Article RSS Feed

Launch of the Tabs Database of Therapeutic Antibodies

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 19:54:05 GMT

Launch of the Tabs Database of Therapeutic Antibodies

01 June 2011

Craic announces the launch of Tabs - a New and Comprehensive database on more than 950 Therapeutic Antibodies in development by biotechnology companies.

Using a combination of advanced data mining and expert manual curation, Tabs represents the most comprehensive resource on therapeutic antibodies developed thus far.

Antibody records in the database are linked to a range of associated data, including Antigens, Companies, Conditions/Indications, Clinical Trials, Papers, Patents and more. Importantly, the database tracks the synonyms that identify individual Antibodies, avoiding duplication and ambiguity in your own searches.

Users can browse the database and search using a wide range of criteria. They can define their own Sets of antibodies and download tables into Excel and citations into common Reference Management software. Email notification will alert users whenever relevant new data are added.

Your Business Development staff can see the status of competing Abs in development and your R&D staff can see relevant papers and patents directly, saving you hours of time searching through separate databases.

As of June 1, 2011, Tabs contains data on more than 950 antibodies, more than 400 Antigens, and more than 300 Companies.

Tabs is available as a web based subscription service and offers cost effective access to the latest developments in this fast moving field. You can find out more about the service and sign up for a Free 30 day trial at http://tabs.craic.com.

Release of the Tandem Select jQuery Plugin

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 23:03:29 GMT

Release of the Tandem Select jQuery Plugin

18 March 2011

Craic has released an open-source jQuery plugin for tandem select menus in HTML forms.

Most of the tools and databases that we develop for our clients involve web interfaces. The JavaScript language and the jQuery library play an essential role in web development at Craic. Our work leverages the contributions of many developers in the open source community and, as part of that community, we feel that it is important to contribute to it.

Today Craic has released a new jQuery Plugin that makes it easier to create complex select menus in HTML forms.

A standard HTML multiple Select menu allows the user to select multiple options using Ctrl/Cmd-Click. But when the list of options is long, requiring the user to scroll, it becomes cumbersome and prone to errors.

An effective solution is to use two select menus in tandem, with buttons allowing options to be swapped between the two.

Tandem Select implements this as a jQuery Plugin that is simple to set up and easy to customize.

More information and demo pages for the plugin can be found HERE and the software can be downloaded from HERE.

Release of the Simple Tooltip Ruby Gem

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:39:31 GMT

Release of the Simple Tooltip Ruby Gem

07 March 2011

Craic has released software that provides Tooltip Help for Rails 3 Web Applications.

Most of the web application development at Craic Computing uses Ruby on Rails, one of the leading open source web application frameworks. In doing so we gain tremendous benefit from the work of many developers in the Rails community who contribute tools and libraries to the project.

So we are especially pleased to announce that we have contributed our first Ruby Gem to the project. Simple Tooltip is a package of software that makes it very easy to add so-called Tooltip Help to web pages in a Rails application. Within the Ruby and Rails community these packages are called 'gems'.

Simple Tooltip allows developers to add online help to their pages which can use the rich formatting features of HTML. Users will see small help icons on their pages and clicking on, or hovering above, these will bring up popup windows that contain the help content.

An important feature of Simple Tooltip is that any given help item can occur in more than one language and the software will show that which is most appropriate to the user.

To try out Simple Tooltip, go to the Demo Site and to learn more about the software go to the project page on GitHub and rubygems.org.

150th post on Craic Computing Tech Tips

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:37:07 GMT

150th post on Craic Computing Tech Tips

17 February 2011

Craic reached a minor milestone last week.

Craic Computing Tech Tips is a blog where we post snippets of code, workarounds and software tips that we think might be of interest to others.

It has been running since 2007 and last week we added the 150th post to the site. The content is aimed at software developers and system administrators and covers everything from quick shortcuts to detailed code examples and installation instructions.

It's not the sort of blog that you read regularly, rather you find it through search engines when you're looking for help with a specific problem.

We turned on Google Analytics tracking on the site in June 2010. Since then it has averaged more than 2600 page views per month. We think that is pretty good!

We rely very heavily on open source software in our work and the Tech Tips site is one way to give back to the community. Not only that, it serves to show potential clients and collaborators the depth of our experience.

PATSY - Making patents easier to read

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:36:49 GMT

PATSY - Making patents easier to read

14 February 2011

Craic has released PATSY, a novel web service that reformats US patents in a way that makes them easier to read.

The text of patents is extremely difficult to read. The language used is can be verbose and arcane. Patents typically contain long lists of terms that enumerate all possible variants of each component within an invention. Compounding this is the narrow two column format chosen by the USPTO with which to print these documents.

The end result is text that almost guarantees frustration, eyestrain and headaches. PATSY is a novel web application that aims to change this.

You enter a US patent number, or publication number, into PATSY. The software fetches the document from the USPTO web site and reformats in several ways, displaying the resulting page in your web browser. Paragraphs are split into separate sentences. Long sentences are split are punctuation into multiple lines. In addition, references to other patents are made into hyperlinks to their respective office web sites, or to PATSY directly in the case of US patents. Key phrases, such as 'SEQ ID NO' are highlighted and certain types of journal references are given links to the NIH PubMed site, allowing quick access to the underlying publications.

PATSY is an experiment and has a few limitations. It only works with US patents at the moment and some features are focused on biotechnology patents. The service is free to use so please try it out and see if it helps you with your work - PATSY.

Launch of the 'Raphael Live' Learning Tool

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:04:11 GMT

Launch of the 'Raphael Live' Learning Tool

11 March 2010

Craic has released Raphaël Live, an interactive tool for exploring the Raphaël Vector Graphics JavaScript Library, developed by Dmitry Baranovskiy.

Raphaël makes it easy to create complex vector graphics in JavaScript in a way that is compatible with modern web browsers. Craic has created Raphaël Live as an interactive tool for learning how to use this library.

By combining Raphaël, jQuery and the CodeMirror in-browser code editor, Raphaël Live makes it easy to try out code examples.

In addition, the tool provides links to a series of tutorial examples that demonstrate the major components of Raphaël. Clicking on a link loads the code into the editor and displays the results. Users can modify the code and re-run it to see how different attributes and parameters affect the result. In this way you can get up to speed with this important library in no time.

The code for Raphaël Live is available on GitHub and is freely distributed under the MIT license.

Launch of the SQIP Patent Sequence Database

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:04:30 GMT

Launch of the SQIP Patent Sequence Database

06 December 2009

Craic is proud to announce the launch of SQIP - your new solution for Patent Sequence Searching.

SQIP (pronounced 'skip') is a database of Sequences derived from Patents and a sophisticated Web Service that allows Biotechnology companies and their IP advisers to explore the IP landscape around their proprietary DNA and Protein sequences.

SQIP moves beyond existing services by providing not only a comprehensive sequence database, but a sophisticated user interface designed to make patent assessment much for efficient. More than that, SQIP is priced in a simple and straightforward manner. With no expensive annual commitment, you simply pay for the service you use, making SQIP ideal for smaller companies.

There is no charge to create an account. You can explore the system and run searches with example data for free.

For more information and to Sign Up for an account, please go to http://sqipdb.com

Ruby binding to Jenkins Hash functions

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:48:21 GMT

Ruby binding to Jenkins Hash functions

07 March 2009

Craic has published a Ruby binding for the lookup3.c code for generating 32-bit hashes. This useful C library was developed by Bob Jenkins (http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash).

The Ruby code is distributed under the MIT open source license.

Download it from the Craic account on Github.

Publication on Bacterial Enteric Infection in Children

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:48:21 GMT

Publication on Bacterial Enteric Infection in Children

27 January 2009

The Journal of Infectious Diseases has published a study on risk factors for bacterial enteric infection in children that was performed in Washington State. Most studies prior to this have dealt with specific outbreaks of bacterias such as Salmonella or E.coli, but these represent only 10% of all such infections.

This study sought to identify risk factors for the much larger set of sporadic infections. An editorial in the same issue of the journal discusses the significance of this study.

Craic Computing was part of the consortium of groups involved in the study and developed the data management tools that supported it.

Tutorial on the aws-sdb Ruby interface to AWS SimpleDB

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:48:21 GMT

Tutorial on the aws-sdb Ruby interface to AWS SimpleDB

09 October 2008

SimpleDB is a hosted, distributed database service, part of the Amazon Web Services Portfolio. aws-sdb is a Ruby interface to this service, written by Tim Dysinger.

This Tutorial from Robert Jones at Craic explains how to use this service from within Ruby code.

Craic Computing uses a number of AWS services to handle massive datasets of sequence and text.