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Why Vendor Lock-In and Micropayments are Bad

A lot of people have commented on the fact that if you get an Apple iPhone, you have no choice but to get your phone service through AT&T. For a lot of people, this is a deal-killer. Why would Apple do this? Doubtless they got some sweet deal, but it doesn't seem to be a sweet deal for their customers. But, the hype surrounding the iPhone means that Apple is probably not really suffering much in the way of people not buying the iPhone because of this restriction. If there were a real competitor out there, perhaps things would be different. So, strike one. What about micropayments?…

You Have One Wish Left

The old riddle goes: you were granted three wishes, and you have one wish left.  What do you wish for?  Everyone over the age of 6 knows: more wishes. When we figured out that there was oil under the ground, and figured out how to use it, it is as though we had been granted three wishes.  Now the oil is running out.  It is as though we have one wish remaining.  So what do we do with it? What we have done in the meantime, is run around looking for more Genies.  Coal?  No, too dirty.  Nuclear?  No, can't figure out what to do with the waste.  Solar?  Wind?  Geothermal?  Tidal?  Biofuels?  No…

Reading Diary: The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada by Chris Turner

Chris Turner's The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada (website) is a book that absolutely must be read by every Canadian interested in the future of science and science policy in the country. And the Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is wagering that that's a pretty low percentage of the population. If Susan Delacourt and Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson are to be believed, the strategy that the Prime Minister is using focuses on an emerging coalition of western Canadians and new Canadians and suburbanites in eastern…

how to buy a house

with all the turmoil, it is good to think about how houses are bought in the US Now We'll do a first order estimate, it scales linearly with changes in income and is an adequate approximation to understand how things work. Now. Unless you have a lot of cash, you need to get a loan to buy a house. This is typically a fixed rate loan, secured by the house as collateral, and we'll estimate an 8% interest. Simple interest will do as first order estimate. Doing the full compound estimate is trivial and an exercise for the reader. The loan term will be 15 or 30 years typically. Long enough that…

PepsiCo Food Frontiers blog did not have to be a #SbFAIL

Given the events of yesterday about corporate sponsorship in the objective landscape of science journalism, I found it ironic that my research collaboration meeting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill brought me to their beautiful FedEx Global Education Center where I enjoyed an iced pomegranate tea. However, I was feeling badly about midday from a combination of the high temperatures and, more significantly, high ozone levels that gave me some respiratory problems from my longstanding asthma issues that preceded LungMutiny2010. The dream So, I took a nap and had a dream. I…

The end is near: Time to switch to Linux

If the difference between success and failure in your business, as the economy comes crashing down around you, is money, and you have ID demands, consider this: With both people and companies having to squeeze a nickel's worth of good out of every penny, how long do you think people will be paying Microsoft for its imperfect operating systems and office suites? Vista Business SP1 'upgrade' has a list price of $199.95. Office 2007 Professional is $329.95. That's $529.90, or as much as a new low-end PC. Or, I could go with Ubuntu Linux for zero money down. if I wanted big business support, I…

#scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?

Two weeks from today, at ScienceOnline '10, Dr. Isis, Sheril Kirshenbaum, and I will be leading a session called "Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents". In preparation for this, the three of us had a Skype conference last night, during which it became clear to us that there are many, many interesting issues that we could take on in this session (and that we come to the subject of online civility from three quite different perspectives). To try to get a feel for what issues other people (besides the three of us) might want to discuss in this session (or on blogs, of whatever),…

Bringing the War on Christmas Into your Very Living Room

I did a little (very little, very short) newsroom debate on Fox 9 with a guy named Tom who appears to represent conservative Christians regarding the question of "Does Christmas have place in schools?" I quickly add that even though that was the planned focus of the discussion, it was quickly revised to be "Oh, no, not just Christmas, but Kwanza and Hanuka and stuff too." That particular bit of backpedaling is, of course, ingenuous and annoying, because nobody from Hanuka or Kwanza is trying to force their religious holidays into public schools, only the conservative Christians. So if we…

Where to buy dichloroacetate (DCA)? Dichloroacetate suppliers, even?

Yes, I know that my blog buddy Abel wrote a post with almost exactly the same title as this. No, I'm not mindlessly aping him. I'm doing it because of what Abel revealed in his post: That most of his referrals lately have been Google searches looking for information on where to buy dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA. I, too, have noticed a lot of referrals to my original post on DCA, in which I tried to explain why it isn't the "cure" for cancer that some have been touting it as, most recently, a rather annoying troll going by the name of Robert Smith who's been infesting my blog lately in my posts…

Chiquita banana: not so perfect

I like bananas. But not that much. So when I buy them I usually buy little ones, called baby bananas in the market although I don't like to think of myself as eating defenseless little underage bananas so I just think of them as bananas. Yesterday Mrs. R. and I went shopping and I saw these little green bananas, labeled "Thai bananas." I bought them, but now I have o idea if they are meant to be eaten fresh" or cooked or fired like plantains. If you know, leave a comment. But there were some bananas I didn't buy there. The ones from multinational Chiquita fruit company. Why not? Multinational…

A dollar is now worth 2/3 of a Euro

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. A bit of each, I suppose. When I was a young man, traveling in Europe was great for Americans. For starters, everybody didn't hate us (thanks George!). For another, everything was cheap. The dollar was strong so the exchange rate favored us. Now the dollar is moribund and travel in Europe is becoming prohibitively expensive for Americans. And in some places the dollar isn't just moribund. It has already died: The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell…

From the Archives: Reviews of Cory Doctorow and Mafiaboy

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This post, from April 4, 2009, covered two books: Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken by…

A game of Twenty Questions between a hungry HIV-infected, expectant Ethiopian mother, and an affluent North American, where it's clear that the North American isn't very good at the game and also (frankly) doesn't have a clue.

This has to be one of my favourites, written pretty much the day after I listened to Stephen Lewis talk. Anyway, it also ties in with the start of the International AIDS Conference this Sunday. I'm hoping our Canadian government has some choice announcements to make at the beginning, but I guess we'll just see. AMERICAN: Is it an animal, mineral or vegetable? ETHIOPIAN: Yes sir, I believe it is all three, sir. AMERICAN: Hmm... Can I get it online? ETHIOPIAN: I'm sorry, sir. I do not understand your meaning, sir. On where, sir? AMERICAN: Online... You know, like at eBay or Amazon? ETHIOPIAN…

Blog/Media Coverage of ScienceOnline2010 (Updated)

I am collecting all the blog and media coverage on this wiki page, but redundancy is always a good idea in the digital realm, so the links are also now posted here, under the fold: Update: the wiki page has reached its limit of number of links per page, so I am only updating this post from now on, adding freshest posts I can find on top. Please let me know if I missed yours. Also, read the interviews with ScienceOnline2010 participants Circle of Complexity: Importance of meatspace - session at Science Online 2010 Adventures in Ethics and Science: #scio10 aftermath: Continuing thoughts on…

California

I just got back from a week long trip to California. (You can hear me talking about Proust on KQED here.) The weather was awful - rain and more rain - but I still got glimpses of what I love so much about the Golden State. Consider the Hollywood Farmer's Market. It's a weekly gathering of a few dozen farmers, tamale stands and organic cheese makers. The crowd is an eclectic mix of dreads and Prada, birkenstocks and Tod loafers. But I can summarize my fondness for the place with a single conversation I had with a chicken farmer who sells eggs: Me: Are these eggs cage free? Farmer: Yes. The…

Can biotechnology be used to enhance the sustainability of our farms? Dont forget to vote

The online debate at The Economist Magazine continues. Dont forget to vote. My rebuttal is here: I agree with Charles Benbrook that "Bt crops have helped reduce insect feeding damage and lessened the need for toxic, broad-spectrum insecticides, and as a result, helped build populations of beneficial insects and promote above-ground biodiversity, two key sustainable farm-management goals." I also wholeheartedly agree with his statements that "Multiple-tactic systems composed of 'many little hammers' offer the best hope for sustained progress" and "Biotechnology can help create new hammers and…

CDC Director Gerberding and Republican talking points

I wasn't at the Women's Health Fair and Symposium at Onandoga Community College in New York so I didn't hear all of what CDC Director Julie Gerberding said there. I just know what was reported in the Syracuse Post Standard. But I wasn't impressed: "If I gave each of you $5,000 and said this is the money you can spend on health for yourself or for your children or family, how would you spend that money? she asked. "For a long time, many of us have been protected from thinking about the value of our health investments because our insurance took care of everything. Well, today more people don't…

The Banner Art

I hope you like my new banner. It was commissioned from a real artist,.... .....Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage. He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here. Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers. I tried to upload the uncropped, unreduced, unmodified version of the banner art so you can play the…

Don't Give Your Friends Fees this Holiday Season!

This may be obvious to the smart readers of Scienceblogs, but let me state this just for the purpose of explaining the waste that is gift cards. You might think giving cash as a gift is tacky, but the nice thing about cash is that it doesn't expire, incur fees, or become impossible to combine with other forms of payment. All those disadvantages are present in gift cards, and according to Consumers Union, those hassles resulted in $8 billion in unused gifts. Best Buy is even counting unused gift cards as a source of revenue: "...in its fiscal 2006 annual report, the retailer Best Buy…

Programmers suck; Programs suck; Programming languages suck.

Some interesting news from the world of computer programming. A company that provides products to improve code studied a bunch of programs and evaluated how badly they were written. Cobol programs had the lowest rate of bad code, while Java the highest. Part of this is because Cobol programs are all old and have been revised and fixed up quite a bit, but it was also suggested that Java programs relatively suck because modern programmers relatively suck. For this reason, maybe Microsoft's latest Evile Corporate Decision makes sense: The new Microsoft 8 App Store deal allows Microsoft to…

Couldn't be prouder

Yowza! Within four days of my announcement about the Donors Choose campaign, you guys donated enough to more than double Signout's fundraising goal. You've raised nearly 600 bucks, kids, and I couldn't be prouder! Of course, don't let that keep you from telling your friends or checking out some of the other great projects you can help fund at DonorsChoose.com. I've added a few new ones, which you can check out here, or you can search their project database yourself by all sorts of variables. Let me also take this opportunity to note how absurd it is that so many of our public schools are so…

Countdown to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks & Press Roundup

After ten long years, the serious countdown has begun for the publication of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which will be on sale nationwide exactly SEVEN DAYS from today.  I've been posting about my impending book tour, and all the great coverage the book has been getting, on Twitter and Facebook, but thought I'd also post a bit of a press round up here, and an update, for those who (gasp) don't spend all of their time in those places.  If you don't know what my book is about: it tells the story of a poor black tobacco farmer whose cancer cells -- taken without her knowledge…

An anti-vaccine protest in New York today

Blame Comcast, I say. Blame Comcast for the fact that I don't have a typical pearl of Orac-ian logorrheic majesty for your edification this morning. And there's so much that requires such a pearl to be thrown at it, too, in particular a study claiming that cell phone radiation alters brain metabolism in the areas where the cell phones are typically held. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow; that is, if something else doesn't catch my attention--and if my Internet service has decided to work long enough to let me do it. Yes, the reason there's no Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, laid down this…

I Want This Job!

It has 'Coturnix' written all over it, don't you think? I am even wearing my PLoS t-shirt right now as I am typing this! But, why is it necessary to move to San Francisco? My wife is terrified of earthquakes and CA is one state she always said she would never move to. Looking at the job description, everything can be easily done sitting in my pajamas here in Chapel Hill, or on a submarine, or on the Moon. It's all online: PLoS ONE Online Community Manager The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit advocacy and publishing organization located in the China Basin area of San…

Day Traders and Why We Need a Transaction Tax

Contrary to what some might think, I'm not opposed to investment bank and bankers, I'm just opposed to the current crop of banks and bankers. But even more than usurious middle men, the guys who really make my head explode are the flat-out speculators--they serve, even on their best days, no useful purpose whatsoever. And thanks to the recent stock market computer glitch that caused the Dow to temporarily dive ten percent, speculators known as high-frequency traders are finally getting noticed (italics mine): Depending on whose estimates you believe, high-frequency traders account for 40 to…

The Gospel of Consumption

Won't you read this story over at Orion? Choice, consumption, citizenship. Then reread Charles Kettering's 1929 article, "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied." Says Kettering: If everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new thing because no one would want it. The ore wouldn't be mined; timber wouldn't be cut. Almost immediately hard times would be upon us. You must accept this reasonable dissatisfaction with what you have and buy the new thing, or accept hard times. You can have your choice. Says Jeffrey Kaplan, in "The Gospel of Consumption," to give a sample of the link: As far back as…

Fallout From Anti-Gambling Legislation

Things have been crazy the last couple days in the online gaming world. The response from various companies ranges from "maybe we can survive this" to "man the lifeboats". Party Poker has announced that if the president signs the bill (which is inevitable, and will likely happen in the next day or two), they will suspend all accounts of American players. Since over 80% of their business comes from Americans, this is a huge hit to them. Others look likely to follow suit. Poker Stars has made no decision yet that I am aware of. Full Tilt Poker, on the other hand, has made public noises that…

Textbooks

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 really hit me, though: The problem with a large, institutionalized used book market is that it completely cuts out the publisher and the author. In a larger economy, it is called 'stock market'. When you buy stocks, most often you will be buying them from a broker, not directly from the company. In other words, you are entering the used-stocks market. You…

Should Food Stamps Only Pay for Healthy Food?

As you probably know the 2012 Farm Bill has food stamps on the block.  I write a lot about food stamps because they are incredibly important - one in seven Americans uses them.  One in four children is on food stamps.  When you subsidize food for this many people, you functionally transform the larger food system.  America, it turns out, subsidizes food just as many other nations do, because without it, people would be hungry.  Although food represents one of the smaller budget items for many Americans, an increasing number can't afford it.  The transformation of our society into one…

Draft Bill Threatens Future Quality Of Swedish Contract Archaeology

In Sweden, as increasingly in the entire industrialised world, the cost of archaeological rescue excavations rests upon the land developer. This is known as "contract archaeology" or, euphemistically, "mitigation". Here it's largely an affair within the public sector: most of the fieldwork takes place because of state road and railroad projects, and most of the contracts are picked up by state or county organisations. Though private foundations and limited companies do operate here, Swedish contract archaeology is mainly a question of routing money from taxpayers to public-sector…

Dichotomy clarified and simplified

I've got to stop being so longwinded. Here's a very clear summary of the entire "New Atheist"/accommodationist debate. I'll put it below the fold because it does have a few naughty words in it, and unfortunately the children will use that as an excuse to ignore the message. There are two main views concerning the reason why Americans are so pathetically fucking delusional at the population level concerning the nature of objective reality, especially in relation to the history of the planet Earth. One view is that the problem is that scientists and science teachers are no good at explaining…

Code in the Cloud: My Book Beta is Available!

As I've mentioned before, I've been spending a lot of time working on a book. Initially, I was working on a book made up of a collection of material from blog posts; along the way, I got diverted, and ended up writing a book about cloud computing using Google's AppEngine tools. The book isn't finished, but my publisher, the Pragmatic Programmers, have a program that they call beta books. Once a book is roughly 60% done, you can buy it at a discount, and download drafts electronically immediately. As more sections get done, you can download each new version. And when the book is finally…

OLPC - G1 G1

Give one. Get One. Update: Buy it from around the world.

What your Facebook page says about who you "really" are

Recently a woman had her sick leave benefits based on a diagnosis of clinical depression terminated because of a few pictures she posted on her Facebook page showing her smiling at a birthday party and enjoying a trip to the beach. Was this a fair assessment of her medical condition? Probably not--people with clinical depression can have moments of genuine joy or elation, and even sad people can fake a smile for a photo. But regardless of whether a few photos posted online are sufficient evidence for a medical diagnosis, there is a larger question: Does a person's online persona match up to…

Seventeen Books Answers

Here are the answers to last week's list of quotes from seventeen books: 1) "The way to a man's heart is through his chest." Use of Weapons, Iain Banks. This one was a little sneaky, as it's in the poem on the opening page. 2) "...Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Necessary to Know..." One for the Morning Glory, John Barnes. A surprisingly delightful little book from an author whose other works inspired the rule "John Barnes books containing forcible sodomy are bad." (Nothing was said about dinosaurs.) 3) "All is waves, with nothing waving, across no distance at all." Songs of Earth…

Introducing the Open Laboratory 2010 editor

Editing the 2006 anthology of the best writing on science blogs was a fast, whirlwind affair - with a little help from my friends, I put it together (yes, from idea to having the book up for sale) in less than a month. As it was quite a success and I expected the number of entries to double (I was right about that), I decided to invite each year a different person - a blogger and a friend - to act as guest editor. Thus, the 2007 book was edited by Reed Cartwright, the 2008 one by Jennifer Rohn and the 2009 book by SciCurious. I am sure you are all waiting with baited breath for me to…

Doyle and Macdonald, Land of Mist and Snow [Library of Babel]

That's Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, authors of the Mageworlds series of space opera novels, and a host of other books-- they're shorted on their first names, because I don't really want to test the character limit for titles in Movable Type. Land of Mist and Snow has been in progress for some time-- I've heard them read from it at least twice at conventions-- but has finally hit the stores, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. Run out and buy copies for those hard-to-buy-for relatives... The book is a secret history of naval actions in the American Civil War, taking off…

Watching the Euro

There is a fascinating article from Bronte Captial about the Euro Fix. The story so far, if you've forgotten: the ECB can't be a lender-of-last-resort to governments, because it isn't allowed to (from memory, the Krauts say No). But in a transparent fix, it is allowed to lend to banks, if those banks put up suitable collateral. And it has said, lo, government debt, that is good collateral. And so 500 bn has been loaned. Why, as a bank, would you want to buy shonky govt debt? Because dodgy Italian debt yields 6% or so at the moment, and lord knows what the Greek stuff provides. But the ECB…

Help an impoverished student

That impoverished student would be me, and I feel like I'm begging, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm studying part-time for my M.Sc., and working three days a week to support my family and pay the mortgage, bills and my tuition fees. (Actually, my meagre income has been further reduced these past few weeks, as I've been on paternity leave.) If you enjoy reading my blog, please consider showing me some love by donating a few dollars. You can do so by clicking on the orange "PayPal - Donate" button that I've placed near the bottom of the sidebar on the left (and which is…

Monday grab bag (with important question to readers)

Yeah, I'm grading. (Maybe you would be too if you weren't reading the blogs, hmm?) But I wanted to check in. I pulled my back loading the car for the last soccer game of the season. What's the proper inference to draw from that (besides the obvious: that I'm getting old and all this grading is doing nothing for my muscle tone)? How is it that if I make assignments at school they often are left undone, whereas if I make assignments on my blog, people do the work and turn it in? (Are we now awarding ScienceBlogs course credit?) As much as I hate feeding capitalism (seriously, ask these…

Science Communication and the Business Model

There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer's twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a new magazine devoted to issues of interest to women, Double X. It hit me that science journalism is not dying, it is having to adapt to a new business model. Traditional media made its money from advertising and sales. It used a broadcast model of publishing - a single source (the printing presses or the transmitters) to many…

Study: Every $1 invested in childhood vaccines saves $10 (and thousands of lives)

It’s not the first study to examine the enormous health and economic benefits of vaccines. But it’s certainly another impressive reminder about the power — and value — of prevention. In a study published online earlier this month in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that childhood immunizations among babies born in 2009 will prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, saving the nation $13.5 billion in directs costs (medical costs and disease outbreak control) and more than $68 billion in total societal costs (premature death and lost productivity). That means that…

Ed's Misadventures in Computing

So here's what I've been through for the last few days. Two trips to Lansing (an hour away), one in a driving rainstorm and the second in a driving snowstorm. Yes, it's Michigan and we're getting snow in October. On the first trip, I bought a brand new case, motherboard and processor. I brought it home, built it, and the dang thing was dead as a doornail, would not power up. I change out three different power supplies, one of which came out of a working computer, so I know it's not that. So today, I took the whole thing back, the tech plays around with it for a bit and announces what I…

Traditional Beverages

A counterpoint to Monday's question about tea: The Super Bowl is Sunday, and a look in the fridge shows that I'm low on beer. What sort of beer should I buy to drink with the game? Leave your suggestions in the comments. Additional information: I generally prefer ale to lager, and don't much care for pilsner. I'm willing to try just about anything that doesn't have fruit in it, though-- when I buy beer, I expect beer. If I wanted fruit juice, I'd buy wine. The title is a reference to party advertising at Williams, back in the day.

Is that a cute little eyeball in your petri dish?

Fellow lab rats, banish the lingering odor of LB broth from your nostrils and imagine how awesome research would be if these little cuties were your model organisms! Buy them from Specimen7 on MakersMarket.

Food Inc: "Who knows a farmer anymore?"

1. If you do know a farmer, and you grew up in a town where feed lots and Tyson plants are normal, there is nothing particularly interesting in 'Food Inc'. I had to fight off falling asleep. 2. If you dont know a farmer, but you are not an idiot, you probably will learn a couple of things. Like, we need to treat farmers and people who work in meat processing plants better, and need to do better regarding the treatment of livestock. Like the financial industry, the food industry needs more oversight via FDA/USDA. 3. If you are a complete moron who thinks chickens magically appear on…

Do I need a new bike?

I'm wondering if this is fatal or not. Bike shops in Cambridge don't seem to do welding. [Thanks to all who commented. The answer turns out to be the Genesis, £600, plus some mini-mudguards. To make things more exciting I'm buying it via the govt's bizarre buy-your-bike-from-work scheme, which (if it all works out) saves me 40% tax plus maybe some other bits. For those happy enough not to live here, there is some weird tax-dodge scheme encouraged by the gummint whereby the company buys the bike (in theory), or maybe some other leaseholding company, you rent it for a year whilst making…

A certain loss

Via Steinn, who got it from CR, this delightful story of how people are now so scared of losing unknown amounts of money they are prepared to sign up to a certain but small absolute loss (and thats neglecting inflation). They should buy our shares, like I did earlier this week, and they actually went up! Mind you I don't think we could absorb $57B input. More lower down... At least three Treasury money-market funds run by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Evergreen Investments and Allegiant Asset Management recently stopped taking outside cash, according to Web site notices and regulatory filings.…

links for 2008-02-13

Jacks of Science â Bring Love to the Lab with a Science Valentine Love notes for the deeply dorky (tags: silly pictures science) telophase: AWESOMETASTIC MANGA OF AWESOMENESS A comic book about people who REALLY love trains and the boxed lunches you can buy in Japanese train stations. Don't even try to understand it. (tags: comics Japan silly) Creek Running North » Am Spayed "They call me Thistle. I find things. Sometimes the things I find are worth something. On a good day I get a percentage. " (tags: animals blogs silly mystery) The Popdose Guide to Tom Waits | Popdose An album-by-…

Free Online Science Seminars from AAAS

I got this email from AAAS, and I thought I'd pass it along: Dear Colleague, We're now taking you behind the scenes of Science , presenting the authors of life science research papers in Science Online Seminars -- our compelling new online audio/slideshow feature. Now Showing on a Computer Near You Every other week, the editors of Science select an author of a breakthrough paper to discuss the application of his or her research and/or the methods and protocol. You'll meet leading scientists whose cutting-edge papers have made Science the premier scientific journal. You'll hear thought-…