Blogs
In the wake of the recent troubles over on Science Blogs, Nature Network contributors have also been grappling with the pros and cons of blogging on a network rather than a solo blog. Dan Pollock, Associate Director of Nature.com, provides Nature’s official response to the ongoing conversation. Several Nature Network bloggers have taken this opportunity to retire their blogs. We would like to say another thank you to Heather Etchevers, Alyssa Gilbert and Cath Ennis for all their ponderings, comments and comradeship over the years. For those waiting for more details on improvements to Nature Network blogs, we have some much-asked-for features ready on our test server and will post an update about these in the next day or two.
Tuning to science, and ecologist Tom Webb writes poetically about the marine environment, and the challenges of perceiving it as a habitat.
Conceptually, that can be difficult to grasp, particularly if you have grown accustomed to seeing species ranges, and other patterns of biodiversity, represented on flat maps. But for me, visualising an ecological problem is very often a great help, if not an essential prerequiste, to solving it. So in Wales, gazing out to sea, I practised the following thought experiment: imagine if you could see through the sea, as if it were air.
He then goes on to describe what you might see, from the sandy plains to the clouds of algae to the air-breathing predators. On a very different note, Andrew Sun discusses the teaching of lab safety protocols. He recommends compiling videos of when experiments go hazardously wrong, to help poke students out of safety complacency:
Let them see the disasters in a centralized manner. We should collect from all over the world videos and photos of “lab FAIL”, each with concise description of the causes, and maintain a blog with them. Syndicating all the “oops” and “ouch” in the lab can create a special powerful culture that every student deem the sense of safety most wise rather than unnecessary.
Finally, Bob O’Hara is looking for people’s notions of how to define a biological niche, Viktor Poór offers a floral cartoon, and Frank Norman wants to know your favourite lookalike favicons (tiny icons used by web sites on browser tabs).
Forums
Places for Science Online London are filling up quickly now. Anyone with an interest in scientific communication and collaboration online will be interested. To discuss the conference ahead of time, join the dedicated forum, where current talk centres around one of the fringe events.
Nature Network stories are now being featured regularly on Nature’s Facebook page, which has over 12,000 fans. We’ll be highlighting the more opinionated, discussion-provoking or otherwise cool content, so this is your chance to reach a wider audience via blog posts and forum topics. Don’t forget to check if we’ve included you or if anyone’s left feedback about your blog there!
And Finally…
How’s your ornithology? GrrlScientist has been continuing her series of mystery birds for readers to identify. See how many you can guess.