Two New Tools Are Available on the Boston University SBRP Web Page

Superfund Basic Research Program

The Boston University Superfund Basic Research Program (http://www.busbrp.org/) (BU SBRP) has implemented an innovative approach to community outreach by making two new tools available on their website: the "Ask the Researcher (http://www.busbrp.org/ask.html) " series and RSS Starter Kit (http://www.busbrp.org/starterkit.html) .

Dr. David Ozonoff, the BU SBRP Outreach Core leader, collaborated with the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility to create these tools.

The "Ask the Researcher" web page provides an introduction to BU SBRP researchers and their research projects. The page also provides an e-mail address for users to submit questions about environmental health to a particular scientist or to the entire team of researchers.

The RSS Starter Kit also helps the general community, researchers, and health care professionals alike. It contains a series of tutorials created by the BU SBRP Research Translation Core that guide users through the basics of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is an easy way of staying up-to-date with changing web content, from news articles to up-to-the-minute PubMed searches. Almost everyone who has tried RSS has found it useful.

Tutorials in the kit include Setting Up Google Reader, Adding Feeds, Creating a Feed From PubMed, and Importing Multiple Feeds. The RSS Starter Kit also contains a file of important news sources in environmental health (referred to as an OPML file).

Both tools are part of a larger BU SBRP initiative to promote Web 2.0 technologies.

The success of the "Ask the Researcher" and RSS Starter Kit tools show that the general public, community partners, and health care providers are concerned about environmental health effects.