Happiness

Getting the week off to a cheerful start, blogger Tom Webb, in his latest post Shifting baselines of happiness has been reading up on happiness after being inspired by an article written by the evolutionary ecologist, Hanna Kokko. He raises some interesting points, such as the significance of the role of ecology or perhaps more specifically ‘nature’ (with a small ‘n’, note!), in making us happy and how the concept, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” falls into this:

Things like birdsong, green space, clean rivers, ancient trees all make us happy (most of us, anyway) in ways that probably don’t need to be quantified, but can be nonetheless. A big new initiative in the UK, the Valuing Nature Network, is trying to do just that, so that nature’s value can be properly entered into future planning and development discussions.

You can read more of his thoughts in his post.

Boston blogger, Tinker Ready, is encouraging those in the area to go to a conference on laughter held at Emerson College, known for producing a host of humorous journalists and actors including Jay Leno, Denis Leary, Andrea Martin, and Seth Grahame-Smith. You can find out more about this ‘funny’ event in her post Ha! The science of laughter. Do let us know if you plan to attend.

Now onto something that will definitely make you smile. Readers may remember the interview London blogger, Joanna Scott, did with Baba Brinkman, rap artist and creator of the Rap Guide to Evolution, a few weeks ago. She attended his launch show with Nature Podcast’s Kerri Smith who also spoke with Baba after the preview. If you’d like to hear some snippets from his show and Baba discussing his rapping abilities, you can hear him on this week’s Nature Podcast and read a Q&A in Nature’s Books and Arts section.

Festivals

Good news for readers of Scitable’s Cognoculture blog. This month the blog will be hosting Encephalon #88, a neuroscience / psychology blog festival which tries to highlight some of the best posts from any given month. So, if you’re a neuro-blogger, send any posts to cognoculture@gmail.com! You can find out more here.

Throughout our latest blogging extravaganza, science festivals have been in the spotlight. This week saw the anticipated arrival of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, from which the pioneering FameLab project was born. The aim of FameLab is to encourage young scientists to inspire and excite public imagination with a vision of science in the 21st century. In our mini-series, we have already welcomed a joint guest post by Sharon Bishop, the Executive Director of the festival and Kathy Sykes, Festival Director, where they highlight the successes of Cheltenham Festival. In our latest post, we summarise this year’s Fame Lab project hearing from some of the contestants, as well as gathering some top tips for wannabe science communicators. You can find out more in our update, as well as an opportunity to listen to an interview with the winner, Myrtani Pieri.

A shocked winner: Myrtani Pieri collecting her prize

Lindau Nobel Laureate – A Genius?

Last week saw the unveiling of the new version of the Lindau Nobel Community site – a place which will be a hub for connecting attendees at this year’s Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. In the run up to the meeting, Lou Woodley has been asking in her latest post, Reflections on Genius if there are two sides to every success. Having been inspired by a session she attended at the WSF on “The Enigma of Genius,” (you can read her write up on this event here) where Philip Glass, the world-renowned composer, defined genius as “the tools needed to get the job done: technique, independence and stamina,” Lou questions:

This seems to sum up many (all?) of the characteristics needed for a successful scientific career, leading me to wonder whether the Nobel Laureates would agree that they’ve had to demonstrate all three to win their prizes?

In Lou’s insightful post, you can discover her musings on the ingredients of genius. She encourages you to have your own say on the matter in the comment thread.

Communicating science

There are many ways to communicate science and the use of social media is becoming increasingly important as it provides a medium for scientists to post their data publicly, in real time. NPG’s News blog has been reporting on an example of how Twitter can be used by scientists. They reveal that on the 11th June, astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena sparked huge interest by live-tweeting his observations of a transit of dwarf planet, Haumea, by its moon, Namaka.

Brown was at the 4-meter William Herschel telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands, when he released multiple plots showing in real time how Haumea dimmed as Namaka passed in front. “The observations were just spectacular,” he says.

You can find out more about Brown’s decision to send these live tweets (despite making some of his colleagues uncomfortable) in the post. What do you think of his decision? Have your say in the comment thread, or tweet him @plutokiller.

In a similar spirit, we all want to know the best way to communicate science and this was the focus of this week’s guest blogger Laura Blackburn’s post. Laura works as a Scientific Communications Officer at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute (CRI) and reveals in her post how to Make Science Make Sense:

My role in all of this is to help make our research accessible to the outside world, from other scientists, through to our supporters, which includes donors, fundraising groups and volunteers.

Question of the week

The question of the week goes to Bob O’Hara who has been asking What are PhDs for anyway? His post tackles the discussion head on as he concludes that the root cause of the problem is the way PhDs are viewed and used by society. He breaks down the varying views from academics, politicians and the general public and provides some solutions:

The Politician’s View

But the PhD is being undermined, not because of any deliberate act, but as a by-product of the way research is increasingly funded. Governments want to fund research, and a lot of that is done using soft money: paying for short projects that then need to be renewed with new short projects. The research is done through funding junior scientists, who are cheaper than more experienced researchers. In practice this means a lot of PhD students.

What is your opinion? Join the growing discussion in his comment thread.

Herbal medicine

NPG’s Spoonful of Medicine blog announced that a controversial set of rules which changes the way herbal medicinal products are licensed and marketed in Europe came into full force this May, ending a seven-year grace period which had allowed manufacturers to come up to speed on the new measures:

Under the law, any plant product with a new curative claim sold over the counter is subject to an approval process the same as the one that pharmaceutical drugs are required to undergo when seeking marketing authorization.

The post reveals that, in addition to these new regulations, the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive will force natural products’ producers to adhere to the standards of good manufacturing practice. You can find out more information in the post.

Evil Element?

Nature Chemistry announced in their Sceptical Chymist blog that they will be posting some anecdotes or characteristics of the element featured each month from the in your element section of their journal. In their latest post, they reveal that David Lindsay from the University of Reading and William Kerr from the University of Strathclyde wrote about cobalt, an element thought to be named after evil sprites (kobold in German):

Oh, and according to Wikipedia, it also treats cyanide poisoning — a use that is hopefully less in demand.

You can find out more about its unusual catalytic characteristics in their post.

Drink, anyone?

MuKa has been discussing an Australian study which suggests people who were stressed and drank a lot of coffee were more likely to have auditory hallucinations.

The recruited subjects were initially primed by the dulcet tones Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” (rockin’ stuff). They were then played three minutes of static hissing and told to press a buzzer if they could hear snippets of Bing singing among the static. However, the song was never played but everyone heard it amongst the static, including low-caffeine subjects who pressed the buzzer once. But those who had the stress-coffee combo heard it three times, not just stress alone or coffee alone.

Concerned by the report as he is a self-confessed coffee drinker, he asks if anyone else is a stress-coffee combo person? Feel free to join in the conversation.

Now onto another drink which often causes concern for some: beer. In her latest post Beer chemistry Eva Amson recounts an entertaining story about an undergraduate student who complained by letter to the brewers of Duvel beer after they had claimed on the label that their product was free of chemicals:

The letter was quite cheeky, suggesting that perhaps the label was a misprint, and that it should have read “with chemical products”, or that maybe it wasn’t beer after all. But they also made the suggestion to replace the label with “brewed with natural products” since that seemed to be what the company was aiming for.

You can find out how Duvel responded in her post.

Finally

Last week Viktor explained how new bacterium strains emerge. In his latest comic strip, he tells us more about the Escherichia coli (EHEC) viewed as an RPG (role playing game) character: