clock | February 27, 2010A couple of weeks ago, there was a flurry of tweets, tagged with #sci140 hashtag on Twitter. What was that about? People were trying to summarize scientific papers in 140 characters or less. Actually, they had to use less as the hashtag itself took some space.
Almost 200 tweets were made, and they have all been collected (and the winners chosen) in this blog post on f1000 blog.
I found the exercise fascinating!
First, it was quite incredible how many more people chose to tweet well-known classical papers compared to those tweeting their own (thus obscure) publications. I would not call it…
clock | February 27, 2010Four Sciblings (and three ex-Sciblings - Sheril Kirshenbaum, Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer - but once a Scibling always a Scibling rule applies, so we hung together some...) went to the AAAS meeting last week in San Diego. There is a lot of coverage in the MSM (and a little bit on blogs - it's hard to blog when you are not given tools, access and respect and thus AAAS will get much less, and much less positive coverage than they would have otherwise) - but here I just want to link to what my SciBlings have posted so far (I will post some more myself later - just watch the AAAS10 category here…
clock | February 26, 2010"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
- Comedian Kip Adota
clock | February 26, 2010Chris Brodie is teaching the 'Explaining Science to the Public' class at NC State University. His students come from English, science and engineering departments and he is teaching them how to write well and how to utilize all of the modern technologies for science communication.
The students are now all on Twitter - yup, that's a class assignment - and you can follow their discussions if you search for the #esttp hashtag.
I visited their class last month and discussed various new forms of online science communication with them. Almost all of them also came to hear a wonderful presentation…
clock | February 26, 2010Listen to the podcast, post comments, ask questions - the new forum is now live and will go on for the next week:
How the Hidden Brain Controls Our Lives
We like to think of ourselves as conscious, rational beings.
But human behavior is largely driven by unconscious attitudes.
These attitudes reside in the deep recesses of the brain, and we ignore them at our own peril.
So says Washington Post journalist Shankar Vedantam.
Vedantam is the author of a new book, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.
Vedantam explores how the…
clock | February 26, 2010How does a journalist figure out 'which scientists to trust'?
Saturday, January 16 at 3:15 - 4:20pm
D. How does a journalist figure out "which scientists to trust"? - Christine Ottery and Connie St Louis
Description: We will talk about how science journalists can know which scientists to trust based on a blogpost by Christine Ottery that made a splash in the world of science communication. As a relative newcomer to science journalism and blogging (Christine) and an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, writer and scientist (Connie), we will be bringing two very different viewpoints to the…
clock | February 26, 2010Friday is the day when four of our journals publish new articles. Let's take a look at those I find most interesting (and 'bloggable'). 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:
Interspecific Hybridization as a Tool to Understand Vocal Divergence: The Example of Crowing in Quail (Genus…
clock | February 25, 2010By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
- Charles Wadsworth
clock | February 25, 2010A stellar line-up of judges has finished their work and announced the finalists of the 2010 Research Blogging Awards. This was a huge job - just look at the entire list of nominees!!! What a fantastic list of the best of the best of science blogs and their best posts, in several languages.
You can see who made it to the finals by clicking here and start exploring blogs you did not know before. I guarantee you will find new candidates for your blogrolls and subscriptions.
Voting for the winners will be on March 4th and the winners of the awards will be announced on March 23rd.
I did make it…
clock | February 25, 2010Links in this post are those that pertain to me or the session I was in - I will link to some others later (and I already did on Twitter):
Columbia Journalism Review: Online and Overseas: Less hand-wringing over state of science journalism
Physicsworld.com: Researchers! Join the Twitterati! Or perish!
Thoughts From Kansas: AAAS Day 3: Social media in science
Scientificblogging.com: Science Journalists Have Met The Enemy, And They Are Bloggers
UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering: Interesting session at AAAS
john hawks weblog: AAAS
A Blog Around The Clock: AAAS 2010 meeting - the Press…
clock | February 25, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Fabiana Kubke, who came to the conference all the way from New Zealand, to answer a few questions. Fabiana writes on Building Blogs of Science which is syndicated on SciBlogs.co.nz
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers…
clock | February 25, 2010How does a journalist figure out 'which scientists to trust'?
Saturday, January 16 at 3:15 - 4:20pm
D. How does a journalist figure out "which scientists to trust"? - Christine Ottery and Connie St Louis
Description: We will talk about how science journalists can know which scientists to trust based on a blogpost by Christine Ottery that made a splash in the world of science communication. As a relative newcomer to science journalism and blogging (Christine) and an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, writer and scientist (Connie), we will be bringing two very different viewpoints to the…
clock | February 25, 2010There are 21 new articles in PLoS ONE today. 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:
Vertebrate DNA in Fecal Samples from Bonobos and Gorillas: Evidence for Meat Consumption or Artefact?:
Deciphering the behavioral repertoire of great apes is a challenge for several reasons. First, due to…
clock | February 24, 2010"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response.
clock | February 24, 2010If you are interested in the topic of science journalism, how it's changing, what's new, and who's who in it, you are probably already reading Knight Science Journalism Tracker. If not, you should start now.
They have recently been digging around and finding projects with which I am involved in one way or another. For example, a few days ago, they profiled science blogs in general and scienceblogs.com in particular, but mainly focused on ResearchBlogging.org which aggregates and gives a stamp of approval to blog posts covering peer-reviewed research. The aggregator is a local thing - it is a…
clock | February 24, 2010Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Jeff Ives from the New England Aquarium to answer a few questions.
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…
clock | February 24, 2010How does a journalist figure out 'which scientists to trust'?
Saturday, January 16 at 3:15 - 4:20pm
D. How does a journalist figure out "which scientists to trust"? - Christine Ottery and Connie St Louis
Description: We will talk about how science journalists can know which scientists to trust based on a blogpost by Christine Ottery that made a splash in the world of science communication. As a relative newcomer to science journalism and blogging (Christine) and an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, writer and scientist (Connie), we will be bringing two very different viewpoints to the…
clock | February 24, 2010There are 31 new articles in PLoS ONE today. 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:
A New Horned Crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Sites at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania:
The fossil record reveals surprising crocodile diversity in the Neogene of Africa, but relationships with their…
clock | February 23, 2010Yes, the day has finally arrived! The anthology is now up for sale!
Just go ahead right now and click on this link right here, then click on the "Add To Cart" button and one copy (or more!) of this amazing book will be yours!
SciCurious did a fantastic job as this year's editor - and it shows. You'll see when you get your copy. Really.
Also, huge props to Blake and his LaTeX and generally tech-savviness for putting the book together so it looks really good (and is actually loaded on the site!).
Cover art was done by Glendon Mellow who used the cover design by Dave Ng.
The list of judges is so…