Academia:
I will be going to a scientific conference next week. Believe it or not, this will be the first purely scientific meeting I'll attend since I quit grad school and started blogging (all the others had to do with science...
Posted on May 11, 2008 11:14 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Holden Thorp is a chemist and an overall great guy. Good news for NC science and education....
Posted on May 9, 2008 11:21 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Our governor agrees. At least in the print version of this article which has a somehwat different title: "Easley supports college for aliens". I wonder why they changed it for the Web version - is the editorial position that having...
Posted on May 9, 2008 11:17 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Anna Kushnir is now to be referred to as Doctor Anna Kushnir!...
Posted on May 8, 2008 8:36 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Peter Suber relays the announcement (and add some more) of the Open Humanities Press, a collection of seven Open Access journals (a humanities PLoS of sorts) in critical and cultural theory. Humanities bloggers have been way ahead of science bloggers...
Posted on May 7, 2008 9:32 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Being out of the lab, out of science, and out of funding for a while also means that I have not been at a scientific conference for a few years now, not even my favourite meeting of the Society for...
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Posted on April 12, 2008 4:27 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A post from December 5, 2007: Communication Communication of any kind, including communication of empirical information about the world (which includes scientific information), is constrained by three factors: technology, social factors, and, as a special case of social factors -...
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Posted on April 8, 2008 4:59 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
As many of you may be aware, yesterday was the first day of the implementation of the new NIH law which requires all articles describing research funded by NIH to be deposited into PubMed Central within 12 months of publication....
Posted on April 8, 2008 11:52 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Obligatory Reading of the day: Why I feel so strongly about redundant digitization...
Posted on April 6, 2008 10:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There have recently been several articles in the media about brain enhancers, so-called Nootropics, or "smart drugs". They have been abused by college students for many years now, but they are now seeping into other places where long periods of...
Posted on April 1, 2008 11:47 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Check the website and download the PDFs: An unprecedented five consecutive years of stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is putting America at risk--slowing the pace of medical advances, risking the future health of Americans, discouraging our best...
Posted on March 12, 2008 6:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY in SLEEP MEDICINE Charles A. Czeisler, Steven W. Lockley, Christopher P. Landrigan, Laura K. Barger Harvard Work Hours, Health and Safety Group Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School The Harvard Work Hours...
Posted on March 12, 2008 6:45 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
[rant]So, if you organize a study-group online instead of in meat-space, the old fogies who still remember dinosaurs go all berserk. A student is threatened by expulsion for organizing a Facebook group for studying chemistry. Moreover, as each student got...
Posted on March 8, 2008 11:16 PM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In academia? See what they say: Mad Hatter EcoGeoFemme ScienceGirl Jennie Mad Hatter again DrugMonkey Laurie Granieri ScienceWoman Telecommuting has its perks. But working only 40 hours is not one of them. Especially in my case in which the line...
Posted on March 8, 2008 9:29 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Jane is the cool new tool that everyone is talking about - see the commentary on The Tree of Life, on Nature Network and on Of Two Minds. In short, the Journal/Author Name Estimator is a website where you can...
Posted on March 4, 2008 10:30 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
That is what Anne-Marie asked after a week with seven mid-term exams. In a few weeks, she'll have another bunch of exams all at the same time. And then a finals week in May. This is, obviously, not the most...
Posted on March 4, 2008 8:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Anne-Marie reviews two books that appear to be useful in thinking about one's career in science: The Beginner's Guide to Winning a Nobel Prize, by Peter Doherty, and The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology, by Chandler,...
Posted on March 2, 2008 3:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards March 27-28, 2008 Chapel Hill, NC Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge...
Posted on February 21, 2008 10:16 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Are you confused with the new NIH Policy and unsure as to what you need to do? If so, Association of Research Libraries has assembled a very useful website that explains the process step by step. But the easiest thing...
Posted on February 21, 2008 9:10 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What is the difference between Free Access Beer and Open Access Beer? You go to a bar to get your Free Access Beer. You sit down. You show your ID. The barista gives you a bottle. You don't need to...
Posted on February 18, 2008 3:36 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I found two articles interesting to me in today's issue of PLoS Computational Biology - the first one about becoming a good scientist, the other on circadian rhythms: On the Process of Becoming a Great Scientist: In the vein of...
Posted on February 14, 2008 6:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mythbusting Canadian Healthcare, Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers by Sara Robinson Scientific Careerism 101: Yes, grad students and postdocs it IS your fault by DrugMonkey The project of being a grown-up scientist (part 2) by Janet D. Stemwedel The...
Posted on February 13, 2008 11:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
....Scienceblogs.com Busy today. What are the others writing about? Abel Pharmboy and DrugMonkey discuss the causes of death of Heath Ledger. Nature had some articles about ScienceDebate 2008 and got it all wrong. I agree with what John Lynch wrote....
Posted on February 6, 2008 10:07 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Aetosaurs. No, I have not heard of them until now. But that does not matter - the big story about them today is the possibility - not 100% demonstrated yet, to be fair - that some unethical things surround their...
Posted on January 31, 2008 9:08 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On the heels of David Warlick's session on using online tools in the science classroom, this initiative is really exciting: Teachers, Students, Web Gurus, and Foundations Launch Campaign to Transform Education, Call for Free, Adaptable Learning Materials Online Cape Town,...
Posted on January 22, 2008 11:19 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, this may not be very new, but for all of you taking a look at science in North Carolina next week due to the focus on the Science Blogging Conference, The Scientist has published a number of essays looking...
Posted on January 12, 2008 11:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
From an e-mail from the Science Communicators of North Carolina: At noon on Friday, January 18, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham will host a seminar by Josh Rosenau, the Public Information Project Director at the National Center...
Posted on January 11, 2008 10:34 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Following his (excellent) article in Seed on the topic, my SciBling Chris Mooney blogs about the future of the position of the Science Advisor to the President, suggesting some potential names, and Matt Nisbet, RPM, Blake Stacey, Brian Switek, Scott...
Posted on January 8, 2008 10:57 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PLoS ONE is the first and (so far) the most successful scientific journal specifically geared to meet the brave new world of the future. After starting it and bringing it up from birth to where it is now one year...
Posted on January 8, 2008 11:10 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the wake of the signed omnibus bill that funds NIH and ensures open deposition of NIH-funded research, here are some thoughtful questions: Why the NIH bill does not require copyright violation: The great advantage of the requirement to deposit...
Posted on December 28, 2007 12:36 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I buried this among a bunch of other cool links yesterday, but there was a study the other day, in the Journal of Cell Biology, that seriously calls in question the methodology used by Thompson Scientific to calculate the sacred...
Posted on December 20, 2007 9:45 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If scientific papers can be publicly reviewed either pre-publication or post-publication, and if one day soon the public can have a voice on the patents, then why not also grant proposals? Now, Michael does not go that far - he...
Posted on November 14, 2007 11:07 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
OK, back home and rested - it's time for a pictorial report, in two parts. This one is social, the other part will be about the conference itself. All of it under the fold......
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Posted on November 11, 2007 8:19 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Cannot. Resist. Funny. Titles. Sorry. But seriously now, the question of authorship on scientific papers is an important question. For centuries, every paper was a single-author paper. Moreover, each was thousands of pages long and leather-bound. But now, when science...
Posted on November 6, 2007 11:43 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have seen this, this and this, i.e., an effort to design an icon that a blogger can place on the top of a post that discusses peer-reviewed research. The...
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Posted on October 29, 2007 9:25 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mark Patterson writes in Bringing Peer Review Out of the Shadows: ----------------------- Hauser and Fehr propose a system for holding late reviewers to account by penalizing them when it's their turn to be an author. A slow reviewer's paper would...
Posted on October 27, 2007 9:24 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A quick update on the Milwaukee events.... The first time I went to Mocha's (much better wifi than the hotel and it is free) I saw a familiar face walk in - from Scifoo! World is small. She promised to...
Posted on October 23, 2007 5:56 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Back at delightful Mocha's cafe on the corner... We just finished our session at the ASIS&T conference: Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social and Scholarly Scientific Communication, organized by K.T. Vaughan, moderated by Phillip Edwards....
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Posted on October 23, 2007 12:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On the Oxford University Press Blog, two useful articles: Grant Writing: Things That You Can Do To Learn Scholarship Behavioral Science Grants: Surefire Tips and Pointers...
Posted on October 18, 2007 4:21 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Nobel Prizes are not the only awards given in Stockholm these day. Karolinska Institute also gives an annual Lennart Nilsson Award for photography. This year's prize has just been announced and I am happy to report that the recepient is...
Posted on October 17, 2007 9:17 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today, Harvard has launched a new website - HarvardScience - showcasing the depth and breadth of science, medicine, and engineering at all of Harvard's schools and affiliated hospitals: The site provides a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in science in...
Posted on October 16, 2007 6:45 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Of course they fight against Open Access Publishing - too much sunshine scares them and would make them scurry away in panic...
Posted on October 11, 2007 12:46 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yes, I'll be there this Friday. Come by and say Hello if you are in the building or close at lunchtime....
Posted on October 1, 2007 10:42 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Back in July, the House of Representatives passed a bill that requires all the NIH-funded research to be made freely available to the public within at most 12 months subsequent to publication. The equivalent bill has passed the Senate Appropriations...
Posted on September 27, 2007 12:39 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There have been a couple of recent posts about textbooks lately. Jim Fiore started it all with a look at the textbook business from the perspective of the authors and students, looking primarily at the problem of money. One sentence...
Posted on September 17, 2007 7:59 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Come see Sapolsky, Deacon, de Waal, Rosenberg, Dennett, Fox Keller and others talk about what it means to be human (or chimp).
Posted on September 14, 2007 9:16 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In a commentary and a blog post, the editors of PLoS Medicine ask: ....is there still a reluctance to accept that anything useful can be learned from research without numbers? An old question that tends to generate a lot of...
Posted on August 31, 2007 9:59 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There are some die-hards in the comment thread of this post on Evolgen who assert that the only thing that makes one an author of something is the act of writing, i.e., using writing materials to commit language to paper....
Posted on August 23, 2007 3:44 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Maxine Clarke: In printing the statement verbatim every week as we have done, making it clear when it originated, we have hitherto assumed that readers will excuse the wording in the interests of historical integrity. But feedback from readers of...
Posted on August 21, 2007 5:04 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
So, you look around to see if there is anything edible! Of course, it's easy if you work with tasty animals....(just ask the guys in the next door lab who work on lobsters, crayfish and oysters...or wait until you get...
Posted on August 15, 2007 1:07 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I am not sure if blogging about it is enough - in this case a very strong Resume may be more important - but if you think you have sufficient experience and expertise to be a Managing Editor of a...
Posted on August 8, 2007 8:27 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Purloined Bibliography: My training in medieval history had acquainted me with the practice of identifying dependencies among manuscripts by tracing the repetition of errors. By analogy, I thought, if there were additional idiosyncratic errors on my Web site that...
Posted on July 18, 2007 12:37 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
My SciBling Rob Knop is leaving the academic circus for a cool job: designing Universes or some such astronomical stuff on Second Life. Just as he is about to leave his University, though, he got a nice parting gift from...
Posted on July 17, 2007 11:57 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There is a long and interesting comment thread on this article on The Scientist blog. What do you think? (Hat-tip: Tanja)...
Posted on July 16, 2007 3:02 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I missed this by weeks, but Dave asked a set of questions that I was pondering on, but found no time and energy to answer until now. PZ, Janet, Martin, Chad and RPM responded (I am assuming some people outside...
Posted on July 15, 2007 7:10 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Four excellent, thought-provoking articles all in some way related to the idea of Open Science. One by Bill Hooker: Competition in science: too much of a good thing and three by Janet Stemwedel: Clarity and obfuscation in scientific papers Does...
Posted on July 12, 2007 8:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Libraryman just gave a Presentation about it, and Danica likes it. Anyone using it yet?...
Posted on June 26, 2007 9:59 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
"Fine in practice, but how does it work in theory?" This headline (in a French paper, of course), prompted Sally Green to pen a fine, fine post - an Obligatory Reading of the Day - about class, education, the psychology...
Posted on June 13, 2007 3:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Graduate of the University of Belgrade (Serbia), City University (UK) and UNC-Chapel Hill (USA), with a Masters from University of Belgrade, Danica Radovanovic is currently in Belgrade without a job and she is looking for one either in Serbia, in...
Posted on June 4, 2007 8:42 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days. Enrique has...
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Posted on May 31, 2007 1:28 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Business customers and children can be tough to manage online, but can you imagine managing scientists! They are already hard enough to satisfy in their native environment offline (e.g., to look beyond the usual metrics when awarding tenure). I know,...
Posted on May 17, 2007 4:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Spiked and Pfizer are asking: 'What's the Greatest Innovation?' is a survey of key thinkers in science, technology and medicine, conducted by spiked in collaboration with the research-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Contributors were asked to identify what they see as...
Posted on May 3, 2007 1:15 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Rob identifies some old pernicious frames, makes suggestions how to counter them and offers more modern ways to frame the question of copyright in this three-part post: Empty Rhetoric: 'Intellectual Property Is Property!' Copyright and scientific papers Copyright is Censorship...
Posted on May 3, 2007 12:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Jake, Chad, Rob, Janet, Chad again and Chad again. have already written everything important about today's Buzz topic - the undergraduate research. What I will do is add a few examples and you draw conclusions why this worked (or not)...
Posted on May 1, 2007 9:29 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you have a moment, this is a useful study to participate in: Do you blog? If yes, then please consider participating in an online survey from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library...
Posted on April 25, 2007 2:47 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Do the survey for this week and let me and John know how you answered and why: Most likely reason a scientist will leave research? Can't find a permanent position Desires to earn a higher salary Sees no correlation between...
Posted on April 9, 2007 2:44 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Alun Salt will be leading a session about the Peer-to-peer publishing and the creative process, i.e., publishing papers on blogs at the Classical Association conference at Birmingham so he has written a post on things he wants to say there...
Posted on March 31, 2007 11:41 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Being constantly online and at the same time out of academia skewed my perspective, and I kinda expected that most of my old profs would not be so hot about publishing in online open-sorce journals (and even thinking that Science...
Posted on March 19, 2007 2:16 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
