Women in science
Rachel Bowden, Naturejobs’ blogger, has been discussing the gap between men’s and women’s careers in UK academia. According to the 2010 Athena Survey of Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET) summary report published earlier this month, this gap is closing as women become more ambitious:
The 2010 survey, which included responses from over 7,000 male and female academics and postdocs from 84 UK universities, found that women are increasingly likely to aspire to senior leadership positions and are as likely as men to hold posts such as head of research and director of postgraduate studies.
You can find out more in her post, Female scientists in UK report improved prospects – but there’s still a long way to go.
Women in science has also been a topic of discussion at this year’s 61st meeting of Nobel laureates and junior scientists. Sited on the beautiful island of Lindau, the conference began on Sunday giving selected young scientists the unique opportunity to meet with Nobel laureates for a week of plenary talks. So far we have been providing regular coverage of events on the island, updating you on the latest talks, videos and tweets surrounding the meeting. In order to keep everyone informed of the latest happenings, check out our summary posts, linking to the most recent blogging coverage.
Savants and space
In his latest post, Ability with disability Tej Nishtala has been discussing the rare phenomenon called Savant syndrome, where an individual has capabilities beyond that of an average individual. Tej is intrigued by these Savants and their extraordinary skills:
Savants display skills in five different domains- music, art (drawing/painting/sculpture), math (compute prime numbers), calender calculation (days/dates/years) and spatial skills (eg.assume a walking and talking google map).
You can watch a video in his post of the real Rain Man, one of the most famous known Savants.
Barbara Ferreira unveils details of the most distant quasar found to date. In her first ever science release, which she researched and drafted while working for the Education and Public Outreach Department of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), she explains what a quasar is and how its discovery came about:
The quasar that has just been found, named ULAS J1120+0641 2, is seen as it was only 770 million years after the Big Bang (redshift 7.1, 3). It took 12.9 billion years for its light to reach us.
Find out more information in her post on this quasar and how its distance was determined.
Guest thoughts
This week we’ve also had not one, but two, guest bloggers. Our first post was by Dr. Rana Dajani who teaches molecular biology and is Director of the Center for Studies at the Hashemite University of Jordan. She discusses the multiple challenges scientific researchers face in the Arab world, something that may not be so obvious for those in the West:
There is an abundance of minds and creativity in the Arab world. However, most of them drain into the West because there is a well-established support system for research. So, what is the solution?
Do you agree with Dr Rana’s thoughts? Feel free to join the discussion by leaving a comment in the thread.
Our next guest blogger is Dr David Barlow, Consultant in Genitourinary Medicine at St Thomas’ and Guy’s Hospital, London. In his guest post, he discusses how facts and figures should be treated with caution:
Anyway, it got me thinking about how, in my speciality, when ‘facts’ become ‘figures’, caution is called for. I had an interest in heterosexual transmission of HIV in the 1980s and 1990s which put me in conflict with the official number-crunchers and I’m afraid I’m still suspicious when presented with totals.
You can find out in David’s post what a DB numerical error is and feel free to give your own examples in the comment thread.
What a pain!
NPG’s Spoonful of Medicine blog reveal that developing new drugs to treat pain is, well… a pain. In their post, they reveal that in clinical trials, researchers typically test experimental pain medicines by asking people to rate the level of pain they experience on a scale of one-to-ten:
This approach isn’t possible in animal models, so researchers, instead of trying to prove that animals are experiencing pain, are turning towards modeling the molecular mechanisms associated with human pain with the hope that halting those pathways will result in more comfort.
Indeed, that’s the approach taken by Giorgio Casari and his colleagues from the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, who reported a new mouse model for migraine headaches last week in PLoS Genetics.
Impact Factor
The News Blog reports on Thomson Reuters’ impact factors results for 2010. Impact factors provide a measurement of how popular a science journal is:
This event, which happened again this week, always produces a slightly embarrassed buzz among science journal editors. They appreciate the absurdity that a journal’s impact (a fuzzy, multi-dimensional concept) should be reported publicly by a single number…
You can see a ladder of this year’s top 20 journals and their movements from last year in the post.
Do you want to know what Nature Chemistry’s impact factor (IF) is? Well, this week The Sceptical Chymsit blog reveal that it is 17.9 (or, if you want more accurate quote, it’s 17.927).
We realise that the IF is far from a perfect metric; really, we do. And we also appreciate that there are a range of opinions out there amongst our audience on the matter — some of you love the IF, some of you hate it.
The post drills a little more deeply into this number and what it might mean, if anything.
I’m a scientist
The I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here! competition is currently in full swing. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, it is an award-winning science enrichment and engagement activity, funded by the Wellcome Trust. It’s the science equivalent of X Factor, where students are the judges, scientists and students talk online and the students vote for the best scientists. The aim is to break down barriers, have fun and learn, all at the same time. Jim Caryl, one of a hundred or so scientists to be entered, discusses his experience of the competition so far, giving us an unprecedented glimpse into what it’s like to take part, how he got involved and what kind of questions he was asked:
There were some pretty oddball questions:
What did the Romans eat?
Hey Jimmy. What would you have as a more preferred pet? a) jelly fish b) spitting lama c) albus casius barbra percyvale woolfred vile dumble door d) lord voldemort e) tom mevarlo riddle f) ronald billious weasly g) a ppink unicorn rairy beast
You can find our more in his post.
Congratulations
In May we announced the details of our new recognition system for Nature Network bloggers and have been providing 3-month online subscriptions to Nature for regular bloggers. No additional bloggers have qualified this month but congratulations to those who are currently receiving free subscriptions:
For those bloggers who have yet to qualify, don’t be disheartened as there’s always next month. Keep up the great blogging! Further details can be found in our blog post, Saying thanks to our bloggers.
Synthetic Biology
Can you imagine living cells using digital signals? This is the topic of discussion in Scitable’s blog Student Voices. A recent report from a team of synthetic biologists announces an intriguing step in just this direction by using genetically altered RNA systems:
The team wanted to build a signalling system using RNA. A signal allows the cell to respond to an environmental input by mobilizing cellular machinery to generate an output such as GFP.
Learn more about this new synthetic system in the post. Can you think of a practical application for this research? If so, feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment thread.
Now onto the “King” of synthetic biology, Craig Venter. In Viktor Poor’s latest cartoon strip Craig Venter becomes a member of the Stripped Science cartoon hall of fame of scientists:
