Science Blogs

International Space Station astronaut Jeffrey Williams was first to report a recent eruption of the Cleveland Volcano on Tuesday, May 23 and provided the first photographs of the event. The Cleveland Volcano lies along the Aleutian Islands volcanic chain southwest of mainland Alaska. Williams' photograph from space shows the ash plume moving west-southwest from the summit of the volcano. The Cleveland Volcano is not seismically monitored by the Alaska Volcano Observatory, and so its eruption would not have been immediately detected without the ISS observation system. According to NASA, "This is the first early sighting of a new eruption in recent years. Williams edged out the nearest satellite by approximately seven minutes to capture the image."

The journal Nature reports that on June 13, the House of Representatives amended a spending bill to require National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant recipients to submit their papers to PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. PubMed is a free online archive of papers covering biomedical and life sciences. Those who stand to lose if the bill passes are mainly publishers and scientific research societies who depend on exclusive publication rights of scientific articles to secure their subscription income. NIH grantees are currently requested to submit their published papers to PubMed, but they are not required to do so. According to Nature, "Some journals do not allow copyedited versions to be posted on PubMed Central. This means two versions of the same research paper can be published: a peer-reviewed manuscript version held in PubMed Central and a journal version complete with copyedits and other mostly cosmetic modifications. The PubMed Central version would also not necessarily link to the journal that published the paper." These efforts by Congress may soon cover not only NIH, but all federally funded programs, which would include the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. "In May, for example, Joseph Lieberman and John Cornyn introduced a bill that would require that all federal US agency grantees with annual research budgets of more than $100 million make their research papers freely available within six months of publication." Ironically enough, the link to the Nature article requires a subscription - or you could buy access to the article (not the whole issue of the journal, just the one article) for only $30. Maybe Congress is onto something.

I have a friend who's always getting sick or injured when he really needs to be getting down to writing. I, on the other hand, am completely justified in deciding that the best time to clean my apartment is when I have a paper due. It turns out that there's now a name for this career-threatening phenomenon. Watson's Syndrome, according to Dr. Richard Gelles, is characterized by (A.) A continuing and persistent avoidance of engaging in the actual writing and completion of one's dissertation, peer reviewed publications, or grant proposals; or (B.) Engaging in what appear to be important activities that take the place of completing one's dissertation, peer reviewed publications, or grant proposals. Dr. Gelles, who is a dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, writes about Watson's Syndrom in his article posted June 19 in Inside Higher Ed. While Gelles's article does not suggest a cure, one commenter suggests "proactive mentoring" by professors. Does that involve a cattle prod? Oh, well, if you can't actually write the thesis yourself, you can always blog about it.

If you're hanging out in the Long Island, New York area some Sunday this summer and have a hankering for a dose of science fun, stop by the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY for Summer Sundays, beginning July 9 and running through August 20. Run by the U.S. Department of Energy, BNL began as a nuclear-science facility in 1946 and is home to six Nobel Prize winning scientists and three nuclear reactors. Among BNL's 5,300 acre campus, adults and children can learn about invisible light rays, DNA sequencing, and weather forecasting, among other fun and interesting science topics. There are only seven Summer Sundays in all, and each Sunday focuses on a specific topic listed here. In addition, each Sunday, the "Whiz Bang Science Show" (pun intended??) will be performed three times from 10:30 am to 3 p.m. Click here to learn more about the history of Brookhaven National Lab.

If you happen to be in Florida when hurricane season hits, whom should you look to in a major storm emergency? Not FEMA, silly - Mickey Mouse! That's right, NOAA's National Weather Service has declared Walt Disney World as a safe place to be in the event of a major storm. To achieve this recognition, Disney World had to "establish a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center; have more than one way to receive severe weather forecasts and warnings and to alert the public; create a system that monitors local weather conditions; promote the importance of public readiness through community seminars; and develop a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises." So don't let a little hurricane derail your summer vacation plans. Typhoon Lagoon is the place to be!

Daniel Collins is a geoscientist and environmental engineer. What this blog is about: science and engineering of ecosystems, land use, landforms, natural hazards, water resources, etc.

Mike Dunford is a graduate student in the Department of Zoology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where he studies evolution. He's also a contributer to The Pandas Thumb.

A student in Colorado, looking for some sort of synthesis--the big picture, encompassing all the strangeness in the universe--but willing to settle for the philosophic or poetic lens.

Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology. Comment policy: say what you want, but back it up with an email address. I don't like anonymous trolls.

A young family physician's attempt to say something pithy. Stories loosely based on real experiences. All characters, however, are fictional.

Abel Pharmboy is an academic researcher and educator who holds a PhD in Pharmacology. He writes on natural product drugs and dietary supplements, academic career development, medical journalism, and wine appreciation for the monetarily- challenged.

Teaching + Writing + Tenure + New Life + Bipolar Ups & Downs + Great Boots + a Splash of Vino = PowerProf.

Before Katrina, before Kyoto, before the Clinton years, Al Gore held the first congressional hearing on atmospheric carbon dioxide as a rookie senator in 1981. This week's issue of New York magazine traces Gore's interest in global warming from his days as a Harvard undergraduate through the development of his speeches on global warming, his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, and finally to the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which opened Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles and opens in select theatres nationwide in June. Al Gore has been traveling the country promoting the film and is said to have shed his stiff persona to reveal a passionate Al Gore that was missing in the 2000 presidential campaign. He even won audiences over this past weekend with an appearance on Saturday Night Live. Is Al Gore merely promoting a film, or does he have greater political ambitions? For climate scientists who have seen their funding slashed under the Bush administration and their efforts to report scientific results on global warming curtailed by administration appointees, one can only hope.

• An Inconvenient Truth Official Website [Climate Crisis]
  
• Trailer: An Inconvenient Truth [Apple]
  
• The Come-Back Kid [New York Magazine]
  
• 'An Inconvenient Truth': Al Gore's Fight Against Global Warming [New York Times]
  
• Saturday Night Live: If Al Gore were President (Video) [Crooks and Liars]

Although we have the word 'Green' in our name, this isn't really an environmentalists web site. We're more like two guys who are interested in new technology, tired of high gas prices, and want to be oil independent. It just so happens that using more efficient technologies and renewable energy sources IS good for the environment, which we really like too.

Chronicles and musings of an urban field ecologist.

A place where nature, photography, and writing meet.

Has your science blog reading fallen into a rut as of late? Here are just some of the latest additions to the Science Blog section of Element List that we particularly like. Enjoy.

• WorldChanging is a technology-oriented blog that offers links to ideas and tools for sustainable living. If sustainable development is important to you, this site will show you how to practice what you preach.
  
• medGadget, created by a team of medical researchers, is an internet journal covering the latest medical gadgets and technologies.
  
• Invasive Species Weblog by Jennifer Forman Orth began as a personal project in April 2002 to keep up with media coverage of invasive species while she was a graduate student. The site has since grown to over 1300 posts and even hosts a store for ISW geek swag.
  
• Lifehacker is just one blog spawn of Gawker Media mogul Nick Denton of Gawker and Defamer fame. While most of his sites are meant to blissfully drain every last drop of productivity from your work day, Lifehacker attempts to make up for this by covering work/life productivity and software tools to make your life just a little richer and happier.
  
• CONELRAD looks back at the good ol' bad days of Cold War atomic era culture through the eyes of writers who "grew up in the shadow of the BOMB." The writers have collected a plethora of links and digitized memorabilia, including a recently unearthed Civil Defense film starring Gene Hackman, that was released just a year before his Oscar nomination for Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

Medgadget.com is an independent, fast-growing on-line journal of the latest medical gadgets and technologies.

The U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Beijing Office officially opened on May 24 in the Silver Tower high rise, which also houses the U.S. Embassy. The objective of the new office is to foster international collaborations between Chinese and American scientists. Representatives from the NSF, the U.S. State Department, the Chinese National Natural Sciences Foundation, and Chinese Academy of Sciences attended the opening. As of 2001, China ranked third behind the U.S. and Japan in research and development expenditures, according to the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 report that was published this past February. The new Beijing Office is the third foreign NSF office following Paris and Tokyo.