New science blog in the mainstream media

While attending the 2008 Science Blogging conference in North Carolina, I met an energetic and charming medical journalist named Helen Chickering. She will be writing a brand new science blog for MS NBC news. Look for it under the name Six-pack Science. Tune in for the latest in practical science.

Books: Now you can order Open Lab 2007

A great collection of blog articles about science has hit the virtual newsstands!

In a few weeks, look for it in a bookstores, Right now, you can order it through on-demand publisher Lulu, which gives the publishers (PLOS one) a greater share of the profits.

There was a wiral-bound pre-press version at the conference so that people could look over the assembled articles. It's quite substantial.

Definitely put ordering one on your to-do list. And sharpen your pencils to write one of the best science articles of 2008, for next year's edition.

Science Blogging Conference

After three years, I'm learning how to do it right!

Science Blogs have been such a success for Seed Magazine and others that they are changing the "news landscape" of the Web. Science bloggers are helping others to get started. For the next two days, I'm at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Sigma Xi facility in Research Triangle Park to learn new skills, topics, and approaches.

Driving to the science-blogging conference

I made it! After a late start and a long drive, LotStreetWiz and I arrived at Research Triangle Park at 02:45 this morning.

Saturday is a blogging skills session and a lab tour: for me, behind the scenes at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond, author, is a professor of geography. He is one of National Geographic's Explorers in Residence. (Shouldn't that be Exporers at Large?) You can follow the link for more information, to see a picture, or to hear an interview.

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He recently published a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,.

He also wrote the widely acclaimed book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. It won a Pulitzer Prize in the U.S. and the 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize in the U.K.

Read an interview with Jared Diamond.

Watch a video about How Societies Fail and Sometimes Succeed.

Alliance for Science essay contest

The 2007 Alliance for Science essay contest for secondary school students is on. With cash prizes. The deadline for entries is the last day of February, 2008. Follow the link for the rules.

Tangled Bank #94 at Life before Death

There's a dense cluster of science articles at the Tangled Bank 94, a compendium of online science writing. Did you know that songbirds can't learn new songs unless they have a particular gene? And that gene has been identified as one humans use in learning language? We're seeing the roots of language. Or that capuchin monkeys don't like to work if another monkey is getting a bigger reward for the same work? Or, worse still, for no work? It looks like the roots of our sense of justice.

Tangled Bank #93: From Archaea to Zeaxanthol:

Every two weeks, dedicated bloggers collect their most interesting science articles: here's Tangled Bank 93 on From Archaea to Zeaxanthol, with articles on everything from birds' claws to nematode vulvas.

Tangled bank #90 at The Other Ninety-five Percent

We are critters with spines. The Other Ninety-five Percent of metazoan animals are invertebrates. So trot on over to Tangled Bank 90 and see how the majority wriggles.

Book: At the Water's Edge by Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer explains the evolutionary pressures of different ways of life in different ecologies in tracing the probable path of whales to the ocean, using the magnificent series of transitional fossils found in the 80s and 90s. Along the way he explains why whales and seals use their flippers differently, why fish can lose their eyes but octopodes don't, how many lineages of fish have lungs for use out in the open seas, and why the baleen whales developed from toothed whales. He also follows a whole series of transitional fish to four-legged creatures. He shows us how one change in the timing of an embryo's development can change a whole group of characteristics in the adult. And he makes it seem simple!


Incidentally, in describing two great macroevolutionary events, Carl Zimmer delineates some of the real controversies that have been going on in evolution: Did baleen whales descend separately from archaeocetes or did they develop from the toothed whales? Did lungs develop from swim bladders, as earlier scientists assumed, or was it the other way around? Is five digits a standard pattern or a mere byproduct of developmental patterns?

Tangled Bank #89 at Aardvarkaeology

Tune in to Aardvarkaeology for the 89th Tangled Bank--a fortnightly collection of blog articles on science.

Books: How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think

This book came out in 2006: Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think edited by Alan Grafen & Mark Ridley. It contains two dozen essays on how Dawkins' thinking, especially his book The Selfish Gene, enlightens, challenges, and changes lives. Some of the writers describe how Dawkins' writing led them to choose their life's work. Others describe the enlightenment of Dawkins emphasis on how evolution maximizes current reproduction without regard for the future good of the species. Still others comment on his note of controversy or his writing style. The first essay, while about biology and breeding strategies, notes that he was studied in literature classes for his use of metaphor.

Amazon's editorial review says,

"A remarkably common reaction among the 25 authors in this volume is the comment that the book changed their lives by altering either their career paths or their thinking about evolution."

You might want to read some of the readers' reviews (amazon.ca, amazon.com).

Wikipedia lists the essays in this book.

Tangled Bank #88 at Behavioral Ecology Blog

Matt at the Behavioral Ecology Blog has a solid selection of the latest science and medicine news at Tangled Bank 88. I'd say there's about a magazine's worth.

Tangled Bank #87 at Balancing Life

Hop on over to Balancing Life for the 87th Tangled Bank, a compendium of recent science writing on the Web.

Tangled Bank #86 at Fish Feet

The Tangled Bank is early this month! Sarsa Sahney at Fish Feet is hosting this fortnight's collection of blog articles about science, evolution, and generally neat stuff: Tangled Bank 86.

Tangled bank #85 at Migrations

Tangled Bank 85: The Reductionist's Tale is online at Migrations. Pictured is Jacques de Vaucanson's "Digesting Duck" of 1739.

Tangled Bank #84 at Voltage Gate

This fortnight's roundup of science writing, Tangled Bank 84, is called "Science in Ancient Greece." It's hosted by Voltage Gate.

My books have arrived!

In a burst of enthusiasm after reading the Sciencebloggers' reviews of Natalie Angier's books The Canon and Woman: an Intimate Geography, I ordered both of them along with Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great. They all arrived yesterday. It will take me a little while to get around to them, after Talk Talk Talk by Jay Ingram and Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. But now they're in the queue or, as some people say, on Mount To-Be-Read!

Canadian Science Writers' conference

The national science writers' conference was in London, Ontario, this year - an easy distance for me but I missed it because I was busy. Here's a note about it from Discovery Channel: Peter McMahon on science writers' conference.

Currently reading The Secret of Life by Joseph Levine and David Suzuki

The Secret of Life: Redesigning the Living World, by Joseph Levine and David Suzuki, grew out of some Nova television shows about science. Joseph Levine began to realize how little the general public knows about science. He decided to write about some of the important and compelling discoveries that affect us all.

The book is out of date (1993) but nicely covers the basics of scientific developments in molecular biology and molecular evolution while I wasn't paying attention (the 1970s and 1980s). There's even a nice explanation of genetic engineering: what it is and what it is giving us (such as human insulin from bacteria instead of sheep insulin from slaughtered sheep).

It is generally clear writing with good analogies; but it scatters around too many metaphors. For example, it says that mutant fruit flies survive in the lab because they are "pampered and protected like kings and queens." Surely no one is doing their nails and giving them hot baths and personal service. It would be clearer to say that they survive because they are "protected and fed" without alluding to royalty. On television, listeners would tune out the analogy because they'd be seeing someone in a lab handling bottles of fruit flies. But on paper, it's distracting.