My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
Microarrays have been used in the study of circadian expression of mammalian genes since 2002 and the consensus was built from those studies that approximately 15% of all the genes expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian manner. I always felt it was more, much more.
I am no molecular biologist, but I have run a few gels in my life. The biggest problem was to find a control gene - one that does not cycle - to make the comparisons to. Actin, which is often used in such studies as control, cycled in our samples. In the end, we settled on one of the subunits of the ribosome as we could not detect a rhythm in its expression. The operative word is "could not detect". My sampling rate was every 3 hours over a 24-hour period, so it is possible that we could have missed circadian expression of a gene that has multiple peaks, or a single very narrow peak, or a very low amplitude of cycling (it still worked as a control in our case, for different reasons). Thus, my feeling is that everything or almost everything that is expressed in a cell will be expressed in a rhythmic pattern.
If you have heard me talk about clocks (e.g., in the classroom), or have read some of my Clock Tutorials, you know that I tend to say something like "All the genes that code for proteins that are important for the core function of a cell type are expressed in a circadian fashion". So, genes important for liver function will cycle in the liver cells, genes important for muscle function will cycle in muscle cells, etc.
But I omit to note that all such genes that are important for the function of the cell type are all the genes that are expressed in that cell. The genes not used by that cell are not expressed. But I could not go straight out and say "all the genes that are expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian pattern", because I had no data to support such a notion. Until yesterday.
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 Eva Amsen, a participant at the 2007 and 2009 meetings, 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?
Hello readers of Bora's blog! I'm Eva, nice to meet you. I finished a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto in December, and before that I studied Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in Amsterdam.
What is your Real Life job?
That depends... At the time I'm typing out these answers, I still have a few days left at my job at an undergraduate biology program, where I created/developed/ran a new website and did some other education support tasks. But by the time this goes live, I probably won't be there anymore, and depending on when Bora posts this, I might even be traveling. Traveling's not a job, though, although I do tend to plan my trips as meticulously as if I was a travel agent. But I am also doing some part-time freelance writing, so I guess that is my only consistent Real Life job at the moment. I'm also currently in the process of searching for a new full-time job. I would like to find a job in which I can coordinate communication between scientists, rather than a job doing research itself.
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
I'm fascinated by the huge shift from offline to online communication in research that happened in the 1990s. The very first people to communicate online *were* scientists: the first internet connection was between research groups! I'm of the very narrowly defined generation who got their first e-mail address as they entered university: e-mail already existed in academia, but high school students weren't using it yet. At the time, not all journal articles were online yet, but by the time I graduated, I only *rarely* needed to physically visit a library. The web has made searching the literature so much more simple than it was before. But now, it seems to have come to a point where the web is making things *more* complicated. Should you blog? If so, who should blog? Do you publish your data online or not? Are people blurring personal lives with professional lives, and is that inevitable or do we need to separate the two again? Why are some people completely obsessed with all that has the suffix 2.0, while others just want to sit back and quietly read a paper? These are the things that I like to think about, and why I fly out to events like ScienceOnline.
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?
Well, that depends which "work" we're talking about. It has always been entirely separate from my work in research - blogging was just a hobby. It still is. I blog because I like doing it, and meanwhile ended up with three science blogs. (Expression Patterns, Easternblot and Musicians and Scientists)
For the job I just finished, I implemented a content management system that lets the staff update the website in a really simple way, very much *like* a blog, although we don't allow comments on the news posts because moderation would be too much a of a time commitment. We have talked about ways to use Twitter in the classroom, but I haven't used that in an education setting myself. For freelance writing, my blog has been crucial. I don't think I've ever had a paid writing job that wasn't directly or indirectly related to my blogging. I tend to not explicitly recommend blogging as a career move unless someone says they want a career in science writing.
As for FriendFeed and Facebook, I am very skeptical about their use in a work setting. Once you start to mix your work network with your private network, things get confusing and messy. But as I said, I'd like to find a job where I can think more about how scientists interact online, and what is *best* for them, so my opinion shouldn't matter so much. I'm more interested in the *facts* - are researchers getting more or less work done when they use a particular service? Are they better for it, and how do you define "better"? There are a lot of factors involved in this, and I think the scientific community is starting to wonder these things more and more. I can talk about this for hours, and sometimes blog about it, so lets just move on...(related blog posts: Scientists and Web 2.0 and From the Vault - The FriendFeed Attitude).
What are some of the similarities and differences between ScienceOnline and the conference you organized in Toronto?
SciBarCamp, which I organized twice in Toronto, is based on the BarCamp/SciFoo model, where participants create the schedule on the opening night. Since we had a lot of guests who were very interested in new, web-based ways to communicate science, we did have some topics (and participants!) that also came by at ScienceOnline. But we've also had broader sessions, about using science to save the environment, or science in poetry, or demonstrations of Mars Rovers or hydraulic music instruments. Whatever the participants want to talk about on the first day, that ends up on the program.
It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.
Bye! And I hope to see *you* at the next SciBarCamp!
There are a bunch of bloggers here at Lindau, wearing Press badges, going to Press meetings and generally behaving like Press. Apart from PZ and myself, most of them are German sciencebloggers who are posting their interviews and dispatches on the Lindaunobel blog on Scienceblogs.de (you can filter only English-language posts here) as well as on Page 3.14. Last night we went out for dinner together and had great fun. Most of my pictures turned out, well, pretty bad, except perhaps this one:
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 Betul Kacar Arslan of the Counter Minds 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?
I am Betul (Kacar) Arslan, originally from Istanbul, Turkey, living in the USA. I actually came here to get a PhD but now that I am graduating, I am starting to feel that I am here only to steal an American's job. My doctoral studies structured around biochemical work on a teleost enzyme (MAO). Now I am getting ready for an exciting project for my post-doctoral work: "resurrecting and evolving 4-billion year old proteins". Interested? More can be found here.
What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?
I don't want to be a grown-up when I grow up. That said, I don't want to lose my ambition and passion for scientific research and I think that is possible if one has the curiosity and courage of a child.
But if you insist, I want to see the Earth from a space shuttle that is headed to Mars.
What is your Real Life job?
Well.. I spend my day time in the lab doing research but I guess people no longer consider academia as real life. Therefore, in my -other- life I dance & teach tango. I am also a volunteer for the IRC (International Refugee Committee). Many refugees come to the US and they need help in many ways, if you'd like to help see this .
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
I am learning. Nothing excites me more than new ideas and thoughts. Therefore through blogging I think I found the right place for me. Not that I get hundreds of hits everyday, but it is just nice to feel a part of the club, plus, all the interesting people (like you) I got to meet. Some people from Turkey reached me through my blog, and now I am writing articles for a popular science magazine called NTV-Bilim in Turkey. So yes, blogging does open you new doors and raises opportunities. One shall not underestimate the power of the Web.
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?
I have friends who read my blog.. well at least they tell me they do so. My graduate advisor wanted me to keep my work limited to publications therefore I have not been able to write on my project details on the blog. I try to write some real-time campus happenings, that way when people see me around, they share their comments and thoughts. Mostly fun. These days I can not blog as often due to my dissertation writing but I promise to strike back starting August. -- I don't use Twitter.
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
My dear friend and collegue, Karen Ventii PhD (science to life), introduced me to the blogging world. I am very glad she did. I like to communicate and I like doing experiments, however laboratories are not the perfect place to be talkative (learned the hard way). Blogging helped me to release my words, my thoughts and everything else that I could no longer keep to myself.
This year was my first time at a SciBlogs Conference, and I had limited time, so I tried to read as many name tags as I could and go talk to sciblings. Therefore I had a lot of "oh so, this is him/her" moments, some disappointing, some surprising but always fun. I got to meet Stephanie Zvan for instance, after reading and following her blog for so long, her blog name has become like a brand in my mind. I called her "almost diamonds" for a while then switched to her first name eventually (I hope this doesn't make me sound like a weirdo)
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 have never thought of the copyright issues or the problems that I might encounter with my employee based on the things I put on my blog. Conference made me realize that my blog is not my secret diary, it is out there and people actually read it. I was more careful on what I put or say in my blog afterwards, though I am still working on it. Like, one way to control myself is not to write when feeling too emotional or frusturated so to not regret later - and for a Mediterranean, that is a challenge.
Eh, I know! Mediterranean myself. Was there an event that marked your first year at blogging?
Definitely, blogging helped me to make a voice on Turkey's censorship of evolution. I even made it to the news in Turkey. So instead of sitting at home and being frusturated on my own, it was a good feeling to be actually doing something. It was also amazing to see how evolution can gather so much attention on one's blog! Some creationist was threatening me and he even told me to behave (or else). A lot of action and drama for a small blog, right?
After all I feel happy with the crowd I gathered. I always feel happy when a new reader stops by. I have no big ambitions on blogging (like being a blogging super star), as I said earlier, having fun and learning new things: priceless.
What is your favorite ice-cream flavor?
Vanilla
It was so nice to meet you and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.
My pleasure Coturnix, thanks for all the fish (and baklava).
PZ was sleepy this morning, but he was a diligent blogger - he sat through each and every talk this morning and wrote about them all in twoposts. Knowing myself (and my ADHD) I did some cherry-picking. I skipped the heavy-duty chemistry lectures that I was bound not to understand, and went to only two talks I really wanted to see.
The first one was by my yesterday's co-panelist Prof. Sir Harold Walter Kroto (homepage, Wikipedia, Lindau biography). Just this moment, I am sitting in the press room discussing with other bloggers who are at this very moment writing blog-posts about Kroto's talk, how impossible it is to describe it. He touched on many topics - numbers, chemistry, science, environment, education, Web (or as he puts it: GYWW - Google/YouTube/Wikipedia World), religion, scientific method and much more. But it is impossible to describe it, really. What was it about? It is one of those talks where you need to be there, sit back, and let the speaker grab you. Laugh. Enjoy. So, you should just watch it yourself. See what strings it pulls for you. How it makes you think. What moral you get out of the story.
The second talk was by Prof. Dr. Peter Agre (Wikipedia, Lindau biography). This was definitely something different (watch his talk here). After all these talks about chemistry, and several on the science of climate change, Agre decided to do something different - remind us what this is all about. His talk was essentially a vacation slide-show of his four camping/canoeing trips in the Arctic areas of Canada and Alaska. But every shot was breathtakingly beautiful. And every now and then, a picture would remind us how fragile those seemingly harsh environments are and how strongly susceptible they are to climate change. Others used numbers and graphs to issue warnings about the necessity for quick response to the climate issue. Agre used powerful imagery to appeal to our emotions instead - not just how it all works, but what is it that we are trying to preserve and protect.
This is the third in the series of posts designed to provide the basics of the field of Chronobiology. This post is interesting due to its analysis of history and sociology of the discipline, as well as a look at the changing nature of science. You can check out the rest of Clock Tutorials here.
The liberality of sentiment toward each other, which marks every political and religious denomination of men in this country, stands unparalleled in the history of nations.
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is:
Today was a busy day. I was somewhat surprised at how shy people are of the little Flip camera - so much worry about the future career prospects if one does something seemingly 'unprofessional' like say a couple of words about one's research for the Lindau YouTube channel and my blog. But see the two interviews below, and I got a few more promise to do it tomorrow. I bet Nobel Laureates will be easier to persuade than the young researchers!
In the afternoon, although it was very hot, I put on my shirt and tie (instead of my 'Ida' t-shirt) for the Open Access panel which I shared with Sir Harald Kroto and Dr. Jason Wild. Moderator Beatrice Lugger made an excellent introduction which made it easy for us to get started right off the bat.
Dr.Kroto talked about his efforts (and those are huge!) in providing educational materials for science teachers, as well in using modern technology, especially video, by the students. This includes a mandatory video they have to make about their research which goes into their CVs and is evaluated when they apply for the next level of education, e.g., grad school.
Dr.Wild, who is published of physical journals at Nature and I used the perceived "competition" between Nature and PLoS as a starting point to introducing the two publishers, the two publishing systemes and two business models. This was then a good basis for further discussion of various Science 2.0 applications, the commenting/notes/ratings functionalities on PLoS papers, and the importance of Open Access for research, for medical practitioners (particularly in the developing world) and teachers.
In the last segment, to some extent prodded by the excellent questions by the journalists in the room (this was a Press event), we went into speculation about the future of science publishing and communication, for which I borrowed heavily not just from myownposts, but also from the brand new, thought-provoking and generally excellent post (a Must Read!) by Michael Nielsen which I just managed to read a few hours before the session.
Someone filmed the session, but I understand that the video will not be posted online (or allowed to be posted by me, if I get my hands on it in a shape of a CD). You will have to trust my word that the panel went very, very well.
In the evening, we were split into groups for dinners. Each group had a Nobel laureate or two, a couple of people from the Press (which includes bloggers, as this is a forward-thinking conference) and a lot of young scientists. I went to the elegant and excellent Restaurant Wissinger to the dinner hosted by Henkel. Nobel laureates Shimomura and Wütrhrich were in our group, but I (as Press, remember) did not want to bother them - there were many young folks there eager to talk to them and that is much more important to them than me - if I want an interview, I can probably get it tomorrow. Instead, I spent a wonderful evening talking to the neighbors at my table, all bright, young, highly motivated scientists. And the food was delicious, including great local wines (Hagnauer Burgstall, a dry pinot gris, and Meersburger Benge, a dry pinot noir). Pictures under the fold:
Just because I am galivanting in Lindau does not mean I could not take a look at the brand new papers published in PLoS ONE, PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases last night. A few titles caught my eye - take a look. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
The placement of medical research news on a newspaper's front page is intended to gain the public's attention, so it is important to understand the source of the news in terms of research maturity and evidence level. We searched LexisNexis to identify medical research reported on front pages of major newspapers published from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2002. We used MEDLINE and Google Scholar to find journal articles corresponding to the research, and determined their evidence level. Of 734 front-page medical research stories identified, 417 (57%) referred to mature research published in peer-reviewed journals. The remaining 317 stories referred to preliminary findings presented at scientific or press meetings; 144 (45%) of those stories mentioned studies that later matured (i.e. were published in journals within 3 years after news coverage). The evidence-level distribution of the 515 journal articles quoted in news stories reporting on mature research (3% level I, 21% level II, 42% level III, 4% level IV, and 31% level V) differed from that of the 170 reports of preliminary research that later matured (1%, 19%, 35%, 12%, and 33%, respectively; chi-square test, P = .0009). No news stories indicated evidence level. Fewer than 1 in 5 news stories reporting preliminary findings acknowledged the preliminary nature of their content. Only 57% of front-page stories reporting on medical research are based on mature research, which tends to have a higher evidence level than research with preliminary findings. Medical research news should be clearly referenced and state the evidence level and limitations to inform the public of the maturity and quality of the source.
The length of the endogenous period of the human circadian clock (tau) is slightly greater than 24 hours. There are individual differences in tau, which influence the phase angle of entrainment to the light/dark (LD) cycle, and in doing so contribute to morningness-eveningness. We have recently reported that tau measured in subjects living on an ultradian LD cycle averaged 24.2 hours, and is similar to tau measured using different experimental methods. Here we report racial differences in tau. Subjects lived on an ultradian LD cycle (1.5 hours sleep, 2.5 hours wake) for 3 days. Circadian phase assessments were conducted before and after the ultradian days to determine the change in circadian phase, which was attributed to tau. African American subjects had a significantly shorter tau than subjects of other races. We also tested for racial differences in our previous circadian phase advancing and phase delaying studies. In the phase advancing study, subjects underwent 4 days of a gradually advancing sleep schedule combined with a bright light pulse upon awakening each morning. In the phase delaying study, subjects underwent 4 days of a gradually delaying sleep schedule combined with evening light pulses before bedtime. African American subjects had larger phase advances and smaller phase delays, relative to Caucasian subjects. The racial differences in tau and circadian phase shifting have important implications for understanding normal phase differences between individuals, for developing solutions to the problems of jet lag and shift work, and for the diagnosis and treatment of circadian rhythm based sleep disorders such as advanced and delayed sleep phase disorder.
Most of the world's acute hunger and undernutrition occurs not in conflicts and natural disasters but in the annual "hunger season," the time of year when the previous year's harvest stocks have dwindled, food prices are high, and jobs are scarce.
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We know what works in fighting seasonal hunger and undernutrition: there are identifiable policy and program successes in contexts around the world, but they often operate on a small scale and in isolation.
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Community-based interventions to treat acute undernutrition and promote growth of preschool children are examples of successful interventions that should be scaled up.
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Global scale-up of a basic "minimum essential" intervention package against seasonal hunger would cost around 0.1% of global GDP and save millions of lives, while protecting millions more from severe illness.
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Focusing on seasonal hunger would be an effective way to leverage resources for the attainment of the hunger-related Millennium Development Goal.
Besides enhancing the pleasure of eating, our sense of taste can steer us away from poisonous foods. Many plants, for example, produce bitter-tasting toxins, such as caffeine and quinine, to deter predation by herbivores from cows to insects. But it remains a mystery how animals developed their capacity to detect--and so avoid--the tens of thousands of plant toxins, which include alkaloids, phenolics, and nonprotein amino acids. The best-known toxic nonprotein amino acid is L-canavanine, which accumulates in the seeds of alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and many other leguminosae. L-canavanine is so similar to the amino acid L-arginine that it gets incorporated into proteins, rendering them dysfunctional. A few insects have developed strategies for counteracting this toxin, including larvae of the beetle Caryedes brasiliensis, which depend entirely on seeds of the legume Dioclea megacarpa and catabolize L-canavanine into harmless compounds. However, the vast majority of insects are susceptible to L-canavanine, and little is known about their ability to detect it in plants.
At the March 2009 United Nations (UN) meetings coinciding with the World Water Forum, Canada, Russia, and the United States refused to support a declaration that would recognize water as a basic human right. The special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain, and endorsed by the President of the UN General Assembly, was instead rejected in favor of further examination of issues of access to safe drinking water and sanitation [1].
Opposition to this declaration runs counter to considerable evidence that access to clean water, which is essential for health, is under threat. According to the World Health Organization, 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and a further 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation services. These numbers are expected to rise. The UN has estimated that 2.8 billion people in 48 countries will be living in conditions of water stress or scarcity by 2025 [2].
Why should it matter how many people visit national parks? In a word: politics. Protected areas are not only physical places, reservoirs of biodiversity, and sources of ecosystem services, such as breathable air and drinkable water. They are also human political constructs, and they are under ever-increasing pressures from growing human populations and resource demands. Visitors may bring them the political capital to survive.
Biologists have pointed out for decades that protected areas are not playgrounds, but life-support systems for the planet's population of humans, as well as its other species. Economists estimate that ecosystem services worldwide contribute twice as much to the human economy each year as all forms of human industry combined--many trillions of dollars [1],[2]. At regional scale, ecosystem services from National Wildlife Refuges in the contiguous 48 states of the Unites States have been valued at US$27 billion annually [3]. The human economic value of conserving biodiversity is many orders of magnitude higher than the funds invested in it [2],[4]-[9]. The cost of buying all of the world's biodiversity hotspots outright has been estimated at around US$100 billion--less than five-years' expenditure on soft drinks in the US [10]. But the actual funds allocated worldwide each year, a few billion dollars in total, are <5% of minimum requirements for effective conservation [11]. This compares with the trillions of dollars spent in 2009 to prop up financial systems in the US, European Union, and China [12].
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 Dr. SkySkull of the Skulls in the Stars 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?
First, the name: I seem to have evolved many different aliases over my time in the blogosphere! My usual moniker is simply "gg", though I am occasionally referred to by my blog title, "Skulls in the stars". A friend of mine somewhat sarcastically started referring to me as "Dr. SkySkull", as well, and I'm rather fond of that title.
With the name out of the way, I can say that I'm an assistant professor of physics at a Southeastern University. More specifically, I am a theoretician with an emphasis in "classical optics", which means that I am more interested in the wave properties of light than the quantum-mechanical particle aspects of light. I actually started my career in experimental particle physics as an undergraduate, and made the change in grad school. There's an amusing story behind the change that I've promised to tell on my blog at some point...
What is your Real Life job?
As a faculty member, I'm required to do research, write grants, teach courses, supervise graduate students, and help keep the department running. I'm also currently working on an optics-related textbook, which I'll explain more about when it's closer to being done!
What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?
Well, hopefully "growing up" includes getting tenure, which I'm up for this year! Other than that... heck, I never know what will interest me next. I jump out of airplanes, play guitar, and ice skate as hobbies. There are certainly days when any and all of those appeal to me more than academia!
In all seriousness, though, I really love my job. Doing scientific research, and trying to educate people about it, is a blast, and I hope to keep at it for a long, long time.
What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?
I really like the fact that the Web opens up a direct line of communication between scientists and the general public. If a member of the public had a science-related question in times past, the best they could do was seek out a popularized book on the subject and hope that the explanation would suffice. Now that same person can find an answer in a (free) science blog post, and can ask follow up questions directly to the author.
With that in mind, all of my science blog posts these days are written primarily with an eye towards a non-technical audience. I work very hard to try and explain concepts without mathematics and in a manner that would be understandable without a major science degree.
How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?
As it stands, blogging does not directly figure into my work. It does provide many indirect benefits for my research, though. For one, blogging provides an additional motivation to keep current in the scientific literature. When I read journals now, I'm not only looking for research relevant to my own but also for good blog-fodder.
Blogging also pushes me to read, and understand well, topics outside of my immediate area of expertise. I've found that trying to write a post on a subject, especially for a non-technical audience, forces me to learn the material at a level much deeper than I otherwise would have bothered.
My 'history of science' blogging has also proven unexpectedly beneficial to both my research and teaching, but I'll say more about that in a moment!
I haven't used any of the social networking resources in my work at all. I use Facebook, but purely as a means to keep up with distant friends and family. Twitter is something I can never see myself using - I give myself heartburn enough trying to blog several times a week, I can't even imagine posting several times daily!
When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?
I still can dictate exactly when and how I was drawn into the science blogosphere! I read Al Franken's book "Lies" when it came out in the first Bush term, and that made me a fan and a regular listener of Air America Radio in its early years. From there, I got turned on to many different political blogs. Somewhere along the way, there was a reference to Pharyngula, which put science blogs on my radar. I started there, found myself drifting over to Science After Sunclipse, Good Math, Bad Math, and Uncertain Principles, and I was hooked from there.
I started reading White Coat Underground after meeting PalMD at the Conference. Neurotopia I was already familiar with, but started reading much more regularly after getting a chance to hang out with the uber-cool Scicurious. I met Tom Levenson at the Conference and now regularly check out his Inverse Square Blog.
You run the Giant's Shoulders blog carnival - can you explain what is the motivation for doing this, what is the goal? Why are you drawn to history and why do you think others should as well?
The carnival began almost by accident! I've always had a significant respect for the history of science, which was instilled in me by my Ph.D. advisor, but I never really expected to make it one of my big "things." I try to be very thorough in my science posts, however, and I found myself hunting down some very old, classic papers in an introductory post on how the speed of light is measured. In April 2008, I thought it would be fun to "challenge" other science bloggers to go and read a classic paper in their own field. I was expecting a few people to pick it up, but surprisingly (and in no small part due to A Blog Around the Clock), lots of people decided to pick up the challenge.
I realized that lots of bloggers have at least some interest in blogging about historical topics, and it seemed natural to have a central "focus" for their efforts - hence, the carnival. Overall, my goal is to promote an understanding of the history of science amongst both scientists and the general population - and that understanding can be beneficial to both groups.
There are a lot of interesting stories in the history of science, and those stories - and the people behind them - can help humanize science in the eyes of the public. Too often scientists are viewed as humorless curmudgeons working alone in some dark lab on scientific minutiae. Historical tales such as Tom Levenson's new book Newton and the Counterfeiter can counter that perception - who could have imagined Isaac Newton matching wits with a crime-lord!
As an educator, I find that understanding the historical origins of a discovery helps immensely in explaining it to a class. In physics, at least, we tend to highlight the major breakthroughs but leave out a lot of the "connecting tissue". This can give students a misleading view of how science is actually done and make it look much more mysterious than it needs to be. Also, fun little historical anecdotes can make the class a lot more fun!
As a researcher, my historical readings give me a better understanding of how major discoveries are made, and what sort of "mental blocks" kept other researchers from making them. What distinguishes an Einstein from a less successful researcher? There's no easy answer to that, but one can partly see the oversights of Einstein's contemporaries by reading the old journals.
It is also fascinating to see how scientific discoveries percolate their way into the popular culture. I also blog about classic weird fiction on my blog, and shocking discoveries such as quantum mechanics and relativity made their mark on the fiction of the time. H.P. Lovecraft, for instance, was a voracious science reader, and the weirdness of Einstein's relativity permeates much of his writing.
One indirect thing I learned from it was how wonderfully democratic blogging is! As a professor, I was sharing the stage with a graduate student (Scicurious) and an undergraduate (Brian of Laelaps), and I thought that it was great to have all those perspectives presented simultaneously! Folks like Sci and Brian are the future of science education, and it was very energizing to see their enthusiasm and hear their views.
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?
It's hard to pin down any single event that really left a mark. Mainly, it was a lot of little things that I internalized, like the different ways that people look at science communication. One thing I'm already taking back to my job, though, is that the blogs are a powerful tool for such communication, and I'm already trying to get more of my colleagues involved.
It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.
A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Corinna Reisinger from Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung
This is the second in the series of posts designed to provide the basics of the field of Chronobiology. See the first part: ClockTutorial #1 - What Is Chronobiology and check out the rest of them here - they will all, over time, get moved to this blog.
Microarrays have been used in the study of circadian expression of mammalian genes since 2002 and the consensus was built from those studies that approximately 15% of all the genes expressed in a cell are expressed in a circadian manner. I always felt it was more, much more. 
