RECENT POSTS 
For a successful interdisciplinary team – bring in some real experts! Interdisciplinarity is defined as creating something new by crossing disciplinary boundaries, like a research project involving biology, physics and chemistry simultaneously. That pretty much describes the work of Hartmut Michel, Johann Deisenhöfer and Robert Huber; they shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1988. These three researchers had described the three-dimensional structure of a bacterial membrane protein complex with the help of x-ray crystallography. Just to keep track of the... Read more
11 September 2014
0 comments
I owe a lot to this blog. This blog got me into science writing, from the first time I pitched the idea of writing about anything and everything science (but especially about science in popular culture) to Nature Blogs in 2010. Lucky for me, they accepted my pitch (I was at the time a slightly unfulfilled biomedical PhD student at WashU in St. Louis), and I've been blogging ever since. This blog guided me into a graduate degree in journalism. This blog helped... Read more
11 September 2014
0 comments
This beauty wouldn’t win any pageants, but it is a fascinating animal. The African naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber), whose hairless, tubular, wrinkled body makes it appear a bit like a tiny walrus lives in underground burrows in very dry areas of East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia). Neither Mole nor Rat Eduard Rüppell, a German naturalist of the 19th century, who first documented a naked mole rat, assumed from its unprepossessing appearance that it was a diseased or mutated... Read more
11 September 2014
0 comments
Spiders are truly magnificent: from the animated personalities of jumping spiders, to the stealthy hunting prowess of wolf spiders, they inspire us, and can sometimes create unwanted fear. We often forget, however, that spiders are more than predators with two body parts and eight legs. Female spiders also produce wonderful structures in which to protect their eggs. Many years ago, when I was rearing wolf spiders as part of my PhD, I recall observing a female making her egg sac.... Read more
10 September 2014
2 comments
Editor's Note: This is a guest blog post by Kirk Englehardt (@kirkenglehardt). Kirk is Director of Research Communication and Marketing for the Georgia Institute of Technology. He blogs about strategic communication & #scicomm on LinkedIn and The Strategy Room. He also curates and shares #scicomm content, which can be found on Flipboard, Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook. Introduction In this series of interviews, prominent climate scientists share how and why they communicate, the risks they are taking by publicly engaging in the climate discussion, and how... Read more
10 September 2014
0 comments
Arctic Ground Squirrel Videos The extraordinary life of the Arctic ground squirrel is described by dedicated scientists who study the handsome creatures. In videos: The Perfect Yuppie Pet, In the Field, In the Lab, And the Circadian Clock, the scientists reflect on questions about the Arctic ground squirrel and its unusual lifestyle. Discover what makes these animals so unique by hearing the scientists' newfound insights. In these videos Professor Loren Buck of University Alaska Anchorage, Professor Brian Barnes of University... Read more
10 September 2014
0 comments
Slovenia’s Alenka Bratusek may become one of the six key commissioners in president-elect Jean-Claude Juncker’s team, heading the new portfolio on digital and innovation issues, according to an article in EurActiv.com. Bratusek was the first female prime minister in Slovenia (2013-2014) and holds a masters in social sciences from the University of Ljubljana. The new team would also include Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovkis for the Energy Union portofolio. Research and innovation may go to Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, according to the... Read more
9 September 2014
0 comments
The definitive guide on applying for LNLM15 as a young scientist. The 2014 Lindau Nobel season has just ended but we are already looking forward to the the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 2015 which will be the 4th Interdisciplinary Meeting with Nobel Laureates from the fields of Physics, Physiology or Medicine and Chemistry. Are you a young scientist? Are you studying/doing research in Physics, Medicine, Chemistry or any related fields? Have you ever dreamt about meeting the luminaries of... Read more
9 September 2014
0 comments
For many science writers, the science blog post has come to epitomize the Monty Python phrase, "and now for something completely different." And if not something completely different, than at least something different in one way or another from your typical science news story, your typical opinion column or or your typical print feature story, among other science story formats. As you might know if you've been following me on Twitter, I've been conducting interviews with science bloggers as a part... Read more
8 September 2014
0 comments
SUMMARY: Books, books, beautiful books! This is a list of biology, ecology, environment, natural history and animal books that are (or will soon be) available to occupy your bookshelves and your thoughts. “Words in leather and wood”. Bookshelves in the “Long Room” at the old Trinity College Library in Dublin. Image: Nic McPhee from Morris, MN, USA. 2007. (Creative Commons.) Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them!... Read more
8 September 2014
0 comments
As I was recently preparing to return to school for my last year of university, I was digging through my possessions to determine what would come with me and what would have to be thrown out. I sat in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by that familiar scent of warm, dusty carpet, rifling through old birthday cards and various special trinkets. With the late-summer light streaming in through the curtains, I felt that peculiar mixture of sadness, happiness, and wistful mourning... Read more
6 September 2014
2 comments
Every day we provide you with Six Incredible Things Before Breakfast to nibble away at. Here you can fill your brain with the most intellectually stimulating “amuse bouches” from the past week – a veritable smorgasbord for the cranium. They’re all here for you to load up your plate – this week’s “Morsels for the mind”. Enjoy! If you do nothing else, make sure to check out the “Reads / views / listens of the week”. **** Feather, fur &... Read more
6 September 2014
0 comments
Researching my recent post about “The Living Desert” reminded me of a photograph of bobcats I'd seen long ago. This memory led me to a story about wildlife management and unintended consequences. As a young child, I travelled with my family (at that time only four of us) across the United States from Massachusetts to California. My father had an aviation project to work on in Tucson, Arizona, and took the whole family along for an extended vacation. As we... Read more
5 September 2014
0 comments
In my day job, I’m a public information officer (PIO) at NC State University. Part of my job is to pitch research stories to reporters, and two of the tools I use when pitching stories are blog posts and news releases. This post discusses two examples that shed some light on how I decide which tool to use. The Similarities Earlier this summer, researchers came to me with two forthcoming papers. They had a lot in common. Both papers were... Read more
5 September 2014
6 comments
As an addendum to the first Open SciLogs project, which I helped crowd-fund, I've created a Google document containing all the raw data that I used as research. It can be accessed here. For extra transparency, I'd also like to quickly explain the method I used to reach my conclusions about the "popularity" of certain scientific subjects in the five newspapers I researched. (You can read said conclusions in my final project report). Using the search engines of each newspaper's online... Read more
5 September 2014
0 comments
