I just received a lovely e-mail from Dr Chris Patil, blogger at Ouroboros and postdoc fellow in the lab of the well-known aging researcher, Dr Judith Campisi at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Chris dialed me up to submit one of my posts to Hourglass, a monthly blog carnival he launched in July that focuses on the field of biogerontology. Chris used the celebration of his second blogiversary to establish the carnival.

Hourglass goes up on the 2nd Tuesday of each month and the next installment will be hosted on 9 September by Alvaro Fernandez over at SharpBrains. I told Chris that I'd put up a call to our readers to submit any appropriate posts to Alvaro at the gmail address of hourglass.host.

Here are the guidelines - I particularly like Chris' wording to potential purveyors of woo:

Hourglass is a monthly blog carnival devoted to biogerontology. Its main purpose is to provide a regular showcase for the growing number of excellent blog posts about the biology of aging.

Everyone is welcome to contribute posts for inclusion in the carnival. Submitted posts should have something to do with the biology of aging, broadly speaking. For example, suitable topics include (but are not limited to) fundamental research in biogerontology, age-related disease, ideas about life extension technologies, personal experiences with calorie restriction, and the sociological implications of increased longevity. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the management, so feel free to subvert the dominant paradigm. If in doubt, submit anyway.

Ideally, submissions should be recent (originally published within the last month or so).

Just about the only sorts of things we'll turn away are quackery and promotions of commercial products (including brazenly for-profit websites of no redeeming scientific value). So, no growth hormone commercials or glowing reviews of your own book, please.

The carnival goes up on the second Tuesday of every month. Submissions should be emailed to [hourglass.host][at][gmail][dot][com].

We'll be back on Tuesday to announce the carnival so go ahead and submit your posts before Monday night.