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)

Each year since 1951, young researchers and Nobel laureates have gathered on the shores of Lake Constance for a unique scientific conference. In 2009 the meeting was dedicated to chemistry, and laureates and students all came away enriched by their experiences. Martin Chalfie, one of the three recipients of the 2008 Nobel prize in Chemistry, reports what they learned from each other in the November issue of Nature Chemistry (1, 586-587; 2009) He writes:
"From their reading or from simply listening to my talk, the students generated a large number of fascinating questions. They wanted to know details of the experiments and they wanted to discuss potential future experiments. Conclusions about my research that had taken me years to realize (and which I have not written about or described in my talk) were instantly suggested by several of the students at the session. Seeing their excitement and quickness was humbling, but also invigorating.
The meeting allowed the students (as well as the laureates) to broaden their horizons, to have a chance to meet, exchange ideas, and learn about new areas of research from investigators from all over the world (the conference participants came from 67 different countries). The word 'exchange' is important here, because I don't believe that the real benefits were associated with hearing advice from a bunch of older scientists who had been fortunate enough to get some recognition for their work." The meeting's significance is "the acknowledgement it gives to young scientists, especially at a time when they do not get much recognition, that they are on their way to succeeding in science, and that we think that they are important. Although they really do not need any seal of approval, everyone likes to get the occasional pat on the back."
In a companion article in the same issue of Nature Chemistry (1, 587-590; 2009), Jeffrey R. Lancaster, a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, looks back at what he got out of the Lindau meeting: "two subtle points have ultimately distinguished the Lindau meeting for me as a unique event of which I was honoured to have been a part.
First, conversation and the sharing of ideas were fostered not solely between scientists with comparable levels of experience, but also across scientific generations and geographies. I had worthwhile discussions with my peers from Australia, China, India, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain (to name but a few), and was able to speak to scientists at various stages of their careers, from undergraduate to graduate students, postdocs, professors, governmental scientists and, of course, Nobel laureates. Second, the activities pursued by scientists outside of publishable, academic research also featured prominently at the meeting. That scientists might have a life apart from, and in addition to, their research is most often a topic best reserved for conference happy hours, not keynote addresses."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 27, 2009
Categories: Careers, Conferences, Disciplines, Education | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Nature Network: The Acting Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, will be talking about the beginning of… everything! The event takes place at the 92YTribeca in New York on Thursday, 1 October at 6:30 p.m. local time. Tickets are $12 and include a one year subscription to Scientific American. For more information check out the 92Y website or read Caryn Shechtman's Nature Network New York post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 29, 2009
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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)

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)

Nature Biotechnology's June issue contains several articles of particular interest to scientists as communicators, authors and entrepreneurs. Here are a few highlights:

Nature Biotechnology 27, 514 - 518 (2009).
Science communication reconsidered.
Tania Bubela et al.
As new media proliferate and the public's trust and engagement in science are influenced by industry involvement in academic research, an interdisciplinary workshop provides some recommendations to enhance science communication. Among these are that graduate students need to be taught about the social and political context of science and how to communicate with the media and a diversity of publics; that the factors contributing to media hype and errors (largely of omission) are explicitly recognized to allow science institutions and media organizations informed communication policies; research on science communication should be expanded to include online and digital media; more investment in the systematic tracking of news and cultural indicators, including traditional news outlets but also radio, entertainment TV, religious media, the web and new documentary genres; and a new 'science policy' beat in journalism courses to fill in the gaps between the technical backgrounders preferred by science writers and the conflict emphasis of political reporters. Finally, the authors argue, if there is a major threat to science journalism, it is that science journalists are losing their jobs at for-profit news organizations; new models of support for science journalism are needed, in which online digital formats blend professional reporting with user-generated content and discussion.

Nature Biotechnology 27, 528-530 (2009):
Maters of their universe.
Genentech—the biotech venture that launched a thousand companies—is no longer its own master. In March, majority stakeholder Roche reached an agreement with the South San Francisco, California–based company under which the Swiss drug maker would take over the biotech for $46.8 billion. But many remember those first years when a small team of bright, intellectually disciplined young scientists—often rowdy and personally eccentric people—got the company up and running. Randy Osborne and Laura DeFrancesco caught up with a few of those pioneers to talk about that era, their time and how they felt leading the charge.

Nature Biotechnology 27, 531 - 537 (2009).
Wasting cash—the decline of the British biotech sector.
Graham Smith, Muhammad Safwan Akram, Keith Redpath & William Bains
Undercapitalization and overgenerous boardroom compensation for management have been major contributors to the poor performance of UK biotech. Despite historic leadership in European biotech, the UK's industry has suffered a near collapse in the past two years and now has little private or public investment and no candidates for world-class companies. Why do shareholders allow UK public biotech companies to accumulate top management that pays itself so much, is unmotivated to drive shareholder value and as a consequence apparently drains the company of resources, notably cash? These questions, and others, are addressed in the feature.

Nature Biotechnology website.
Nature Biotechnology guide to authors.
Nature Biotechnology conference programme.
Nature Biotechnology focuses and supplements.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 25, 2009
Categories: Authorship, Conferences, Education, Ethics, Public and media, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology is hosting an evening of speakers and discussion on Thursday 25 June at the Institute of Physics,London, 6pm – 8.30pm (approx). There are some spaces left – men and women are very welcome, but booking in advance is essential.
The discussion:
Women in Science, Engineering and Technology – and the recession
Is gender equality key to recovery?
What is the impact of the recession on women in science, entineering and technology professions? We’ll look at the role of these disciplines in economic recovery, whether gender equality become a luxury in a recession, and the place of women in the new employmnet landscape that emerges.
Speakers include Ruth Sunderland (chair), Business Editor at the Observer; Anne Pettifor, an expert commentator and campaigner on financial systems, author of the Green New Deal and the Debtonation blog; Professor Douglas Kell, Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, also a blogger; Mandy Clarke (Halcrow Ltd); Professor Ursula Martin (Queen Mary University of London); and Annette Williams (Director of the UK Resource Centre)
There will be refreshments and networking before and after. The meeting is upstairs at the Institute of Physics, but places are limited and prior booking is essential by email or by telephone (+44) 01274 436485.
About UKRC.
See also this Nature Network forum entry by Ruth Wilson.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 19, 2009
Categories: Careers, Conferences, Public and media | 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 Web is rapidly changing the communication, practice and culture of science. Science online London 2009, which will be held on 22 August 2009 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, will explore the latest trends in science online. How is the Web affecting the work of researchers, science communicators, journalists, librarians, educators, students? What can you do to make the best use of the growing number of online tools?
This is the follow-up conference to last year's Science Blogging 2008: London conference. The name of the event was changed to reflect the variety of science-related activities happening online today.
Topics include blogging and microblogging, online communities, open access and open data, new teaching and research tools, author identifiers and measuring the impact of research.
The organizers are still in the process of assembling the programme. To suggest keynote speakers, topics for panel discussions, sessions, demos, and so on, join the discussion at Nature Network, in the conference FriendFeed room or send the organizers an email. You can also follow the conference on Twitter (follow @soloconf, hashtag #soloconf_09) . The deadline for submission of suggestions is 19 June 2009.
Science Online London 2009 is organized by Matt Brown (Nature Network), Martin Fenner (Hannover Medical School), Richard P. Grant (F1000), Victor Henning (Mendeley), Corie Lok (Nature Network) and Jan Reichelt (Mendeley).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 27, 2009
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1)

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
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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
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Have you seen the Natureevents directory for 2009? The Natureevents Directory is published once a year by Nature Publishing Group and covers a complete range of scientific events, conferences and courses around the world. The digital edition of the Natureevents Directory 2009 is free to download.

Related links:
The Natureevents website, a regularly updated events database.
Nature conferences website, all the conferences organised by Nature Publishing Group and its partners.
Nature Network Source Event forum, for scientists attending the Source Event careers fair this year. In 2009, the Source Event science career fair will expand into mainland Europe and will be held in Berlin, in addition to the established London event. The Source Event, London takes place on 25 September 2009, followed by The Source Event, Berlin on 4 December.
Nature Network careers advice forum for scientists.
Nature Network Naturejobs forum: making science work.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2009
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group announces the third Nature Chemical Biology Symposium, Chemical Biology in Drug Discovery, to be held on 19 and 20 September 2009 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Scientists in industry and academia seek new approaches for finding the next generation of therapeutics. The 2009 symposium will explore how chemical biology is opening up new avenues for identifying therapeutic targets and discovering small molecule drugs. This two-day meeting will address the following topics, across a range of diseases:
Cell-based screening and target deconvolution
Targeting pathways and systems
Expanding druggable chemical space
Expanding druggable targets
The organizers are Paul Workman (The Institute of Cancer Research, UK); Giulio Superti-Furga (Center for Molecular Medicine, Austria); Brian Shoichet (University of California, San Francisco); and Joanne Kotz (Nature Chemical Biology). The application deadline is 22 May 2009, and the deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 June 2009.
Meeting programme.
List of speakers.
Location and accommodation.
Nature Chemical Biology journal website.
About Nature Chemical Biology.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 26, 2009
Categories: Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eric Hand is blogging all this week at In The Field from the 40th anniversary Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Houston, Texas. In his first post, Eric writes that the traditional home of LPSC, a centre in League City, near the Lunar and Planetary Institute and Johnson Space Center, "was getting too tight for the burgeoning ranks of planetary scientists. But organizers wanted to keep the traditional roots of the conference in Houston. So they moved to a conference center in The Woodlands, a master-planned, mixed-use development done in the 1970s by astrophysics-loving billionaire George Mitchell. " Join Eric and the one and a half thousand registrants for a week of planetary news and views.

In The Field, the Nature reporters' blog from conferences and events.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 24, 2009
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As part of Nature’s ongoing celebration of Charles Darwin’s bicentenary, the second Nature Darwin Debate will take place at 1900 h local time on Monday 9 March at Kings Place, London N1 9AG, UK .

We pay for our food, water, health-care and energy, so why not pay for the many ‘services' currently obtained for free from biological diversity? Services such as insect-pollination, central to food production; or healthy forests, which we need for clean water and to stop soil erosion. Shouldn't we invest now in our biodiversity in order to secure our future needs?
PANEL
• James Lovelock, independent scientist and author of Revenge of Gaia. Prof Lovelock is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, distributed almost equally among topics in medicine, biology, instrument and atmospheric science and geophysiology. He is the originator of the Gaia hypothesis and has written four books on the subject, including The Revenge of Gaia (2006). His latest book is The Vanishing Face of Gaia: a final warning, published this year. He is the inventor of the electron capture detector, which made possible the detection of chlorofluorocarbons and other atmospheric nano-pollutants.
• Michael Meacher, MP (Labour) is a long-time campaigner for the environment within party and government. A staunch advocate of renewable energy, he was Minister of State for the Environment between 1997 and 2003. During this time, he played an important role in international negotiations over the Kyoto Treaty and helped pass the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which secured greater protection for Britain’s wildlife areas.
• Sir Crispin Tickell, Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University, was Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission, Ambassador to Mexico, Permanent Secretary of the Overseas Development Administration (now DFID), and British Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He has been Warden of Green College, Oxford, and Chancellor of the University of Kent, and has since had other public and academic appointments. He has advised successive British Prime Ministers on environmental issues, and is the author of Climate Change and World Affairs (1977 and 1986).
Chair
• Ehsan Masood, Acting Chief Commissioning Editor, Nature. Ehsan was UK news and developing-world correspondent at Nature in the 1990s. He then became Opinion Editor at New Scientist and subsequently Director of Communications for the environmental leadership training organization Lead International. He has also worked as a consultant to the British Council, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He teaches international science policy at Imperial College London and his book, Science and Islam: a history, is published by Icon books this year.

Nature also continues its Darwin bicentenary celebrations with a dedicated online Web Focus celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Included in the Focus is the Nature Insight on Evolution, an interview with Sir David Attenborough, 15 Evolutionary Gems, and a Nature Podcast extra. Read all this and more in the Nature Web Focus.

Further details and booking information for the Nature Darwin debate at Kings Place.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 04, 2009
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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)

Classical and emerging infectious diseases, viral pandemics, and drug-resistant pathogens remain challenges to human health. However, contemporary advances in genetics and genomic technologies provide new approaches to understanding and combating these diseases. The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) and the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are partnering with Nature Publishing Group (NPG) to organize an international conference to discuss how the genomes, unique biologies, and interactions of both host and pathogen are being revealed using novel genomic technologies, and how this information can and will translate into disease management and therapies. This conference, from 21 to 24 March 2009, at the Ritz Carlton Millenia Hotel, Singapore, will engage basic and clinical scientists, including human geneticists, genome scientists, computational biologists, and experts in pathogenic microbial agents, to chart the effects of genomics on questions in global infectious disease management.
Organizers; Aravinda Chakravarti (American Society of Human Genetics, USA) ; Jeremy Farrar (Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Viet Nam) ; Louisa Flintoft (Nature Reviews Genetics, UK); Chris Gunter (HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, USA); Edison Liu (Human Genome Organisation, Singapore); and Magdalena Skipper (Nature, UK).

Website for conference on gentics and genomics of infectious diseases.

List of speakers.

Register here for this conference.

More about location and accommodation.

About the organizers.

Nature Conferences: programme for 2009.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 26, 2009
Categories: Conferences, Partners | Permalink | Comments (0)

Make personal history and come to the first Digital Lives Research Conference. The Digital Lives Research Project is hosting a conference starting on Monday 9 February 2009, and continuing until Wednesday 11 February, at the British Library in London. The aim is to explore a wide range of aspects of digital lives and the curation of personal digital archives in a collaborative conference bringing together researchers, professionals, creators and the digital public.
On 11 February, virtual delegates can join the conference on the Elucian Islands, the Second Life home of Nature Publishing Group and Macmillan Publishers. The programme for the day focuses on the web, and is oriented towards life online and online lives. Topics range from virtual worlds and iScience to cloud computing. Speakers include Dame Wendy Hall DBE and Nature Publishing Group's Timo Hannay. The day finishes with polar explorer Ben Saunders talking about 'Digital Life at the Extremes'. Other highlights include a talk by Georgina Ferry, author of some superb scientific biographies including those of Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz; and a “writers in conversation” session to include Dame Antonia Byatt and Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood Benn. I (Maxine Clarke) shall also be attending.
The conference is free to attend on 9 and 11 February, registration required. There is a small registration fee for 10 February, but waivers are available.
About the conference.
Programme and speakers.
Registration details.
Digital lives project team blog.
Information and user guidance about the Second Life version of the Digital Lives conference.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 07, 2009
Categories: Conferences, Partners, 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
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There is still time to register for Interpreting the Human Genome, the Miami 2009 Winter Symposium organized by the University of Miami, Nature Publishing Group and Scripps Florida. The conference takes place 24-28 January 2009, at Deauville Beach Resort, Miami Beach.
The human genome has hidden levels of regulatory complexity and variability that have begun to reveal themselves since the initial sequence became available in 2001. Today, with increasingly powerful sequencing and analysis technologies, we are not only beginning to appreciate the scale of variation in individual human genome sequences, but also gaining a greater understanding of how genome differences relate to human evolution and disease. This meeting will showcase these advances in our understanding of human genome regulation and variability as well as the potential of new technologies to drive the advancement of knowledge.
Speakers and honoured scientists include Svante Paabo, J. Craig Venter and George Church (full list available here).
Organizing committee of the symposium.
Meeting programme.
Conference registration details.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Imperial College London are hosting a free virtual conference today on NPG's/Macmillan's Elucian Islands in Second Life. If you are interested in the science of climate change and carbon-dioxide storage and want to hear from some great speakers, please register and come along, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. GMT (7 a.m. -11 a.m. PST). The Second Life location is Khufu Conference Centre, co-ordinates: 141,10,27.
The conference will be broad-based, covering all aspects of climate change and research on carbon dioxide storage. The presentations will be accessible to any researcher interested in learning more about the subject, although technical posters on all aspects of climate change, ocean acidification, carbon-dioxide separation, transport or storage are welcomed and encouraged.
Keynote Speaker: Franklyn M. Orr Jr, Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project and Professor of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University.
Among the other speakers is Martin J. Blunt, head of the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London.
Why attend a virtual conference?
- Listen to top international speakers
- All attendees are invited to present a poster
- The convenience of attending a conference from your office: no flights, no hotels, NO HASSLE!
- It is FREE! An excellent opportunity to present student posters
- Save 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per international traveller on flights alone
The virtual poster session is available online from 2 to 16 December for attendees to view at their leisure. Presenters are encouraged to be available on 3 December before and/or after the talks for questions.
More information about the conference is here.
More about Second Nature and the Elucian Islands on Second Life.
Joanna Scott's Second Life blog at Nature Network - for news, advice and all matters Second Nature. (Her post about this particular conference is here.)

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 03, 2008
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The Salk Institute, Nature, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology and the Fondation IPSEN are holding Processes of Aging, the third annual Symposium on Biological Complexity, from 8 to 10 January 2009, at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California. The organizers are: Yves Christen (Fondation IPSEN); Sue Deeley (Nature Publishing Group); Andrew Dillin (Salk Institute); Ron Evans (Salk Institute) Marie-Therese Heemels (Nature); Arianne Heinrichs (Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology); Fred Gage (Salk Institute); and Inder Verma (Salk Institute) - Chair.
The aging process is a multi-faceted process, where cellular aging, metabolism, the DNA damage machinery and stem cell dynamics interact to influence aging of an entire organism. Single genes can greatly alter the aging process in organisms as diverse as yeast and mice. Furthermore, it has become increasingly clear that distinct activities — which act on dividing and nondividing cells alike — protect organisms from age-related deterioration and decline. The focus of this meeting will be to decipher the mechanistic details that surround age onset, disease onset and perturbation within the aging population.
For more information and to register, please see the conference website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 25, 2008
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This is the text of a Correspondence from Nature (455; 1175; 2008) by David Grémillet of the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier, and the University of Cape Town:
"Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of their work. For example, in the latest of many recent reflections on the subject, bioinformatician Hervé Philippe urges us to uncouple scientific progress from economic growth (Trends Genet. 24, 265–267; 2008). He adds his voice to those advising us to reduce our carbon footprint by attending fewer scientific conferences (see also the free-access Editorial 'Meeting expectations', Nature 455, 836; 2008).
Regular long-distance flying can easily triple an academic's carbon footprint. During the past year, I have 'spent' about nine tonnes of carbon, two-thirds of this on plane trips. Yet I am a good consumer otherwise, and I don't even own a car. Such figures are particularly hard for field ecologists to stomach, as we hope our long-term work will highlight the environmental consequences of climate change and may ultimately influence the public and policy-makers.
Take, for instance, the dynamic field of conservation biology. Most of its best researchers are based at universities in the Northern Hemisphere, but most of their field sites are located in developing countries in the south. These hotshots and their students use up tonnes of fuel each year in commuting trips. In fact, those who are particularly renowned and most involved in environmental politics become 'constant fliers' who are always jetting off to field sites and meetings.
I estimate that such behaviour can potentially increase an individual's carbon footprint to ten times their national average. Of course, plenty of businessmen have similar or larger carbon footprints, but few of them would claim that their journeys are good for the environment. One is left wondering whether the carbon footprints of ecologists outweigh the environmental benefits of their findings and of their lobbying.
One way around this problem is to promote conservation biology on site, with improved local academic training (see here, for example), local research leaders and fewer but longer stays by foreign visitors. With regard to environmental politics, one faces the classic dilemma between personal restraint (I stay at home and work in the garden) and energy-demanding public involvement (I fly daily to help ban overfishing).
The outcome is a personal decision that may be dictated more by ambition than by environmental awareness. Nevertheless, as a German environmental campaigner told me 15 years ago, "Industry would be all too pleased if we did not attend distant meetings because we refuse to board aeroplanes."
Further online discussion of this topic is continuing at the Nature Network Opinion forum and in the Nature Network forum 'Getting science to go green'. Readers are warmly welcomed to contribute their views.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 17, 2008
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Eric Hand is currently blogging at In The Field from the Division of Planetary Sciences fall meeting of the American Astronomical Society at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York - a "gorges" place. His posts from the meeting can be viewed here. (For orientation, the introductory post is here.)

Here's Eric's report of Sho Sakada's talk: "the far side of the moon is full of gravitational lows. Scientists have long thought that the near side cooled more slowly, and that the moon's warm mantle and core were tugged closer to the Earth. This dense rock is much closer to the surface on the near side, as evidenced by the mare basalt flows in all of the basins. The far side has a much thicker crust."

Check out Eric's reports for space music, tigers and sharks, and more, over at In the Field (the Nature news reporters' blog from conferences and events).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 12, 2008
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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)

Last Thursday, Nature introduced its latest Essay series with an Editorial (Nature 455, 137-138; 2008):

"Creative ideas are not always solo strokes of genius, argues Ed Catmull, the computer-scientist president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review. Frequently, he says, the best ideas emerge when talented people from different disciplines work together.
This week, Nature begins a series of six Essays that illustrate Catmull's case. Each recalls a conference in which a creative outcome emerged from scientists pooling ideas, expertise and time with others — especially policy-makers, non-governmental organizations and the media. Each is written by someone who was there, usually an organizer or the meeting chair. Because the conferences were chosen for their societal consequences, we've called our series 'Meetings that Changed the World'."

The first Essay, on a topical subject in the week in which the Large Hadron Collider began operation, is Paris 1951: The birth of CERN (Nature 455, 174-175; 2008), when François de Rose chaired the meeting that founded Europe's premier facility for experimental nuclear and particle research. Here he relives the five days of drama that changed the world of physics.

The Editorial continues: "When we began to think about commissioning this series, several difficulties arose. First, we were looking for more than the traditional scientific conference, and it was notable how few of the twentieth century's world-changing meetings had involved scientists taking a lead. As a list emerged, we were faced with another problem: time had sadly depleted the pool of writers. This week's author, for example, is among the few surviving members of a group that met 57 years ago.
The six events that made the final cut took place on three continents and span five decades, from 1951 to the dawn of the new millennium. They represent the twentieth century's promise, and two of its greatest threats. And they illustrate a period in history when scientists felt they should raise a collective voice to advance the public good. The six meetings have something else in common. In wanting to change their world, the scientists involved needed and obtained the support of governments and, in some cases, the media."

There are, of course, other candidates for the title of Meetings that Changed the World. And our illustrious attendees' opinions are, of course, personal and often provocative. Readers are invited to have their say, and suggest their own favourite Earth-shaking meeting, at Nature Network. One, or rather two, suggestions have been made by Daniel Greenberger: "a very important conference just after the second world war was the Shelter Island conference on high energy physics, which discussed the newly discovered elementary particles, and such new phenomena as the Lamb shift. This conference determined the direction of high energy physics for a generation. A similar, first-ever, conference that took a field that did not even exist yet to the point where the principals started seriously considering it, and subsequently started a revolution, was the MIT conference on quantum computing, held in 1980."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 17, 2008
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In its August Editorial, Nature Genetics (40, 929; 2008) looks forward to the second Genomics of Common Diseases conference, to be held from 6 to 9 September 2008, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In a review of last year's meeting, Enrico Petretto and colleagues (Nat. Genet. 39, 1299–1301; 2007) emphasized that recent successes in complex disease genetics rest upon rapid technological advances and the excellent communication and collaboration forged in the genome sequencing community and the SNP Consortium. They also stressed the importance of studying gene networks rather than single genes in the pathogenesis of disease. Finally, they noted that an evolutionary as well as a physiological perspective is required to understand the startlingly diverse genetic architectures of common diseases.
The Editorial asks what can be expected from this year's meeting? "Over the past year, many new sequencing tools have been added for strategically resequencing candidate genes for rare and common variants alike. Bioinformatic tools have been launched for sequence assembly and comparison. Statisticians have developed methods for marker imputation and for rigorous association studies with structural variants." Various other topics will be discussed at the conference as outlined in the Editorial, whch concludes: "In the era of personal genomics, with next-generation sequencing of thousands of human genomes just beginning, the focus of common disease genetics is already shifting from identification of loci and risks. We anticipate an intensification of functional genomics, investigation of the consequences of variation on gene expression and the effect of variation on the functioning of pathways and systems."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2008
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Nature Network's Berlin group, run by Philipp Selenko, is organizing a series of dinners during the Twentieth International Genetics Conference (to be held in Berlin from 12 to 17 July). The dinners are free to attend and are intended to provide the opportunity to meet some of the distinguished scientists who are speaking at the conference in a relaxed atmosphere.
Friday 11 July: Oliver Smithies & Mario Capecchi, winners of the 2007 Nobel prize in Medicine ’for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.’
Monday 14 July: Elisa Izaurralde & Frank Uhlmann, respectively Max Planck Director at the MPI for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen and group leader at the Cancer Research UK Institute in London. Elisa works on various aspects of RNA biology whereas Frank is interested in the functional properties of eukaryotic cell division.
Tuesday 15 July: Eric Lander, Peer Bork & Dinshaw Patel.Eric is the Founding Director of the Broad Institute of the MIT; Peer is the Scientific Coordinator of the EMBL Stuctural Biology and Bioinformatics Program. The two are internationally known for their pioneering work in deciphering the DNA/RNA sequence space. Dinshaw runs a structural biology laboratory at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute in NYC where he has unraveled some key features of RNA and DNA molecules, most recently those of siRNAs.
Wednesday 16th July: Rudi Jaenisch & Barry Dickson discuss issues about model organisms in science. Rudi is at the Whitehead Institute in Boston and a distinguished expert in mouse genetics and embryonic stem-cell biology. Barry is the Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, and known for his work in on axon guidance in Drosophila . He has recently embarked on a journey to unravel the molecular principles of complex animal behaviour.

All dinners will start at 7 p.m. and take place at the Meierei, Kollwitzstrasse 42, Prenzlauer Berg.
Philipp writes "We hope that you are as excited as we are about the program and that many of you will show up for those special events!" For further information (including travel directions), please see the Nature Network Berlin forum; if you have any additional questions, you can contact Philipp via email.
Nature Network Berlin has set up a shared Google calendar for these and other Berlin-related events.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 08, 2008
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The availability of whole-genome association studies has redefined the genetic architecture of genetically complex disorders, and genotyping and resequencing will reveal new susceptibility genes for a wide range of common human diseases. The emphasis of the field is thus changing from focusing on the identification of susceptibility genes towards an understanding of mechanisms and potential applications.
Following the successful inaugural conference in Hinxton, Cambridge, UK in July 2007, this second meeting, organised by Nature Genetics and the Wellcome Trust, will take place from 6 to 9 September 2008, at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA aims to address the following topics, across a range of common diseases:
--The state of the art in gene-identification strategies
--The transition from knowledge of susceptibility genes to understanding of mechanisms
--Population genetics and genome evolution in common-disease genetics
--The utility of risk prediction based on genetic and other available tests
--Ethical, legal and social implications of personal genetic information.
Please see the conference website for further details of the organizers, speakers, abstract submission, accommodation and more.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 01, 2008
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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)

Frontiers of cellular, developmental and molecular biology, Nice; 30 August – 2 September 2008.
The seventh international congress of the European Life Scientist Organization (ELSO) returns this year to Nice on the French Cote d’Azur. Promoted for the first time in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the ELSO meeting offers a broad palette of top-notch international molecular life science mixed with informative and practical events to promote the career development of young researchers.
From the conference information pages: Plenary session speakers this year include: systems biologist Ursula Klingmueller; cell biologist Graham Warren; stem cell biologist Andreas Trumpp; developmental biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz; tissue engineer Donald Ingber, and proteomics expert Matthias Mann. The 21 minisymposia and the poster sessions cover topics ranging from entry of pathogens into cells, through epigenetics to computational biology and all stops en route. Around 180 speakers, 600 posters and 80 commercial exhibitors will provide four full days of exciting and topical life science. Abstract submission deadline is 15 June.
If you are looking for advice on what to do next, whether it be a postdoc or a junior group leader position in another country or a move into a career outside academia, ELSO’s career development events can give you the inspiration to try something new and challenging and the practical help to put your plans into practice. At this year’s meeting there will be mentoring and mobility sessions, first-hand accounts of careers outside academia, as well as a new career enhancement workshop looking at your own personality, CV, interview techniques, and so on. Not to be missed if you are planning a career move soon!

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 09, 2008
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The official forum for Science Blogging 2008, to be held at the Royal Institution, London, on 30 August 2008, has been set up at Nature Network.
The science blogging community is growing rapidly and reaching larger audiences. At Science Blogging 2008, science bloggers from around the world will have the opportunity to meet and discuss the pressing issues in science, science communication, publishing and education. What can science bloggers do to maximise their impact? Can blogging contribute to scientific research and careers? How can blogs be used to help educate the public about science? Readers and writers of science blogs, those who follow trends in online scientific communication and anyone else interested in learning more about science blogging will benefit from the discussions. You do not have to have a blog in order to attend.
To register, email network@nature.com (with subject line ‘Science blogging conference’) and let us know your job title, affiliation and whether you’re a blogger. Join this group, and help set the agenda in the discussion forum.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 01, 2008
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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)

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

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 07, 2008
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Multiple Sclerosis: From Pathogenesis to Therapy, 6 June 2008, Espace Charles-Louis-Havas, Paris.
Organizers: Eva Chmielnicki (Nature Medicine, USA), Laurie Dempsey (Nature Immunology, USA) and Yves Christen (Fondation IPSEN, France).
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory autoimmune disease targeting the central nervous system, leading to demyelination and axon degeneration and to severe disability as the disease progresses. It presents as a clinically heterogeneous disease, which has been problematic for efforts to develop appropriate animal models. Many environmental and genetic factors have been identified that may initiate disease. Various immune and neural cells have been found to play key roles in disease pathogenesis and progression. An Emergence & Convergence mini-symposium organised by Fondation IPSEN, Nature Medicine and Nature Immunology will address open questions in multiple sclerosis research, with the goal of identifying future directions that may lead to therapy. The application deadline is 31 March 2008. Attendance at this meeting is free on acceptance of application (register here); a free conference poster is available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 17, 2008
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The mission of the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) is to provide both the European and the international science communities with an open platform for debate and communication. It presents and profiles Europe's leading research trends in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It is an opportunity to discuss and influence the future of research and innovation in Europe. The scientific programme for ESOF08, "Science for a better life", to be held in Barcelona from 18 to 22 July, has just been finalized, and is made up of 83 scientific sessions from 10 scientific themes, 10 career sessions and 70 outreach activities, with the participation of more than 450 speakers and session organizers from 30 countries. The final scientific programme schedule and list of speakers is available at the ESOF website or can be downloaded here as a 97KB PDF. Among the speakers and organisers of the sessions are Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature publications and Editor of Nature, who will be talking in the session "Sharing scientific data: who benefits?"; Alison Abbott, Nature's senior European correspondent, who is organizing a session "Looking inside your brain"; and Karl Ziemelis, Nature's chief physical sciences editor, who is organizing the session "An organic revolution".
You can register for the conference here. There is a reduced fee for participants who register before 15 March (tomorrow).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 14, 2008
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Visit the Nature Publishing Group booth at the American Physical Society meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. We are exhibiting from 10-12 March 2008, at booth 540. Pop by to pick up your free sample copies of Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Physics, Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Photonics, as well as your copy of Nature Milestones in Spin.
The March 2008 issue of Nature Physics contains a Focus on quantum phase transitions which is free online to 3 April. Phase transitions are familiar occurrences, such as the freezing of water to ice. When the transition occurs at zero temperature, it is known as a 'quantum phase transition'. As distinct states of matter coexist at a transition, there are quantum fluctuations between them. The Nature Physics Focus explores the resulting – and often surprising – collective behaviour, in an Editorial, two Perspectives and three Reviews.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 05, 2008
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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
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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)

Nature conferences are aimed at the international scientific community, with the goal of fostering and facilitating communication and collaboration between scientists. They are distinguished by: high-quality, international facult; close involvement of Nature Publishing Group’s editorial staff; and a focus on the most timely topics
Details of some upcoming conferences (please see NPG's conference website for further details of these and other future conferences):

A Symposium on Biological Complexity: Genes, Circuits and Behavior
Organized by the Salk Institute, Fondation IPSEN and Nature Neuroscience
10-13 January 2008 • La Jolla, CA
Highlighting recent advances in interdisciplinary neuroscience. The meeting covers multiple fields, from sensory and motor function to emotions to learning.

Miami 2008 Winter Symposium: Regulatory RNA in Biology and Human Health
Organized by the University of Miami, Nature Publishing Group and Scripps Florida
2-6 February 2008 • Miami Beach, FL
Looking at our current understanding of the mechanisms of action and biogenesis of small regulatory RNAs and how this is being applied to create a new generation of therapeutics and diagnostics.

A Ringberg Colloquium: Determinism and Plasticity of T Lymphocytes
Organized by the Max Planck Society and Nature Immunology
10-13 February 2008 • Tegernsee‚ Germany
The aim is to stimulate conceptual breakthroughs leading to advancement in the fields of chronic inflammation and control of infection mediated by T lymphocytes.

Nature Chemical Biology Symposium: Chemical Neurobiology
Organized by Nature Publishing Group and The New York Academy of Sciences
22-23 February 2008 • New York‚ NY‚ USA
The two-day meeting will comprise a series of four scientific sessions that look at distinct molecular functions of a neuron and concludes with a keynote session featuring Linda Buck‚ a pioneer in the field of neuroscience.

Emergence & Convergence mini-symposium: Epigenetics and Behavior
Organized by Fondation IPSEN, Nature Neuroscience and Nature Genetics
31 March 2008 • Houston‚ TX
Speakers will address the role of epigenetics in memory‚ drug addiction‚ maternal care and stress reactivity‚ the effects of endocrine disruption and human disorders such as Rett and Angelman syndromes.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 03, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group is featuring a free cell biology web focus to highlight some of the exciting research of 2007 from across the Nature Publishing Group, to coincide with the current 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB) meeting in Washington DC (1-5 December 2007). If you are attending the meeting, visit us at booth 228-210 to collect your free copies of Nature and other NPG cell biology titles. Nature's correspondent Brendan Maher is blogging live from the conference at In The Field, and you can join the ASCB group at Nature Network for further discussion. We hope you enjoy the conference in person, or, if you aren't, vicariously via our online coverage and forums. Either way, we hope you enjoy reading this collection of excellent papers, News and Views and other articles with a cell biology theme.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 03, 2007
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"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)

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced that it will be contributing the cash received by winning the Principe de Asturias Award to a philanthropic fund, NPG Awards. Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of Nature, and Annette Thomas, CEO of Macmillan, accepted the 2007 Principe de Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities at a recently held ceremony in Oviedo, Spain. The award was made jointly to NPG’s flagship title, Nature, and the journal Science.
The two publications will share a prize of €50,000 and NPG will use Nature’s share to boost the NPG awards, which help researchers from the developing world attend Gordon Research Conferences. Launched in June 2006, the NPG awards provide funds of up to US$1,500 to help delegates from developing countries attend the internationally renowned conferences. The awards are made based on nominations made by conference chairs, and are open to those who live and work in eligible countries and have been accepted to attend.
The addition of €25,000 to the philanthropic fund will allow NPG to support many more researchers to attend the conferences. In 2007, NPG awards were made to 26 participants who attended 21 different conferences and were from Kenya, Venezuela, Brazil, India, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, China, Poland, Mexico, Zambia and Romania.
Nature also runs a mentoring awards scheme.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 06, 2007
Categories: Awards, Conferences | Permalink | Comments (0)

Conference registration: how people react to a deadline : Article : Nature Physics

Valentina Alfi, Giorgio Parisi and Luciano Pietronero in their Correspondence in the current issue of Nature Physics ( 3, 746; 2007) draw on their recent experiences of organizing and planning meetings to investigate the behaviour people show when they are asked to register for a conference and provide an abstract. They conclude: "People's behaviour around a deadline does indeed seem to be universal. If the action is reversible (as is simple registration), the pressure to do it is inversely proportional to the available time before the deadline. For an irreversible action (such as payment), there is a tendency to postpone it until even closer to the deadline, which can be described by a utility function. The rule of thumb to guess the final number of registrants is to consider the extrapolation of the initial linear behaviour and multiply it by three — a result that may be useful for organizers of future events."
Their data and analysis are shown in the full Correspondence article at the link provided above.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 06, 2007
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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)

If you are a neuroscientist attending Neuroscience 2007 in San Diego from 3 to 7 November, visit booth 221 while you are there. Pick up a sample copy of Nature or one of our other neuroscience journals, and meet the editors. Receive a 20% discount to any of our neuroscience titles by subscribing here.
Visit our conference webpage to access free neuroscience-related content from across Nature Publishing Group, link to our conference blogs and a special podcast, and find the latest jobs in neuroscience.

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