Nautilus

From Sara Abdulla:
A unique cultural venue opened in London this month. The Wellcome Collection is the first permanent home for the massive, maverick history-of-medicine collection that pharmaceutical entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936) gathered throughout his life. Thirty million pounds (US$60 million) and decades in the making, the free venue has three galleries, one of the world's most important history-of-medicine libraries, an original programme of live events, a members' club, a bookshop, a café, a conference centre and Pablo Picasso's Bernal mural.
Wellcome's fortune also created the Wellcome Trust, Britain's main bioscience research funding agency. The trust has now remodelled the compact 1930s building it recently vacated to realize Sir Henry's vision of a 'Museum of Man' and to extend its public engagement activities.
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The second floor brings the trust's vast library into the twenty-first century. Virtual browsing stations and WiFi now complement the graceful galleries long beloved by science-and-society scholars (and TV crews in search of instant gravitas). The top floors house The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, where much of this thoughtful activity starts.
And what of the members' club? Will it become biology's Algonquin Hotel? Quite possibly: it is inside a thrilling new museum, beside a leading medical school, opposite London's new European rail terminus and encircled by scientific publishers. What better place to raise a glass to humane curiosity, the legacy of Sir Henry Wellcome.

For the rest of this review, see Nature 447, 1056 (2007).

The Wellcome Collection
by the Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road, London.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2007
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This week saw the much trailed departure of Tony Blair as UK prime minister. In a Commentary (Nature 447, 1053; 2007) in the current issue of Nature, Sir Robert May, the government's chief science adviser from 1995 to 2000, reflects on the Blair legacy. In many ways, he says, science and engineering prospered. Yet there is general discontent amongst scientists in UK universities, and many current trends are potentially damaging. Blair's successors — Gordon Brown initially — will have much to do if the country is to continue to thrive scientifically.

...why is there discontent among scientists in UK universities? Are we perhaps revealing an inherent, Eeyore-like glumness? I think not. Although student numbers, faculty positions and research funds have all increased, they have not done so in equal proportions. Student-to-staff ratios are almost universally higher than 15 years ago. And research funding — despite its increase in real terms — has not kept pace with the increasing number of active researchers, themselves spurred on by the demands of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which every few years rates individual academic departments. Life seems harder than it used to be. Even more important, in my opinion, than higher teaching loads and the increasingly fierce competition for grants, is the extreme growth of bureaucracy — too often masquerading as accountability. The ballooning of the civil service since 1997 means that there are now more conscientious administrators who hold meetings and send out forms to be filled in. And universities have matched or exceeded the growth in bureaucrats seen in the civil service. This growth is only partly justified by need. One issue that Brown might address is that the current number of central administrative staff is roughly equal to the number of faculty for four major UK universities; this would certainly raise eyebrows at many top US universities.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2007
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Nature Genetics presents a special issue, Structural Variation in the Human Genome, comprised of one commentary and seven perspectives exploring recent discoveries and future prospects in the rapidly growing field of structural genomic variation. As well as comprehensive overviews of this burgeoning area, the articles also propose standards and guidelines for future research. Access this special issue FREE online.
From the Editorial:
From the earliest cytogenetic studies, it was recognized that losses or gains of entire chromosomes or microscopically visible alterations involving very large chromosomal segments were the cause of several common developmental disorders, including Down's syndrome. Beginning in the early 1990s, it also became apparent that submicroscopic gains or losses of specific chromosomal segments were a recurrent cause of many other rare genetic diseases. What was generally unappreciated, up until a few years ago, was the extent to which focal variation in DNA copy number contributed to the range of normal sequence variation among apparently healthy individuals.
In this issue, we present a collection of eight commissioned pieces highlighting recent advances in the field. We hope you enjoy this fresh glimpse into the exciting realm of human genomic structural variation.
Nature Genetics 39, Issue 7s, July 2007.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2007
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The Society for Mucosal Immunology (SMI) and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) are very pleased to announce a new publishing partnership. In January 2008, NPG and SMI will launch a new publication, Mucosal Immunology. Mucosal Immunology is now accepting submissions of papers discussing all aspects of immunity and inflammation involving mucosal tissues. The guide to authors is here and you can submit here.
Mucosal Immunology is the official publication of the SMI. It will provide a forum for both basic and clinical scientists to discuss all aspects of immunity and inflammation involving mucosal tissues. The journal reflects the interests of scientists studying gastrointestinal, pulmonary, nasopharyngeal, oral, ocular and genitourinary immunology through the publication of original research articles, scholarly reviews and timely commentaries, editorials and letters. Publication of basic, translational and clinical studies will all be given equal consideration. In addition, Mucosal Immunology aims to provide a primary method of communication for the SMI governing board and its members through the publication of society news, announcements of planned meetings and conferences, discussions of policy concerns, and advertisements for job and training opportunities.
The Editor-in-Chief is Brian Kelsall, MD, of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
General editorial inquiries and correspondence regarding manuscripts and peer review should be addressed to:
Taylor Bowen, Managing Editor.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 28, 2007
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Dr Monica Zoppè writes: The Nature News story 'Applicants challenge male order at Howard Hughes' (Nature 447, 242-243; 17 May 2007) highlights only some aspects of the gender imbalance that dominates the science system everywhere. All scientific funding agencies distribute money on the basis of competition, which is an attitude typical of males. Women are more inclined to collaboration than competition, and if forced to compete do so reluctantly. Some refuse even to take part, hence relegating themselves to the lower steps of the career ladder.
Women often feel that competition can easily degenerate into rivalry and open hostility, which is damaging to everyone, but is an issue often overlooked by men. If Howard Hughes, or any other funding agency, really believes that scientific excellence is equally distributed among men and women, then the best way to grant women their share of funding (50%) would be to have separate distribution avenues: one for men, in which male scientists set the rules and judge applications; and one for women, managed by and dedicated to female scientists.
This would be a very bold and unusual move for any funding agency, and it would need to run for several years before women could define a 'female road of science' independent of the typical 'competition road' to which we have had to adapt until now. Yet it may eventually allow women to demonstrate that a different attitude is possible, scientifically as good, or even better. Of course, it is necessary to define terms like 'success' or 'good science' according to a more (gender)-balanced value system: I am sure that many women are ready to participate in such a discussion, if it is started.
Monica Zoppè
Institute of Clinical Physiology
Pisa, Italy

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 28, 2007
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Nature China has just been updated. Every week, the editors write research highlights to summarize the best research published in mainland China and in Hong Kong. This week's selection:
Axon differentiation: Dishevelled neurons
The signalling protein Dishevelled helps to regulate axon growth
Microemulsions: A dry mix
Scientists create a microemulsion of two ionic liquids
Nanotubes: Slowly but surely
Single-walled nanotube arrays have been synthesized using ultralow gas-flow deposition
Zinc oxide: Crystal under pressure
A model explains how the crystal structure of zinc oxide is transformed at high pressures
Super-excited states: Change the channel
The super-excited states of fluorine molecules are studied using quantum-defect theory
Fluid dynamics: Understanding Hurricane Katrina
Solutions to the Euler equations provide a means to study a wide range of physical phenomena, including natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
Please visit Nature China to read these highlights, which are all free, and sign up to receive weekly updates, as well as to rank the selections and recommend your own favourites.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 27, 2007
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Frank Gibson, a Research Associate at Newcastle University, UK currently working on the e-neuroscience project CARMEN, has written an essay Do scientists really believe in open science? , in which he collects current opinions of “Open Science”. He was stimulated to write the essay because of his role in the CARMEN project which, he writes, has exposed him to a domain of the life-sciences to which "data sharing and publicly exposing methodologies has not been readily adopted, largely it is claimed due to the size of the data in question and sensitive privacy issues."

The essay is available here. It addresses definitions of "open science" and summarizes the standards used in disciplines other than neuroscience. You can see the Nature journals' policies on data availability here, which apply to all the original research articles our journals publish. Via this web page, you can provide us with your comments and views on recent journal editorials about emerging policies on data availability in a range of disciplines and circumstances.

Among other aspects of "open science", Dr Gibson discusses the "open notebook" approach pioneered by J-C Bradley. He also notes that Postgenomic produces an "up-to-the minute list of the open science discourse". (Postgenomic is a website that tracks hundreds of science blogs and "does interesting things with that data".) "Although early days", continues Dr Gibson, "maybe even the "open science group" on Scintilla (still undecided on Scintilla) will be the place in future for fostering the open science community".
Scintilla is one of Nature Publishing Group's very latest products. It collects data from hundreds of news outlets, scientific blogs, journals and databases and then makes it easy for you to organize, share and discover exactly the type of information that you're interested in. For example, you can keep track of life science podcasts, or the latest papers on schizophrenia, DNA methylation, physics or immunology. It is free to join, so take a look at what it has to offer and, if you wish, contribute to the open science group, or join one of the many other interest groups there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 27, 2007
Categories: Data availability, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group has published an expanding, illustrated online timeline of the history of the company and its journals. Click on the arrow to expand each year's entry. The first segment, The first 100 years (1869 - 1969), celebrates the journal Nature : "What a glorious title, Nature, a veritable stroke of genius to have hit upon. It is more than a cosmos, more than a universe. It includes the seen as well as the unseen, the possible as well as the actual, Nature and Nature's God, mind and matter. I am lost in admiration of the effulgent blaze of ideas it calls forth." J.J. SYLVESTER, MATHEMATICIAN .
The second two segments are called Branching out (1970 - 1999) and NPG in the new millennium (2000 - 2007). All three timelines detail the fascinating progression of Nature, Macmillans and Nature Publishing Group: new editors, the origin of peer review, new journal launches, office openings, and more recently NPG's entry into realm of Web 2.0. All against a diverse selection of the science we have published since Nature's first issue in 1869.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 26, 2007
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There is a forum for Nature Precedings on Nature Network, where you can ask questions, receive answers and join the debate about this new way to post your results. (It is all free, but you need to sign up to Nature Network first.) One such question asked of Nature Precedings by a science blogger is: Why post on Precedings when one can just post on one’s blog? Hilary Spencer, product development manager for Nature Precedings, provides a reply at the Nature Network forum:

To me, there seem to be very good reasons to post on Precedings, the first of which involves stability. Blogs, and personal webpages, can be ephemeral. If the author changes affiliations, domain names, or even blog publishing software, blog postings may disappear. One of the goals of Precedings is to create a stable permanent archive for researchers. We anticipate that the content will be mirrored by one or more of our partner organizations, thus ensuring that the researcher’s work will always be available.
The second related reason involves ”citability”. Blogs citations currently fall in a gray area—there is no definitive way to cite a blog posting, although this is changing. One of the benefits of Precedings is that every document posted is citable, thus ensuring that the author can be properly credited with the idea. We assign a DOI or a handle to every submission, which provides a permanent identifier for the document and can be used in citations.
A final reason is exposure. For many researchers, posting to a central archive provides more exposure for their ideas than they would receive by posting it on their website. For example, I think authors tend to get more exposure when their documents are also listed in PubMed rather than only on their personal website. (Precedings allows researchers to link submissions to postings on their blogs for redundancy.) To that end, we hope Precedings will help researchers reach a wider audience for their ideas.
Nature has always been very supportive of the blogging community, but we feel that Precedings fills a gap between (informal) blogs and (formal) peer-reviewed publications. What are your thoughts?

Can you post on both Precedings and your blog? Go to the forum to give us your views and see our responses to questions like this, or add your comments here. Other topics being disussed at the Precedings Network forum are whether PowerPoint presentations are acceptable for Nature Precedings, the site's rating system, and what drives people to post preprints in a public website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 26, 2007
Categories: Author Services Feedback, Policies Feedback, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

From this week's (21 June issue) Nature Correspondence (Nature 447, 908; 2007):

The US Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) processes the applications of foreign students for the US Medical Licensing Examination, which evaluates candidates' basic and clinical knowledge in medicine. The examination has two steps, both of which must be passed for the ECFMG to recognize the individual as a medical doctor in the United States.
As a medical student, I applied for step 1 in January 2007, entering my country (Iran) in the contact address section. A message in red letters appeared on the registration page: "It has come to our attention that ECFMG may be subject to specific United States federal regulations that prohibit entities from doing business with or providing a service to any individuals who have an address of residence in specific restricted countries. The country of Iran is included on this list of restricted countries. In light of this, ECFMG is not able to allow you to request this service."
The political status of Iran or any other nation is not relevant to education. The result of the restriction is that all medical students and graduates who live in Iran are prevented from taking the US licensing examination. This surely is academic discrimination against a whole country.
Sina Zarrintan
Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 25, 2007
Categories: Careers, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

In which I contemplate the unsung scientific record - Mind the Gap - Jennifer Rohn's blog on Nature Network

There is a very chatty conversaton happening at the above post on MInd the Gap, Jennifer Rohn's Nature Network blog. Jennifer's post is about the plea In Nature by Sydney Brenner and Richard Roberts to scientists to save their notebooks and correspondence and donate them to historians.

Jennifer writes: "Of course I agree that such materials should be preserved, which is probably why I can’t bring myself to throw away the two boxes of gently moulding lab notebooks, spanning thirteen years of research, stashed up in the loft. I’m sure these are not the papers that Brenner and Roberts had in mind, though – they want to preserve the detritus of the Watsons and Cricks of this world, not of ordinary research folk like me.
But then I got to wondering. Why not? My lab notebooks might make pretty compelling reading to some future historian starved for scraps of how 99.9% of (non-celebrity) researchers spent their days and nights in the lab. Why not document the parade of meaningless or ambiguous data that make up most researchers’ records? The ‘non-Eureka moments’, if you will? "

Join in the conversation here or at the Mind the Gap post's comments section, which has taken some fascinating tracks along avenues of clear communication and the virtue of electronic notebooks as well as the importance of a good cup of coffee.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 25, 2007
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"I'm a strong believer in allowing commenting on online papers", says Euan Adie on his blog Flags and Lollipops in a post titled Publishers, trackbacks and shared data. "This is something under serious discussion at Nature (the question is how to do it properly). The vast majority of researchers read, organize and discover papers online; we should give them the tools and opportunity to discuss papers online, too."
The Flags and Lollipops posting contains a discussion of technical ways to alert authors when there are new comments on their published paper, and ways to create systems to track "informal" comments and writing, so it can be part of a scientist's accredited boldy of work, and hence a more attractive proposition. We are interested in knowing your views -- Nature authors past, present and future, among the scientific community. Comments are open.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
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From this week's issue of Nature, Correspondence page (Nature 447, 908; 2007).

Your News story 'Anger at "unfit" museum design' (Nature 447, 239; 2007) reports some people's belief that the design of the Natural History Museum's Darwin Centre Phase Two is unfit for purpose, as the building will not have room to house the entire insect and plant collection.
The crux of the issue is that the public is being given access to our science, and this takes space. Building new facilities for the entirety of our collections, research and public access in one go is not feasible, with current funding. Instead we are taking it by stages. With the completion of Darwin Centre Phase Two, we will have more than half of our 70 million specimens in high-quality storage.
Balancing the needs of collections, research and public access will help us to advance knowledge of the natural world and to communicate this to the public. It will mean some changes in how we work and it will take time to adjust. However, we think that the new building will lead to a long-term improvement in the way we carry out and communicate the museum's work in taxonomy and systematics.
We have received a high level of support for this project, and are confident that it will be a real benefit to the museum, the scientific community and the wider public.
Richard Lane
Natural History Museum, London.

See here for the News story on which Dr Lane's letter comments, which reports criticisms of the directors of the Natural History Museum over their plans to split parts of its world-renowned collection of biological specimens on a permanent basis. Some of the museum's curators are angry that plans for a new building to store the bulk of the museum's entomology and botany collections remain unaltered three years after being branded unfit for the purpose by museum staff, according to the News story.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
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Nature Chemical Biology is pleased to present a special focus on natural products (and terpenes in particular) in the July 2007 issue of the journal. Investigations into natural products have recently regained prominence with the increasing understanding of their biological significance and increasing recognition of the origin and function of their structural diversity. This issue highlights some of the major questions and advances in natural products research, from recent synthetic approaches to access complicated natural products to a new educational program which utilizes natural products as a basis for discovery-based research. The entire contents of the July issue of Nature Chemical Biology are free for one month, including the focus on natural products, which is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
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Nature Protocols June issue is now out. Any scientist can upload his or her own protocol and comment on the protocols already uploaded into the website for free on the interactive Protocols Network.
Make suggestions as to how to improve current protocols, or share what worked and what didn't for you as well as uploading your own protocols for further feedback and refinement. You can also discuss protocols in our free forum on Nature Network, where Katharine Barnes, Editor of Nature Protocols, and her colleagues invite you to post questions relating to techniques and to answer the queries of other scientists in your field.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
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News from the Neuroscience Gateway: The Allen Institute for Brain Science has released an upgrade to the Allen Brain Atlas, offering improved browsing and navigation and enhanced data mining. Updates to the Atlas application include:
NeuroBlast, a blast search tool that allows users to easily retrieve a list of genes with expression patterns similar to a gene of interest.
Easy Browsing and Quick View options that allow users to quickly access and browse raw data and data summaries by gene or brain structure.
Improved navigation allows users to synchronize raw data images with corresponding anatomic reference plates from the Allen Reference Atlas.
The Neuroscience Gateway, a comprehensive source for the latest research, news and events in neuroscience and genomics research, is a collaboration between the Allen Institute for Brain Science and Nature Publishing Group. The Allen Brain Atlas is a freely available scientific resource developed by the Allen Institute, which provides maps of the expression of approximately 20,000 genes in the mouse brain. Together, the Neuroscience Gateway and the Allen Brain Atlas are new tools to help researchers navigate neuroscience and genomics research. See more details about the Allen Brain Atlas here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Small changes that work for writer and reader - Time for a change - Linda Cooper's blog on Nature Network

In her Nature Network blog Time for a Change (click on the underlined sentence above), Linda Cooper provides suggestions to help researchers marshal their data into a coherent story; such suggestions also help readers because a logically structured account of the significant finding is so much easier for them to understand than a random or semi-structured compilation of data. In the post linked to above, Linda provides tips that relate to the structure and content of a manuscript, beginning with the paper Abstract.

Linda provides specific advice if you comment at her blog. For example, Kathryn Holt asks: "I would be interested to read your posts on any of the topics you suggest, but in particular I’d like to hear your thoughts on “how to transform convoluted sentences into sentences where ideas shine through”. This can seem a very difficult task, especially when the writer has in their own mind a great many details behind every statement they make, and indeed is expected to provide evidence for all their claims." And Linda replies:" I’ve deconstructed the Abstract to your paper on “Multidrug-resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi A” and would be happy to give you some editing suggestions.."

Time for a Change provides several very useful posts on how to write a clear scientific manuscript, so please do check it out. A clearly written paper is better understood by editors and readers, and is likely to have more impact after it is published.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

This letter is reproduced in entirety from Nature's Correspondence in today's (21 June) issue (Nature 447, 908; 2007).
Scientists should promote co-operation, not boycott

Since 1931, the International Council for Science (ICSU) has upheld the principle of the universality of science, based on the right of scientists to work without discrimination on the grounds of citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race, colour, age or gender.
The entire ICSU membership, representing the scientific community in 112 countries and all disciplines, has consistently expressed its unequivocal support for this principle. This stance has stood the test of time throughout the Cold War, apartheid in South Africa and the new challenges posed by international terrorism. It is a strong expression of solidarity across the international science community: a critical reference point for individual scholars confronted with threats to their freedom.
The decision by the congress of the UK University and College Union to recommend that its members bar academic exchanges with Israeli researchers is a flagrant breach of this principle. It has rightly drawn substantial adverse comment from scientists, newspaper columnists and human-rights activists in the United Kingdom and internationally.
It is easy to understand the strong feelings generated by conflicts and people's desire to demonstrate their opposition to the actions of governments. But to do so through the medium of individual scholars is to sacrifice a profoundly important principle of freedom and solidarity. In situations of strife and conflict, it is surely the duty of scientists to promote international understanding and co-operation — not to penalize each other for the shortcomings of their governments.

Bengt Gustafsson
ICSU Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
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In a post entitled Nascent: Word 2007 and the STM Publisher Ecosystem, Howard Ratner, Chief Technical Officer of Nature Publishing Group, writes about how he has become involved in "a very lively conversation with Microsoft staff about why Word 2007 is not being actively endorsed by STM publishers. It has recently come to Microsoft's attention that Nature , Science and many other scholarly publishers do not accept files from authors in Word 2007. Both Science and Nature Publishing Group have been in correspondence with Microsoft staff on this important issue. The staff there have been very willing to engage in this conversation."

The rest of Howard's Nascent post is the text of a letter to Microsoft by Bruce Rosebaum of Inera, which well explains the issues for science and technical publishers attempting to integrate this format with their typesetting and web coding systems. The letter concludes: "Those of us in the scientific community look forward to a dialog to articulate scholarly publishing requirements to Microsoft so that Microsoft can provide products that serve the needs of the entire scholarly community."

James McQuat, London Nature journals' Editorial Production Director, draws attention to an article by Margaret Heffernan at The Huffington Post, one of the world's most popular blogs, on this issue. It is a much more upfront analysis of the situation, but encapsulates it well.

In a comment to the Nascent post, Bruce D'Arcus writes: "There's another issue with backwards compatibility for scholarly workflows. Word 2007 supports new citation and bibliography fields. But if you open such files in previous versions of Word, the fields are converted to plain text. This means scholarly collaboration becomes impossible unless all parties are using Word 2007. I'm sure MS thought this a smart business decision, but I beg to differ. I think it'll mean many scholar won't bother with Word 2007, or its citation features."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 21, 2007
Categories: Policies, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (1)

Since their introduction to medicine, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have greatly contributed to medical research and clinical practice. In particular, brain imaging with MRI and PET scans has led to important insights into both the normal and diseased brain. With increasingly advanced technology, scanning techniques, and clinical applications, brain imaging is a continuously evolving field. A web focus, presented by the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, compiles many of the most important research papers on the techniques and applications of cerebral MRI and PET imaging from Nature Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, NCP Neurology and Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism. There is free access to MRI & PET Imaging research for a limited time.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2007
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The Functional Glycomics gateway is updated today (20 June) -- a one-stop online resource designed to keep readers in touch with the latest and hottest research in glycobiology, in collaboration with the Consortium for Functional Glycomics. Each month we showcase two exciting new glycobiology articles from the current literature. Nature Publishing Group papers are available free for 3 months and the Editor's Reviews are free indefinitely. This month's two featured articles are: Glycosylation effects: core contributions, which describes how distant carbohydrate substitutions at the N-glycan core alter glycan lectin affinity, glycoprotein-mediated cell binding and serum clearance; and Tumor Growth: at the end of a snake bite in which it is described how the C-type lectins lebectin and lebecetin isolated from the venom of the blunt-nosed viper (Macrovipera lebetina) inhibit tumor angiogenesis through a direct interaction with epithelial cell integrins.
Also in the Functional Glycomics gateway are Research Highlights (short summaries of research papers); the Research Library; and the Consortium Quaterly, the latest news and findings from the Consortium for Functional Glycomics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2007
Categories: Partners, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

For readers who are interested in knowing more about the virtual world Second Life, there is a nice article on the Booksquare blog called Publishers Explore the Metaverse in which the writer has trawled Second Life to see what (book) publishers are up to there. Perhaps more directly relevant to readers of Nautilus is a post called A sampler of science in Second Life on Troy McConaghy's Nature Network blog, Science in the Metaverse.
After seeing all the online activity there, Nature journal authors might want to consider giving a virtual talk in Second Life. Drop a line in the comments, if so, or contact Joanna Scott of our web publishing department (Joanna Wombat in Second Life).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 20, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Timo Hannay, head of NPG's web publishing department, provides some more information about Nature Precedings on the Nascent blog . From his post:

"all the content is released under the Creative Commons Attribution License and the service is free to authors and readers. We're working with some of our partners to mirror the content to ensure its [Nature Precedings'] long-term free availability (whatever might happen to Nature Publishing Group). And what a great list of partners they are: the British Library, the European Bioinformatics Institute, Science Commons and the Wellcome Trust. See our press release for their statements about the project.
We expect to add one or two more partners in the not-too-distant future, and convene a group of forward-thinking senior scientists to advise us on future development of the service. Right from the beginning, Precedings was conceived not as an NPG-only project but as a collaborative endeavour to open up scientific communication. To that end, we'll also be reaching out to other publishers in the weeks to come to ensure that this initiative works effectively alongside the existing journal publishing channel, which Precedings seeks to complement.
If you've got comment, please post it below, go to the Nature Precedings Group on Nature Network, or write to precedings-at-nature-dot.com."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 19, 2007
Categories: Publications | Permalink | Comments (3)

Vaccines are among the most useful and cost-effective tools for reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases. This month, a special Focus issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology highlights some of the latest progress in vaccine development and the pitfalls that have been encountered along the way.The topics covered range from advances in our understanding of the immune response that will help in the development of new adjuvants and anti-bacterial vaccines, to the latest work on the development of a dengue virus vaccine. The accompanying library collects the most relevant recent publications from Nature Publishing Group.

Here is the table of contents for the vaccine focus collection.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 19, 2007
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The Omics Gateway is the portal for all information relevant to large-scale genomics and biology from Nature Publishing Group. Regularly updated, this comprehensive collection enables you to view relevant archived and recent content drawn from the complete range of our publications. Most of the content is free for you to view online. The latest article higlight is GeoChip, a comprehensive microarray for investigating biogeochemical, ecological and environmental processes. from the ISME Journal. This article describes the first use of GeoChip, a comprehensive functional gene microarray suitable for studying the geochemical, ecological and environmental processes of diverse microbial communities. This new methodology allows for the screening of environmental samples across more than 10,000 genes belonging to over 150 of the most important functional gene families.
The Omics Gateway provides life scientists a convenient portal into publications relevant to large-scale biology from journals throughout NPG. By organizing our papers and web focus projects on large-scale biology into this comprehensive, topical, one-stop web portal, we hope to help you quickly reach the resources you need to study the "ome" of your choice and to keep you up-to-date with the most significant research in that area.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 18, 2007
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Last week, Nature held mini-conferences in Beijing and Shanghai to celebrate the launch of Nature China. There were over 200 attendees in Beijing, and Liu Depei, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, gave the opening remarks, together with Daoxiang Sun of Tsinghua University Council. Also speaking were Huang Laiqiang of Tsinghua University, who last year was a coauthor of a paper in Nature on self pollination in orchids (Nature 441, 945-946; 2006), and Xiaolin Zhang, head of the Innovation Center China of AstraZeneca and sponsor of Nature China, who outlined the company's activities in the region.
A similar event was held at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), organized by Dangsheng Li, deputy editor in chief of Cell Research, a journal based at SIBS and part of Nature Publishing Group's Asia-Pacific academic journal programme. The meeting was attended by about 120 people, with talks by Jarui Wu, vice president of SIBS, and Hong-Wei Xue, deputy director of the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who provided tips on publishing in international journals.
According to results presented at the conferences, in 2006, scientists from mainland China and Hong Kong published more than 80,000 scientific papers that were indexed by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), bringing the output of scientific research at the same level (in numbers) as the United Kingdom and Japan.
Additional data from ISI indicate that the number of high impact papers from China with large numbers of citations is also increasing rapidly in number year on year.
Every week, Nature China’s editors select some of the best recently published research from across the scientific and medical literature, and provide short easy-to-understand summaries of the results. The website also allows users to recommend research articles for inclusion, and to vote on those recommendations. Furthermore, the website has an archive of highlights of 154 research articles published in top scientific journals since 2000, and in the case of research articles highlighted from Nature journals, the original full text scientific articles are made freely available to reg