Tid Bits

It's been a while ...

We'll start off with Science and Art: Design and the Elastic Mind at MoMA (NY Times article)

RPM at evolgen ponders about faculty members that blog. And now there are even journal editors that blog. In another post, RPM discusses the various phenotypes found in the typical audience attending the weekly departmental seminar.

We also have a pair from PhysioProf at DrugMonkey:
Submit Your RO1 Now
New Fiscal Policy at the NIH FY2008 - Cuts in existing RO1s

You gotta love Sunil's great stories. In a recent post he tells a few tales about the giant scientific egos he has encountered.

Anna Kushnir also has some interesting things to say about lab life.

The folks at biocurious link to a great video on the Edge.org where Drew Endy discusses "Engineering Biology". While you are at the Edge, check out this conversation between Venter and Dawkins.

Speaking of videos, Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica and A New Kind of Science) discusses his ideas with George Johnson in the latest edition of Science Saturday at bloggingheads.tv.

And on NPR's DNA Files submit a question to Daniel Povinelli (Professor and Director Cognitive Evolution Group, Center for Child Studies, University of Louisiana) and William Fields (Director of Bonobo Research at the Great Ape Trust outside Des Moines, Iowa) on the differences between the mental faculties of chimps and humans - or just listen to the segments from the upcoming DNA Files program.

Corie Lok points to an article in Science on how Pfizer is fighting anonymous peer-review. From Corie's blog:

According to an editorial in last week's Science, Pfizer recently filed a motion in a federal court here in Massachusetts to get the New England Journal of Medicine to fork over the confidential reviews of papers it's published about some of Pfizer's drugs. Plaintiffs are suing Pfizer, claiming that its COX-2 inhibitor drugs caused heart disease and other health problems. So the drug giant wants to dig through the reviewers' reports in hopes of finding something that will help its case.

And here are more musings on publishing at ScienceSampler.

Finally Dan at bitesizebio talks some seminal books in experimental biology:

What of comparably brilliant books on evolutionary biology, post-Synthesis, from the point of view of genetics, molecular biology, and related disciplines? I won't pretend to have read every such book out there, but below the fold is a list of some of the more seminal books, IMHO. Please add to them in the comments!

Click here to see Dan's list.