Posts

May 22, 2013

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12:48 PM | Irish scientists uncover link between gut bacteria and autism

Another clue into the molecular processes of autism. Irish scientists uncover link between gut bacteria and autism – BelfastTelegraph.co.uk. Related Article: Bacteria boost fixes symptoms of autism in mice – Article in New Scientist Filed under: Bacteria, Microbiology, Nature, Science Communication, STEM Tagged: Autism, Bacteria

May 21, 2013

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11:16 PM | #swimsafe: Let’s Chat about Healthy Waters

It’s Recreational Water Illness & Injury Prevention Week! So let’s chat about how we’re using science to keep our water ways healthy. We’re thrilled to be joining The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s twitter chat #swimsafe on Wednesday May 22 at 2pm EDT. We’ll be joining CDC experts Michele Hlavsa and Michael Beach [...]

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4:26 PM | Critical Science Writing: A Checklist for the Life Sciences

One major obstacle in the "infotainment versus critical science writing" debate is that there is no universal definition of what constitutes "critical analysis" in science writing. How can we decide whether or not critical science writing is adequately represented in contemporary science writing or science journalism, if we do not have a standardized way of assessing it. For this purpose, I would like to propose a following checklist of questions that one would find in a news article or […]

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2:22 PM | Narrative Transportation

This is a draft of an article I submitted to Nautilus Magazine, a “new magazine on science, culture, and philosophy,” for their issue entitled In Transit. Nautilus already had plans to cover the topic of my story, narrative transportation, so they politely declined my submission, which I share here with you. Their magazine is off to a great start, I encourage you to check it out.

May 20, 2013

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12:25 PM | Learning to read the tree of life

Evolution education is entering an exciting time: scientists are working on the Open Tree of Life – the first comprehensive tree charting the evolutionary relationships of all named species — and many U.S. classrooms are preparing for state adoption of … Continue reading »

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12:25 PM | Learning to read the tree of life

Evolution education is entering an exciting time: scientists are working on the Open Tree of Life – the first comprehensive tree charting the evolutionary relationships of all named species — and many U.S. classrooms are preparing for state adoption of … Continue reading »

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12:00 AM | Google “Timelapse”: Images of destruction

By Claire Google (in conjunction with NASA and the USGS) has just released a series of timelapse movies, showing the changes occurring to the surface of our planet since the 1970s. These videos use images taken by the LandSat satellite … Continue reading →

May 19, 2013

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11:05 AM | ‘Infotainment’ and Critical Science Journalism

I recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Guardian in which I suggested that there is too much of an emphasis on ‘infotainment’ in contemporary science journalism and there is too little critical science journalism. The response to the article was unexpectedly strong, provoking some hostile comments on Twitter, and some of the most angry comments seem to indicate a misunderstanding of the core message. One of the themes that emerged in response to the article was the Us-vs.-Them perception... […]

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7:45 AM | Weekly Science Picks

Greetings one and all, and a very happy science Sunday to you! This week’s generally been quite interesting. We’ve had good news, bad news, a little heated discussion… All the kind of things which keep the science community vibrant and [...]testThe post Weekly Science Picks appeared first on Australian Science.

May 18, 2013

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6:06 PM | ‘Is ‘cloning’ mad, bad and dangerous?’ – an argument revisited

Seven years ago, to mark the then tenth anniversary of the announcement of the birth of the folkloric Dolly the sheep, and in the still reverberating wake of the South Korean cloning scandal, I practiced my fledgling/intermittent/debatable/wanton science communication skills with the penning of an article on the issue of ‘cloning.’ It being an anniversary with a ’0′ on the end, combined with topical relevance, suggested I might be lucky enough to get it published. And I was thus very... […]

Tachibana, M., Amato, P., Sparman, M., Gutierrez, N., Tippner-Hedges, R., Ma, H., Kang, E., Fulati, A., Lee, H., Sritanaudomchai, H. & Masterson, K. (2013). Human Embryonic Stem Cells Derived by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.006

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12:00 PM | What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz

If you’re looking to show doubters that plants are fascinating then a good starting point is Daniel Chamovitz‘s What a Plant Knows. I was a bit wary of the book at the title made it sound a bit twee. In fact the book is an accessible and extensive exploration of how plants react to their [...]Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)The post What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz appeared first on AoB Blog.

May 17, 2013

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5:29 PM | Don’t Let Mark Bittman Cook Your Brain with Bad Science

Mark Bittman, the popular food writer for the New York Times, has written a column that is almost beyond parody for its unintentional irony. The only way to fully appreciate his lack of self-awareness is to stop and marvel at numerous passages. Let’s start at the top: Things are bad enough in the food world [...]

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3:41 PM | A Brush With Journalistic Style of Authoring

I am tickled pink. I wrote something for a magazine, an informational piece on the Cryptococcus gattii outbreak currently ongoing in the US (on which I expanded in my last blog post). My essay was published yesterday, on May 16, with the launch of the UK edition of the online news magazine, The Conversation. One of the editors for The Conversation is none other than the Scilogs community's very own, Dr. Akshat Rathi (he of the Allotrope fame; read his... Read more

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1:05 PM | Scientists blog for positive change, in environment and community

New faculty members Randall Hughes and David Kimbro set up shop at the Marine Science Center this winter after spending several years studying oyster reefs at Florida State University. During their time in Tallahassee, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill devastated the region, dumping nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean over a period of 87 days. [...]

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7:39 AM | How do you really feel about biomedical science?

The Wellcome Trust Monitor explores public attitudes about biomedical science. Now in its second incarnation, the survey shows surprising trends in public thinking around biomedical subjects. We asked the project’s manager, Hannah Baker, to tell us more. What is the Wellcome Monitor? It’s a tracking survey that measures adults’ and young people’s awareness, knowledge and […]

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7:39 AM | How do you really feel about biomedical science?

The Wellcome Trust Monitor explores public attitudes about biomedical science. Now in its second incarnation, the survey shows surprising trends in public thinking around biomedical subjects. We asked the project’s manager, Hannah Baker, to tell us more. What is the Wellcome Monitor? It’s a tracking survey that measures adults’ and young people’s awareness, knowledge and […]

May 16, 2013

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9:17 PM | Stealthy emergence of Cryptococcus gattii in North America

What can the members of multiple animal species (cat, dog, bird, ferret, llama, alpaca, elk, goat, sheep, horse, porpoise) have in common with humans? Deeper philosophical questions aside, all of them have fallen prey to a deadly fungus spreading gradually, but steadily, in western North America (southwest Canada; US states of the Pacific Northwest, PNW) for over a decade.1 Well, what-ho, what-ho Cryptococcus gattii (CG), I believe we have been introduced. The disease, cryptococcosis, […]

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7:04 PM | Ecologists reaching out #reachingoutsci

By Nadine Lymn, ESA director of public affairs Since the earliest days of the Ecological Society of America’s existence (it’s 98 years old) ecologists have sought to share scientific information. In the 1950s, the Society created a public affairs committee and its members actively engaged with federal policy makers on some of the key [...]

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2:08 AM | An Inside Look At The Science Of Eating Grass

Reblogged from Dinner Table Science: Cows are cool. And here is why. They're not especially smart, or amazingly athletic, nor are they formidable predators or experts of camouflage. Their main survival tactic is to be large and to move in groups. But what's really cool about cows, is that they are ruminants. A ruminant is a mammal that […]

May 15, 2013

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5:00 PM | QUEST Goes National

Affiliated with PBS and NPR, KQED public media has served Northern California for over 50 years. In February 2007, KQED started its large multimedia series, QUEST. QUEST explores the latest science and environmental news, trends and issues. It has reached more than 60 million viewers and listeners through television, radio and the Web. QUEST mainly […]

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3:31 PM | Aspartame and “academic chill out”

I am not sure whether this has come up before in any of my blog posts, but I am a member of the Charity “Sense about Science”, and occasionally work with them. They are, as stated on their website (link) a “Charitable trust that equips people to make sense of science and evidence on issues […]

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12:06 PM | It’s A Fun Game… Until The Dog Swallows It

If I told you that a tennis ball could kill, would you roll your eyes or laugh in my face? What if I showed you this? Like a cork in a bottle, a fumbled tennis ball in an innocent game of fetch can lodge in a dog’s esophagus with the unfortunate consequence of asphyxiating your [...]

May 14, 2013

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8:00 PM | Chris Hadfield-Bowie; a Space Oddity

By Kelly Normally I might put a piece like this as a ‘Not-so-serious-Sunday‘ post. But Chris Hadfield‘s recent recording from his studio in space is worth featuring mid week. His rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ has gone viral, with … Continue reading →

May 13, 2013

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8:33 PM | Building Inclusive Approaches to Facing Climate Change

Climate Access hosted an online conversation on May 13 about how United States environmental communicators can build relationships with low-income and minority communities. Insights from Detroit, Mississippi, Alabama, New York, New Orleans, and southeastern coastal states enriched the conversation. “The folks … Continue reading →

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3:43 PM | Picture This: Visuals and your Research

A striking image can spark interest in your scientific research, but the picture itself doesn’t need to be informative—in fact, it might be better if it isn’t. That’s one bit of wisdom that veteran science communicators from the news media and science institutions such as NASA shared with an audience Tuesday afternoon at the National Research Council in Washington, D.C.

May 12, 2013

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12:00 AM | Not-so-Serious Sunday 47: Star Wars in 60 seconds

By Kelly When life starts getting just a little too hectic, Speedrun animation has the solution to all your entertainment needs. Your favourite movies in 60 seconds. and for the Matrix …I love the dancing in the nightclub…

May 10, 2013

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8:45 PM | Soil: an under-appreciated dynamic consortium of communities. Part 1?

Quick fact: the amount of data generated by analyzing the genetic make-up of 1 gram of soil would surpass the total for the entire Human Genome Project. That is because a gram of soil may contain between 2,000 and 18,000 different genomes comprised within roughly 40,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 bacteria cells (1) and (2). Soil; we […]

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11:42 AM | Around the world in 80 days – Part 5: Thailand

Over the course of four months, Barry Gibb visited our major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about Wellcome Collection’s Art and Global Health project. In the latest of his diary entries, Barry finds himself in Thailand. The distance between Vietnam and Thailand is more appropriately measured in time than kilometres. […]

May 09, 2013

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8:07 PM | Scientific writing seminar

This is a talk I gave to undergraduate research students at the STEM Center earlier today. Come for the tips, stay for the bad jokes!

May 08, 2013

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6:35 AM | All You Need is a Minute to Learn Physics

Really. Well okay, maybe a little more than a minute. Three minutes tops. Well okay, maybe five minutes and throw in an appreciation of watching cartoons and Youtube videos. That’s it. I was skeptical when I stumbled on Henry Reich’s [...]testThe post All You Need is a Minute to Learn Physics appeared first on Australian Science.