Wafaa El Sadr, PhD, MPA, global vice president of ICAP, has been in the news recently, due to an article he wrote for a publication focusing on new translation technologies for translational research. The article was published in the prestigious Science Newsmagazine, a week before the deadline for submission. It has caused a lot of excitement both inside and outside the translation industry. Dr. El Sadr states that he expects that within two years, there will be more than two million people who will have access to his database of more than two billion web pages. The scope of the project is vast: it will enable easy access to information across the entire globe.
One of the goals of the journal is to build upon the success of the Washington Post’s Live Science blog, which was one of the first established online science journals. Live Science, of course, enjoyed a successful launch and continues to attract a wide readership. The Journal, however, went straight to the target audience: those working in the translation industry, as it were. This led to a great deal of coverage in major language newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Nature News, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel, among others. It was also picked up by international media, with prominent features in the BBC and CNN.
Although the focus of the Journal is translation, it does have some interesting articles on topics such as the global food crisis and its connection to SARS, and the role of vaccines and other pharmaceutical drugs in protecting the world from such epidemics. It goes without saying that these articles would attract a huge audience, but one can also expect great insights from it on matters such as the Trump administration’s travel ban, immigration, and environmental policy. Global News Wire also covers the developments in the financial sector, including the Volcker Effect and the turbulence in corporate stocks. These articles may be slightly more technical than the Journal’s style, but they provide new insights on issues where laymen may not otherwise have been aware of.
Global News Wire is not purely a news site, however. It also has some great visual features, including videos from certain events and feature stories that explain cutting-edge technologies and new advances. This summer saw the release of an episode of Global News Wire’s “Healthplace” series featuring Washington Post reporters’ investigations into the effectiveness of airpacks, roca test strips, and breast reconstruction surgery. While some of the technology featured in the episode was already available in hospitals around the country, the episode nonetheless served as a call to action for medical professionals to use these advanced methods, which are now easily available in hospitals across the United States.
The “Healthplace” episode also featured the work of Washington Post reporter Liatris Ebersole, who covered the controversy surrounding the price tag on Simvastatin-A. Simvastatin-A, a combination of vitamin A, collagen, and amino acids, is commonly used to treat patients suffering from age-related eye diseases like macular degeneration and cataracts, with positive results. However, it was found that Simvastatin-A, at a certain dosage, could cause harmful side effects in some patients. Simvastatin-A is made by Simvastatin, Inc., a company that is part of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company that owns the rights to Simvastatin-A.
Global News Wire‘s “Tech Knowledge” segment also profiled Simvastatin-A. A study had been conducted by the National Institutes of Health to determine whether the use of a contraceptive patch can help increase a woman’s chances of getting pregnant while she simultaneously took Simvastatin-A. The study found that women taking Simvastatin-A had about twice as much success in getting pregnant as women who did not use the contraceptive patch, and that women who were not taking Simvastatin-A also had about twice the success rate as those who were taking Simvastatin-A but were not on the contraceptive patch.