A Blog Around The Clock

2011 in review

Bora Zivkovic — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:25:20 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 68,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Big Announcement, this time for real: The Scientific American Blog Network has launched!

Bora Zivkovic — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:34:13 +0000

It took some time, but it was worth the wait. The network that everyone’s been waiting for is now live.

My long post on The Network Central blog, in which I introduce all blogs/bloggers is here.

The official press release is here.

Mariette DiChristina’s (Editor-in-Chief) welcome post is on the @ScientificAmerican blog here.

A brief announcement on the Observations blog is here.

The blogs homepage is here.

My own blog, A Blog Around The Clock, has also moved to a new place. The new URL is: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock/

And the RSS feed is: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-blog-around-the-clock/feed/

See you all over there….

Filed under: Uncategorized

New posts on the @sciam blogs

Bora Zivkovic — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:00:39 +0000

New posts today. Two on the Guest Blog. One last night:

Paris: City of Light and Cosmic Rays by Greg Gbur.

and one this morning:

Scientists Discover that Antimicrobial Wipes and Soaps May be Making You (and Society) Sick by Rob Dunn.

And on Expeditions blog:

Dinosaur Egg Clutches, Not as Simple as Chicken Eggs by Hannah Susorney and Christi Lorang

As always, read, enjoy, comment, and share….

Filed under: Uncategorized

Open Laboratory 2011 – submissions so far

Bora Zivkovic — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:29:15 +0000

The submission form for the 2011 edition of Open Lab is now open. Any blog post written since December 1, 2010 is eligible for submission.

We accept essays, stories, poetry, cartoons/comics, original art.

Once you are done submitting your own posts, you can start looking at the others’, including on aggregators like ScienceSeeker.org, Scienceblogging.org and Researchblogging.org.

As I always do, I will keep posting the full list of submitted entries once a week until the deadline – see the listing under the fold.

You can buy the last five annual collections here. You can read Prefaces and Introductions to older editions here.

Help us spread the word by displaying these badges (designed by Doctor Zen:

Or take the Open Lab 2011 submission bookmarklet – Open Lab – and drag it to your browser’s toolbar to have it always handy as you browse around science blogs.

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538 Refugees: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords: Lessons About Traumatic Brain Injury
538 Refugees: In the Wakefield
538 Refugees: Tales of Big Pharma: Synagis™ (Palivizumab)
538 Refugees: Science Marches On
538 Refugees: A Cure for AIDS, But at What Cost?

A Blog Around The Clock (guest post on SA Observations): Circadian clock without DNA–History and the power of metaphor
A Blog Around The Clock (guest post at SA Observations): The line between science and journalism is getting blurry….again
A Blog Around The Clock (guest post at SA Guest Blog): Me and the copperheads–or why we still don’t know if snakes secrete melatonin at night

A leaf warbler’s gleanings: Tigers Are Less Important Than Warblers

Action-Reaction: Pseudoteaching: MIT Physics

Aetiology: Pigs with Ebola Zaire: a whole new can o’ worms
Aetiology: Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS): history and implications

Almost Diamonds: Rape Myth #1: She’s Probably Lying
Almost Diamonds: Sex, Science, and Social Policy

Ambivalent Academic (guest post): An Optic Cup in a DISH

American SciCo: Science Online Will Change the World

Ancient Shore: The Beatles and the Cambrian Explosion

Anecdotes from the Archive: Protect yourself from the confidence man’s moonshine

Anna’s Bones: A Reason to Smile

Anthropology in Practice: Unraveling The Fear o’ the Jolly Roger
Anthropology in Practice: Power, Confidence, and High-Heels
Anthropology in Practice: The Social Functions of Blushing

The Artful Amoeba: Mosses That Move and the Rocks They Reveal

The Atavism: The origin and extinction of species

Beaker: Four Ways Patient Advocates Help Drive Research
Beaker: Setting the Record Straight on Meiosis
Beaker: Seeing is Believing

Beatrice the Biologist: Your cold symptoms are your fault

The Biology Files: Autism, RORA, and testosterone
The Biology Files: Sex, gender, and gender identity

Body Politic: Why pregnant women deserve drug trials
Body Politic: Cell phones, Cancer, and Scientific Oversimplification
Body Politic: A close look at the plastics industry’s spin on BPA

Boing Boing (Lee Billings): Incredible journey: Can we reach the stars without breaking the bank?
Boing Boing (Maggie Koerth-Baker): Nuclear energy 101: Inside the “black box” of power plants

Boundary Vision: Objectivity and ambivalence: The case of the Apollo scientists
Boundary Vision: Arsenic, cold fusion and the legitimacy of online critique

The Bunsen Boerner: Chemistry: this shit’s important

Clastic Detritus: The Long Beat of Rhythmic Sedimentation

Clear Sci: SOS: Save our Science – Last minute Christmas

Confusedious; a science blog: Genetic diversity and ecosystem recovery; there is more to biodiversity than species count.

Context and variation: Iron-deficiency is not something you get just for being a lady
Context and variation: Even when we want something, we need to hide it.

Cosmic Variance: Physics and the Immortality of the Soul

Culturing Science – biology as relevant to us earthly beings: The danger of appealing stories: anecdata, expectations, and skepticism

The Curious Wavefunction: Better extraterrestrial communication through chemistry: What do aliens want?
The Curious Wavefunction: How can we make the International Year of Chemistry successful?
The Curious Wavefunction: Aliens, arsenic and alternative peer-review: Has science publishing become too conservative?

Dangerous Experiments: On Beards, Biology, and Being a Real American

Deep Sea News: DON’T PANIC: Sustainable seafood and the American outlaw
Deep Sea News: How To Cuddle Your Lady Right, by Smoove A
Deep Sea News: Inside the Outside

Denim and Tweed: Evolution’s Rainbow, from sparrows’ stripes to lizard lesbianism
Denim and Tweed: An adaptive fairytale with no happy ending
Denim and Tweed: How can you tell if a plant is carnivorous? Feed it!

Design. Build. Play.: Computers and the Homeless
Design. Build. Play.: Design Fridays: That’s a big prop
Design. Build. Play.: Future of Spaceflight: No single point sollution

The Digital Cuttlefish: BART Bugs! (poem)

Dinner Party Science: Who’s afraid of the Universe?

The Dispersal of Darwin: Sir Charles?
The Dispersal of Darwin: Distilling “History of Science” to 140 characters…

Dot Physics: The Physics of a High-Speed Crash: 70 MPH vs. 85 MPH
Dot Physics: Here is an Awesome Moon Model
Dot Physics: Where Does the Carbon Come From?
Dot Physics: How To Brute Force a Car Talk Puzzler

The Dragonfly Woman: Ode to an Odonate on Valentine’s Day (poem)

Drugmonkey: Pick ‘em (poem)

Dr. Carin Bondar – Biologist With a Twist: Reflections on Biology and Motherhood: Where do Homo sapiens Fit In?
Dr. Carin Bondar – Biologist With a Twist: Mark Burnett VS Charles Darwin in an Epic Battle of Immunity

Clevelandpoetics: Dunkleosteus: three haiku (poetry)

Electron Café: Scientific Process Rage (cartoon)

Endless Forms: Woolly Bats Use a Carnivorous Roost

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: An Unlikely Heroine

Engineer Blogs: Noise of Aviation

The Euroscientist: Pivot points – The big cheese and the director’s cut
The Euroscientist: Political will closes our eyes

The Excuses I’m Going With: Up Malaria’s Sleeve
The Excuses I’m Going With: The New Madrid Seismic Zone: Much Ado About Something … Unexpected
The Excuses I’m Going With: Species Assault is a Go
The Excuses I’m Going With: Shaky Reasoning

Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat: A shocking experience
Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat: Moonscape Reminder: Owens Lake

The Febrile Muse: Human Papillomavirus: Driving Ms. HeLa, Henrietta Lack’s Cells
The Febrile Muse: Scientific Literacy in Children: Building the Basics

From The Lab Bench: Hiding Place for the Artsy-Scientist
From The Lab Bench: Out of Hiding: The Artsy-Scientist’s Mid-life Crisis
From The Lab Bench: We Want More Science, said the American Public
From The Lab Bench: The Science of Chocolate
From The Lab Bench: Life, Death, and Silver Bullets

Genegeek: Can sport teach science about excellence?

Genomics, Evolution and Pseudoscience: It’s time to destroy our smallpox

Georneys: Geology Word of the Week: L is for Lithosphere
Georneys: Geology Word of the Week: O is for Ophiolite
Georneys: Technology Anachronisms in Science
Georneys: A Conversation with My Dad, a Nuclear Engineer, about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster in Japan
Georneys: Bee-Bop the General Exam Bear
Georneys: A Million Random Digits
Georneys: Why are there Earthquakes and Volcanoes in Japan? In Response to: Magnitude 8.9 Earthquake & Tsunami in Japan

Guardian Science Blog (Scicurious) The postdrome: migraine’s silent sister

Highly Allochthonous: Ten million feet upon the stair
Highly Allochthonous: A flood is a disaster when people are in the way

Inside Our Lab: A Letter from the Post-doc with One Foot in the Pipeline
Inside Our Lab: If At First You Don’t Succeed …

It’s Okay To Be Smart: On Beards, Biology, and Being a Real American (also here)
It’s Okay To Be Smart: “There’s no crying in baseball” . . . the status quo of Ph.D. programs?

Katie Ph.D.(ABD): A whole new RNA world
Katie Ph.D.(ABD): How do you solve a problem like a broken chromosome?
Katie Ph.D.(ABD): DNA origami gets curves

Kitchen Hacking: Blurring The Lines – Part I
Kitchen Hacking: I Want An Empty Waiting Room

Lealaps: The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!
Lealaps: What Death Means to Primates

Labcoat Life: Should Extremely Preterm Babies Be Saved?
Labcoat Life: Science Blogs Are Good For You

Lamentations on Chemistry: On the pitfalls of science outreach to the public

Looking For Detachment: Deep Time
Looking For Detachment: Like caterpillars, crawling or marching…

The Loom: The Human Lake

The Lord Geekington: Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

Lounge of the Lab Lemming: Dear Hypothesis

Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: Scaphognathus crassirostris: A Pterosaur in the Historical Record?
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: Goertzen’s Case for the Historical Scaphognathus

Magma Cum Laude: Eruption rates at volcanoes

Mammoth Tales: Tabbert’s Sea-Mammoth

The Mother Geek: How “boner” is misleading: The science behind an erect penis
The Mother Geek: Science on the brain: Motor traffic and beads on a string

NeuroanthropologyHuman (amphibious model): living in and on the water
Neuroanthropology: ‘The last free people on the planet’
Neuroanthropology: Getting around by sound: Human echolocation

NeuroDojo: Indie spirit
NeuroDojo: Ptarmigans on ptreadmills

Neuron Culture: Free Science, One Paper at a Time

Neuropoly: The case of the man who couldn’t find the beat

NeuroPsydoctor8: Things were just simpler in the Dark Ages. Two Neuroscientific Challenges to Retributivism
NeuroPsydoctor8: Regarding Juvenile Comprehension of Miranda
NeuroPsydoctor8: Interested In Neuroethics and National Security? Well here you go:
NeuroPsydoctor8:
Y U NO (cartoon)

Neuroself: Jonah Lehrer is not a neuroscientist

Neuroskeptic: Where Papers Come From

Neurotic Physiology: Dinosaur Inspiration
Neurotic Physiology: In which Sci is WRONG, you guys. Follow up on bees and cell phones

Neurotribes: Woof! John Elder Robison, Living Boldly as a “Free-Range Aspergian”

Observations of a Nerd: Why do women cry? Obviously, it’s so they don’t get laid.
Observations of a Nerd: Reverse Bestiality: When Animals Commit Sexual Assault
Observations of a Nerd (guest-post on Nutrition Wonderland): The Truth About Organic Farming
How do you ID a dead Osama anyway?

The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars (ricardipus): Genome sequencing, Shakespeare style
The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars (ricardipus): Genome Assembly – a primer for the Shakespeare fan

Occ Psy Dot Com: Within boundaryless contexts, developmental relationships may positively impact upon optimism

Oh, For the Love of Science!: Zombie Ants and The Bite of Death
Oh, For the Love of Science!: Friday Weird Science GUEST POST: The distance between your testicles and your anus, ‘taint unimportant

One Small Step: A supermassive star, all by its lonesome
One Small Step: Churnalism: Bad for Science?
One Small Step: Modelling comets, kittens and the Universe

Oscillatory Thoughts: How to be a neuroscientist

Pharyngula: Dear Emma B

Phased: Black Women Perceived as Being More White Receive Judicial Leniency in the United States

PLoS Blogs Guest Blog (Delene Beeland): Saving Ethiopia’s “Church Forests”

Primate Diaries (at Times Higher Ed): Ariel casts out Caliban

Providentia: The Turing Problem (Part 1), The Turing Problem (Part 2) and The Turing Problem (Part 3) fused into a single essay.

Punctuated Equilibrium (guest post by Cath Ennis): The scientific method, in chromo-logical order

Quantum Diaries (US LHC): Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs

Reciprocal Space: Numb or Numbered? – great comment section to edit and include.

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Empty Building

RRResearch: Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA’s claims)

Rule of 6ix: On the origins of smallpox – where and when did variola virus emerge?
Rule of 6ix: An ecological perspective on bat viruses
Rule of 6ix: The ‘interactome’ of a host/pathogen triad

Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week: Tutorial 12: How to find problems to work on

Sciencebase: Can we count on journal metrics?

Science Business: HSBC Takes Climate Change Research to the Bank
Science Business: One Nation, Under Geeks

Sciencesounds: Cheerleaders, Rock Stars and Science Music: The Many Faces of Science Communication

Science with Moxie: The power of rock n roll.

Seven Deadly Synapses: To Sleep, Perchance to Cause a Midair Collision
Seven Deadly Synapses: Liberally Thinking: Red Brain, Blue Brain
Seven Deadly Synapses: Iodine-131 in US Milk: Cause for Concern?
Seven Deadly Synapses: Seven Deadly Sins Sunday: Gluttony Part 3

Skulls in the Stars: The Saga of the Scientific Swindler! (1884-1891)
Skulls in the Stars: The birth of electromagnetism (1820)

Silvarerum: Chasing Daphnia: The Smallest Story on Earth

Sleeping with the Fishes: Self-Help for Seabirds: How to manage your time and outcompete your neighbors for maximum survival

Southern Fried Science: The Global Extinction Crisis – species area relationships, habitat loss, and population dynamics

Substantia Innominata: If you are a headbanger, you should listen to Céline Dion

Superbug: Diseases and borders: Potatoes and St. Patrick’s Day

Tattooed Science: Sex and math: You can integrate my curves any day

Tetrapod Zoology: Necks for sex? No thank you, we’re sauropod dinosaurs

There and (hopefully) back again…: In the shadows of greatness

This is serious monkey business: Primate vaccines: help you to help me?
This is serious monkey business: “Bad-sad-bad” and other responses to death.
This is serious monkey business: Raison d’etre of the female undergraduate primatology blogger.
This is serious monkey business: Is habituation ethically permissible from a biocentric perspective?
This is serious monkey business: The Curious Case of the Present Hymen.

This May Hurt a Bit: “Don’t You Want to Know What I Used to Do?”

This View of Life: Elements of an Effective Public Education Toolkit
This View of Life: Narrating Science and Fear

The Thoughtful Animal: Defending Your Territory: Be Smelly, Be Fast
The Thoughtful Animal: Might Pleistocene Fido Have Been A Fox?
The Thoughtful Animal: Perseverating on Perseverative Error: What Does The “A-not-B Error” Really Tell Us About Infant Cognition?

Thoughtomics: We Are Nobody: Contingency and Convergence in Evolution

Thoughts from Kansas: Does meditation make people act more rationally?
Thoughts from Kansas: On interfaith outreach and atheists
Thoughts from Kansas: Biopunks, biohackers, and the movement to own your own DNA

The Tree of Life: The story behind the story of my new #PLoSOne paper on “Stalking the fourth domain of life”
The Tree of Life: A “work” trip to Catalina Island: USC, Wrigley, C-DEBI, dark energy biosphere, Virgin Oceanic, Deep Five, & more

Through the looking glass: What’s this public ‘engagement’ with science thing then?
Through the looking glass: A brief history of awesome

Tooth and Claw: Of Bad Odors and Good Yarns

Uncertain Principles: Science Is Not Irreducibly Complex

Uncharted Atolls: Crushing predators reinvade the Antarctic benthos

Universe: Moon Arts, Part Two: Fallen Astronaut

WhizBANG!: My Grandma’s Cure-All
WhizBANG!: An Active Study

Worst Professor Ever: Why Humanities People Should Care About Math

Yes Means Yes!: Gender Differences and Casual Sex: The New Research

YourBrainonDrugs.net: Welcome to the future of recreational drug use.

Filed under: OpenLab11

Too Hard or Too Hot? Two new posts on @sciamblogs

Bora Zivkovic — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:50:55 +0000

Today on the SciAm Guest Blog, two posts:

Too Hot to Handle: The Dangers of Running in the Heat by By Caitlyn Zimmerman

Too Hard for Science? Off-the-Shelf Organs By Charles Q. Choi

Filed under: Uncategorized

Best of June 2011 at A Blog Around The Clock

Bora Zivkovic — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:01:03 +0000

I posted 35 times in June.

There were some announcements last month.

Early in the month, I went to World Science Festival in New York and did a panel. There was coverage of it.

I teamed up with Perrin Ireland and reported from The Bezos Scholars Program at the World Science Festival.

I keep interviewing attendees of ScienceOnline2011 – see the latest Q&As with Bonnie Swoger and John Hawks.

I made sure that the Scientific American Guest Blog was busy all month as well, full of great posts on a diversity of topics – check them all out:

Living Interplanetary Spaceflight Experiment–or Why Were All the Strange Creatures on the Shuttle Endeavour? By David Warmflash

Cell Phones, Cancer and the Dangers of Risk Perception By David Ropeik

Does Quantum Mechanics Flout the Laws of Thermodynamics? By Vlatko Vedral

Thorium, Polonium, Radium, Oh My! Marie Curie and Maggie Gyllenhaal Kick Off the 2011 World Science Festival By Neda Afsarmanesh

Too Hard for Science? Joan Slonczewski–Reshaping Ourselves for Our Changing World By Charles Q. Choi

All about Stories: How to Tell Them, How They’re Changing, and What They Have to Do with Science By Lena Groeger and Perrin Ireland

Too Hard for Science? Seeing If 10,000 Hours Make You an Expert By Charles Q. Choi

Simply Brilliant Science: Creating Healthier Eggs for a Healthier You By Kiyomi Deards

What Does the New Double-Slit Experiment Actually Show? By Matthew Francis

The Renaissance Man: How to Become a Scientist Over and Over Again By Ed Yong

A World Ocean By Kevin Zelnio

To Turn Up the Music, Cochlear Implants Need a Software Update By Allison Bland

It’s Your Virtual Assistant, Doc. Who Is Watson? By Karthika Muthukumaraswamy

Lindau Nobel meeting – courting Minerva with Ragnar Granit By Lucas Brouwers

Too Hard for Science? Regaining the Element of Surprise By Charles Q. Choi

Ant Thrills: Seeing Leaf-Cutter Ants through an Artist’s Eyes By Jessica Wapner

Weinergate: Private Records in a Public Age By Krystal D’Costa

When Cells Discovered Architecture By Jennifer Frazer

What Bats, Bombs and Sharks Taught Us about Hearing [Video] By Bradley Voytek

Stranded Whales on the Key Largo Shore By Michelle Bialeck

Linking Erosional and Depositional Landscapes By Brian Romans

The Power of Theory in Science By Ethan Siegel

From the Shadows to the Spotlight to the Dustbin–the Rise and Fall of GFAJ-1 By Rosie Redfield

Arsenic-Eating Bacteria Have Changed Science Education By Marie-Claire Shanahan

Too Hard for Science? Neutrinos from the Big Bang By Charles Q. Choi

Good Dads and Not-So-Good Dads in the Animal Kingdom By David Manly and Lauren Reid

Stem Rust Ug99–the Agricultural Bully By Tiffany Stecker

Book Review: The Future of Water By Matthew Garcia

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Natural Selection and Evolution, with a Key to Many Complicating Factors By Jeremy Yoder

#WSF11: The Invisible Language of Smell By Bora Zivkovic and Perrin Ireland

Close Encounters of Science and Medicine By Iwona Fijalkowska

Too Hard for Science? Experimenting on Children Like Lab Rats By Charles Q. Choi

Lindau Nobel Meeting–The Cross-Pollination of Ideas By Christine Ottery

Stick to the Science By Michael E. Mann

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Bearing the fruits of global health research By Christine Ottery

Education Reform in the Wrong Direction: High-Stake Consequences for New York State Teachers and Their Students By Jeanne Garbarino

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Monday’s Researcher: Madhurima Benekareddy by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Stressed Mind, Stressed DNA by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Beef Bug to Blame for Bowel Cancer? by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Ada Yonath: Climbing the Everest with polar bears By Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–If HIV Is Attacked, It Adapts By Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Sentences That Win Nobel Prizes By Lucas Brouwers

A Journey in Sharing Science: From the Lab to Social Media and Beyond By Jason A. Tetro

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Joke van Bemmel, Chromatin and Epigenetics By Christine Ottery

Beauty Pageants and the Misunderstanding of Evolution Meet….Again By Susanna Speier

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Evolutionary Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn By Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Peter Agre and Torsten Wiesel: Nobel laureate scientific diplomacy builds bridges By Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Buckminsterfullerene and the Third Man By Lucas Brouwers

Overprescribing the Healthy Elderly: Why Funding Research and Drug Safety is Paramount By Laura Newman

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Cowboy hats and countesses By Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–The future of biomedicine By Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Glowing brainbows By Lucas Brouwers

This month we said good-bye to the USC scientific diving class – Problems Without Passports: Scientific Research Diving at USC Dornsife – written by a whole collection of instructors and students:

Reflections at the Edge of the Pacific Ocean By David Ginsburg

Making a Difference: Environmental Students in Palau By Patrick Talbott and Gabrielle Roffe

Preserving Biodiversity By Wendy Whitcombe

Palau Protects and Conserves By Kirstie Jones

Peleliu: 67 Years after the Battle–a New and Different Conflict By Jim Haw

Last Child in the Reef By Emilie Moore

Just When You Think It Can’t Get Any Better By Genivieve McCormick

Looking Ahead By David Ginsburg

Experiential Learning and Communicating By Jim Haw

Thank You, Scientific Research Diving at USC Dornsife by me.

The South Pacific Islands Survey continues with new posts, written by Lindsey Hoshaw:

One Illness Threatens a Cook Islander’s Way of Life

And we started two new expeditions on the Expeditions blog – first one is from Montana – New Expedition–MSU Student Research with Dinosaur Eggs in China, posted by me.

New season starts with division of egg duties, petrified trees, soybean Popsicles by Betsy Kruk

Beautiful window serves as escape hatch for baby dinosaur by Betsy Kruk

Fossil hunting in China very different than in Montana by Ashley Poust

Incredible Find in Temple Museum, Harrowing Rescue on Crumbly Mudstone By Betsy Kruk

Rock Mapping a Challenge for Biology Student By Amanda Wregglesworth

Go to Landfill, Find a Dinosaur Footprint! By Christi Lorang

We Visit Fishy Relatives, Geology Wonderland By Ashley Poust and Hannah Susorney

The other new Expeditions trip is all about squid, all posts written by William Gilly:

Squid Studies: Back to the Sea of Cortez

Squid Studies: Scientists Seeking and Savoring Squid

Squid Studies: Changing Seas and Shrinking Squid

Squid Studies: Correction, Connections and Calamar

Squid Studies: “It Is Not Down in Any Map; True Places Never Are”–Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Previously in the “Best of…” series:

2011

May
April
March
February
January

2010

December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

2009

December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

Filed under: Housekeeping, Uncategorized

New posts on the @sciamblogs Guest Blog

Bora Zivkovic — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:08:54 +0000

Four today:

Overprescribing the Healthy Elderly: Why Funding Research and Drug Safety is Paramount By Laura Newman

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Cowboy hats and countesses By Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–The future of biomedicine By Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Glowing brainbows By Lucas Brouwers

Read, comment, share….

Filed under: Uncategorized

ScienceOnline2011 – interview with John Hawks

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:00:40 +0000

Continuing with the tradition from last three years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2011 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January 2011. See all the interviews in this series here.

Today I chat with John Hawks (Twitter)

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your (scientific) background?

I’ve been based in Madison for nine years, at the University of Wisconsin. I was born and raised in Norton, Kansas – a small, rural town halfway between Kansas City and Denver. I loved science when I was a kid, but it really wasn’t until I was halfway through college that I realized that I could be a scientist. I started as an English and French major, but I gradually made my way into anthropology.

I’ve taught evolution in Kansas, Michigan, Utah, and Wisconsin. Kansas gets a bad rap on this. Speaking from experience, the Kansas kids are the best. There’s a real sense in which a practical knowledge of animals and plants helps give a background for understanding evolutionary changes. This is how Darwin came up with the idea in the first place, after all. I really think that people who know animal breeding on an intuitive level are already primed to understand natural selection, and kids in rural Kansas (and rural Wisconsin) have that background.

Teachers need the resources to show these kids the human fossil record, and exercises to pull them into 21st century genetics. Why do we make kids sit four or five times through the same boring stuff about Mendel, when you can run a genome browser on any computer?

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

I began my career working with fossil hominins, and still do a lot of work with skeletal collections. Early on, I realized that genetics really had the potential to become a much more important source of evidence about the past, and I taught myself genetics.

I was telling someone the other day that I’m an anthropologist because it’s those questions about our evolution that always guide what I do. I’ve published on the whole range of our evolutionary history: the earliest hominins and the timing of the human-chimpanzee divergence, the origin of Homo, the Neandertals, late Homo erectus and the origin of modern humans, and the very recent part of our evolution in the last few thousand years.

A few years ago my friend Greg Cochran and I reasoned that natural selection in humans ought to have become much stronger and faster in the recent past, because the human population really grew rapidly in size after we developed agriculture. That realization led us to some really interesting work on the recent evolution of human populations. People have been evolving in all kinds of interesting ways, and understanding that history may help us to identify the genes that make a difference in human variations and diseases.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

My students and I are working with archaic human genomes from several Neandertals from Europe, and one from a site called Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains. This week I’m flying to Novosibirsk to travel out to the site. Denisova is fascinating because it’s a mystery: a population that we didn’t suspect existed from fossils alone, but for which we now have a complete genome. In some ways the problem of modern human origins has been solved. What’s exciting is that we’re discovering things about ancient humans that are not evident from their bones — things about immunity, muscle, the digestive system, and potentially the brain.

To my mind, the central problem in human evolution right now is the origin of our genus, Homo. I’ve been working on this question from a genetic perspective, and it’s also a very exciting moment in the fossil and archaeological records with new discoveries in South Africa and the Republic of Georgia. Over the next two years I will be directing a lot of effort to this problem and I expect that our view two years from now will be pretty different from today.

Stories about fossil hominins engage me, and I use genetics to add detail to them. We have the power now to find out things that nobody ever knew about our ancestors — and I just love figuring out how.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

The primary data of human genetics are more than ever available for free to the public. There is no barrier keeping high school students from doing the same kind of work on the Neandertal genome that my graduate students are doing today. I’m running a public forum this summer on personal genomes, and I can give the participants all the websites and software that we use to analyze genomes, because they’re all available for free to anyone. I find that tremendously empowering.

At the same time, I’ve gotten to a point in science where I’m often part of conversations that are more restricted, more closed. And it’s frustrating. I look at the web as a way to broaden our conversations, to bring in people who have knowledge and skills. I’m interested in more open scientific meetings, where being in the room isn’t a prerequisite to effective participation.

Streaming, live-tweeting and live-blogging are very important to me as ways to broaden the audience of scientific meetings. I am excited by ways of digitally archiving conversations and meetings, and sending those out to different levels. Why shouldn’t scientific meetings have a K-12 feed going out from them for students to follow? Why don’t we exploit the opportunity, when we have a thousand scientists together, to create content that can go out to the public in some compelling way?

I’m inspired by people who find ways to share new ideas. Paleoanthropology is a field where top researchers still get away with hiding their data from scrutiny. That culture has to change. Science means that others must be able to confirm observations independently. The web has made it possible to share data on a wide scale — as we see today in genetics, astronomy, and other data-intensive fields. The human fossil record is a drop in the bucket compared to the data that will be collected every night by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. And those astronomical data will all be open. What is stopping us from making the human fossil record available to schoolkids all over the world?

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and others? How do you intergrate all of your online activity into a coherent whole? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

My blog is my scientific memory. I really mean that, and I’ll explain why.

Several years ago I decided to commit to using a content management system, and I started using a series of Perl scripts to translate content from plain text files and present it as XHTML. For five years I ran everything that way off my own server with a simple versioning system: Published and unpublished files differ by a single letter in the file extension, the whole thing was updated across several computers and the server by rsync. It’s a beautiful system (at least, at small scale) and it meant that I could seamlessly present myself with a different blog than the public.

I wanted to structure my own notes, build an argument, maintain references consistently across multiple posts, and reuse material in scientific papers as I needed. I write 1 or two long posts every day, and maybe five or six short ones. I share the things I think are worth sharing, or are ready to share, which is really one or two short posts a day and a long post every 3 or 4 days. My computer is full of stuff I don’t publish. A lot ends up in scientific papers, some of it just serves as background for later work, and all of it makes up my structured, organized databank of knowledge about human evolution. My memory. I search this body of writing when I start thinking about how to address a new topic, and more often than not I’ve already written something relevant, giving me a place to start and build new material.

Twitter is like ham radio. I keep up with my faraway friends and meet new people, and a whole crew of folks around the world may be listening in. Yesterday I was carrying on a conversation about leprosy — you’ll see that on my blog maybe weeks from now.

There are certain people who just make me smile when they update.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

When journalists started to realize that science blogs were a phenomenon, in 2005 or so, I’d been going for a while and had pretty good traffic, so I was ranked right up there on the lists of science blogs to read. I’m really gratified that my readership has grown continuously since then.

I have some great favorites that I’ve read from the start, or at least for several years. Razib Khan, Mo Costandi, Sabine Hossenfelder, Michael Eisen, Alex Golub, Daniel MacArthur. Genomes Unzipped is just full of compelling stuff, and they’re sharing data and tools along with writing about genetic testing.

I feel sad when people stop writing. There have been all these genetics grad students and postdocs over the years who wrote pseudonymously, and who mostly stopped when they got tenure-track jobs. Grant applications kill creativity.

In the last couple of years I’ve seen a tremendous growth in biological anthropology and archaeology blogs and social networks. For a long time I felt really lonely, and now I find I’m not so much the hepcat anymore. Right now, it’s Kristina Killgrove, Julienne Rutherford, and Kate Clancy in biological anthropology, Julien Riel-Salvatore and Colleen Morgan in archaeology, who really impress me.

I follow the Scientopia feed and just admire the energy of the bloggers on that network. I feel like many of the young, exciting bloggers are embedded within their school or professional networks more than “science blogging” as a category. I think we need some more ways to draw good people across disciplines. I was telling somebody the other day that the Scientific American guest blog has become the place to be seen.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2011 for you? Any suggestions for next year?

I’m organizing a conference and I want it to be just like ScienceOnline. I’ve never been to an event that made it so natural to establish lasting contacts with people, to talk about common issues across scientific disciplines, to expand the conversation outside the room.

The challenge is to raise the bar. At a given moment, the people in the room may be the most engaged, but they’re only the crest of a much larger wave moving science communication forward. How do we connect the energy with patrons who want this to happen?

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, or to your science reading and writing?

Some moments I will never forget.

Thank you so much for the interview. I hope to see you again here next January!

Filed under: ScienceOnline2011 Interviews

On @sciam blogs today

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 01:55:04 +0000

On the Guest Blog:

Beauty Pageants and the Misunderstanding of Evolution Meet….Again by Susanna Speier

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Joke van Bemmel, Chromatin and Epigenetics by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Evolutionary Chemistry with Jean-Marie Lehn by Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Peter Agre and Torsten Wiesel: Nobel laureate scientific diplomacy builds bridges by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Buckminsterfullerene and the Third Man by Lucas Brouwers

And on the Expeditions blog:

Squid Studies: “It is not down in any map; true places never are” — Herman Melville, Moby Dick by William Gilly

Enjoy, comment, share…

Filed under: Uncategorized

On @sciamblogs today

Bora Zivkovic — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:40:00 +0000

Three posts on the Guest Blog today:

A Journey in Sharing Science: From the Lab to Social Media and Beyond by Jason A. Tetro

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Sentences that win Nobel prizes by Lucas Brouwers

Lindau Nobel Meeting–If HIV is attacked, it adapts by Lucas Brouwers

Enjoy, comment, share…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Today on @sciam blogs

Bora Zivkovic — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:08:09 +0000

On the Guest Blog:

Education Reform in the Wrong Direction: High-Stake Consequences for New York State Teachers and Their Students by Jeanne Garbarino

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Monday’s Researcher: Madhurima Benekareddy by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Stressed Mind, Stressed DNA by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Beef Bug to Blame for Bowel Cancer? by Christine Ottery

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Ada Yonath: Climbing the Everest with polar bears by Lucas Brouwers.

On Observations blog:

Are Violent Video Games Corrupting Children? Supreme Court Says States Cannot Decide by Larry Greenemeier

Sequencing of Tasmanian Devil Genome Suggests New Attack on Contagious Cancer, Clues for Conservation by Katherine Harmon

And on the Expeditions blog:

Squid Studies: Correction, Connections and Calamar by William Gilly

As always – read, enjoy, comment, share…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Open Laboratory 2011 – submissions so far

Bora Zivkovic — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:54:03 +0000

The submission form for the 2011 edition of Open Lab is now open. Any blog post written since December 1, 2010 is eligible for submission.

We accept essays, stories, poetry, cartoons/comics, original art.

Once you are done submitting your own posts, you can start looking at the others’, including on aggregators like ScienceSeeker.org, Scienceblogging.org and Researchblogging.org.

As I always do, I will keep posting the full list of submitted entries once a week until the deadline – see the listing under the fold.

You can buy the last five annual collections here. You can read Prefaces and Introductions to older editions here.

Help us spread the word by displaying these badges (designed by Doctor Zen:

Or take the Open Lab 2011 submission bookmarklet – Open Lab – and drag it to your browser’s toolbar to have it always handy as you browse around science blogs.

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A leaf warbler’s gleanings: Tigers Are Less Important Than Warblers

Action-Reaction: Pseudoteaching: MIT Physics

Aetiology: Pigs with Ebola Zaire: a whole new can o’ worms

Almost Diamonds: Rape Myth #1: She’s Probably Lying
Almost Diamonds: Sex, Science, and Social Policy

Ambivalent Academic (guest post): An Optic Cup in a DISH

American SciCo: Science Online Will Change the World

Ancient Shore: The Beatles and the Cambrian Explosion

Anecdotes from the Archive: Protect yourself from the confidence man’s moonshine

Anna’s Bones: A Reason to Smile

Anthropology in Practice: Unraveling The Fear o’ the Jolly Roger
Anthropology in Practice: Power, Confidence, and High-Heels
Anthropology in Practice: The Social Functions of Blushing

The Artful Amoeba: Mosses That Move and the Rocks They Reveal

The Atavism: The origin and extinction of species

Beaker: Four Ways Patient Advocates Help Drive Research
Beaker: Setting the Record Straight on Meiosis
Beaker: Seeing is Believing

Beatrice the Biologist: Your cold symptoms are your fault

The Biology Files: Autism, RORA, and testosterone
The Biology Files: Sex, gender, and gender identity

Body Politic: Why pregnant women deserve drug trials
Body Politic: Cell phones, Cancer, and Scientific Oversimplification
Body Politic: A close look at the plastics industry’s spin on BPA

Boing Boing (Lee Billings): Incredible journey: Can we reach the stars without breaking the bank?
Boing Boing (Maggie Koerth-Baker): Nuclear energy 101: Inside the “black box” of power plants

Boundary Vision: Objectivity and ambivalence: The case of the Apollo scientists
Boundary Vision: Arsenic, cold fusion and the legitimacy of online critique

The Bunsen Boerner: Chemistry: this shit’s important

Clastic Detritus: The Long Beat of Rhythmic Sedimentation

Clear Sci: SOS: Save our Science – Last minute Christmas

Confusedious; a science blog: Genetic diversity and ecosystem recovery; there is more to biodiversity than species count.

Context and variation: Iron-deficiency is not something you get just for being a lady
Context and variation: Even when we want something, we need to hide it.

Cosmic Variance: Physics and the Immortality of the Soul

Culturing Science – biology as relevant to us earthly beings: The danger of appealing stories: anecdata, expectations, and skepticism

Dangerous Experiments: On Beards, Biology, and Being a Real American

Deep Sea News: DON’T PANIC: Sustainable seafood and the American outlaw
Deep Sea News: How To Cuddle Your Lady Right, by Smoove A
Deep Sea News: Inside the Outside

Design. Build. Play.: Computers and the Homeless
Design. Build. Play.: Design Fridays: That’s a big prop
Design. Build. Play.: Future of Spaceflight: No single point sollution

The Digital Cuttlefish: BART Bugs! (poem)

Dinner Party Science: Who’s afraid of the Universe?

The Dispersal of Darwin: Sir Charles?
The Dispersal of Darwin: Distilling “History of Science” to 140 characters…

The Dragonfly Woman: Ode to an Odonate on Valentine’s Day (poem)

Drugmonkey: Pick ‘em (poem)

Clevelandpoetics: Dunkleosteus: three haiku (poetry)

Electron Café: Scientific Process Rage (cartoon)

Endless Forms: Woolly Bats Use a Carnivorous Roost

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: An Unlikely Heroine

Engineer Blogs: Noise of Aviation

Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat: A shocking experience
Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat: Moonscape Reminder: Owens Lake

The Febrile Muse: Human Papillomavirus: Driving Ms. HeLa, Henrietta Lack’s Cells
The Febrile Muse: Scientific Literacy in Children: Building the Basics

Genegeek: Can sport teach science about excellence?

Genomics, Evolution and Pseudoscience: It’s time to destroy our smallpox

Guardian Science Blog (Scicurious) The postdrome: migraine’s silent sister

Highly Allochthonous: Ten million feet upon the stair
Highly Allochthonous: A flood is a disaster when people are in the way

Inside Our Lab: A Letter from the Post-doc with One Foot in the Pipeline
Inside Our Lab: If At First You Don’t Succeed …

It’s Okay To Be Smart: On Beards, Biology, and Being a Real American (also here)
It’s Okay To Be Smart: “There’s no crying in baseball” . . . the status quo of Ph.D. programs?

Katie Ph.D.(ABD): A whole new RNA world
Katie Ph.D.(ABD): How do you solve a problem like a broken chromosome?
Katie Ph.D.(ABD): DNA origami gets curves

Kitchen Hacking: Blurring The Lines – Part I
Kitchen Hacking: I Want An Empty Waiting Room

Lealaps: The Dodo is Dead, Long Live the Dodo!
Lealaps: What Death Means to Primates

Labcoat Life: Should Extremely Preterm Babies Be Saved?
Labcoat Life: Science Blogs Are Good For You

Lamentations on Chemistry: On the pitfalls of science outreach to the public

Looking For Detachment: Deep Time
Looking For Detachment: Like caterpillars, crawling or marching…

The Loom: The Human Lake

The Lord Geekington: Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

Lounge of the Lab Lemming: Dear Hypothesis

Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: Scaphognathus crassirostris: A Pterosaur in the Historical Record?
Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs: Goertzen’s Case for the Historical Scaphognathus

Magma Cum Laude: Eruption rates at volcanoes

Mammoth Tales: Tabbert’s Sea-Mammoth

The Mother Geek: How “boner” is misleading: The science behind an erect penis
The Mother Geek: Science on the brain: Motor traffic and beads on a string

NeuroanthropologyHuman (amphibious model): living in and on the water
Neuroanthropology: ‘The last free people on the planet’
Neuroanthropology: Getting around by sound: Human echolocation

NeuroDojo: Indie spirit
NeuroDojo: Ptarmigans on ptreadmills

Neuron Culture: Free Science, One Paper at a Time

Neuropoly: The case of the man who couldn’t find the beat

Neuroself: Jonah Lehrer is not a neuroscientist

Neuroskeptic: Where Papers Come From

Neurotic Physiology: Dinosaur Inspiration
Neurotic Physiology: In which Sci is WRONG, you guys. Follow up on bees and cell phones

Neurotribes: Woof! John Elder Robison, Living Boldly as a “Free-Range Aspergian”

The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars (ricardipus): Genome sequencing, Shakespeare style
The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars (ricardipus): Genome Assembly – a primer for the Shakespeare fan

Occ Psy Dot Com: Within boundaryless contexts, developmental relationships may positively impact upon optimism

Oh, For the Love of Science!: Zombie Ants and The Bite of Death
Oh, For the Love of Science!: Friday Weird Science GUEST POST: The distance between your testicles and your anus, ‘taint unimportant

One Small Step: A supermassive star, all by its lonesome
One Small Step: Churnalism: Bad for Science?
One Small Step: Modelling comets, kittens and the Universe

Oscillatory Thoughts: How to be a neuroscientist

Pharyngula: Dear Emma B

Phased: Black Women Perceived as Being More White Receive Judicial Leniency in the United States

PLoS Blogs Guest Blog (Delene Beeland): Saving Ethiopia’s “Church Forests”

Primate Diaries (at Times Higher Ed): Ariel casts out Caliban

Providentia: The Turing Problem (Part 1), The Turing Problem (Part 2) and The Turing Problem (Part 3) fused into a single essay.

Punctuated Equilibrium (guest post by Cath Ennis): The scientific method, in chromo-logical order

Quantum Diaries (US LHC): Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs

Reciprocal Space: Numb or Numbered? – great comment section to edit and include.

The Renaissance Mathematicus: The Empty Building

RRResearch: Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA’s claims)

Rule of 6ix: On the origins of smallpox – where and when did variola virus emerge?
Rule of 6ix: An ecological perspective on bat viruses
Rule of 6ix: The ‘interactome’ of a host/pathogen triad

Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week: Tutorial 12: How to find problems to work on

Sciencebase: Can we count on journal metrics?

Science Business: HSBC Takes Climate Change Research to the Bank
Science Business: One Nation, Under Geeks

Sciencesounds: Cheerleaders, Rock Stars and Science Music: The Many Faces of Science Communication

Science with Moxie: The power of rock n roll.

Skulls in the Stars: The Saga of the Scientific Swindler! (1884-1891)
Skulls in the Stars: The birth of electromagnetism (1820)

Silvarerum: Chasing Daphnia: The Smallest Story on Earth

Sleeping with the Fishes: Self-Help for Seabirds: How to manage your time and outcompete your neighbors for maximum survival

Southern Fried Science: The Global Extinction Crisis – species area relationships, habitat loss, and population dynamics

Substantia Innominata: If you are a headbanger, you should listen to Céline Dion

Superbug: Diseases and borders: Potatoes and St. Patrick’s Day

Tattooed Science: Sex and math: You can integrate my curves any day

Tetrapod Zoology: Necks for sex? No thank you, we’re sauropod dinosaurs

There and (hopefully) back again…: In the shadows of greatness

This May Hurt a Bit: “Don’t You Want to Know What I Used to Do?”

This View of Life: Elements of an Effective Public Education Toolkit
This View of Life: Narrating Science and Fear

Thoughtomics: We Are Nobody: Contingency and Convergence in Evolution

Through the looking glass: What’s this public ‘engagement’ with science thing then?
Through the looking glass: A brief history of awesome

Tooth and Claw: Of Bad Odors and Good Yarns

Uncertain Principles: Science Is Not Irreducibly Complex

Uncharted Atolls: Crushing predators reinvade the Antarctic benthos

Universe: Moon Arts, Part Two: Fallen Astronaut

WhizBANG!: My Grandma’s Cure-All
WhizBANG!: An Active Study

Worst Professor Ever: Why Humanities People Should Care About Math

Yes Means Yes!: Gender Differences and Casual Sex: The New Research

YourBrainonDrugs.net: Welcome to the future of recreational drug use.

Filed under: OpenLab11

On the @SciAm blogs today

Bora Zivkovic — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:36:03 +0000

On the Guest Blog, three posts today (so far!):

Stick to the Science by Michael E. Mann

Lindau Nobel Meeting–The Cross-Pollination of Ideas by Christine Ottery

Too Hard for Science? Experimenting on Children Like Lab Rats by Charles Q. Choi, interviewing Steven Pinker.

On Cross-Check:

Defending Stephen Jay Gould’s Crusade against Biological Determinism by John Horgan

Enjoy, comment, share….

Filed under: Uncategorized

Today on @sciam blogs

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:01:11 +0000

On the Guest Blog:

Close Encounters of Science and Medicine by Iwona Fijalkowska

On Expeditions blog:

We Visit Fishy Relatives, Geology Wonderland by Ashley Poust and Hannah Susorney

On Extinction Countdown:

Platypus Threatened by Climate Change by John Platt

On Solar at Home:

Twatter? Phasebook? My(Green)Space? Can Social Networking Be Harnessed for Energy Conservation?

Filed under: Uncategorized

ScienceOnline2011 – interview with Bonnie Swoger

Bora Zivkovic — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:53:16 +0000

Today I chat with Bonnie Swoger (blog, Twitter)

I am a science librarian at a small public liberal arts college in central New York. I started out as a geologist, completing a masters degree without really knowing what I wanted to do with it. I spent a few years teaching introductory geology before realizing that what I was really interested in was how scientists communicate with each other. Through the eyes of my students, I was able to see that this world of scientific communication (which I took for granted) was difficult for some of them to access and understand. I decided that I could help students navigate this world as a librarian.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

My regular work day consists of answering reference questions (most of the science-related ones come my way), teaching undergraduate students about the nature of the scientific literature (and how to access it) and working with faculty. At the moment, I am exploring ways of convincing faculty who are not immersed in science blogs and other “new” forms of scientific communication to pay attention to these developments. In turn, I work with these faculty to teach their students about how scientists communicate – including traditional methods and new-fangled technologies.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I am very interested in the slowly changing nature of peer review (open review, post publication review, etc.). Most researchers still rely (and teach their students to rely) on the traditional system. They are very wary of some of the new experiments. I would like to see faculty be open to these developments so that they can teach their students about them. The peer review system will change – it isn’t set in stone – and it may get more complicated for undergraduate students to recognize “quality” work. At the moment, they typically have one litmus test – peer review. Even though that test isn’t failsafe, it’s easy to apply. As the peer review system changes, professors will have to educate their students on how things work. I think that librarians can be a useful partner in this education.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I discovered science blogs prior to my career switch, when I was teaching geology. The discussions about “Web 2.0″ and “Science 2.0″ were part of what encouraged me to pursue librarianship – I wanted to help students learn about these new developments. I am especially fond of the thoughtful blogs written by some outstanding science librarians Christina Pikas and John Dupuis, both of whom are ScienceOnline participants.

I started blogging about two years ago, just after I got involved with Twitter. For me, the blog forces me to think through various issues that arise in scholarly communication, publishing and education. I can also reach out to science faculty in my quest to convince them to spend time teaching their students about scientific communication – don’t assume they just pick it up as they go. Twitter has become a very important source of professional development for me, as well as introduced me to some wonderful colleagues. Although there aren’t a lot of faculty at my institution who use it, I can follow practicing scientists and keep up with publishing trends. I learn about a lot of new resources and developing news stories via Twitter, often making me the most informed person in the room regarding scholarly communication.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2011 for you? Any suggestions for next year?

My favorite aspect of this conference is the diverse group of folks who attend. Scientists, teaching faculty, journalists and librarians rarely sit down and talk about how scientists communicate with one another. It allows each group to gain a better understanding of the processes, strengths and limitations of the other groups. Because I concentrate on undergraduate education, I would love to see a conversation with teaching faculty, librarians and students about strategies to teach undergraduates about science communication (new and old).

For me, the most interesting discussions at ScienceOnline2011 centered around alternative metrics for measuring scholarly “impact”. At the conference, scientists and scholars who were engaged in new forms of scholarly communication argued passionately that the Impact Factor was horrible and everyone seemed to be in agreement that new metrics were needed. Back at my institution, the case for new metrics isn’t as clear. There is still a distrust among many rank-and-file researchers about blogs and data sharing and pre-prints as legitimate scientific work. While they don’t love the impact factor, they don’t see the pressing need to develop new metrics because the things they may measure (downloads, bookmarks, etc.) aren’t as tried and true as citations. There seems to be a dichotomy in the science community – those who are actively engaged in newer forms of scholarship and those who just aren’t interested. Before any alternative metrics can gain acceptance, a large portion of the scientific community may still need to be convinced of the importance of what the alt metrics are measuring.

Thank you so much for the interview. I hope to see you again in Raleigh in January.

Filed under: ScienceOnline2011 Interviews

New posts on the @SciAm blogs

Bora Zivkovic — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 23:53:18 +0000

On the Guest Blog:

#WSF11: The Invisible Language of Smell by Bora Zivkovic and Perrin Ireland

On Expeditions blog:

The South Pacific Islands Survey–One Illness Threatens a Cook Islander’s Way of Life by Lindsey Hoshaw

Go to Landfill, Find a Dinosaur Footprint! by Christi Lorang

On Anecdotes From The Archive:

Hold Your Horses with Electricity by Mary Karmelek

On Cross-Check:

Cool Science Classics for Summer Reading, Part 2 by John Horgan

Enjoy, comment, share….

Filed under: Uncategorized

New issue of Journal of Science Communication

Bora Zivkovic — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 03:18:41 +0000

June 2011 issue of JCOM – Journal of Science Communication – (issue 2, volume 10) is online.

Plenty of fodder for blogging! Let me know if you comment on any of these papers.

Where is public communication of science going?

We have published this issue of JCOM while the call for papers is open for the twelfth Public Communication of Science and Technology conference. The biennial meeting will be held in April 2012 and for the first time in Italy: the hosting city in Florence. The 2012 edition of the PCST conference is being held after more than twenty years of growth of the network of scholars that founded it and the expansion of its boundaries outside the European context from which it was created. JCOM is a part of this network, made up not only of individuals but also of organisations, university departments, journals, national conferences and so on.

Science as theatre: a New Zealand history of performances and exhibitions

In colonial times in New Zealand the portrayal of science to the public had a sense of theatre, with nineteenth and early twentieth century grand exhibitions of a new nation’s resources and its technological achievements complemented by spectacular public lectures and demonstrations by visitors from overseas and scientific ‘showmen’. However, from 1926 to the mid-1990s there were few public displays of scientific research and its applications, corresponding to an inward-looking science regime presided over by the Government science agency, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The subsequent development of science centres with their emphasis on visitor participation has led to an increase in the audience for science and a revival of theatricality in presentation of exhibitions, demonstration lectures, café scientifiques, and science-related activities.

What are the features of non-expert opinions on regenerative medicine? Opinion analysis of workshop participants

Regenerative medicine (RM) has the potential to strongly impact on society. To determine non-experts’ impressions of RM, we analyzed opinions obtained from workshops in which participants freely discussed RM. Three major features were apparent. First, non-experts were most concerned with the possible effects of RM after it has been fully realized in society. Second, non-experts expressed concerns not only about RM itself, but also about the governance and operation of the technology. Third, non-experts were not only concerned about direct influences of RM, but also about its potential indirect influences. These identified features are likely to be controversial issues when RM is introduced into society. It is important to promote early discussion of these issues by society as a whole.

From journal to headline: the accuracy of climate science news in Danish high quality newspapers

A significant number of mass media news stories on climate change quote scientific publications. However, the journalistic process of popularizing scientific research regarding climate change has been profoundly criticized for being manipulative and inaccurate. This preliminary study used content analysis to examine the accuracy of Danish high quality newspapers in quoting scientific publications from 1997 to 2009. Out of 88 articles, 46 contained inaccuracies though the majority was found to be insignificant and random. The study concludes that Danish broadsheet newspapers are ‘moderately inaccurate’ in quoting science publications but are not deliberately hyping scientific claims. However, the study also shows that 11% contained confusion of source, meaning that statements originating from press material or other news outlets were incorrectly credited to scientific peer-reviewed publications.

Science and the Internet: be fruitful and multiply?

What role and citizenship has the scientific thought on the web, or rather on the social side of the web? Does it benefit from the debate between peers and with the general public, or else does it only risk to become a monologue? How to deal with the number of instruments the Internet is able to provide in making, discussing and disseminating research? These are some of the questions tackled by the reflections from scholars and experts which were the basis for our debate.

The Internet phenomenon

The Internet has become a worldwide phenomenon. It is undeniable that the Net has forcefully entered everyday life, ceasing to be a useful tool only for a small circle of researchers and academics, to become a new and versatile means of mass communication. And measuring Internet access and calculating the number of Internet users is not easy. By using the domain names registered in the “.it” as an endogenous metric, the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the Italian National Research Council (IIT-CNR) carried out a research on Internet diffusion in Italy taking into account some major categories of users (enterprises, non-profit organizations, individuals, professionals and public bodies) and territorial distribution (nation, macro-area, region and province). This research has made it possible to carry out an initial analysis of the digital divide in Italy.

Access to news on line: myths, risks and facts

Although the debates on the Internet (sceptical, enthusiastic and finally more mature ones) in our country started in the mid 90s, it is only over the past few years that the Internet, especially thanks to social networks, has become a daily practice for millions of Italians. Television still is the main medium to spread information, but as it becomes increasingly cross-bred with the Internet (and other media too), the information-spreading process deeply changes. This creates, also in our country, the preconditions for the development of a web public (an active and connected one), founded on the new practices of multitasking and participatory information.

Social networks, a populated picture

Man, by his very nature, puts things between himself and the environment, turning the latter into a place, a space. He arranges the environment around him on multiple levels, by projecting parts of himself and shaping the frontiers and the horizons that surround, define and represent him. This was learnt a long time ago, but a trace and a memory remain in the way man acts: when mapping reality (both physical reality and the reality explored through digital means), we observe it and find a way through it by adopting behaviours that have always been similar. What has changed in this mapping is the ability to recognise, especially the ability to interpret maps and creatively work them.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Big Announcements

Bora Zivkovic — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:37:23 +0000

No, not that! (Yet)

First, let’s get bad news out of the way – in the end, I will not be able to go to the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar. But I will watch (with envy, of course) the #WCSJ11 hashtag on Twitter. And I will re-double my efforts to make it to Science Online London in September and the NASW/CASW Science Writers meeting in Flagstaff in October.

Now to the bright side, and some good news.

Starting in September and lasting two years, as was just announced over the weekend, I will be a Visiting Scholar at the NYU school of journalism Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP), co-sponsored by Jay Rosen’s Studio 20 (more). This will be a great opportunity for me to learn about the teaching of the craft from within, and to help the students network and prepare for the new media ecosystem. This promises to be great fun! And is a great honor, of course.

Filed under: Personal