Tag Archive for twitter app

Fight Cancer: Mohawk Valley communities chosen to participate in nationwide lifestyle vs. cancer study

May 25, 2009 cancer, nutrition, research, survivorship One comment

Relay for Life, 2008Image by Andy Ciordia via Flickr

A story in today’s Utica Observer-Dispatch announced that “The Mohawk Valley has been chosen to participate in the American Cancer Society’s nationwide Cancer Prevention Study 3, and ACS is seeking local people to enroll in the study. The study will examine lifestyle, environmental and genetic factors to determine which may contribute to or help prevent cancer.”

Study participants must fit this profile, according to Peter Cittadino, ACS community executive director:
“All adults ages 30 to 65 who do not have a personal history of cancer are eligible to enroll. Participants must be willing to commit to a long-term study that, although it requires minimal involvement, will continue for about 20 years.”

Earlier multi-community studies established the links between tobacco use and cancer, and between obesity and cancer.

Interested participants can register (a 20-30 min. process) at a table at the Utica Relay for Life on June 13-14 at Mohawk Valley Community College. People interested in participating in the study do not have to be RforL participants to sign up. The registration process involves a survey and some initial measurements on day of sign-up, including giving a blood sample.

Thanks to @foodmedic on Twitter for the heads-up about this study. Sometimes it takes a tweet from Texas to let Central New Yorkers know that they have an opportunity to help researchers make strides evaluating the connections between cancer, lifestyle and diet!

All content in “Gaelen’s Cafe: Life Out Loud” (c) by Patricia. A. Steer.
May not be reprinted without written permission of the author.
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As long as you spell my name right (and include that link-back)…

April 13, 2009 dogs, pets 6 comments

Yesterday, I blogged about the inappropriateness and intrusiveness of groups that think they are somehow entitled to a voice in the Obama family’s selection of their family pet. And a couple of days ago, I blogged about an anti-pet-owner no-tail-docking NY state assembly amendment to the Agriculture and Markets bill called A07218.

Since those blog posts, five or six suspiciously animal-rights extremist profiles have shown up among my Twitter followers. I’m not trying to build a ginormous Twitter following out of everyone who clicks ‘follow’ on my account; I’m interested in content and good conversations–not sheer numbers. Often, I’ll follow back–for awhile. But people whose tweets have a high noise -> signal ratio get unfollowed pretty quickly. And those who follow but don’t have much of a profile or a website or any followers or updates of their own will get blocked. And for the record, animal rights activists will also get blocked from following me.

Then today, my blog about the new 1st puppy was quoted (and decried) by another blogger who calls himself AnimalRighter. By the goddess, I even got a blog link out of the man (for the record–never heard of him until his link-back showed up in my Google analytics summary.) Maybe he, too, is following Problogger’s April exercise, “31 Days to a Better Blog.” Darren Rouse, the author at Problogger.com, just included a blog improvement exercise that had participants link-back to another blog writing in their category.

So hey–as long as the blog spelled my name correctly (‘Gaelen’ is tough) AND it included a link back to my blog (which improves my online visibility) — well, high-five, man! I’m not going to follow you on Twitter, nor let you follow me, and I’m for sure not going to subscribe to your blog–but I’m more than willing to be grateful for the extra boost to my site traffic.

Oh…and thanks for pointing out (by quoting it) the typo in my original upload. That’s fixed now. ;)

All content in “Gaelen’s Cafe: Life Out Loud” (c) by Patricia. A. Steer.
May not be reprinted without written permission of the author.

Clinical Trials meet Social Media

April 13, 2009 cancer, research, survivorship No comments

You have cancer, and someone suggests you should consider clinical trials. But you have NO idea how to find a clinical trial for your cancer, or for your stage of illness. Through trial and error, you discover clinicaltrials.gov but, to be honest, you’re just overwhelmed when you search the site. How do you begin? How do you sort? Which trials are right for you? Then you realize that clinicaltrials.gov is only one of a couple of dozen sites that index clinical trials. You’ll never be able to sort through all of them–and your doctor(s) want an answer about your treatment, now.

TrialX at http://trialx.org is moving the search for clinical trials onto social media sites like Twitter.

In this TrialX blog entry are the instructions you need to send a request (a QuTweet) to @trialx from your Twitter account. Use the format @trialx CT your health profile and send the qutweet as either a regular public update, or a private direct message (DM) to @trialx. Within a few minutes, you’ll receive a targeted response with a tinyURL link to a list of clinical trials appropriate to your query.

For instance, my query was @trialx CT rectal cancer northeast US.
Within a minute, I received this response: @Gaelen2 Your Matching Clinical Trials http://tinyurl.com/link
At the tinyURL link, I was able to further refine the list with my age, sex, and stage information, search among the listed trials for phase of trial information, and get a general run-down of each of the trials on my targeted list (including acceptance and exclusion criteria.)

Useful–and cool. The TrialX Twitter app puts a high-powered clinical trial search engine at the fingertips of anyone with a Twitter account–and the main website offers additional search options. Best of all, it’s all for free.

This is the kind of information that makes having a computer a good thing.

All content in “Gaelen’s Cafe: Life Out Loud” (c) by Patricia. A. Steer.
May not be reprinted without written permission of the author.