Before the meeting starts I figured I’d give you a quick tour of Adare Manor, location of the Wiring the Brain meeting. After this quick post, it’s off to the opening lecture (John Rubenstein from UCSF) on “Patterning of the neocortex by FGF-signaling”. And then some cocktails in the gorgeous courtyard. Pictures below the fold and the full set is here… ... Read more
I’ll be out of blogging touch for a bit as I travel to Ireland for the Wiring the Brain conference (FYI, I will be tweeting from this meeting with the hashtag #wibrain), followed by a short trip to the Mother Ship: In the meantime, be sure to read this article on what we may see in the not so distant future regarding the marriage between scientific communication and the semantic web (got this via Bora). I’ve been thinking about this... Read more
Neurobeat is a music series on Nothing’s Shocking that comes out late on Tuesday nights. Every other week a new song is featured to complement my mood or experiences of the previous week. If you’re wondering why in the hell I’m doing this, please read the original Neurobeat for my reasons. Kuduro is an Angolan sound that originally combined and mixed percussive African styles of drumming with the calypso beats popular in Trinidad and Tobego. Kuduro kept evolving, eventually incorporating... Read more
I noticed a guest post on Peer-to-Peer that calls for creating a metric measuring peer review performance. Essentially, the author suggests that pooling citation-based metrics along with a peer-review metric will provide a more comprehensive assessment of an individual scientist. Here is an excerpt: Perhaps a metric for this essential scientific activity of peer-reviewing might be constructed by summing the number of papers refereed by the individual scientist per year, each review being multiplied by the Impact Factor of the... Read more
Looking back over what caught my eye, I was a little light on neuro this week. But perhaps you’ll understand when you realize that competing for my attention were polls examining the understanding of evolution in Muslim schools, the steady rise of ‘shit’ in the Guardian, the NYT threatening to close the Boston Globe, and the potential break-up of an ice shelf the size of CT. Nevertheless, let’s check out the neuro: (cont.) ... Read more
At times, this blog probably needs a break from the α-male attitude exuded by your host. Therefore, Hysell Oviedo, a senior postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Tony Zador at CSHL will periodically bring a woman’s perspective to scientific publishing and life as a scientist. Having grown up in the Dominican Republic, she will also speak on her experiences as a minority breaking into the world of science. Once I force her to sign up for an account at NN,... Read more
Bruce Alberts grabbed my attention recently with an editorial leading with a reference to a recent poll conducted at UCSF. 1000 young scientists apparently provided quite a range of answers when asked about their future career choices. Most strikingly, less than half selected academia as their likely future path. Alberts suggests that we are at a “tipping point” where those who make the decision to use their scientific training in other endeavors and lines of work besides the academic research... Read more
Every week I look back at what caught my eye in the neuro world. This is for those of you who hate/are scared of/don’t understand/can’t be bothered by/had a bad experience with/never heard of/simply avoid reading my feed (please circle only one) on Twitter, because these stories were all listed there. If you are coming from Twitter, consider this a refresher on the tweets that got away. (cont.) ... Read more
I was reading a thorough piece on cognitive enhancers at Discover Magazine, and also discussing this topic on Twitter (click through the various links to piece together the conversation, if interested). I was reminded of the extensive discussions regarding the ethics underlying enhancer use in the News & Opinion Forum here on Nature Network, and my own response at the time. Well I went back and read my post and got PISSED that nobody made a single comment. Well, since... Read more
This is a pretty important development, possibly a set-back, on the frontiers of scientific communication and the future of publishing. Obviously, the debate regarding open access has raged on in a variety of places, and certainly, this recent lack of announcement by JoVE will ignite those flames again. Nevertheless, the most peculiar thing about the whole move is the way in which it went down and was revealed to the public. Basically, it was done on the sly. One day... Read more
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