Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Category: Science
Posted on: August 3, 2008 9:15 AM, by PZ Myers
I'm wondering how this works. VADLO is a web search engine for biologists, and my first attempts at using it...it worked surprisingly well. I looked up a few techniques I've been using, and actually turned up some useful articles.
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Comments
I really love the "Life in Research" cartoons on that site! Great cartoons!
Posted by: Heather | August 3, 2008 9:36 AM
YEAH! A new search engine. Great. Screw Cuil. Oh wait, I'm not a biologist. Dammit.
Posted by: John Marshall | August 3, 2008 10:21 AM
It failed my test. I searched for 'influenzae' (as in the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae) and, except for a couple of hits to genome databases, all the hits in every category were to 'influenza' (as in the flu virus).
The cartoons are also pretty lame compared to PhD (and have very few women scientists).
Posted by: Rosie Redfield | August 3, 2008 10:50 AM
Wow! WOW!
What a resource for biology students and teachers. (and others)
Check out database of powerpoint presentations on different topics.
Posted by: Divalent | August 3, 2008 10:55 AM
Our experiment at Hannon University evolving morality in Fruit Flies is not even MENTIONED, goddam science fascists.
OT- McCain and Spears in 08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd0Kb2SnD_Q&feature=dir
Posted by: scooter | August 3, 2008 10:57 AM
Well, I'm huffed; it didn't list me when I searched my own name. Still, apparently "biology" is only animals, not plants, even to a lot of biological scientists....
Posted by: Louis Irving | August 3, 2008 11:16 AM
For those with a hankering for science cartoons, I'd recommend "Lab Initio", but it seems it's disappeared down the memoryhole. A great loss.
Posted by: Sili | August 3, 2008 11:20 AM
Ah, I guess "biology" doesn't include much microbiology. No luck searching for stuff on HERVs.
Posted by: Terry Small | August 3, 2008 11:36 AM
Terry Small: "No luck searching for stuff on HERVs."
What about this:
http://search.vadlo.com/b/q?sn=158621799&e=dta&k=HERV&rel=2
Posted by: Divalent | August 3, 2008 12:09 PM
I thought there was already a big biology search engine, called pubmed.
Posted by: gdlchmst | August 3, 2008 12:44 PM
Oooh, thanks for the info on this search engine. I looked up Chip-on-chip, which I am doing in full force right now, and it gave me lots of good stuff.
Posted by: LisaJ | August 3, 2008 2:43 PM
This looks like it might be the new home of Lab Initio: http://www.nearingzero.net/
Posted by: SDyuaa | August 3, 2008 3:46 PM
Thanks, I use SCIRUS, but I am always interested in new engines. Using this one and searching "Henle's loop" ( I think this is one of the newer poster children of irreducible complexity) turns up only two links with vadlo. Scirus turns up way too many. There has to be a happy medium.
http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/
Posted by: Thanos | August 3, 2008 4:00 PM
@ #9
Now that's odd. I was getting no hits for the search term when I made my post.
Posted by: Terry Small | August 3, 2008 4:00 PM
I have to agree here with some people... my research didn't turn up anything useful, either.
#10 Pubmed doesn't give you protocols or ppts or software, I think. At least I only know it for research articles, sequences and proteins (but it has many nice functions concerning that).
Posted by: raiko | August 3, 2008 4:53 PM
It seems like the database has a lot of stuff in the "powerpoints" section, which is also known as the "seminar" section. (why they use a different term is a mystery; it sure is confusing). It's not wikipedia (clearly they are meant to illustrate a talk, not be the whole presentation), and there isn't any quality filtration, but for any major topic (e.g. meiosis) you get lots of hits on PPTs which appear to be college and HS teacher PPTs on specific topics.
It would appear to be a pretty good starting point for developing your own PPT on a topic, as you can get your hands on any number of useful graphics, and a variety of "angles" on presentation format.
Posted by: Divalent | August 3, 2008 5:52 PM
Is it better than Google?
(It doesn't look like it is to me)
Posted by: PeteC | August 3, 2008 8:11 PM
Yay- finally an alternative to scholar.google.com that actually gives me the information about protocols I am looking for. Exhausted research students awake at 3am around the world rejoice! ^__^
Posted by: Karen | August 3, 2008 10:04 PM
Thanos I got 9 hits in the database section for 'Loop of Henle'. Note that vadlo seems to display the top two results, you have to click the show all link for the rest.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | August 4, 2008 8:23 AM
Try www.nextbio.com. It is a very useful search engine for the life science research community.
Posted by: SSKS | August 4, 2008 1:42 PM
Cool. I just did a search for "turtle" and came across a Turtle necropsy manual! Further proof that everything is on the internet!
Posted by: Craig | August 5, 2008 12:16 AM