Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Best of Nature Network, NPG staff blogs and Scitable: 22 – 28 October

The very first London Science Festival took place from last week and we attended several of the events. On Friday night we went to the Museum of Life Sciences at the Gordon Museum, Kings College London, for an exhibition on the mechanisms of evolution. Check our coverage to see some of the weird specimens on display:

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Tuesday night brought us the Science Question Time event at King’s College London, where discussion was focused on the future of drugs. Amongst the topics discussed were the role of open innovation in new drug discovery, the economics of drug development and usage, personalised medicine and cognitive enhancing drugs. In our post we have collated a Storify of tweets and other content from the event.

The London Science Festival finished on Wednesday, but do keep an eye on the London Science Events calendar which is regularly updated. We also have events calendars for hubs around the world, and, as our Boston Blogger continues to keep those in the area in the loop, you can read a summary of events in her latest post, food, fights bats and biotechs.

Careers Advice

This week Eva Amsen has been moving house and in the process has been receiving some impromptu career advice from her plumber:

“At the end of every week, stop and ask yourself: ‘Have I learned something this week? Have I made a difference? Have I enjoyed myself?’ If the answer is ‘yes’, you’re doing all right. When you’re in a new job, you’ll still be learning new things all the time. But when that stops, when at the end of the week you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, you’re in trouble.”

We agree with Eva (and the plumber) that this is, “Sound advice for all careers…” including those in science!

Open Access

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The Royal Society is making their historical journal archives open access, GrrlScientist reveals in her latest post. So if you love reading about the history of science first-hand, then you’ll love having free access to the archives of the world’s oldest continuously published scientific journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society – this access may prove particularly useful in the lead up to Halloween:

They are permanently free to online access from anywhere in the world, according to an announcement by The Royal Society.

On the other hand, if you enjoy reading about strange and wondrous scientific phenomena that rarely see light in the modern day, you may wish to search out gems such as monstrous calves — or monstrous humans? Since Hallowe’en rapidly approaches, maybe you prefer to read about mummies?

You can find out some history of the journal in her post or check out the News Blogs latest coverage.

Bioinformatics

This week’s guest post is on bioinformatics, explaining what is it and how it can bring prehistory to life? Blogger Ivan Karabaliev from Eagle Genomics clarifies:

Explained in just one sentence, bioinformatics is the science of managing, analysing, storing and merging biological data (DNA sequences, proteins, etc.) using advanced computing techniques. Put another way, it is the application of computer science and information technologies to solve biological questions. Simple questions include asking what a specific region of given DNA is responsible for, or how closely related one organism is to another by comparing their genomes.

Continuing the bioinformatics theme, the Spoonful of medicine blog has reported that a sequencing project may bring age-old wisdom to genomics:

Helen ‘Happy’ Reichert died in September. She was a lifelong New Yorker, a former television talk show host and Cornell University’s oldest alumna. She was 109. Despite her death, however, Reichert’s memory may live on through her genome sequence. Today, the nonprofit X-Prize Foundation — best known for its attempt to spur the development of private spaceships — launched a $10 million competition to accurately sequence 100 genomes from 100 centenarians over the course of one month, starting 3 January 2013.

Find out more about this project and the future of genomics in the post, including what Craig Venter, who sits on the X-Prize advisory board, has to say.

It’s podcast time

Check out this week’s Nature Podcast, which includes reports on how brains change across the lifespan, the biggest threat from climate change and Pluto’s new best friend. Plus, the best of the rest from Nature.

Media misinterprets

This week, scitable blogger, Taylor Burns, is discussing how science stories can sometimes be misinterpreted by the media. This is in response to the UCL study linking IQ swings in adolescence to specific structural changes in the brain which went viral this week:

Whenever a science story goes viral, there is always either a miscommunication, misunderstanding or misplaced emphasis. For this one, it’s misplaced emphasis. Take, for example, the BBC piece, which suggests the most significant aspect of the study to be the fact that it demonstrated IQ fluctuation. Any psychologist who studies intelligence will tell you that we’ve known about this for years. Rather, what’s exciting about the UCL study is its neuroscientific (rather than psychological) finding: namely, that there is a significant correlation with particular structural changes in the brain – which they were able to isolate and observe – and verbal and non-verbal IQ.

Taylor talked with Prof Stephen Ceci, an influential developmental psychologist at Cornell, about the results and you can read two of his longer comments in his post.

Sleepy Bears…

Following on from last week’s post on bears, the Frontier Scientists are explaining all about bear hibernation:

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This isn’t ‘true’ hibernation; the bear’s temperature drops to only about 88 °Fahrenheit from a standard 99 °F maintained during waking months. Some call it ‘denning’. In contrast, most small mammals which hibernate can reach a core body temperature of below 40°F, with a few species even dropping their temperature to below freezing. Still, bears exhibit a slowed metabolic rate (torpor), sparse oxygen consumption and low core body temperatures, just like other hibernators.

The post asks if modern day science can help to harness the power of hibernation. You can find out more here.

What’s the diagnosis?

The favourite diagnosis of hit US TV character Dr House is Viktor Poor’s inspiration for his latest comic strip:

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