easternblot.net - it's (not) all about science

The new issue of Hypothesis came from the printer this week. Oooh, shiny! No, really: It’s printed on nicer, shinier paper than before! Of course you can’t see that if you only read the articles online, but you can see the work of our newly appointed graphic designer. Hypothesis now has a new typeface, new layout, and pull-quotes!
On top of that, articles in Hypothesis are now not only just free, but also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

But the changes don’t end there! Starting next issue, we will publish articles online as soon as they are accepted, and the collected articles of an entire year will appear in print at the end of the year. We’re also switching from e-mail submission to the use of Open Journal Systems (OJS) to submit articles. OJS is an open source program for use by open access journals. It is developed by the Public Knowledge Project, which was founded by John Willinsky, who happened to be on the panel I moderated at the Science in the 21st Century conference last month. It’s a small world.

Hypothesis volume 6, issue 1 contains the following articles (links go to the pdf documents)
Editorial: Interdisciplinary Communication
Local Biotech Sector and Global Health Development - Mehrdad Hariri
The Phantom Phantom - Sadie Yancey
Fun with Microarrays Part III - Paul Boutros
The scientific workforce policy debate: Do we produce too many biomedical trainees? - Jeffrey Sharom

Hypothesis is currently accepting manuscripts for the next issue. We accept new and thought-provoking ideas, as long as they are supported by scientific findings or existing theories (in other words: don’t just make stuff up). These ideas may, however, currently be untestable. We also welcome regular reviews, original research, or opinion pieces.
There are no submission costs. We rely on sponsors and advertisers to keep the journal running. Speaking of which, the new shiny paper would also make advertisements look especially attractive, so if you are interested in advertising, please drop us a line as well to get a quote. (Web advertisements also considered.) Hypothesis is a non profit journal, and all the staff are volunteers, but we need money to cover printing costs and general expenses (web, postage costs, etc.)

Funnier than the Nobel Prizes, the IgNobels highlight research that makes you laugh. The research itself is completely valid and serious, but the topics can be funny.
Among this year’s winners (copied from the site)

-Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
-Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert,, and Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
-Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

Found on Vimeo: this a film by Amit Zakai, made as graduation project for HIT Israeli Academy for Design. It’s about measurements of daily life, and reminds a bit of the film Amelie, but with more math. (Hebrew with English subtitles)

“a micrometer from here” (eng sub) from amit zakai on Vimeo.

ScienCentral has two videos on their site of a project where they put Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman at a desk on the street, from where he answered questions about science.

Which Nobel Prize winning scientist would you like talk to on the street?

Open Laboratory 2008 is accepting entries for this year’s science blogging anthology.
Actually, they have been accepting entries all along and I submitted mine months ago. Of course, now I forgot which one I submitted, so I’ll probably do it again.
You can submit blog posts from other people that you particularly enjoyed, or your own, or both. I have had a blog post in my head for months that I haven’t written yet. Maybe I should squeeze that out before the end of the year.

Concerned conference attendees at the Perimeter Institute anxiously follow the Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet? website. Has it? Has it now? Let’s refresh it to be sure!

(Actually we were laughing about the source code of the site. Wait, that’s probably even geekier. Never mind.)

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