- I.V. Pershukov – professor, doctor of medical sciences and philosophy (PhD), head of the Department of Hospital Therapy with a course in Radiological Diagnostics and Oncology at Jalal-Abad State University, as well as a fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and the American Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (FSCAI).
We quote his words:
“While previously scientific research and development (R&D) were funded by external sources, last year it became clear that despite the increase in science budgets, not all allocated funds were used effectively. This raises the question: what is actually hindering scientific achievements?”
Today, science has truly become an international discipline. In medicine, this is especially important, as most scientific resources are concentrated in the USA and European Union countries. One of the largest free medical resources is the library established by the U.S. Congress. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides access to its extensive medical library (NLM), which has been operational since the last century. This resource has become a primary tool for searching scientific information. By visiting the website https://www.nlm.nih.gov/, researchers can access a multitude of biomedical reference materials.
The first of these is PubMed®, which claims to have over 39 million references to biomedical publications, including MEDLINE, journals in the biological sciences, and online books. These references may lead to full texts from PubMed Central and publisher websites.
The second resource, PubMed Central®, is a free archive of scientific publications in biomedicine and life sciences, located at the NIH National Library of Medicine.
The third resource, Open-I, is a system for searching biomedical images with open access.
The fourth resource, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), is a controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in PubMed.
The fifth resource, which recently closed, is ClinicalTrials.gov, where information about clinical trials worldwide could be found. It is important to note that even in the USA, funding can be discontinued, and the data on this site may become outdated. In this case, the NIH Clinical Center (NIH research hospital) continues its work. Current information about its activities can be found on the website cc.nih.gov, and updates on government activities can be found at opm.gov.
The sixth resource, BLAST (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi), is a tool for finding local alignments that helps identify areas of similarity between biological sequences. It compares nucleotide or protein sequences with databases and calculates statistical significance.
There are many other medical resources; however, the main thing is the speed of access to the necessary information, which is critical for researchers who sometimes need to quickly clarify topics and formulations for their search.
Those who can quickly find the necessary answers often become leaders in the scientific field.
It is impossible to know everything and to keep track of all innovations even in one's own field. Therefore, libraries are necessary as resources that are consulted as needed – sometimes once a month, and sometimes constantly, to update new scientific data and verify ideas.
All these technologies require quality internet. It is not only the declared connection speed that matters, but also the absence of delays when searching for information. The power of internet channels and the capabilities of communication lines determine how quickly scientists can obtain the necessary information. If the search speed does not match the speed of thought, the effectiveness of a scientist's work decreases.
Therefore, high-quality internet is necessary not for social networks, but for science. Without it, scientific achievements may slow down, and this "burner" under scientific progress is the internet.
