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Nature‘s Careers section is pleased to announce their latest international competition to select five young scientist columnists for 2013. All currently enrolled science graduate students and working postdocs are eligible. You can find out more in the Nature Jobs blog:
Over the course of the year, each columnist will write at least one column to be published in Nature, and will be encouraged to pitch more. Columnists will also be asked to write two or more Blog entries for the Naturejobs blog, charting their ups and downs through the year and describing how their experiences have shaped their future career choices.
You can see some examples of columns from past winners in the blog post.
TB vaccine takes a tumble
Daniel Cressey reveals in the News Blog that a candidate for a vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) has failed to protect children against the disease in a major clinical trial:
Published today in The Lancet, the results of the trial of the MVA85A vaccine show that it seems to have “no significant efficacy” against either TB or infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
The results are a major blow to the TB research community, as MVA85A had seemed highly promising as a solution to the problem of the patchy efficacy of the ‘BCG’ vaccine used worldwide against the disease.
It was hoped that the new vaccine could be used as a booster to the BCG. A team led by Helen McShane of Oxford University in the UK and Hassan Mahomed of Stellenbosch University in South Africa gave MVA85A to 1,399 infants in South Africa and gave placebos to a further 1,398. Thirty-nine of the placebo group and 32 of those given the new vaccine developed TB. And 171 infants in the placebo group became infected with M. tuberculosis, versus 178 of those vaccinated.
You can read a statement from Helen McShane in the report.
Gene sequencing
Yevgeniy Grigoryev reports in the Spoonful of Medicine blog that doctors can now use a patient’s genetic sequence as the basis for rational drug selection:
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A case report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine illustrates the strength of this approach.
The paper describes an extended Saudi Arabian family in which many young siblings suffered from a Parkinson’s-like condition affecting their movement. The children had normal levels of neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in their spinal fluid, suggesting they should have been healthy. The unique circumstances prompted researchers to use the latest advances in genomic sequencing to identify a mutation in the SLC18A2 gene, which encodes the protein vesicular monoamine transporter 2, or VMAT2, as the cause of the disease.
A team led by Berge Minassian, a neurologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, successfully pinpointed the mutation and treated the symptoms in these siblings.
Continue to the post to find out how advances in personalized genomics will help with genetic diagnosis and treatments.
Beyond Replication: Misleading Reports of a Provocative Experiment
This week’s Soapbox Science post is by Jonathan Ellis, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California. His post considers John Bargh’s experiment on priming, which has recently been the subject of heated discussion among cognitive scientists:
The experiment involved the venerable Scrambled-Sentence task, where subjects are given five scrambled words (e.g., it, there, Matt, right, hold) and asked to make a sentence out of exactly four of them (Hold it right there). Every subject completed thirty of these, yet half the subjects received many words associated with the elderly (forgetful, bald, gray, wrinkle, Florida) whereas the other half received entirely “age-non-specific” words. The result: the subjects whose words connoted old age later walked down the hall more slowly, on average, than the other subjects.
These words, Bargh and his colleagues explain, primed nonconscious ideas of the elderly, which in turn affected walking speed. The experiment is widely cited in support of the general notion that people are often unaware of the reasons why they act as they do.
Last year, however, a major brouhaha erupted concerning Bargh’s experiment, after a careful attempt to replicate it failed to yield a significant difference between the two groups.
Follow through to the post to hear more of Jonathan’s thoughts on this and share your own in the comment thread.
Art and science communication
In his latest post, SciLogs blogger Matt Shipman is talking about art as a tool to communicate science. He wants your help – we all know how beautiful and valuable are is as a science communication tool – but how can we quantifying that value?
How You Can Help Me Out
First, if you are aware of any research that addresses this issue, please share it with me: shiplives[at]gmail.com. And if it’s publicly available, please post a link in the comments. Second, if you’re a communication researcher who is interested in pursuing research related to this question, please let me know (via email or in the comments here) – I might be able to connect you with some science artists who would be interested in working with you. Third, if you are a science artist who is interested in exploring this question, please let me know – I might be able to connect you with some communication researchers who would be interested in working with you.
I believe that art is an important part of science communication, but I want to know whether that is accurate. And if there is an emerging body of evidence that art is an effective tool for conveying scientific concepts, maybe we can get some more money to support it.
Leave your ideas in his comment thread or tweet him @shiplives.
Archaeologists unearth Richard III
This week, archaeologists at the University of Leicester, UK, announced that a body uncovered last September in a car park was in fact that of the famous king Richard III:
The team revealed its find at a morning press conference, along with new photos of the body, which was found on the site of a long-buried medieval church.
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The announcement is generating lots of press, but it’s sparked a Twitter of discontent among scientists who are wondering why the university exposed the discovery before putting the data out for peer review.
A hit below the belt to Spanish science
Erika Pastrana discusses in the Methagora Blog how the Spanish government’s decision to modify their established rules pertaining to the financing of research projects, sentences their research community to more adversity:
Public funds are the main financing source that Spanish science relies on. These programs, which fund research projects as well as individual investigators (mostly young talented scientists starting their labs and returning from postdocs overseas) are granted every year and typically provide funds for projects spanning 3-to-5 years. In the present financial climate, the Spanish government has been continuously and drastically cutting funds for these programs.
In 2009 the Spanish government spent 547 million euros to support science. In the latest resolution of these programs, published last December, these funds were reduced to 309 million (a more than 40% reduction). Rubbing salt into the wound, these funds will also be significantly delayed according to the recent communication, which states that researchers will receive the funds in four years instead of the three that the original call had stipulated back in December 2011.
Join in the online debate and share your own thoughts in Erika’s post.
If Your Head Is In the Clouds At Least It Won’t Get Wet
Finally, if you want to learn more about clouds, then check out Paige Brown’s latest blog post over at Scitable.
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