Science Hacker Nature Network blog posts from user 'Attila Csordas' http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60 en-us 40 Writing the doctoral thesis on a blog: it is working!!! There are now a bunch of blog posts of mine over at Pimm starting with the following intro: In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential.

My experience so far is that editing a thesis on a full blog engine, like Wordpress is an exciting, feasible and practical journey. I’d like to encourage every recent thesis writer – looking for an open science alternative – to give it a try. Transparency on the thesis level is good and the feedback is crucial.

]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:56:04 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2008/04/22/writing-the-doctoral-thesis-on-a-blog-it-is-working http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2008/04/22/writing-the-doctoral-thesis-on-a-blog-it-is-working Attila Csordas Nurture, Nature's own email killer corporate blog Did you know that Nature Publishing Group has its own 4.5 year old internal corporate blog?

Yes, they have and it is called Nurture.

Read the whole story

]]> Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:02:38 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/10/03/nurture-natures-own-email-killer-corporate-blog http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/10/03/nurture-natures-own-email-killer-corporate-blog Attila Csordas Vote for your favorite life science blogs! At The Scientist, the editors are awaiting your suggestions on your favorite life science blogs to gather the list of blogs that are especially hot for life science researchers. They asked 7 science bloggers (Abel Pharmboy, Bora Zivkovic, Carl Zimmer, Newamul Khan, PZ Myers, Ed Silverman and me) to nominate some of their favorite blogs for a start.

]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:50:56 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/09/18/vote-for-your-favorite-life-science-blogs http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/09/18/vote-for-your-favorite-life-science-blogs Attila Csordas SciFoo and SENS3: It's good to visit unconventional science meetings I am visiting the third Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS3) conference, which will be held from 6-10 September 2007 at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Briefly: It is a biogerontology conference (see the schedule) and the only scientific conference that includes many heavyweight life extension technology supporters.
So after SciFoo I have the chance to visit another unconventional science gathering. SciFoo was unconventional by definition as it was an unconference with no strict schedule defined earlier (remember Henry Gee: Someday, all conferences will be like this), while SENS3 is unconventional due to its mission statement. SciFoo, SENS: ideal meeting points for young scientists with strong drive for change and looking for the new.
SENS3 is not an average conference in any respect and I am really happy to participate for 5 reasons,
Read the whole story

]]> Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:11:56 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/08/27/scifoo-and-sens3-its-good-to-visit-unconventional-science-meetings http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/08/27/scifoo-and-sens3-its-good-to-visit-unconventional-science-meetings Attila Csordas The role of Journal Club in lab life and how to move it to the web Regular (daily, weekly) Journal Clubs are crucially important events in the life of labs. By reviewing other labs’ results it is a way to get synchronized with all the data accumulated by a particular subdiscipline. Moreover it is the most obvious everyday form (conferences are not that frequent) of secondary peer review of the given paper, when experts in one lab heavily criticize the story, methods, data and assumptions of experts in the other competitor lab.

Now the question is how to move the Journal Club format to the web without losing its merits and retaining its role in a lab’s life? Short answer: by embedding the Journal Club events of individual labs in a multimedia (and here the screencast form is preferred compared to making videos) format into a social networking site of scientists.
Read the whole story

]]> Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:16:13 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/08/22/the-role-of-journal-club-in-lab-life-and-how-to-move-it-to-the-web http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/08/22/the-role-of-journal-club-in-lab-life-and-how-to-move-it-to-the-web Attila Csordas Would you invite your supervisor to Nature Network? In my early analysis on Nature Network I compared it to LinkedIn, the social networking site of technology and business professionals, based on the Business 2.0 coverage of LinkedIn.

Now I’d like you (already NN users) to ask about your inviting habits in the form of a question: Would you like to invite your supervisor to Nature Network?

And the rationale behind comes also from the comparison with LinkedIn habits: “Hoffman and Guericke knew that. What they tried to do was make LinkedIn both as easy and as unobtrusive as possible. Your friends may nag you to join Friendster or MySpace, but nagging doesn’t work very well in the business world.

The mechanism at LinkedIn that overcame that obstacle is very simple: Anyone can join, but to make someone else a part of your network, you have to invite them and they have to accept. And whom would you rather invite to your network, someone who ranks below you in the work world or above?

”You are more likely to invite up than down for your own network,” says Guericke, LinkedIn’s marketing VP. “That’s only natural, but what that does is keep the quality high on LinkedIn. We wanted it to be a place where people you think highly of can be found. It might not be Steve Jobs, but it will be other senior people at Apple (Charts) who you might want to know.”“

So let’s transfer this thought to fellow scientists: The basic line of invitation to NN currently is probably the invitation of people in the same rank (grad to grad, postdoc to postdoc) and fewer invitations are sent to people higher in the academic hierarchy than of the invitator. But in order to make NN an everyday and useful web destination it would be advisable to invite academic people from every chronological age and hierarchical level.

What could be the obstacles: too much transparency and visibility, web ignorance, even illiteracy in some cases. These obstacles can be overcome, of course.

]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:37:42 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/06/24/would-you-invite-your-supervisor-to-nature-network http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/06/24/would-you-invite-your-supervisor-to-nature-network Attila Csordas Editing my doctoral thesis on stem cells in a blog: Why not? After reading the official rules on how to manage a doctoral thesis, and after speaking with my supervisor asking for his permission, I ’ve decided to edit my ongoing doctoral thesis in my blog Pimm. Or at least the introduction of it, which is intended to be no other than a review-like summary of some current results in the stem cell biology of different tissues, organs. After all, what do I risk here? I contacted a Nature Editor, Maxine Clarke, peer review and publishing policy specialist who explained to me the publishing situation of doctoral theses.
Read the whole story

]]> Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:50:10 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/06/04/editing-my-doctoral-thesis-on-stem-cells-in-a-blog-why-not http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/06/04/editing-my-doctoral-thesis-on-stem-cells-in-a-blog-why-not Attila Csordas Are we really in the age of Regenerative Medicine 2.0? According to Chris Mason 2006 heralded the era of Regenerative Medicine 2.0 (RegenMed2.0), where the focus is almost exclusively on the translation of research into commercially successful products.
‘While Web 1.0 was about commerce, Web 2.0 is about people and their active participation. The same is true for regenerative medicine; the pioneers were all about the science and research and little about translation into genuine products with benefits to both patients and shareholders. Whereas RegenMed2.0 is almost exclusively focused on the pragmatic translation of great science into routine clinical practice.’

Is he right? Or is his analysis too optimistic?

Scan through the whole story

]]> Tue, 29 May 2007 09:04:01 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/29/are-we-really-in-the-age-of-regenerative-medicine-2-0 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/29/are-we-really-in-the-age-of-regenerative-medicine-2-0 Attila Csordas Cell’s Superhero Cover: the role of comics in science popularization I’ve just realized how cool is Cell magazine May 4 issue’s cover (the one with the excellent Scientist Enter the Blogosphere report by Laura Bonetta) with the S-nitrosothiol superhero T-shirt. This substance may have some therapeutic utility in diseases such as heart failure and asthma.

Would you be kind enough to share with us more cool but strict peer review magazine covers?
Read the whole of the story

]]> Fri, 25 May 2007 10:39:19 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/25/cell-s-superhero-cover-the-role-of-comics-in-science-popularization http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/25/cell-s-superhero-cover-the-role-of-comics-in-science-popularization Attila Csordas What can Google do for science or The Google Scientist Gamma? The Google Scientist Beta, intended to be the default scientist type of the web age, is painfully in Gamma mode. The time, when scientists can lean more heavily on targeted Google products seems far away. As Google ’s mission is making the world’s information more easily accessible, they’d better concentrate a little bit more on the high end scientific information part of it.

read the whole story

]]> Wed, 23 May 2007 22:29:23 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/23/what-can-google-do-for-science-or-the-google-scientist-gamma http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/23/what-can-google-do-for-science-or-the-google-scientist-gamma Attila Csordas Overture Hi Nature Networkers,

I am Attila Csordas, stem cell researcher and experimental biotech geek blogger. My 1 year old outside blog Pimm -Partial immortalization is about biotechnology, stem cells, regenerative medicine, indefinite life extension and science hacks. Here I try to be less biotech oriented and more focused on science hacks, which are no other than web tricks to make the scientific life more comfortable and cost-efficient. There will be little intros or excerpts out my big blog and new topics too. We shall see what follows and do not forget: every blog post is an experiment. With the thoughts and the audience.

]]> Wed, 23 May 2007 11:17:55 -0000 http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/23/overture http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/UC5066B60/2007/05/23/overture Attila Csordas