I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but for newcomers, Lonesome George is a world famous conservation icon and is believed to be the last Pinta Tortoise in the world. George was taken in 1972 from Pinta, an island off the coast of Ecuador and has lived at the Charles Darwin Research Insititute in the Galapagos Islands ever since. Pinta tortoises were thought to have been wiped out by hunting and despite extensive searching, they have never found another Pinta tortoise on Pinta or any neighbouring islands. So, conservationists have been trying to get him to mate with tortoises from the neighbouring island of Isabela, but unfortunately George seems disinterested in mating and has made no progress in 30 years. A couple of years ago, he became the subject of one of the best books I’ve ever read on natural history – Lonesome George by Henry Nicholls – and I advise everyone to read it, it’s honestly brilliant.

Anyway, the point is, it was reported yesterday that one of the females in George’s pen has laid some eggs and it’s possible George is the father! It’s by no means certain, because tortoises can lay unfertilised eggs, apparently, but they have incubated three of the eggs and in about four months they should be able to tell. I will report back.

Full story at The Guardian.

It’s been said that we are witnessing nothing less than a new Gold Rush, where the territory is the human body. Human eggs are used in huge numbers for the stem cell technologies— – over 2,000 in one recent case. Roughly one-fifth of all human genes have been patented by biotechnology companies. Women’s tissue is worth more than men’s, but both sexes are vulnerable. The fact is, we don’t own our bodies in law.

Donna Dickenson is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of London. Her career has been distinguished and varied, taking in activities including ethics committees, academia and authorship and in 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Spinoza Lens award, an International award awarded bi-annually to an illustrious thinker in ethics and society, for her contribution to the public debate on ethics. Most recently, Donna is the author of Body Shopping: The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood, an important investigation into the increasing commercialisation of human body tissues. All welcome to join us for a what promises to be a fascinating and controversial discussion with Donna covering all these issues and many more.

Date: 22nd July
Time: 8am PDT, SLT (West Coast time), 4pm BST (London time)
Location: Second Nature Island

All details are on the website and one and all are very welcome. See you there!

Pete Moore, author of Enhancing Me is coming to Second Nature today to give a talk about how we can enhance our brains and bodies, how we’ll be able to in the future and whether we should really want to anyway.

Date: 15th July
Time: 10am PDT, SLT (West Coast time), 6pm BST (London time)
Location: Second Nature Island

All details are on the website and one and all are very welcome. See you there!

Pete Moore, author of Enhancing Me% will be coming to Second Nature to give a talk about how we can enhance our brains and bodies, how we’ll be able to in the future and whether we should really want to anyway.

It’s a week on Tuesday, 15th July, and all details are on the website.

Jean-Claude has been using Second Life in a variety of ways since long before we ever got into it, but Jon is more skeptical of its value, and one of his specific points is to ask whether most things done in Second Life couldn’t be done more effectively using another medium. The whole interview is worth listening to and I actually agree with Jon to a greater extent – we’ve said time and time again, we’re not going to make Nature papers available in Second Life because it’s just pointless. Who wants to read a whole paper in Second Life, when that’s what PDFs are perfectly designed for? We also made some of our podcasts available in Second Life as a trial but the same applies: why would people come into Second Life to listen to them when they could just listen to them in their iTunes? Now, if we had a weekly playing of the podcast, followed by a chat with the presenter or contributors, that might be different…

I think Second Life is valuable when it plays to its strengths – helping people communicate. I’m sure that’s why Science Friday works, by having an intereactive audience, not simply asking people to listen to the same show in a different location.

Anyway, Jon and Jean-Claude have agreed that to see how SL is actually useful to people, Jean-Claude will take Jon on a tour to make a video in Second Life of all the science-y highlights and different ways it can be used. More news on that when I have it.

Jen lists five things that make Second Life a worthwhile place for collaborative learning, all of which I agree with, but I was especially interested by:

More Interesting Q&A: People asked wackier questions and really pushed the envelope during the post-chat Q&A portion. Interesting questions = more valuable, revealing answers.

I think that certainly was true for the 23andMe presentation, the questions were certainly very robust and also varied. I think possibly having to write down your question forces conciseness and really thinking about what you want to know. It obviously also helps people who are not confident of their spoken English. But I wonder if it goes further than that: does Second Life really loosen the tongue and let you ask things you wouldn’t ask in person? And if it does, it is because of the pseudonymity? There’s been a big discussion over at Henry Gee’s blog about pseudonymity in blogs, and I wonder if the same applies in Second Life, even though you are actually “with” the other people, not protected by a time lapse and a chance to think about your answer.

Berci has a much fuller report on his blog, and of course you can go along to Second Nature to see the slides, so I won’t describe any more here, but thanks again to Berci and to Erin and Joyce from 23andMe for coming. You can see their verdict on their blog – they seemed to enjoy it and didn’t seem at all fazed by the horned blue monsters in the audience!

See the Medicine and Health forum for details and discussion.

He is one of a series of animals featured in a new exhibition at the gallery at the bottom of the Oxo Tower on the South Bank. Photographer Roger Hooper is a long term WWF supporter and has put together Endangered Wildlife Exposed, a few dozen beautiful photos of a wide variety of endangered species.

Not nearly so many images and more cat-heavy, but definitely recommended for anyone passing by who enjoyed the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. Open until the end of the month.

23andMe is a personalised genetics company: customers can provide a sample of their DNA via a saliva sample produced at home and sent back through the post. 23andMe then uses a genotyping process which looks at 600,000 SNPs to characterise the genome. They put put this online (in a secure location!) and you can use their various tools to look at questions like your predisposition to certain conditions, your global ancestry or the inheritance of characteristics down your family tree.

This is a very simplified description of what is a fascinating and potentially very powerful tool. Please do take a look at their website and all are welcome to come along and hear them speak.

SciFoo Lives On is a series of events held on Second Nature as an extension of the SciFoo conference. The speaker gives a short talk with presentation and then leads a discussion with the audience. We can’t claim any credit for this – this session was organised by Bertalan Mesko, who will also live blog the whole event, so check out his blog for more details.

Date: Tuesday 24th June

Time: 10am PST (Second Life time), 6pm London time

Location: SFLO area, Second Nature island

The conference was good too, met lots of new Nature colleagues and took part in a session called ”Second Life and beyond: should Publishers care about virtual worlds?”. The panel consisted of me, Linden Lab’s education and healthcare expert John Lester and Ben Sawyer from Digital Mill. Unsurprisingly, our conclusion was “yes”. Perhaps more surprisingly, lots of people came up to me afterwards to say they were really interested in what we were doing and were thinking of doing similar things themselves. I’ve done similar talks many times but this one really felt like the first time the audience reaction had moved from “how cool! Now for those of us with real jobs…” to “how cool! How can we use this?”.

For one answer to that question, I point you in the direction of an interesting article in the current issue of EMBO Reports.

Scientific discourse 2.0. Will your next poster session be in Second Life

The ability to modify online worlds and to create customized objects and virtual rooms could have a positive impact on the presentation of data and information. Traditional poster sessions, for example, only present research findings in a static format with the investigator standing next to the poster to answer questions. Similar poster presentations within virtual worlds such as Second Life® could not only effectively simulate the spacing, timing and methods of presentation sessions, but also allow the expansion and modification of the conference space as needed. In addition, users would be able to add information to and edit their posters based on other participants’ questions and feedback, and interact with other avatars in a similar manner to real life. Poster presenters would not even have to be online for the whole event in order to answer queries because they could use a mobile phone as an effective bridge between the virtual and real worlds (Kelly, 2007). Furthermore, entire sessions could be saved and the virtual space preserved for future perusal by attendees and those who were absent.

It’s a long (and not entirely accurate) article, but has some interesting thoughts on holding posters sessions and conference add-ons in virtual worlds. Little snippet above, but the whole article is recommended.

Scientists get a 2nd Life

It was called “How to Bag a Geek” and featured a reporter going to three events to attempt to chat up “geeks” of varying descriptions.

One of these categories was “science geek”. Science has always been cool, geeks definitely are now, so I have good news for Second Lifers: the chosen “science geek” event was the Dana Centre event about virtual worlds.

Anyway, it seems that not all scientists are quite so pleased at the association. After the discussion, our intrepid reporter approached a “fit geek” with the chat-up line “So are you on Second Life?”.

It was unsuccessful.

Read the full story here, although I take no responsibility for any advice gleaned from an article which does not know the difference between a geek and a nerd…

We have a group, Nature, with 400 odd members. It used to be the top result when using the in-world group search for “Nature” and in the top 5 or so when searching for “science”.

I last noticed a few weeks ago that when searching for Nature that we now appear on p3! I wouldn’t mind, but the majority of the groups above us have hardly any members and even less relevance to science/nature. I see that we are not the only victims: the “science” search is now hit and miss, the Science Center is way down the list, lots of relevant results have disappeared entirely and all sorts of odd groups have appeared above them.

I’ve submitted a ticket (via concierge) asking about this, but typically have received precisely no response whatsoever a fortnight later. So two questions:

1. Any idea why the rankings have suddenly changed?
2. Has anyone ever received a response to a help request to LL?

The winning one (an elephant spraying water everywhere) was good, but my personal favourite was the goat on the mountain:

Not a helpful post, really, since the exhibition has closed now, but you can still see the photos online.

The only complaint I would make about it is the merchandise, or lack of it. I understand you want to splash the winners all over everything, but I’m sure everyone has their own favourite and I couldn’t find so much as a goat postcard.

Since its emergence in the seventeenth century, science fiction has been a sustained, coherent and subversive check on the promises and pitfalls of science. In their turn, invention and discovery have forced fiction writers to confront the nature and limits of reality.

Join us with Neil Hook and Mark Brake, authors of Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science to trace the way in which we’ve imagined the future.

Neil and Mark are both at the University of Glamorgan, teaching courses in Science Fiction and Science Communication respectively. All are welcome to join us for what promises to be a fascinating event.

Speakers: Prof Mark Brake and Rev. Neil Hook, Glamorgan University

Date: Mon 28th April

Time: 9am SLT, Midday NY time, 4pm GMT, 5pm London time

Location: Second Nature Island

Immediately after the event, we will be hopping over to ACS Island, where there will be a second talk with Joan L. Slonczewski, Kenyon College, on science fiction from the point of view of the author. Joan is a Professor of Microbiology, specifically stress responses in E. coli and Bacillus subtilis, and also the author of several science fiction novels including Brain Plague and A Door Into Ocean.

All welcome to both talks: voice will be used.

If you have ever attended, tried to, or just thought about attending one of our events, please do go and take the survey.

No prizes, but the reward of knowing you’ve done something good for mankind. Also, anyone reading this is an early adopter, so there’s a good chance your suggestion will get acted on!

Lastly, it’s very short and easy and it would really be helpful for me.

It’s only in the early stages of development, but it’s an interesting video nonetheless. But I am a bit disappointed you don’t need a spinning desk chair and a long corridor to fly any more…

Every day I tell people about Second Nature who say “How cool! Where can I find out more?” and I’m torn between giving them a SLURL they won’t know what to do with or this blog which is not a lot more than a list of upcoming events and certainly no place for newbies.

With this in mind, I’m pleased to introduce a new site on nature.com:

http://www.nature.com/secondnature

Something of a work in progress, we hope this website will be a starting point for newcomers, an introduction to what Second Life’s all about and what we’re doing there, as well as providing listings of all our upcoming events and guides to the best places to see in Second Life. Obviously this is just the first version, but we will be regularly adding to and rotating the content, so if you know a good science-y place in Second Life, by all means send it over and it’ll pop up there sometime.

Most importantly, we hope this will make it easier for people who have heard of Second Life to see what it can be used for and to help experienced users follow activity. Please do take a look: any feedback is very much appreciated from any perspective – in the comments or direct to me at j.scott @ nature.com.

PS: Any SL-experts out there – next on the to-do list is to use the Reg API to allow registration through the website. Anyone got any experience/advice on that?

NOTE: The event will be earlier than normal, at 2pm GMT/10am EST/7am SLT

On Monday 10th March, we will be joined on Second Nature by Helen Meredith, project co-ordinator for the EDGE Amphibian project.. The EDGE project is run by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and stands for Evolutionarily Distinct, Globally Endangered. In words of one syllable, if it’s endangered and there’s nothing else genetically similar to it, then the EDGE project wants to conserve it.

EDGE is in its second year now: last year they focused on mammals, almost certainly to get some cuddly, publicity-happy species to be the face of the launch. This year attention has shifted to amphibians and as Helen commented earlier this year “These animals may not be cute and cuddly, but hopefully their weird looks and bizarre behaviours will inspire people to support their conservation”.

Join us with Helen to hear how they decide what is Evolutionarily Distinct, the current status of the EDGE species and the future of the project. All welcome!

Title: The EDGE Project for Amphibians

Speaker: Helen Meredith, ZSL

Date: Monday 10th March

Time: 2pm GMT/1am EST/7am SLT

Location: Second Nature Island

Computers might be able to spew out facts and tally your accounts, but could they ever make great art? Simon Colton from Imperial’s Department of Computing thinks so. With colleagues Maja Pantic and Michel Valstar he’s created an award-winning system called The Painting Fool , which paints stylised portraits after analysing facial expressions.

If, for example, it sees an angry face, the portrait might incorporate strong brushstrokes in fiery colours, while a depressed person might be rendered in dismal hues.

The results are impressive and last month bagged the team a prestigious award for machine intelligence at a British Computer Society conference.

For more on Simon’s work, read Matt’s full article and then join us on Second Nature for a talk with Simon himself all about his work. All welcome – no specialist knowledge, just an open mind, required!

Date: Monday 3rd March

Time: 9am SLT/PST, Midday EST, 5pm GMT

Location: Second Nature Island

James will join us on Second Nature on Monday in the usual timeslot: all welcome! Voice will be used, so please get there early if you need help setting up. Incidentally, we are trying to switch to streaming audio rather than voice, but it is proving a challenge – please bear with us.

Speaker: Dr James Kirkpatrick

Title: Towards a Nanoscale Understanding of Charge Transport in Molecular Semiconductors

Date: Monday 25th Feb

Time: 9am SLT/PST, Midday EST, 5pm GMT

Location: Second Nature Island

Abstract: Molecular semiconductors are of great technological interest, since they offer the possibility of combining the electronic properties of traditional semiconductors such as silicon, with low-cost solution based fabrication techniques such as those used in the plastic industry.

One of main drawbacks of these materials is their poor charge transporting ability. In traditional inorganic semiconductors, the existence of a high degree of order leads to a complete delocalization of charge carriers. In molecular materials charges are strongly localized and “hop” from molecule to molecule. An appropriate theoretical framework exists that allows us to determine the speed of individual hops. What is lacking is an understanding of how chemical structure controls macroscopic charge transport. Such an understanding is crucial, because it will allow chemists and engineers to design better molecules and better processing strategies.

My aim has been to simulate molecular materials accurately enough to obtain a microscopic understanding of the origins of disorder in their charge transport parameters. This involves using different simulation techniques to study the relative orientation and position of molecules in a solid and the explicit computation of their electronic parameters.
I will in particular focus on a family of graphene-like discotic liquid crystals.

All welcome – any newcomers to Second Life, if you want to come, but you get stuck/get lost/just need some help getting started, by all means drop me a line and I’d be happy to meet and show you round Second Life beforehand.

Date: Thurs 21st Feb

Time: 9am SLT, 12pm EST, 5pm GMT.

Location: Second Nature Island

Contact: Joanna Wombat

Axolotls are unusual animals and I’m sure they feature in every undergraduate zoology course as the most famous example of neoteny, but I can vouch that they also make very good pets: for anyone with time on their hands, hand feeding an axolotl raw liver is definitely more rewarding than watching a goldfish go round and round in a bowl.

I discovered the axolotl was on the list by reading Darren Naish’s blog Tetrapod Zoology, a blog covering dinosaur bones, cutting edge conservation and anything in between: highly recommended to anyone interested in four-legged things that you’ve never even thought of.

Monday 3rd March, 5pm GMT, Simon Colton from Imperial’s Dept of Computing will be talking about his work using a computer to generate works of art. Sounds a bit off-beat, but it’s won him an award for machine intelligence from the British Computer Society. Matt the Nature Network editor has interviewed him, so take a look at his article for all the details.

Monday 10th March, 5pm GMT, Helen Meredith from the Zoological Society of London joins us for a discussion of the EDGE project. In its second year, it is a flagship ZSL programme for conservation of EDGE - Evolutionarily Distinct, Globally Endangered – species.

More details nearer the time on both of those – also stay tuned for speakers on science and science fiction, climate change and carbon dating.

In RL, CeAire and Hawc are known as Deb and Doug Brown and are heavily invovled with manatee conservation in Florida. Join us with them as they tell us all about the manatee, its biology, its conservation status and what is being done to save it.

Title: Mermaids or Manatees: Myth & Reality

Abstract: Do you have a clue as to what a manatee is, what they eat, or where they live? Why are they on the endangered species list and what are some of the issues that have put them there? For answers to these, and other questions you may have about manatees, please join us as CeAire and Hawc Decosta give an educational presentation on “Meet the Manatee”, information about the real life organization Save the Manatee Club, and ways you can help save this gentle sea cow.

Date: Monday 18th February 2008

Time: 5pm GMT, midday EST, 9am PST/SLT

Location: Second Nature Island

Contact: Joanna Wombat

This event is free and open to all: voice will be used, so get there early if you need help setting it up or IM me (Joanna Wombat) beforehand.

Save the Manatee

IUCN Red List species information

‘Snooty Cam’ at the Parker Manatee Aquarium

Recent article reference development and dugongs in Japan

Recent article concerning public comments solicited for swimming with manatees rules

But of those 300 people, I’m sure I can’t even have met half of you and I’d like to. I really want to know what other people are doing in real and Second Life and to find out what you think we should be doing. I would also like some more friends to add to my meagre list.

So if anyone would like to meet up and say hi, I’m going to be spending much more time in world. I’m around quite a lot now, I just find I tend to log in, do other stuff and come back to SL to find someone was trying to talk to me and I rudely ignored them for ages…! So from now on I’m going to have times when I actually concentrate on being in SL. I notice from our stats that most people visit in the afternoon GMT, so for the next few weeks I’m going to be on Second Nature, in the events area, every day from 4-5pm GMT / 8-9am SLT. Come and visit! I’m also around to meet up pretty much any other time as well, so if you want to meet up some other time, just IM me.

It’s called An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears: it’s epically long and with very small print, so I’m only about half way through, but so far I can whole-heartedly recommend it to any scientist. Can’t vouch for this, having never read it, but it’s supposed to be very much the same style as The Name of The Rose.

Set in 17th century Oxford, the plot surrounds the murder of a New College fellow. A young girl is charged with the crime, and the book takes the form of four participants all relating their view of events. The first author is a Venetian would-be physician, and the whole of his testimony chronicles his work in Oxford pioneering blood transfusions. I really know so little about the development of modern medicine and it’s fascinating – the supporting characters include Robert Boyle, John Wallis and John Locke and it spares no detail of what they’re working on. Boyle is currently busy inventing the vacuum chamber! Sadly no sign of Robert Hooke yet (quite keen on him having paid so many overdue book fines to his library while in Oxford…) but I’ll keep you posted.

First up will be Deb and Doug Brown on Mon Feb 18th, talking about their work conserving the endangered manatee in Florida. Deb is a particularly welcome guest as she is also known as CeAire DeCosta, one of our first ever attendees at a Second Nature event!

Manatee, for anyone wondering

Following on from that will be the rescheduled George Monbiot event. George is a well known blogger and author and will be talking to us about his views on the current global warming debate and what we as individuals and a society need to do about the climate.

Thirdly, we welcome Dr James Kirkpatrick, the winner of the Roy Prize for Physics, awarded annually to the best PhD thesis submitted in materials physics. James is a member of the Imperial College Experimental Solid State Physics Group, working on the use of organic materials in solar cells.

Dates and times below: watch this space for details of these and more upcoming events. All events will be held on Second Nature, and will be free and open to all.

Speaker: Doug and Deb Brown
Topic: Manatee conservation and classification
Date: Mon 18th Feb, 2008
Time: 5pm GMT, 9am SLT (Pacific)

Speaker: George Monbiot
Topic: Global warming and what to do about it
Date: Thurs 21st Feb, 2008
Time: 5pm GMT, 9am SLT (Pacific)

Speaker:Dr James Kirkpatrick
Topic: Using organic materials for solar cells
Date: Mon 25th Feb, 2008
Time: 5pm GMT, 9am SLT (Pacific)

Second Nature Cafe: Photo by Hiro Sheridan

The first year was a bit of a baptism of fire: in our very first week as landlords, we came back in after the weekend to find our entire island covered in the most beautiful forest, with buildings, sandy beaches, tropical plants of all kind – and we had no idea who had put it there or why. It was almost a shame to destroy it, but we had no such compulsions about our second group of squatters: they built several houses on our land and when we politely asked them to leave, they became agressive and rude. “Oh, well”, we thought, “at least we’ve seen the back of them”. All was quiet for a few weeks, until we hired a freelancer with a jet-pack and considerably more knowledge than us. He took one look at the island and reported that the same squatters had immediately recognised us as complete newbies and built an entire city in the sky just out of sight above the clouds! We promptly returned the foreign objects and stood by as several angry avatars fell to earth around us…

Anyway, since then, we have learned a lot as landowners, expanded to three islands, hosted meetings, displays and research projects and launched the Second Nature lecture series. All of these things will continue this year: the events will re-commence in February and more details on those and other projects will follow shortly. We will also be relaunching Second Nature to make it much easier to navigate and creating a dedicated website for all our SL information.

Just for now, though, two things: firstly, I would like to say thank you very much to everyone who has visited Second Nature, who has attended an event, built an exhibit or just shown an interest in any way. After technical catastrophes, my biggest fear was that we were totally wasting our time, so I’m glad at least some people think we’re doing something worthwhile!

Secondly, if anyone has any feedback, comments, questions, whatever, please do send it my way, in the comments or by email to j.scott@nature.com. I really want to know what you think is worthwhile and what isn’t, what you’d like us to do in 2008, any suggestions for people you’d like to see speak, any volunteers to speak themselves! We can only really guess at whether what we’re doing is worthwhile so any feedback welcome: no comment too trivial or too critical.

You can read Euan’s commentary in last week’s Nature on the topic, and you can also listen to his talk, the Q&A session that followed and view his slides below.

Thanks again to Euan for coming and providing some fascinating food for thought – any feedback for him or us, drop me a line at j.scott@nature.com.

Euan’s talk and Q&A (mp3, 40MB)

Euan’s slides

For anyone who couldn’t make it, Tara’s talk, slides and references are available below. I’d like to thank Tara very much for coming, and if anyone has any comments or feedback for us or for Tara, please leave a comment or email me and I’ll be happy to pass it on.

Disclaimer: the recording of Tara’s talk was fairly poor quality, so we invited Tara into our studio to re-record after the event because we thought it would be better than the distorted original. We asked all the questions which were originally asked. This mp3 is the result. Any questions, let me know.

Tara’s talk and Q&A (mp3, 38 mins)

Tara’s slides

References:

Slide 3: Barker T., I. Bashmakov, L. Bernstein, J. E. Bogner, P. R. Bosch, R. Dave, O. R. Davidson, B. S. Fisher, S. Gupta, K. Halsnæs, G.J. Heij, S. Kahn Ribeiro, S. Kobayashi, M. D. Levine, D. L. Martino, O. Masera, B. Metz, L. A. Meyer, G.-J. Nabuurs, A. Najam, N. Nakicenovic, H. -H. Rogner, J. Roy, J. Sathaye, R. Schock, P. Shukla, R. E. H. Sims, P. Smith, D. A. Tirpak, D. Urge-Vorsatz, D. Zhou, 2007: Technical Summary. In: Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [B. Metz, O. R. Davidson, P. R. Bosch, R. Dave, L. A. Meyer (eds)], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Slide 4:
International Energy Outlook 2007, Chapter 5: coal, US. Department of Energy, Report # DOE/EIA-0484(2007),

Slide 7:
Parson and Keith, Science, 282, 1053-1054, 1998.

Slides 9, 17:
Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada, National Energy Technology Laboratory, US DOE, 2007,

Slide 11:
Unpublished data courtesy of Hu Dong

Slide 12:
Hesse, M.A., H.A.Tchelepi and F.M. Orr, Jr., “Scaling Analysis of the Migration of CO2 in Aquifers”, SPE 102796, Presented at the 2006 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, TX, 24-27 Sept 2006

Slides 13-14:
Qi R., V. Beraldo, T. LaForce and M.J. Blunt, “Design of Carbon Dioxide Storage in the North Sea Using Streamline-Based Simulation,” SPE 109905, Presented at the 2007 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Anaheim, CA, 11-14 Nov, 2007

Slide 15:
Riaz, A., M. Hhesse, H. A. Tchelepi and F. M. Orr Jr, Onset of convection in a gravitationally unstable diffusive boundary layer in porous media, J. Fluid Mech. 548, 87–11, 2006,

Slide 23:
Seto, C, Analytical Theory for Two-Phase Multcomponent Flow in Porous Media with Adsorption, PhD Diss. Stanford University, 2007

Slide 25:
Jessen, K., Tang, G-Q and Kovscek, A.R. Laboratory and Simulation Investigation of Enhanced Coalbed Methane Recovery by Gas Injection, Transport in Porous Media, Online Friday, October 12, 2007,

Slide 27:
IPCC, 2005: IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage . Prepared by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Metz, B., O. Davidson, H. C. de Coninck, M. Loos, and L. A. Meyer (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 442 pp.

Slide 28:
Cook, P., CO2CRC a Global Perspective , Presentation, Dec 2005,

Apologies for the short notice, but I will post here when we have new dates.

We are rescheduling as we speak and I’ll let you know when we have a new date.

Euan will be talking all about his commentary piece (going online and free access in Nature tonight, links tomorrow), where he discusses how important monitoring the climate is, and how we’re getting it right and wrong.

All welcome – see you there!

Time: 6pm GMT, 10am SLT, PST Location: Second Nature Island Contact: Joanna Wombat

Tues 4th Dec, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT
Tara LaForce, Imperial College, on her research into carbon capture and storage

Thurs 6th Dec, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT
Professor Euan Nisbet, Royal Holloway College, London

Tues 11th Dec, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT
Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change

Thur 13th Dec, 5pm GMT, 9am PST, SLT
George Monbiot, Guardian Columnist and author of Heat: How we can stop the planet burning

The UN conference runs from the 3rd – 14th of December, and over that fortnight, Second Nature will play host to a range of speakers including Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Climate Change Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change ; Dr Tara LaForce, Imperial College on her research on carbon capture and storage and George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and author of Heat: How to stop the planet burning.

The first speaker will be Tara LaForce on Tuesday 4th December at 6pm GMT/ 10am PST, SLT: all events are free, open to all, and will be held on our flagship Second Nature island.

Speaker details are in the next post, which will be updated as and when: for more details on times, dates and new speakers, watch our this blog for updates, email me, or join the “Nature” group in Second Life. Lastly, if anyone’s interested, but has never tried Second Life before, now’s a good time, and I’d be very happy to help anyone get started and show you round Second Life – email me, or find me in SL as Joanna Wombat.

Our guest is Sue Scott, a patent attorney working as a consultant to Abel & Imray in London. Before that, she acted as an advisor on patent matters to the UK government on a number of occasions, was Head of Patents at BTG and originally began life with a chemistry degree from Oxford.

Sue will talk to us all about patents in science, why patents exist and are controversial, explain the basic things all scientists need to know about patents, and attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions about patents.

Judging by the interest in at the last abandoned event, I’m certain this is going to be a fascinating event, and Sue is prepared for rigorous questioning!

All welcome – please do come along! Voice will be used, so if you need any help setting up, come along a few minutes early.

Date: Monday 5th November

Time: 11am SLT/PDT, 7pm GMT

Location: Second Nature Island

Contact: Joanna Wombat

Shai has a broad range of interests, and today will be talking to us about his recent publications on vertebrate taxonomy.

How many species are there in the world? How do we know if we’ve found a new one, or if it’s just a sun-kissed version of the same old leopard? And why is conservation so dependant on accurate classification?

Join us with Shai for a discussion on all these questions, an introduction to the species of the world and a broader look at conservation policy in general. No specialist knowledge required – all welcome!

Voice will be used – come along ten mintues early if you need help setting it up.

Title: Are we artificially inflating number of species, and why does this matter?

Speaker: Dr Shai Meiri, Imperial College

Date: 29th October – TODAY!

Time: Midday SLT/PDT, 3pm EDT (East Coast time) 7pm GMT (London time)

Location: Second Nature Island

Contact: Joanna Wombat

• The clocks have gone back in London, and this has left me so confused about time, so I hope this is right – it is definitely 7pm GMT, everything else was worked from there using the World Clock

Luciftias, also known as Drexel University’s Dr Corey Hart, gave a very interesting overview of the origins of the project, some of the results so far and his ideas for the future. He then took questions and led a tour of the ecosystem.

If you missed out, we have recorded the talk and the questions: read on below the break.

Luciftias (Dr Corey Hart, a neurobiologist from Drexel University in his spare time) is the founder of the EWG, who created the content of the popular sim Terminus. On Terminus, a group of scientists and programmers created a series of “living” creatures which survive, reproduce and interact according to defined rules. The result is a fully functioning ecosystem, which has recently moved to a new home on Second Nature.

The basic lifeform, the Cannon Plant. Join us to meet more exciting animals!

Luciftias will be telling us about the ecosystem, what it does, results so far, and what their future ambitions are. He will take questions and then lead a tour of the ecosystem.

All welcome for what promises to be a fascinating look at one of the most interesting scientific uses of Second Life to date.

Date: Monday 22nd October

Time: 9am SLT/PDT, Midday EST, 4pm GMT, 5pm BST

Location: Second Nature Cafe

Contact: Joanna Wombat

The new date is Monday 5th November at 11am SLT/PDT, 7pm GMT. Brits take note – this is 7pm UK time, the clocks having changed the week before!

I would like to thank Sue very much for being so calm about everything and agreeing to reschedule and apologise to her and to everyone else who came along.

A quick explanation: around half six, everything was running smoothly, voice was clear and the presentation was prepared. By 6:45, the voice had stopped working for some unknown reason. We prepared to give the talk by text only. Then, just before seven, the whole region started crashing – myself, Ian and Sue, in the Nature offices could only stay on the island for a few seconds before crashing again. Others reported the same problems, and it became apparent that there was no option but to reschedule. We tried our best to explain this to everyone in our brief visits in between being unceremoniously logged out again!

I have investigated the cause and can’t see anything wrong with the island: I can only assume it was just Second Life being temperamental.

I hope this won’t happen again, but Second Life being Second Life, we will take note from this and ensure we have a plan B in case it does. In the meantime, there seem to be no problems today, so fingers crossed all will be well now, and at the next event which is on Monday – more details in the next post, hope to see you there!

Our guest is Sue Scott, a patent attorney working as a consultant to Abel & Imray in London. Before that, she acted as an advisor on patent matters to the UK government on a number of occasions, was Head of Patents at BTG and originally began life with a chemistry degree from Oxford.

Sue will talk to us all about patents in science, why patents exist and are controversial, explain the basic things all scientists need to know about patents, and attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions about patents.

Judging by the interest in patent matters at last night’s event about affordable drugs, I’m certain this is going to be a fascinating event, and Sue is prepared for rigorous questioning!

All welcome – please do come along! Voice will be used, so if you need any help setting up, come along a few minutes early.

Date: Tuesday 16th October

Time: 11am SLT/PDT, 2pm EST, 6pm GMT, 7pm BST

Location: Second Nature Island

Contact: Joanna Wombat

Further to last month’s post, the two auctions of sponsorship opportunities at the International Spaceflight Museum are live on eBay.

Apollo Lunar Module

Lunniy Korabl

The first has 5 bids, the second 4 so far, and the top bidder (who is the same for both) has currently bid $31.

The lives of poor people in developing countries should not be dependent upon their ability to pay for medicines that cure infectious diseases. There is an opportunity to make cost-affordable medicines for patients who do not receive any treatment at all. Millions rather than billions of pounds can have a major impact in many parts of the world where big pharma has little interest.

Sunil Shaunak is Professor of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London and a co-founder of PolyTherics. He is dedicated to showing how academics can produce medicines for a fraction of the existing cost and proving that this approach represents an exciting new opportunity for making patented cost-affordable medicines available to patients who currently receive no treatment.

Join us for a talk by and informal discussion with Professor Shaunak on Second Nature. No specialist knowledge required – all welcome.

Speaker: Professor Sunil Shaunak

Date: Thurs 4th Oct

Time: 11am SLT, 2pm EST, 6pm GMT, 7pm BST

Location: Second Nature Island

More info:

Nature article about Professor Shaunak’s work

Feature 1 on Professor Shaunak’s work

Feature 2 on Professor Shaunak’s work

Professor Shaunak’s homepage

Due to technical hitches (more below the break), the audio wasn’t completely recorded, I’m afraid, but Professor Mellor’s slides give a very comprehensive view, so definitely worth reading. They’re available here:

Professor Mellor’s slides

Thanks very much to Philip for an excellent talk at short notice, and to everyone else for coming – hope to see you on Thursday!

This was the first event we had attempted using entirely voice, and I think it went surprisingly well considering my constant expectation of disaster.

There were a few people in the audience who hadn’t activated voice – thanks very much to Troy McLuhan for helping them out. I think by 10 minutes in or so, there were only a couple of people who couldn’t hear. Anyone who had problems, by all means get in touch and I can help you set it up before the next event. The voice itself was OK, I think – I listened to it afterwards, and after initially being 95% crackle, we moved the microphone away and it seemed much better, although still occasionally crackly. Memo to self: put microphone much further away from speaker in future!

The recording also worked fine – until 30 mins in when the computer went into sleep mood and cut it off! So I’m afraid no recording this week, but next week we will be wise to this.

I think the biggest lesson for me this week is about the slides. I don’t think they really work – I hear from people who can see perfectly, and people who can’t see them at all. From now on, I’m going to ask the speakers to keep slides minimilistic, with nice large text and graphics only.

Lastly, with regards the voice/text issue. I’ve had several people say they don’t want/can’t understand voice and lots of people say voice is infinitely superior. So I thought the obvious solution was simultaneous voice and text. Oh, no! I’ve now had quite a few people say that this is over-whelming and makes it difficult to follow the voice. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I do sympathise with anyone who for whatever reason isn’t keen on voice. But I really feel that voice is really a much more interactive experience and those who can hear it get much more out of it. So I’m afraid we’re going to stick with the voice. This week as a trial, we will provide the text in notecard form: anyone who wants it, may have the notecard with the full text and follow it in their own time. I hope this will prove satisfactory – as always, feedback welcome.

Anyone who would like help setting up voice, turn up 15 minutes early, and we will run through it then.

This week, I will be leaving the speaker alone with another helper, and I will be free to help people in the audience, take pictures, that kind of thing. If anyone has any questions or problems, please do drop me a line – as Joanna Wombat or by email. Hopefully that will make things easier – this week is a really interesting talk on making cheap, ethical drugs for the developing world, so please do come along!

Hot on the heels of another Foot-and-Mouth disease outbreak, a Bluetongue Disease outbreak was declared in the UK last week. This summer, there have been 3,000 reported cases of Bluetongue in Northern Europe alone. What is Bluetongue? How does it spread, why is it here now and where will it go next? And is it all because of climate change?

Picture from IAH fact sheet, showing the Bluetongue virus

Join us for a special session with Professor Philip Mellor from the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright for a discussion of all the details of Bluetongue, what we can expect from the outbreak and whether global warming is going to result in Bluetongue and other animal diseases becoming the norm.

Title: Bluetongue Disease special

Speaker: Professor Philip Mellor

Location: Second Nature Island

Date: Thursday 4th October

Time: 7am SLT, 10am EST, 2pm GMT, 3pm BST

Contact: Joanna Wombat

Note – this session will be using voice only. For help on how to set up voice, IM me (Joanna Wombat), or visit the Second Nature cafe ahead of time to read the insturctions.

More info:

Bluetongue disease
Professor Mellor’s research group

I’d like to thank Phil very much for coming and for bearing with us through all the technical challenges. Thanks also to everyone for coming, and as always, I’d love to hear feedback on this event and the series as a whole. Is it worth doing it at all? Who would you like to see speak? What time is a good/bad time? Any technical comments? Any feedback much appreciated, in the comments box or direct to me at j.scott@nature.com.

Back to Phil’s talk – slides, text and dicussion below the break:

From the press release:

The International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), a non-profit, volunteer-run educational facility in the virtual realm of Second Life (SL), takes its exhibit sponsorship auctions to eBay to attract the attention of more real-world bidders.

The sponsorships for full-scale models of two lunar vehicles are up for auction—the “Apollo Lunar Module” (built by Lora Chadbourne, SL
name) and the unflown Russian “Lunniy Korabl” (built by Helori Pascal, SL name). The auctions will run from October 1 to October 21, and sponsorships will begin on November 1, 2007 and end on January 31, 2008.

Winning sponsors will have their names prominently displayed on the exhibit’s display signage. They may also elect to have a logo displayed for an additional fee.

Kat Lemieux (SL name, Katherine W. Prawl in real life) is co-founder of the museum and CEO of the nonprofit ISM Corporation. She said, “The exhibit sponsorship auctions allow us to give individuals as well as organizations the opportunity to support the museum, and get some recognition for their contributions at the same time. We are very interested in seeing whether eBay auctions are a viable approach, since this might permit us to reach a much larger donor pool than only holding silent auctions within Second Life.”

Will keep an eye on this and report back with links when the auctions begin.

I do think it’s interesting, and I’m curious to see if there will be any interest from people not already well versed in Second Life. Sponsorship is something we’ve been thinking about recently with regards the events we’re holding, and we thought that it might be a good opportunity for people who are interested in Second Life, but don’t really have any ideas beyond branding. I’m not sure what the monthly traffic is to the ISM, but I’m sure it must be thousands, so why wouldn’t RL companies want to sponsor that just like anything else?

Island Britain is separated from the European continent by the English Channel and the North Sea. But it was not always so. The floor of the Channel provides evidence for two catastrophic floods arising from the drainage of huge glacial lakes in the area of the southern North Sea. These megafloods carved the Dover Strait to make Britain the island it is today.

Picture from Nature

Join us with Professor Phil Gibbard, Dept. of Geography, Cambridge University, for a talk and discussion on recent research in the English Channel that has revealed evidence for two catastrophic “megafloods” hundreds of thousands of years ago which led to the creation of Britain as we know it today. Professor Gibbard will talk about how these floods defined Britain’s geographical future, sealed our sttus as an island and had profound implications for natural life in Britain and the climate of the North Atlantic.

No specialist knowledge required – all welcome!

Speaker: Prof Phil Gibbard

Location: Second Nature

Date: Thurs 27th Sept

Time: 11am SLT, 2pm EST, 6pm GMT, 7pm BST

Contact: Joanna Wombat

For more info, see the full description

Picture by Troy McLuhan

The slides, talk and discussion are all archived below the break.

Following last week’s success, we thought we would be a bit more ambitious and experiment with voice. This, combined with other things, led to perhaps inevitable teething troubles…

The plan was for Graham to deliver the talk using voice. Simultaneously, I would provide the text in the same sentence-by-sentence style as last week for anyone not able to hear the voice. I’m not sure how the audio worked: had a couple of positive comments and also a couple of reports of problems with it fading in and out. Anyone try and use the audio? How was it? Feedback much appreciated in the comments or to j.scott@nature.com.

More distressingly, SL was down for maintenance for much of the afternoon, coming back up about an hour before the talk. Except for Second Nature… After half an hour of frantically trying to get the island back up, then relocate, Second Nature finally reappeared just after 8pm. We all hot-footed over there, and sent messages to tell people that we had made it and the talk was going ahead. We eventually started about 20 minutes late, slightly frazzled but at least all in the right place. Despite the issues, I counted about 25 or 30 people, which in the circumstances, I think is a big success – thanks to everyone who made it and apologies to those who didn’t. Thanks also to Graham for coming and for being so very good-humoured in the face of disaster all around!

Next week: join us on Thursday, 11am SLT for a discussion about the formation of the English Channel. More details to follow.

And with that, on with the talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flkgNn50k14 (1:00)

Professor Martin is the Professor of Avian Sensory Science and will be telling us about his work on Great Cormorants:

Photo by Sławomir Staszczuk

Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) show the highest known foraging yield for a marine predator and they are often perceived to be in conflict with human economic interests. They are regarded as visually-guided, pursuit-dive foragers, so it would be expected that they have excellent vision much like aerial predators, such as hawks which detect and pursue prey from a distance. However, research shows that underwater the visual acuity of Cormorants is surprisingly poor (in fact, similar or worse than unaided humans under water) and very inferior to that of aerial predatory birds.

I suggest that Cormorants are able to detect typical prey items only at close range and conclude that cormorants are not the aquatic equivalent of hawks. It seems that their efficient hunting involves the use of specialised foraging techniques which employ rapid neck extension to capture prey that cormorants flush from hiding places; much like the foraging techniques of herons. Cormorants seem to be hunting an “escaping blur”. Like herons, the eye movements and visual fields of cormorants allow visual scanning for escaping prey in a wide arc about the head. The ability of cormorants to see prey held in the mouth may help to aid its identification when it is brought to the surface before swallowing.

Speaker: Professor Graham Martin

Location: Second Nature Island

Date: Wednesday 19th September 2007

Time: Noon SLT, 3pm EST, 7pm GMT, 8pm BST

SL contact: Joanna Wombat

Picture by Troy McLuhan”

About 40 or so people came to the talk, and there were lots of questions for Phil afterwards. His slides, talk and the full discussion are all in the full post below.

All in all, I thought it was really successful – an excellent turnout and loads of really positive feedback. Couple of technical glitches to iron out, and I think we’ve learnt something about what does and doesn’t work on slides in Second Life.

Most interestingly, I now feel much more confident of doing these talks, and I want to try audio next: we will still do text, because so many people still can’t use voice, but I want to try doing audio and text simultaneously, see how that works out. Maybe it will be really distracting for those who do have audio (a bit like watching subtitles on the TV) but I still think it’s worth a try. Maybe next week, maybe the week after – stay tuned for news.

Anyway, I want to say a huge thank you to Phil for coming and being our very first guinea pig and thank you to everyone for coming – see you at the next one!

Title: New polymerases for old DNA: molecular breeding of polymerases for damage bypass and amplification of ancient DNA

Speaker: Dr Phil Holliger, MRC, Cambridge, UK

Location: Second Nature Island

Date: Thursday September 13th, 2007

Time: 11am SLT/2pm EST/6pm GMT/7pm BST
SL Contact: Joanna Wombat

Good news: the Second Nature event series is about to begin and the very first event is this Thursday.

Our first guest is Dr Phil Holliger from the Medical Research Council Molecular Biology Lab in Cambridge. Phil works with ancient DNA: DNA samples retrieved from specimens of forensic, paleontological or archaeological interest. DNA naturally degrades over time, making it very difficult to amplify and analyse, and Phil will be talking about a new way to rescue genetic information from damaged DNA, which he recently tried out on a 60,000 year-old cave bear. After the talk will be a discussion on this or anything else you care to ask Phil.

No specialist knowledge is required, and entrance is completely free, so please do come along and see what it’s like. To come, you will need a Second Life avatar. Getting one is free: go to www.secondlife.com/join to get started. If you need any help getting started or get lost when you are in Second Life, by all means email me and I will come along and teleport you to the safe haven of Second Nature!

Speaker: Dr Phil Holliger, MRC, Cambridge, UK

Location: Second Nature Island

Date: Thursday September 13th, 2007

Time: 11am SLT/2pm EST/6pm GMT/7pm BST

On a side note, I’m quite new to blogging – what is the etiquette with cross posting? I want to alert as many people as possible, and I think some people probably do read here but not Nascent or vice versa – so is it OK to just post the same text twice? Seems a bit of a waste of my life to rewrite the whole thing with different sentence structures just to make it different…

1. The next event, Definitions in Open Science, is this afternoon, 4pm GMT/5pm London/9am SLT. All welcome, it’s on Second Nature

2. For keeping up with the session calendar, Jean-Claude has created a SciFoo Lives On wiki. Presenters at each event can link to their websites, slides etc and anyone can make new suggestions for sessions.

3. The area has been revamped, so it now looks like a series of plots. Each plot will hold one poster, so the old session posters can still be archived and visited.

4. On that note, Jean-Claude has come up with a way to make the area into more of a permanent poster session. If you take a look, you will see that some of the poster have large bells sitting on the grass in front of them. The idea is that if you are interested in a poster, you can “ring” the bell and send a message direct to the owner of the poster

The bell tells you whether the owner is on or offline by displaying the presenter’s name in large green or red letters above it (which I notice upon previewing this post are mysteriously absent from the picture…). If the owner is online, they will receive the message straight away. If not, the message will be sent by IM to them for them to read later. Tip for poster owners: CTRL-P, then set your prefences to deliver IM to email – this way, you will get an email alert whenever someone sends you a message about your poster. Then you can come into SL and talk to them about it when you’re free.

Anti-Aging: The Prospect of Human Life Extension
Dr Peter Clifton, CSIRO Theme Leader Obesity, Affiliate Professor Department of Medicine and Department of Biomedical Science, Adelaide University

Professor Clifton is a researcher in Obesity and Diabetes at CSIRO and is co author of the CSIRO Total Well Being Diet Book. He does clinical work at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Flinders Medical centre. Advances in longevity will come in Western societies through the use of stem cell replacement of ailing organs, greater use of biomaterials, and more intensive screening for disease.

Join this fascinating Second Life seminar as Dr Peter Clifton discusses anti-ageing and the prospect of human life extension.

2 AM SL Time (PDT)
5 AM EDT
9 AM GMT
10 AM in London, England
7 PM in Sydney, Australia

Where: ABC Island

Yesterday was Medicine 2.0, written up here by the co-moderators Bertalan Mesko and Jean-Claude Bradley. I couldn’t make it myself – taking advantage of a Bank Holiday in the UK - but by all accounts it was a really good discussion with about 30 people attending.

Next up is a discussion on the definitions of Open Science which will be next Tuesday, 4th September at 9am PDT/4pm GMT/5pm BST. All are welcome, so do come along, and if you would like to put a poster up, get in touch with Jean-Claude. Suggestions for new topics are also welcome: Video in Science has already been suggested and is coming soon.

Apparently back in September 2005 a super-villain, a flying serpent called Hakkar, was supposed to be doing battle with high level players.

Hakkar, WoW baddie. Photo by Jemimus

Unfortunately, a bug of some kind caused him to transmit a “corrupted blood” virus to humans and other creatures in the game, causing half the population to be infected. I think it was a serious curse – a quick Google search reveals lots of reports of “cities filled with corpses”. Some players managed to get immunity, but became carriers, and others actively tried to spread it. It spread like wildfire, affected players at all levels and all sorts of quarantine methods were put in place with varying degrees of success.

This is news now because it’s been written up for a paper being published in The Lancet next month. The authors have analysed the spread of the disease and individual players’ responses to it, with a view to forming strategies for dealing with epidemics in the real world – the theory being that this is a good model of the real world because the players have such an emotional investment in the game. The detailed records mean you can see exactly how the epidemic spread, and additionally look at how to keep the public informed: what level of information caused panic, etc etc.

Disclaimer: I really don’t know anything about WoW, so this is just what I read in the paper and might be totally innaccurate, but it seemed an interesting story to me – does this kind of thing happen a lot?