Element List

Overheard in the Science Blogosphere: Oxymoron Edition

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:28:14 -0500

PLoS launched a new online, open-access journal last week: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. If you dedicate a journal to neglected diseases, are the diseases still neglected? [A Blog Around the Clock]

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), so some less literary and more geeky bloggers have taken it upon themselves to declare November International Dissertation Writing Month and International acaDemic Writing Month, which both share the acronym InaDWriMo. Looks like we picked the perfect time to relaunch Element List. [What the Hell is Wrong with You?]

The uber web geeks at Nature.com are hosting science lectures in Second Life at their very own island, Second Nature Island. I attempted to view the island, but just trying getting into my Second Life account that I haven't accessed in nearly two years was too much of a hassle (I was forced to download a new version of Second Life, then they informed me that they had disabled my password, then I couldn't remember which email account I used with SL, which I needed to retrieve my new... grrr, I don't have time for this!!!). I applaud Nature.com's efforts, but maybe the difficulty of simply logging in has something to do with why people give up on Second Life. [Nascent]

Is Chris Anderson Aiding the Terrorists?

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:08:31 -0500

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail author, blogger, and Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine has found himself in an interesting situation. When he's not busy running a magazine or blogging, Chris builds Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for a hobby. He also runs a UAV social network on Ning called DIYDrones.com. Last week Amir Aalipour, a 17-year-old Iranian UAV enthusiast, proudly posted pictures of his UAV in a RCGroup chat room draped in the Iranian flag. In his latest blog post, Chris writes, "Part of me says 'Bravo Amir! Excellent work on the airframe, and thanks for posting.' And part of me says 'Yikes. We're helping Iranians make UAVs draped in nationalistic colors. This isn't going to help us in our efforts to destigmitize drones.'" Quite a discussion has ensued in The Long Tail blog comments regarding whether the UAV open source movement, or Chris's site in particular, is giving comfort to the terr'ists. Amir himself joined the discussion to give his side of the story.

Scientific American Will Take Your Science Videos, Or Not

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:18:07 -0500

Social Media reports that Scientific American is accepting user-generated science videos, which you can submit here. While the link seems legitimate enough, we can't find an accompanying article describing the program on the Scientific American website. According to the disclaimer on the upload page, Scientific American cannot guarantee that it will post your video or even acknowledge your submission. Nor are they offering any monetary compensation. So why should you submit your videos to Scientific American versus, say, your own page on YouTube or perhaps another science video site such as JoVE? Beats us, but if you have a good tip, we'd like to know.

Overheard in the Science Blogosphere: Medical Edition

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:00:12 -0500

Drugs and Poisons - Blogger Chris, a grad student from Toronto, Canada, writes about, you guessed it, drugs and poisons. This kid loves poisons. And drugs. And gossip. In short, he's our kind of science blogger. He typically profiles chemicals such as sanguinarine, which is said to possibly cause cancer from toothpase and swollen limbs when found in mustard. Some of the best posts come from knowledgable readers who write about what drugs they have taken by prescription or over a hospital stay, not off the street as you might expect. A sample...

Since you ask, I am reminded of one time I was in the hospital for kidney stones, which ended up being one of the longest sedative drug-binges of my life. It began as what I hoped was a quick visit for some hydrocodone to dull the relentless visceral groin pain, but ended up in a 3 day hospital stay and a lithotripsy. What follows is the truly amazing list of substances I was on, and my personal opinion of them....

A Good Poop - In this blog the so-far anonymous author gives short, sharp commentaries on curious medical journal research articles. It's only been around since May. Here are a few sample postings on the problems with piercings:

NASA Cmdr. Kelly Says Reports of Astronaut Drunkeness Are Exaggerated

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:25:46 -0500

Buried into yesterday's New York Times Science section is a report that NASA Commander Scott Kelly, who is scheduled to lead Space Shuttle Mission STS-118 to the International Space Station today, contacted several newspapers to tell them that reports of astronauts being drunk on flying missions were exaggerated. In fact, the NY Times article says the reports were merely anecdotes received by the investigative panel, which never confirmed the claims of astronaut drunkeness within 12 hours of launch. NASA is reportedly investigating the claims. “To see a minor part of the report exaggerated and misrepresented was extremely disappointing,” Commander Kelly wrote. “We fully understand our responsibility to this country.”

Post-Sci Foo Blogging: Find Us Science Bloggers on Facebook

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:48:07 -0500

I arrived in NYC at 6:30am this morning after taking a redeye flight out of San Jose, and have a bunch of post ideas relating to the conference, which I think I'll spread them out over the week so I can give each topic the appropriate amount of thought and a little background research. The Sci Foo crowd was amazing. For now, I'd like to invite all of you science bloggers out there to join the Science Bloggers group on Facebook. Don't forget, there is also the Science Blogs link directory here on Element List, where you should submit your blog or science website if it's not listed there already. Science blogging, when we get down to it, is about sharing ideas and building community. It's good to have a central place to meet up, in this case on Facebook, and be able to see pictures of all the other science bloggers. We've had 55 members sign up in less than 24 hours. See you there. - Jackie

Live Blogging Science Foo: Magical Things Happen at Science Foo

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:13:59 -0500

I just finished leading a small discussion session on Why aren't there more scientists on the covers of science magazines? Magazine covers, I should note, are merely being used as a metric here to measure the visual space that media outlets are willing to devote to the faces of scientists. Why should we care? My concern grew out of discussions with non-scientists and their stereotyped views of scientists as isolated, possiby nutty geeks with wild hair. Thus, my thought is that if more modern, active research scientists were featured in the media, the public would begin to get a better idea of what a modern scientist is like. Just as we were looking at a slide of Wired magazine covers as a good example of a magazine that frequently features scientists and techies on the cover, Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson joined us. Chris pointed out that while Wired has a significant number of pages devoted to science content, "objects [such as a molecule] sell better than non-recognizable people." Moreover, Chris said that "magazines would go out of business" if science magazines put only scientists on their covers. If the crux of the issue is having "recognizable" scientists, then perhaps the burden is on scientists, or perhaps university outreach and PR departments, to promote themselves and their research. At the end of the session Chris Anderson asked if we could recommend scientists for the cover of Wired magazine. How about it Element Listers? Who would you recommend? Chris is listening. - Jackie

Live Blogging Science Foo: Who said there's no blogging at Sci Foo?

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:04:44 -0500

Those compulsive science bloggers, poor souls, have already started blogging every single minute of their trip to the Sci Foo conference. Here are probably the best sources for finding all the latest info on the Science Foo Camp, to the extent that we're allowed to cover it, that is. Who knows? The best reporting may end when we board shuttles to the Googleplex in the next 15 minutes.

Participant's blogs: http://www.lexical.org.uk/planetscifoo/

Flickr Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/scifoo/

Technorati 'scifoo' tagged content: http://www.technorati.com/tags/scifoo/

Live Blogging Science Foo: Front desk, there is an ad in my WiFi!!

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:45:56 -0500

I just barely survived six hours on a plane with no internet service and no juice left on my laptop because I ~~wasted~~ spent it blogging in JFK this morning. I had no choice during the flight but to read a book (yes), watch TV (not), or (OMG!!) talk with a real live person sitting next to me (I'm so happy for your 24-year-old son who built and sold his internet company in less time than it took me to finish grad school. Excuse me while I go slit my wrists.). Then, after parking myself next to two free electrical outlets in the San Jose airport to juice up my cell and laptop, I received a five-day backlog of text messages from Boyfriend, including one inviting me to last night's dinner which I missed. Yikes! Now I've just arrived in my hotel room, and this free hotel wifi experience is coming to a quick, disappointing end due to the frequent interruption of my precious web browsing time with advertising in the form of ad pages that pop up between page loads and a permanent MetroFi banner ad at the top of my page (pictured). So far, I don't see an option to, say, pay for ad-free browsing, which of course I wouldn't do. If this is the future of 'free' internet, I think I'll stick with my private line, thanks. Luckily I have a Verizon broadband card because, yes, I am a tech junkie who must be online, all the time, everywhere because it makes my life sooo. much. better. Finally, I'd like to know how much the hotel will charge me if I open this 'complimentary' bottle of Syrah that's sitting on my nightstand, but the phone in my room doesn't work. - Jackie

Heading to the Science Foo

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 07:35:21 -0500

Yours truly will be attending the Science Foo Camp at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA this weekend. Sci Foo is a free, invitation-only meeting organized by Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media and Timo Hanney of Nature.com. Lodging, meeting facilities, and of course the food are being provided by Google. Luckily, we'll be staying in a hotel, not tents like the icon suggests, which is great for me because, despite being an earth scientist, I hate, hate, hate camping. I'm not sure how much conference blogging will happen during the conference. For one, I'll be too busy talking and listening. Second, it seems they have some rules limiting blogging of the conference speakers, like no direct quoting of the participants, blah, blah, blah. Some notable attendees expected to be there are Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin's new wife, Bora Zivkovic from A Blog Around the Clock and PLoS-ONE, David Pescovitz from BoingBoing, and Vint Cerf, considered one of the "founding fathers of the internet." If you're going to be at Sci Foo, give me a holler. - Jackie

Discovery Buys Environmental Blog TreeHugger

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:35:09 -0500

TreeHugger, the little green environmental blog that could, has been purchased by the Discovery network for $10 million. This is a modest sum compared to the likes of Weblogs, Inc., an entire network of blogs which sold to AOL in 2004 for $25 million and, most recently, MediaBistro, founded by Laurel Touby, which was sold last month to Jupitermedia for $23 million. Still, it's not a bad payout for its founder, Graham Hill (pictured), who started TreeHugger with proceeds from his WeAreHappyToServeYou coffee mug business for which he exclusively licensed the rights to a popular NYC paper coffee cup design. Graham Hill wrote a lengthy blog post yesterday explaining the benefits of the sale to Discovery, noting that Treehugger was courted by "over 15 large companies" over the last year. Principally, Discover is looking to expand its "green" content online, which is where TreeHugger, which is currently ranked as the 17th most popular blog on the web by Technorati, fits in. It makes us nervous to see our favorite indie enviro blog get scooped up by the corporate machine, but it could be worse. Despite selling out, Graham betrayed his media mogul ambitions with his blog post entitled TreeHugger Acquires Discovery Communications.

Heidi Cullen Profiled in NY Times

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:37:16 -0500

It's been a while since we last posted about Heidi Cullen's progress at The Weather Channel. (Yes, we know, it's been a while since we posted anything.) Regardless, we couldn't miss mentioning our famous Lamont-Doherty alumnus' interview with Claudia Dreifus for the New York Times. According to the article, Heidi (a.k.a., Dr. Cullen) is the only Ph.D. climatologist in the country with her own weekly television show. She also knows where to find the best punchy leads:

I’ve become a media junkie. I read far more widely now than when I was a researcher. Also, I watch a lot of TV, which means all the news programs, “Frontline,” even ESPN, which I watch to learn how to write punchy leads. I also listen to NPR, check out Greenwire and troll the scientific journals like Science, Nature and Geophysical Research Letters.

Perhaps the highlight of the article covers Heidi's infamous blog post last year that got conservative commentators' panties in a wad:

And the Winner is ... String Ducky!

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:40:16 -0500

Discover Magazine has announced the winners of the String Theory in Two Minutes or Less video contest. Woot! Columbia University Physicist Prof. Brian Greene selected String Ducky, above, as the winner. The majority of viewers, however, took their frustrations out on their high school math teachers by selecting the The Problem with Math. We're going with Brian Greene on this one. Duckies are cute! To see all of the videos, click here.

Chris Mooney's Storm World Book Party

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:58:54 -0500

Chris Mooney's party for his new book Storm World at People Lounge last night in Manhattan's Lower East Side was a great success. Mucho thanks to Seed Magazine for sponsoring the party with yummy food and even free copies of Chris' new book. Chris' brother Davy Mooney (pictured above) provided the musical entertainment. We saw lots of Seed Magazine folks, of course, including Seed Founder and Editor-in-Chief Adam Bly, who arrived fashionably late. Some top NYC-based science bloggers at the event included Gavin Schmidt from Real Climate, Grrlscientist from Living the Scientific Life, and Jake Young from Pure Pedantry. Chris is kicking off his nationwide book tour at Barnes and Noble in NYC tonight. You can find the schedule for his book tour on his blog here. More photos from the event after the jump.

Bora's First Day on the Job at PLoS ONE

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:52:24 -0500

Bora Zivkovic, also known as Coturnix from A Blog Around The Clock, began his first day as the Online Community Manager yesterday at the online science journal PLoS ONE in San Francisco. Bora was invited to interview for the position after PLoS ONE Managing Editor Chris Surridge read Bora's blog post appropriately titled I Want This Job! We asked Bora to send the above picture of him in his new office in San Francisco (Darwin t-shirt optional). Luckily, PLoS ONE didn't require Bora to shut down his blog, so Bora is calling on his posse of readers and fellow bloggers to help him out in his mission to build an active community of commenters on the scientific papers at PLoS ONE. The trick, of course, is finding not just any commenter, but a number of commenters who can actually understand or are willing to slog through the highly specialized scientific papers in the first place. Bora's got a tough task ahead of him, so take a look at PLoS ONE and give him a hand.