Nautilus

Choices in neuroscience careers are discussed by Tamas Bartfai, Tom Insel, Gord Fishell and Nancy Rothwell in the Viewpoint in the May issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience (9, 401-405; 2008).
What factors should young scientists (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers) consider to ensure they choose wisely when selecting their field of study, place of study, laboratory and mentor? Most students and postdoctoral researchers aiming for a successful career in neuroscience ask themselves these questions. In this article, Nature Reviews Neuroscience asks four successful neuroscientists for their thoughts on the factors one should consider when making these decisions, with the hope of creating a useful resource for junior neuroscientists who have to make important and sometimes difficult decisions that might have long-lasting consequences for their careers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2008
Categories: Careers | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced five new co-publishing agreements for 2009 in Japan and China. NPG Nature Asia-Pacific, the Asia-Pacific wing of NPG, has partnered in China with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to co-publish Acta Pharmacologica Sinica and the Asian Journal of Andrology (which is also sponsored by Shanghai Jiao Tong University) from January 2009. Together with an existing publishing partnership for the journal Cell Research with the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, this means that from next year NPG will publish three of mainland China’s most prestigious journals in life sciences and chemistry.
In Japan, NPG Nature Asia-Pacific has finalised agreements with the Japan Antibiotics Research Association, the Japan Society for Human Genetics and the Japan Society of Hypertension to publish the Journal of Antibiotics, the Journal of Human Genetics and Hypertension Research.
David Swinbanks, of NPG Nature Asia-Pacific, said: “By building on the reputations of these five international journals and by launching the NPG Asia Materials website we can publish and highlight some of the best research from the region in the life, medical, chemical and physical sciences and communicate it to the relevant communities around the world.” NPG Nature Asia-Pacific is the Asia-Pacific wing of NPG, set up to serve the growing needs of the scientific, engineering and medical communities in the region, and has offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi and Melbourne. More about its publishing partnerships can be found here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 29, 2008
Categories: Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charles Darwin has taken up blogging. He describes himself as a "resurrected Victorian scientist and author", now "a ‘blogger’ (a criminal offence when last I was alive) -- a commentator on science in society." From his customary seat in the Natural History Museum cafe, Mr Darwin overheard conversation about "a film called Expelled, traducing natural selection and championing something called ‘intelligent design’. I thought we had settled Mr Paley’s watchmaker nonsense in 1859."
Mr Darwin continues:
"I am used to bad reviews: I was much savaged in the press when I published The Origin of Species, but Expelled holds me responsible for a particularly vile chapter of genocide which occurred in the 1930s and 40s. I do not recall advocating genocide, indeed distinctly remember writing with anguish about the massacres of the Indians in South America during my voyage on HMS Beagle. Could it be that my critics have formed opinions about my work without actually reading it? Surely not." This is "more than even a marble statue can stand".
Moved, therefore, to take up blogging, Nature Network "has been so kind as to give me a blog and asked me to cast my eye over modern scientific developments. A little stiff in the joints, and with some catching up to do (if only I had known about genetics in 1858!) but if there is anything you wish me to consider, please leave a comment at the blog or contact chazdarwin(at)gmail.com." (Link to e-mail provided here.)
Mr Darwin has already expressed opinion about the advance of science since he was last alive, as depicted in the Sunday newspapers; and has had a nasty surprise about his backdated Royal Society subscriptions.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 29, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

The preliminary website for Nature Chemistry is now live. As well as providing more detailed information about the journal, the site will be updated each week with three new research highlights about exciting chemistry papers that have caught the attention of the editors.
The chemistry@nature.com portal has also undergone a significant overhaul. As well as offering a list of current chemistry-related content across Nature Publishing Group titles, the portal includes a research collection that brings together chemistry papers published in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Protocols and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery since 2001.
Nature Chemistry also made a big splash at the Spring 2008 American Chemical Society in New Orleans – even though some journal staff ended up driving there from Washington DC just hours after getting off a transatlantic flight – but that is another story which can be found on the Sceptical Chymist blog! The Nature Chemistry labcoats were rated as the best giveaway at the meeting’s exposition – the first one went to Teresa, an undergraduate student from Iowa, who had been stranded with the Nature Publshing Group team in Dulles airport and survived the 1,133-mile, 17-hour roadtrip that followed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 28, 2008
Categories: Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

With his experience of writing about NIH policy for Nature, Paul Smaglik writes at the Nature Jobs careers forum, " I believe a fair peer-review grant system is the best way to distribute funds to the most-deserving science. Having said that, one must wonder how some senior investigators are six, or ten or 22 times more deserving of merit than promising young investigators, or the extent of the problem, as seen by the young investigators...... Please let me know if you are the victim of what appears to be an imbalance in the system—or if you have suggestions on how to either fix it (beyond an unprecedented NIH budgetary boost) or deal with it."

Discussion about clear writing style continues at the Good Paper Journal Club. Linda Cooper's view: "I know scientists are capable of writing clearly about highly complex research. Students in my classes do this all the time once they have the tools to transform their original confused drafts into articles that both the specialist and non- specialist can understand." Hawley Rigsby describes how rewriting a "long, obscure, and jargon-filled" account allows the reader to find the point even though some detail is missed; yet how courses in science writing can provide too much focus on simplifying concepts, and so over-simplify complex ideas. He asks whether it is possible for an article to be at the same time well-written and incomprehensible outside of a small sphere of specialists. In another discussion thread, Heather Etchevers contrasts readers of review articles, who may follow up threads and delve into new areas, with readers of research articles, who need precise technical information, quickly.

Further views on the publication process, as practised by Nature, are provided by senior editor Henry Gee at his blog End of the Pier Show, where he opines that "a purpose of the Nature Network.... is to make the whole publication process less mysterious and less frustrating for authors whose years of painstaking research are met with a form letter that says ‘no’, albeit with great politeness and much circumlocution. We know from experience that many authors see Nature as a Black Box and crave some human interaction, hence the frustration and anger when the Black Box is all they get......the Network has been adorned with many interesting discussions about editorial policies, accessibility and publication, in which editors and scientists have all taken part."

And finally, a bittersweet post from Anna Kushnir of Lab Life, about finishing her dissertation and why she won't be returning to the lab (for now).

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 25, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sherry Towers, a particle physicist who is now a statistician, reports a study using public databases to study the career paths of 57 former postdoctoral researchers from Fermilab who worked on the Run II Dzero experiment to examine if males and females were treated in a gender-blind fashion on the experiment. Dr Towers's results are highlighted in a Nature news story this week (23 April 2008) .
Female researchers were on average significantly more productive compared to their male peers, yet were allocated only one-third the amount of conference presentations based on their productivity. The study also finds that the dramatic gender bias in allocation of conference presentations appeared to have significant negative impact on the academic career advancement of the females.
Nature contacted some physicists to ask them their views. Some are sceptical, arguing for example that one of the criteria used in the study, internal papers, are not necessarily a direct measure of productivity, and that the small number of physicists surveyed is not enough to prove systematic bias. But even those expressing scepticism do not doubt that females suffer gender discrimination. Several female physicists contacted by Nature said Towers's data matched their personal experiences of institutional sexism in physics. According to the news story, Fermilab did undertake a review of its policies after the complaints of gender bias.
Various points of view are expressed in the comment thread to the Nature story, to which you are welcome to add your experiences and/or views.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 24, 2008
Categories: Careers, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Editorial in this month's (May) issue of Nature Immunology (9, 445; 2008) describes how academics are responding to escalating violence by extremist animal-rights groups by working proactively to prevent the harassment and harm of scientists. Some of these violent incidents, and the scientific community's reactions, have been previously discussed at Nautilus.
The Nature Immunology Editorial points out that measures passed by the UK Home Office in July 2004 and the US Congress in late 2006 classify as a criminal offence the use of force, violence and harassment against people and institutions engaging in animal testing. Unfortunately, the Editorial continues, "these measures have apparently done little to dissuade fringe animal-rights activists groups..... Perhaps not understood by extremist organizations is the fact that the creation of suitable alternatives to animal testing would be welcomed by many academics, most of whom are frustrated with the enormous financial and administrative burdens associated with animal research." A few encouraging efforts are under way (see Nature Correspondence from 20 March 2008 issue, for example), but "for the foreseeable future and until technological advances provide suitable alternatives, animal research remains essential to biomedical research into understanding and combating human disease."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amyloid-β and tau in Alzheimer's disease, by Frank M. LaFerla, May 2008.
Poster from Nature Reviews Neuroscience, available free online (PDF).
Alzheimer's disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder with a relentless progression. Its pathogenesis is believed to be triggered by the accumulation of the amyloid-β peptide, due to overproduction and/or the failure of clearance mechanisms. This peptide, together with the microtubule-associated protein tau and their associated signalling pathways, represent important therapeutic targets for Alzheimer's disease. The pathogenic mechanisms are described in more detail here, and are shown graphically in the Nature Reviews Neuroscience high-resolution poster.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2008
Categories: Communication, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Venture capital is a key part of growing a start-up company, but can be fraught with problems. Nature Biotechnology is gathering together a group of seasoned chief executives, venture capitalists and a venture lawyer at a one-day event 'Bioentrepreneur beware: CEO war stories on investor nightmares', to discuss what can go wrong during the financing process, including term-sheet negotiations that seriously dilute equity, rounds that fall through at the last second, investor activism and hostile takeover of board seats. Take the opportunity to participate in a lively panel discussion that will explore key issues when borrowing other people’s money and ways that you can ensure investor and management goals are compatible with your biotechnology business. The meeting will take place on 20 May 2008 at The Meritage Resort, Napa, California, and is free to attend. The speakers and programme, and more details, can be found here. For information and to register, please send full company name and contact details by email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 22, 2008
Categories: Author services, Communication, Conferences, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

The eternal question of authorship is in the frame in a News story in the current issue of Nature (452, 791; 2008), in which it is reported that thousands of of documents relating to Merck’s withdrawn painkiller rofecoxib (Vioxx) were were reviewed by medical researchers, and seem to show Merck’s extensive involvement in ghost-writing and ‘guest authorship’ of research and review papers. The results of the analysis are published by J. Ross et al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association (299, 1800–1812; 2008).
By omitting the names — or downgrading the involvement — of drug-industry writers, and adding the names of academics who were not substantially involved in a paper, the industry’s role in research may be concealed. And doctors may be misled over the independence of the work. For example, one of the Merck-held documents lists a number of clinical trials in which a Merck employee is to be author of the first draft of a manuscript. However, when these trials were published, in 16 of 20 of the articles an external academic is listed as first author. Merck denies these allegations.
See also Spoonful of Medicine, the blog of Nature Medicine.
There is further discussion of the JAMA article, and the implications for authorship credit, at Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 21, 2008
Categories: Authorship, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (1)

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

In the longest-yet comment thread on Nature Network, part of the conversation has turned to open science. Jean-Claude Bradley writes: "For my research group, switching to Open Notebook Science has been extremely beneficial for finding some great collaborators (and friends). We’re working on making anti-malarial compounds so I would be quite happy if someone branched off from our ongoing results to do something useful or even point out another interpretation or error." Jason Kelly, on the other hand, is of the view that "in “open science” discussions is that there are going to be people who think it doesn’t make sense in their (‘very competitive’) field to be open about their work. However, there are many, many scientists whose principle problem isn’t being scooped—it’s that no one notices their work. This is especially true among younger scientists still making a name for themselves or folks in smaller fields. I think there is already significant incentive for young scientists to publicize what they are doing as openly and early as possible. This open group will either be scooped out of existence, or will be more successful thanks to all the unintended benefits of making your work accessible early." These are but two small samples of a broad discussion on "open science", its desirability, and tools to achieve it (as well as tools to achieve plain old archiving). There's further discussion at Deep Thoughts and Silliness blog about the financial viability of open access publishing models.

Ai-Lin Chun describes a day in the life of a Nature journal editor in Tokyo: how she handles manuscripts submitted to the journal Nature Nanotechnology and other important matters.

The news feature from last week’s Nature about how collaborations can go bad, ending up in disputes about data ownership, is followed up by Corie Lok. Would you sign a ‘pre-nuptial’ agreement to try to avoid potential conflicts?, she asks. Further discussion on drawing up an "agreement template" for international collaborations is taking place at the News and Opinion forum.

Structural resolution is under the microscope at The Scientist blog, in a post and discussion about metrics to judge crystal structures.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 18, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

The paragraph reproduced below is the Abstract of the article 'Writing a clear and engaging paper for all astronomers' in Astronomy Communication, 290 221 (2003), by Leslie Sage, a senior editor at Nature who handles manuscript submissions in astronomy, planetary science and physics.

Scientists usually receive no formal training in how to communicate effectively scientific information. What little training we do get comes from our PhD supervisors, who may or may not be good communicators themselves. Moreover, too many scientists seem to feel that the goal of scientific writing is to impress others with the author's intelligence, and most of the rest forget that even people in closely related fields may not be aware of the jargon, background and technical details specific to each subfield. Yet the principles of clear writing are easily grasped, and with a little practice will become natural to implement. Even in a technical journal the audience is not restricted simply to a few direct competitors, so you need to explain why the general topic is interesting, what problems there are in the field, what you have done and how it has helped advance us towards the resolution of one or more of the problems.

The publisher, Springer Science and Business Media, has kindly given us permission to reproduce the author's version of this paper here, for the personal use only of those downloading it. We hope you enjoy reading it, and find it helpful in preparing your papers for submission to a Nature journal, whether in the field of astronomy or any other scientific discipline.
Download the article here; Word document

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 17, 2008
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (1)

Juan-Carlos Lopez discusses the publication process from the authors' perspective in a couple of posts at Spoonful of Medicine, the blog of Nature Medicine. First, he shares some data to show that the Nature journals are not biased in favour of authors based in the United States. The data shown are the ratio of submitted to published papers as a function of country. Take a look.
In a subsequent post, Juan-Carlos describes a talk he gave recently in Madrid, at which he showed these data (and received some puzzling feedback), and also was asked questions about open-access publishing. He writes: "It was fascinating to see how difficult it was for some people to understand that scientific publishing costs money, and that there are different models to recover your costs -- the author-pays model, the subscription model, and everything in between ...... as there are different models, publishing groups ought to choose the model that works best for each of them. In our case, the subscription-based model is the only one that seems viable for the time being. How difficult is it to get this point?"
There has been some discussion related to this topic over at Nature Network in the past week, summarized here at the blog Gobbledygook. Part of this discussion involves the latest NIH (US National Institutes of Health) policy on self-archiving of research that it has funded, requiring deposition of the author's version into the PubMedCentral database 12 months after the journal's publication date. For authors who aren't sure how this affects them when submitting to Nature journals, the new NIH policy is consistent with Nature Publishing Group's existing policy, which states: "When a manuscript is accepted for publication in an NPG journal, authors are encouraged to submit the author's version of the accepted paper (the unedited manuscript) to PubMedCentral or other appropriate funding body's archive, for public release six months after publication. In addition, authors are encouraged to archive this version of the manuscript in their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites, also six months after the original publication."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 16, 2008
Categories: Access, Authorship | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are a scientist-blogger and are interested in a real meeting as opposed to a virtual carnival, please visit the Nature Network bloggers' forum , where Matt Brown reports the good news that The Royal Institution in London has offered to host a European science blogging conference later this year, to be organised by the bloggers. The rationale for the European bloggers' conference is given here.
The first thing to do, Matt writes, is to pick a date, from August 16th, 23rd, 30th, or September 13th, so please head to Nature Network and state your preference.
Another piece of science blogging news concerns microblogging. A microblog is a post of 140 or fewer words. Attila Csordas informs me that there is a new microblog called Biotecher, on the Twitter platform. Biotecher tracks every biotech-, biology-, medicine- and bioinformatics-related 'twitter' (microblog on the Twitter platform) to create a 'biotwitter community'.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 15, 2008
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Partners, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

In March, the British Library conducted a survey on researchers' attitudes and needs in the digital age. Of the respondents, 93 per cent stated that access to online research material should be the same as for books. Most of the 320 respondents agreed that, in the age of the Internet, anyone involved in non-commercial research should be allowed, via 'fair dealing' or exemptions, to copy parts of electronically published works, including online articles, news broadcasts, film or sound recordings. 'Fair dealing' is the ‘right' to make a copy from an in-copyright work without permission from, or remuneration to, the rights holder for non-commercial research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting. For example, most individual copying by researchers at university for academic purposes is done under the fair-dealing provision in UK law. Two-thirds (68 per cent) of the survey respondents are opposed to having different fair-dealing laws for material in paper or electronic format.
Further details of the survey are available at the British Library website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 15, 2008
Categories: Access | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group presents a Collection on microRNAs and cancer, which includes original Research and Review articles, as well as Research Highlights, from Nature Genetics, Nature Reviews Genetics and Nature Reviews Cancer. The collection is freely available until 30 September 2008.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) — an abundant class of small non-protein-coding regulators of gene expression — play an important role in tumorigenesis and, depending on their targets, can function as tumour suppressors or oncogenes. Crucially, miRNA-expression profiling of human tumours has identified signatures associated with diagnosis, staging, progression, prognosis and response to treatment. The editors of the Collection summarise the content here, and the table of contents can be viewed here. On the Library page, there is a set of links to a selection of News and Views, Research Highlights, Reviews, Research Articles, Perspectives and Commentaries published by Nature Publishing group journals on microRNA and cancer, some of which are freely available to June 2008.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 15, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Editorial in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology (26, 358; 2008) reports that corporate biotechnology has finally entered the 'Web 2.0' world, with the launch of a blog by Centocor, the biologics division of Johnson & Johnson. The Editorial points out that plenty of other pharma and biotech-related blogs exist, by people who see themselves as commentators on the industry and its activities. Some of the most insightful, topical and entertaining are from industry insider Derek Lowe, veteran journalist Ed Silverman and the editors of Windhover's In Vivo. What distinguishes the Centocor blog is that it is the first biotech industry blog that has the company's imprimatur. To what extent the blog is a blog or an extension of the company's corporate PR is discussed in the Editorial, which goes on to outline ways in which blogging can be part of the informal yet often powerful public debates about important industry issues. Centocor's blog gets the thumbs-down from Nature Biotechnology, which says of it "what's the point?" But unlike some corporate blogs, it is open to comments (see this post, for example, which describes some goals of the blog and asks for reader feedback). It is a welcome toe in the water of public engagement.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 14, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

Jennifer Rohn has once again sparked a vivacious discussion, this time about how to document an ever-expanding plethora of files, information and notes -- on paper and, as mostly described in the long comment thread, electronically. There is much to note here about the practical problems of date-stamps, peer-review, wikis, plagiarism and data sharing - from and for those at the sharp end.

The theme of electronic and web-based research and teaching is taken up in a blog post by Bob O'Hara. The pros and cons of online tools for collaborative research are discussed, both in the post and in the comment thread, with links to several services that are currently available.

Philipp Selenko reports on the Nature Network Berlin group's evening with Alison Abbott of Nature, and urges local students to join. "The basic idea of Nature Network Berlin is to also give students the opportunity to participate in activities that they would otherwise not have access to (like talking to a senior Nature editor over a glass of beer, for example)."

On 2-3 June, there will be a Royal Society meeting (free to attend) on synthetic biology, a field covering the design and construction of novel artificial biological pathways, organisms or devices, and the redesign of existing natural biological systems. Synthetic biology has developed from the convergence of other disciplines such as systems biology, genetic engineering, engineering, information theory, physics, nanotechnologies and computer modelling. Advances and applications of this exciting technology will be discussed at the meeting.

Jose Manuel Otero gets stuck into another myth of industrial (as opposed to academic) research, that "if you join an industrial research center, you can kiss good-bye the exciting days of the pursuit of knowledge, teaching students, working on large consortium projects, or in fact, having individual impact. Essentially, you will be relegated to a number inside what are often large organizations, and find moments of happiness reading the Dilbert Comic Series, only to realize you are Dilbert." Among many other points, he discusses the lack of training in management and human resources in the academic community, and the rights of the individual in large-team collaborations.

Some useful advice to the scientist who has never submitted to an international journal is provided by the ever-engaging Paul Smaglik, emeritus Editor of NatureJobs.

Finally, an historical note. On Monday (14 April) a meeting at King’s College will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Rosalind Franklin. Molecular geneticist Noreen Murray will discuss Franklin’s inspiring role for women in science (also celebrated by the Rosalind Franklin Award), Ellen Solomon will speak on Franklin’s legacy for genetics and medicine, and Franklin’s co-worker Ray Gosling will recall their work in elucidating the structure of DNA. Read more about Franklin's work at Nature Network London News.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 11, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a Commentary in this week’s Nature (452, 686-687; 2008), Christine Boesz and Nigel Lloyd of the OECD propose a practical framework for examining misconduct allegations in multinational scientific teams: it is imperative, they argue, for researchers in cross-boarder collaborations to be held accountable for the integrity of their work. In the same issue of the journal, a related Editorial (Nature 452, 665; 2008) and News Feature (Nature 452, 682-684; 2008) also explore collaborations: what makes them fail and how they can work better.
Do you know of international misconduct-related documents that could inform the templates the OECD hopes to produce? Have you encountered relevant situations or challenges while conducting research with scientists from other countries? How were these situations resolved? We invite you to provide your views and experiences at the Nature Network News and Opinion forum.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 10, 2008
Categories: Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his Thesis article The literature of promises (Nat. Nanotech. 3, 180 - 181; 2008), Chris Toumey asks how science fiction has been influenced by nanotechnology, and why so many reports about the possibilities of nanotechnology read like science fiction. The article covers ideas discussed at and arising after a conference on nanotechnology, literature and society in December 2007. Professor Toumey writes: "Steve Lynn, my colleague in the English department at South Carolina, has been saying for years that the purpose of science fiction is not to predict the future, but rather to put science and technology in a new and different light so that we can explore their place in our lives. Nanotechnology endures a great deal of prognostication, prophecy and prediction in government documents, social-science journals and humanities conferences. It can be difficult to resist the urge to predict the future, but nanotechnology needs to be examined in terms of how it affects our lives today. Science fiction is hardly the only way to do so, but it has a rightful place among the humanistic perspectives on nanotechnology. Sometimes it treats nanotech lovingly and sometimes rudely, but nanotechnology and science fiction could have a long and beneficial friendship."
Read the rest of the Thesis article at Nature Nanotechnology, April 2008 issue.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 10, 2008
Categories: Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Haihong Ye wrote a fascinating post on Action Potential, the blog of the journal Nature Neuroscience, last month, on the amazing changes in Chinese neuroscience over the past decade. He writes: "Over the past 10 years, especially the last five, the whole world has been amazed by the Chinese economy. To me, however, the improvement in biological science research in China is much more amazing. In the summer of 1998 I left Beijing and went to the US to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. In 2007, after nine years of graduate study and post-doc training abroad, I came back to Beijing, seeking opportunities for further career development. What a difference some strong funding and visionary directives, not to mention a decade, can make."
Please visit Action Potential to read on and to discuss this stimulating article about the driving forces behind the country's neuroscientific achievements, the problems in maintaining progress, and how things look for the future.
For those interested in reading more on the topic, Chinese neuroscience was featured in Nature Neurocience's March editorial (11, 1; 2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 09, 2008
Categories: Careers | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nature Network journal club for well written papers, called the good paper journal club, has received seven nominations of papers in its first three weeks. The papers are each listed at the Nature Network group's forum, so you can comment on each one and how well or badly you feel it succeeds in conveying its message. In addition, the papers are collected as Connotea online bookmarks, using the tag "good paper journal club". We welcome your own nominations, both at Connotea and at the Nature Network journal club. Here's an example:
Functional genomic Analysis of C. elegans Molting
"I like both the Introduction and Discussion of this paper because they lead the reader logically through several facets of the study – in the Introduction, moving from general information to specific finding, and in the Discussion, moving from important finding to the new significance of the study. (While closer editing would sharpen the sentences, on the structural level I think that the paper works well.)"
The Nature Network good paper journal club forum is here, with all nominated papers listed and open for your comments.
Connotea tag for good paper journal club is here. Please add your own examples of well-written papers as online bookmarks, so others can access and read them.
Time for a Change blog is here, containing examples of good and poor writing style, and related discussion.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 08, 2008
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rachel Courtland is reporting on Nature's In the Field blog from the Spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. "Last month's American Physical Society meeting passed under the city's radar", writes Rachel, but this meeting is so large, the welcome mat extended all the way to the airport, which boasted a "Welcome ACS" sign at the baggage claim area."
Attending the first press conference of the meeting, Rachel continues: "In the spirit of our swampy environs, the first press conference Sunday morning was on the special anti microbial/fungal/viral properties of alligator blood. Alligators aren’t the friendliest creatures around. They like to fight and sometimes sustain serious injuries; they also live in marches and swamps full of opportunistic microbes. But, the researchers say, alligators seldom get infected."
For more coverage of ACS, please visit In the Field for regular updates until Rachel's departure on Thursday (10 April).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 07, 2008
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Striking a balance between the need to allocate credit fairly and the need to be readable can be a challenge for editors and journalists when writing about research papers, according to this month's (April) Editorial in Nature Nanotechnology (3, 179; 2008). Every week, editors at the Nature journals write 200-word articles about a research paper that explains the main results of the paper — why the work is interesting or important, how the results were obtained, what they mean for that area of research and beyond, and who did the work. Such articles appear every week as 'research highlights' at the website of each Nature journal. The Nature Nanotechnology Editorial discusses the challenges in writing these articles : what is interesting or important to one reader might be of little interest or import to another, for instance, and it may be impossible to say anything meaningful about the significance of the results, other than stating that they are indeed significant, in 200 or fewer words. Even awarding appropriate credit is hard in such limited space, as most papers have four or more authors, often from two or more institutions. The Editorial goes on to discuss some of the ways the journal deals with these problems, and contrasts research highlights with full scientific research papers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 07, 2008
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekly Nautilus column highlights some of the online discussion at Nature Network in the preceding week that is of relevance to scientists as authors.
The Nature Network week column is archived here.

If you are in Berlin on 8 April, join Alison Abbott from the Nature office in Munich at an informal gathering to discuss your ideas about scientific publishing, Nature’s activities in Germany, catch up with fellow scientists from Berlin and take the opportunity to meet the people behind the Nature Network Berlin Group (further details at the link).

Here are some thoughts about how to use the tagging options at Nature Network to encourage new scientific collaborations.

Joanna Scott, Nature Publishing Group's expert on all matters Second Life, announces a new nature.com website: Second Nature. Second Nature is also the name of Nature's home on Second Life: Joanna describes how the new Second Nature at nature.com website is a starting point for newcomers, an introduction to what Second Life’s all about and what we’re doing there, as well as providing listings of all our upcoming events and guides to the best science-related places to see in Second Life,to make it easier for people who have heard of Second Life to see what it can be used for and to help experienced users follow activity.

Read here, in the good paper journal club, how some recent papers fared on a test that correlates with the US school-grade level that can follow the text.

New group of the week is NYC, a Nature Network hub for scientists and engineers in the New York City area interested in sharing protocols, interesting publications, ideas and possibly beer. The goal of the group "is to become loud enough so that we get out own tab right next to Boston” - that's right, to become the next Nature Network official hub. The first non-virtual meeting will take place at Lucky Jack's on 9 April (details at the link). In the same group, Chris Wiggins draws attention to the five-day World Science Festival in New York City from 28 May to 1 June 2008 -- list of speakers here, including many eminent scientists, prominent media figures and others.

While on the topic of conferences, Matt Brown in his Editor's blog draws attention to the British Association's scientific communication conference on 19-10 May, in a post that offers bursaries to allow 32 scientists to attend free. To qualify, you need to fall into one of the following categories: UK science communication students; freelancers/microbusiness (fewer than 10 employees); campaigning groups; or scientists/engineers involved in public engagement. For further details of how to apply, see Matt's blog post.

Finally, Brian Clegg on his blog PopSci reveals the answers to his challenge to recognize the opening lines of five famous novels after being "babelized". (Here is one: No relation of transformation of the point, in the name of the station of the work, of that that not worried, the end still to call it, one gentleman did not live between little hour, one, of one entrerrosca and the old sample in small fine squeezes of a cremagliera of the horse and have more and more to lévier more for the packing.) There are some further challenges in the