A new IOM report, an excellent explainer piece, and some exciting social media discussions about science in this edition of Blog Buzz!

This week the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a new report, Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress.The report propose 15 standardized measures and recommendations for their use in order to clarify the many measurements associate with health care in the US. The IOM hopes to highlight which measurements the committee feels are the most important for various stakeholders in healthcare to watch. The full report, briefs, info graphics, and a video of the announcement are all available through the link above.

A week can feel like a long time in our modern information landscape, but you may remember the recent hubbub over a study using CRISPR to edit human embryos published by Chinese researchers very shortly after early developers of the method called for the science community to hold off on using CRISPR on human embryos. Whether you missed the story, were curious or even alarmed by it, Carl Zimmer, does a great job explaining it all on The Loom with, Editing Human Embryos so this Happened. I cannot recommend this post enough.

PLoS has been teaming up with reddit to produce a series of science themed AMAs (Ask Me Anything); a cool use of social media to allow experts to communicate with the public about science. Check out last week’s discussion with Dr. Andy Beck of Harvard on the future of cancer treatment, here, or have a peek at this week’s discussion of 3D printing your own Open Source labware, here.