Nautilus

Taken from the Editorial in the November issue of Nature Chemical Biology (5, 863; 2009):
In the past decade, chemical biology has expanded to embrace increasingly diverse research areas at the interface of chemistry and biology. Nature Chemical Biology has strived to highlight this aspect of chemical biology by publishing papers that apply chemical and biological approaches to achieving a greater mechanistic understanding of biological systems. The field also offers small molecules and tools that can be used to manipulate chemical and biological systems with unprecedented molecular precision. Given these basic and applied aspects, chemical biology has naturally resonated with fields that rely upon integrated chemical and biological insights. No field has been more affected than drug discovery.
This synergy was highlighted at the third Nature Chemical Biology symposium Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery, held on 19–20 September 2009 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The organizers were Paul Workman (Cancer Research UK Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at The Institute of Cancer Research, UK), Giulio Superti-Furga (Center for Molecular Medicine, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria), Brian Shoichet (University of California, San Francisco, USA), and Joanne Kotz (Nature Chemical Biology, USA)
Though the symposium focused primarily on the ways that chemical biology will shape the science of drug discovery, it was clear that chemical biologists, who are equipped with a substantial toolbox of 'pathfinder compounds', chemical methods and other technologies, represent a new generation of talented interdisciplinary scientists who will bring fresh insights to the drug discovery culture. Pharmaceutical companies should make every effort to integrate chemical biology programs and scientists into their portfolios to promote innovation in chemical biology for drug discovery.
A primary aim of the Nature Chemical Biology symposium series has been to nucleate discussions among scientists who share common interests but approach these scientific areas from different perspectives or with divergent tools. We look forward to bringing together other groups at the frontiers of chemical biology, and we welcome suggestions for future symposium topics.

Nature Chemical Biology:
Journal home page.
About the journal's web site.
Focuses and supplements.
Guide for authors and peer-reviewers.
About the editors.
Contact the journal.

Nature Conferences main index.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 17, 2009
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Intellectual-property protection is a key driver of innovation, and researchers are always keen to file patents to shield their discoveries. Yet scientists often have an uninformed view of the value of their intellectual property. This naiveté slows down translational research. So concludes the November Editorial in Nature Medicine (15, 1229; 2009).
An informal poll conducted by the Nature Medicine editors revealed that "about two-thirds of scientists, particularly in Europe, don't know who owns the intellectual rights to the discoveries made in their labs. A similarly high proportion don't know if there are any provisions in their job contracts assigning them any rights over their discovery. And roughly half don't even know whether they are legally entitled to open a company based on their research." Ironically, states the Editorial, these are the very same scientists who dream of patenting their work and reaping the financial benefits. Before thinking about licenses (the essential first step), the Editorial continues, "it's important to realize that the decision to file a patent seldom rests with the scientists, but rather with the technology transfer office (TTO) of their institution. Strangely enough, although most of the scientists we surveyed were interested in patenting their work and knew about the importance of the TTO to this end, over 60% admitted to never having interacted with that office." After highlighting some of the problems concerning technology transfer offices and investor caution, the Editorial concludes:
"Translational researchers never shy away from the chance to present their science to anyone who might want to invest in it. But they would be well advised to start listening to companies, investors and their own TTOs to develop a better understanding of what they must bring to the table in order to attract financial support. Admittedly, there are very few places where scientists can learn how to engage in this dialogue, but the excuse that provides should be cold comfort given how important this is to the progress of translational research. The creation of forums of this sort should therefore become a priority for universities and research centers alike. A high-profile paper may allow you to get your foot in the door, but it won't be enough to open it."

See also the free Nature Medicine podcast, this month looking at the law in the context of the "patent cliff" which pharmaceutical companies are facing.

In other Nature Medicine news, the journal is organizing a colloquium on Systems Biology and HIV Vaccine Development on 8-10 February 2010 in Peachtree City, Georgia, USA. Participants will include HIV researchers and scientists using systems approaches in other areas of biomedical research, who will address how systems biology has provided insight into the immune response and into other areas of medicine, such as cancer and autoimmunity. Also on the agenda for discussion are the technical and bioinformatic challenges associated with using systems biology approaches; the gaps in HIV immunology that need to be resolved to develop an HIV vaccine; whether systems approaches can help to address these questions; and how 'systems vaccinology' approaches can be implemented in HIV vaccine development and clinical trial monitoring.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 12, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Communication, Conferences, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

From an Editorial in Nature (462, 12; 5 November 2009):
Nature's first issue appeared on Thursday 4 November 1869. 7,269 issues later, a little bit of satisfaction may be in order given that the journal has survived wars and, so far, the Internet's onslaught on traditional models of publishing. Nature's papers are highly cited for what seem to us to be good reasons. Lots of people (millions online every month) want to read the journal. So where do we need to be self-critical? Readers will no doubt have many answers, but here are a few.

> Others sometimes put more weight on our judgement than it can justifiably bear. Large grants, philanthropic donations and personal chairs have been awarded on the strength of a paper in Nature — in effect, using editors' decisions as a surrogate for independent judgement. This is an abdication of the decision-makers' responsibility, and is a pitfall to be avoided.

> We endorse efforts to create systems that reach beyond the crudeness of the impact factor — systems that make transparent the citations and other effects of papers, and that record impacts of scientists' other work, such as their contributions to databases and the hard slog of peer review.

> We have enhanced our journalism and externally authored opinion in recent years, and readers can anticipate further developments ahead.

> Nature has to reflect the values of its authors and readers. The core values of science — objectivity, independence, self-critical thinking and a relentless urge to observe, experiment and explore — are also important principles of good journalism and editing. As an unusual hybrid of magazine and journal, Nature can only retain readers' respect if it follows those principles while adding substantial value to the lives and work of researchers and others seriously interested in science. Our commitment to fulfil these ambitions is as strong as it has ever been.

More about Nature.
Nature's own history website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 09, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's an interesting Editorial in Nature Photonics this month (November) about the 2009 Nobel prize for physics (Nat. Photon. 3, 605; 2009), won for two innovations in photonics that underpin society's adoption of information technology. From the Editorial: "What is particularly interesting about this year's choice of award is the strongly applied nature of the achievements and the prevalence of the technologies in today's society. Indeed, this is probably one of the rare instances where many of those working outside science are likely to have both an immediate familiarity with the topics of the award and an appreciation of their usefulness. After all, in developed countries fibre-optic communications underpin phone networks and the internet, and digital cameras are now considered a ubiquitous item in many households." The Nature Photonics editors are intrigued as to whether this year's award will set a Nobel precedent for honouring practical applications of scientific research.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 30, 2009
Categories: Awards, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bad journalism is best met not with red-faced indignation, but with good journalism. The truth is the best revenge. So concludes an Editorial in the current issue of Nature (461, 848; 2009) about an email campaign to a US climate scientist who backed out of participating in a documentary when he realized that the film-makers had not been clear with him about their intentions. Occasionally, scientists have been hoodwinked by the media, but these are rare events compared with the vast majority of programmes and other media articles. From the Editorial:
"Most journalists and documentarians are honestly trying to report the facts, and scientists have a responsibility to tell the public about their work — especially if it is supported by public money.
Fortunately, scientists can do much to protect themselves. When someone asks for an interview, for example, a scientist should enquire about starting assumptions, the intended audience and the identity of the project's backers. And, if possible, researchers should check the earlier work of the journalists and any companies behind the film for a partisan tone, or unacceptable levels of sensationalism.
But if these efforts fail, and it is discovered too late that the film-makers are bent on using an on-tape interview to promote a view that seems unscientific, the question becomes what steps to take. There is rarely a way to withdraw an interview that was given on the record, for good reason. In any case, making a fuss can be a gift of publicity to film-makers. Schneider admits that he might have spared himself the deluge of e-mails had he just ignored the makers of Not Evil Just Wrong.
A better approach might well be to complain to the television channels and broadcasting regulators, many of which have standards for their programming. The Great Global Warming Swindle was censured by Ofcom, Britain's broadcasting regulator, for breaking several rules in its broadcasting code. And when the same documentary was aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, it was followed by a point-by-point debate and rebuttal."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two examples of open-source science are the subject of Opinion articles in this week's Nature. In the first of these, Timothy Gowers and Michael Nielsen describe their 'Polymath Project', which showed that many minds can work together to solve difficult mathematical problems, and reflect on the lessons learned for open-source science (Nature 461, 879-881; 2009). In the other article, Cameron Neylon says that Google Wave is the kind of open-source online collaboration tool that should drive scientists to wire their research and publications into an interactive data web (Nature 461, 881; 2009).
"Solving the current problems in science communication requires the intervention of strong companies such as Google", he writes. "But it will take more than technical advances to provoke scientists into taking full advantage of the web. We need pressure, and perhaps compulsion, from journals and funders to raise publishing standards to the new level made possible by such tools. Google Wave may not be, indeed is probably not, the whole answer. But it points the way to tools that build records and reproducibility into every step. And that has to be good for science."
Both these articles are free to read online for one week from the publication date (15 October).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following on from yesterday's post about schemes to involve the general public in the daily lives of scientific researchers, Nature Medicine and Nature Biotechnology announce an initiative to connect commercially oriented academics with their local business community (Nat. Med. 15, 1095; 2009). The SciCafé is a series of networking events in Boston and San Francisco that help researchers connect with investors and serial entrepreneurs.
The SciCafé is intended to provide a showcase of the work of investigators publishing cutting-edge work to an invited audience of 30 or so business people. The first SciCafés were in Boston and San Francisco because each area not only produces a prodigious amount of high-quality science, but is also home to a large number of sophisticated, early-stage life science investors/entrepreneurs. Starting next month, the journals are extending the concept to Europe, with a SciCafé in planned in London. Nature Medicine writes:
"Academics are selected on their publication record and on the potential commercial interest of their research. Editorial responsibility for selection rests with the participating journals, which take an ecumenical approach, looking at the whole literature—not just papers published in Nature journals. Those selected are given one-on-one coaching by the editors on how best to present their research to an investor audience. We also invite the technology transfer offices of any selected academics to send a representative to the SciCafé.
In announcing the SciCafé to the broader biomedical community, we would like to also invite applications from investigators in the Boston, San Francisco or London areas who are interested in presenting. Applications should be sent to scicafe@us.nature.com outlining in 1,000 words the applicant's contact details, the three peer-reviewed papers most relevant to their work, a clear but brief description of the commercial potential and any associated intellectual property.
We acknowledge that many in academia have no interest in seeking closer ties with the investor community. But for those who do wish to commercialize their work, we hope SciCafé offers a new opportunity."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 13, 2009
Categories: Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December, talk will turn to scientific, political and economic issues with a global reach and a long history — not easy to pick up from the daily news. Nature Reports Climate Change asked select experts on climate change what books we should be reading ahead of the big event. See Nature Reports Climate Change for the selections made my Mike Hulme, Tony Juniper, Mark Lynas, Oliver Morton, Ron Oxburgh, Rajendra K. Pachauri, Roger Pielke, Jr, Andrew Revkin and Joseph Romm, which range from popular scientific accounts to technical reports; and from explaining the controversies to passionate accounts of solutions. Some quotations from the recommendations:
--"a must-read book for those who want a primer on all the key solutions countries will be considering at Copenhagen."
--"Policymakers will have to forge a highly ambitious deal to avoid the crisis."
--" 'Climate change fatigue' is said to be an ailment slowly spreading through the media. As Copenhagen takes over the headlines, Bryan Lovell's lively new book — peering into the doubts, concerns and prejudices that have dogged climate negotiators — is an instant tonic for this malady."
--"The painful truth is that no one knows how to decarbonize the global economy.....— it's a lesson of history."
--"As governments head grimly into negotiations determined to avoid a policy failure, it's worth keeping in mind that the system they're hashing out is not the only possible one or even the best."
--"a grand agreement is less achievable than a set of specific deals on particular issues."
--"Beyond the frequently invoked battle-line between climate change 'believers' and 'sceptics', there is a deeper, and in the end more important, division of thinking."
--"This book is not going to help anyone get to grips with the intricacies of the UN climate negotiations, but if you want to lift your head from the trenches for an overview of the twenty-first century, it's a great place to start. "
--"it clearly maps out the serious consequences of inaction, as well as the feasibility and affordability of action both to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 09, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature and Icon Films cordially invite you to a private screening of the feature film CREATION.
Please join us on Wednesday 16 September 2009 at the Science Museum in London for this advance screening. Director Jon Amiel and Oscar winning Producer Jeremy Thomas will introduce the film, followed by a screening on the Science Museum's IMAX screen.
CREATION is the powerful story of Charles Darwin and the single most explosive idea in history.
Based upon Randal Keynes’s book, Annie’s Box about the life of his great great grandfather Charles Darwin, the film stars Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Drinks reception: 1830
Screening: 1915
Location: Science Museum, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD, UK.
Please RSVP by email. It is essential to RSVP in order to confirm that a seat is available.
From the Nature review of Annie's Box (Nature 411, 739-740; 2001), by Bruce Weber:
Keynes sees in Darwin's relationship with his daughter threads that tie together disparate aspects of his life and thought. He makes a compelling case and reveals an aspect of Darwin that should be incorporated into our total picture of him. The writing is graceful, the illustrations are apt and affecting, and the thesis is convincingly presented.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 08, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Personal GenoME & Medicine: Hype or Reality? So runs the title of the next Talkscience evening at the British Library in London on 23 September. As usual, there is a Nature Network forum to provide more details of the event and to start the discussion going online before the meeting itself, so readers are encouraged to check that out and contribute ideas. How is cheaper, faster DNA sequencing helping or hindering our ability to understand disease, treatment and prevention? Which of the many single-nucleotide polymorphisms that have been identified in genome-wide association studies might be causal to a disease? How will advances in genome technologies lead to better diagnosis and treatments? What are the legal, ethical and other issues concerning "direct to consumer" personalised genomics?
These and other topics will be debated on 23 September, in an evening beginning with a talk by Alan Ashworth of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre of the UK Instiute for Cancer Research.
SIgn up here to attend the Talk Science evening on 23 September.
Join and contribute to the associated Nature Network forum.
Other Nature Network forums.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 03, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

September's Editorial in Nature Chemical Biology (5, 601; 2009) addesses the question of how to foster open scientific dialogue in the digital age while respecting the integrity of the scientific process. The publication of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals is the primary means by which discoveries are disseminated through the scientific community, with the most exciting being subsequently communicated to the public through the scientific media. The Editorial continues:

"New media such as blogs and Twitter can greatly facilitate scientific communication, and may offer a route for engaging scientists more directly with the public. Yet the 'scientist as journalist' model that is supported by these technologies presents challenges as a general mechanism for distributing scientific information. Transmission of unpublished data on the Internet circumvents the peer-review process that serves as our primary quality control mechanism to ensure that scientific studies are technically sound before they are communicated to the public. Presenting unpublished results from meeting presentations and posters as established facts may create misunderstandings between scientists and could lead to major misconceptions of ongoing research discoveries by the general public, who may have a limited understanding of the scientific method and peer review.
The first step toward a more open system of scientific communication is an enhanced public understanding of the scientific method and the peer-review process. Scientists understand this, but they must play a greater role in these educational efforts. In the meantime, we maintain that embargoed press coverage of newly published scientific studies serves an important purpose to ensure that science reporting occurs only after peer review. Press embargoes also provide adequate lead time for journalists to prepare informed news stories to coincide with publication of a new research study (for example, see Nature Publishing Group's embargo policy). Scientists who wish to engage with the online community should draw on the positive aspects of this system as they aim for greater openness.
Scientists should experiment with new communication styles and technologies, which offer potential benefits for collaboration, data sharing and the advancement of scientific thinking. As these technologies gain wider acceptance, scientists must agree on guidelines for their appropriate use in the context of scientific discourse, and these guidelines should be consistent with our common goal of ensuring the integrity of the scientific information that we share among scientists and communicate to nonscientists."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 02, 2009
Categories: Communication, Pre-publicity | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature's news coverage is evolving with this week's launch of News Briefing — a two-page digest of the key events shaping the scientific enterprise in the past week. With coverage encompassing policy decisions, funding announcements, market trends and business deals, News Briefing offers a complete overview of the developments that affect anyone working in science. The section also features a calendar to highlight important events, reports and initiatives occurring in the forthcoming week.
From the Editorial announcing the new section (Nature 460, 1057; 2009, free to read online):
"Science is inextricably linked with the messy details of politics and commerce, and it is vital for today's researchers to be aware of how political and business decisions can steer their research programmes — and indeed how their research can affect society. Similarly, policy-makers require the perspective that science can provide on the likely outcomes of their decisions. Yet it is all too easy to miss something important in the torrent of news that pours down on us every day.
By gathering all of the important events in one place, News Briefing aims to plug that gap. In doing so, it complements Research Highlights (example here), which for the past four years has brought you our editors' selections of the most interesting research results from beyond the pages of Nature. Both sections will guide you to longer analytical pieces and exclusives in the main news section or online at http://www.nature.com/news. Apart from breaking daily news stories, our news website also carries stories from the print edition before they make it onto paper, getting analysis and information to our subscribers as soon as possible."
Feedback from readers is welcome here or via email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 28, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Editorial in the August issue of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (16, 797; 2009) highlights a Pew/AAAS survey revealing striking differences between the public's and scientists' views of US scientific achievement and its societal benefits. According to the Editorial, this conclusion reinforces the fact that more must be done to effectively communicate with, educate and engage the public.
The survey involved 2,000 people from the general public and 2,500 scientists, including teachers, researchers and administrators, aiming to discover how we think about science and its impact on society. One of the disparities revealed was that whereas many participants from the general public (84%) acknowledged the importance of scientific contributions to society, only 17% felt that US scientific achievements are best in the world, in striking contrast to US scientists' own assessment — 94% of respondents thinking that US scientific achievements are best best or better than average compared to other industrialized nations.
The Editorial asks why there is an apparent disconnect between the public view of science's contributions and how scientists perceive the quality and importance of US-based research? Education may be one factor. Of the scientists surveyed, 85% viewed the lack of understanding of science by the general public as a major problem. Indeed, the general public barely passed a short 12-question quiz of basic textbook science (example question: "True or False: Electrons are smaller than atoms"). Scientists are also critical of science communication via television and newspaper coverage .
Some of the greatest differences in perception are on issues such as climate change and evolution. Whereas 97% of the scientists surveyed believe that humans and living things evolve over time, 61% of the public agreed, but roughly a third of these people felt that this was guided by a supreme being, with more than a quarter believing that there is lack of scientific consensus on this issue. Although most of the public respondents feel that climate change is occurring, only half think that this is due to human activity, as opposed to 84% of scientists surveyed.
The NSMB Editorial concludes that although improving the quality of education is obviously important, "the survey clearly reveals that the general public applies its own beliefs when absorbing and filtering scientific information. As scientists, rather than speaking down or lecturing to the general public (or even worse, throwing our hands up in despair), we may be better off showing them a bit more of the respect they have for us and trying to see things from their perspective."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 25, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reporting of scientific research is sometimes exaggerated or at worse inaccurate. Researchers need to change this and have the power to do so. So states the August Editorial in Nature Immunology (10, 795; 2009). Although attention-grabbing headlines might increase subscriptions or traffic to newspaper websites, such reporting is irresponsible to the public and to science in general. Even if the article itself is more balanced, many readers never get much beyond the headlines, which include: "Man flu is not a myth; "Burger fellas firing blanks"; red wine is a "cancer-busting antioxidant"; and a 47-million-year-old fossil of a lemur-like animal is a "missing link" in human evolution. Although the Editorial gives some pessimisitic examples of science journalism, it also reports some better news of initiatives to which scientists can contribute. "Several websites that critique the scientific press have started to evolve. In the UK, the National Health Service provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that hit the media. HealthNewsReview.org is a website dedicated to improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures. The Yale Environment 360 website provides unbiased opinions from scientists and journalists on issues such as climate change. These are just a handful of examples." In addition, organizations such as the Voice of Young Science network are providing advice for researchers on how to stand up for science in public and correct misinformation in the mass media.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 22, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The US State Department promises to accelerate the visa process for foreign graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, a promise welcomed by Nature Structural & Molecular Biology in its July Editorial (16, 677; 2009). The Editorial decries the occasions when researchers have been severely delayed in trying to obtain or renew visas, leaving some stranded and others unable to travel to the United States for work or to attend scientific meetings.
The US State Department is now streamlining its procedures, aiming (eventually) to deal with routine requests within 2 weeks, an improvement on the current reported 4 months' average delay for applicants from China, for example. The Editorial concludes: "We must continue to attract and retain the best and the brightest from all over the world if we are going to retain America's global competitiveness, and reducing visa-processing delays is definitely a step in the right direction. If we don't, America's loss will be the rest of the world's gain."

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology journal home page.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology guide to authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 09, 2009
Categories: Biosecurity, Careers, Communication, Conferences, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Various codes of conduct have been proposed for nanotechnology —and in the June issue of Nature Nanotechnology (4, 336; 2009), Richard Jones examines what they mean for individual researchers, particularly in the light of the European Commission's code, aimed at academic research rather than at businesses and other commerce.
"How is responsibility divided between the individuals who do science, and the organizations, institutions and social structures in which science is done? There's a danger that codes of ethics focus too much on the individual scientist, at a time when many scientists often feel rather powerless, with research priorities increasingly being set from outside and with the development and application of their research out of their hands. In this environment, too much emphasis on individual accountability could prove alienating, and could divert us from efforts to make the institutions in which science and technology are developed more responsible.
Scientists, however, should not completely underestimate their importance and influence collectively, even if individually they feel impotent. Part of the responsibility of a scientist should be to reflect on how to justify one's work, and how people with different points of view might react to it, and such scientists will be in a good position to have a positive influence on the various institutions they interact with, such as funding agencies. But we still need to think more generally about how to make responsible institutions for developing science and technology, as well as responsible nanoscientists."

About Nature Nanotechnology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 23, 2009
Categories: Communication, Disciplines, Education, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its June Editorial, Nature Geoscience (2, 371; 2009) discusses the exploding variety of bidirectional online channels for communicating science. The traditional path of scientific discoveries from bench to breakfast table — through scientific journals and newspapers — is diversifying at a staggering rate. Blogs by scientists and non-scientists alike are jostling for public attention; research institutions provide websites, films and press releases; and scientific information is 'Flickring' and 'Twittering' away, accessible to anyone who is interested.
Given this variety of competition, researchers work hard to make their work stand out from the crowd. A session at the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union in April — 'The Significance of Marine Technology in Science Communication – Challenges and Opportunities' — highlighted an increasingly important selling point for science in the public arena: the volume of publicity that can be generated by stunning images.
But the Editorial goes on to outline how science communication is more than pretty pictures. As science sections in quality newspapers shrink, the role of press and media offices becomes more significant as a portal between the science itself and what the public sees of it, particularly challenging in the face of complicated aspects of science without an immediate application. The Editorial concludes that as the print media is crumbling in the face of cheaper offers online, the need for full-time science reporters is stronger than ever. A society in which science and technology are central must provide the funding to bring the narrative of scientific progress to the public.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 16, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature editors and journalists are at the World Science Festival in New York this week (10- 14 June), reporting at In The Field blog, so track them there to see what's happening at this wide-ranging festival of science, culture and society. Among the speakers are Alan Alda, Joshua Bell, John Barrow, Sean Carroll, Glenn Close, Harrison Ford, James Hanson, Margaret Livingstone, Sarah Hrdy, Paul Nurse, Harold Varmus, Frank Wilczek, Edward O. Wilson and a host of others.
Also in New York this summer is the Imagine Science film festival (ISFF) , "fusing science and film", on 26 June. Imagine Science Films aims to encourage collaboration between scientists and filmmakers, and is seeking films that "effectively incorporate science into a compelling narrative while maintaining credible scientific groundings." Nature Publishing Group is supporting the 2009 ISFF Nature Scientific Merit Award, in which a jury panel will select the film from those submitted that exemplifies science in storytelling and narrative filmmaking in a compelling, credible and inspiring manner. Last year's winner was Jessica Sharzer for her film The Wormhole (watch it here). The deadline for submissions for this year's award is the end of July: more details about submission can be found at the Imagine website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 11, 2009
Categories: Awards, Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1)

The June Editorial of Nature Chemistry looks beyond the printed page at online services for authors and readers. Now that most people read journal articles that they have downloaded from the web, rather than taken down from a shelf, the article itself — not just its delivery — is on the verge of major changes. Rather than the HTML (full-text online) version of the article being a narrow reflection of the printed page, it can offer enhancements beyond clicking to bring up figures or reference.
Enhancements that further enrich articles are already being offered by other publishers, including the Royal Society of Chemistry with Project Prospect which, among other services, highlights words that are terms in the IUPAC Gold Book and links to their definitions. Apart from the fledgling ChemSpider of the Journal of Chemistry, there are few other publishers exploiting the full potential of their online articles. Although the American Chemical Society are testing several interesting and useful innovations on the JACS website, such as downloadable PowerPoint and ChemDraw files, none of these so far enriches the text of the articles.
NPG's newest Nature journal, Nature Chemistry, also offers online enhancements. For most numbered chemical compounds in research articles, a separate compound information web page is available (an example can be found here) that can be accessed by clicking on the bold compound number. These compound pages include information such as molecular weight and synonyms, as well as an interactive three-dimensional model of the molecular structure that readers can manipulate. Chemical identifiers, such as InChIs6 and SMILES7 strings, are also included on these pages. These alphanumeric identifiers are machine-readable and can be used in databases and by publishers and chemists to identify and search for chemical compounds. Each numbered chemical compound for any given article is also deposited in the National Institutes of Health PubChem database and a link to the relevant record is included on the compound information page.
Downloadable ChemDraw files for the structures are available for each individual compound, and the compound pages are grouped together on an article-by-article and issue-by-issue basis. A single ChemDraw file containing all of the structures from a particular paper can be downloaded; see here, for example. An example of a compound round-up page for an issue can be found here. As with Supplementary Information, the chemical compound pages are freely available on the journal's website.
The Editorial describes several other online enhancements in Nature Chemistry, inviting reader feedback at the journal's blog, The Sceptical Chymist in a post that contains the entire text of the Editorial.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 08, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the text of an online petition on the Sense About Science website:
The law has no place in scientific disputes
We the undersigned believe that it is inappropriate to use the English libel laws to silence critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence.
The British Chiropractic Association has sued Simon Singh for libel. The scientific community would have preferred that it had defended its position about chiropractic for various children's ailments through an open discussion of the peer reviewed medical literature or through debate in the mainstream media.
Singh holds that chiropractic treatments for asthma, ear infections and other infant conditions are not evidence-based. Where medical claims to cure or treat do not appear to be supported by evidence, we should be able to criticise assertions robustly and the public should have access to these views.
English libel law, though, can serve to punish this kind of scrutiny and can severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest. It is already widely recognised that the law is weighted heavily against writers: among other things, the costs are so high that few defendants can afford to make their case. The ease and success of bringing cases under the English law, including against overseas writers, has led to London being viewed as the "libel capital" of the world.
Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.
The English law of libel has no place in scientific disputes about evidence; the BCA should discuss the evidence outside of a courtroom. Moreover, the BCA v Singh case shows a wider problem: we urgently need a full review of the way that English libel law affects discussions about scientific and medical evidence.

If you would like to find out more, and sign the petition, please visit Sense About Science.
Comments from some of the signatories can be found here.

Related articles:
Nature News 3 June 2009: Science writer will appeal libel case ruling.
Nature Network: Using the law to stifle scientific debate.
Reciprocal Space blog: Keep the libel laws out of science.
Nature Network bloggers' forum: A message to Nature Network users.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 04, 2009
Categories: Communication, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday 8 June, Nature is hosting The Big Science Debate: A Biological Century? The event starts at 7 p.m. at Kings Place 90 York Way, London NI. Physics, biology and chemistry have all helped define the twentieth century. Many world-changing innovations from physics include electric power, the microchip and the internal combustion engine. In biology and chemistry, an agricultural revolution has helped to feed a growing population. But some of these advances have also helped to create climate change and a rate of species-loss not seen since the last mass extinction. What will physics and biology look like 50 years from now? And what might the impacts be?

Join three distinguished panellists -- a physicist, a biologist and a historian -- as they cast their gaze into the future of science, and its possible impacts. Will we resolve the riddle of dark matter and dark energy, and will string theory remain the best candidate for unifying the forces of nature? Will stem cells have fulfilled their promise and what of the potential of genetically modified crops in agriculture?
Panellists:
• David Edgerton, Professor of the History of Science, Imperial College London
• Lewis Wolpert, Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine, University College London
• Alison Wright, Chief Editor of Nature Physics
Chair: Ehsan Masood, Acting Chief Commissioning Editor, Nature
Host: Nick Campbell, Managing Editor, Nature
For more info on The Nature Debate series, please email the organizers.
Tickets are available online, by email or via the King's Place Box Office on +44 (0)20 7520 1490.
Kings Place, and how to get there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 03, 2009
Categories: Communication, Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World is the title of a new book by Eugenie Samuel Reich. The book tells the story of Jan Hendrick Schön 's discovery of a plastic that worked as a superconductor - hailed as a scientific triumph before revelations that his discoveries were fake. (See here for Nature's editorial about the journal's retraction of seven papers by Schön.) This book analyses the fraud and considers pressures that force unscrupulous behaviour from science's rising stars.
Comments from some reviews of the book:
'…Reich’s journalistic persistence and technical thoroughness yield a largely complete, often dramatic account of Schön’s roguery and downfall.' - Booklist
'Eugenie Samuel Reich unpicks the tale with meticulous care.' - Philip Ball, Sunday Times
‘…a wonderful piece of forensic writing.’ - Clive Cookson, Financial Times
'It is gripping stuff: a surprising page-turner that is well worth reading.' - New Scientist
The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan and costs £15.99. For more details and to order, see the Palgrave website.

World Scientific Publishing Company and Nature Publishing Group have just announced that they are co-publishing a book called Nanoscience and Technology. This collection of Reviews from Nature journals will be launched in October 2009 at Frankfurt Book Fair. The book is a collection of more than 30 review articles by internationally renowned researchers working in nanoscience and nanotechnology, first published in various Nature journals. Topics covered include nanomaterials and nanostructures; molecular machines and devices; nanoelectronics; nanophotonics; nanobiotechnology and nanomedicine; and applications of nanotechnology.
"World Scientific and Nature Publishing Group should be applauded for publishing this collection of some of the most important papers in nanoscience," said Dr. Mark Lundstrom, Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor at Purdue University. "Pulling these papers together in one volume helps put the remarkable advances in this very new field in perspective, and stimulates thinking about future directions in nanoscience and technology. It will be an important resource for the community."
More information on Nanoscience and Technology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 02, 2009
Categories: Communication, Partners, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

A hyped-up fossil find highlights the potential dangers of publicity machines, according to one of the Editorials in today's Nature (459, 484; 2009 - free to access online). The Editorial describes last week's publication of paper describing a 47-million-year-old fossil primate with a remarkable degree of preservation, which quickly led to enormous media and internet coverage, including claims that the fossil is a "missing link" in human evolution. The Editorial describes how, "in the paper the authors explicitly state that Darwinius masillae "could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here, nor do we consider either Darwinius or adapoids to be anthropoids". The authors also refrain from claiming that the fossil changes our understanding of primate evolution."
But the circumstances surrounding the paper's publication were anything but normal. Before the paper had even been submitted, a television documentary and an accompanying book about the find had been commissioned; a week publication of the paper, the book is out and the documentary has been aired on TV in several countries. The Editorial continues:
"Both book and documentary include the the suggestive words 'The Link' in their titles. A press release associated with the New York press conference at which the fossil was first officially described claimed that the fossil represents revolutionary changes in understanding. The History Channel website calls the find a "human ancestor", and the BBC website describes it as "our earliest ancestor".
To be fair, the authors' claims at the press conference were appropriately measured. Nonetheless, the researchers were fully involved in the documentaries and the media campaign, which associate them with a drastic misrepresentation of their research.
Another damaging aspect of the events was the unavailability of the paper ahead of the press conference and initial media coverage. This prevented scientists other than those in the team from assessing the work and thereby ensuring that journalists could give a balanced account of the research.
There is no reason to think that PLoS ONE's editors and reviewers did less than their duty to the paper. Nonetheless, the clock was ticking at the time of submission. Nature has over the years received occasional offers of papers associated with television documentaries, and the offers usually come with broadcast dates attached. Where the refereeing process might have been compromised, we have always said no to these papers. When time is tight, there is a risk that the broadcast will go out even if any problems uncovered by peer review cause the paper to be delayed or rejected.
In principle, there is no reason why science should not be accompanied by highly proactive publicity machines. But in practice, such arrangements introduce conflicting incentives that can all too easily undermine the process of the assessment and communication of science."
Amid all the vast quantity of media and internet coverage of this research, I highly recommend this excellent post, 'Why Darwinius is not our ancestor', by Karen James at her Data Not Shown blog. I also recommend this Nature Network blog post by senior Nature editor Henry Gee.
Nature journals' embargo policy.
Nature journals' policy on confidentiality and pre-publicity.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 28, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (4)

A court case between one of Britain's leading science writers and an organization representing alternative medicine practitioners is causing renewed concern about the potential for libel laws to stifle debate on scientific issues (Nature News, 13 May 2009).
Simon Singh, author of Fermat's Last Theorem and other books, is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association over an article he wrote for the Guardian newspaper last year. In an unusual move, the BCA is suing Singh personally, and not the newspaper.
The case has international implications for science reporting and journalism more generally, warns Singh. It comes against a background of increasing concern in many quarters that litigants opt for British courts as they are seen as easier places to get a favourable result; a problem labeled 'libel tourism'.
Neil White, a partner at legal firm Taylor Wessing (which undertakes some legal work for Nature), says the case should serve as a warning not just for science writers, but more generally for scientists and all who write about similar topics. "I think there is a degree of ignorance on the part of scientists about libel law, particularly UK libel law," he says. "I do think there are some scientists who are rather arrogant about it, and think because they're scientists with a view to express on a matter of potentially considerable importance they can say what they please. That is just not the case. The lesson I think they need to learn is you can usually say what you want to say in a way that doesn't expose you to litigation, by taking a bit of care and taking a bit of advice."
Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, says, "Recent history shows quite clearly there is a danger people can be silenced by the financial and legal might of their opponents."
What are your views? Please let us know, either by commenting at the Nature Network Opinion forum or at the Nature News website (where there is a comment in favour of the BCA, as well as others taking the opposite view). How confident are you about expressing a scientific opinion publicly? How well-informed are you about the legal consequences of what you might write on your blog or for a publication?
See also this Nature Network blog post by Stephen Curry and this alert at Nature Network by Brian Clegg .
Readers' comments at Nature Network or here will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Ethics, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its Editorial this month, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (16, 453; 2009) looks at the benefits of 'local' science. "How close to publication do you need to be before you present the exciting findings from your laboratory to your field at large in the forum of one of the big internationally attended meetings and symposia? .... In particularly competitive areas, people prefer to wait until close to or after publication before they will talk about recent work in the context of the global community that composes the field at large. At the opposite extreme, laboratory meetings and lecture series at specific institutions provide a more closeted environment for the discussion of new work. However, as travel plans are made for meeting others in the field face to face, it's worth remembering the value of the 'in between', those meetings that bring scientists from the wider local area together to discuss a broader range of topics."
The Editorial goes on to discuss various institutions and academies in its own patch, New York, that organize meetings to bring scientists from local research centres together for interdisciplinary discussions and to encourage a range of collaborations and projects.

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology journal home page.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology guide to authors.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology focuses and supplements.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 12, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nature Medicine Podcast reports on cutting-edge news in biomedical research from around the globe, featuring interviews with experts and a review of the advances that scientists hope to translate from bench to bedside. Tune into the podcast to learn about breakthroughs and policy developments in medical research. The presenter, Molly Webster, began her broadcasting career at National Public Radio's Science Friday, where she is still a guest producer. She also creates shows for The Takeaway, a radio production spearheaded by Public Radio International, and writes for various scientific and environmental magazines and journals.
To subscribe for free to the Nature Medicine Podcast copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your preferred media player.
The archive page for Nature Medicine podcasts list all programmes from January 2009 to the present edition (currently 7 May 2009, in which you can listen in to find out how scientists are overcoming disabilities in the lab and for a recap of the biggest headlines in biomedicine).
Nature Medicine Podcast: current edition.
Nature Medicine journal home page.
Nature Medicine guide to authors.
About Nature Medicine.
All podcasts at nature.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 11, 2009
Categories: Author services, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cross-posted at Nature Network.
Its attack on poverty and arrogance is what makes C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ lecture relevant 50 years on, according to a Nature Editorial published today (Nature 459, 10; 2009). Three Essays in the same issue of the journal look back on the lecture and its effects. In Dissecting The Two Cultures (Nature 459, 32; 2009), Martin Kemp contends that the real enemy of understanding is not the ‘two cultures’ identified by Snow, but specialization in all disciplines. Georgina Ferry (Nature 459, 34; 2009) suggests that today’s division lies between optimists and pessimists rather than between scientific and literary intellectuals. And Nature’s Books and Arts Editor, Joanne Baker, introduces a passage from Extract from Science and Government by C. P. Snow (Nature 459, 36; 2009). This month's Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 309; 2009) also discusses the impact of the 'two cultures' concept.
The boundaries between the arts and the sciences — and between the sciences themselves — that Snow identified have long since been removed. But other challenges remain. Snow would not have approved of the narrow-mindedness of some researchers who consider the significant costs of their work to be no more than their due from society, nor of their blind resentment when its value is questioned. What Snow urged in particular was an awareness of the problems of poor countries — and of putting scientists at the disposal of solving those problems, for reasons both moral and strategic. The disparities between rich and poor countries may have shrunk since Snow’s time, but are still unacceptably large. Snow’s overriding message — whether about awareness of artistic and scientific experience, or about the applied sciences, or about ‘remediable suffering’ — was that the best and the brightest should not be blinkered. That message still has resonance.
All three C. P. Snow articles in this issue of Nature and linked here are free to access online until Thursday 14 May (the Editorial is permanently free access), so let us know your views on the opinions expressed in them. As usual, contributions to the Nature Network online forum will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence contributions.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 07, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the Editorial in this month's (May) Nature Chemistry (1, 93; 2009):
What are the aims of scientific conferences? Do they exist to provide a forum in which researchers can discuss their most recent results with their peers, make announcements of startling new discoveries, and help educate the younger members of the community who are fortunate enough to be there? Before the rise of the internet, these motives were almost certainly some of the more powerful ones. Scientific discourse by letter is obviously very slow; telephones are useful up to a point, but chemistry is a very visual subject — it was surely the case that convening large numbers of researchers in one location greased the wheels of collaboration and discovery. But is this still the case today? At larger mainstream conferences, the time devoted to scholarly discussion — at least in the official sessions — is somewhat limited at best.
After discussing various pros and cons, the Editorial concludes that it "seems clear that conferences are — in one form or another — an important part of science, but they need to adapt so that they better align with developments in information technology and our desire for a cleaner planet."

Nature Chemistry journal website
Nature Chemistry guide to authors
About Nature Chemistry
All the Nature journals
About the relationship between journals in the Nature family.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

James Lovelock fears that humanity faces widespread death and mass migration as Earth's systems become further unbalanced by climate change. Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia reviews Lovelock's new book, as well as a biography of Lovelock and his ideas, in Nature (458, 970-971; 2009). From the review:
"Lovelock's vision of sudden and imminent collapse is apocalyptic, but for our long-term future and that of the planet it might be preferable to some of the alternatives. Suppose, for instance, that our profligate ways and expanding population are sustained for the rest of this century, but at a huge cost — the complete loss of all the natural ecosystems of the world. Most of us, living in cities and insulated from the natural environment, would barely notice until it was too late to do anything about it. This is what many politicians, economists and industrialists seem to want — their mantra of unceasing economic growth implies that we should take for ourselves all Gaia's resources and squeeze from them the maximum short-term gain, leaving nothing for the future."

James Lovelock sounds a final warning for planet Earth and enthuses about his upcoming space trip in a free NatureVideo interview with Oliver Morton, Nature's chief News and Features editor.

Books reviewed:
The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning
by James Lovelock
Allen Lane/Basic Books: 2009. 192 pp./ 288 pp. £20/$25
By at Amazon: US site; UK site.
He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia
by John Gribbin & Mary Gribbin
Allen Lane/Princeton University Press: 2009. 256 pp/272 pp. £20/$24.95
Buy at Amazon: US site; UK site.

Many other NatureVideos can be accessed via the journal's video archive.
See also the Nature video channel at YouTube.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 29, 2009
Categories: Communication, NPG special content, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The April Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 237; 2009) looks at the effects of ten years of the web: its fundamental impact on activities such as browsing library content, buying textbooks, or arranging conference travel. Although he way in which most physicists actually do research day to day seems less affected, this is bound to change, predicts Michael Nielsen in his Commentary on page 238 of the same issue of Nature Physics, as information becomes less static and more active.
An example of online collaboration is the Polymath1 project, an experiment in 'massively collaborative mathematics' initiated by Fields medallist Tim Gowers, of the University of Cambridge, UK. From the Nature Physics Editorial: "In late January and early February this year, Gowers wrote several posts on his blog in which he explained a specific mathematical problem, its background and the procedures by which he hoped it could be solved "by means of a large collaboration in which no single person has to work all that hard". In the weeks that followed, a lively discussion developed in the comment section of the blog, with more than a dozen people making substantial scientific contributions. Nielsen set up a wiki to collate the insights gained and related material. On 10 March, Gowers announced: "Problem solved (probably)". "

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 21, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Frank Gannon says goodbye as senior editor at EMBO reports in the journal's April issue (10, 293; 2009). I shall certainly miss his monthly editorials, which I always looked forward to reading and often mentioned on this blog. On the occasion of his goodbye, he looks back at his contribution:

"EMBO reports has not only garnered a reputation for reporting good science, but also paved the way with a novel Science & Society section. It has been a joy to help mould this section into something that our readers appreciate. A related major task—and a great pleasure—has been writing monthly editorials. When I had finished the first editorial, I experienced a moment of panic as I was faced with the challenge of finding a topic for the next month and beyond. More than one hundred editorials later, that concern has long gone. There are so many topics to write about that are relevant to scientists and that are not often addressed in other journals. Some of my favourites include language barriers for non-English speaking scientists (March, 2008), The downsides of mobility (March, 2007), the fate of scientists who reach retirement age (March, 2004), bullying (October, 2008), Family matters (November, 2005), and role models and mentors (December, 2006). Then there are all of the societal topics that address how science is catering to, and is directed by, politics and business, such as the 'Faustian' bargain of private interests and university research (March, 2003), or the role of government in directing science (December, 2003). My editorial, An NIH/NSF for Europe ( June, 2002), was one of the first serious calls for a European Research Council, which has now become a reality. And, of course, it is always fun to take a sidelong look at the scientific community and comment on how we behave. My favourites on this theme are Conformists (October, 2007) and Meeting standards ( January, 2006). It was similarly amusing to write a tongue-in-cheek rejection letter to Charles Darwin ( January, 2009) while a crowded world of communication was eulogizing him for his two-hundreth birthday."
And there is news of the new order:
"Howy Jacobs has agreed to become the new Senior Editor of EMBO reports. I have known Howy for many years, both as a great scientist and communicator, and I have had many thought-provoking and enjoyable discussions with him. I have no doubt that the journal is in good hands for the years to come. I am certain that with Howy's guidance, EMBO reports will increase even further in value and stature as an important source of information for the scientific community—and our broader readership—communicating both insightful scientific research, and commenting on and reporting the ongoing debates about how science and society shape one other in the twenty-first century."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The rise of 'omics' methods and data-driven research presents new possibilities for discovery but also stimulates disagreement over how science should be conducted and even how it should be defined. Is the ability of these methods to amass extraordinary amounts of data altering the nature of scientific inquiry? These are the issues dicussed in the April Editorial of Nature Methods (6, 237; 2009).
"Methodological developments are now making it possible to obtain massive amounts of 'omics' data on a variety of biological constituents. These immense datasets allow biologists to generate useful predictions (for example, gene-finding and function or protein structure and function) using machine learning and statistics that do not take into account the underlying mechanisms that dictate design and function—considerations that would form the basis of a traditional hypothesis.
Now that the bias against data-driven investigation has weakened, the desire to simplify 'omics' data reuse has led to the establishment of minimal information requirements for different types of primary data. The hope is that this will allow new analyses and predictions using aggregated data from disparate experiments."
The Editorial goes on to ask whether the generation of parts lists and correlations in the absence of functional models is, in fact, science? "Based on the often accepted definition of the scientific method, the answer would be a qualified no. But the rise of methodologies that generate massive amounts of data does not dictate that biology should be data-driven. In a return to hypothesis-driven research, systems biologists are attempting to use the same 'omics' methods to generate data for use in quantitative biological models. Hypotheses are needed before data collection because model-driven quantitative analyses require rich dynamic data collected under defined conditions and stimuli.
Correlations in large datasets may be able to provide some useful answers, but not all of them: 'omics' data can provide information on the size and composition of biological entities and thus determine the boundaries of the problem at hand. Biologists can then proceed to investigate function using classical hypothesis-driven experiments. It is still unclear whether even this marriage of the two methods will deliver a complete understanding of biology, but it arguably has a better chance than either method on its own."

Comment on this Editorial at Nature Methods' Methagora blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 13, 2009
Categories: Communication, Data availability, Disciplines, Format | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via press release: Most scientific research goes largely unnoticed by the general public until media reports reveal major scientific breakthroughs or biosafety accidents. The most recent module in the Fedaration of American Scientists (FAS) Case Studies in Dual Use Biological Research series examines the public reaction to scientific research. It is designed to increase scientists’ awareness of the general public’s perception of their research, the possible consequences, and how scientists can engage the public to address their concerns. “Scientists have to realize that some people are afraid of research being done in their community,” said Michael Stebbins, FAS Director of Biology Policy. “They need to do a better job of reaching out to the public and communicating the benefits of science.”
The Public Reaction to Science Research module is the latest addition to the FAS Case Studies in Dual Use Biological Research multimedia online education material. The series illustrates the implications of dual-use biological research through case studies of researchers and provides a historical background on bioterrorism, bioweapons and the current laws, regulations and treaties that apply to biodefense research. This module is one of a series of case-studies in "dual use" of biological research.

The Nature journals' policies on biosecurity, including an archive of free-access journal editorials.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 01, 2009
Categories: Communication, Education, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Timothy M. Vogel and coauthors, in an Edtiorial in this month's (April) Nature Reviews Microbiology (7, 252; 2009) invite the microbiology community to participate in an ambitious and extraordinary sequencing project to decipher the soil metagenome, a goal that is now within reach thanks to developments in high-throughput sequencing.
Metagenomic sequencing efforts are necessary to resolve the intricacies of the soil microbiome and to provide sufficient data to understand the diversity and function of the soil microbial communit. Vogel et al. propose a coordinated international effort, starting with agreement and cooperation from the scientific community in reaching a primary objective: the complete sequencing of a 'reference' soil metagenome. They write: "The soil system chosen for investigation, Park Grass, is an internationally recognized agroecology field experiment that has been running for more than 150 years at the UK agricultural sciences institute, Rothamsted Research. This ambitious reference sequencing effort cannot be undertaken by a single laboratory or even by a single country. We therefore invite the international community to participate in this project, and hope to eventually expand the project to other soil sites. The information gleaned from this project will serve as a starting block or platform for other soil metagenomic sequencing efforts and will generate new hypotheses to test." The TerraGenome international sequencing consortium, which is dedicated to soil metagenomics, has just been launched to coordinate these efforts.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 16, 2009
Categories: Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Frank Gannon writes a stirring Editorial in EMBO Reports this month (10, 193; 2009) about scientists and the global economic crisis. " Hubris and recklessness", he writes, " together with an insatiable hunger for money, have created a global crisis that is driving many of the world's economies into recession. One result is rapidly increasing unemployment and fears are rising that pensions will be rendered worthless; yet, there is no sign of an end to this economic disaster, which has been happening 'on our watch'."

After summarizing the energy, climate, ecology and humanitarian crises now facing the world, Dr Gannon concludes that "scientists should have been the first to identify these problems and sound the bugle call for action. Indeed, some researchers did voice their concerns and published their analyses back when corrective action could have taken place without major disruption. But they did not galvanize their community, or their community ignored their message or presented contrary analyses; in any case, the scientific community failed. But, even the scientists who voiced their concerns early and proposed corrective measures were largely ignored by modern societies in which sound bites trump evidence and in which 'academic' has become synonymous with 'practically useless'.

There are major challenges ahead and business as usual is no longer good enough. There is an increasing need for courage in the scientific community to both speak up and propose measures, however unpopular in the short-term, to bring about systemic change. We, as scientists, also need to become politically engaged as experts in the political world, rather than poking fun at and ridiculing it. We need to talk to the public directly, convince them of the evidence and present possible solutions to get us out of this mess. More importantly though, it is a time to reflect on how we have contributed to the current system failure and what we can do to help society recover from it. It is still our watch and we can make change happen."

Additional material is in Nature's Recession Watch, providing analysis and advice on how to survive the global economic downturn. Science is key to nation-building during a recession but scientists must learn to convince politicians of the need to protect research budgets. Building global links and breaking down the barriers between disciplines is vital if the world is to weather the financial squeeze. Central banks must also end their obsession with cutting interest rates and technology start-ups will need to cut costs and sell what they can. A stimulus package for the developing world could, however, benefit everyone. Nature's news and opinion coverage of the dangers and opportunities keeps scientists updated on the recession and its impact on institutions, funding, and careers.

See also the March Editorial in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (16, 229; 2009), 'Stimulating Science', which argues that the economic benefits of biomedical research are recognized by governments around the world, but investment in science should go beyond profitability.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 11, 2009
Categories: Communication, Education, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientists have been too dogmatic about scientific truth and sociologists have fostered too much scepticism — social scientists must now elect to put science back at the core of society, says Harry Collins, director of the Centre for the Study of Knowledge Expertise Science at Cardiff University, UK, in the 5 March edition of Nature (458, 30; 2009 – free to access online for a week). Prof Collins identifies three waves in the history of social science attitutes to scientific research: first, an attempt to understand and interpret it; second, scepticism about it; and third – well, third is what he says social scientists must now do – work out what is right about science, not just what is wrong. He writes:
"This third wave will be resisted. Post-modernists have become comfortable in their cocoon of cynicism. And some natural scientists have become too fond of describing their work as godlike. Others are ready to offer simple-minded criticisms of deeply held beliefs. But the third wave is needed to put science back in its proper place…..
Science’s findings are to be preferred over religion’s revealed truths, and are braver than the logic of scepticism, but they are not certain. They are a better grounding for society precisely, and only, because they are provisional. It is open debate among those with experience that is the ultimate value of the good society.
Science, then, can provide us with a set of values — not findings — for how to run our lives, and that includes our social and political lives. But it can do this only if we accept that assessing scientific findings is a far more difficult task than was once believed, and that those findings do not lead straight to political conclusions. Scientists can guide us only by admitting their weaknesses, and, concomitantly, when we outsiders judge scientists, we must do it not to the standard of truth, but to the much softer standard of expertise."
What do you think about whether, and how, social scientists and others should interpret the “values” of scientific research and “truth” to society at large? We welcome your views at the Nature Network forum hosted by Nature's Opinion editors.

Other current debates at the Nature Opinion forum at Nature Network:
'Untouchable' science.
Blogging: science, journalism or public discourse?
Brain, machine and in-between.
What you need to know, and what you can do for science, in the financial crisis.
Pruning the IRB tree.
Troubles with plastic.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 09, 2009
Categories: Communication, Ethics, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The increasing impact of science on society calls for improved communication between scientists and the public via dedicated science media centers as well as nontraditional personal blogs, according to the March Editorial (free to access online) in Nature Methods (6, 181; 2009). From the Editorial:

A powerful aspect of blogs is their capacity to put a human face on science and related health issues by allowing scientists to discuss how these things affect them personally in a format in which regular readers feel as though they know the writer. Analysis of the MMR vaccine incident suggests that emotional arguments like a scientist talking about vaccinating his or her own children might be more powerful than the rational arguments that form the basis of normal scientific discourse. The public's emotional response to genetically modified food in some countries might also have been very different if people could see numerous online blog entries from scientists discussing why they were not concerned about the scenarios being promulgated in the press. But can enough scientists be convinced of the potential benefits of blogging to make this a reality?
Conferences such as Science Blogging 2008: London, organized by Nature Network, and ScienceOnline'09 are exploring the role of blogging in science and trying to get more scientists involved. Nature Network just concluded their Science Blogging Challenge 2008—won by Russ B. Altman—where the goal was to get a senior scientist to start blogging. Altman's colleague Steve Quake also just started blogging in a guest stint for the New York Times. One hopes that examples of prominent scientists blogging will convince others of the benefits. When a blog author is not a prominent scientist with a reputation to maintain, the quality of information on the blog can be a concern, but science-blog tracking sites can help alleviate this problem.

Nature Methods invites readers to comment at Methagora, the journal's blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 05, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like to share an email I received today from my colleague Henry Gee:

This weekend I hosted a Nature Network 'unconference' in Cromer called 'Cromer Is SO Bracing'. The meeting featured a geological field trip, a workshop on crocheting toy marine invertebrates, and the scripting and shooting of a short film called 'Cromer: Darwin's Lost Weekend' (coming to a YouTube page near you soon).
The meeting was blogged, twittered, webcast and friendfeeded as much as possible, so on the off-chance that all this is new to you, you can find out what we got up to through a series of five linked posts on my blog, starting with this one

And progressing in order: Friday lunchtime; pier review; Saturday afternoon; and Sunday.
Delegate Erika Cule has blogged about it here (day one) and here (day two).
The meeting was trailed by the most famous science blogger on the net.
And, believe it or not, you can even buy souvenir T-shirts!

Other, related posts:
Cromer: Darwin's Lost Weekend.
Nature Network CISB09 conference forum.
CISB09 Friend Feed room.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 03, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

As research into the public perception of nanotechnology becomes more complex and rigorous, it is increasingly clear that greater public awareness of nanotechnology will not, on its own, automatically lead to widespread public acceptance. So starts the Editorial in the current (February) issue of Nature Nanotechnology (4, 71; 2009). The Editorial is part of a special focus of the journal on public perceptions of nanotechnology, consisting in addition to the Editorial of three Letters (reports of original research), a News and Views article and a Thesis article, as well as a library of related articles from the journal's archive. In his Thesis article, Chris Toumey of the University of South Carolina NanoCenter describes new research by social scientists that is presenting a clearer picture of the factors that influence the public perception of nanotechnology and the challenges for those working to increase public acceptance of nanoscience and technology. "Together these studies alert us that reactions to nanotechnology will be shaped by a landscape of values, beliefs, concerns and other strong sentiments that were established in peoples' hearts long before most people heard or cared about nanometres, van der Waal's forces or carbon nanotubes."
Advice to the nanotechnology community provided by authors of the articles collected in this focus includes developing social psychology tools to frame information on controversial policy issues so that people of diverse values can derive the same factual information from it; and an awarness among social nanoscientists of the importance of translating their technical research findings into language that is directly useful to others.

Nature Nanotechnology focus on public perceptions of nanotechnology.

Guide to authors of Nature Nanotechnology.

Nature Nanotechnology: Asia-Pacific and beyond forum on Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 18, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always enjoy Frank Gannon's editorials in EMBO Reports, so it is a pleasure to see the latest issue's table of contents alert in my inbox. This month (EMBO R. 10, 103; 2009), Dr Gannon discusses 'convergence', the latest business buzzword, but hardly a new concept to scientists, he writes.
"Research is, and should always be, ahead of its time, and convergence research is no exception. The potential of convergence in the development of new products and in public outreach is enormous and will provide valuable, diverse career options for those scientists and engineers who are ready to expand their skills and knowledge into new domains. The old days of a single skill career are now behind us and we have to prepare for this new and complex environment."
Enoy the rest of the article at EMBO Reports.

This Editorial introduces the EMBO Reports Science & Society Series on Convergence Research, which features viewpoints from authors who attended the 'Doing Society and Genomics—Convergence and Competence Building' workshop organized by Peter Stegmaier for the Centre for Society and Genomics at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) in September 2008. The journal editors hope that this series will help to introduce readers to the new multi- and transdisciplinary developments among the life sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The first article, 'Genomics in school', by Roald Verhoeff, Dirk Jan Boerwinkel and Arend Jan Waarlo, is free to access online. (EMBO R. 10, 120-124; 2009.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 11, 2009
Categories: Careers, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first Nature Darwin debate has the title: Are We Still Evolving?, and will take place on Monday 9 February 2009 at Kings Place, London at 7 p.m. local time. Speakers are Henry Gee, palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor, Nature; Susan Blackmore, psychologist, writer and visiting lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol; and Andrew Pomiankowski, Professor of Genetics, University College London. Chair of the panel is Oliver Morton, chief News and Features editor at Nature. The panellists will be addressing the question of whether natural selection is still shaping humans, given that our survival is often more dependent on technology than genes. What might our species look like 1000 years from now?
Further details, including venue information and more about the speakers, can be found at the Nature Network London events forum.

Discuss this event and the general topic at the Nature Network London forum.

See also further discussion at the Nature Network Opinion forum, to which you are welcome to contribute.

Nature's special celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday - a wonderful collection of articles and interactive content of all types, updated as the year continues.

Fifteen evolutionary gems: free access to 15 Nature publications that illustrate the breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking.

The second Nature Darwin debate: What Price Biodiversity?, will take place on 9 March 2009. More details are available here.

Kings Place "Words on Monday" debates.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 05, 2009
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can visual arts stimulate creativity in the science laboratory? A new biochemistry building for the University of Oxford might provide the answer, writes Georgina Ferry (Nature 457, 541; 2009). From the article:

"The prime purpose of the art project is to create a stunning physical environment for research. "The senior people [in the university] grasped that if you are trying to recruit the best people in the world, walking them through a building that is dark and dingy is not the best way to get them," says Sansom. Time will tell if money spent on art gives a significant return in scientific discovery."

A 360-degree interactive view of the building can be found here.

See also Martin Kemp's article Laudable Labs? (Nature 395, 849; 1998). "You can read much about the history of science and of architecture in the changing styles and materials used in the building of laboratories. It's a story of fashion, functionality and financial constraints.....We are all too familiar with the messy clutter of disparate laboratory buildings squeezed into congested university campuses. The lab is a major building type, yet we have come to expect little of it — other than as providing functional spaces which almost invariably prove to be inadequate as soon as they are occupied. It would be better if we cared more about the buildings' effects on our visual ambience."

More on creativity at Nautilus.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 04, 2009
Categories: Careers, Communication, Public and media, Support | Permalink | Comments (0)

From my colleagues in the Nature press office:

British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents his views on Charles Darwin, natural selection, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril in an exclusive interview for Nature Video.
Talking about his new programme "Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life", to be broadcast on BBC One on 1 February 2009, Attenborough singles out the book of Genesis as the root cause of man's exploitation and devastation of the planet, and explains that evolution is vitally important because it inextricably places man as part of the natural world. He also gives a personal insight into his 50-year career as a science broadcaster and life-long campaigner for evolution.
Access the video free on Nature’s YouTube site.

Nature' s YouTube video channel index page is here, from which you can access our other videos, also free.

Nature's video archive at the journal website.

Nature's multimedia index page.

David Attenborough's recent troubles with creationists are described at End of the Pier Show, the personal blog of Nature senior editor Henry Gee, and at The Great Beyond (Nature's science news blog).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2009
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Toumey of the University of South Carolina asks, in a Thesis article in the January issue of Nature Nanotechnology (4, 5-6; 2009) "where does nanotechnology fit into arguments about the two cultures? Much has changed since 1959, and now we have bright and sincere people from both the sciences and the humanities who want good science and good values in nanotechnology. My favourite example is an eminent scientist at my university who says repeatedly that scientists will have the first word on the future of nanotechnology, but non-scientists will have the last word. Thus does he invite — even dare — non-scientists to claim a place in nanotechnology policy."
The author goes on to discuss some of the ideas espoused in the book Nanovision, by Colin Milburn of the English department of the University of California, Davis. Rather than dismissing some of the book's ideas about the "transcendent" world that may result from the synthesis of new and powerful technologies, Toumey argues that scientists need to address the issues raised about their professional disciplines by those outside the profession, even if this does mean getting to grips with science fiction as well as the terminology of literary theory. He concludes: "It is unlikely C. P. Snow could have imagined that the humanities and social sciences could do to science what science does to nature. But sometimes they can. And when they can, they subvert the divide between the two cultures. Aren't these new cultures preferable to the "two cultures"?"

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 20, 2009
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the text of a Correspondence to Nature (456, 870; 2008) by William Burns of the University of Queensland.

Search engines are invaluable for finding out about the latest research but, thanks to publishers' efforts to digitize back issues of scientific journals, we can now also search deep into the past. And what turns up isn't necessarily pretty.
In the CAB (Centre for Agricultural Bioscience) abstracts database, for example, I found more than 100 articles written by the discredited Soviet geneticist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. One of his most astounding reports, in a 1947 issue of the journal Literaturnaya Gazeta, declaimed that: "intraspecific competition does not occur... the opposition of bourgeois geneticists to this theory is attributed to their desire to justify capitalist exploitation, which is essentially a struggle within the human species".
Another search, using Web of Knowledge, brought up hundreds of Chinese scientific articles from the decades after Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, with titles such as 'Chairman Mao's brilliant philosophic thought guides me in winning triple cropping with high yield' (Li K. C. Sci. China Ser. A 20, 391–391; 1977).
Also using Web of Knowledge, I came upon 70 research papers by Claus Schilling, the Nazi war criminal who conducted medical experiments on prisoners in Dachau concentration camp. None of his wartime research is in the database but, as I scrolled through the record of his publications, I found myself looking for the point at which he had gone wrong.
These examples stand in contrast with the high-minded official version of science history that we read in textbooks. As Thomas Kuhn remarked in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. Chicago Press, 1962), science is like Big Brother's society in George Orwell's 1984 — constantly rewriting history to show itself in the best light.
But will this censorship be possible when every politically motivated, unethical and demonstrably incorrect scientific article breaks out from dusty library storerooms to appear online? How will anyone be able to believe that science is an honest quest for truth, when its inglorious past is a mouse click away?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 06, 2009
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (3)

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)

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 is the text of a recent Editorial in Nature (456, 2; 2008):
Six foreign medics escaped the Libyan death penalty last year thanks to intense diplomacy, supported by the advocacy and decisive expertise of scientists. But the researchers' involvement was largely a matter of luck and serendipity. Science and scientists have much untapped potential to contribute to human-rights issues, but until now there have been limited efforts to systematically consolidate the interactions between science and human-rights groups. Two new initiatives of the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science are intended to help fill that gap.
Its On-call Scientists program launched last month aims to create a database of scientists who will volunteer time — be it a few days or a few months — and expertise, and human-rights organizations — including non-governmental organizations and international agencies such as the United Nations — seeking practical help or advice.
'Human rights' covers a gamut of issues, from exposing abuses to disaster relief. The range of scientific advice sought is correspondingly broad — statistical or methodological help to get a more accurate picture of conflict or ethnic cleansing, advice on water issues from hydrologists, or forensic help to document mass executions or overturn false convictions.
The service faces a steep learning curve in deciphering the diverse needs of human-rights groups, and how scientists might be able to help in ways perhaps not yet imagined. But better communication between scientists and the alphabet soup of human-rights groups — and between those groups themselves on technical issues — is long overdue.
Another welcome initiative is due in January 2009. Many learned societies, as well as academic groups such as Scholars at Risk, have a long history in upholding human rights and academic freedom — for example, defending scientists under threat from oppressive governments, using satellite imagery to expose human-rights abuses and speaking out on abuse wherever it occurs. To put such efforts on a firmer footing, American organizations are to launch the US Science and Human Rights Coalition, a forum in which scientific bodies and human-rights groups can share experiences and best practice. Given the US presidential election, the timing could not be better. For the past eight years, American human-rights groups have seen their international influence undermined by the US administration's diminishing moral authority and standing in the world. Scientists can, and should, help reinstate the fundamental principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Sign up, learn more and become a volunteer for On-call scientists here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 27, 2008
Categories: Communication, Education, Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Science journals have been slow to make themselves audible, according to a Correspondence by Wouter M. J. Achten of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Nature 455, 590 (2008). The Correspondence is reproduced here:

Podcasting has become very popular, mainly as a medium for entertainment. But it also holds huge potential for the visually impaired and others, such as dyslexics, who have reading difficulties. Simultaneously reading and listening to read-aloud news articles and scientific papers, for example, could increase readers' concentration and absorption of information. Such audio files would open a new world for the blind or partially sighted.
Software is available that translates text from digital files or directly from the Internet into a listener-friendly audio file, but it is expensive. Some freeware has built-in 'read out-loud' functions, but the quality is generally inferior.
Several newspapers and magazines already offer subscribers podcasts containing complete and navigable issues in read-aloud format. But the scientific press seems to be lagging behind. The Nature podcasts are a good start, but when shall we be able to listen to sections such as Research Highlights, News and Correspondence as downloadable audio?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 22, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (1)

'Frame that gene: A tool for analysing and classifying the communication of genetics to the public' is the title of a commentary by Rebecca Carver, Ragnar Waldahl & Jarle Breivik of the University of Oslo in EMBO Reports ( 9, 943-947; 2008). They write:

Enabling the public to understand scientific concepts and advances, and the issues they raise, is an increasingly important challenge for scientists and politicians alike. Public opinion—received via polls and elections—can influence scientific policy-making, and hence affect the funding and even the nature or focus of research itself. The fierce dispute over genetically modified crops in Europe, and the sometimes bitter debates about research using human embryonic stem cells in both Europe and the USA, highlight the enormous importance of public opinion on scientific issues. A greater awareness of the ethical, technical and philosophical issues surrounding research, as well as a better understanding of the science itself, could lead to more rational debates and outcomes—at least, that is what many scientists hope. The media therefore has a central role in furthering or modifying the public understanding of, and engagement with, scientific issues: it is the main source of information for many people, even more so than politicians, educators or scientists.
The authors go on to outline their framing scheme, which "represents a transparent and easy way of classifying gene discourse. It can be applied to the analysis of any type of gene-related communication—including textbooks, classroom education, television programmes and government reports—and it forms a basis for quantitative analysis. One could use it to identify the 'gene profile' of a particular newspaper or author or to explore the effects of gene framing on the public understanding of life science in general. Framing of the gene concept has implications for important issues ranging from personal health—such as the risk of breast cancer or heart disease—to international politics—such as stem-cell research or the regulation of genetically modified crops. Assuming that this framing is largely an unconscious process, our study may act both as an eye-opener and as a helpful tool for journalists and scientists alike."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first in a series of Nature debates, Enhancing the Brain, takes place at King's Place in London on Monday 13 October. Experts in science, science policy and science ethics selected by Nature, the leading weekly international journal of science, will discuss the risks, benefits and extent of how far research can extend our mental and physical abilities. The first of two panel events focuses on research underway that is extending the human brain: from intelligence and emotional tolerance, to sleep needs, memory power and more. What are the risks and benefits to the individual and to society of these developments? Would you boost your brain power? Why, when and why not? Should doctors, scientists, students, teachers or soldiers use such aids? Come along and take part in this mind-stretching evening. Tickets are £11.50.
Chair: Ehsan Masood, acting Chief Commissioning Editor of Nature.
Panel:
• Prof Barbara Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
• Prof John Harris, Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester.
• Prof Nick Bostrom, Director of the Oxford University Future of Humanity Institute.
Booking enquiries can be made by email. To check ticket availability please use the King's Place online booking service.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 07, 2008
Categories: Communication, Disciplines, Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life in the twenty-first century requires an understanding of science and technology (see Nature Geoscience 1, 635; 2008) Students, educators and scientists will be celebrating the eleventh annual Earth Science Week from 12 to 18 October, with the theme 'No child left inside'. The event, organized by the American Geological Institute, aims to bring to life the relevance and importance of the science of the Earth and engender a lifelong interest in the topic.
According to Nature Geoscience, "the goal of this event is to engage students and their families in the geosciences, which are all too often relegated to early school years or removed from elementary and secondary school curricula entirely. The lack of exposure to the Earth sciences in school may be partly to blame for shrinking numbers of graduates with concentrations in geology, and it is probably compounded by the increasing tendency to rely on PowerPoint lectures and mail-order mineral kits instead of field experiences.
But the need for outreach goes much further than convincing the best students to take up a career in the geosciences. Earth science issues ranging from climate change to earthquake risks and from ocean acidification to sinking coastal cities confront politicians and voters alike. The science underlying these questions is complex, the impacts are potentially devastating and there are no quick fix solutions. It is impossible to make rational decisions on any of these issues without at least a basic understanding of the science behind the problems.
Unfortunately, the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) suggests that many young people advancing through the educational systems of their countries are essentially scientifically illiterate. The report shows that almost 20% of 15-year-old students, distributed equally across industrialized and developing nations, do not understand the most basic science."
.....
"In addition to the occasional open days offered by more and more universities and research institutions, much can be done by individual scientists. Local and national programmes such as TRIO and Upward Bound are looking for volunteer scientists to host secondary level students in their lab for a few weeks during summer. Meanwhile, programmes like ScienceQuest need scientists and graduate students to be interviewed, or to provide materials and guidance for projects and experiments. Secondary and elementary school teachers are often pleased if researchers bring experiments into their classrooms or offer to guide field-trips for a day. Your child's teacher is a great place to start. You could also volunteer to give a presentation at a museum or a school's career day, or spend an afternoon with a scouting troop earning their geology badges."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 07, 2008
Categories: Communication, Education, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via e-mail from Arnaud Berghmans of Deloitte Belgium on behalf of Augusto Burgueño of the Research Directorate-General of the European Commission:
Deloitte is conducting, on behalf of the European Commission, a survey on Internet-based services in support of the research process. So far, responses have been received from more than 3,500 EU researchers. As a benchmark, Deloitte would like to get the opinion of researchers already using the Internet for research and is asking readers of this website for their help by taking the survey.
About the survey
With this survey, the European Commission would like to find out which Internet-based resources (such as websites, wikis, social networks, mailing lists, bulleting boards, chat rooms, etc) the research community at large currently uses when carrying out research, and which ones it would be willing to use in the future.
The survey has six sections corresponding to the following phases of a research project: (1) Generate, elaborate and refine ideas; (2) Find partners; (3) Set up the research project; (4) Seek funding; (5) Run the research project; and (6) Exploit results. Each section has 3 questions.
The results of this survey will help the European Commission better understand what Internet-based services could in the future facilitate the participation of the research community in the European research and innovation programmes.
The questionnaire is anonymous and responses are aggregated for analysis. It takes ten minutes to complete.
Upon request, the survey results can be shared.
Link to the survey is here

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 01, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Format, Publishing, Support | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Video is proud to present five short films on the future of physics. The films comprise conversations with Nobel prizewinning physicists George Smoot, David Gross, Gerardus 't Hooft, John Hall and William Phillips, and will cover topics including dark matter, dark energy, the Large Hadron Collider, space-time and quantum computing. Recorded at the 2008 Nobel Laureate meeting in Lindau, students willingly don the role of interviewers and make the most of this one off question time.
Two of the five films will be premiered at a special screening in Second Life and you are cordially invited to attend. The screening will take place on 2 October 2008 at 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST and 6 p.m. GMT. The event is free, but it is necessary to register in advance by email , with the subject line Missions in Space-Time. Instructions are available here on how to create an account in Second Life.
Each of the five films will then be serialized weekly, on iTunes and on nature.com , starting on 3 October 2008.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 30, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the third of Nature's election-themed podcasts available online, the journal looks at where US innovation policy might go under a new president. You can listen or read a trascript at the journal's podcast index page. In the latest podcast, Stephen Ezell of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says that "substantial amounts of research into basic science must occur before we can ever reach technology and therefore government has a substantial role to play in being a funder of basic and applied research in the United States. When you look at a great number of US companies and industries, specific companies like Google, like (UNCLEAR 14:18), like Oracle, these were all companies that got their initial funding from basic government grants for research in science and technology. Extending and increasing the amount of government funding for research is one of the most important things the next administration can do." The panel goes on to discuss how research could be funded and possible mechanisms for promoting US competitiveness in the global sphere. William Bates of the Council of Competitiveness compares the presidential candidates: "Senator Obama has been very explicit in endorsing doubling of the research budget. Senator McCain speaks about the importance of research, but I think he has been a little more hesitant to embrace a specific doubling goal of the research agencies. They're certainly talking about it and that's a big step in the right direction." Hear or read more via the Nature podcast index.

An archive of the Nature Podcasts, which are all free, can be found here. Each week, Nature authors talk about their newly published papers, on topics ranging from craters formed by asteroid collision, tsunami risk in the Bay of Bengal, the sequence of the grapevine genome, a mouse with obsessive compulsive disorder, a new species of ape, and many more.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 24, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Biology Week, an online "open house" for biologists, biology students and other interested people, begins today (22 September) on Citizendium, a 'next-generation' wiki encyclopedia started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. (See this Peer to Peer post for a brief comparison of online encyclopaedias.)
From the Citizendium announcement: "during this week, biologists and anyone interested in the topic are invited to test the Citizendium system. Editors and authors from the project's Biology Workgroup will be on hand to meet and greet new people on the wiki. "I strongly believe that the Citizendium system will be appealing to many scientists and scholars," said Sanger. "Many of them just need to give it a try. Biology Week is an excuse for biologists to try out the system together." Gareth Leng, a professor of Experimental Physiology at the University of Edinburgh, and Citizendium author and editor, described the project: 'Our role will not be to tell readers what opinions they should hold, but to give them the means to decide, rationally, for themselves. The role of experts is critical—not to impose opinions, but to support accuracy in reporting and citing information'. "
The Citizendium, or "citizens' compendium", uses the same software as Wikipedia and is a public-expert hybrid project to produce a general reference resource. The community encourages general public participation, but makes a low-key, guiding role for experts. It also requires real names and asks contributors to sign a "social contract." As a result, the project is said to be vandalism-free and, despite its youth (its public launch was just 18 months ago), has steadily added more than 8,000 articles.
Further information:
Citizendium website and press release about this project.
Biology Week homepage.
Sample article: Life, said to demonstrate the success of the collaborative-editing system.
(Thank you to Shirley Wu for alerting me to this project.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 22, 2008
Categories: Access, Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday 22 September, the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology will be running their first consultation session, A Vision for Science and Society, in the virtual world of Second Life, at Second Nature Island. (Time: 1850 – 2000 GMT/1050 – 1200 PDT.) The UK Government has issued a new consultation document entitled A Vision for Science and Society. The resource centre for woman is keen to ensure that issues of gender equality are part of the agenda and are holding a series of focus groups to discuss the topic. Monday’s event will be held entirely in Second Life and all are very welcome to attend. It will be just over an hour long and will involve informal discussion in small groups on some of the issues. You do not have to have read the report, and men and women are equally welcome. The event is free, but you are asked to book in advance to give them an idea of numbers. You can book by email or telephone. See the UK Resources for Women website for further details.

Another event next week is taking place in the real world (first life) and simultaneously in Second Life. Scientific researchers and web2.0: social notworking? at the British Library in London on Wednesday 24 September from 1800 to 2030 GMT, and is organized by Sarah Kemmitt. This free event is the second in the BL’s quarterly café scientifique exploring varied topical issues in science. Timo Hannay, the Publishing Director of nature.com, will introduce the subject followed by a discussion with the audience. This provocative title aims to stimulate discussion on the following questions: is Web 2.0 all about attitudes or technologies?; what can Web 2.0 do for your research?; as a scientist, are there good reasons for getting involved beyond social ‘notworking’?; and web 3.0: another buzzword or a semantic revolution for science on the web? There is a lively discussion group on Nature Network in which aspects of these topics have been debated in the run-up to the evening. This event is free but pre-registration is required. For those interested who cannot attend in person, details of the Second Life parallel alternative are here.

Several further scientific events are scheduled in Second Life in the next few weeks. Some highlights include:
Sunday 10 February: Darwin Day Monkey Parade
Tueesday 11 February: “Nano-science and the Quantum World” talk on Nanotech Island.
Monday 18 February: “Manatee conservation and classification” talk on Second Nature
Thursday 21 February: George Monbiot talk on climate change on Second Nature.
Friday 22 February: talk by Dr David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist from the Denver Museum of Science & Nature.
Further details and links to the calendar of events can be found here.

See the website Second Nature for more information about Nature's island in Second Life, where there is a video introduction and tutorial for first-time users, and much other information about Second Nature and the events there. If you are familiar with Second Life, you can go directly to Second Nature by visiting this link.
There is a Nature Network Second Life group for those interested in using this virtual world for scientific activities.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 18, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Conferences, Partners, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Condayan, manager of the Public Education Outreach Initiative at the American Society for Microbiology, writes an Editoral in the September issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology (6, 646; 2008) about how self-created audio and video content enable more microbiologists to share knowledge and news online. From his article:

As the science audiences for newspapers, radio and television decline, the future for audio and video podcasts, blogs and social networking looks bright. On the horizon we are starting to see the emergence of science-related social networks and a movement towards 'open science' that allows scientists and researchers to collaborate on projects, communicate results, share data and publish papers with the same recognition that is afforded to colleagues who publish in print journals. Specific details of how open science will work are still murky, and concerns over citation, peer review, accuracy, scooping and accountability resound even among its strongest supporters. But this has not stopped microbiologists from engaging with one another on wikis, such as EcoliWiki, TOPSAN or Proteopedia, or prevented thousands of scientists from sharing their poster presentations, lectures or laboratory methods through iTunes or video destination sites, such as YouTube, SciVee and JoVE. Podcasting for audio or video is generally defined as episodic content that listeners or viewers can subscribe to for free and which they can consume at any time and on any device, whether it be a computer, iPod, mobile telephone or television set. Audio podcasts are easy and affordable to create, and can be used to make a radio-style show or to make lectures available to a wider audience. Uploading and sharing videos on websites such as YouTube, or creating a video podcast show, is more time consuming and requires more equipment and a video-editing software program.

Chris Condayan goes on to provide some examples of microbiologists who produce online resources to educate and promote microbiological research, and the MicrobeWorld sevice of the American Society for Microbiology, which includes the popular resources MicrobeWorld Radio and MicrobeWorld Video.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 01, 2008
Categories: Communication, Data availability, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pluripotent cells offer great promise for the future of regenerative medicine. However, cells with pluripotent potential are difficult or impossible to isolate from patients, which makes methods for experimentally induced pluripotency in readily available somatic cells invaluable. Accompanying the September issue of Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology, and free to access online, is a poster by Christopher Lengner and Rudolf Jaenisch, which compares and contrasts the properties of pluripotent embryonic stem cells with those of laboratory-generated pluripotent cells.
In the same issue of the journal is a related Essay, The promise of human induced pluripotent stem cells for research and therapy, by Shin-ichi Nishikawa, Robert A. Goldstein and Concepcion R. Nierras (Nature Reviews Molec. Cell Bio. 9, 725-729; 2008) The abstract:

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are human somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. There are several hurdles to be overcome before iPS cells can be considered as a potential patient-specific cell therapy, and it will be crucial to characterize the developmental potential of human iPS cell lines. As a research tool, iPS-cell technology provides opportunities to study normal development and to understand reprogramming. iPS cells can have an immediate impact as models for human diseases, including cancer.

See also the Nature Reviews collection of articles on stem cells, which is free to access online for six months.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 28, 2008
Categories: Author benefits, Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Performing research in one language and having to write manuscripts in another—nearly always English—is not an easy task, according to Sonia M.R. Vasconcelos et al. in the latest issue of EMBO Reports (9, 700-702; 2008).Yet, they write, "Publishing in high-quality international journals is part of today's scientific zeitgeist and a challenge for researchers from developed and developing countries alike. However, competition to attract an editor's attention and to convince reviewers might be tougher for scientists from non-English speaking (NES) countries. As various authors have pointed out, the proficiency of the English language among a country's scientists could influence its scientific output (Man et al, 2004; Victora & Moreira, 2006; Meneghini & Packer, 2007; Vasconcelos et al, 2007). A recent econometric study, for example, stated that English proficiency is a significant factor for the performance of European science (Bauwens et al, 2007).
Some NES authors argue that they "don't compete on a level playing field when it comes to international science" and that "language and cultural barriers may be partly to blame" (Anon, 2002). However, it is not clear how much linguistic competence affects the visibility of research in NES countries. In particular, it is difficult to assess the link between a researcher's writing competence and established indicators of research output such as the number of publications and citations. Most countries do not maintain databases with comprehensive information about a researcher's academic profile and publication record, or they do not make this information publicly accessible."
Brazil, however, is an exception, and the EMBO Reports article presents some of the available statistics about communication skills from that country. One of the authors' conclusions is that governments and their research councils should invest more in training researchers to be fully competent in the English language.
Nature journals provide writing guidance at the author and reviewers' website in an article that provides links to various services and resources.
See here for a discussion at Nature Network about regional and minority languages in science communication.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 27, 2008
Categories: Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although the Euroscience Open Forum is a meeting to be proud of, its organizers should aim even higher, according to a recent Editorial in Nature (454, 552; 2008). The text of the Editorial:

When a small group of academics founded the organization 'Euroscience' in 1997, few would have imagined it could acquire the clout and funds to drive a regular biennial meeting, now attracting 5,000 attendees, in a major European city. The grass-roots society risked being dismissed as a small band of Euro-wonks, although some organizations (including this journal) welcomed its arrival. But last week's third Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) in Barcelona, Spain, showed that Euroscience's sheer determination in the face of such perceptions has again paid off. Anyone attending the meeting will have been struck by the energy on display, the high attendance of young people, and the active engagement with the media.
Nature was involved in the meeting in several ways, and cannot claim detachment. Nevertheless, informal canvassing of opinions of other participants reinforced the notion that this ESOF meeting was both lively and — to judge by the European movers and shakers present — important. The attendance of participants from the United States and elsewhere outside Europe was also a good sign.
It is still an open question just how influential this forum might become, rather than simply acting as a showcase.

Continue reading "Europe's science forum" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 19, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week saw the 2008 SciFoo, the annual ‘unconference’ organized by Nature, Tim O’Reilly and Google. Topics ranged from the Large Hadron Collider to the neuroscience of the brain–machine interface and a new social contract for science. For a collection of blog and other internet articles about the conference, please see here. "Editors' choice" articles can be found here. And for those whose interest extends even further, a collection of photos can be accessed here. Background information about SciFoo 2008 can be found at this Nature Network group.

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

Scientists Without Borders is a new web portal that helps connect scientists and coordinate scientific efforts to address the challenges of the developing world. Joanne Kotz in the August issue of Nature Chemical Biology (4, 447; 2008) describes how the New York Academy of Sciences and 24 partners have worked to coordinate scientific efforts in the developing world and to provide resources where and when they are most needed.
How do you connect the world's scientists? Evelyn Strauss, now executive director of the project, spent many months developing the plan. She discovered that organizations are continually 'reinventing the wheel', trying to repeat earlier initiatives and running into the same stumbling blocks. In other cases, Strauss heard, "three organizations could be in the same place at the same time trying to do the same thing." The enormity of the communication gap, Strauss says, is obvious to everyone who works in the developing world.
Strauss and her colleagues have created an online resource that will serve as a virtual network to connect scientists. Profiles can be created for individuals, projects and organizations that describe, for example, what they do or want to do, the resources they need, the resources they can offer and what regions of the world they work in. People can also include details about their scientific expertise and their willingness to travel. For projects, a lasting record will be created through descriptions of what has been accomplished, what the next steps are and what the challenges to these next steps are likely to be. At the time of the website launch in May this year, there were already almost 400 individuals, 140 organizations and 80 projects with profiles. Despite the many potential challenges (Nature 453, 564; 2008), there is hope that this portal will succeed.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 13, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

From 11 August, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will adopt a new system for delivering less-than-stellar news to companies trying to bring new drugs to market, in a move intended to stop investors from over-interpreting its decisions (Nature 454, 265; 2008). The agency has ended its two categories of rejections: 'approvable' letters, if the drug needs more information or specific changes to win approval; and 'not approvable' letters, for applications with more major problems. In their place, a company whose drug is being rejected will receive a 'complete response' letter outlining an application's deficiencies and what can be done to address them.
According to the agency, the change is intended to be a more consistent and neutral way of delivering the news that a drug application is not up to standard.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 11, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG)'s Nature Asia-Pacific’s English website has been redesigned to incorporate two new websites that feature some of the best published research from the Asia-Pacific region. Newly added to the site are NPG Nature Asia-Materials and Nature India. In addition, a new section called Nature - Hot Topic has been added, featuring one 'hot' paper selected from Nature each week. There are also regular news updates of NPG's activities and regional websites.
The focus of www.natureasia.com has until now been on NPG's local language websites in Japanese, Chinese and Korean, but, with the recent launch of several custom-publishing projects in English along with Nature China and Nature India, the publishing and editorial teams are now able to feature research highlights covering a wide spectrum of research from across the region. These highlights are updated every week.

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

A recent Nature News story highlights efforts to create a free digital library of mathematics (Nature 454, 263; 2008). From the Nature report:

All the mathematical literature ever published runs to more han 50 million pages, with around 75,000 articles added each year. Over the past decade there have been several attempts to make this prodigious body of work accessible in a single digital archive, but so far none has succeeded.
A group of mathematicians intends to change this. They have started small, with a handful of digitization projects in Poland, Russia, Serbia and the Czech Republic. In a few years they hope to unite these repositories with their western European counterparts in an archive to be hosted by the European Union, according to the organizer, Petr Sojka, an informatics scientist at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic. Eventually this pan-European archive could be expanded globally, he says.
To make such an archive easier to search, researchers have found ways to guess the subject of a paper on the basis of the frequency of symbols in it. But there will be many more-practical challenges, such as finding the funds to scan millions of old papers and striking deals with publishers who hold rights to them.
It may already be too late to build a single free mathematical archive, according to John Ewing, head of the American Mathematical Society, which maintains a list of more than 1,500 journals whose archives have already been digitized. “A few years ago, this model had the potential to change the mathematics journal literature in profound ways,” he says. But most publishers have rushed to scan their own archives in order to lock them up and sell them to libraries.
“While the effort to digitize the smaller collections is admirable, and it's certainly worthwhile, it's unlikely to effect a larger change,” says Ewing.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 06, 2008
Categories: Access, Communication, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature News (454, 150; 2008): A former Texas official is suing the state's education agency, saying that its policies passively endorse creationism.
In a complaint filed with a district court on 1 July, Christina Comer, a former director of state science education, alleged that officials tacitly condone the teaching of creationism through a policy of neutrality. Comer oversaw Texas's science curriculum until last November, when she was forced to resign for circulating a notice of a talk entitled “Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse”. In her termination notice, Comer was told that the education agency endeavoured to “remain neutral” on the issue of creationism.
Comer's complaint argues that board neutrality violates the separation of church and state. She is also seeking reinstatement to her former position.
There are many online comments to this brief news item, perhaps typified by this one: "Many have been waiting for Chris to challenge this arcane move towards theocracy. Texas science education needs those like her whose efforts will keep our state and our country competitive in the twenty-first century. Dr. Timothy Henry Former Director of Judging Texas Science & Engineering Fair."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 04, 2008
Categories: Communication, Ethics | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientists are apparently not as disenchanted with the media as anecdote suggests, according to a study in Science (321, 204 - 205; 2008) , and featured by Phil Ball in his Muse column in Nature News earlier this month. Phil writes: "science journalists can draw encouragement from this evidence of general goodwill but the study raises more provocative questions than it answers. It undoubtedly matters how scientists perceive the way their work is reported, but in the end the crucial question is surely how well science is communicated, not whether scientists are happy with the results. Making scientists happy is not the aim of science journalism, any more than political reporters should worry whether politicians feel good about what they write."

For more of this article, and for other Muse columns by Phil Ball, please visit Nature's News site.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 24, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientific meetings and conferences come in all shapes and size, and love them or loathe them, they have an important role to play in all areas of science. That's the start of Nature Nanotechnology's July Editorial (3, 371; 2008). The article goes on to discuss the size of the upcoming third International Conference on Nanoscience + Technology, a medium-scale affair compared with other mega- and nano-meetings assessed. The Editorial concludes:

In time-honoured style I have reached the end of this article without covering a very important conference topic — how to give a good conference talk. I could exceed my allotted slot by listing various do's and don'ts, but the golden rule when giving talks is to finish on time, so I will refer you to previous articles on this topic written by colleagues on other Nature journals (Nature Methods and Nature Physics). The secret, they conclude, is to rehearse and to always remember that you are speaking for the audience and not to yourself. Thank you.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 21, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the July issue of Molecular Systems Biology (4 , Article number: 201 doi:10.1038/msb.2008.39; 2008), Jonathan A Sagotsky et al. in their article "Life Sciences and the web: a new era for collaboration, write:

The World Wide Web has revolutionized how researchers from various disciplines collaborate over long distances. This is nowhere more important than in the Life Sciences, where interdisciplinary approaches are becoming increasingly powerful as a driver of both integration and discovery. Data access, data quality, identity, and provenance are all critical ingredients to facilitate and accelerate these collaborative enterprises and it is here where Semantic Web technologies promise to have a profound impact. This paper reviews the need for, and explores advantages of as well as challenges with these novel Internet information tools as illustrated with examples from the biomedical community.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 14, 2008
Categories: Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nature Cell Biology wishes Nature Precedings a happy birthday in its July Editorial (Nature Cell Biology 10, 753; 2008), in the process taking stock of the usefulness of "web 2.0" publishing ventures to cell biologists (and other scientists).
Nature Precedings allows rapid posting of unpublished (and unreviewed) manuscripts, conference posters and slide presentations. Entries are subject-tagged, searchable and citable. Postings are screened by curators for scientific legitimacy, plagiarism and scope, but not peer-reviewed for novelty or data quality; commenting and voting by readers is encouraged.
The immediate question for most cell biologists and other scientists is whether posting material on a preprint sever is worth the risk of being scooped. Nature Cell Biology concludes that although many cell biologists are still wary of preprint servers, they could consider posting solid data that are not likely to be published in traditional journals because they are confirmatory or negative. Well-controlled negative data are immensely useful to colleagues, so documenting them in a citable form on a preprint server is a valuable community service.

Related posts:
Peer to Peer on the first year of Nature Precedings.
Nature Network post by Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings.
Nature Network online discussion forum for the Nature Cell Biology editorial.
Futher information about Nature Precedings is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 07, 2008
Categories: Communication, Data availability | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Geoscience publishes a regular feature called BackStory, at the back of the journal or on the journal's website, in which the authors of a paper in the current issue of the journal answer questions about their field work -- providing an unusual perspective on the region of the world that contributed to the paper. The Backstory in the July issue (Nature Geoscience 1, 482; 2008), Sailing for a stretched lithosphere, describes how Jenny Collier and colleagues, having managed to get themselves and all their instruments on board a ship not too far away from an imminent war zone, enjoyed the serenity of life at sea as they investigated the rifted continental margin of India.

How long did it take to plan the fieldwork?

Two years elapsed between getting the project approved and setting sail. We wanted to use a particular vessel, the RRS Charles Darwin, which was already in the Indian Ocean and had the scientific capability that we needed. Unfortunately, we had to join a rather long waiting list. Coordination was a nightmare — our scientific instruments were all in different parts of the world, taking part in experiments that were also subject to scheduling changes. When we finally had our chance, the build-up to the Iraq invasion resulted in several changes to our port of embarkation. It was a huge relief when we finally set sail with all the equipment onboard!

See Nature Geoscience's website for the rest of the Backstory.
The paper featured is: The relationship between rifting and magmatism in the northeastern Arabian Sea, by Timothy A. Minshull, Christine I. Lane, Jenny S. Collier & Robert B. Whitmarsh (Nature Geoscience 1, 463-467; 2008).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 03, 2008
Categories: Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature reports in News this week (453, 1149; 26 June 2008) that a Canadian graduate student dissatisfied with science coverage on online sites such as Google News and Yahoo News has created a news aggregator especially for scientists.
Michael Imbeault, an HIV researcher at the Université Laval in Quebec, launched his fully automated site called e! Science News last month. It has already attracted 300,000 different users, and averages 5,000 visits a day, he says.
News aggregators display headlines and snippets from other media sources, but don't produce their own content. Of the top five online US news sites, three are aggregators — Google News, AOL News and Yahoo News — and only two — CNN.com and MSNBC.com — generate original content. Yahoo and AOL use human editors and source almost all science stories from wire agencies, such as Reuters. Google News uses computer algorithms to aggregate headlines from thousands of news sources, ranking them by how often and on which sites stories appear. Science and technology coverage on Google News, for example, is notoriously devoid of basic science.
The above is taken from the Nature News story, where more information can be found.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 30, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

New Communication Channels in Biology is the title of a workshop that takes place next week, on 26 and 27 June, at the University of California, San Diego. Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings will be giving a talk, as well as Moshe Pritsker of JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) and many others. The agenda can be viewed here. The workshop is open to the public and is free, although prior registration is required.
From the programme: "The workshop will focus on the range of emerging approaches within e-science, community engagement in dialogue knowledge input/review or assessment, science blogs, and authenticated wiki-like research discussions and analysis, as well as the potential to formalize such community level contributions. These new approaches to communication are becoming important for biology as biological scientists attempt to address the inherent complexity of life, manage both high information content and high throughput data streams, and employ the opportunities emerging from advances in e-communication/networking and information technology."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 19, 2008
Categories: Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Physics, in its June Editorial (4, 429; 2008), adds its own advice to recent articles on presenting talks, summarized and referenced here. From the Editorial:

Presenting your research to an auditorium of peers can be a daunting prospect, particularly for those at the start of their careers. But with a little thought and preparation, it needn't be.
We editors go to a lot of meetings, and have listened to a lot of talks. To hear a good talk can give you a reason for being. To hear a bad talk can make you wish you'd never left your hotel room. But even if your results won't earn you a trip to Stockholm (yet), there is no reason they shouldn't be the seeds for a lively discussion. And lively discussion is what it's all about. We've put together a collection of do's and don'ts to delivering a talk that will move your audience, not put them to sleep.
Once you've cut, tightened and improved the content, deliver it again, listen to it again, and fix any remaining weaknesses, again. Then again. And again. Until you are so familiar with its structure and content that you could give it in your sleep. Familiarity fosters confidence, and a confident talk is a compelling talk.
As it is with writing papers, so it is with giving conference talks — if your research is worth being presented to your colleagues, it's worth being presented to them well.

Read the rest of the Editorial at Nature Physics.

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

SciDevNet's Practical Guides offer very useful advice for scientists who wish to communicate their results, not only in journals but in other ways and using other media. Articles include 'How do I become a science journalist?'; 'Planning and writing a science story'; 'How do I apply for a research grant?'; 'Spotting fraudulent claims in science'; 'How do I become media-savvy?'; 'How do I make a science news story for the radio?'; and others. A full contents listing is here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 16, 2008
Categories: Communication, Partners, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature reporter Quirin Schiermeier is spending June 5-12 aboard the Canadian research icebreaker CCGS Amundsen, as part of a project to study climate change in the high Canadian Arctic. His dispatches can be read at In The Field . At the start of his voyage, Quirin writes:

After an epic journey, on four planes and one helicopter, I have at last arrived on board the CCGS Amundsen. The final leg of my trip, the short transfer from Inuvik to Cape Parry at the northern tip of Canada’s Northwest Territories, was easily the most spectacular flight of my whole life. The tiny aircraft flew at very low altitude, so that every barren hill and every glittering lake in the tundra below seemed almost seizable. Then we were out on the frozen Franklin Bay, an inlet of the Amundsen Gulf, and headed towards the edge of the fast ice. We went down on a gravel airstrip next to an abandoned cold-war early warning station. From there a helicopter took us on board the icebreaker which is currently staying put in the fast ice at only a few ship lengths distance to the ice edge.

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

Networking is an essential part of the conference experience, but what opportunities are there for those who cannot make it to many, or even any, meetings? Can Web 2.0 applications enable scientists that do not have the time or money to attend meetings to reap the benefits of networking, and do Web 2.0 applications have a place in both our social and work lives? The June Editorial in Nature Reviews Microbiology (6, 410; 2008) takes a look at selected virtual networking resources, including wiki software such as OpenWetWare, preprint servers (for example, Nature Precedings) and scientific social networking sites (for example, Nature Network), that might be useful for microbiologists, and the editors welcome your comments here. From the editorial:

Finding the time to write and read blogs could stimulate collaborations or open up new career opportunities in science writing and education, but how many microbiologists actually write blogs? In the United Kingdom, the only microbiology academic who blogs on a regular basis is Alan Cann from the University of Leicester. His blog on new and exciting microbiology research, aptly named MicrobiologyBytes, has been particularly successful, with 300,000 page views over the past 18 months and 750 comments on 468 posts (Alan filters out all spam comments or 'splogs'). He also blogs about science in general on Science of the Invisible, and his enthusiasm for new technologies has led him to divert his energy into a non-laboratory-based career researching the use of online resources for education. Other active microbiology 'bloggers' include Moeslio Schaechter, whose blog Small Things Considered is hosted by the ASM, César Sánchez, whose blog Twisted Bacteria has a particular focus on actinomycetes and Ed Rybicki, whose blog ViroBlogy concentrates on virology. Some other bloggers, including microbiologist Rosie Redfield, focus more on their own research to provide an insight into the everyday lives of research scientists.
It is now even possible to attend conferences without leaving your desk: the first ever International Online Medical Conference was held on 10–11 May. But how useful will Web 2.0 applications be in your research? We welcome your views, as comments to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 16, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (3)

Presenting at a conference is a unique opportunity to communicate your work. Editors attend many conferences, and although they may not address an audience often, they have plenty of opportunity to observe presentation skills.
Nature Methods (5, 371 - 372; 2008), in its May Editorial, makes ten suggestions for making the most of such presentational opportunities, and invites readers to add their own tips and comments at its blog Methagora. The Nature Methods list:
1. Plan for the allotted time.
2. Know your audience.
3. Define your goals.
4. Structure your talk.
5. Keep your slides simple (content).
6. Keep your slides simple (design).
7. Beware of animations and multimedia.
8. Watch your delivery.
9. Choose your words.
10. Rehearse!
Advice can also be found on Nature Network: see Lab Daze blog; End of the Pier Show blog; Expression Patterns blog; and a post in the Visualization and Science forum, in which Hilary Spencer provides some very good, practical advice about the balance between information and presentation in Power Point slides.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 12, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (2)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Watch five hours of US cable news, and on average you will see around 35 minutes on election campaigns, another 36 minutes on US foreign policy, and 26 minutes on crime — but only about one minute on science and technology, slightly more on the environment, and only a little over 3 minutes on medicine and health care. (The rest is taken up with other local issues, weather, entertainment and so on.) Science news in the United States has indeed been squeezed to around 2% of the total since the events of 11 September 2001. But it was never that high, hovering around 4–6% from the mid-1970s until 2001. And the drop does not reflect a falling public interest in science, as much as the media's increased emphasis on foreign policy, war and the homeland: the diversity of US news coverage has decreased across the board since 9/11.
These numbers are obtained from a new study by The Pew Research Center, The State of the News Media 2008, and were discussed in one of Nature's editorials last week (Nature 452, 378; 27 March 2008). From the editorial: "The Pew Center's numbers offer another reason not to be gloomy: the Internet is overtaking television as the public's main source of science news. This means that a larger global audience can now access, on demand, a great diversity of science coverage from media outlets around the world. Moreover, the public are no longer just passive consumers of information. The Internet is now the first place people go to look for more information on a scientific topic, such as stem cells or climate change. Thanks to the Internet, in short, one could argue that the overall state of science communication is better now than at any time in the past."
Nature's editorials are free to access online, so please read on at this link.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 01, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

From an Edtiorial in the current (April) issue of Nature Genetics (40, 375; 2008):
Communicating the details of science to nonspecialists is intrinsically hard because research entails specialized techniques for empirical testing of counterintuitive ideas. Public imagination may be more readily seized by stories that fit with preconceived models, and distortion can happen when communicators employ the most transmissible ideas. But when new concepts are successfully represented in everyday imagery, there is no reason the public cannot follow in detail the excitement of doing research. When engaged in the details of the analogy, nonspecialists can ask questions from a perspective that will be useful to the expert.
In an interview with Robyn Williams on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Science Show [15 March 2008 edition], Oxford University researcher Kim Nasmyth explained molecular mechanisms of chromosome segregation with a riddle. In his allegory, chromosomes are represented as pairs of socks.

Continue reading "Analogies to describe science to nonscientists" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 31, 2008
Categories: Communication, 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.

In the science writers' group, Angela Saini asks what science stories would be great for television, given that her non-scientist friends frequently tell her that "there is not enough science on TV". Among the responses so far are suggestions about heirloom tomatoes, better science for children, fun science and a magazine show. Matt Brown , who provides a weekly round-up of UK science TV on the network, comments that his favourite science programme on TV is "the recent BBC4 documentary about the lead singer of Eels discovering his father’s pioneering work on parallel universe theory. In other words, rock star learns extreme physics." Read on, and add your suggestions, at the Network forum.

At the NatureJobs careers forum, Paul Smaglik provides advice on roles in clinical trial programmes and starting a research career.

At the good paper journal club, Linda Cooper asks why so many scientific articles are difficult to read, and Heather Etchevers encourages more suggestions of well-written papers for dissection. Continuing the theme, Richard Grant at his blog The Scientist asks why most scientific papers are so boring. There is a very nice blog post by Mico Tatalovic, providing a student's perspective on students' science-writing skills -- including a round-up of undergraduate science journals.

Anna Kushnir initiates what has turned out to be a very informative debate about PubMed searches, at her blog Lab Life. There are plenty of tips and links in the long comment thread. You can also read an article on Partial Immortalization blog, "How to filter and read PubMed articles through RSS feeds", complete with screen shots, by Attila Csordas.

Jose Manuel Otero has started a Nature Network blog to discuss the difference and similarities between academic and industrial research. He is setting out to destroy some common myths. One such is that industrial research environments are not focused on problem understanding, but instead exclusively concerned with project milestones and product delivery, and therefore, will punish any type of mechanism-based efforts towards enhanced and deeper understanding. Wrong! Unsurprisingly, this blog is attacting stimulating discussion, which doubtless will continue.

John Willbanks writes about creative works, copyrights and publishing, providing some further thoughts after his talk at MIT on the question of how to extricate the “non-creative facts” from the creative, copyrighted work.

Perhaps the most intense and long comment thread for the week is Jennifer Rohn's post and discussion on Mind the Gap, "In which I utterly fail to conceptualize". Initially on the use of Excel spreadsheets to analyse genome-wide screens, the discussion becomes a full-blown debate on the contributions of bioinformaticans and "wet" (laboratory) biologists. And perhaps the most significant Nature Network group that started this week is called Collaboration: bringing Nature Network members together, set up by Bob O'Hara in direct response to this discussion. Can Nature Network create collaborations between its members? How can NN facilitate this process? Here you can discuss these details, and look for other people who are interested in working on the same topics as you are. I encourage you to sign up.

Previous Nature Network columns.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 28, 2008
Categories: Communication, Nature Network round-up, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Noam Y. Harel of Yale University writes in Nature's Correspondence page (Nature 452, 409; 2008):

Writing grant proposals is difficult enough; keeping track of different deadlines makes for an endless cycle of procrastination and frantic preparation. The added stack of bureaucratic forms, with arcane variations from agency to agency, can tip one over the edge as a deadline nears.
Is it almost too obvious to wish for a centralized proposal repository? Investigators could submit proposals at any time, in a common format that highlights the science rather than obliterates it with red tape. Funding agencies could search the repository for proposals matching their interests. A minimum of bureaucratic information would be required up front. Budget details could be worked out between funding agencies and investigators as necessary.
Ideally, all proposals would be publicly accessible. However, most of the scientific community has not yet accepted the inevitable dawn of truly open science. Submissions to a central repository could therefore be made accessible only to funding agencies that agree to keep proposals private (unless a submitting investigator indicates a willingness to share his or her proposal publicly).
The repository would make life easier for scientists by eliminating the hassle of searching for suitable grant mechanisms and the stress of meeting various deadlines. It would make life easier for funding agencies by expanding the pool of applications from which to choose. Of course, the best proposals could attract offers from multiple agencies. Rather than forcing investigators to choose non-overlapping sources of funding for each project, why not use the repository to mediate shared funding agreements that could benefit everyone involved? In effect, it would serve as the mediator between grant-seekers and grant-providers.
In a world where eBay, Facebook and Google powerfully demonstrate the communal nature of the Web, it is a pity that scientists and funding agencies don’t have a similarly modern forum for matching their interests and offers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 26, 2008
Categories: Access, Communication, Data availability, Support | Permalink | Comments (4)

Hearing about past and present issues in the world community of immunology can enrich all of us, according to the Editorial in this month's (April) issue of Nature Immunology (9, 331; 2008). The journal is publishing a series of commentaries on immunology in various places in the world, to demonstrate how, as a community, immunologists work and live together to advance the discipline.
Beginning with a piece by Agustin Lage on immunology, public health and biotechnology in Cuba in February (Nat. Immun. 9, 109-112; 2008), this series provides information on funding and infrastructure for immunology, special projects, and people, places and events. It also provides an opportunity for readers to compare and contrast the familiar scene in their own regions with that of other places. Commentaries now scheduled or under consideration survey the scene in India, the Middle East, Argentina, Russia and South Africa, and, in the current issue, Xuetao Cao discusses immunology in China (Nat. Immun. 9, 339-342; 2008).
The commentaries will not cover immunology comprehensively, but will present a few well chosen places—and well-chosen authors—to provide insight into new projects, ideas and concerns. In the words of the Editorial: "We hope that these commentaries, which will appear periodically over the next year or so, will enrich understanding of the familiar and the not-so-familiar in the world of immunology."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 24, 2008
Categories: Communication, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

Corie Lok, Nature Network's Editor, was in Toronto over the weekend attending the world’s first Scibarcamp, where 120 scientists, writers, artists, technologists and business people discussed topics ranging from science '2.0'; science and art; and whether can technology can make us happy. Corie highlights a session led by Eva Amsen on '10 things everyone should know about science'. Eva asked conference-goers to write down their ideas for what everyone should know about science on a board, which is photographed at Corie's blog, together with a list of her favourites.

In a post called The condition of Denmark, Nature editor Henry Gee writes on scientific literacy and how "Selecting papers for publication in Nature is rather like standing in front of a firehose and picking out a few choice drops of water. Even then, Nature’s subeditors remain hardpressed, given that papers these days contain volumes (volumes) of accessory and supplementary material—none of which existed a decade ago. Online publication means that papers are published round the clock, rather than just once a week. And things are unlikely to get any easier."

The Fiction Lab, coming soon to the newly refurbished Royal Institution, will be a reading group dedicated to lab lit and other science-related or inspired literary fiction, introduced by Jennifer Rohn at her blog Mind the Gap. The first book to be discussed is The Sun and Moon Corrupted by Philip Ball, who will also be making a personal appearance.

In response to a question at the NatureJobs career forum from a Network user who has a medical degree and wants to start a job in research, Paul Smaglik advises that "it’s perfectly acceptable to start as a technician, learn a few skills, decide whether or not you like what you’re doing, and, if you do, seek further training. That’s perhaps a more rational approach than in investing seven years in a PhD, a few more in a postdoc, then learning you despise benchwork."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 21, 2008
Categories: Communication, Nature Network round-up, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month's Nature Reports Stem Cells newsletter explores banks and registries. Lawyers, ethicists and scientists meet in California to figure out what the field needs, and so does a global group of stem cell funders. A registry of human embryonic stem cells is colaunched by a country that has criminalized most research on these cells. Private stem cell banking firms criticize their competitors' approaches while claiming all stem cell triumphs.
Featured stories include:
Thickets and gaps blocking stem cell science
Cross-institutional collaborations could advance stem cell science
The European Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry — a personal view from Germany
Joeri Borstlap, technical coordinator of the registry, explains why a country that has criminalized work on some embryonic stem cell lines is participating in this effort
Related story: Q&A with Anna Veiga, the registry's scientific coordinator
Stem cell banking: lifeline or subprime?
Bryn Nelson reports that cell banks are charging high prices to store stem cells for therapeutic applications that may never be realized
Q&A: Head of the UK’s Medical Research Council ponders global stem cell efforts
At a meeting of the International Stem Cell Forum, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz describes the need for multiple registries and banks
Umbilical cord companies in Asia
Announcements of deals to bank and use umbilical cord blood in India, Vietnam and South Korea point to an industry that is both promising and prone to overpromising
For more stories, as well as research highlights, news, journal club and "featured editor", visit Nature Reports Stem Cells -- where you can also sign up for the monthly newsletter (see button at right-hand side of the page) and subscribe to the associated blog, The Niche.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 18, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few useful links and some weekend light reading suggestions via Nature Network:

Who's got an opinion on public engagement with science? asks Nature Network London editor Matt Brown.

An overview of science-related "stuff" at Second Life, by T. Troy McGonaghy of Science in the Metaverse. Via the link, you can see the slides and a video of Troy's presentation at the recent Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums conference.

On the Visualization and Science forum, Hilary Spencer posts what she calls a "rant" about powerpoint, public speaking and blog posts. I'd define it as a strongly opinionated article: it contains her reactions to presentations at a recent conference she attended, and provides some useful advice about how to make and how not to make helpful slides. In a post with a related theme, Nuruddeen Lewis at his blog Lab Daze provides a very useful primer about how to give a talk: 'Tips for nailing your next presentation'.

Martin Fenner on his excellent blog Gobbledygook writes on the "complicated" aspects of paper writing: all those policy and format requirements, ethical bodies' requirements, and international nomenclature committees' pronouncements. And Richard Grant, at The Scientist blog, hosts a discussion on writing style: 'On the care and training of students, especially the training.'

Stew at Flags and Lollipops picks up on various recent posts and articles about the lack of take-up among scientists of the online commenting facilities often offered by journals on the papers they publish. Stew takes previous suggestions with a pinch of salt, homing in on the two main reasons he believes inhibit people from writing comments on published papers.

LabLit publishes the first installment of Private Investigations, a four-part story about the adventures of a very special scientist-for-hire. The author? He or she is not unknown to Nature Network, as a small amount of detective work will reveal.

What is the best way forward for Eastern Europe's science? asks Mico Tatalovic at Cambridge Student blog, in an article featuring the new life-sciences institutue MedILS at Split, Croatia.

If you are in reach of London, there are some unusual science-related events coming up, listed by Li-Kim Lee (see links for further details): Elizabethan Sea Charts and Maps (behind the scenes); Francis Crick - DNA and beyond; Leonardo's philosophical anatomies; and my favourite, Prince Rupert, Cavalier and Scientist.

Today (14 March, which in the US style is 3.14) is Pi day; see Gobbledygook for links to the Pi day website, but also to some music, including the American Pi song -- as Martin points out, best listened to at 1:59 today.

And finally, again from Matt Brown, Nature Network's ten most prolific bloggers over the past six months, with links to the blogs concerned. They'll give you a good taste of the lively discussion on the network - do join us there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 14, 2008
Categories: Communication, Partners, Publishing, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via the Nature Network blog Science in the Metaverse:

"The popular BBC Radio show The Naked Scientists will be broadcasting live into the virtual world Second Life starting this Sunday, 2 March at 18.00 GMT (10:00 AM PST). They have an island with a nice mansion and lots of comfortable chairs where you can listen to the show with other science enthusiasts and discuss whatever comes to mind. It’s in the middle of the sim named ‘SciLands’. If you already have a Second Life account, here’s a direct link to their mansion."

The background to the event is told by Dave Taylor at Knowlege Transfer Innovations:
......"last November I contacted Dr Chris [of The Naked Scientists] and asked him if he would be interested in having a studio audience in the SciLands. By happy coincidence Chris had been thinking along the same lines and so the idea of Naked Scientists in Second Life was born. This weekend Gordon Clark and I headed to Cambridge while colleagues in Second Life tested the audio link. The resulting podcast included an interview with us both. I described the ISM’s tour of the planets and our joint nuclear experiments with University of Denver while Gordon spoke about his recent trip through a biological sim. You can read the transcript or download the podcast here. During the show I said that innovations often come out of different disciplines meeting and having corridor discussions."

Joanna Scott, Nature Publishing Group's expert on Second Life, is usually at Second Nature (Nature's island on Second Life) between 4 and 5 p.m. GMT (8 - 9 a.m. SLT) , so please log in and join her then if you'd like to tell us what you are doing in Second Life, and what you think Nature Publishing Group might do there that would be useful for you. She looks forward to meeting you.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 29, 2008
Categories: Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (1)

Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature, writes (Nature 451, 643; 2008):
"When Nature asked a group of experts to offer their visions of the future, we were aware that such a project can have its pitfalls. Experts can get things drastically wrong — although, as Arthur C. Clarke noted, this usually occurs when they assert what is not possible. When they say what is possible, they can be inspiringly right.
With such inspiration in mind, these five Horizons articles (listed below) offer a sense of what our authors believe should happen over the next few years. The collection is in no way comprehensive — we simply wanted to deliver a mix of fundamental and applied science, with the writers articulating their unrefereed agendas for their disciplines."
The five Horizons articles, all in the 7 February 2008 issue of Nature:
A systematic look at an old problem
As life expectancy increases, a systems-biology approach is needed to ensure that we have a healthy old age.
Thomas B. L. Kirkwood pp 644-647
Chemistry for everyone
Moves by chemists to help computers access the scientific literature have boosted the drive to make scientific information freely available to all.
Peter Murray-Rust pp 648-651
Building better batteries
Researchers must find a sustainable way of providing the power our modern lifestyles demand.
M. Armand and J.-M. Tarascon pp 652-657
Evolution of anatomy and gene control
Evo-devo meets systems biology.
Georgy Koentges pp 658-663
Wiring up quantum systems
The emerging field of circuit quantum electrodynamics could pave the way for the design of practical quantum computers.
R. J. Schoelkopf and S. M. Girvin pp 664-669

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 25, 2008
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (1)

The digital edition for the Nature Events directory 2008 is available. Now in its ninth year, the directory is full of conferences, meetings, courses and symposia being held during 2008 across all scientific and medical disciplines. From each entry in the Nature Events listings, you can click directly to the conference website for further information.
If you prefer a PDF version of the directory, you can obtain it from the Nature Events main page. Whether via the directory or its regularly updated database, Nature Events aims to offer a comprehensive resource that will help researchers identify the right event to attend.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 21, 2008
Categories: Careers, Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

The role of scientists in informing the public about their field is addressed by Frank Gannon in this month's (February) issue of EMBO Reports (9, 111; 2008 ). Dr Gannon writes about a perceived "creeping cynicism" among the public, and urges scientists to "instill a healthy dose of optimism about what science can do—albeit in a fair and balanced way. We have to do this for ourselves as well as society at large. We have to explain the complexities of the tasks that lie ahead and, at the same time, highlight the genuine successes that scientific research has achieved. We must counter the cheap shots directed against honest and determined scientists, and reign in those who overstate their work and its implications. But more than anything else, we have to stress time and again that rigorous research is the only way to discover the cures and solutions needed for the twenty-first century."

At the same time, there is a variety of views on this topic being expressed by science writers on their Nature Network forum, in response to Brian Clegg's question "Is balance the enemy of science writing?" In cases where "there is overwhelming scientific evidence in favour of one opinion", writes Brian, "the media’s attempt to provide balance by giving equal weight to both sides of the argument is a mistake. It misleads the public, and does a disservice to science.
Is this true? If so, what should science writers be doing about it?" Or, as Frank Norman puts it, quoting Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne: "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong." A stimulating and very heated discussion follows about the role of the media in (mis)communicating science. To Michael Kenward it is relatively simple: "Look at examples, point out to the perpetrators that their idea of balance is actually no more than giving publicity to the lunatic fringe." Other contributors discuss longer-term goals, such as changing the way science is taught in schools, and rewarding scientists for personal public-education initiatives. Elsewhere on Nature Network, senior Nature editor Henry Gee provides his own unique perspective at his blog End of the Pier Show, in a post entitled Plausible Unavoidability.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 15, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

At Nature Publishing Group, we are often in a position of celebrating birthdays across a full range of ages, from Nature itself (139 on 4 November this year) to our youngest anniversarian, Nature Network, one year old today. In its brief span, the network has become host to a huge range of forums, groups, blogs and event notifications, some created by staff but the vast majority by users -- scientists, students, and (to quote the Editor Emeritus of Nature, Sir John Maddox) camp-followers.
Today, my shapshot shows me that the most vibrant discussions are on the role of money in Indian science; the quality of writing as a factor in the peer-review process; and nanotechnology trends predicted for this year. Tomorrow, these will be different, but equally stimulating. And fun -- check out Stripped Science, the blog of PhD student Viktor Poór, for a regular dose of science cartoons, this week with a birthday theme. Anyone can join the network, it is all free, so please do visit and meet others in a similar field, or with similar interests, to yourself.
Nature Network shares anniversaries of various kinds with the element Lawrencium, Dolly the sheep, Alexander Graham Bell, James Cook and, of course, St Valentine. The network almost, but not quite, shares a birthday with a person very closely connected with Nature in its earliest days -- Charles Darwin (who would have been 199 on Tuesday of this week, 12 February). In celebration of that anniversary, and of Nature Network's own much younger achievement, I reproduce a small part here of Matt Brown's lovely blog article about a walk through Darwin's London (complete with Google map):

"Walking up Lower Regent Street you might want to take a detour into Leicester Square. In Darwin’s day, No. 28—on the eastern side of the square—was the headquarters of the Zoological Society of London and the site of a zoological museum. On 4 January 1837, Darwin handed over 80 mammals and 450 birds collected during his Beagle trip. These included the now-famous Galapagos finches, specimens that ornithologist, artist and taxonomist John Gould was quick to describe as 'an entirely new group, containing 12 species.' "

I highly recommend reading the whole of this delightful combination of essay and guided tour. Happy birthday, indeed, Nature Network. I look forward to 199 (or more) lively years of your existence.

Update: See this posting at Nature Network for a brief history and some highlights of the first year.

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

In an article just published in Research Information magazine (December 07/January 08 issue), Timo Hannay and Hilary Spencer of Nature Publishing Group explain why this publishing company has launched a free preprint service for biologists, chemists and Earth scientists. They write:

"Nature Precedings is perhaps most easily understood as a preprint server that allows scientists to upload non-peer-reviewed (or pre-peer-review) documents so that they can be discovered, downloaded, read, and cited by other researchers. In this way, it is similar to arXiv.org, a website that has been providing an indispensable service to physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists for over 15 years. In contrast to arXiv.org, however, Nature Precedings serves scientific fields in which the open and early exchange of research findings has yet to take root. Running a preprint server might seem like a bold, or even quixotic, goal for a publishing company, but we strongly believe that such open and early exchange of information between researchers is in the best interests of science as a whole, and NPG exists to enable such activities."

Read the whole article Research Information : Features : PREPRINTS : Document sharing speeds up research for an account of the benefits of sharing research results in this way, and why it makes sense for a publishing company to develop a preprint-sharing sevice.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 13, 2008
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature 451, 619 (2008):
African researchers have just been connected by a high-speed Internet link to Europe's research network, GÉANT2. The deal has been struck between GÉANT2 and UbuntuNet, an alliance of African national research networks created in 2005. It will speed up communications and data transfer not only between African scientists and the estimated 30 million GÉANT2 users in 34 European countries, but also with scientists worldwide — through GÉANT2's connections with the United States and other research networks around the world.
UbuntuNet is not related to Ubuntu, the popular free version of the Linux operating system. But both namesakes help bring affordable quality information technology to African scientists.

The science and development network Scidev.net reports the formation of a new network, Scientists Without Borders, an initiative of the New York Academy of Sciences, which will "integrate the efforts of the scientific and health community to address global health, agriculture and energy challenges in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals." Ghana will be the first country in the scheme, from where a range of information is being collected to create a collaborative database and website, followed by others in the African continent.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 11, 2008
Categories: Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nature Physics editors (Nature Physics 4, 81; 2008) want to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet. One hundred years ago, communication was relatively slow, and scientists attended conferences to find out what was going on outside their own place of work; now, we live in an environment in which there is an over-abundance of data-rich information that is a challenge to assimilate. What tools do scientists most need to communicate, share and organize information in the most meaningful, or "filtered", way? Nature Publishing Group has already created several such tools, for example Connotea, a reference management system, and Nature Network, a social website for various kinds of specialist discussion forums. The editors would like to hear from readers about the tools they would like to see developed. Please send them an email if you have suggestions you'd like to make, or drop a comment to this post.
Nature Physics February 2008 Editorial: A tangled web we weave.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 06, 2008
Categories: Author services, Communication | 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)

Brian Clegg writes on the Science writers' forum at Nature Network: "I’ve recently had an exchange of emails with a respected scientist who has doubts about the validity of some of the science behind the current thinking on climate change. He has been villified as a ‘climate change denier’ " . Regular readers of Climate Feedback, the blog of Nature Reports Climate Change, will certainly have seen examples of imbalanced, passionately expressed, readers' comments directed at climate scientsts.
Brian asks whether this is really the right way for professional scientists to go about things. He points out as one example that Fred Hoyle's espousal of the steady-state theory long after most astrophysicists were convinced by the Big Bang did not result in him being vilified as a ‘Big Bang denier’. Are there some topics within science in which objectivity is always sacrificed for emotion? Nature Reports Climate Change and Nature Reports Stem Cells are providing light, rather than unnecessary heat, on these particular "flashpoint" areas of science -- and Brian welcomes your views in the Nature Network forum. Are there other disciplines that would benefit from the Nature Reports approach?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 29, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jennifer Rohn, of University College London and Editor of LabLit, reviews three books in last week's Nature: From bench to book (Nature 451, 128; 2008), addressing how web publishing and marketing might put more science into fiction and attract new readers. The books reviewed are: A Version of the Truth by Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack; The Gift: Discovery, Treachery & Revenge by Jon Kalb; and The Expeditions by Karl Iagnemma. Jennifer writes: "In a darwinian scrum for the attention of an increasingly distracted audience, authors who want to write fiction about science, but not straight science fiction, have their work cut out. The gates of publication are typically guarded by humanities graduates who may have no scientific affinity. To slip through the net, stories about scientists are often sugar-coated." Only one of the three books reviewed, The Gift, is a serious work of "lab lit" -- and given its "uncompromising approach to technical detail, it is probably no coincidence that the book is self-published", writes Jennifer.
Jennifer herself is subjected to some Q and A on the Authors page in the same issue of the journal (Nature 451, ix; 2008) about her efforts to improve scientists' fictional standing by her LabLit site "to generate interest in fictionalized science by shedding light on scientists in their natural habitat."
"Q. Do you think publishers are prejudiced against publishing fiction about science?
A. Yes. Most publishers balk at the idea of publishing a fictional book about science. For example, the book I reviewed with the most scientific detail — The Gift by Jon Kalb, which delves into the ruthless world of hominid fossil hunting — was not traditionally published. It is available print-on-demand by the author. I think for this genre there is considerable opportunity for print-on-demand."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 17, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Drosophila [fruit fly] courtship is a complex behavior. A new study shows that glia modulate neurotransmission to influence male preference, but the authors should have resisted the temptation to describe their results in tabloid language." Joel Levine of the University of Toronto, begins his Commentary "Glia and romance" (Nature Neuroscience 11, 8 - 10; 2008) with this provocative statement. He goes on to write: "The study by Grosjean et al. [Nature Neuroscience 11, 54–61; 2008] makes an important contribution by calling attention to a neuro-glial element in the circuitry that governs courtship behavior. Furthermore, this study initiates the search for the glutamatergic neurons involved in the processing of courtship pheromones. Apart from its merits, however, this paper has a serious language problem. Throughout, the authors use the term homosexual to describe the behavior of a male mutant that courts both males and females with equal probability." Levine goes on to explain why the use of the term homosexuality to define the flies' behaviour is inappropriate and objectionable.
In a Nature Network journal club discussion of this paper, Nature Neuroscience editor Noah Gray describes the authors' controversial nomenclature, and provides links to some discussion on blogs at the New York Times. Putting this issue aside, questions for the journal club include:
--How could changing the glutamate content in the extracellular space contribute to the altered processing by the appropriate (but unknown) circuits?
--How do these Drosophila courtship behaviours relate to mammalian courtship rituals and what does the current research say about those behaviours?
Via Action Potential, Noah writes the neuroscience online journal club will feature interesting papers from any journal for discussion, in posts written by students and postdocs discussing somebody else's work, in the classic spirit of a journal club.
"This forum is designed to teach the non-specialist about certain neuroscience sub-fields in which they may have some interest, as well as to feature important findings that very well may pertain to the current work of the specialist. Hopefully, the discussion will include the following (and more): questions being asked regarding the data or conclusions of the study; inquiries made as to how to successfully implement particular methodologies; reasons given for why additional data would help the authors solidify their conclusions; suggestions floated as to what the next steps should be in the follow-up experiments."
Another journal club discussion is entitled Extrasensory perception (ESP) fails the test : the Nature Network neuroscience group is clearly setting out to be a lively forum. If you are a neuroscientist, or work in a related discipline, please feel free to join the group and contribute to the discussion.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 15, 2008
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Join Nature editor and writer Alexandra Witze at the 211th American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas from 8-11 January. She'll be sending diary reports to our In The Field blog as astronomers gear up for the International Year of Astronomy in 2009.
The AAS meeting schedule is here, with links to the abstracts of all the presentations.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 08, 2008
Categories: Communication, Conferences, Disciplines | 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)

Bali has not been the only island that has just hosted a climate-change conference. The BBC World Service's Digital Planet today runs a short feature and podcast about Nature Publishing Group's Second Nature, an archipelago of islands in Second Life, in which climate scientists – or their representational avatars – have been hosting talks and discussions. Timo Hannay, publishing director at Nature Publishing Group, describes how we went about achieving this series of virtual talks in a podcast which is available for one week only (until Tuesday 25 December) via the Digital Planet site.
Full reports of the Second Nature conference are at Joanna Scott's Nature Network blog. A brief description of the virtual conference's aims is here, with full presentations, Q/As and slides of the first two talks, by Tara LaForce of Imperial College London and Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College London.
You can follow our coverage of the real UN climate change conference at Climate Feedback blog -- just keep scrolling, there are many excellent posts from Olive Heffernan, Editor of Nature Reports Climate Change, who was in Bali for the duration.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Disciplines, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

What's the point of blogging? is a question asked by Duncan Hull at Nodalpoint: are people wasting their time reading and writing blogs? As Duncan writes, "most leading scientists are too damn busy to pay much attention to the blogosphere, especially when it descends (as it frequently does) into "uncontrollable verbal discharge". " There follows a list of links to various articles about scientific blogging in Nature, Cell and other publications, including one with the title "Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good for your career", with a perhaps predictable rejoinder, "Ten Reasons Why Blogging doesn't matter". Among other sentiments, this last article (written in March 2005) contains this summary of relevance to scientists: "Bloggers tend to have strong, acute viewpoints on niche issues - a lot like academia, in fact. Except that unlike research papers, blogging is not subject to peer review before going to press, nor does it need to have bibliography and references."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 23, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Kenward starts a debate in Nature Network's science writers' group called Science experiments in accessibility, in which he highlights the journal Science's trial project of starting each Research Article with a one-page author's summary. Michael sees two benefits for science writers: one, to help authors to produce accessible summaries; and another to use the summaries to write more easily and confidently about the research.
Following this post is an online discusssion about the benefits to the reader of different types of summary which you may find stimulating, and to which you are welcome to contribute, or comment here. Typical summaries provided by journals range from News and Views-style editorials (articles by independent scientists in the field about a new finding), to short author summaries, to "making the paper" (interviews with an author featured on Nature's author page in the journal every week), to "inside the paper" (editors' accounts of how the paper evolved from submission to acceptance during the peer-review process) to one-paragraph editors' summaries, to science journalism, to blog posts, to podcasts. What kind of reader finds what kind of summary most useful? Would authors welcome the additional task of writing one-page summaries?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 21, 2007
Categories: Author services, Authorship, Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ai Lin Chun of Nature Nanotechnology describes how to join Nature Network and one of its many groups:
1) Complete your profile (include a picture)*
2) Participate in the forum (post topics/replies; ask questions)
3) Read the notice board
4) Post your newest publications to the group profile for increased visibility
5) Set your account to receive at least one email per week to keep up to date on latest events/postings

*For examples of a Network profile, here is Ai Lin's (click on her name), and here is mine.
There is a huge variety of groups to join, including in every discipline of science, or arts/culture, or science/society, or general science-related: here is a listing. Select groups to suit your own interests and interact with like-minded scientists and other users. It's simple to do, and all free.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 19, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Nature Network:

"We are looking for contributors for a one-day event on popular science books to be held at Imperial College, London on 22nd Feb 2008. Literary critics, historians, writers, illustrators, publishers, prize-givers, reviewers, readers, booksellers, teachers (and others) are all invited to take part. Contributors will be asked introduce a book, collection, theme, or popular science author, perhaps with a small extract, and use it to raise a topic for discussion in or about popular science."
"If you are interested in contributing, please send us an outline of your presentation (500 words maximum) and a short bio (approx 200 words). The outline should list the source(s) you want to discuss, and preview the discussion topic your session would raise. Email this to popscievent@gmail.com by the 23rd November 2007." (See Nature Network for more details.)

Also, see The Science Project blog for information about the Third Annual ‘Science & the Public’ Conference, to be held at the University of Manchester, UK, on 21 and 22 June 2008. The conference "aims to bring together the wide ranging strands of academia that consider science as it intersects with non-scientific cultures." The organizers are currently calling for papers on topics including: notions of expertise in the public; public science and science policy; technological development and the public; and science on the internet. All submissions and enquiries should be emailed to scienceandpublic@googlemail.com by 14 March 2008. (For more details, see the Science Project posting.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 10, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

"PowerPoint is a joy to use — click a few highly intuitive buttons to animate your favourite model and the results seem the work of professionals with years of film school behind them. Customize your graphics to rival the finest glossy magazines. But does a visually striking presentation really make your research more accessible or memorable? Do bouncing phosphates really explain a kinase reaction better? We would argue that overbearing graphics tend to distract the audience from the science."
So begins the editorial in this month's Nature Cell Biology (9, 1217; 2007), which continues: ... "graphics tools ought to be used only when necessary. It is worth reflecting on the frustrating experience of watching a Hollywood movie so overloaded with special effects that it leaves the viewer drained from sensory overload but intellectually and emotionally unsatisfied. Less is more: after a day of back-to-back talks, nothing is more refreshing than a visually clear, logically constructed and well articulated presentation."
Read the full editorial here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 09, 2007
Categories: Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Importance of Patents to Scientists is the title of today's talk at Second Nature island in Second Life. Sue Scott, a patent attorney, will talk about patents in science, why they exist and are controversial, explain the basic things all scientists need to know about patents, and attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions. Please see this Nascent posting for more details: Jo Scott writes that "Voice will be used, so if you need any help setting up, come along a few minutes early."
Date: Monday 5 November
Time: 11am SLT/PDT, 7pm GMT
Location: Second Nature Island
Contact: Joanna Wombat

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 05, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tim O’Reilly, head of the company bearing his name that, since 1978, has been a “chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future”, recently visited Nature Publishing Group’s London offices. Rosamund Daw, a senior editor in Nature’s physical sciences team, attended his talk, and here reports her impressions.

Tim O'Reilly's talk was a fascinating insight into the mind of someone who thinks about new ways of getting people together in real life and on the internet to generate new stuff (ideas, information, products). His presentation was a Q+A forum, which he kicked off by introducing the concept of “Web 2.0” as the phoenix rising from the ashes of the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. The concept of Web 2.0 seems to be based around harnessing the interactive networking power of the internet to provide new functionality and information.
Topics discussed in the forum included concerns with privacy on networking websites. O'Reilly believes that attitudes to privacy more generally are changing: that privacy is something that people are prepared to compromise if they can clearly see the benefits – one of his examples was surveillance cameras, and another is the relaxed attitude that can be seen at the social networking site Facebook.
Another topic was open access. When asked whether making content free led to mediocrity in publication quality online, O'Reilly responded he didn't believe that this had to be the case, giving Wikipedia as an example.
Anther question concerned what's at the "edge" of Web 2.0 ? O'Reilly discussed the idea of sensing: generating, for example, new information content through combining imagery posted on the internet. Imagine wandering through the streets of Paris on a virtual site generated from thousands of images of Paris posted on the internet from different people!
O'Reilly was exceptionally kind about NPG's efforts at the frontline of web developments. He and his colleagues blog at O’Reilly Radar , and you can find out more about his company’s activities here .
You can read another account of Tim O’Reilly’s talk, including a picture, over at Nascent, NPG’s web publishing blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 02, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publishing | 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)

Are you interested in finding out more about research in Mainland China and Hong Kong? Take a look at Nature China. Every week, the editors of Nature China survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from mainland China and Hong Kong, and provide a summary of the results.

Divided into subject areas, this portal allows you to stay up-to-date with the latest research appearing in various scientific publications in this region. Taking materials science as an example, here some recent highlights posted on Nature China:

• Carbon nanotubes: Becoming a brighter fighter
• Drug delivery: Wet or dry
• Magnetic nanoparticles: Artificial enzymes
• Super-hard conductors: Electric diamonds

Other subject areas are: biotechnology; cell and molecular biology; chemistry; clinical medicine; developmental biology; Earth and environment; ecology and evolution; genetics; neuroscience; space and astronomy; and physics. You can register for Nature China e-alerts at the website, and stay abreast of the latest research in your field from mainland China and Hong Kong. Help us identify the best Chinese papers by using the recommended paper section of the website. Click here to recommend a paper and find out what papers other users have recommended.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 26, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Council of Science Editors has organized journals around the globe to participate in its 2007 Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development. Hundreds of journals are publishing articles related to the scientific and medical issues that surround this theme. The Nature journals are pleased to contribute the content highlighted on this page, all of which is free. We have also created a supporting archive comprising previously published content from the Nature Publishing Group that is relevant to this theme.
See here for the nature.com Poverty and Human Development index page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 25, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

A presentation and press briefing by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) was held at a high-technology fair in Shenzhen China on Friday 12 October, to announce and distribute the 20-page Spotlight and Regions advertising feature on Shenzhen published in Nature in the 27 September issue. NPG staff gave presentations on publishing activities in China to a packed audience of about 100 from academia, government, industry and the media. A reprint of the Spotlight translated into Chinese was released at the event.
Nature Publishing Group's Shenzhen Spotlight project has involved about 25 NPG staff and freelancers from around the world. David Swinbanks, NPG's publishing director in Tokyo, writes; "After three years of discussion, we were finally given the green light by the Shenzhen local government in early August and had to pull the 20-page feature together by 21 September for the 27 September issue so that copies could be made available at the China High Tech Fair on Friday." As the supplement is also fully online, this was a considerable achievement for all the writers, editors and project-managers involved.
Part of the Spotlight supplement includes a video of a self-pollinating orchid, which can be seen here in all its beauty, showing in a stunning way the incredible power of plant adaptation and evolution.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 23, 2007
Categories: Communication, Partners, Public and media, 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)

What’s the impact of the “impact factor”? Are you satisfied with the current scientific publishing process? Will the internet revolutionize publishing? What are your thoughts on open access publishing and how it will affect the future of scientific publishing? If you are interested in these questions, join the Nature Network forum "Publishing in the New Millennium" , which is linked to a conference on Friday 9 November 2007, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m., at Harvard Medical School.
The conference is organized by students, and will convene experts from across the world to discuss the state of publishing in the biological sciences. The keynote address will be by Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, former director of the NIH, now head of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The State of Publishing will critically assess the impact that scientific publishing has on scientific research, with panellists including Robert Kiley, head of e-Strategy of the Wellcome Library; Isaac Kohane, director of the Countway Library at Harvard University; Emilie Marcus, Editor-in-Chief of Cell Press and Editor of Cell; and professor Stuart Shieber of Harvard University. Publishing 2.0 will examine the future of publishing in an increasingly digital world. Panelists include Moshe Pritsker, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Visualized Experiments; Hilary Spencer of Nature Precedings; John Wilbanks, executive director of Science Commons; and Bora Zivkovic of PLoS ONE.
By joining the Nature Network forum, you can discuss topics before the meeting, receive updates, suggest topics, and see who else is going.

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

Google announced back in April that it would be adding presentations to its Google Docs&Spreadsheets tool. Now the service is available, and Google has, thankfully, decided not to call it "GoogleDocs&Spreadsheets&Presentations" but has shortened the name of the suite of applications to "Google Docs." To see what it looks like, go to your Google Docs page (or open an account), click on "new" over at the left, then click on Presentations.
I am told by my testing team, a couple of teenage girls, that Presentations does not (yet?) offer anything like the features provided by Microsoft Powerpoint. However, the main advantage of Presentations is that it is online, allowing one to collaborate easily when developing a presentation. (This is also a feature of Docs and Spreadsheets, of course.)
To learn more, you can visit YouTube to see and hear a video called Google Docs in plain English.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 11, 2007
Categories: Communication, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the August issue of EMBO Reports (8, 712 - 716;2007), Matias Pasquali argued for a more important role for video to record the work of laboratories as an effective way to portray an accurate view of science to society. He wrote: "By enabling the public to observe a cloning procedure or a microarray experiment, the concept becomes less obscure, and the mysterious and frightening becomes the mundane and ordinary. Studies of the effect of seeing an experiment on a person's perception of science have to be carried out, but exploring new methods of communication is essential to attract the public's attention to everyday scientific topics."
In the current issue of the journal (EMBO Reports 8, 10, 886–887; 2007), Nikos Darzentas and coauthors extend Pasquali's suggestion that communication of science for the next generation of scientists will require the use of other media. They think that social websites such as del.icio.us, WebSphere and YouTube are promising, in that graduate students are probably vary familiar with these web resources. They suggest that educators or science communicators appreciate that many young scientists would rather watch a 'science' video than sift through masses of written information. (A suggestion to use YouTube for scientific outreach was made on Nautilus in April by Clements et al.)
Darzentas et al. also think that journals' and scientists' use of video and web media will help to counteract the detrimental effect of scientific misinformation from non-authoritative sources. They describe their struggles to communicate a dense manuscript on the Net of Life—an intricate network of horizontal and vertical gene flow patterns across the microbial world. They write: "Despite excellent editorial handling, it was the traditional medium of the manuscript that limited the presentation of the data, algorithm and the visualization of the results. During conference presentations, we therefore demonstrated the complexity of this work by a simple sequence of alternative views of the gene flow network. To present the main results to our peers, students and the general public in an aesthetically more engaging way, we created a science communication video—the result of a collaboration between our research group and a digital media company." Videos have an even greater potential than just enhancing communication among scientists, they conclude: "In the near future, it seems possible that journals will look more like video collections that, after peer-review and editorial processing, users can evaluate using a star-rating system. These clips could represent the entry points to the scientific work; first triggering the curiosity of the reader, then directing them to the relevant material and enhancing their interactive experience."
Those interested in this concept might like to look at Nature Precedings, where scientists can upload their manuscripts and other material for online comments and rating by other readers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 08, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (1)

Frank Gannon writes in an Editorial in the current issue of EMBO Reports (8, 10, 885; 2007):

At a recent scientific meeting, a speaker at a small workshop session caused me to stare in surprise. I did so not because of anything he had said, but simply because he was dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit and tie. It later became clear that he was a medic who had rushed to the meeting from work to give his presentation on time. Nevertheless, with his sartorial elegance he was obviously 'out of place'—all the other scientists attending the meeting were wearing a different 'uniform': a limited wardrobe in which jeans, colourful shirts and t-shirts were dominant, with the occasional jacket for those who were giving a talk. This casual style of clothes might suggest that scientists are 'cooler' and more relaxed than other professionals, but this seemingly carefree choice of clothes conforms to group pressure in just the same way as the obligatory suit and tie among medics or bankers—scientists are less free than their tie-free image suggests.

The Editorial goes on to discuss conformity in a more general sense, pointing out the irony of a group of individuals priding themselves on their free-spiritedness in terms of their dress code, but often spurning the diversity of ideas -- possibly to the extent of missing opportunities to gain new knowledge.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 05, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you've read an exceptional paper recently in the fields of climate or stem cells, you can recommend that paper be included in one of our online journal clubs. You can visit the journal clubs to comment and rank the papers that you and other readers have selected.
Nature Reports Climate Change journal club.
Nature Reports Stem Cells journal club.
Papers on any subject written by Chinese authors can be recommended for the Nature China website, where readers can rank and comment on the highlighted papers.
The journal Nature has a weekly journal club column in its print/online edition, in which a scientist writes about a paper of his or her choice and explains why it is of personal interest. You can see all the entries so far, and comment on the selection, at the Nature journal club blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 01, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is a link to an online slide show, Staying Current with Science Blogs & Wikis? , created by Patricia F. Anderson of the University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries. You can comment on the slides if you have a slideshare account. The abstract for the slide show reads:

Leading journals and voices in science are speaking informally about new directions and developments in research through blogs and podcasts. Wikis are being used for research communities to develop consensus views on best practices in research methodologies as well as developing shared resources. There are some excellent examples available of how these are being used to increase communication, community, and productivity in science, research, and clinical communities.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 24, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group and The New York Academy of Sciences announce the second Nature Chemical Biology Symposium: Chemical Neurobiology, on February 22-23, 2008 at The New York Academy of Sciences. (See here for location and accommodation details.) The 2008 symposium will explore how chemists and biologists are using the tools and philosophy of chemical biology to understand the molecular basis of neuronal function. The two-day meeting will comprise a series of four scientific sessions that look at distinct molecular functions of a neuron (chemical sensing, synapses and signalling, synthetic neurobiology and brain matters) and will conclude with a keynote session featuring Linda Buck, a pioneer in the field of neuroscience.
The meeting organisers are Terry Sheppard, Chief Editor of Nature Chemical Biology, together with his colleagues Joanne Kotz, Mirella Bucci and Catherine Goodman, as well as Stacie Bloom of the New York Academy of Sciences. See here for registration details.
See here for more about Nature Conferences.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 03, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an Essay, "Look who's talking too: graduates developing skills through communication" in the September issue of Nature Reviews Genetics (Nat. Rev. Genet. 8, 724-726; 2007), Eleni M. Tomazou & Gareth T. Powell of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, write that "greater opportunities for young scientists to present their doctoral research to large general audiences will encourage development of transferable skills and involvement in the scientific community." In their article, they describe how students communicate their research and explore the benefits of student-led meetings.

The entire article can be read via the link above, but it is worth reproducing another part of it here:
"One way in which students can overcome geographical and financial boundaries is through the internet. The recent First On-line EMBL PhD Symposium is an interesting new twist on the conference format that has great potential. Collaborations between students at different institutes can also help to gather sponsorship. A strong example of this is the PhD Student Conference, which was organized (in rotation) by young scientists from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the Institute of Molecular Pathology–Institute of Molecular Biotechnology Research Centre in Vienna, Austria, the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, and the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in London. Most importantly, young scientists need not wait for opportunities to organize and communicate to be provided for them, nor must they arrange an international conference for every subject — events can be equally successful as small, simple and local. Talking to faculty members and senior scientists at one's own university or institute is the best way to find out what is possible. Exchanging ideas and experiences with other PhD students who have already been engaged in this kind of activity is also important. The PhD students at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have created a Nature Network group in order to encourage discussions arising from SCAMPS (Sanger-Cambridge PhD Symposium) for University of Cambridge PhD students, but also for more general discussions about life as a PhD student. The group is open to all students participating in or planning similar events, and we hope that this will foster collaborations between institutes and lead to large, well regarded national and international PhD student meetings involving young scientists from around the world. So start talking!"
See here for the SCAMPS Nature Network group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 31, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 2002, a bold initiative—the Israeli-Palestinian Science Organization (IPSO)—was launched to bring together scientists from both sides to pursue common projects. Unlike other ventures, IPSO is administered jointly by Palestinians and Israelis, and grants awarded under its auspices require Palestinian-Israeli partnership. In its mission statement , IPSO proposes to build an infrastructure that creates and sustains development, collaboration and education between the communities through the universal language of science. Scientific research endeavors involving people working together as equal partners would produce practical results and would likewise engender personal trust and friendship between people living in the two communities.

The above is an extract from the Editorial in the September issue of Nature Immunology (8, 895; 2007)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 28, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Andrew Biggin of the University of Utrecht writes in Nature's Correspondence (Nature 448, 749; 2007):
Many of the world's most reputable and best-placed scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, have released strong and unequivocal statements regarding the dangers the world's population faces as anthropogenic climate change gains pace. Although such statements are effective in informing public opinion and thereby influencing policy on this important issue, they are not the most powerful means available.
A more potent approach would be for scientific organizations to make ambitious, high-profile moves to reduce their own contributions to climate change. Such activity could generate significant publicity and demonstrate that the organizations are taking the threat of climate change seriously. They would send a louder, clearer message that emissions reduction should be a priority.
Such moves, although necessarily bold, should not impair the organizations' abilities to achieve their primary aims. Rather, they should publicly demonstrate that reductions in any organization's environmental impact need not reduce its effectiveness. One example would be the more widespread inclusion of video-conferencing facilities in oral sessions at scientific meetings. Another could be the introduction of 'virtual poster sessions' with live audio connections.
If well-implemented, such measures would actually increase the effectiveness of a meeting while reducing its environmental impact. In particular, those who would otherwise not attend could now participate, which would lead to an increase both in the dissemination of research findings and in the interaction between members of the organization.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 23, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an Editorial this week entitled "Men [sic]" (Nature 448, 728; 2007), Nature opines that its 1869 mission statement is out of date. From the Editorial:

It was 1833 when the English polymath William Whewell first coined the word 'scientist'. Over subsequent decades, the word gradually replaced such commonly used terms as 'natural philosophers' and 'men of science'.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, this last phrase was already out of date: pioneering women such as Mary Fairfax Somerville and Caroline Herschel were proving their worth as astronomers, mathematicians, botanists and palaeontologists.
The original mission statement of this journal, first printed in Nature's second issue on 11 November 1869, was therefore running behind the times when it referred to "Scientific men" — even though, to be fair, the word 'scientist' did not enter general circulation until the end of the nineteenth century. In other respects it is well worded — which is why we print it every week in the Table of Contents.
The statement expresses two purposes for this publication. The first is "to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery ; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life". Today this is as important as it has ever been — although members of the public have important considerations to lay before scientists, and Nature reflects them also.
The second thrust was expressed as follows: "to aid Scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time."
In printing the statement verbatim every week as we have done, making it clear when it originated, we have hitherto assumed that readers will excuse the wording in the interests of historical integrity. But feedback from readers of both sexes indicates that the phrase, even when cited as a product of its time, causes displeasure. Such signals have been occasional but persistent, and a response is required.
There is a convention within the English language by which writers quoting text can indicate their view that a particular phrase is inappropriate. That is to insert sic, a Latin word meaning 'thus', after the phrase — in effect expressing the sentiment 'alas, dear reader, this is what was said'.
This is what we will do in the mission statement from now on. The small, belated change takes place against the vast backdrop of a scientific world where the upper echelons of academia, academies and prestigious awards are still numerically greatly dominated by men, and where outright discrimination can still rear its ugly head (see page 749). In this context, the insertion of a Latin word in a couple of paragraphs may be a tiny step: but it is at least one in the right direction.
(The modern version of Nature's mission statement can be read here.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 17, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (10)

For the past 20 years, David Goldston has been at the heart of forging US science and environmental policy. His regular Nature column provides a seasoned insider's take on the interaction between science and politics. His latest article, Making room for dissent (Nature 448, 524; 2007), explores the effect of political dissent on scientific progress.

For now, Congress is likely to move ahead with the Administration's proposal to double the budgets of key physical science programmes over ten years, while providing more money than requested for other science agencies. And it is poised to pass legislation authorizing the approach called for in the Gathering Storm.
What needs to happen next is one of those rare, but essential periods when Congress is perplexed enough to scan the full horizon for new diagnoses and prescriptions — including some that are yet to be formulated. The next consensus will have to rely less on a reflexive turn to politically safe, time-honoured ideas if the United States is to keep enough high-value jobs to sustain its standard of living.

You can read the collected Nature columns of David Goldston here, and hear him talk about the intersection of science and politics on the Nature podcast.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 15, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The articles that have been downloaded most often, in PDF format, from the Nature website in July, are listed below and can be accessed online from this page. The chart does not rank the quality, scientific significance or citation impact of the content. However, it may bring articles to your attention that you might not have otherwise noticed. We hope you enjoy them.

Continue reading "Nature's July top ten PDF downloads" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | 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)

There is a succinct and useful post at the addictive FemaleScienceProfessor blog entitled "The First Two Lines", in which FSP advises a student on how to give a good presentation.

"When my students are preparing presentations for conferences, I always tell them that the first 2-3 lines are particularly critical and I want them to think carefully about how they will introduce the talk. After the first few lines, the rest of a talk is typically straightforward (data, interpretation, conclusions), but the first few lines are where you either grab the audience or you don't. This is when you lay out why the work is interesting and important, and why anyone should care about the rest of what you have to say. In fact, it's a lot like writing a proposal."

Read the rest of the advice here. If you are inexperienced or unsure about giving a scientific presentation, or indeed writing a paper, I think you'll find it very helpful. Certainly the student who received the advice found it so, according to the comments to FSP's blog post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 30, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientists tend to complain that Congress rarely pays heed to what they have to say. But the issues are often as much about values as they are science, says David Goldston in his monthly Nature column Party of One (Nature 448, 119; 2007) .

"For many US scientists, the demise of the OTA [Office of Technlogy Assessment] has taken on inordinate symbolic significance. Scientists often suggest that in eliminating the agency, Congress chose a path of wilful ignorance that has led to poor decisions over the past decade. But has the absence of the OTA really hampered policy-making? Not particularly. Congress is awash with information provided by scientific groups, and it still formally seeks scientific guidance — particularly from the National Academies, which arguably have more prestige and credibility on Capitol Hill than the OTA had. And reports from the academies can make a difference. For example, the 2006 report on the palaeoclimate record, specifically on the 'hockey-stick' graph (see Nature 441, 1032–1033; 2006), helped quieten congressional debate over whether recent decades have been unusually warm.
Other reports have been equally prominent, if less decisive. The academies' 2002 report on fuel-economy standards has become the bible on that subject, although, like the Bible, it is quoted by all sides. That's partly because of the report itself — it concluded, for example, that the standards had cost lives in the past but that, because of new technology, they needn't in the future — but it is also because scientific information does not usually point ineluctably to a single conclusion on policy.
Policy-making needs to be informed by both science and values. Is stem-cell research ethical? That's not a science question, although one needs to understand the potential of stem-cell research to answer it. Should clean-air standards be strengthened? That is not a science question, but one needs to know what researchers think the health impacts of dirtier air would be."

See here for the full article (subscription or site licence required).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 26, 2007
Categories: Communication, Education, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The July Editorial in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (14, 569; 2007) reports on an interesting and diverse Cold Spring Harbor meeting on "clocks and rhythms" that reminds us of the importance of supporting basic science research.

From the editorial: "many presentations began with an image of the Earth seen from space, half shrouded in nocturnal shadow (no, this wasn't a sci-fi convention). Another unusual feature was the curious mix of scientists—biochemists, microbiologists, fly and mouse geneticists, plant biologists, neurobiologists, clinical researchers—all mingling and discussing their work. Even for a seasoned conference-attending editor, this was quite a remarkable gathering.

Read on at the NSMB journal page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 23, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a post entitled Copy-Editing and Citation-Linking , Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network compares the version of an article finalised by the author, and the version edited by the journal. An extract is provided here:

"Two recent articles in Learned Publishing, the journal published by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), have highlighted the issue. The first, by Wates and Campbell, looked at the changes made in copy-editing in articles published in a series of Blackwell journals. The second, by Goodman, Dowson and Yaremchuk, is in the current issue of Learned Publishing, but also, interestingly, through the University of Arizona’s repository. I have not tried to compare the two versions. It would be interesting to do so, not least because they found that as a result of publishers’ copy-editing “there were a number of differences between author-final and published versions that were ‘confusing’ and that sometimes the publisher version and sometimes the author version was the more confusing”.......
In an editorial ....Sally Morris also comments on the two articles, and lays considerable stress on the value that the publisher adds in the checking and formatting of references and the provision of citation linking via CrossRef..... the need to add DOI links is a relatively new one which I gather relatively few authors actually do themselves (and I was not guided so to do by the publishers of either of my recent articles)."
See here for the full article.
We would be interested to hear further feedback from authors about the editing and web services they received from Nature journals and NPG journals, to add to the regular "author experience" surveys we conduct.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 19, 2007
Categories: Author services, Citation analysis, Communication | Permalink | Comments (1)

Udo Hahn and colleagues add to the discussion "making data available to all" by describing the benefits of automated, as opposed to manual, structured abstracts (see Nature 448, 130; 2007). They write:

Mark Gerstein and colleagues in Correspondence (Nature 447, 142; 2007) propose that journals should require authors to manually provide structured abstracts to facilitate text mining of biological information. There are three main difficulties in implementing such a proposal.
First, life-science terminologies are huge, diversified and complex. This means that identifying the correct content descriptors is almost impossible for inexperienced users of online term repositories. For example, Medical Subject Headings , the International Classification of Diseases and Gene Ontology are high-volume — tens of thousands of terms — and structurally complicated terminological systems, each with different design rationales, naming conventions and principles of structural organization. Even human indexers, search specialists and database curators with routine exposure to these resources have to invest much effort in understanding and keeping track of their content as well as terminological updates and revisions. Will scientists find the time to dive so deeply into this alien terminological territory, and be capable of finding exactly what they are looking for?
Second, the coverage of existing terminologies for the many subdomains in the life sciences is incomplete. The two main terminological umbrella systems for the life sciences, the Unified Medical Language System and the Open Biomedical Ontologies, contain impressive numbers of individual terminologies, but their coverage of the life sciences is still fragmentary and suffers from varying depths of description. The size of the terminology gap is likely to be even more pronounced if authors were required to encode relational descriptions, for example indicating a binding relation between two specific proteins, P1 and P2, by Bind(P1, P2), because such a vocabulary has not yet been determined.
Third, the quality and reliability of author-supplied content descriptions is quite a hurdle. Even if the first and second problems were to be solved, human indexers, even professional ones, are liable to error as well as to the possibility of intrinsic subjective bias (M. E. Funk and C. A. Reid Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 71, 176–183; 1983). This is not to say that authors of a structured abstract would consciously cheat, but rather there is a grey area of overstatement and overestimation of one's own results in a highly competitive scientific environment. If authors' structured entries were subject to peer review together with the submitted article, this would be more work for the reviewers as well as the authors — neither of them likely to have been trained as terminologists.
As an alternative, we suggest automated procedures for knowledge capture in which neither the authors nor the reviewers are in the loop. There has been significant progress in automatic text mining and information extraction as well as in the methodological foundations of life-science terminologies in terms of ontologies, knowledge representation languages and semantic encoding standards. These efforts in automating the generation of content descriptions and linking them directly to biological databases are strongly experimentally founded and would help to avoid additional workload and subjectivity — see, for example, the BioCreAtIvE competition results. Once automated mechanisms for content analysis are applied, this also increases the coverage and the recency of the literature entered into biological databases, as human input is complemented by computationally generated content.
Udo Hahn, Joachim Wermter
Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Rainer Blasczyk & Peter A. Horn
Hannover Medical School, Germany

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 17, 2007
Categories: Communication, Data availability | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nature Reports Stem Cells is an interactive forum for stem cell scientists and other stakeholders to communicate about the research, policy, ethics, business and medicine of stem cell science. And it's all free! This month you can read about the editors' trip to Cairns, Australia, to cover the year’s biggest stem cell conference, held by the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). You can read about the research trends, plus scientists’ thoughts on where the field is headed. See our conference overview here. Also check out our ISSCR entries on our blog, The Niche.
Top stories of the month include:
Reprogramming expert makes a lab in two countries
Learn how Shinya Yamanaka plans to crisscross an ocean to unravel pluripotency. See what's bringing him to San Francisco's Gladstone and keeping him at Kyoto University.
Scientific society seeks smart growth
Read the commentary by Leonard Zon, past president of ISSCR, in which he describes how stem cell science has gone global, and how moving off North America spurs collaboration. The ISSCR has enlisted the man who brought billions to California stem cell science
Benefits of stem-cell engraftment may not last
Cardiac researchers report artifacts and transient improvements in animal models.
Read also about the powerful potential of pericytes collected from human adult tissues and how old, misoriented stem cells go dormant in Drosophila.
Asian-Pacific stem cell scientists discuss regional network
Learn about and participate in plans to share human and material resources across the region.
Read information normally kept from public view
See peer reviewers' thoughts on a Nature paper describing a surprising origin of blood
And read a theological argument in favour of chimaera research.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 13, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (1)

Would like to meet | eG weekly | EducationGuardian.co.uk

Nature Network is featured in the Guardian Unlimited this week (see link above). "Welcome to Facebook for professors, postdocs and PhDers in the sciences - otherwise known as Nature Network" , states the article. Although the Guardian reporter, Jessica Shepherd, can't resist leading with some of the more imaginative possibilities of the network, notably romantic ones, the article provides a good summary of the service, including this quote from Matt Brown, Editor of the London part of the site:

"Traditionally scientists have met, collaborated and swapped ideas through conferences and the pages of scholarly journals," says Brown. "These can be time consuming and rely to some extent on serendipity. Our vision for Nature Network is that every scientist in the world will have a personal profile on the site. Likeminded people and potential collaborators could then be easily found through a tagging system. Ideas can be discussed in the forums. Who knows, many years from now, traditional activities such as writing an academic paper could be peer-reviewed online."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 04, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this post on Nascent, NPG's web publishing and science blog, Timo Hannay provides a draft of his recent article in STM news : Nascent: Foo and beyond. The whole section is worth reading (and there is a good graphic of the opportunities provided by the "scientific web"), but here is an excerpt:

"The idea that everyone can now do their own publishing, making publishers superfluous, is misguided. But publishers do need to adapt. Online communities don't just happen, they require initiators, motivators, organisers, moderators, summarisers and guides. They also need trust systems based on user identification and reputation. In many ways, these, too, are traditional publishing roles, but they require new skills. Writers and editors now need to double as moderators and hosts. Publishers need to become adept at mitigating gaming and spamming of their systems, and at monetizing web traffic rather than selling subscriptions. On top of that, they need to become better at cooperating — with each other and with other organisations outside the industry. This particularly applies to online interoperability (even horror of horrors, with competitors), which is a positive-sum game that can benefit all participants. CrossRef has blazed a trail in this area, and we should build in its success.
Above all, publishers need to be leading the online charge, not following the scientists we serve. We are the information dissemination experts, so if we aren't pushing the boundaries and testing what's possible in this new world then we're not merely missing out, we're also not doing our jobs. Cynics will point out that most apparent 'opportunities' are a long way from turning a profit, and many probably never will. They're right. Do any of the STM projects I've mentioned above make a lot of money? No. But are they representative of the future of scientific communication, and do they provide a platform on which to build information businesses of the future? You'd better believe it."

In a similar vein, Alex Palazzo of The Daily Transcript blog wrote about Nature Publishing Group's "game plan" as he calls it, regarding science publishing and web "2.0" (the social, interactive web). The post arose from Alex's attendance at Nature Network Boston's pub night. This post, and the lively set of comments accompanying it, range over the the topic of the value of publishing in a journal, "open access" publication, and whether the unit of publication will become the paper itself rather than the journal in which it is published.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 02, 2007
Categories: Access, Communication, Publishing, Quality measures | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 29, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

From this week's issue of Nature, Correspondence page (Nature 447, 908; 2007).

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

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 22, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

Nature Precedings, as its title implies, enables researchers to share, discuss and cite their early findings on the web -- all free access. It provides a lightly moderated and relatively informal channel for scientists to disseminate information, especially recent experimental results and emerging conclusions. In this sense, it is designed to complement traditional peer-reviewed journals, allowing researchers to make informal communications such as conference papers or presentations more widely available and enabling them to be formally cited. This, in turn, allows them to solicit community feedback and establish priority over their results or ideas.
Covering biology, medicine, chemistry and the Earth sciences, the site will host a wide range of research documents, including preprints, unpublished manuscripts, white papers, technical reports, supplementary findings, posters and presentations. All submissions are reviewed by staff curators and accepted only if they are considered to be legitimate scientific contributions. No judgement is to be made about the quality or uniqueness of the work, and submissions are not subjected to peer review before they are released. Because of this, accepted submissions will usually be published within one working day, and no charge is made to either authors or readers.
Nature Precedings makes use of social features such as tagging, voting and commenting to facilitate the discovery of especially interesting and relevant content. As well as an RSS feed for recent submissions, there are separate RSS feeds available for 13 broad subject categories, so scientists can keep an eye on newly uploaded content in their own fields.
We anticipate that the content will be mirrored by academic partner organizations, several of whom have been involved with Nature Publishing Group in developing this service. As well as allowing it to become incorporated into the substantial information hubs already provided by these organizations, this federated approach will also help to ensure the long-term availability of the content — and act as a practical guarantee of the Nature Publishing Group's pledge not to charge readers for access.
Find out more about Nature Precedings here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 18, 2007
Categories: Communication, Partners, 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)

The first e-newsletter of Nature Reports Stem Cells, out now and free (sign up at the home page), provides the latest news and information about research, policy, ethics, business and medicine of stem cell science. The editors' welcome letter is here, and the associated blog, The Niche, is here.
A selection of this week's stories:
Skin Cells to Stem Cells
Recent research promises embryonic stem cells, minus eggs and embryos. Three labs transformed mouse skin cells (fibroblasts) into cells that seem to pass muster as embryonic stem cells. If it works for humans, a simple biopsy could yield patient-specific sources of neurons, cardiomyocytes, or any other useful cell type. Read an interview with Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist who found the transforming recipe.
Man or Beast? Man and Beast!
Ian Wilmut is Nature Reports Stem Cells’ first Featured Editor. This week, he writes about how part-human part-animal cells could produce some of the most powerful tools yet for unraveling human disease, he talks about current research that excites him most, and he remembers Dolly.
Eggless cloning
Unfertilized eggs have long been the limiting resource for attempts to make genetically tailored human embryonic stem cells. If a new technique for cloning mice from fertilized eggs works in humans, they might not be necessary. This week Monya Baker writes about whether the new procedure for cloning using zygotes instead of oocytes changes the ethical terrain, and also tries to define just what eggs have that makes reprogramming work. Read an interview with Davor Solter, a scientist who, decades ago, convinced researchers that eggs were essential.
And now for something completely different
For a really fresh perspective on the technique for cloning from zygotes, read this fortnight’s Inside the Paper. Pioneered by Nature Reports Stem Cells, this new form of science reporting posts edited discussions between authors and reviewers from the peer review process. Learn what the foremost experts in the field had to say about a paper’s context, strengths, and shortcomings. See what the authors saw, and read their responses. (And you can add your own comments on The Niche.)
See all this, and more, at Nature Reports Stem Cells -- and it is all free.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 13, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wellcome collection's Medicine Life + Art opens on 21 June in London. The venue is open every day, with galleries open from Tuesdays to Sundays. Exhibitions and events are free. There is also a library, conference centre and club, as well as a cafe and the inevitable shop.
The exhibitions present a rich picture of the cultural and social implications of medicine past and present, through three galleries including exhibits and artworks from Henry Wellcome's original collection, as well as current medical topics such as obesity, genetics and malaria through the eyes of scientists, artists and patients. The opening programme includes exhibitions about the heart as well as sleeping and dreaming, examining each subject from a scientific, cultural and social perspective.
For more information and details of how to get there, see the Wellcome collection website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 12, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and Nature Medicine present Translational Approaches to Cardiovascular Research, from 14 to 16 October 2007, in Capri, Italy. This conference will focus on new genetic and molecular mechanisms that underlie cardiovascular disease, as well as on new diagnostic tools and innovative therapies. The goal of the meeting is to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration between academic and clinical researchers in the area.
See the conference website for more details of the programme, accommodation details and to download a free poster.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 11, 2007
Categories: Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee Unplugged: Semantic Web better than APIs for data access

Via Berlind's Testbed blog, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world-wide web, received the 2007 lifetime achievement award of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange in Boston on 5 June. After the reception to honour his achievement, "Sir Tim" (as David Berlind calls him) answered questions about the semantic web, data access and standards. The session is captured on video at the link above.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 08, 2007
Categories: Access, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

The IPSEN Foundation, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Immunology are pleased to announce the first Emergence & Convergence mini-symposium, which will focus on small RNAs in development, immunology and cancer, on 3 October 2007 at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York.
The mini-symposium will address what we know and what we have yet to understand about the molecular intricacies of the processing and production of these small non-coding RNAs, as well as the mechanistic basis underlying their physiological functions.
Speakers at this one-day meeting work in a broad array of scientific fields but share a common interest in small RNAs. The aim is to facilitate discussion and collaboration among diverse scientific disciplines to further our understanding of the function of these enigmatic RNAs.
More information is available at the conference website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 07, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

south by southwest festivals conferences

At the link above is a podcast of a session from the SXSW (South by South-West) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, held in March. From the conference website: "New publishing technologies challenge the traditional structure of peer-reviewed scientific journals. For hundreds of years the "article" has been the primary vehicle for conveying scientific information - but semantic markup, tagging and wiki are reconstructing scientific publications into a flexible and evolving concept." The panel looked at the social and legal implications of "Web 2.0" and the "Semantic Web" as they impact science and scientific knowledge. The moderator was John Wilbanks, Executive Director of Science Commons, Creative Commons, and one of the invited speakers was Timo Hannay, Director of Web Publishing of the Nature Publishing Group. The podcast has just been uploaded to the SXSW site, and is freely available by going to the link at the top of this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 02, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oncogenes and Human Cancer: The Next 25 Years. Nature and Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncolgicas (the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre) are pleased to announce a conference focusing on the future of cancer research on the 25th anniversary of the isolation of oncogenes from human tumours, from 3 to 6 October 2007, in Madrid. The isolation of cancer genes from human tumours represented a landmark in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms responsible for human neoplasia. We now have a more detailed understanding of the molecular changes within transformed cells and how these and the tumour microenvironment influence cancer development. Oncogenes and Human Cancer: The Next 25 Years will emphasize future directions for cancer research and treatment.
For organisers, venue and further details, visit the conference website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 01, 2007
Categories: Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the editors of Nature China: Join some of the Nature journal editors for a day of presentations on "how to publish in Nature journals". The meeting is on 11 June at the Shanghai Information Center for Life Sciences Hall, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Registration is free. The line-up includes: David Swinbanks, Publishing Directorof Nature Publishing Group; Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature;Terry Sheppard, Chief Editor of Nature Chemical Biology; Rachel Won, an Associate Editor of Nature Photonics; Felix Cheung, Associate Editor of Nature China; and Xiaolin Zhang, head of AstraZeneca Innovation Center, China.

For more details and to book your place, send the organisers an email. A second meeting will be held on 9 June 2007 at the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, but registration is full.

The Nature China website highlights the best research coming out of mainland China and Hong Kong, providing scientists from around the world with a convenient portal into publications drawn from across all scientific disciplines. Each week, our editors select the best published research and provide a summary of the results. By organizing this research into a comprehensive, regularly updated, one-stop web portal, we hope to help you quickly reach the resources you need to study, and to keep you up-to-date with the most significant research coming out of mainland China and Hong Kong.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 30, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are in striking distance of London on the evening of Tuesday 19 June and want to find out more about this Second Nature in Second Life that you keep reading and hearing about, then please attend a free event, "Science in Virtual Worlds", in association with the Royal Institution and Nature Network.

It’s when you’re flying next to a Saturn V rocket or climbing around a protein molecule that you realise the potential for science in virtual worlds. In an online place like Second Life, you can do things that are dangerous, expensive or downright impossible in real life (or ‘meatspace’). That’s why scientists have begun using such places to conference, teach, build and experiment, in fields from astrophysics to neuroscience, chemistry to psychology. Fancy a stroll through a four-dimensional house? Log on and do it in Second Life.

Online worlds are social spaces too, and that makes them attractive to social scientists. How do we develop meaningful relationships with people we’ve never seen or heard? How do those with autism or schizophrenia fare? Do gender roles or moral codes alter? How does information travel and how can there be economies, uprisings and fads? What are the ethics of studying the denizens of these worlds — are they different from real world citizens? Join Aleks Krotoski , Dave Taylor and Nature Publishing Group's Joanna Scott at the Apple Store on Regent Street for a free event on how science is expanding into virtual life.

Venue: The Apple Store, 235 Regent Street, London W1B 2ET: See the Royal Institution website for more details.
See this previous Nautlius post about opportunities to present your work virtually on the Second Nature island.
This previous Nautlius post describes more about Second Nature and Second Life.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 29, 2007
Categories: Communication, Partners, Public and media, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

prospect : how headlines affect science jobs : Naturejobs
Paul Smaglik writes:
A website is often the first point of contact people have with a laboratory — a sort of digital window into the workings of the place. Most lab websites articulate research programmes and give names and contacts of the lab's members. Good sites also provide ways to seek collaborations. And excellent ones allow potential future members to see what past and present lab participants have gone on to do.

If I was searching for a new lab, I'd want to know that the previous members have published under the principal investigators and have gone on to positions that I'm interested in exploring — whether in academia, industry or government, both on and off the bench. I'd also want to know about lab culture. Do the members interact both professionally and socially? Do they have some sense of humour and a culture of cooperation?

To explore these 'best practices', graduate student, stem-cell scientist and blogger Attila Csordás is hosting a laboratory website competition on his blog Partial Immortalization. Csordás' thesis is that few lab websites take full advantage of the medium's technology and don't give visitors the information they want about a group's science and culture. "Am I alone with my opinion that most academic laboratory web pages simply do not meet any advanced, current, dynamic web standards, although this would be crucial for them?" Csordás writes in his blog. He provides a few examples of sites in his discipline that come close, but is challenging life-science labs around the world to share their best efforts. Taking on this challenge will help labs sell their science — and might also attract promising young scientists to their groups.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 23, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Geological Society of London, one of the world's oldest national scientific and professional societies for earth scientists, is opening up its archive of published material free to anyone for four weeks from 17 May to 18 June.
The Lyell Collection represents the digitized content of the society's extensive range of publications, covering journal and book articles from the mid 1800s to the present. The Lyell Collection was created to mark the Geological Society of London's 200th anniversary, and is one of the largest integrated collections of online earth science literature.
Although a subscription will be required for full access from June 18, many aspects of the service will remain entirely free for public use. This includes a sophisticated search functionality, access to summaries and abstracts and e-mail alerts about new content as it is added.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 21, 2007
Categories: Access, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Are you a scientist with some fascinating results to discuss? Have you just published in Nature and are burning to tell the world about your new work? Would you like to see what it is like to give a virtual talk? We are looking to try out some events in our amphitheatre and meeting area at Second Nature in Second Life .

If you are interested in trying out a talk, presentation or question–answer seminar in this novel format, please do get in touch with us. Some of the events that have previously taken place in Second Life include:

•Dr Eric Chaisson, Director of the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University, author of the book Hubble Wars, talking about his work and answering questions from the audience.
•What can the world's most powerful computers do now? Rez Tone, who works with IBM's Blue Gene research project, explained his membrane protein science effort, including questions and discussion.
•The Spaceflight museum held a presentation about BLAST (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope), a scientific ballooning project dedicated to understanding the origins of the Universe.
•Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, gave a talk entitled "Upgrading Humans: Why not ?”

If you would like to participate in this cutting-edge initiative, please contact Joanna Scott to suggest a topic and to find out more about this strange but exciting new format. You can contact her in the usual world directly by email or find her in Second Life, where she is known as Joanna Wombat. I would also be happy to forward any emails sent to her via the Nature journals authors' email address, or you can drop a comment to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 15, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Attila Csordas of the biotechnology blog "Partial Immortalization" reviews Nature Network, the social site for scientists. He writes:

At this point I am strongly supportive of NN as I embraced its core mission a long time ago: “Connecting scientists at a global and local level.”

In his article, Attila compares the Nature Network to LinkedIn, a site for job seekers in the business, IT and technology industries. Although Nature Network is smaller, it is much younger, and has a broader range of operation:

According to the numbers, Nature Network is currently a very small but organically growing strong online community. This is exactly the most exciting period in the life cycle of every forming network, so it is a guaranteed experience and challenge to join and participate - now at least - for people like me, who are eager to test and modulate every flexible beta product.

If you are interested in participating in a "Web 2.0" social network for scientists, then it is worth reading this review, which investigates the benefits and pitfalls for scientists of making Nature Network their main networking site. The verdict? "From the user-scientist point of view, NN is good for scientists hungry for all level of scientific information and contacts."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 14, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Nature's Authors page (Nature 447, xi; 2007):
It's one thing to review a book about events in your scientific field; it's quite another to find yourself a character in the story. Per Ahlberg, a palaeontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, says he experienced "a dislocating feeling" while reviewing Swimming in Stone: The Amazing Gogo Fossils of the Kimberley by John Long. Ahlberg found that he had a "walk-on part" in the story about the finding, excavation and analysis of a treasure trove of fish fossils in an Australian barrier reef that is now above ground. Ahlberg's feeling of displacement increased when he came across "a rather unflattering photo of me with Mike Coates in the field".
Perhaps because of his proximity to the story, Ahlberg enjoyed the review process. "The pleasure of reviewing a book like this one is that not only is the subject familiar to me, but I've been to the locality and I know many of the people who featured in it." Despite some minor quibbles about details, Ahlberg was able to give the book his seal of approval. "I didn't have to throw the thing at the wall in frustration," he smiles.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 10, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scientists have a crucial role in educating the public about the importance of science if we are to have any hope of facilitating future innovation. A few notable scientists have taken this duty to heart, altering their career tracks to promote science and education. So states Nature Structural & Molecular Biology in the May issue's editorial (14, 353; 2007)

But what makes one place more conducive to innovation than another? Certainly money invested in science and education is an important part of the equation, but other factors are equally critical. The quality of education the next generation receives is essential to give them the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation. That can be achieved only with higher levels of success across disciplines. The ability to recruit and keep the world's most talented people is also of key importance. By not giving visas to leading foreign scientists and thus sending foreign students to other countries, the US has severely limited the potential for scientific exchange in this country. Finally, it is important to create an environment where people are encouraged to think creatively and where risk-taking is rewarded.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 04, 2007
Categories: Careers, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is the full text of an Editorial in today's Nature (447, 1-2 ;3 May 2007), which is freely available. For further details of the Nature journals' policy on fraud and fabrication, see the Author and Reviewers' website. Comments on this editorial are welcome.

The use of electronic laboratory notebooks should be supported by all concerned.

Too often when errors or cases of fraud occur in science, the lab data required to reconstruct what happened have gone astray. And too often, the co-authors failed to exert due scrutiny on their colleagues' activities in order to prevent such misfortunes. The damage to personal and institutional reputations can be severe and, in rare high-profile cases, public trust can be eroded.

It is therefore in everyone's interest to pre-empt such cases as far as possible. Electronic laboratory notebooks offer a partial solution — and have other advantages too. This is despite the fact that maximizing their benefits will require a change in culture that many researchers will no doubt initially resist.

Continue reading "Share your lab notes" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 03, 2007
Categories: Communication, Data availability, Ethics, Policies, Publications | Permalink | Comments (4)

Following years of development, electronic paper is now entering ebooks, mobile phones and signs, and, as Duncan Graham-Rowe reports in the current issue of Nature Photonics (1, 248 - 251; 2007), is starting to gain the market acceptance that it has long strived for. Will it be good enough for your research notes or next scientific paper? Various of the new display technologies now coming onto the market are checked out in this useful Nature Photonics round-up. Duncan Graham-Rowe concludes: "Ultimately, however, putting aside the novelty of having a flexible display, the real innovation with electronic paper will be the viewing quality in these screens. For many consumers the simple ability to read the electronic screen in bright sunlight without frowning will be more than enough to convince them."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 01, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Brian", a graduate student in geology, at his blog ...Or Something..., reviews science podcasts. Under the microscope are Nature's weekly podcast, Science Friday, Science Times, Science Talk and PopSci's podcast. Here's what Brian writes about the Nature podcast:

This is one of the longer ones at about 25-30 minutes and is published once a week. This podcast sums up 3 or 4 of the prominent articles that are reported in the weekly journal Nature. The format is typically a phone interview with one or more of the authors of a study in that week's issue. This is the most technical of all the podcasts listed here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry Gee, in his review of the book The Discovery of the Hobbit by M. Morwood and P. Van Oosterzee (Nature 446, 979-980;26 April 2007), describes what it was like to read what seemed to be the equivalent of a description of the discovery of a unicorn:

"Many manuscripts received by Nature are full of the confidence of scientists who know precisely what they have found and why it is important. But a paper that landed unannounced on my desk on 3 March 2004 was surprising, not only for the extraordinary discovery that it reported, but for the matter-of-fact, almost muted, tones in which it was described. Reading between the lines, it seemed as if the discoverers of Sundanthropus floresianus weren't entirely clear in their own minds about what manner of unicorn they had unearthed."

He goes on to recount: "The referees responded with one accord. To be sure, the creature was strange, but the strangeness might be a consequence of its size. The skull, though, was clearly that of a member of our own genus, Homo. In addition, one referee commented specifically on the specific name, floresianus, noting that generations of students would dub it 'flowery anus'. The authors duly changed the generic and specific name to Homo floresiensis and, after several iterations, that was the name attached to the fossil when the discovery was published in Nature on 28 October 2004."
See the complete book review here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 27, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

To celebrate its fifteenth birthday year, Nature Genetics, in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, announces a conference covering research strategies progressing from genome-wide association studies to untangling the mechanisms of common diseases. The Genomics of Common Diseases conference will take place from 7 to 10 July 2007 at The Wellcome Trust Conference Centre, The Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK.
The availability of genome-wide association studies has started to redefine the genetic architecture of common diseases, and over the next three to five years will reveal new susceptibility genes for a wide range of these disorders. This is shifting the strategic emphasis of common disease genetics, from identification of susceptibility genes to understanding of mechanisms and potential applications. The following topics are on the programme:
>The state of the art in genome-wide association studies across a range of common diseases
>The transition from knowledge of susceptibility genes to understanding of mechanism
>Population genetics, genome evolution and structural variation in common disease genetics
>The usefulness of risk prediction based on genetic and other available tests
>Ethical, legal and social implications of personal genetic information.

In the meantime, don't forget the Question of the Year: What would you do if it became possible to sequence the equivalent of a full human genome for only $1,000? So far, 28 genetics researchers have provided their answers on the Question of the Year website. More answers will be added until October, so contact Nature Genetics if you work in this field and have your own suggestion.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 27, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

While on the subject of neuroscience, this week's (26 April) free podcast from Nature, "A new study of old brains", features an analysis of two damaged brains, preserved in a museum since the nineteenth century, which could force neuroscientists to rethink the area where language resides in the brain. Two brains in which Paul Broca, the French anatomist and surgeon, originally identified 'Broca's area' -- the brain's speech-processing centre -- have been scanned using magnetic resonance imaging. Oddly, the new scans show that Broca's original patients didn't have damage in Broca's area after all. Read the full story at news@nature.com.
Also discussed in this week's podcast are new studies reported in Nature on lowering inhibitions in addiction; wing shape in swifts; iron and carbon sequestration; the perfect pint; and how invasive species gain ground.
An archive of Nature podcasts and their transcripts, all freely available, is on this web page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 26, 2007
Categories: Author benefits, Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reuben Clements, Navjot Sodhi, David Bickford, David Lohman and Mary Posa write:

The explanatory power of videos has been harnessed by at least one online scientific journal explicating molecular biology protocols (Journal of Visualized Experiments). YouTube , which has arguably become the world's online video-sharing nexus, is a free website containing more than 70 million video clips and commanding a monthly viewership of around 20 million people. Scientists should therefore consider broadcasting environmental messages through this pipeline, which connects to an audience that primarily consists of impressionable 12- to 17-year olds.

The concept of YouTube appears well-suited to improve online eco-literacy. An inexhaustible supply of short documentary clips that are viewable anytime could fare better at public outreach, as opposed to full-length versions shown at fixed times on television networks. The video commentary function on YouTube also allows scientists to contribute informed opinions.

YouTube's connectivity is another powerful feature. Videos with similar themes can be 'tagged' to one another or hyperlinked to environmental weblogs to deliver stronger messages, or even act a platform for investigative journalism, where anonymous contributors are relatively safe from the repercussions of whistle-blowing. As an example, we uploaded a video documenting deforestation within Lore Lindu National Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia .

Despite its frivolity, the most viewed clip on YouTube has attracted more than 44 million views. If the scientific community can contribute expert opinions and persuasive videos on a regular basis, YouTube could be an effective conduit to foster a deeper understanding of our roles as environmental custodians.

Reuben Clements, Navjot Sodhi, David Bickford, David Lohman and Mary Posa
Department of Biological Sciences,
National University of Singapore

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 25, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (3)

Pamela Silver writes in Correspondence this week (Nature 446, 856; 2007):
Mary Ann Holmes and Suzanne O'Connell comment on the lack of women in the academic ranks in your Recruiters article "Leaks in the pipeline" (Nature 446, 346; 2007). In the same issue, advertisements for two Nature conferences illustrate part of the problem — the poor representation of women speakers at scientific meetings.
The Nature conference "Oncogenes and human cancer: the next 25 years" features 36 speakers, of whom four are women. The "Days of molecular medicine: emerging technologies and cancer biology" conference, co-sponsored by Nature Medicine, features 19 speakers, of whom two are women. There are many accomplished women scientists in the areas covered by these meetings. There is no obvious reason why the number of women speakers should be so low.
The representation of women speakers at many meetings remains dismally poor and thus may contribute to the lack of success of women in academia.
However, this is a problem that could be easily remedied, if more attention were paid by organizers and the agencies that provide funding for meetings to the issue of whether qualified female speakers have been missed.

Pamela A. Silver
Harvard Medical School

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

Via Outsell/Insights, I read that the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers last week held its Book 2.01 Seminar in London as part of the London Book Fair. The event set out to examine where STM publishers are heading with their e-book strategies, and to look at where future developments might lead.
One of the speakers, Professor Martin Hofmann-Apitius, of the Fraunhofer Institut for Algorithms and Scientific Computing, talked about scientists´ use of book content and about the innovative applications his institution has produced to interpret chemical resonance structure diagrams in scanned text in a way that can then be used for experimentation.
There was discussion about making books available through routes that have traditionally been used by researchers to find journal articles. This year many more e-book chapters may start to be indexed by Pubmed, Scopus and other abstracting and indexing services, bringing together book and journal content where researchers can find and use it. "Good news for researchers", according to Outsell/Insights.
The Book 2.01 presentations are available from the association's website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 24, 2007
Categories: Communication, Publishing | Permalink | Comments (0)

What does a good laboratory homepage look like? Show me at least one! � Pimm - Partial immortalization

At the post above, Attila Csordás asks if he is alone in his opinion that most academic laboratory web pages simply do not meet any advanced, current, dynamic web standards, even though this is crucial for them. His view is that many laboratory web pages were set up by "scientists turned web geeks" (his expression! But I like it) some years ago and have never been updated to reflect "web 2.0" and its associated multimedia opportunities.

Attila's post above features four laboratory web pages that he thinks are good, so do go over and take a look. He's also initiated an unofficial competiton for the best lab web page, and has received many suggestions and comments. So if your institutional web page hasn't been updated for ages (which in this context means since about 2004), check out some of the examples on offer at Partial Immortalization (Attila's blog). You can add in your own nominations or get some creative ideas, or even both.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 20, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

A reminder that tickets are now on sale for the Royal Institution evening public lecture series on polymathy and science chaired by Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor of Nature, programme organized by Sara Abdulla, publisher of Macmillan Science books and of Nature Network. Do come – and please spread the word to others who might.
On Wednesday of this week, 18 April, John Whitfield will talk on D’ Arcy Wentworth Thompson: ‘The last man who read everything’ Wednesday's lecture follows from last month's talk by Andrew Robinson on Thomas Young: ‘The last man who knew everything’
These lectures will be followed by a debate on 16 May 'What happened to the polymaths?', about whether interdisciplinarity is alive, dead, possible, desirable, vice or virtue.
Venue: The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE
Tickets: www.rigb.org ; (+44) 0 20 7409 2992
Details: 7-8.30pm. £8/£5 Ri Members, RCS Fellows/Members and concessions. (The Royal Institution is on tour while its building undergoes a refurbishment.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 16, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nanotech 2007 conference, to be held in Santa Clara, California from 20 to 24 May 2007, is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative programme which will feature more than 700 technical presentation and 300 business presentations. Over 4,000 scientists and engineers attend and more than 300 companies and organizations exhibit and sponsor the event -- Nature Pubishing Group will be there. Top nanotechnology centres from around the world are featured and there will be an awards programme to honour leaders in small technology. Nanotech 2007 is coordinated with Cleantech 2007, a multi-sector conference on global sustainability addressing advancements in traditional technologies, emerging technologies and clean business practices.
Vinod Khosla, Silicon Valley icon and founder of Khosla Ventures, will deliver the keynote at Nanotech 2007 & Cleantech 2007, highlighting the interdependency of 'cleantech' and 'nanotech'. Mr Khosla was founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 04, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stay abreast of (and contribute to) the news, research and gossip unfolding at BIO International Convention through Nature Publishing Group’s interactive networking tools. Check out our conference blog, daily podcast, and the new Nature Network Boston website to see what we have to say and let us know what you think. Visit us from 7 to 9 May at BIO International Convention in Boston, booth 2522, or online.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 03, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cognitive Daily: CogDaily's blogroll; Encephalon
Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has collected together a list of the cognitive/neuroscience blogs that he reads regularly. See the link above for the collection.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 27, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interested in bioinformatics and computational biology? Need to know the basics to apply to your own research? Euan Adie, in his Nature Network blog FnL, highlights Bio::Blogs, "a freely available compilation of the best bioinformatics blogging from the past month, in easy to print PDF format". Euan writes:

It’s a good read and a gentle introduction to scientific blogging in general. The PDF is a relatively recent development but a welcome one – it means that you can print out all of the posts at once to read at your leisure. After downloading B::B you should check out Nodalpoint, the ‘by the people for the people’ bioinformatics group blog founded by Greg Tyrelle which has recently seen a resurgence of activity. Some of that activity has been focused on updating a list of blogs about computational biology which is worth going through to find good reads.

Bath optional.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 27, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Readers who enjoy listening to the regular Nature podcasts might be interested to read Open Culture: Podcasts Primer. As its title suggests, the article explains what a podcast is, how to download one via iTunes, rss or to your own media player; how to play, listen and even to make your own podcasts.

Nature provides a free podcast each week. The current edition highlights Kuiper belt collisions, the roots of flowering plants, Linnaeus’ legacy, the birth and death of photons and swarms of mini-quakes. The podcast is featured on the journal's home page, but if you go to NPG's podcast index, you'll also find subject-focused podcasts on stem cells, systems biology, neuroscience, chemistry, genetics and more.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 19, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Network is now live. Please log on and experiment, spread the word to your own scientific network, and contact us with any questions or suggestions. You can use the site to create personal profile pages to describe yourself and your research. You can form topic-based groups, contribute to forums, view and announce seminars and conferences, read news and browse local job listings.

We hope that the network will help scientists everywhere to identify like-minded researchers, hold online discussions, showcase their work via personal homepages, share information with groups (open or private), comment on content and tag it. Participation is free to all, requiring little more than www.nature.com registration. Like all Web 2.0 products, launch is the beginning, not the end, of the road, so user-driven upgrades will be added regularly from now on.

Nature Network will, we hope, stimulate and facilitate scientific communication and collaboration in innovative, flexible and forward-thinking ways. It should be especially appealing to postdocs and junior faculty.

Nature Network also features local hubs, offering all the global tools plus area news, features, blogs, jobs and events. The first local site is Nature Network Boston, which has been in beta version over the past eight months, and now containing new features. Nature Network Boston supports, celebrates and connects scientists in the city, with rich daily editorial coverage of Boston-area research and researchers, Boston bloggers, a calendar of Boston-area lectures, seminars and conferences and listings of Boston-area jobs for scientists. Coming in March: Nature Network London.

An early indicator of the potential of the Nature networks is shown by Michael Durney, a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, who has grown his Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy group on Nature Network Boston from less than 10 members to 40. Groups like Durney’s will continue to grow, and will become more international, at which point online data-sharing tools that NPG will provide, would start to become useful. The value of the networks lies in information about local organizations, research and events, ensuring relevancy for the user as well as allowing scientists attending conferences or visiting those areas for other reasons, to find local events and connect with like-minded researchers. We hope you'll use the network, and give us your opinion of it.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 26, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (1)

There has been some discussion in Nature's Correspondence section about the difficulty experienced by colour blind readers in interpreting colour figures.
Chris Miall of the University of Birmingham, UK, started the topic in his letter pointing out that a significant number of readers cannot distinguish red from green. He cited issue 7120 of Nature, which, he says, contains six figures whose only two colours are red and green.
John Runions, of Oxford Brookes University, UK, then pointed out that magenta and yellow, a combination apparently encouraged by some journals, are not a good combination either. From his letter: "Magenta and yellow in overlay produce 'almost white' — virtually indistinguishable from the yellow in tiny images. Red and green, the standard colour pair, produce yellow when overlaid, and this is very easy to interpret. I suggest that journals continue to publish these images in red/green, but that they make alternatively coloured images available online as supplementary information for readers who have impaired colour vision."
Last week, Joseph Ross of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle drew attention to an excellent website. From his letter:
"As a red-green colour–blind (deuteranope) scientist and graphic designer, I have long campaigned for figures to be accessible to an entire audience. I do so, in part, by leading seminars training my colleagues to create accessible figures.
One of the key resources I employ in this crusade is a website by Masataka Okabe and Kei Ito: 'How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to color-blind people'.
I strongly urge all authors to visit this site, which both describes the need for creating accessible images (including simulations of colour-blindness for those who are curious) and, more importantly, provides instructions for making figures comprehensible to everyone. This includes instructions on how to pseudo-colour images containing red and green fluorescent signals — one of the most hated types of graphic among people with colour-blindness. Authors will find it is surprisingly easy to accommodate the colour-blind when creating figures.
Anyone who needs to be convinced that making scientific images more accessible is a worthwhile task should consider that colour-blindness is common, affecting 5–10% of males. If your next grant or manuscript submission contains colour figures, what if some of your reviewers are colour-blind? Will they be able to appreciate your figures? Considering the competition for funding and for publication, can you afford the possibility of frustrating your audience? The solution is at hand."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 16, 2007
Categories: Communication, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group hosts several blogs, all of which can be directly reached from the left-hand sidebar here. These blogs all have their different goals, identities and readerships, but one of them, Methagora, is the most different -- so far. The journal Nature Methods has created an online space inviting readers' contributions, in particular comments on published papers. The site's name comes from the ancient Greek agora, and the journal plans for the site to become a public place where 'citizen readers' assemble and discuss important (methodological) matters. But is there much debate, in fact? From this month's Nature Methods Editorial, "Happy to take questions":

"But the uptake is slow. Of course, these are still early days, and many people may not even be aware of this forum—hence this editorial and upcoming promotion. Other similar initiatives, however, such as those ongoing at Cell and Nature Biotechnology, experience an equally scarce response. Particularly worrisome is the fact that the Nature Biotechnology initiative and one of the Methagora postings are seeking community feedback on papers that outline proposed reporting standards. Despite the potential impact that such standards, if adopted, would have on individual researchers, only a handful of the interested have taken the time to comment. This lackluster reaction makes us pause and speculate about scientists' motivations for the commenting activity."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 13, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pipes is a new application from Yahoo that lets the user "remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment". Although this is rather technically expressed, Pipes is a graphical environment for a specific type of programming that takes the form of a kind of flowchart. It is a browser-based application that lets the user input RSS feeds, then filter them for text, images or other data -- which the user can then process and merge with other feeds, making the output (another RSS feed) reusable for anybody. There are lots of good examples on the Pipes site.
A more detailed commentary on Pipes, calling the application "a milestone in the history of the Internet" can be found on O'Reilly Radar, but there are plenty of other analyses on many Internet sites and blogs.
Alf Eaton at Nature Publishing Group has already created a pipe of all the NPG blogs, by combining their RSS feeds and filtering by user-defined keywords. Have a try, at the link provided.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pCo8Tmy32xG5lPXzXqIxGw/

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 12, 2007
Categories: Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Special report : science career issues and alternative jobs for scientists : Naturejobs

"The nervous Japanese postdoc spent two weeks creating slides, 30 hours drafting a script and 44 hours rehearsing. Altogether, she spent one month away from the bench so that she would not disappoint her supervisors and colleagues during a short informal presentation, in English, before co-workers. Yet they remembered only the mistakes, she says.

Seasoned scientists also feel under pressure when speaking in English. Masahiko Takada at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience admits that, even after years of working in English, "I sometimes feel frustrated when I have to discuss research data with foreign scientists."

Language mastery, be it of one's native or adopted tongue, provides the communicative ease that says: "I am capable." In science, weak English hinders a successful career. Improve your English proficiency, and confidence will follow — or so the people of many non-English-speaking nations believe.

Concerns about the dominance of the English language in science are being raised around the world. Researchers in Germany and France, for example, are grumbling about the frustration of working and publishing in English — and, perhaps more surprisingly, so are those in nations that have typically been viewed as consumers of basic science, rather than contributors."

So writes Bonnie Lee La Madeleine of the RIKEN Brain Research Institute. Read the rest of this special report on the Nature website (subscription or site licence required).

Please let us know your own experiences and views, via the comments to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 07, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Research Library of the Signaling Gateway brings together all recent cell-signalling-related research published in the Nature Publishing Group journals. Divided up into subject categories or by date, you can be guaranteed to find what you are looking for. Here is a selection of the latest research published this week:
Transcription factor control of asymmetric cell divisions that establish the stomatal lineage.
Nature 445, 537-540 (1 February 2007).
Notch signal organizes the Drosophila olfactory circuitry by diversifying the sensory neuronal lineages.
Nature Neuroscience 10, 153-160 (2007).
The energy sensing LKB1-AMPK pathway regulates p27kip1 phosphorylation mediating the decision to enter autophagy or apoptosis.
Nature Cell Biology 9, 218 - 224 (2007).
The research library is one of the many ways in which Nature Publishing Group extends the reach of articles published in its journals. Discipline-specific areas on the nature.com site, varoius web focuses on the journals' websites, and many other collaborations between journals collect articles together in different combinations, which draws them to the attention not just to readers of the journal in which they were published, but to researchers using nature.com to find out what's hot in their field more generally.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 02, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tickets are now on sale for the Royal Institution evening public lecture series on polymathy and science, chaired by Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor of Nature. The programme is run by Sara Abdulla, Editor of Nature Networks and publisher of Macmillan Science books. All are welcome.
Two lectures on great polymaths in March and April will be followed by a debate in May about whether interdisciplinarity is alive, dead, possible, desirable, vice or virtue.

March 21: Andrew Robinson on Thomas Young: ‘The last man who knew everything’
April 18: John Whitfield on D’ Arcy Wentworth Thompson: ‘The last man who read everything’
May 16: Panel debate: What happened to the polymaths

Venue: The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE, UK.
Tickets: www.rigb.org ; (+44) 0 20 7409 2992
Details: 7-8.30 p.m. Price £8 (£5 for Ri Members, RCS Fellows/Members and concessions). You can book for all three of the Polymaths Series events at the special price of £20 (£12 Ri Members, RCS Fellows/Members and concessions).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 02, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Nature Podcast is a free weekly audio show that you can play through your computer. Every show features highlighted content from the week's edition of Nature, including interviews with the authors, and in-depth commentary and analysis from journalists covering science around the world. This week, hear about conserving the Amazon with a scientific SWAT team, redrawing the hydrological cycle from space, micro-organisms forming new relationships, and virtual quantum computing on chips. To subscribe to the Nature Podcast, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader, iTunes or your preferred media player:

http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/rss/nature.xml

An archive of Nature podcasts is available on the Nature Newsblog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 01, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

As part of an institutional site licence, Nature Publishing Group provides monthly reports that measure visits to all content on nature.com licenced to that institution. These reports are uploaded to the site licence administration account before the 15th of every month for the preceding month. The registered site license administrator is alerted by e-mail. For more details of the reports provided, please see the statistics page in the NPG Librarian gateway.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2007
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Network London, a free new website for science and scientists in London, will be launching in March 2007. We hope to make the Nature Network London scientific event listings, which will be regularly updated after Network London is launched, comprehensive. We are currently collecting a database of all scientific lecture and seminar listings, especially those at academic institutions, both in London and at those within a day's return journey to or from the city.

Please can you let us know about any lecture and seminar series you attend, and/or of which you are aware? You can contact us via email if you wish to include an attachment with calendars and topic lists, or drop a URL, together with any other relevant diary and contact information, in the comments to this post. You can also enquire further about Network London using this email address.

Many thanks for your help.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 16, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nobel Intent: How do we get scientists to do outreach?

John Timmer at Nobel Intent (link above) promotes the idea of "outreach faculty": people in an academic institution who could, proposes Dr Timmer, work in the institution's public affairs office to improve the quality of press releases and other often-muddled output; who would visit schools and other local community organizations; help to train graduate students so that they themselves will be better able to interact with the public, and so on.

The end result, writes Dr Timmer, would "provide benefits for the two most important constituencies—the institutions, which receive better outreach, and the departments that provide the faculty, which receive better-trained graduate students. Provided [ he adds, cynically but probably with reason ] that the academic community does not attach stigma to these positions, it can provide a rewarding experience for those inclined to become outreach faculty."

There is a discussion of these proposals in the comments section at Nobel Intent. We also welcome your views in the comments here. How can journals such as those published by Nature Publishing Group help in this process?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 14, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (1)

In today's Nature, Masao Ito and Thorsten Wiesel of the Human Frontier Science Program write in Correspondence about the lack of international visibility of many Japanese scientists, in that they are very difficult to find by search engines and indeed in publication databases. (The full text of the Correspondence is on the continuation sheet of this post.)
As a consequence, scientists in Japan and in other non-English speaking countries are less likely to be invited to participate in collaborative projects or to become reviewers, which deprives them of a full international experience.

The Correspondence authors advise scientists to construct internationally comprehensible web pages to make a scientist’s research interests, research group and publications immediately clear to anyone who visits the site. The homepage of such institutional websites must provide a clear option headed ‘research’, in the English language, that leads to a page summarizing the research in a style familiar to international visitors.

In many regions of the world, numerous scientists have similar or identical family names and initials, making literature searches in PubMed very difficult or impossible. Some concerted effort is necessary to resolve this problem — perhaps by the addition of laboratory codes, or a ‘zip code’ for the initials of individual scientists — to allow these scientists to compete fairly on the international level.

We welcome suggestions from readers, which can be made by writing a comment to this post.

Continue reading "Web visibility" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 14, 2006
Categories: Communication | Permalink | Comments (6)