Blogs: Of Astronauts and Nanobots

Nature Network this week welcomed two new bloggers who cover science from opposite ends of the scale spectrum. Joe Hill always wanted to become an astronaut. After gaining a PhD in X-ray astronomy, she now works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, building detectors for space-based instruments. Excitingly, she will shortly take part in the NASTAR program, giving her experience of an astronaut training regime. Her blog, dare we say it, promises to be out of this world.

Ayusman Sen, by contrast, works on the very small. His team at Penn State University are focussed on building catalytic nano- and microbots. His Chemical Calisthenics blog will examine developments in this field, and chemistry more generally.

Elsewhere on the blogs, Jenny Rohn enlists the help of two fellow geeks (her own word) to decode a gene-themed cycle path in Cambridge. Several Entrez and Blast searches later, they identify the sequence of the BRCA2 gene in a rare combination of genetics and civic infrastructure. Chris Surridge begins a conversation about the best science podcasts and radio shows. And Frank Norman presents some science publishing highlights from the recent Online Information conference in London.

From the Archive:

To get us all in the Christmas spirit, Brian Clegg cajoled Nature Networkers into putting together some seasonal poetry. Here’s the first verse to give you a flavour.

’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the lab

Not a Gilson was stirring, not even one jab.

On the bench, ’twixt a novel by Jennifer Rohn

And the paper rejected by Henry’s iPhone

Lay a leg, still trembling and covered in gore

And Frankenstein sighed ‘I can’t take this no more’.

Now, read on.

Special Announcement

Google Wave Demonstration. For those lucky enough to have access to Google Wave (a new communication tool, currently under closed beta), Nature Network is organising a demonstration of how to use it at 4pm (GMT) on Friday 4 December. If you’d like to join us, check out the discussion here on the Network or message Lou Woodley if you still need a Wave invite.

And finally…

Nature Network now boasts its first Nobel Prize winner. Sort of. Prof Stephen Curry gratefully accepts the Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry and medicine for his work on a Theory of the Tangential Universe, and its relationship to certain alternative medical practices.