Blogs
A warm welcome to David Johnson, whose new blog, Neuropoly, began on Nature Network this week. David is a neuroscience PhD student with a background in cognitive and social psychology. His research covers a wide range of topics in the cognitive sciences, from humans to mice and his first post, The neural correlates of (some abstract cognitive process), considers the exploitation of science in the media. He discusses a story the NY Times ran a few years ago which featured the work of a neuromarketing company where participants were asked to lay in a scanner while looking at pictures of presidential candidates. His post delves into the problems associated with this experiment, highlighting the ways the media can often mislead people by misinterpreting science:
It’s unfortunate that the study received such a prominent platform for distribution because people, especially non scientists, can be heavily influenced by articles with pictures of brains or technical sounding neuro language. One study, found that people were much more likely to believe a nonsensical article if it had meaningless neuroscience language in it than if it didn’t.
Popular topics
We all know how valuable science education is and this has been the central focus of our recent mini-series. We have looked at how science is taught at all levels, have assembled some top tips from PhD students and have created a Storify summary of the recent Science Question time event in London. In order to collate all of this information, we have created a Dipity Flipbook; including our seven PhD interviews, other related blog posts and a summary of the live Q & A Nature held last week. You can find the Flipbook here and if you have any related questions, feel free to leave a comment in the thread.
Onto another popular topic – weddings. With the hype over the Royal Wedding slowly dwindling, NPG’s News Blog have revealed that there is an experimental philosopher in New York City who is looking at marriage from a whole new perspective. Jonathon Keats is offering a sciencey way to share a special bond with your loved one. He will entangle couples, in the quantum sense, so that they will live “Happily ever entangled:”
Couples wishing to be entangled walk down a narrow corridor, two-people wide, and stand under the entanglement apparatus. This comprises a nonlinear crystal of beta-barium borate (commonly used to entangle photons), which will catch the sunlight from the window. Then a series of prisms will split that light – hopefully containing the entangled photons – and the light will hit the two people standing below.
DNA Origami
When the world of art and science collide you often get some of the most ingenious creations. This week, Scitable’s blogger, Eric Sawyer has been sharing with us some DNA origami, which, as the name suggests, is literally doing origami with molecules of DNA. He explains that since we know a lot about the structure of DNA and how it behaves, developing DNA origami is limited only by our creativity.
Science writing
How do you Write? This is the question that blogger and PhD student Richard Williams asks in his latest post. As an apprentice scientist writing his first year report, he reveals his own tested method of writing and urges other PhD students who have any top tips to impart their advice:
Does this sound familiar to PhD graduates out there? Did you encounter a similar issue when you were at Grad School? If so, how did you overcome it? How do you write?
The writing theme continues in The Sceptical Chymist blog. As you might already be aware, each month, an essay is published in Nature Chemistry about an element. These short pieces are fairly informal and often include anecdotes or historical tales about a particular element. Their most recent essay is by Ralph Puchta, from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and he enlightens us about the element beryllium. You can read an extract from his essay in the post.
YouTube Ban
This week Scilogs blogger Markus A. Dahlem has revealed that a video he posted on YouTube, which shows how some people see optical migraines, has been removed. It presented a simulated visual hallucination, a zigzag pattern, which you can see in the screenshot below:
The video has received a lot of positive feedback from both the scientific community and from migraine sufferers. Blogger Markus feels that there no obvious reason why YouTube disabled his video, although he does try to offer an explanation in his post. What do you think of this decision?
To AV or not to AV?
Yesterday in the UK, a national referendum was held to decide whether the voting system currently used in parliamentary elections should be changed. In the run up to this, in his post, to AV or not to AV, Tom Webb has been giving us a run down of what this actually means and cites Australia as an example of a country which has used AV for years.
We go to the polls in the UK tomorrow, in a national referendum to decide whether we should change the voting system we use in parliamentary elections. The choice is between our current system, First Past the Post (FPTP), and the Alternative Vote (AV) system.
Like Tom, London blogger Joanna Scott has also been discussing this issue in her latest post, Politics and science: AV, ESF funding and libel laws. In her politically themed post she reveals that other votes are taking place that might be of more interest to scientists:
But AV is not the only vote going on today: London scientists may be more affected by a special assembly of the European Science Foundation (ESF) which is considering proposals to merge with the European Heads of Research Councils (EuroHORCs) and discontinue its grant funding activities.
Risk Intelligence
This week’s guest blogger is Dylan Evans, author of numerous books including, Emotion and Placebo. In his post, he is considering Risk Intelligence, introducing us to the Forecasting World Events Project, a multi-year research program investigating the accuracy of individual and group predictions about global events.
Now onto an event which perhaps could have been predicted: the death of Osama Bin Laden. Australian blogger MuKa, in his amusing post, Aladdin, reveals how he was taken aback at the announcement from his mother, who is originally from Bangladesh and has difficulty with pronunciation:
“Did you hear? Aladdin is dead!”.
“What?”, I asked with astonishment_.
“Aladdin, he’s dead!”.
“Aladdin?”.
“_Yes".
His post sparks an interesting comment thread revealing how common it is to misinterpret language. MuKa encourages those who have experienced similar misunderstandings, particularly in science, to leave a comment.
Finally
Viktor Poor has been asking us what happens when two homologue chromosomes meet…..?
