Storify crazy

Over the last two weeks here on “Of Schemes and Memes, we have been beavering away crafting Storify storyboards, collating the tops tweets from two of the major events the nature.com Communities team are involved with organising. On Tuesday 20th, we hosted the fifth installment of the monthly Science Online NYC (SoNYC) discussion series at Rockefeller University. The topic for debate this month was Enhanced eBooks & BookApps: the Promise and Perils. To read what people on Twitter were saying about the event, check out our Storify of tweets at the bottom of our post.

You can now relive your experiences from Science Online London 2011, or, for those who couldn’t attend, see what the fuss was about by checking out our Storifys. To make your lives easier, we have even made a Storify of Storifys. Take a look below and find out how the “unusual” idea came about:

As well as this, you can discover Eva Amsen’s thoughts about Science Online London in her post Science Offline. She also offers a quick summary of the breakout session she ran alongside Paula Salgado and Jesus Rogel-Salazar on The importance of offline communities in online networking.

In our breakout session, we gave a few examples of projects where either an offline community moved online, or an online community expanded offline, to point out how offline interaction improved these communities. We also had several people in the audience who had similar experiences, and we had lots of stories to share.

Scitable’s blogger, Dr Nick Morris, has also being doing an exceptional job covering Science Online London in his blog, so do take a look.

If you attended Science Online London, as you know, the organisers experimented with the format of the conference by introducing new, hands-on workshop sessions and a greater focus on practical aspects of science online. We’d love to hear your feedback on the event so we can improve things for next year, so make sure you fill in this survey.

Lindau Videos

For the last three years, our Nature video team has made a collection of short films from the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. This year was no exception, as they were on hand to capture some of these extraordinary conversations between Laureates and students focusing on research topics in Physiology and Medicine. You can now check out this week’s video, combating cancer with Nobel Laureate, Edmond Fische, in our post.

A strange occurrence… MOOSE ON THE LOOSE

This week, Barbara Ferreira reports on an unusual story; a drunken moose was spotted in Sweden! What is even more unusual about this report – it’s not the first time a drunken moose has been discovered! Find out why in her post:

Advice and Internships

Nature Jobs have been reporting from the Vitae’s international researcher development conference, held in Manchester, UK, last week, revealing some of the top take home messages for becoming a global researcher:

If you’re considering working in another country, be sure this is really the right choice for you. Seek advice from those with experience and consider your family, financial situation and career prospects when evaluating options. “It is about your physical mobility to some degree.”

Feel free to add your own advice in the comment thread.

Nature Medicine revealed in their blog the details for their science writing internship. The intern will be closely involved in the editorial process and will write news articles and briefs, as well as blog entries. This is not a paper-pushing internship! The person selected for the position will be reporting stories and working on editorial content full-time. Applicants should have completed one year in a graduate program in journalism or have equivalent work experience in journalism. Additionally, a strong understanding of biology and current issues in medicine is required. The six-month, paid internship will start in late November and be based in New York City. Find out how to apply, in their post.

Amber

In a story line that could have been snatched from the Jurassic Park films, Anne-Marie Hodge reports that 11 sets of Cretaceous feathers have been found in amber deposits which were from gleaned from various museums. The feather specimens are in pristine condition, preserved down to a micron scale, which makes them an extremely valuable and exciting find:

This remarkable set of amber samples displays a range of feather types, from the basal, unspecialized feather structures of dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurids to highly specialized and functional feathers characteristics of those found on modern birds. Some had intermediate structures that made them difficult to designate as either characteristically bird or dinosaur—perhaps because they belonged to taxonomically intermediate organisms.

Find out what this discovery can tell us about our understanding of the ecology, behaviour, and evolution of dinosaurs and ancient birds, in her post.

Science and the military: live web chat

The military has long been one of the biggest investors in scientific research. In preparation for a military special in next week’s, Nature_, the News Blog have been taking a closer look at the US military-science complex, hosting a live webchatlive.html with some of the authors of the investigative pieces.

The live web chat took place at 11am EST on Thursday 22 September; If you wish to read all the questions and responses, as well as finding out more about the special, check out the News Blog’s coverage:

Guess who

This week’s celebrity puzzle from Viktor Poor, is much harder (and more geeky) than the previous two. You can decipher it in different ways, but you will have switch your brain power to ON. Can you work out who this famous American dancer, actor and singer is?

Answers in the comment thread.