Why We Need Science Communication

In this week’s Soapbox Science guest post, science illustrator Emily Coren shares a list of valuable resources for science communicators:

I’ve attended several meetings this past year and when I talk with other science communicators, there are certain sources that keep coming up in conversation. I’d like to share with you some of the resources that describe and inform the theory and practice of science communication and have helped shape my perception of the work that I do.  I’m amazed at how new this information is to many of my peers in both science and science communication and I hope you will find the references as interesting and helpful as I did.

Why We Need Science Communication

• The Public Understanding of Science, The Royal Society, London 1985.

A comprehensive treatise on why science communication is important to society. It makes recommendations for what we can do as a society to improve our understanding of, and engagement with, science. 

The post includes the above illustration by science comic Maki Naro. Please feel free to share your own resources too.

Social Media from an Institutional Perspective – Why are we on there?

This week, we also hosted a special Soapbox Science guest post by Paula Salgado on why the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biosciences, (ICaMB) research institute decided to use social media and start up a blog:

…..we decided we needed a blog to showcase our research and researchers, and to discuss in more detail issues that are relevant to the scientific community and beyond.

As well as engaging with those outside our Institute, these activities will also foster internal social interactions including connecting with our newly formed postdoc (IPA) and postgraduate student associations (PANIC) online, which are also using social media as the main means of communication.

The next discussion point was: how can we get people to know about it? We realised that Prof Jeff Errington’s recently accepted Cell paper provided an ideal opportunity. The paper describes a key mechanism of cell division in bacteria without cell walls (which are therefore resistant to certain antibiotics) but it also hints at how early life forms might have proliferated. Having such an interesting topic to bring to the table seemed like a great way to make the initial connection.

And so our first blog post was born! Do let us know what you think and what else you’d like us to discuss in the future.

Anemia drug recalled amid safety concerns in dialysis patients

Yevgeniy Grigoryev reveals in the News Blog that after less than a year on the market, a long-acting anemia drug called Omontys (peginesatide), was recalled after US regulators received reports of severe allergic reactions, including some deaths:

In clinical trials, Omontys showed no major safety concerns and was actually thought to shield patients from a rare complication of erythropoietin-based drugs in which antibodies develop that target the body’s endogenous hormones, effectively shutting down all blood cell production and exacerbating the anemia. Whereas neutralizing antibodies occurred in just a little over 1% of patients taking Omontys, it is not really known what caused the allergic reactions that led to the recall. “These adverse reactions were not described in the clinical trials for the dialysis patients, and I do not recollect any such responses reported,” says Jeffrey Berns, a nephrologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, who was a member of the data and safety monitoring board for Omontys.

Learn more about Omontys in Yevgeniy’s post. 

Canada launches first asteroid-hunting space telescope

The first satellite designed to search for and keep track of asteroids and space debris was launched into orbit this week. Brian Owens elaborates in the News Blog: 

The Canadian Space Agency’s suitcase-sized Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) will circle the globe every 100 minutes, scanning space to pick out asteroids that may one day pose a threat to Earth.

NEOSSat will focus on the day side of the sky, which is not visible from ground-based observatories.  It is hoped that the mission will discover at least half of the asteroids 1 kilometre across or larger within Earth’s orbit.

The mission will also keep an eye on high-altitude satellites, and monitor orbiting space junk to try to minimize collisions. Tests of anti-satellite weapons and collisions between satellites have led to an increase in the amount of orbiting debris in recent years, leading to several near-misses with the International Space Station.

You can find out more about the mission in Brian’s post. 

Competition intensifies over market for DNA-based prenatal tests

Kevin Jiang reports in the Spoonful of Medicine Blog that Natera, a startup based in San Carlos, California, announced the 1 March launch date of a commercial test that can detect chromosomal abnormalities in the developing fetus from just a drop of an expectant mother’s blood:

Natera now joins three other California-based firms—Sequenom, Verinata Health (a division of sequencing giant Illumina) and Ariosa Diagnostics—in offering such products for women at high risk of having babies with Down’s syndrome or other chromosomal miscounts known as aneuploidies. With US health insurers, including Aetna and Wellpoint, saying they plan to cover the new tests, the market for DNA-based prenatal screening now provides “a billion dollar opportunity,” according to David Ferreiro, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in Boston.

Continue to Kevin’s post to see a table comparing the noninvasive tests that are currently on offer.

Zewail City to start receiving university applications from students

Mohammed Yahia reveals in the House of Wisdom Blog that starting early next week, Zewail University of Science and Technology will start receiving applications from high school students seeking to join the first class at the new university for the autumn 2013 semester:

The minimum requirement will be a score of over 90% for students with either a science or mathematics major in high school. All applicants will then need to take a series of admission exams prepared by the university itself, including English language, before they are accepted.

“We are looking to recruit the best students there are, regardless of social or financial status,” says Sherif Sedky, the founding provost of the university. “For the first year, we will recruit the 300 students who score highest in the admission exams.”

The university will also be taking transfers from other Egyptian universities, but details of this will be announced at a later, unannounced date.

More details about this university can be found in Mohammed’s post. 

Brain talk

SciLogs blogger Akshat Rathi, asks in his latest post “Why it is our brains are all wrinkly?”

Some mammals have smooth brains (rat), while others have a lot of folds (dolphins). Higher folds lead to greater surface area and denser connections between neurons, which in turn help increase the brain’s computing speed and allow for specialisation of certain regions.

The obvious question then, and one that Robert Toro asks in a new paper is: Are these folds encoded in our genes or is it because larger brains have to fold up to be accommodated in a smaller space?

Toro finds that it has little to do with genes and mostly to do with brain size. This observation explains it succinctly: The back part of our brain which develops earlier has greater space to grow in and thus has fewer folds compared to the front of our brains (ie the neocortex).

Useful references are also provided in Akshat’s post. 

Mudskipper

 Finally, Scitable’s Creature Cast Blog features a video of an unusual fish – the mudskipper:

The phrase “like a fish out of water” is often used to describe something out of place. The mudskipper, however, is a fish completely at home out of water. Rosalyn Price-Waldman, from Casey Dunn’s Invertebrate Zoology (Biol 0410) course at Brown University, tells the story of how mudskippers move on land, enacting muddy battles for territory and mates.

Special thanks to the Brown University Science Center and the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. Music is “Railroad’s Whiskey Co.” by jahzzar, freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Home/Railroads_Whiskey_Co.

You can visit creaturecast.org for more stories about the unexpected world of Biology.