Monthly Archives: October 2009

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline’09 back in January.
Today, I asked Daniel Brown from the Biochemical Soul blog to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
My name is Daniel Brown, and I am a biologoholic.
I grew up as a rat-tail-sporting, barefoot redneck running around the pine forests of Northeastern Texas (specifically in a tiny town called Hooks). My daily pre-teen life apart from school pretty much consisted of me looking for critters alone in the woods – often trekking great distances (for a little kid anyway) through forests and over farmlands, skirting diamondback rattlers, copperheads, and other rednecks. Times were different then, eh? One of my most vivid memories from my childhood was when I came upon a flooded area of “my woods” a week or two after a big storm. The entire forest floor was covered in a couple of inches of water, which was itself filled with gloopy, slimy bunches of frog eggs. Each gelatinous mass was about the size of a softball, and I distinctly remember just sitting their feeling the goo between my fingers as tiny tadpole tails swirled within each isolated egg. I was completely mesmerized. I’m almost certain that I was born a biologist – but that moment in the forest of frog embryos in particular pretty much sealed the deal for me.
I grew out of my redneckdom not long after, though I certainly retained my country boy attitude. Since those days in the Texas woods my biological interests have varied widely. I spent time in my undergrad training (at an amazing liberal arts college called “Hendrix College” in Arkansas) working in the field of ecology, radio-tracking timber rattlesnakes in the Ozark Mountains. In a slightly more sophisticated echo of my days playing with frog eggs, I moved to the University of North Carolina where I worked for many years trying to figure out how genes tell a growing frog embryo how to make a heart (my Ph.D. work). After getting my doctorate, I stayed in the field of developmental biology and spent a few years studying brain development in mice.
I have now gone one step deeper into the realm of biology, moving into the field so cool it gets its own nickname: “evodevo.” For the non-scientists out there, that’s “evolutionary developmental biology.” More on this below…
I am also a graphic artist (mostly digital these days) making both 2D still-lifes and 3D animations, and I’m an avid fossil collector.
Full disclosure: I was recently asked this exact same question by another blogger (The Reef Tank – not posted yet), so some of my above answer is a bit of self-plagiarism. Sue me.
What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?
I do not ever want to grow up. That is, I hope to remain the 8-year-old boy trapped in a man’s body that I am until the day I die. That being said, in a fantastical world in which I have become that which I’d most like to be, I would become a full-time biologist/geologist/professor/fossilhunter/novelist/artist/animator/photographer/blogger/sculptor/whittler/musician/gamer. The cruel voice of Real Life has informed me, however, that I am not nearly talented enough to pull off this dream profession. Thus, my more realistic aspiration is to continue what I’ve been doing, which is to be a scientist/professor during the day and after I’m done with the day-time money-making, pick a hobby in the evening, go at it full steam for 1 to 6 months until one of the others beckon more loudly, and then switch.
What is your Real Life job?
Two months ago, I began a new position as a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Veronica Hinman in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in the Arctic tundra Pittsburgh. In my current work, I study not only how genes control an organism’s development, but also how the genetic programs that control development (Gene Regulatory Networks) evolve at the molecular level (e.g. mutational changes in cis-regulatory elements). And not only do I get to work on such a fascinating subject, but I get to do so using those wacky, brainless creatures called “echinoderms” (e.g. starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers).
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
I am by far most interested in using the web, regardless of the specific medium, to disseminate and educate the general public on the awesomeness of nature and what we can learn about it through science. It sounds cheesy – but it’s something we all know is sorely lacking in America today. It’s sad when “the awesomeness of nature” seems like a laughable phrase. I find myself constantly dismayed by the lack of general fascination with the natural world among children and high school students. From my experience so far, my blogging has attracted a good number of students – but most of them arrive at my site because of some specific research they were doing. I definitely consider it a success if students end up coming to me to learn about specific topics. However, I (like most people/businesses on the web) would most like to discover ways to reach out and pull in people that would otherwise not seek out scientific knowledge. Which ties in with the next question…
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?
I find that blogging (and following blogs) figures prominently in my own thinking about my work. But beyond that I have yet to find (or rather, create) specific ties to my actual research. This is mostly because I only recently began my new research and have yet to blog about it (in fact I’ve been on quite a blogging hiatus since the summer because of the sheer magnitude of new information and techniques to learn).
However, I consider teaching and outreach to be an integral part of who I am and of my actual work. So in that sense, blogging has been the centerpiece of my attempts to reach out to the public and throw a little science at them.
I used Twitter a lot for a good while – both for discovery of interesting things and promotion of my own – but eventually I found the deluge of interesting information too overwhelming and time-consuming. More importantly for me, I found that my own tweets tended to be drowned out as well, with very few people discovering my posts.
I’ve now found that I’ve had by far the most success in reaching the general public through Facebook. My posts would generally be read by a core group of my own friends (most of which are not scientists), some of which would then repost, etc.
Unfortunately, Real Life has pretty much removed my ability to utilize fully any of the social networks for good science fascination dissemination.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites?
I went through most of graduate school performing actual science while completely oblivious to the existence of science blogs or the science blogging community. I’m not quite sure how that happened.
Then one day I somehow stumbled across (who do you think?) PZ at Pharyngula. Suddenly I was like, “Oh! This exists! I should do this!” Trust me – the exclamation marks were all there. I started blogging near-instantly. I had been putting together dumb little sites with my own rants and thoughts since about 1998, none of which was ever really seen by anyone. The discovery of science blogging really allowed me to find a central way to focus my thoughts and my intentions. By far my favorite blogs are the one you’re reading, Southern Fried Science, Deep-Sea News, The Oyster’s Garter, Cephalopodcast, Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets, The Echinoblog, Observations of a Nerd, and Oh, For the Love of Science!.
This of course perfectly leads into the next question, because…
Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
…I’ve left a bit of the story out. You see, after I discovered science blogs and started blogging, it was only a few months later that I discovered this thing called ScienceOnline09 – and it was being held only 1 mile from my workplace (the NIEHS). It was there that I met the squid-hatted Andrew, crab-hatted Kevin, and merry-making Miriam (and of course Bora!) of four of the aforementioned blogs. Merely meeting all the science bloggers present made me realize “Wow – there’s even more to this thing than I thought. My blog is crap. I gotta fix that. I need to become more of a part of this community.” Reading their blogs over the coming months also aroused my interest in marine biology and at least set me on the path to my current research in echinoderm evodevo. Thus, the contingent nature of life, much like that of evolutionary history, means that my attendance at ScienceOnline09 had a direct causative influence on me sitting in this lab right now surrounded by tubes of starfish DNA.
Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
I haven’t read everyone else’s interviews, but I can only assume that many have said the same thing – Miss Baker’s biology class and how she used blogging and the internet inside and outside the classroom completely opened my eyes to the possibilities of the Web as a teaching tool. I have no doubt that I will be using some sort of blogging/network medium as a supplement to my future courses.
It was so nice to meet you and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again soon.
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See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline’09 back in January.
Today, I asked my Scibling, Blake Stacey from the Science After Sunclipse blog to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? For example, what is your Real Life job?
Nominally, I do “complex systems modeling and analysis”, but the projects I work on are hush-hush. It’s all very need-to-know. I could figure out what I’m doing, but then I’d have to kill myself.
What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?
A hammy Shakespearean over-actor. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and who would have thought the old man to’ve had so much blood in him?
I see from your blog that you wrote a science-fiction novel. What’s that about?
Until Earthset is a tale of forbidden love, murder most foul and artificial intelligence, all set in an alternate 1968. Why I wrote it — well, the compulsion to invent imaginary people and make them suffer is probably just one of those delightful spandrels we’ve inherited, a side effect of our brains thinking in narrative terms. After the fact, I was able to invent several justifications for my hobby. For example, we keep having arguments on the Blogohedron about the relationship between science and art, about how scientific accuracy works in fiction and all that, and it’s nice to have a little practical experience in the matter. To a stuffy audience, I could sell my novel as a 130,000-word thesis on The Two Cultures Question (TM), but really, it’s a murder mystery with robots.
Do you think science fiction has an obligation to be scientifically accurate?
Well, let’s break that down a bit. “Science” is (a) a community of people using (b) a set of methods and tools to build (c) a body of knowledge which sometimes (d) gets applied to make technology. If the characters in your story investigate something wholly fictitious, like an alien monolith, using the practices which real scientists would actually employ, are you being “accurate”? Even stories not expressly written to be didactic build up our mental image of the world. Now, you could try to use fiction in an “educational” way to convey the facts of science, to transmit the data about our discoveries, but you can also use it to illuminate the methods of the trade and the social mores of the profession. Think of a novel like Contact — or, to pick an extreme example, the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. The scientific knowledge base of the story is fanciful, but the travails of the characters do call to mind issues about science as a profession, such as the ways people (and women in particular) have had to balance career and family. Art is generally better at raising questions than providing answers. If you’re looking for hard data in fiction, if you want to find the blueprint for a perfect society in a made-up story, well, peace be with you in your quest. But that’s only half the picture. In the age of Open Access and Google Scholar, we can dig up any particular datum we need, if we know how to look; the challenge is having a clue on how to start, and knowing how to handle what we bring back. The former requires an understanding of the broad strokes of scientific knowledge, and the latter depends on good critical thinking skills. A science education has to teach both, to have any worth at all, and science fiction can help us explore science-as-method even though we’ve yet to dig up that monolith in Tycho crater.
At ScienceOline’09, Henry Gee argued that creating science fiction requires the same kind of imagination as doing science, because both start with inventing hypotheses about the world and then exploring what they would entail.
Yes, I’d say there’s a great deal of truth in that. In science, hypotheses survive when they mesh well with the data, whereas in SF, the conjectures which endure are the ones which make for good stories. (Our understanding of the strong nuclear force has advanced quite a bit since 1972, but Asimov’s The Gods Themselves hardly suffers for having arrived before quantum chromodynamics!) There’s this notion afoot that if a scientist doesn’t like a movie which has some science-talk in it, this has to be because the science was bad! This is rather like saying the only reason a plumber can dislike a movie is because it doesn’t show anybody using the bathroom. Now, I don’t want to make a blanket statement here, but I do know a few science people, and from what I’ve seen, they’re plenty willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a story — except when the story itself isn’t good enough to suspend disbelief for!
With one book down, where will you go next?
I’m taking a stab at mathematics education, partly spurred by my own unhappy memories of high-school mathematics classes, which in retrospect turned out to be four years of almost wholly wasted time. Coming from someone who went on to get a physics degree, that’s pretty harsh! I happily deal with abstruse mathematics every working day, but you couldn’t pay me to sit through Pre-Calculus again, so something must be off here.
And you’ll be speaking on mathematics education at ScienceOnline’10?
With Maria Droujkova, yes. For all I know, we’ll be demonstrating our spiffy computer graphics to an empty room, because we’ll be scheduled at the same time as some “civility in communication” session, to which everybody will go so they can argue at each other about how best to be a nice person.
Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?
Finally meeting Brian Switek of Laelaps and Dr. SkySkull of Skulls in the Stars was fun, because we share enthusiasms even though we work in different fields — Brian and I have gotten righteously steamed over “textbook cardboard”, for example, which he finds in palaeontology and I in physics. But you asked if anything changed my views, which isn’t the same as reaffirming them. That’s more difficult to say. I can tell you, though, that meeting Stacy Baker’s high-school students was a blast: I skipped out on the sessions of the last day to chat with them instead. They provided the questions, I tried to bring the answers. If anything at the conference changed the way I think about the biz, it was that conversation. When you meet the people who are poised to benefit the most from good science communication, the quarrels you used to have on the Blogohedron look downright silly.
It was so nice to finally meet you and thank you for the interview. I am looking forward to seeing you again next January.
Likewise. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ramble.
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See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline’09 back in January.
Today, I asked Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
Thank you, Bora
I am a lucky individual who was given a chance to exist, create and interact with other living beings on this amazing planet. It is hard to put this into right words. Those who know me, know that I was shocked to find out the extent of the Bible Belt grip here in NC, and again, I can not help but have immense respect toward Nature and be as humble as our human existence allows. Dusko Radovic said once (I know there are plenty of ex-Yugoslav readers here, thus both original quote and translation): »Mi smo mrve na Zemlji, Zemlja je mrva u kosmosu. To se moze razumeti sve dok nas ne zaboli zub. Mrvine mrve mrva…« »We are crumbs on Earth, Earth is a crumb in the Universe. All that is easy to comprehend until we have a toothache. Crumb in the crumbs crumb«
So, yes, I was lucky to be born in a wonderful country that used to be, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Belgrade. Lucky to be surrounded with amazing people who did good, one way or another. Ones who were kind and respectful to show me how to act, and the opposite ones, to show me how not to act and how to avoid the traps. For both of them one big thank you.
Part of why I consider myself lucky is to be able to study biology, and some 24 years ago University of Belgrade had really extensive curricula. Today, according to Bologna accords, BSc in Biology at University of Belgrade is equal to an MSc elsewhere, but when I graduated Serbia was still not part of the Bologna process. I worked for eight years at the Ecology Department at Institute for Biological Research on predator-prey relationships, small mammal identification and mostly owl research. Thus my full name doesn’t ring much bells, as Tanja Sova does: ‘sova’ means an owl, and that was the word people associated with me so often, it became my pseudonym.
When I moved to USA, Arizona at first and two years ago to North Carolina, I developed a line of artwork inspired by nature. Discovering Etsy helped a lot in many ways, but that is a story for some other interview.
What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?
Growing up??? You are kidding! Why would I?
Oh, well… Since I went into adulthood, I was provided with tools to play seriously. You know, when we were young, it was digging around and taking care of pets that was considered play. With a degree, you just turned that play into some serious job. Now I play, I mean create artwork, and I love it. Yes, giving and sharing knowledge / skills is my ultimate wish what I want to do when I grow more gray, I mean when I grow up 😉
What is your Real Life job?
In economy like this, and we’ve been trained that very well back in Yugoslavia / Serbia, one has to be like a cat: to get on its feet. I am open for possibilities, but for now I am self employed making mostly custom orders on Etsy.
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
Biologist in me is active, although in the background for a while. Bringing the missing pieces into the puzzle of personal and professional knowledge, as well providing inspiration for art. As a parent, I enjoy sharing links with my children and discussing them. Sometimes I am too busy to be able to read all I would want to, so the most active blog reader in the family, Djordje comes with his opinion and it develops most of the time into a discussion either when we craft something together or when we are on the road.
When and how did you discover science blogs? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
It’s all your fault J OK, jokes apart, when we knew we were moving to NC, I googled information that I considered important to learn where am I moving to (SC and VA were options as well), and just came upon your blog. WOW! The new world opened. The amount of time I spend there really depends on available time I have, which is unpredictable. However, sometimes there are some hot topics that steal me from artwork and grab my full attention following the links. I was really, really glad to be able to meet in person many people whose blogs I have read. Irreplaceable experience which I am looking forward repeating. It was discovering many very cool people first of all, and learning about new blogs as well.
When did you become an artist? How do you combine your interests in science and art?
I would rather say that just like this figure was more of a freeing the captured sculpture from within, the same is with artist in us: circumstances make the artist surface from within, with each artwork it is more prominent. Whenever I can, I do my best to combine science and art. I’ve learned long time ago that having strong imagination helps understanding natural sciences, and understanding science brings vast amount of art themes to create. I really enjoy Etsy for although you can find ANYTHING there, it has somehow enough numbers of free thinking and highly educated people, many biologist themselves amongst sellers, who apply science knowledge / theme / process / subject into their art. Again, being popular amongst scientists and students, Etsy is helping in widening the public for really specific subjects that otherwise would not have as much appreciation in general public. Examples for such an artwork is this pendant that you can see here. The NYTimes article brought some amazing people, such as Leslie Vosshall, with whom I worked on pendants I am sure not many people from general public would appreciate or understand: Drossophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti. Learning more about her and her work was even greater joy.
You led two sessions at the conference – one about producing Art for a blog, and the other about Open Access in developing countries. How did they go and what did you learn from them?
Meeting Glendon Mellow was a joy even before we met in person. There are so many interests we have in common and I love his visions of science. Luckily the format of unconference was really good, as you have on-the-spot exchanging and sharing information. I am hoping we tackled some strings and definitely know that there were dozens of tips shown that are more, in my opinion, technical information rather than art itself. However, all those tips are enhancing blogging. Lot of laughter, some quite unintentional but very welcome, as a result of miscommunication between Betul and Djordje 🙂
Danica and I are coming from two different angles and I believe we have opened some questions and definitely paved the way to the upcoming 2010 session with Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailovic. I think session with Danica was also good example of how it is important to have people with different backgrounds in the library systems. Even in biology itself, I recall often a block to understanding between ecologists and molecular biologists, for instance. Demands of publishing at the same rate with laboratory experiments versus field work that needs to have few seasons before showing proper results worth publishing simply does not add up. That is one of the topics for upcoming session as well.
Jelka and I are not only colleagues, but first of all friends, and I am sure this will reflect in a fluid and relaxed session at the unconference in January.
Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, your art, blog-reading and perhaps blog-writing?
I wish a day had more than 24 hours (48 would do just fine) for all I would want to do. It was so refreshing being again amongst scientists and some new kids on the block (Balasevicevi ‘neki novi klinci’). I have learned a lot as a parent (at that time homeschooling Djordje), as a biologist to pass tricks and tips to my fellow biologists in Serbia, both who are in education and research, and to understand first-hand the American way of approaching problems I could only read about. Talking in person helps a lot, really. It is hard to stress who would stand out, for there are many, really, and placing the names I would not feel good for the others (say I will mention trilobite, tulumbe, vole dance, discussion about religion just to mention a few topics without mentioning the names), but I really have to say I was blown away with Ms Stacey’s students! As my owns kids are similar age, I was honored to meet them, and quite a few young ladies and gentlemen impressed me the most with their knowledge, dignity, eloquence and mannerisms. My kudos to them. About my blog: have opened one, but still short in time to write. Hopefully in the future.
It was so nice to meet you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.
I am looking forward being part of the conference again. Thank you and Anton for incredible amount of time and energy to organize these truly important events!
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See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.