clock | December 19, 2008I did not know there were so many of them:
Student science publishing: an exploratory study of undergraduate science research journals and popular science magazines in the US and Europe:
Science magazines have an important role in disseminating scientific knowledge into the public sphere and in discussing the broader scope affected by scientific research such as technology, ethics and politics. Student-run science magazines afford opportunities for future scientists, communicators, politicians and others to practice communicating science. The ability to translate 'scientese' into a jargon-…
clock | December 19, 2008We're a sentimental people. We like a few kind words better than millions of dollars given in a humiliating way. (Refusing economic aid from the West)
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
clock | December 19, 2008Changes in publication statistics when electronic submission was introduced in an international applied science journal:
In a refereed journal in the food and agriculture sector, papers were tracked over a five-year period during the introduction of electronic submissions. Papers originated in the Americas and Pacific region and were processed in Canada. Acceptance times for revised papers were reduced (P < 0.001) to 59% of the original, from 156.5 ± 69.1 days to 92.8 ± 57.5 days. But the start of electronic submission coincided with a change in the geographical origin of papers, with…
clock | December 19, 2008
Polygamy, Paternal Care In Birds Linked To Dinosaur Ancestors:
Sure, they're polygamous, but male emus and several other ground-dwelling birds also are devoted dads, serving as the sole incubators and caregivers to oversized broods from multiple mothers. It is rare behavior, but research described in the Dec. 19 Science found that it runs in this avian family, all the way back to its dinosaur ancestors.
'Hobbit' Fossils Represent A New Species, Concludes Anthropologist:
University of Minnesota anthropology professor Kieran McNulty (along with colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in…
clock | December 19, 2008January issue of Scientific American is devoted to Darwin's 200th birthday and contains several excellent articles. Check out The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom by Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott for starters.
But beware, there are other (and I would say better) ways of thinking about some of the issues in some of the articles, so check out what Larry has to say about Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution and Testing Natural Selection. You may not agree 100%, but you need to think about it.
clock | December 19, 2008Pam Spaulding and Wayne Sutton discuss blogs, election, Rick Warren and more:
Location: Carrboro Creative Coworking space. Who needs Silicon Valley when there are people and facilities like this right here in North Carolina?
clock | December 19, 2008
From WiSE (Women in Science and Engineering) of Duke:
WiSE is partnering with ScienceOnline'09, a national science blogging and communication conference, to host a Triangle-wide networking event for women scientists, engineers, educators, researchers, science writers, and students. This event also includes many of our local women's groups and promises to be a networking extravaganza. Following a networking reception with free light eats and drinks, there will be a presentation by our guest speaker, Rebecca Skloot, a freelance science writer, contributing editor at Popular Science, and…
clock | December 19, 2008You may have heard the story that Scarlett Johansson had a cold when she appeared on Jay Leno's show the other day. And you may have heard that she got the cold from her 'The Spirit' co-star Samuel L. Jackson. And you may have heard that she had to blow her nose into a tissue during the show. And you may have heard that this particular tissue is now up for sale on eBay. And you may have heard that all proceeds of this sale will benefit USA Harvest, the charity of Scarlett Johansson's choice.
What you may not know is that, due to the content of the tissue being regarded as biohazard (or even…
clock | December 19, 2008From The Big Picture
2008 has been an eventful year to say the least - it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I've done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It's not the story of 2008, it's certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months. This is a multi-entry story, 120 photographs over three days:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Those are some amazing pictures. Some are gory. Some are poignant. Some are…
clock | December 19, 2008There are 11 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Home Range Utilisation and Territorial Behaviour of Lions (Panthera leo) on Karongwe Game Reserve, South Africa:
Interventionist conservation management of territorial large carnivores has increased in recent years,…
clock | December 19, 2008I get mail:
The National Academies want to identify the topics in science, engineering, and medicine that matter most to the public and that people have the greatest interest in learning more about. Once the topics have been selected, we plan to create a suite of educational materials (in both print and web formats) about each subject, with the goal of offering objective, reliable resources about complex topics.
We developed a 2-minute survey that we'd like to distribute to our key audiences. Readers of your blog are one of those key audiences and we would love to hear what topics matter…
clock | December 19, 2008The deadline for the PLoS ONE Second Birthday Synchroblogging Competition is now officially over. Here are all the posts written for the competition - 18 posts, written by 17 people, covering 22 PLoS ONE articles. Liz, Dave, Jason and I will be reading them today and will announce the winner as soon as we can:
Barn Owl of Guadalupe Storm-Petrel: DNA Repair During Spermatogenesis: Gimme a Break! about the article: Deletion of Genes Implicated in Protecting the Integrity of Male Germ Cells Has Differential Effects on the Incidence of DNA Breaks and Germ Cell Loss
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket…
clock | December 19, 2008Urbanization: 95% Of The World's Population Lives On 10% Of The Land:
A new global map released by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and published in the World Bank's World Development Report 2009, measures urbanisation from the new perspective of Travel Time to 8,500 Major Cities. The map fills an important gap in our understanding of economic, physical and even social connectivity.
Girls Have Superior Sense Of Taste To Boys:
Girls have a better sense of taste than boys. Every third child of school age prefers soft drinks which are not sweet. Children and young people love…
clock | December 18, 2008Bringing up teenagers is like sweeping back ocean waves with a frazzled broom - the inundation of outside influences never stops. Whatever the lure - cars, easy money, cigarettes, drugs, booze, sex, crime - much that glitters along the shore has a thousand times the appeal of a parent's lecture.
- Mary Ellen Snodgrass
clock | December 18, 2008
There is a new interview in the series by the students in Miss Baker's class: An Interview with Danielle Lee, Author of Urban Science Adventures. Danielle Lee will be moderating a session about Race in Science.
clock | December 18, 2008Two very interesting papers this week:
The Circadian Clock in Arabidopsis Roots Is a Simplified Slave Version of the Clock in Shoots:
The circadian oscillator in eukaryotes consists of several interlocking feedback loops through which the expression of clock genes is controlled. It is generally assumed that all plant cells contain essentially identical and cell-autonomous multiloop clocks. Here, we show that the circadian clock in the roots of mature Arabidopsis plants differs markedly from that in the shoots and that the root clock is synchronized by a photosynthesis-related signal from the…
clock | December 18, 2008So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Developmental Constraints on Vertebrate Genome Evolution:
Because embryonic development must proceed correctly for an animal to survive, changes in evolution are constrained according to their effects on development. Changes that disrupt development too dramatically are thus rare in evolution…
clock | December 18, 2008From EconPapers:
Scientific research has come to dominate many American universities. Even with growing external support, increasingly the costs of scientific research are being funded out of internal university funds. Our paper explains why this is occuring, presents estimates of the magnitudes of start-up cost packages being provided to scientists and engineers and then uses panel data to estimate the impact of the growing cost of science on student/faculty ratios, faculty salaries and undergraduate tuition.We find that universities whose own expenditures on research are growing the most…
clock | December 18, 2008Publish in Wikipedia or perish:
Wikipedia, meet RNA. Anyone submitting to a section of the journal RNA Biology will, in the future, be required to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarizes the work. The journal will then peer review the page before publishing it in Wikipedia.
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The RNA wiki is a subset of a broader project, the WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, which has marshalled hundreds of scientists to improve the content of biology articles in Wikipedia. It, in turn, is collaborating with the Novartis Research Foundation on GeneWiki 3, an effort to…