Biological data and databases are ever expanding. This year was no exception as the number of databases tracked by Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) grew from 1512 to 1552. In the leadoff introduction [1] the authors summarize this year’s issue and the status of the NAR index. The 21st issue includes ...
Previously, I wrote about students using science blogging as a way to develop an on-line portfolio and document their skills. One friend wrote me this morning and asked if my instructions to our students were really as simple as I described. Well, no. In fact, it wasn't easy to persuade ...
Why should students blog about science? Don't they have enough to do already? Last Thursday night I participated in a panel discussion about science blogging (see the video) at ScienceOnline Seattle ( #scioSEA)(video) and mentioned that we have two students blogging for us at Bio-Link. A question I saw afterward ...
Tonight, I'm going to be speaking on a panel at the University of Washington with fellow science bloggers: Alan Boyle ( @b0yle) from CosmicLog and some company called "NBC" news. ( I only watch TV programs on Netflix and iTunes, these days, so I forget TV stations still exist.) Brendan ...
I've heard you have to sing loud if you want to change the world. Cloning DNA – lyrics by Sandra Porter, sung to the tune of Surfin' USA C ..................G7..................C If everybody had a plasmid, across the U.S.A., C ..................G7..................C then everybody'd be cloning, with their DNA ................................F You'd see ...
If all the information you had about scientific careers came from newspapers or TV, it would be easy to think that everyone who works in life sciences / biotechnology is either a Ph.D. scientist, post-doc, or graduate student. In reality, the life sciences are more like an iceberg. The public ...
Many of you may remember a time when music-stealing was rampant on the internet. Apple changed this situation by establishing a new kind of marketplace. Now people pay for music and download it from iTunes. What if there were a third party group, with an iTunes-like model, where scientific publishers ...
The Backstory: As it stands today,when one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides the funding for a scientific research project, and those results are published, they must be made freely available to public, within a set period of time. The reasoning behind this requirement is that taxpayers funded ...
The C.R.E.A.T.E. strategy is an approach to making biology teaching a better model of biology, the science. From the C.R.E.A.T.E website, ...C.R.E.A.T.E. teaching focuses on on authentic published work--peer reviewed journal articles--with students reading either series of papers produced sequentially from individual labs or series of papers from different labs ...
This morning, I learned that congress wants to reverse the advances made by NIH and go back to restricting access to scientific publications. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (New York) and Congressman Darrell Issa (California) are co-sponsoring a bill to restore the limits on public access to NIH-funded research. I've written many ...
In simple Mendelian genetics, a single change in one gene can produce a large change in mortality. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will be funding genomics studies on Mendelian traits using a similar strategy. NHGRI will fund a small number of centers, dominant centers you might say, and ...
Like everything else, if we want to know what's going on, we have to ask. So, it's time once again for the 2011-2012 National Biotechnology/Life Sciences Program Survey. Yes, indeed. Federal and state agencies will use the results to determine how best to support programs like yours. This study will ...
What roles should community colleges play in training the bioeconomy workforce of the future? Send your answers to bioeconomy@ostp.gov by Dec. 6th. One night towards the end of October, we happened to meet with someone who could tell us more. We asked him about a request for information (RFI) soliciting ...
For the past few days I've been avidly following Daniel MacArthur's tweets from the Personal Genome Conference at Cold Spring Harbor( @dgmacarthur #cshlpg). The Personal Genomics tweets aren't just interesting because of the science, they're interesting because MacArthur and others have started to take on the conventional dogma in genetic ...
"It's all about saving Aunt Millie" – Bob Swanson Co-Founder of Genentech. Jim DeKloe wrote this post as a guest author a few years ago. Jim is one of the most inspirational educators I know and he's the sort of person that reminds you why educating students about biotechnology careers ...
The National Science Foundation recently announced an ambitious plan to transform biology education across the United States called "Vision and Change." Funding for this mission is being provided by a new NSF grant program called "TUES" for Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science. This finding may have been a surprise to ...
It only takes a quick trip to the grocery store to see that familiar jobs are vanishing. Unless you're in Oregon, grocery store checkers are going the way of gas station attendants, travel agents, and secretaries. Jobs are changing, new jobs require different skills, and even those jobs will be ...
Last night we went to see "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" by Mike Daisey. Two hours vanished as we sat riveted and listened to interspersed stories of Apple and Shenzhen. Mike spoke of Apple and computers as a lover, familiar with the details, and knowledgeable in the ...
This morning I attended a "bloggers-only" conference call with Dr. Eric Green and the folks from the NIH Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to hear about NHGRI's new strategic plan. The new plan represents a shift away from viewing the genome through a lens marked "for research use only" and ...
Have you ever wondered if creationism was intelligently designed? Most of my colleagues tend to dismiss creationism as generally nutty and not worth bothering about. But, every now and then, we did get the odd situation with a few students who disagree or state legislatures that get a little confused ...
