Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP) - Guatemala City, Guatemala

Center of Excellence Activity Sites

Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, which includes the following areas:

• Southern Mexico
• Central America (Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama)
• Dominican Republic

Developed Country Partner

Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Principal Investigator: Benjamin Caballero, M.D., Ph.D. ...

Objectives

To reduce the burden of CVD [cardiovascular diseases] in Mesoamerica by establishing a Center of Excellence to carry out research, training, and capacity-building for prevention and management of CVD and related risk factors."

-- National Heart Blood and Lung Institute, National Institutes of Health (2009). Global Health Initiative: Centers of Excellence: Guatemala. Retrieved January 27, 2009 from

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/globalhealth/centers/guatemala-center-of-excellence.htm

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I have been excitedly surprised to discover the existence, previously unknown to me,  of a large system of interconnected health organizations that start with major agencies of the US government, branch out to more local levels of health service in this country, and ramify across international borders to developing countries, including Latin America, which naturally will be a focus of my attention as my career develops. It's good to know that infrastructure is growing out from our country to help our neighbors. ~ Luis

UK ahead of US in government transparency!

UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / January 20, 2010 11:57 AM /
"A new website dedicated to making non-personal data held by the U.K. government available for software developers has launched today with the help of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.Data.gov.uk is being slammed with traffic but six months after the U.S. government opened its Data.gov site the U.K. site already has more than three times as much data than the U.S. site offers today.

At launch, Data.gov.uk has nearly 3,000 data sets available for developers to build mashups with. The U.S. site, Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets today."

--- Kilpatrick, Marshall (2009). UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame. ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved January 22, 2009 from: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/uk_launches_open_data_site_
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Competition is good for the consumer so a rivalry among governments to open up their data will benefit the public and the librarians who gain access to the treasure trove. - Luis

"Government posting wealth of data to Internet"

AP / Yahoo!
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jan 22, 7:31 am ET

"WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Friday is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments, on topics ranging from child car seats to Medicare services.

The mountain of newly available information comes a year and a day after President Barack Obama promised on his first full day on the job an open, transparent government. ...
All the new data collections will be added to the government's Web site, data.gov."

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The wealth of information that is becoming available to us every day is unparalleled in history. No one is better equipped to organize this mountain of data, make it searchable, and guide the general public plus specialized researchers in navigating it than librarians and information professionals. The weight of this resource call us to orient ourselves toward managing 'public data.' - Luis

CNET: "Feds get new tool for online public feedback"

January 19, 2010 2:58 PM PST
by Daniel Terdiman

"The hope, at least among participating departments and agencies, is that having a single tool that can be used across the federal government will make it easy for members of the public to engage with as many agencies as they wish, and to help government bureaucrats meet the requirements of the Open Government Directive, which is built around fostering transparency, participation and collaboration."

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The mass of information available to librarians increases constantly, and the source in many cases is one usually considered to be trustworthy: the federal government (though many may dispute that thought). Accuracy may be subjective but federal data is the "data of record" or the official data that we can work with. The task of librarians has always been to organize and make searchable masses of data. We will need to increase our organizational skills and perhaps import skills from computer science in order to keep up with the quantity of data becoming available. - Luis

Dropbox.com - free drive space in the cloud

Dropbox - You're invited to join Dropbox! - Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy.

www.dropbox.com

"Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There's no complicated interface to learn. Dropbox works seamlessly with your operating system and automatically makes sure your files are up-to-date. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux."

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Many things computer-related are now migrating to 'The Cloud,' or external servers, as opposed to being stored on our computer at home. Google Docs, a free service, now accepts any file, not just text or spreadsheet files, and other services do too.

This is Dropbox, a free service to store your files and make them accessible to you anywhere there is an internet connection. It's like a flash drive in the sky - an interesting backup when traveling with files that you will need at your destination. More space is available for a price but the free service works excellently. Requires download of a small free program platform. Let me know what you think if you try it. - Luis