Teaming Up For Men’s Health Month
Did you know that it’s Men’s Health Month? You can read a selection of highly-cited articles here and they are all free!
Extra Podcast
This week there is a Nature Podcast extra and it’s all about time. Click on the image below to take a listen:
Many physicists are happy with the idea that time doesn’t exist. Now a new book, Time Reborn by Lee Smolin, wants to put time back into physics.
nature.com blogs – a collection of blogs from editors and other staff at NPG
Wednesday’s Soapbox Science post is by Dr. Schwarcz’s, a chemistry professor at McGill University and the Director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. He explains that the presence of a chemical is not the same as presence of risk:
Thanks to our analytical capabilities, we can now routinely detect substances down to the part per trillion (ppt) level. That’s not finding a needle in a haystack; it’s finding a needle in a world full of haystacks. At that level, we can detect a myriad of chemicals should we choose to look for them! And by selectively referencing the scientific literature, the spectra of risk can be readily raised.
The Indigenus Blog continue their ‘Away from home’ blogging series that features one Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab every Wednesday. Their latest post is a summary of this month’s content and includes an interactive map:
This month we covered a wonderful mix of postdocs in terms of their geographical spread, disciplines and dreams. We featured postdocs from the US, Canada and Singapore with a wide array of interests — from biological modelling to regenerative medicine and from healthcare delivery to academics.
For further blogging news, check out this week’s Best of NPG Blogs which includes negative data, chemicals, risk perception, open access news, plus lots more.
Scitable – Nature Education’s network of science blogs
Credit: Claudia Stocker
Lice are a pain. They are blood suckers after all. But did you know that some fish have to deal with lice too? Alexis Rudd explains: “While suctioned onto or grabbing the fish with their antennae, lice feed off the mucus, skin, and muscle, often causing bleeding and infection. For a large, healthy fish, a few lice are unpleasant but seldom fatal. However, too many lice can kill a fish, especially a small one.” Fair warning: the pictures in this post are not very pleasant!
Jonathan Lawson reports how a graphic designer explained the concept of cell polarity, the ability of living biological cells to form different shapes, with the use of beautiful designs.
SciLogs.com – an NPG network of science bloggers
Matt Shipman has two posts about the status of negative results in science today. In his first post, Matt discusses the importance of negative results and discusses whether journals form the right strategy for their dissemination. Matt also pricked PLOS ONE’s Eric Martens’ brain about “whether negative results matter, why there are so few publications on negative results, and what the publishing community can do about it.”
Paige Brown has been posting some superb photos on her blog lately. Better still, she accompanies each photo with a short but relevant science post. Her latest photo post is about Cooley’s Meadow Rue, a now endangered species.
Thalictrum cooleyi
If you missed anything science last week, Malcolm Campbell most probably has you covered with his weekly roundup.