Welcome to the blogosphere
We would like to wish a warm welcome to a new blog which began on the Scitable blogging network this week. The Promethean Cell will track ongoing issues and research in the regenerative medicine fields and will occasionally be interspersed with anecdotes from a fledgling postdoc’s career. Ada Ao, a postdoctoral research fellow at Vanderbilt University, explains more about her new blog:
Now that I’ve declaimed from my soapbox, what exactly will I blog about? The possibilities are endless. Recent discoveries in the stem cell field are incredibly exciting. This blog will encompass issues like basic biology, opinions and views, and where we may go next in terms of applicable therapeutics. I’m really aiming to put together the “big picture”.
We urge you to check it out and do feel free to send Ada a tweet; she’s @adaaocom on Twitter, with any feedback or suggestions.
On Nature Network we would also like to welcome post-doc student Ivana Gadjanski whose new blog, My Metacognitive Oasis began this week. Her very first post discusses how she Zigs and Zags through her scientific career:
I still remember the feeling I had immediately after obtaining my PhD degree. It was a mixture of relief, accomplishment and somehow emptiness. And one question kept popping in to my mind. What now?
You can follow her story in her blog and please feel free to join in the discussion.
Neuroblogging
Neuroscience 2011 has been this year’s major event for neuroscientists from around the globe. Organised by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), the event took place from November 12th – 16th, in Washington, DC. To tie in with this, some of the attendees have been sharing their observations from the event in an exclusive series of guest posts on NPG’s Neuroscience blog, Action Potential.
We’ve created two round-ups of the blogging coverage; part 1 here and part 2 In addition, Action Potential’s editor, Noah Gray, has created a Google + circle listing the guest bloggers and you can also follow the hashtag #NPGsfn11 on Twitter to share in the discussion. Do let is know if you have any feedback.
SONYC!
The details of December’s Science Online NYC (#SoNYC) event were announced this week. Please join us on Thursday December 8th, in person at Rockefeller University from 7pm EST, or online via our Livestream channel to discuss, Matching medium and messengers to meet the masses.
Reaching an audience that’s already interested in science is a relatively easy thing to do. Reaching a broader audience, however, can be a serious challenge. Attracting and maintaining an audience outside the core of science enthusiasts requires a carefully crafted match of the medium and messenger. When and how should scientists and science communicators seek to highlight science issues to the general public? Should we be ready to respond and correct public misunderstandings or attempt to influence science policy? What material can be handled through social media, and what requires a more involved form of engagement, such as a science festival?
This month’s panel has experience communicating with everyone from young kids to policymakers, and will discuss what they’ve learned about using different spokespeople and platforms to get their message out. The panel includes:
Darlene Cavalier: The woman behind the Science Cheerleaders
Jamie Vernon: A science policy analyst
Molly Webster: The lead producer for live programming at the World Science Festival.
Kevin Zelnio: The webmaster for the Deep Sea News and a freelance writer.
The event is free to attend with an opportunity to meet the panellists and other attendees afterwards. If you’d like to follow the vocal online discussion (we average around 600 tweets per SoNYC event), keep an eye on the #sonyc hashtag or check back here for our write-up and Storify of the online conversations. Do also keep an eye on the official Twitter account for more details.
Tweetups
Science Tweetups provide an excellent opportunity to meet local scientists and science communicators for an evening of chatting in the pub. For those interested in the next #camscitweet, this will be held next week on Thursday 24th November in the Kingston Arms pub. Join in from 6:30pm and anyone is welcome!
For those on the other side of the Atlantic, keep an eye on the #DCscitweetup and #NYCscitweetup hashtags for information on future events.
Twitter and Google+
This week has seen the launch of another NPG journal account on Twitter, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology who are tweeting as @NatRevMCB
You can also find a full Twitter list of NPG journals and products here.
Last week Google+ launched pages and several NPG journals and products have already created their own. See our circle featuring all the NPG Google+ pages. This circle will be continuously updated as and when accounts are created.
Science Calendars
Yesterday we alerted you to the latest scientific calendar in our series, Science Events in Paris. The calendar is moderated by MyScienceWork, an open access scientific research network.
There’s always an interesting science event taking place and to help with diary planning, we’ve created Google Calendars for some of the other major science cities: London and Cambridge in the UK and NYC, Boston and San Francisco in the US. Below you can find links to all of the Google Calendars we have put together:
Please do let us know if you can see any important omissions.
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