AJCann

"Following the recent letter from the Secretary of State, Rt. Hon. Michael Gove MP, to the Training and Development Agency for Schools on the allocation of Teacher Training Places and Financial Incentives for 2011 – 2012; the Society of Biology wrote to the Minister to express its concern regarding the grouping of biology with general science. We believe that this will create the impression that biology is the weaker science and discourage students from studying biology further. We called for a decoupling of these subjects and recommended that biology is given a stand alone quota for 2011-2012." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Good analysis of the current state of Google Plus from Steve Gillmour. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Just looked at many screens of content piped into friendfeed from elsewhere, no real connection going on here any more. I hope to see you on Google Plus (for all its faults). - AJCann

I agree with Deepak -- G+ still needs some work to truly be a FF replacement (the lack of "Groups" and inability to automatically pipe updates to/from the service are obvious gaps identified), but its the best one that has emerged and given the relative triviality of the two features to implement (I think they didn't turn on the piping mainly to encourage people to share original content on G+), I'm pretty sure they will bridge that gap soon. - Benjamin Tseng

Looking forward to it! :) - Berci Mesko, MD

Where did you submit it? - Björn Brembs

"Universities Minister David Willetts announced today that he wants to open the floodgates to cut-price private providers in an attempt to create a full-scale market in higher education" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Yeah, exactly what a university needs... competitiveness not based on science :) - Egon Willighagen

I wonder if there's a new market being created here, in evaluating job applicants? Is that Di$count Univer$ity diploma really comparable to this Cambridge one? Is the Di$count grad with the A+ average really better than the Oxford grad with a solid B? I could see employers administering their own "entrance exams", or rather, paying someone to do that for them. Assessments-R-Us could design standardised tests to rank applicants for any given job or field. - Bill Hooker

"The best papers don’t simply answer questions, they also open up new avenues of research. Here Kawashima and Berger are extremely helpful. If you’re looking for something to research in signalling then the authors have erected big signposts in the conclusion with big arrows marked ‘mysteries this way’. If you’re looking for a departure point into cell-cell signalling, then this looks like a helpful guide to where the interesting puzzles in mechanisms are." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"Citizen Science “News about Citizen Science and DIY Research” Created and curated by Kevin Gamble" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"£30,124 - £35,860 (inclusive of location allowances) As Science Writer you will research and write about the work of the MRC in order to communicate our policy and strategy, and to promote research outcomes and achievements to key stakeholders such as political decision makers and parliamentarians, research organisations, charities and the general public. You will play a key role in supporting the MRC Communications Team in delivering all of its strategic and corporate communications objectives." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"The procedure is straightforward and starts with an author registering him or herself on the website. He or she then submits their article either in the form of a word document or a pdf. The article is then checked by readers for its suitability and immediately goes online. By submitting the author agrees to conduct at least three reviews within a specified period. Once the article is online it is sent to reviewers who are then asked to conduct reviews and to rate it in a number of categories and overall. Once the three reviewers’ results are in, the author is informed of the results. The author then has three days to say if they want to withdraw their paper, otherwise it goes online together with the ratings. The author has the ability to respond to the reviewers’ comments and to engage in an online discussion." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"I first learned about this subject [evolutionary biology] from the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. But I eventually came to realize that working biologists regard Gould much the same way that economists regard Robert Reich: talented writer, too bad he never gets anything right. Serious evolutionary theorists such as John Maynard Smith or William Hamilton, like serious economists, think largely in terms of mathematical models. Indeed, the introduction to Maynard Smith’s classic tract Evolutionary Genetics flatly declares, “If you can’t stand algebra, stay away from evolutionary biology.”" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Nice post. - AJCann

I assume the CC is new, not the standard YT license? - Egon Willighagen

Yes, this is new. Only one CC licence at present though - but this is progress. - AJCann

It's just that the NEW is placed at the same hight as the YT license... - Egon Willighagen

"Response by peer reviewers: Dear Dr. L, We regret that we cannot accept your historian joke in its present form…. However, a panel of anonymous reviewers (well, anonymous to YOU, anyway) have reviewed it and made dozens of mutually contradictory suggestions for its… improvement. Please consider them carefully, except for the ones made by a man we all consider to be a dangerous crackpot but who is the only one who actually returns comments in a timely fashion." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"Many infographics build on a common visual grammar (in the West, line charts up to the right increase over time; for area based charts, the bigger the area the more of something is being represented). But many infographics are also limited by the chart types we are all familiar with (line charts, bar charts, coloured maps…) Maybe the place to start is the stats community finding ways of introducing new-to-the-majority statistical graphs into the mainstream media along with a strong narrative to explain what is going on in those charts (and not necessarily so much discussion about the actual maths and stats…)?" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"Insist on receiving your schedule 4 years in advance, and “hopefully you’ll only need to do three or four course preparations” during that time. That way you’ll just need to give your syllabi a little fact check and update, leaving more time to reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and how each class could be better." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

:-) Getting there, slowly. - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"Saturday 9 June Plenary session on ‘Science Communication through Social Media’" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"... a number [of journals], not in plant sciences, are offering to accelerate the review process by charging authors an extra fee. Alex Holcombe suggests on his blog that this will mean researchers with poor funding will fall further behind their rich counterparts, and several people are questioning the ethics of this fast-tracking, although one of the Editors of  a Journal with the option also responds to the blog. I can’t see anything like this being adopted by Annals of Botany. We will continue to aim to publish the best plant science, and to obtain high-quality reviews as quickly as possible; however, we recognize that referees both have many demands on their time, and also for some manuscripts, it takes careful thought and some contemplation to give a considered review. From my own reviewing experiences, I know that chasing is needed in some cases, but too intense pressure will lead to a superficial review." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"Whoa, what's happening? Sorry if we've caught you by surprise. Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS. Here are a few links to catch you up to date on the latest news regarding Delicious (blog post, press release)." "We anticipate Delicious in its current form will be available until approximately July 2011. By agreeing to AVOS's terms of service upfront, you will allow us to move your data when the time comes to transfer control to AVOS." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"I wish people would stop calling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a science book. There's virtually no science in it at all. It's a book mostly about the life of incredibly superstitious and ultra religious African Americans living in the deep, deep south in the1940s. I say it's mostly about the life of poor African Americans, as the rest is set aside for Skloot to go into great depth about how much work she put into writing the book. It's little short of her repeatedly patting herself on the back for having made a few phone calls and travelled about the country a bit. Sadly there's no room left in her book for any science." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

I've heard even harsher criticism from colleagues, but I just look at it as an interesting story wrapped around a historical event in scientific history - kudos for appealing to non-scientists. I am curious how it has affected the public's perception of scientists/science. - Jeff Habig

As a popular science book, it's well written. It's the science bit that's lacking. - AJCann

"Conscientious academics who try hard to keep in regular contact with their students are the most likely to suffer from work-related “burnout”, a new study has found. Positive traits that can make lecturers more appealing teachers, such as openness, also make them more susceptible to suffering feelings of weariness and emotional exhaustion." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"It was meant to be the much loved home of Gardeners’ World for years to come. But the BBC has been accused of ‘horticultural vandalism’ after leaving the programme’s showpiece, purpose-built Greenacre garden  to rot. Gardening experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of pounds were spent on the site over two years after Toby Buckland was made the new presenter in 2008." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"“Peer reviewed journals and scientific conferences are still the basis of scholarly communication, but science blogs and social community platforms become increasingly important.”" - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"I’m delighted to say that we have reduced the Annals of Botany Open Access charges to £1000 GBP/ $1615 USD/ €1160 EURO for all papers. Open Access papers are freely accessible to everybody over the web, and all rights for reuse, republication and dissemination lie with the authors. Our discussions suggest that the high charges are a major limitation to wider uptake of open access across the whole plant research community, and this 40% reduction makes our charges substantially lower than those of all the major on-line/open-access-only subject journals. We have the additional advantages that our open-access papers are distributed not just on-line but in the printed journal. Like all our authors, the open access authors have no charges for full-colour in their papers and receive free reprints. For authors from low-income developing countries, we completely waive the open access charge so these authors can distribute their papers more widely. Full details are given at  http://www.oxfordjournals.org/annbot... ." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

"We maintain our other reader- and author-friendly policies for all our contributors, including no page charges for authors, authors retaining copyright on all their work, free access to many review articles, increasing amounts of editorial material including ContentSnapshots, Plant Cuttings, and book reviews, wide free distribution of Special Issues, and of course distribution and... more... - AJCann

"Students and academics at a world-leading London university want to build bridges between the Wikipedia website and formal research. The online encyclopedia is one of the biggest resources for students, says the newly-formed Wikipedians at Imperial College. But there is a reluctance to admit to this "elephant in the room", says thr group's president, Vinesh Patel. The group is planning an event to improve editing on Wikipedia pages. The event to be held at Imperial College in April - the London Wikipedia Academy - is an attempt to address the often unspoken place of Wikipedia in students' research." - AJCann from Bookmarklet

They had better include the wikipedia mafia, or else they are just going to have all their efforts channeled straight into discussion page hell... - Bill Hooker

The friendfeed replacement? - AJCann from Bookmarklet

Does anyone have details? What I read on RWW it sounded like a place to push new things, rather than aggregate things... should I read again? - Egon Willighagen