Nature operatives are still at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego. Here’s a round up of their latest news, from our In the Field blog.
This is your brain on music
In one of the more astonishing demonstrations heard at Saturday’s music and language session, Northwestern University neuroscientist Nina Kraus started by playing the sound of someone saying the syllable ‘da’. …read more…
Blogs, twitter, videos … oh my!
It would have been more appropriate to have my laptop open and to blog or twitter while at the talk on Communicating Science in the New Information Age. But alas, even if I had remembered my laptop at 8:30 in the morning, it would have been useless at the San Diego Convention Center; oddly enough, most of the rooms lack WiFi. …read more…
13 months of science and Obama
You have to hand it to Eric Lander: he gives a good talk. At last night’s plenary session, he admitted he would have been more comfortable talking about the human genome. …read more…
Stem Cells, Quackery, Ratings
With stem cells the latest therapy to be abused by unscrupulous practitioners, a research society plans to help patients identify quackery. Come April, the International Society for Stem Cell Research is to launch a program to rate and approve stem cell therapy programs worldwide. …read more…
Different on the inside
They may look the same, and behave the same — but under the surface pluripotent stem cells are not the same. That was the message coming from a well-attended AAAS session this afternoon. …read more…
Six snippets from Francis Collins
His first six months as director of NIH have “been a wild ride”. …read more…
Data techs needed
Should every research group have a full time data-handler? I’m persuaded after hearing about the multiple pitfalls associated with handling scientific data in modern research. …read more…
Dust, Puffins, Iceland
A new trail to dust from receding Arctic glaciers began among a colony of Puffins on a small island off Iceland. …read more…
Image: photo by jepoirrier via Flickr under creative commons