How to write an editorial (in tweets)

This week Nature Chemistry published an editorial describing how they have used Twitter over the past 4 years. The piece was written as a series of tweets which the team then shared on Twitter on Wednesday. How and why did they put it together?

The version that was handed over to our production team consisted of a title, standfirst, Wordle, and 42 tweets in the main body of the article. It turned out to be 22 lines too long. Ouch. Look at the picture of the proof to see what needed to be done to cut it down to size. 4-line tweets were cut to 3 and a couple of tweets were removed completely. Click through to the larger version of the image to see exactly what changes were made. And it was on the second page so you can’t see it, but #overlyhonestmethods had to be cut from the hashtag tweet (it didn’t play nice with line breaks).

The ’42′ ending still works; one tweet for the title, one for the standfirst and 40 for the main text (you could argue that the original version was actually 44 tweets and the published one is genuinely 42 tweets in total). We still had problems with orphans and widowsin the pdf version, so we shifted some of the tweets around. If you compare the proof to the published version (and you care that much) you can figure out what was moved where. Yes, it’s somewhat bizarre that an Editorial about how we use a web 2.0 tool is dictated — to some extent — by old-fashioned typesetting issues, but there you go.

Stuart Cantrill explains more in the The Sceptical Chymist Blog. You can also follow Nature Chemistry on Twitter, they are @NatureChemistry.

Stem cell tracking system promises more targeted regenerative therapies

Stem cells hold enormous potential for repairing or regenerating damaged tissue. But delivery of these cells to their target location remains a major obstacle. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California have developed a novel nanoparticle-based system that allows stem cells to be tracked in real time in a living mouse for up to a year after injection. Kevin Jiang elaborates in the Spoonful of Medicine Blog:

“Delivering stem cells to specific tissues is a very big challenge, since basically all investigators have to shoot blindly,” says Sanjiv Gambhir, director of Stanford’s molecular imaging program who led the work published online today in Science Translational Medicine. “For these cell therapies to succeed, you need imaging systems.”

Gambhir and his team started with a type of nanoparticle already used in clinical trials to guide cancer drug delivery. They then attached two imaging agents to the nanoparticle: gadolinium, a contrast agent picked up by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and a fluorescent compound called fluorescein. Although the resulting composite nanoparticle was less than a micron in diameter, it aggregated once absorbed by a cell, making it large enough be imaged by ultrasound and MRI.

Continue to the post to watch a video of labeled stem cells being injected into a mouse heart.

US bioethicists recommend more tests before child anthrax vaccine trials

A US Navy corpsman prepares an anthrax vaccination shot aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. Courtesy MILVAX, the US Military Vaccine Agency.

Erika Check Hayden explains in the News Blog how bioethicists have proposed limits on the types of clinical trials of anthrax vaccine (and other drugs and vaccines) aimed at bioterror agents that can be conducted in children:

The safety of our children is paramount, and we have to get this right,” said Amy Gutmann, chair of the commission. “The commission concluded many steps would have to be taken…before pediatric anthrax vaccine trials prior to an attack should be considered by the U.S. government.”

Interest in a vaccination campaign was spurred by a 2011 modelling exercise, ‘Dark Zephyr’, which found that a release of anthrax spores in a city the size of San Francisco, California, would compel officials to vaccinate 7.6 million people — including 1.7 million individuals under age 18.

Find out what John Parker, chair of the National Biodefense Science Board, has to say in Erika’s post. 

Qatar surpasses US in obesity

Mohammed Yahia discloses in the House of Wisdom blog, the obesity epidemic in Qatar may have just overtaken the United States, which was long the world leader:

According to new data release by the Supreme Council of Health, about 70% of people in Qatar are overweight and some 41% are obese.

“These diseases, as science has shown, kill prematurely, they compromise quality of life and we also know they are influenced by behavior,” said Ravinder Mamtani, associate dean for global and public health at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q).

Rapid urbanization in Qatar, and many other states in the Arab Peninsula, following the discover of oil has contributed to a sedentary lifestyle. Coupled with a lack of exercise culture and diets high in fats, salts and sugar, obesity has rapidly increased in the Middle East.

Find out how the Middle East plan to battle this growing obesity epidemic here.

The Audience You Don’t Know

Science communication can be hard. Can we do anything to improve how science writers reach out to the general public? This week’s Soapbox Science guest post is by David Wescott, he suggests that science writers and communicators need to take advice from people outside of science. David links out to some people we should take note of:

Here’s a short list of people that some in the PR field may consider emerging leaders in new media (There are obviously more than I can count; if you want more suggestions try here). They may never be household names, but they already influence important people in their own communities and beyond.  My PR advice to science writers: read up on these folks, develop a healthy respect for their accomplishments and think abouthow and what you write is relevant to what they do.

• Karen Walrond is wildly convinced that you’re uncommonly beautiful, and she will say so to your face. She’s the author of The Beauty of Different, a fabulous compilation of some of her best photographs and essays. In addition to being an outstanding photographer and writer, Karen is a speaker, a lawyer, a civil engineer, and a global advocate for moms. When her friends talk about her, they do so with reverence.  Karen isn’t just smart, she’s wise.  She helps others find their own beauty.   As for science, it doesn’t seem to be a frequent topic of discussion for her, though she did take exception to an evolutionary psychologist’s controversial assertions about race and physical attractiveness among women.

Whole brain cellular-level activity mapping in a second

It is now possible to map the activity of nearly all the neurons in a vertebrate brain at cellular resolution. Erika Pastrana expands on this research in the Methagora Blog: 

In an Article that just went live in Nature Methods, Misha Ahrens and Philipp Keller from HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus used high-speed light sheet microscopy to image the activity of 80% of the neurons in the brain of a fish larva at speeds of a whole brain every 1.3 seconds. This represents—to our knowledge—the first technology that achieves whole brain imaging of a vertebrate brain at cellular resolution with speeds that approximate neural activity patterns and behavior.

Brain activity imaging of a whole zebrafish brain at single-cell resolution. Click on image to view the video [20 MB].

What does this research mean for the neuroscience community? Find out in Erika’s post. 

Bizarre Creatures

Each Monday, SciLogs blogger Rayna Stamboliyska  will link out to either a video or picture that has some scientific relevance. This week she refers to an octopus chandelier:

Influenced by 16th century Baroque opulence and Gothic design, Adam Wallacavage’s created ‘Shiny Monsters’. These exquisite and bizarre octopus chandeliers are crafted using lamp parts, epoxy clay, and spray paint. You may have a read of this nice interview with Adam.

Follow her posts online using the #aMomentaryLapseOfReason hashtag.