clock | May 18, 2009It is Sex Week on Deep Sea News.
It started with The Sand Dollar Love Shack: A Special Echinoblog to DSN and followed by 'Sleezy' sponge sexuality and more is yet to come for the rest of the week.
clock | May 18, 2009A special issue of JCOM, Journal of Science Communication, has just issued a call for submissions, with the deadline moved to June 1st, 2009:
Science is increasingly being produced, discussed and deliberated with cooperative tools by web users and without the institutionalized presence of scientists. "Popular science" or "Citizen science" are two of the traditional ways of defining science grassroots produced outside the walls of laboratories. But the internet has changed the way of collecting and organising the knowledge produced by people - peers - who do not belong to the established…
clock | May 17, 2009You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel.
- Jim Ignatowski
clock | May 16, 2009Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
- Jewish proverb
clock | May 16, 2009Radical Transparency removes almost all potentials for conflict. Why?
Conflict requires secrecy by some people (bad guys), which is why neither utopian nor anti-utopian novels try to describe such a society in which everything done by everyone - individual, corporation, government - is completely transparent. When everything is out in the open, conflict is difficult to do.
It is hard to write a gripping novel without conflict. Who will read a lyrical ode to a perfect society? Readers need good guys beating up on bad guys in the Final Battle.
In many dystopias, transparency is one-way, i.e…
clock | May 16, 2009The Giant's Shoulders #11 is up on Curving Normality
Friday Ark #243 is up on Modulator
And the next Praxis will be on a new date - May 21st - on The Lay Scientist
clock | May 15, 2009Basking Sharks: Disappearing Act Of World's Second Largest Fish Explained:
Researchers have discovered where basking sharks - the world's second largest fish - hide out for half of every year, according to a report published online on May 7th in Current Biology. The discovery revises scientists' understanding of the iconic species and highlights just how little we still know about even the largest of marine animals, the researchers said.
How Bees Hold Onto Flowers: 'Velcro'-like Structures On Flower Petals Help Bees Stick:
When bees collect nectar, how do they hold onto the flower? Cambridge…
clock | May 14, 2009I discovered I always have choices and sometimes it's only a choice of attitude.
- Judith M. Knowlton
clock | May 14, 2009I'd like to start today with Big Congratulations to the amazing PLoS IT/Web team for finishing the complex and long task of migrating all seven PLoS Journals onto the TOPAZ/Ambra platform. This week, the last of the seven journals, PLoS Biology, was successfully moved. This means that you can now rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks to articles in PLoS Biology just like you could do it on the other six titles that were migrated over the last couple of years. While I don't know exactly what is in the planning, I am sure that the team will continue to make regular…
clock | May 14, 2009One by one, brave people are opening up science, serving as examples of how things can and should be done openly with no ill consequences.
Today - examples of two such pioneers.
First, Bryan Perkins published his research on his blog. Go and read it and post comments, ask questions, help him improve the work. If the feedback is good, who knows, he may submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. In any case, it is much better for data to be out in the open, available to anyone who knows how to use Google search, than gathering dust in some manila folder.
Second, Darren Begley, a graduate student at…
clock | May 14, 2009I and the Bird #100 is up on Nature Blog Network
Change of Shift: Volume 3, Number 23 is up on Emergiblog
clock | May 13, 2009Only two ways left to submit!
Next edition of The Giant's Shoulders will be on May 15th on Curving Normality. History of science, 'classical' papers? If you have blogged about those over the past 30 days, please send in your entry.
I understand that the next edition of Praxis will also be on May 15th on The Lay Scientist. Next month, it will be on Quiche Morraine and in July here on A Blog Around The Clock - we need hosts for after that! Let Martin or me know if you are interested.
clock | May 13, 2009You may have heard about a recent Wikipedia hoax:
A WIKIPEDIA hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world.
The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March.
It was posted on the online encyclopedia shortly after his death and later appeared in obituaries published in the Guardian, the London Independent, on the BBC Music Magazine website and in Indian and Australian newspapers
Yup. Journalists check their sources carefully. Especially the despised untrustworthy Wikipedia, only a…
clock | May 13, 2009There are 18 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:
The Abdominal Circulatory Pump:
Blood in the splanchnic vasculature can be transferred to the extremities. We quantified such blood shifts in normal subjects by measuring trunk volume by optoelectronic…
clock | May 13, 2009
Teenagers Are Becoming Increasingly Logical, Swedish Study Finds:
A research project at the University of Gothenburg has been testing large groups of 13-year-olds in Sweden since the early 1960s using the same intelligence test. The tests have taken place at approximately five year intervals and consist of an inductive-logic test, a verbal test and a spatial test.
Landmark Study Reveals Significant Genetic Variation Between Mexico's Population And World's Other Known Genetic Subgroups:
Could genetic differences explain why some people and not others have died of H1N1 Influenza A? That is…
clock | May 12, 2009I'm an early bird, and I'm a night owl. So I'm wise and have worms.
- Michael Scott
clock | May 12, 2009Encephalon #70 is up on SharpBrains
Carnival of Space #102 is up on TheSpacewriter's Ramblings
Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 34 is up at Health Blogs Observatory
The Carnival of the Green #179 is up on OrganicMania
Friday Ark #242 is up on Modulator