Monthly Archives: March 2017

Promoting open science from a pub: the Panton Principles

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Follow the Panton Principles to ensure your data is licensed and accessible for immediate reuse, says Atma Ivancevic.

In a world where scientific discovery is driven by impact factor and funding, the idea of open data may seem idealistic. But the open data movement has been growing since the early 2000s, spurred by the rise of big data and computational capabilities. For the sake of reproducibility in science, we need to encourage data sharing after publication.

panton principles pic

Founders of the Panton Principles at the Panton Arms, Cambridge UK.
Copyright Panton Principles Authors (CC by 3.0).

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Hope in the Dark and the March for Science

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Rebecca Solnit’s recently republished book Hope in the Dark should inspire the organisers of the global March for Science and other protest movements. It’s important to acknowledge and celebrate incremental change, she argues.

 

YOGYAKARTA, INDONESIA - MARCH 08: Indonesian women perform dance during celebrates International Women's Day on March 8, 2017 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. International Women's Day was first marked in 1911 and celebrated each year on 08 March with thousands of events around the world by women's networks. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Women in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2017 (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

When Rebecca Solnit was born in 1961 some Ivy League universities did not admit women, a few Southern US colleges and universities only admitted whites, and some elite institutions still banned Jews. The Berlin Wall was erected that summer and the Cold War was at its height. Continue reading →

Genome editing meets version control

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BioStudio screenshot

Consider for a moment the logistics of rewriting a genome from scratch. Starting from a reference genome sequence, you nip and tuck, recode and reorganize. Changes to any one element changes the genetic coordinates of every element downstream, meaning the process requires consider genetic bookkeeping.

Joel Bader, Jef Boeke, and an international team of colleagues faced precisely that problem as they rebuilt five chromosomes from the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae – an effort Amy Maxmen covered yesterday in Nature News. Continue reading →

Painting with yeast

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Science magazine

Today, an international research team led by Jef Boeke of New York University Langone Medical Center and Joel Bader at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, reported in Science a remarkable feat – the complete de novo synthesis and redesign of five yeast chromosomes, a first step towards a completely synthetic model eukaryote. Over at Nature News, Amy Maxmen has done an admirable job covering that achievement, part of a project called Sc2.0. What I’d like to talk about is one of the artistic flourishes used to illustrate it. Continue reading →

Lessons in leisure for scientists

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The scientific pursuits of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill and King George III can teach today’s scientists about the importance of life outside work, reports David Payne.

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill at his desk in 1939: a prolific writer, he covered scientific topics as diverse as evolution and fusion power.{credit}Getty Images{/credit}

 

In October 1939 Britain was just weeks into its prolonged fight against fascism and Nazi Germany when Winston Churchill, then part of the wartime Cabinet, penned an essay about alien life. Astrophysicist Mario Livio’s analyis of the lost essay, published in Nature  last month, garnered global media coverage. According to physics professor and science writer Graham Farmelo, the lost essay reveals a “dazzzling scope of inquiry” that shows he was an “even greater public figure than we thought.” Continue reading →

Join the March for Science in London (and other UK cities)

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The most effective way to protect science is to encourage the public to value and invest in it. This is why we’re marching through London on 22 April 2017, says Story Sylwester.

London skyline. Credit: Tim Graham/Getty Images

London skyline. Credit: Tim Graham/Getty Images

As the nature of scientific inquiry developed over centuries from the “solitary genius” model of Sir Isaac Newton to the international collaboration modelled by the Rosetta space exploration mission, UK scientists have been leaders in the development of scientific thinking and methodology. Yet, in an age where science has resulted in new technologies, improved quality of life, and improved understanding of the world around us, it faces some of its toughest challenges. Continue reading →