Tid Bits - Snowy Sunday Edition

The lack of posts can be explained by this equation (lab work = 1/updates) so I'll make it up to you with a weekend smorgasbord of links. So today as I sit in my warm cozy snowed-in apartment I present to you the latest edition of Tib Bits.

First off, I would like to wish happy birthday to the late great Frank Zappa (yes to the chagrin of my wife, I'm a big fan). And what could be more fitting on a day like today than this song:

Next, the big news is the financial turmoil that has now spread to all the academic institutions. Even PhD comics had something to say about it:

Here are some other posts from around the web:
DrugMonkey: The Institutional Squeeze: As if the NIH budget wasn't enough bad news
JuniorProf: Survive the squeeze
Professor in Training: Strategic plan

But all is not gloomy. Yesterday, the Obama administration just announced its new science advisory panel. Here is Obama's youtube clip describing the new appointments:

I am especially pleased that Harold Varmus, will have the president's ear. More then anyone else, Varmus has been a big supporter of basic research.

As I wrote last week there are indications that the NIH will receive a huge boost as part of the stimulus package - in an interview with Nature Zerhouni indicated that the new stimulus package will include at least $1 billion for addition science funding.

The trend of appending plain accessible summaries to highly technical manuscripts is a great development in science publishing. One journal that pioneered such a feature is PLoS. But now The Journal of RNA Biology has gone one step further. It just announced that all future authors will be asked to submit a wikipedia entry with every manuscript. And yes, these entries will be peer-reviewed. (Ht: ScienceRoll.)

Lastly it would seem that more and more of the journals are taking advantage of the web. Lately, I've been writing about all the great new features launched by the Journal of Cell Biology. Now, it turns out that Science just launched it's own blog, ScienceInsider, and Nature launched a Youtube channel. Go check 'em out.

OK that's it for today. If I can get to it I'll try to write about the FLOOD of papers tying the activity of RNA polymerase to chromatin remodelling and promoter activation. All I can say is WOW! (note to any budding science journalist, if you really want to understand how the eukaryotic genome works, READ THOSE PAPERS!)