Nature.com blogs – a collection of blogs from editors and other staff at NPG
In a jam-packed blogging week, we hosted two Soapbox Science guest posts. Firstly, we heard from Dr Gianni Lo Iacono, a mathematical modeller at the University of Cambridge. He talks about interdisciplinary research and what it means to him. Secondly, Sharon Levy a freelance science writer, looks at whether it’s possible to raise the woolly mammoth from its Pleistocene grave:
{credit}Smithsonian Woolly Mammoth. Photo by Kevin Burkett. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons{/credit}
Mammoths and mastodons once roamed throughout the Americas, as well as much of Europe and Asia. There were several species, but the best-known is the woolly mammoth, a creature of the far north. Well-preserved carcasses have been discovered melting out of the permafrost in Siberia and the Yukon. There’s been a lot of talk of ‘cloning’ a mammoth by using DNA recovered from bodies preserved in permafrost.
For a summary of last week’s NPG blogging content, including advice on how to ask for a promotion, news from NASA, 3D-printed material and a fun comic, see here.
Scitable – Nature Education’s network of science blogs
ScienceOnlineTeen, sponsored by Nature Education, took place this Saturday in New York City. It was an ideal platform to put younger science enthusiasts and junior communicators in touch with more experienced ones. Scitable blogger Samantha Jakuboski was involved in the conference and blogged about it too. If you missed it, you can check out the #scioteen tweets.
SciLogs.com – an NPG network of science bloggers
This week, Matt Shipman discusses a communication conundrum in the climate science field. Matt points out that the public does trust climate scientists although it doesn’t trust the media. Considering that it is the media that communicates what climate scientists are saying to the public, there’s a bit of an issue here. Matt has some solutions to this problem, which he proposes here.
Continuing his series about the terrifying fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, Kausik Datta explains how microbiologists identify those dangerous microorganisms in the lab; it’s detective work!
SpotOn NYC – a monthly discussion series in NYC co-hosted by NPG
On the 25th April, SpotOnNYC will be celebrating its second birthday! For this year’s festivities we will be trying something new…we are inviting the community to help us create a set of case studies on using social media for science outreach projects. As usual, we’ll livestream all of the examples and add the video archives to the website, alongside a series of written case studies that we’re sharing in the run-up to the event. More details on what we’re hoping to achieve can be found here, and to sign up see the event page.