Nautilus

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Understanding the genetic and pharmacological factors surrounding nicotine and other substances of abuse will lead to insight into ways to prevent psychological dependence and addiction A special web focus, presented by Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, is a compilation of some key articles from Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Neuropsychopharmacology and The Pharmacogenomics Journal on smoking, nicotine and addiction; many of them free to access online. Examples of featured articles include:
Development of Procedures for Early Human Screening of Smoking Cessation Medications
KA Perkins, C Lerman, ML Stitzer, CA Fonte, JL Briski, JA Scott & KNR Chengappa.
Contingency Management: Utility in the Treatment of Drug Abuse Disorders
ML Stitzer & R Vandrey.
Smoked Marijuana as Medicine: Not Much Future
H Kalant.
Clinical Pharmacology of Nicotine: Implications for Understanding, Preventing, and Treating Tobacco Addiction
NL Benowitz.
By Now, “Harm Reduction” Harms Both Science and the Public Health
AI Leshner.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 27, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Molecular Therapy presents a special web focus, gathering together top articles on RNAi originally published in Molecular Therapy, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Genetics, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, British Journal of Cancer and other NPG journals, free to access for a limited time. This collection covers latest research on the development of RNAi-based tools for drug target and gene function analysis as well as work describing the development of the technology for therapeutic applications.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 20, 2008
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

The journal Heredity is publishing a special issue on experimental evolution, under the guest editorship of Graham Bell. The goal of experimental evolution is to understand the mechanics of adaptation by observing the outcome of natural selection in simplified laboratory microcosms. The experimental approach allows us to study fundamental features of evolution such as the fixation of beneficial mutations, the extent of specialization, the repeatability of adaptation and the effect of sex. The May issue of Heredity marks the great expansion of the field in recent years. It features mainly work on microbial and viral systems concerned with the genetic basis of adaptation, and the complications introduced by conflicting sources of selection and complex social interactions.
Visit the Heredity website to read the articles, all free to access.
Editorial: Experimental evolution
G Bell
Reviews
The spread of a beneficial mutation in experimental bacterial populations: the influence of the environment and genotype on the fixation of rpoS mutations
T Ferenci
Predicting evolution from genomics: experimental evolution of bacteriophage T7
J J Bull and I J Molineux
Experimental evolution: Experimental evolution and evolvability
N Colegrave and S Collins
The tragedy of the commons in microbial populations: insights from theoretical, comparative and experimental studies
R C MacLean
Experimental evolution of plant RNA viruses
S F Elena, P Agudelo-Romero, P Carrasco, F M Codoñer, S Martín, C Torres-Barceló and R Sanjuán
Kin selection and the evolution of virulence
A Buckling and M A Brockhurst.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 06, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

A key priority in translational cancer research is the discovery of molecular biomarkers that improve the early diagnosis of cancer and guide cancer prognosis, including the design and assessment of new therapeutic avenues. A Nature Insight in the current issue (Nature 452, 547-589; 3 April 2008) highlights key approaches for the discovery and validation of cancer biomarkers, at the level of DNA, RNA and protein analysis. It also focuses on non-invasive imaging tools and serum analyses that will be important in detecting tumours and monitoring the course of cancer therapy. Translating these advances into personalized cancer care will entail challenges far beyond the scientific discovery and validation strategies. We hope that the articles in this Insight not only bring together key aspects of the translational research into cancer biomarkers but also draw attention to associated issues such as trial design, tissue collection and regulatory requirements. This Nature Insight is freely available online for six months.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 03, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Hilary Spencer, Nature Precedings has just introduced some new features.
Comment notifications: authors can opt to receive notification when new comments are added to their Nature Precedings document by checking a box during the submission process. Commenters can also opt to receive notification of when someone responds to their comment.
Watermarks on PDFs: the DOI (or Handle) and date of posting are now embedded in all PDFs on Nature Precedings. By embedding the identifier in the document, readers can correctly reference or cite the document, even when they have received the document via email or accessed it via a “deep-link”.
Document thumbnails serve as a memory aid and preview; they can also be embedded in blogs and webpages.
Please join the Nature Precedings group on Nature Network to receive updates and make suggestions about the site, as well as to join the conversations between Hilary, Timo Hannay and Nature Precedings users and authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 12, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Author services | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest in Nature's Insights series is Cardiovascular disease (Nature 451; 21 February 2008), the most common cause of death worldwide and becoming even more prevalent as the population ages. New therapeutic targets are being identified as a result of emerging insights into disease mechanisms, and new strategies are also being tested, possibly leading to new treatment options. Improving diagnosis is also crucial, because by detecting disease early, the focus could be shifted from treatment to prevention. This Insight collection of an Editorial and eight Review and Progress articles is freely accessible online.
Editorial: Cardiovascular disease
Michael Basson
Reviews and Progress articles:
Translating molecular discoveries into new therapies for atherosclerosis
Daniel J. Rader & Alan Daugherty
Triggers, targets and treatments for thrombosis
Nigel Mackman
Tackling heart failure in the twenty-first century
James O. Mudd & David A. Kass
A genetic framework for improving arrhythmia therapy
Björn C. Knollmann & Dan M. Roden
Stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease
Vincent F. M. Segers & Richard T. Lee
The developmental genetics of congenital heart disease
Benoit G. Bruneau
The search for new cardiovascular biomarkers
Robert E. Gerszten & Thomas J. Wang
Imaging of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
Javier Sanz & Zahi A. Fayad
An index of all Nature's Insightscollections is available here.

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

Respiratory diseases, including allergies, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, are a major public health burden worldwide.The latest WHO statistics (2007) estimate that 300 million people worldwide have asthma, 210 million people have this type of pulmonary disease, and millions of people are affected by allergies. Each year, 250,000 people die of asthma. The prevalence of these diseases is increasing, and there is a continued need for new and improved therapies. A March 2008 Focus issue of Nature Reviews Immunology highlights the latest advances in our understanding of the immune bases of these respiratory diseases and how this knowledge can be translated into effective treatment strategies, in five review articles and four research highlights. All Focus articles are freely available online for the month of March.
See here for a listing of all previous focuses at the journals Nature Immunology and Nature Reviews Immunology.

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

The International Society for Nephrology (ISN) Nephrology Gateway is being completely redesigned this month (March 2008), with many new interactive features. Since its initial launch in 2005, the gateway has become an important online resource for nephrologists worldwide, including many educational projects, and providing links to news and literature, ISN contact information and membership highlights, a conference centre with announcements, and career resource links. The ISN is one of Nature Publishing Group’s valued society partners, with more than 8,000 members worldwide. The gateway also supports the ISN's membership service activities, connecting nephrologists with information and each other to improve patient care.
The latest addition to the site is the ISN Network, where nephrologists can log in, create a profile, set up discussion groups and participate in online forums. There is already a special discussion group on the ISN Network for all those involved in editing and publishing the journal Kidney International.
More enhanced search features within the gateway will soon follow these initial features.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 03, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Partners, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Four Nature Network bloggers feature in an anthology of selected science blog posts of 2007, Open Laboratory 2007. Out of more than 450 nominated entries, 52 were chosen for publication, including these from Nature Network bloggers:
Deanne Taylor, a research scientist with the Harvard School of Public Health, describes what changes need to be made to boost faculty diversity in science.
Kristin Stephan, a Tufts graduate student, discusses how difficult, but necessary, it is for PhD students in grad school to learn about careers outside academic science.
Henry Gee writes about how his 9-year-old daughter's Asperger's syndrome might help her become a good scientist.
Jennifer Rohn, a postdoc at University College London, documents in a series of four posts her return to the lab and academic science after four years as a journal editor. Required reading for anyone contemplating a career change.
In a short review of the book in Nature's 24 January issue (Nature 451, 401; 2008), Nature's Books and Arts editor Joanne Baker wrote: "If you are overwhelmed by the surge in science-related blogging and don't know where to start, then this compilation may help you steer a course through the sea of perspectives on offer — or inspire you to start a blog yourself."
The book is available either as a PDF or a printed paperback, from Lulu.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 08, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Awards, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the longest, and longest-lasting, Nature Network discussions in which I have participated is called "High Impact made by famous ones", started in October 2007 by a graduate student known as "Universal research" as part of the "Ask the Nature editor" forum.
The forum, incidentally, is hosted by the editors of Nature Network, and is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals, and about careers in scientific editing, straight from the editors of these journals. You are welcome to join the group and post your questions.
Returning to the discussion thread about those "famous ones". The Nature and Nature journal editors who regularly handle manuscript submissions provide their answers to a wide range of questions, including whether being well-known or having a stellar track-record is more likely to get your mansucript sent for peer-review or published (answer: no); blinding of the peer-review process (double-blinding gets an airing, but Nature journal editors explain why they feel the system of single-blinding is best for scientists); duplicate publication (or "salami slicing" as it is often known); and independence of editors from those whose work is being considered.
This thread may not be the longest or the oldest that I have ever seen, but it is certainly among the most focused and useful for authors, and I highly recommend you read it for a unique insight into the editors' thought-processes. If you are at the start of your publishing career as a scientist, you are likely to find this forum very helpful. We welcome you there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Author services, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest journal in the Nature family, Nature Geoscience, introduces a section called Backstory, to celebrate the passion and endurance that geoscientists bring to their work. Each month, there is a question-and-answer piece at the back of the journal or on the journal's website. Because earth scientists like to know exactly where a story is set, each backstory shows the globe from a different perspective, centred on the location of the field work.
Here are some examples from the current (January 2008) issue:
Drillship on ice (Nature Geoscience 1, 76; 2008).
Kate Moran and Jan Backman took an ice-hardened drillship, two icebreakers and two helicopters to the high Arctic to recover many million-year-old sediments from the Lomonosov Ridge. The goal of the Arctic Coring Expedition was to reconstruct the past 60 million years of environmental change in the Arctic by recovering the first-ever long sediment core of deep-sea marine sediments from the Arctic Ocean. The site on the Lomonosov Ridge was chosen by the authors because it has a thick sequence of sedimentary layers covering its crest, which they thought should hold a record of the Arctic's past climate.
Midnight glacier hikes (Nature Geoscience 1, E1; 2008.)
Tim Bartholomaus and Suzanne and Bob Anderson hauled 25 kilograms of equipment over 25 kilometres in 25 hours to get a handle on glacier flow without breaking the bank. Glaciologists and geomorphologists are always looking for the best natural experiments to study the processes acting to shape a landscape. Glacier sliding is key to erosion at the glacier bed. In Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, the authors found an ideal natural experiment to probe the role of glacier hydrology in setting basal motion.
Plates under the sea (Nature Geoscience 1, E2; 2008.)
Using sophisticated multibeam imaging equipment aboard a French Navy vessel, Marc Fournier and colleagues mapped the structure of the enigmatic Owen fracture zone underneath the Arabian Sea. The region where the Arabian, Indian and Somalian tectonic plates meet — a triple junction — is probably the only such feature in the oceanic domain that had not been surveyed with modern oceanographic instruments. Before these authors' expedition, there was very little information regarding its precise location and geometry, although this triple junction can potentially shed light on the history of the break-up of the African plate and the formation of the Arabian plate.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 07, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two collections of Essays appeared in Nature last year epitomizing the 'big issues' facing science and society -- Connections and Science and Politics . You can now download free digital editions (PDFs) of both these essay series in a simple, one-click operation at the links in the previous sentence.
The Connections series addresses how researchers, from cell biologists to quantum physicists, are struggling to work out how systems involving large numbers of interacting entities work as a whole. In this collection of essays, scientists explain how a systems approach, in parallel with the reductionism that dominated twentieth-century science, promises to yield fresh insight, and in some cases, to challenge the most widely held concepts of their field.
In the nine Science and Politics essays, experienced advisers on science policy to the US, UK and Swedish governments, as well as other senior scientific advisors, reflect on the highs and lows of being at the intersection of science and society. Do scientists devalue their advice to government by emphasizing uncertainty, the series asks, or is there a need for greater humility when science meets public disquiet?
These essays make stimulating reading -- I enjoyed each one in the weekly issue of Nature. If you missed them, I encourage you to download these PDF editions for reading at your leisure.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 04, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature China's "Recommendation of the month" award has been won by Timon Cheng-Yi Liu at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou. He has won a free subscription to Nature for recommending the paper: The phosphothreonine lyase activity of a bacterial type III effector family. Timon writes: "Pathogenic bacteria can inject into host cells virulence factors via the so-called type III machinery. Li et al. describe a family of bacterial virulence factors that have a previously unknown phosphothreonine lyase activity that can remove the phosphate from signaling mitogen-activated protein kinase family members involved in innate immunity. This family of effectors is important in the virulence of a variety of animal and plant bacterial pathogens, including Shigella, Salmonella, and Pseudomonas syringae". You can add your comments about the paper here.
If you would like to recommend a paper reporting high-quality research in any scientific or medical discipline originating from mainland China and Hong Kong for inclusion in Nature China, you can do so here. Nature China aims to highlight the best research being produced in Hong Kong and mainland China. Every week, its editors survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from the region, and provide short summaries. The choices are sorted into categories to provide a useful study and research resource. Readers can rank and comment on the chosen papers. In the case of research published in Nature journals, access to the original article is provided.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 12, 2007
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Biotechnology and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery announce a joint web focus, Antivirals, hosting a collection of Reviews, Research Highlights and Commentaries covering the science and business of antiviral drug research and development, highlighting innovative approaches and lessons learned from decades of antiviral drug development, as well as identifying key issues for future antiviral drug discovery and potential solutions. The web focus also includes an online library of recent research papers and review content from other Nature Publishing Group journals. All articles, and selected content from the library, are freely available from December 2007 until June 2008.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 10, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a combination of genetic tricks and fancy proteins, Jean Livet et al. in the current issue of Nature (450, 56-62; 2007) report their work in which they have colourfully labelled hundreds of individual neurons with distinctive hues to create a "brainbow". The authors have labelled neurons with approximately 90 different colour combinations, providing a significant step towards modelling how the nervous system works normally and in diseased brains.
As well as reading the paper, you can listen to this week's free Nature Podcast to find out more, and read the Nature editors' summary of the work here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 02, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Milestones in DNA Technologies (October 2007) is a collaboration from Nature, Nature Methods and Nature Reviews Genetics, focusing on ground-breaking technologies and advances in the analysis of DNA. Developments in the last 50 years range from the first Sanger sequences to the latest next-generation chemistry, and from the earliest methods of DNA separation to transgenic organisms and specific gene replacement in human cells.
You can request a free print copy here. In addition, the full content of DNA Technologies, plus further articles and features, is freely available online from October 2007 for six months. The table of contents listing is here. You can also see here for a timeline of milestones in DNA technologies.
Index of all Nature Publishing Group's Milestones publications.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 19, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Partners, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever seen something in Nature — be it a research paper, news story or an editorial — that you thought deserved far more attention that it received? We value your opinion, so we've launched a website, 'Best of Nature ', that allows readers to nominate, vote for and discuss content from Nature's past. Please vist, and tell us what we may have missed while compiling the 'History of the Journal Nature ', a newly launched website which explores Nature's history back to the first issue in 1869, and of which more later.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 18, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The world's population is ageing rapidly. The effects of this change in demographics are predicted to touch on many facets of human life. Not least, because the health of older people deteriorates with time. Nature's latest in its "collections" series draws together recent articles on the process of ageing, and the connections that exist between growing older and disease.
You can read the collection online, where it is free-access, or order a free print copy.
A collection of articles on the same subject, the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology web focus on ageing, can be seen here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 28, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

To mark a decade of significant progress in the increasingly important discipline of marine microbiology, the October issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology features a special focus on the topic.The issue contains a collection of articles that highlight the latest advances in marine microbiology and how they are leading to a new understanding of biodiversity, ecology and biogeochemistry. The topics covered range from recent advances in our understanding of marine ecology and metagenomics to the remote sensing of microorganisms and ecological modelling. This issue also features the marine viruses that are believed to shape microbial ocean communities, and addresses the question of microbial abundance in the extremely harsh conditions of the deep ocean biosphere.
From 13 September 2007, these articles are available free to download owing to the generous support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Agouron Institute. This special issue is also accompanied by a Web Focus that draws together relevant articles published in journals across the Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 17, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ricardo Vidal of the University of Algarve, Portugal, has made a badge which can be seen below and at his Nature Network blog: My Nature Network Blog Badge

Ricardo blogs both on Nature Network and at My Biotech Life. If, like Ricardo, you have a blog on the Network and a blog elsewhere, you can copy his badge and use it on your external blog so that your readers can click to your Network blog.
See here for more information about blogs on Nature Network. If you like the posts you read and would like to set up your own blog there, simply click on the "request a blog" button on the right of the page. Nature Network blogs are indexed in Technorati (a major blog search engine and ranking system) and are added to Postgenomic, Nature Publishing Group's science blog aggregator. Use the Network to spread your scientific words, as well as to join groups that share your interests and to make new contacts.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 12, 2007
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

What do Eric Lander, Frank Wilczek, James Randi and Martha Stewart have in common? Answer: they were all attendees at the second Science Foo Camp from 3 to 5 August, co-organized by Nature Publishing Group, O'Reilly Media and Google, and hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.
The 'Foo Camp' format has been pioneered by O'Reilly, a publisher of computing books and organizer of technology conferences, as an antidote to the often overly restrictive nature of formal conferences, where most of the best conversations seem to happen in hallways and during coffee breaks rather than at the main sessions. Foo is self-organizing, unpredictable and rather anarchic - but also quite wonderful.
For fuller accounts, see Henry Gee's End of the Pier Show blog on Nature Network, this Edge essay by George Dyson and Timo Hannay's account on Nascent. There is lots of other blog coverage which can be accessed from this summary page .

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 13, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Summer 2007 issue of Nurture, the magazine for past and present Nature journal authors,has been mailed to authors who have published original research papers in a Nature journal or a Review article in the Nature Reviews journals -- and, crucially, who have provided us with details of their addresses via the manuscript submission system -- in the past year. The current issue features articles by and about authors and editors from the Nature journals; news of our latest interactive web publications Nature Precedings, Nature China, Nature Reports Stem Cells and Nature Reports Climate Change; how to use RSS feeds in PubMed searches; about Nature Network London and how you can participate; debate on Nature's history, Nature's journal club; the latest from Macmillan Science books, and more -- including poetry.

If you haven't published a paper in a Nature journal in the past year, we cannot send you a printed copy because of our limited print run: nevertheless, you can read Nurture free of charge as a digital edition. Please follow this link for instructions on how to access the digital version, or if you are familiar with the system, please go directly to the digital edition of the magazine here.

Whether you read the print or the digital format, we hope that you enjoy our latest news and views for authors: past, present and future.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 07, 2007
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the next 10 months, Nature is publishing 5 free audio shows specifically for the chemistry community, including interviews with Nobel prizewinners, updates on nanotechnology research and more. Each show features important research from the Nature journals as well as interviews with scientists, in-depth commentary, location reports and analysis from journalists covering chemistry around the world. You can download the latest podcast from this page, which also provides links to previous chemistry podcasts. Alternatively, you can subscribe by RSS feed.
To receive updates on the chemistry podcasts, as well as the latest chemistry research from the Nature journals, you can sign up here for our chemistry email alert.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 06, 2007
Categories: Author benefits | Permalink | Comments (0)

In today's era of start-ups, spin-offs and university–industry collaborations, it pays to be knowledgeable about patents and how they can help. So starts the Editorial in the new issue of Nature Photonics (1, 355; 2007)

"All too often scientists are deterred from patenting by misconceptions about how expensive or time-consuming the process might be. True, the cost of filing and maintaining a patent has to be considered carefully, but the financial or commercial benefits may be worth it."

Read on at the Nature Photonics website.

Further information about patents in photonics is provided in the Commentary "Patenting photonics research" by Andrew Fearnside later in the issue (Nature Photonics 1, 357-359; 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 03, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Disciplines, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

If you’ve wondered about starting your own blog, have a look at Nature Network, where scientists of all kinds are blogging. It is free, quick and simple to set up the blog, and you’ll find yourself connected with researchers and others with overlapping interests.
You can see who is blogging at Nature Network by going to the blog index and reading whichever blogs catch your interest. Recent posts from all the blogs are featured on the blog index page, so that's another way to see what's truly current. Here are a few posts that I’ve enjoyed reading this week:
In her blog Mind the Gap, Jennifer Rohn records what it’s like to return to the bench after a spell in the science literary scene running the LabLit website. The post In which I rejoice in muscle memory is a vivacious description of planning her first experiment since her long break. "With due consideration of my long hiatus, I showed what I thought was a ridiculously stripped-down plan to the lab’s two leading experts on Drosophila cell culture RNAi: a pilot tissue culture experiment with a mere eight samples. I waited expectantly as the Ph.D. student studied my scribbles. But then he slowly started shaking his head. “Your first experiment in four years?” he said dubiously. “Only four wells, maximum. Get rid of half of this.” "
Attila Csordas, whose Network blog is called Science Hacker, looks at the role of comic books in science popularization. Cartoons are terrific education tools, writes Attila, as well as howtoons, cartoons showing kids of all ages “How To” build things. "What about cartoons for scientists? After all, experimental results, short communications and complete articles could be presented in a cartoon way, let us just juxtapose the figures of an article with good graphics and build a story upon them." Nature 's synthetic biology cover and online comic in its issue of 24 November 2005 being a good example.
In her Network blog Time for a Change, Linda Cooper suggests that "there's a better way to write a scientific article. Currently, published articles are unnecessarily difficult to read and researchers need to be trained in how to write about their research." Here she explains why the active voice, useful transitions and clear subjects help readers. The post at the link takes a paragraph from the Allen Brain Atlas part by part, providing an original, a descontstruction and a revised version of each section. Head on over and tell her which you think is best.
These are just three of the many lively blogs on the Nature Network. Check it out, and have a go yourself.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 15, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (2)