Nautilus

A happy Christmas, new year and holiday season to all readers. This blog will resume posting on Friday 2 January 2009.
In the meantime, I recommend the article 'Burnout', by Frank Gannon, published in the December issue of EMBO Reports (9, 1157; 2008). From the article:

Even when we do step out of our professional world, we do not always allow our minds to follow. As we sit in the theatre, are we secretly churning over a work-related problem at the back of our heads? Similarly, are we fully taking part in family activities or are we thinking in parallel about the next grant proposal or presentation? An honest answer would be that sometimes we fail to close our minds to work when we leave the building. Conversely, some of our brightest insights can come while stuck in traffic, walking the dog or sitting through a boring theatrical performance. But it does mean that we risk our work consuming our lives.
...
It is important to establish a work–life balance that allows us to pursue other interests and activities, and to spend time with our families. If nothing else helps, we might seriously consider changing jobs—a new start can be truly reinvigorating as it removes one from the inevitability of tomorrow, colleagues who have only predictable advice to offer, the chaos of unread papers, un-filed documents and un-done tasks that have been piling up. Of course, changing jobs is a rather drastic solution and not always possible or desired. But, a sabbatical can often achieve the same goal and allow us to return fresh to a job we still want to love. What we should avoid, however, is analysing our situation and continuing down the same track, even if we recognize ourselves to be burnt out.

Further science-related blog reading and online discussion can be enjoyed at:
Planet Nature
Nature.com's science blogs index and tracker
Nature Network's many blogs and forums
Science Online FriendFeed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 24, 2008
Categories: General | Permalink | Comments (1)

A clever use of fable brings surprising clarity to the story of climate change, thinks Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College, London, in his review for Nature Reports Climate Change (doi:10.1038/climate.2008.123) of Tyler Volk's book CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge. The author uses parables and puns to describe scientific concepts, creating a protagonist who is “a little carbon atom called Dave.” From the review:
"Like Prometheus, Dave habitually spends millions of years bound in a limestone cliff. But occasionally he escapes, most recently to travel variously into a glass of beer, through the rear end of an Irish earthworm, inside the brain of a giant Galapagos tortoise and as part of an air parcel to Mauna Loa where he is measured by climatologist Charles David Keeling, to be recorded on the infamous ‘Keeling curve’, which documents the twenty-first century rise in atmospheric CO2.
Dave has relatives: Coaleen, Oilivier and Methaniel in the fossil fuel family, and Icille. Coaleen heads for a strangler fig tree in Australia, Methaniel is taken up by a plant in the Arctic tundra, and Oilivier, who becomes a bicarbonate ion in the ocean, is followed by cheerful Dave, who finds himself diving to a sea bed carbon burial site. Really cool Icille gets trapped in an ice bubble."
Members of the Nature Network science writers' forum discuss whether this approach to communicating scientific research is "nauseous anthropomorphic twaddle" in the words of one contributor, or a way to "make concepts more accessible and fun" in the opinion of another. The reviewer believes it works in this case:
"Fables, like political cartoons, are powerful. Orwell’s Animal Farm was the stake through the heart of Stalin’s Marxism. Tyler Volk’s simple tales in CO2 Rising are not at that level, but they are clearer and more easily read than the prose of most scientific writing, even in good scientific journalism. That clarity brings understanding. Despite — or perhaps because of — its dreadful puns and apparent simplicity, this is a book that can persuade, can educate, and can change policy."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 23, 2008
Categories: Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics presents Adolescent Medicine, a free web focus that compiles important articles on topics pertinent to adolescents, conditions that afflict them, and strategies for management. Adolescence is a period of accelerated growth and change, bridging the metamorphosis from childhood to adulthood. In addition to physical maturation, adolescents experience psychological maturation, which affects behaviour, patterns of learning, and the adaptation to adult abilities of cognition. Throughout this transition, challenges arise that carry the potential for negative long-term health impact. Examples include the onset of obesity associated with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome; sexual experimentation and an increased incidence of sexually transmitted disease; initiation of cigarette smoking, alcohol, and substance abuse; and reduced adherence to treatment regimens for chronic diseases that have an onset in childhood. Effective measures for prevention and treatment require a comprehensive understanding of the differences and difficulties associated with this fascinating period of life.
Adolescent Medicine, a web focus of articles published in seven journals published by Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 22, 2008
Categories: Author services | 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.

More and more non-fiction authors are creating dedicated book blogs to supplement published work. So blogs may be good for science book authors, opines Scott Keir. A discussion follows on the relative usefulness of online blogs or websites as supplements to non-fiction books. Also on books, Brian Clegg draws attention to his review of Experimental Heart, a novel by scientist and Nature Network blogger Jennifer Rohn - both of which (review and book) are subsequently debated.

Xiaoli Li is calling for submissions to a special session on “Data Mining in Protein Interaction Networks” at the 2009 International Joint Conferences on Bioinformatics, Systems Biology and Intelligent Computing conference, to be held in Shanghai, China , 3-6 August. The deadline for submissions is 15 February 2009.

"I arrived a month late as I had been working in the USA that summer. I was shown a desk, handed a copy of a PhD on sintering theory and told to develop a model for diffusion bonding." Thus reflects Brian Derby on the 30th anniversary of starting his PhD, in an evocative description of a life in science.

Nature Network online forums relevant to authors include Ask the Nature editor, Publishing in the new millennium, Citation in science, and The good paper journal club. All are welcome to join these groups and to contribute questions and discussion.

Next Friday is 26 December and is a public holiday in the UK, so the column will miss a week and return next year on Friday 2 January 2009.
Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 19, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is still time to register for Interpreting the Human Genome, the Miami 2009 Winter Symposium organized by the University of Miami, Nature Publishing Group and Scripps Florida. The conference takes place 24-28 January 2009, at Deauville Beach Resort, Miami Beach.
The human genome has hidden levels of regulatory complexity and variability that have begun to reveal themselves since the initial sequence became available in 2001. Today, with increasingly powerful sequencing and analysis technologies, we are not only beginning to appreciate the scale of variation in individual human genome sequences, but also gaining a greater understanding of how genome differences relate to human evolution and disease. This meeting will showcase these advances in our understanding of human genome regulation and variability as well as the potential of new technologies to drive the advancement of knowledge.
Speakers and honoured scientists include Svante Paabo, J. Craig Venter and George Church (full list available here).
Organizing committee of the symposium.
Meeting programme.
Conference registration details.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2008
Categories: Conferences, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alan Alda is not only a beloved actor, producer, writer and activist, but also a skilled science communicator. Those aiming to talk effectively to the public about biotech research would do well to follow his lead. That's the view of George S. Mack, whose profile of Alda is published in this month's issue of Nature Biotechnology (26, 1325; 2008). From the article:

Nobel Laureate and Rockefeller University president Paul Nurse has hosted Alda as a speaker and guest and shared a speaking platform with him many times. "He should have been a scientist himself," he says. "Alan pays attention, and he's interested in what science can tell us about the natural world and ourselves—ranging from molecular biology and high energy atomic physics right through to geology and relativity." For Nurse, the highest tribute he can offer is that Alda is prepared to tackle difficult topics and disciplines. "He doesn't retreat behind the metaphor, which can at times be useful, but you have to be careful about metaphors because you think you understand things when you don't always."
Alda is a great proselytizer for the potential of science as a provider of solutions for poverty and hunger. He also spends time visiting US universities each year to teach science students how to give presentations. According to Alda, a major aim is not "to dumb down science." But he also worries about the tendency of scientists at times to talk down to nonexperts. In the field of genetically modified plants and animals, for instance, Alda believes researchers should address people's concerns straight up. "I think it's important to know what their fears are, and to address them, rather than to just say don't worry and just trust the guys in the white coats," he says. "I don't think it's a bad idea for scientists to acknowledge the fear of bioengineered foods and then to distinguish among the fears."

Read the full article at Nature Biotechnology (site licence or subscription).
More about Alan Alda's new TV series The Human Spark.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 17, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature's latest Insight collection of reviews (Nature 456, 719–744; 2008) is on the topic of quantitative genetics. Recent revolutions in genomic technologies have led to a renewed interest in quantitative genetics. One of the main areas of study is the genetic basis of complex traits, which proved difficult to investigate until the advent of genome-wide association studies. Findings from a wide variety of organisms — from plants to mice to humans — are now markedly improving our understanding of how genotype contributes to phenotype. Two articles from this Insight are free to access online for one month from date of publication (11 December 2008):
Commentary: A global network for investigating the genomic epidemiology of malaria
The Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network
Review: Reverse engineering the genotype–phenotype map with natural genetic variation
Matthew V. Rockman.
Futher information about the field of quantitative genetics can be found in the introductory article of this Insight (also free to access online) by Chris Gunter.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 16, 2008
Categories: Author services | Permalink | Comments (0)

Entries for the science blogging challenge close on Monday, 5 January 2009. The challenge is, simply, to "get a senior scientist blogging". The ultimate aim is to help scientific blogging gain more momentum and credibility – and also to have some fun. Points will be awarded for:
• The seniority and reputation of the blogger (both in absolute terms and in comparison to the person who convinced them to blog)
• Their previous lack of experience with blogging and other new-fangled online habits
• The quality and quantity of the posts, their relevance to science, and any demonstrable positive impact they might have already had
• Other criteria that may occur to the judges (Peter Murray-Rust, Timo Hannay, Richard Grant and Cameron Neylon) later
Please submit nominations (including self-nominations) by email to ‘t dot hannay at nature dot com’ using the subject line ‘I got a senior scientist to blog’. Please include:
• Your name and affiliation
• The name and affiliation of the blogger
• A link to the blog
• Any interesting anecdotes, or reasons why you think it deserves to win
The winning blog will earn the chance to be included in the book The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2008. The blogger and instigator will also each earn expenses-paid trips to Science Foo Camp 2009, to be held in July or August (exact date still to be confirmed) at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.
Timo Hannay, one of the judges, notes some background reading: one article to describe the wildly different conference (more accurately, unconference) SciFoo; and another providing news of the extent of the competition one is up against to win this contest. The first post at the newly hatched "senior blog" is here, coincidentally describing various pieces of research published in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 15, 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.

Researchers may be good innovators, and good leaders, but are they good managers? So asks Heather Etchevers in a wide-ranging post about ranking, credit and other similar matters.

Why scientists blog, or should blog (or not) is a topic of perennial interest, not least to scientists who themselves blog. Martin Fenner raised the issue recently, in the form of a set of ten questions to science bloggers. More than 30 of them answered. If you don't know much if anything about blogging and want to know why you should consider undertaking it, Martin's summary of the replies is an excellent place to start (you can also read all the individual replies in full via the links collected in Martin's post).

Are you, or do you know, a brilliant science communicator?, asks Branwen Hide in the UK science policy forum. Nominations are now open for the BA award lectures (closing date 27 February). Each year the BA honours five outstanding young communicators with the opportunity to present a prestigious Award Lecture at the BA Festival of Science. The 2009 Festival of Science is taking place from 5 to 10 September 2009, hosted by the University of Surrey, UK - more details are available at the BA website or via email.

Steffi Suhr draws attention to a theme section on the ethics of science journalism for the journal she edits: Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics (ESEP). The theme section is intended to bring together viewpoints from all parties involved in bringing science to the ‘public’ – writers, editors, publishers, and – not least – scientists themselves. The first two of these open access articles are now published: Michael Gross asks whether science reporting is turning into fast food; and I (Maxine Clarke) discuss the ethics of science communication on the web (links to these open access articles are at Steffi's post). These articles and the issues they raise are being discussed at Nature Network, so please do contribute your own views.

Bob O'Hara opines on the form of peer-review to be adopted by a new journal called Ideas in Ecology and Evolution: "you pay for refereeing, with no guarantee that the manuscript will be published. If you fail, it's $400 down the drain. Make sure you get some nice referees! I can see a lot of people looking at this and deciding to submit to another journal, where they don’t have to pay for the privilege of submitting." This is not the only experimental approach proposed by the journal, as discussed by Bob and by the commenters to his post.

Trends in virtual worlds are highlighted by Maria Hodges, who discusses in the Second Life forum two reports published last month (links in Maria's post) on the educational uses of such worlds. Apparently there are more than 80 of these platforms that exist, and Maria asks whether Second Life will retain its current dominance in the light of such consumer choice.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 12, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

An international author identification system could allow scientists to receive credit for all their scientific contributions and would solve the problem of identity in a world of limited surnames. This is the premise of an article in the December issue of EMBO Reports (9, 1171-1174; 2008) by Howard Wolinsky. Not a new premise, by any means, but are we any closer to achieving this end? And what are the pros and cons?
Timo Hannay, publishing director of nature.com is quoted in the article: "I'd love a user of Nature.com to be able to click on an author's name and to be able to see a list of everything that we publish by them. And that kind of thing, which seems really trivial, should be very straightforward, but actually isn't because we don't have identifiers associated with them ... We've got a world in which scientists have assigned numbers to all kinds of things: to genes, to species, to stars, to molecules, to the articles they write. The one thing they left out was themselves.....A global author ID does bring you the same benefits that you already have from [a] unique article ID, and you can locate an article very quickly and easily online if you know what its DOI [digital object identifier] is."
The article goes on to describe some of the challenges and complexities of this apparently simple goal (which is, in fact, anything but simple). One issue is whether people would want to assign themselves such a number in principle, given concerns about privacy and possible misuses. Another is the extent of cooperation that would be required by many publishers, databases, institutions and other organizations, as well as the interoperability of their technical systems.
Wolinsky concludes: "In the end, whether an author ID system is a universal database or a connected and compatible network of databases, it has to serve the needs of the scientific community. There is a careful balance to be struck between giving credit where credit is due and knowing everything about everyone. Where that balance lies will be up to the community and those who collaborate to make such a system a reality."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 11, 2008
Categories: Authorship | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is a growing trend to take prescription stimulants (Adderall and Ritalin for example) in order to enhance cognitive performance – perhaps in attempt to obtain better grades or increase learning capacity. Nature has been reporting on developments in this controversial area and providing a forum for discussion. In a Commentary article (Nature doi:10.1038/456702a; 7 December 2008 - free to access online until 18 December) Henry Greely and co-authors, who include Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature, say that society must respond to this demand. The authors call for:
--a presumption that adults should be able to use drugs for this purpose
--an evidence-based approach to evaluate the risks and benefits
--legal and ethical policies to ensure fair and equitable use
--a research programme
--broadly available information about risks and benefits
Do you agree with the authors that new methods of improving our brain function should be welcomed, to improve quality of life and extend lifespans? Will safe and effective cognitive enhancers benefit the individual and society? Or should these drugs remain illegal for these purposes? A range of opinions is expressed in a lively Nature Network discussion. One example: "Not only would the rich continue to get richer and healthier, but they’d have the ability to get “smarter” as well. If we’re not careful, we won’t only end up with further social stratification— we’ll see speciation!" Another: " I do agree with the authors that the topic will not disappear, and needs to be confronted. I do not pretend to know what policies are best....As a scientist I do not relish my peers or younger colleagues taking such drugs for the extra edge in career success. I do not relish getting “confidential” advice from a tenure review committee member that next time I should try taking a daily dose of X." And another example: "The majority of mind-altering drugs discovered by humanity have side effects of one form or another. I would be very wary of using any of the current family of available drugs on a long term basis. In which case the call for evidence-based research in the Nature piece will have not inconsiderable ethical issues. These would presumably need to be both double blind and long term."
Please join the Nature Network forum discussion and add your own views to questions such as "why? What’s wrong with leaving your good old brain to do its thing without enhancement?" Previous Nature Network discussion responding to the question ‘would you boost your brain power?’, based on an earlier Commentary article by some of the same authors, can be found here, and the results of Nature's reader survey on the use of neuroenhancing drugs can be read and analysed here.
Initial media reports about the Nature Commentary's proposals are summarized at The Great Beyond, in which Philip Campbell is quoted as stating: “The article, while libertarian in spirit, is absolutely not saying: ‘use these drugs, everybody’. My advice is to avoid taking such drugs unless you have been prescribed them. It is a serious felony to sell such drugs off-prescription in the US; in the UK, Ritalin, for example, is a class B drug, so that un-prescribed possession is punishable by prison and a fine. Furthermore, these drugs have undergone no clinical trials for use by healthy people. And they do have side-effects.”

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 10, 2008
Categories: Education, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Education, a new division of Nature Publishing Group, has launched Scitable, a free online educational resource for undergraduate biology instructors and students.
Scitable, which currently covers the field of genetics, is built on a library of overviews of key science concepts compiled by Nature Publishing Group's editorial staff. Scitable’s evidence-based approach explains science through the lens of the scientific method, with links to milestone research papers.
Topics of investigation include:
• Chromosomes and cytogenetics
• Evolutionary genetics
• Gene expression and regulation
• Gene inheritance and transmission
• Genes and disease
• Genetics and society
• Genomics
• Nucleic acid structure and function
• Population and quantitative genetics
Scitable is designed to help teachers engage students in a deeper appreciation of science by combining the site's content libraries with the kinds of social learning tools that students enjoy.
Visit Scitable to register, browse the content libraries, and create a classroom research space for your students.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 09, 2008
Categories: Education, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a Correspondence to Nature Methods (5, 991; December 2008) responding to an Editorial in the March 2008 issue of the journal (Nat. Meth. 5, 209; 2008) , Scott A Ochsner, David L Steffen, Christian J Stoeckert, Jr and Neil J McKenna report a study showing that researchers are not routinely depositing supporting raw microarray datasets into a public database.
The Correspondence authors surveyed papers from the 2007 issues of 20 journals, searching the text for reference to deposition of a microarray dataset. They find that the rate of deposition of datasets was less than 50 per cent. The authors note the effort required by authors to deposit these complex data in public microarray repositories, even though repositories are simplifying submissions while encouraging compliance with MIAME (minimum information about a microarray experiment) standards. They write: "Although microarray datasets are most useful to bioinformaticians in their raw, unnormalized forms, which facilitate cross-comparison with other datasets, processed datasets are more useful to the bench scientist. Moreover, unless a description of the experimental details is available, neither form of the data are biologically interpretable." They urge repositories to require deposition by authors and propose journals require a statement in the manuscript identifying a repository and accession number at the time of submission, with the record embargoed until acceptance of the paper. (Of the 16 Nature journal papers that were part of the survey, such accession numbers were provided in 15 cases.) They conclude: "Seven years after the elaboration of the MIAME principles, the emerging discipline of microarray meta-analysis, exemplified by the cancer gene expression resource Oncomine, continues to be hobbled by the mundane, time-consuming and often fruitless exercise of tracking down annotated full datasets. We call for a renewed collective effort from researchers, publishers and funding organizations to redress this situation and secure these data-rich research resources for posterity."
The full text of the Nature Methods Correspondence, with supporting data, is here.
Policy note: the Nature journals have for some years required authors to submit MIAME-compliant microarray data to the GEO or Arrayexpress public repository. Details of the journals' polices can be found here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 08, 2008
Categories: Data availability | 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.

What type of licence should authors choose when they post their articles on preprint servers? Will it restrict their options for subsequent submission to journals, or conflict with some publishers' policies? These questions are asked by David Bickel at the Nature Precedings forum, and the pros and cons of different forms of creative commons licences are discussed by Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings, John Wilbanks of the Science Commons, and others.

Alfredo Pereira Jr announces a conference Investigating Inner Experience Brain, Mind, Technology, to be held in Hong Kong, from 11 to 14 June 2009. This is the fifteenth in an annual series of 'Toward a Science of Consciousness' conferences, "known for broad, interdisciplinary and multi-faceted approaches to the age-old question of how the brain produces consciousness awareness", writes Alfredo in the Nature Network forum which contains what must be the longest-running online conversation on the network - 485 replies to date to the quest for a definition of the term 'consciousness'. The number of replies would be even longer if the discussion had included another conversation thread, 'What is the most well-accepted model of consciousness?', now up to 64 responses.

There is discussion at the science writers' forum about Euan Nisbet's review for Nature Reports Climate Change of Tyler Volk’s book ‘CO2 Rising’. The author uses parables and puns to describe scientific concepts. The book’s protagonist is “a little carbon atom called Dave.” Nauseous anthropomorphic twaddle, as one commenter has it, or accessible and fun, in the opinion of another?

The winners of this years’ AAAS/Science Dance Contest were announced on 20 November, writes Branwen Hide. There are four categories, graduate student, post-doctoral student, professor and popular choice with the winning dances being those that most creatively convey their PhD theses. All the dances are available on You Tube, apparently. If you prefer a science or science-related career to one of ballet or tap, Deb Koen, the NatureJobs career expert, is now answering questions from Nature Network users.

Ruth Wilson notes that the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology is running an open evening event in Second Life, 15 December 2008, 1850 - 2000 h GMT. She writes that the focus is gender equality and ‘a vision for science and society’, and that this Nature Network group is for anyone interested to comment, ask questions, share advice and recommend links. "And if you are joining us in SL, introduce yourself so we can get to know each other before going virtual." Moving off-topic somewhat, the Resource Centre has also set up a Facebook group called 'Make the next Dr Who a woman!' Suggestions are invited for the time when actor David Tennant quits the popular UK science-fiction TV show. The group is pretty popular, being the topic of an article in the Daily Telegraph on Monday of this week; you can contribute to the seasonal frivolities by casting your vote for who should take the role in an online survey.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 05, 2008
Categories: Nature Network round-up | Permalink | Comments (0)

Published on 1 December, Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton is a collaboration from Nature, Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, focusing on ground-breaking advances in cytoskeleton research. Developments in the past 60 years range from the discovery of actomyosin to the identification of molecular motors, and from fluorescence analogue cytochemistry and differential interference contrast microscopy to single-molecule in vitro assays and optical traps.
Milestones are a series of specially written articles, which highlight the most influential discoveries in the field of cytoskeleton over the past 60 years, as described in an Editorial. Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton also comprises a collection of selected review articles, a timeline of key discoveries, and an online-only library of recent research papers and review-type articles from Nature Publishing Group.
Free print copies of the Milestones in Cytoskeleton suppliement are available to order (the supplement is being distributed with the December 2008 issues of Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, so subscribers of these journals do not need to request a copy).
See also Nature's web focus on the 50th anniversary of the first report of muscle crossbridges, published online in 2004. A few print copies of the reprint of the two 1954 papers are available: if you would like one, please leave your name and mailing address in the comments field to this post, or send an email to authors@nature.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 04, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Imperial College London are hosting a free virtual conference today on NPG's/Macmillan's Elucian Islands in Second Life. If you are interested in the science of climate change and carbon-dioxide storage and want to hear from some great speakers, please register and come along, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. GMT (7 a.m. -11 a.m. PST). The Second Life location is Khufu Conference Centre, co-ordinates: 141,10,27.
The conference will be broad-based, covering all aspects of climate change and research on carbon dioxide storage. The presentations will be accessible to any researcher interested in learning more about the subject, although technical posters on all aspects of climate change, ocean acidification, carbon-dioxide separation, transport or storage are welcomed and encouraged.
Keynote Speaker: Franklyn M. Orr Jr, Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project and Professor of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University.
Among the other speakers is Martin J. Blunt, head of the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London.
Why attend a virtual conference?
- Listen to top international speakers
- All attendees are invited to present a poster
- The convenience of attending a conference from your office: no flights, no hotels, NO HASSLE!
- It is FREE! An excellent opportunity to present student posters
- Save 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per international traveller on flights alone
The virtual poster session is available online from 2 to 16 December for attendees to view at their leisure. Presenters are encouraged to be available on 3 December before and/or after the talks for questions.
More information about the conference is here.
More about Second Nature and the Elucian Islands on Second Life.
Joanna Scott's Second Life blog at Nature Network - for news, advice and all matters Second Nature. (Her post about this particular conference is here.)

While on the subject, Jeff Tollefson, Nature's climate reporter, is at the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland this week (see his scene-setting post here). He's posting updates from the meeting as they happen at the blog In The Field. For his preview of what to expect from the conference -- the last big step before negotiators convene in Copenhagen next year, hoping to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol -- see Nature 456, 428-429 (2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 03, 2008
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Structural Genomics Update for December reports a centralized system created by the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI) that allows investigators an easy way to submit protein target suggestions to the ten PSI structural genomics centres. These proposals are evaluated for feasibility and consistency with the overall goal of the programme. The four large-scale production centres are pursuing structural studies of more than 1,400 community-nominated targets. The six PSI specialized centres, which focus on various structure-determination bottlenecks, also consider target nominations. For further information, guidelines and submission service, see the news article.
In the rest of the December update, see the featured molecule (scavenger decapping enzyme DcpS), selected free-to-access research articles from across Nature Publishing Group journals, as well as other articles and news, including an events calendar.
The PSI-Nature structural genomics knowledgebase is a free service, designed to turn the products of the Protein Structure Initiative into knowledge that is important for understanding living systems and disease. Use the site to explore the PSI's work, and stay informed about advances in structural biology and structural genomics by signing up to the monthly e-newsletter.

Nautilus post announcing launch of the structural genomics knowledgebase.
Previous Nautilus posts about structural genomics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 02, 2008
Categories: Data availability, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the year 2008 draws to a close, excitement and an expectation of change hang in the air, and not least in the field of neuroscience, according to the Editorial in the December issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience (9, 885; 2008). From the Editorial:
"We have recently had a decade of the brain, and there is a sense that this will be a century of neuroscience," says Pasko Rakic, one of three winners of this year's Kavli prize for neuroscience, in an interview on page 893 of the December issue. Pasko Rakic, Sten Grillner and Thomas Jessell were recognized for their pioneering work and outstanding contributions to elucidating the development and function of neural circuits. This highly prestigious prize, which will be given biannually in the fields of nanoscience, neuroscience and astrophysics, was awarded for the first time this year. The interviews highlight the milestones in the careers of the awardees, their outlook on neuroscience and their advice for young neuroscientists.

Previous Nautilus posts on prizes and awards.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 01, 2008
Categories: Awards, Careers | Permalink | Comments (0)