Science journals for undergraduates that allow students to publish their work and experience peer-review process have been around for a while. Now they are becoming more abundant than ever and last ten years have seen first European undergraduate science journals kicking off.

It is interesting to see what they state as their aims in the light of Richard’s blog and recent discussion about science writing skills of scientists that stemmed from that blog. I didn’t see any that say that they are there to teach students how to write clearly and effectively. Most say they are there to allow students to learn about peer review, to reward students for hard work they’ve done doing the research or to showcase the quality of undergraduate research at the university.

Although undergraduate research journals are popular in the USA, they have only recently started publishing in the UK, based at the University of Chester (Origin), University of Leeds (Biolog-e), University of Surrey (SURJ), University of Nottingham (BURN), and nationwide by Oxford Journals (Bioscience Horizons).

But are these not perfect places for students to learn how to write clearly both for other scientists (undergraduate journals) and for the public (student popular science magazines)? I would say I learned a lot while writing and editing for student science magazine BlueSci. Initially I was very upset with the changes editors made to my, as I then thought, perfect articles. Later on, with experience in editing I realized that when student scientists write about something they’re passionate about they can make a fallacy of thinking that their writing is as good as their understanding and passion for the subject. This is often not true even when they try to write for popular science outlets.

Going back to learning writing as part of the science degrees; at Oxford we had tutorials each week which meant writing at least an essay or two per week. For keen students this was an ability to really review the topic and write solid 2-3,000 word articles. For the less keen this meant a hassle of putting together a 1,000 word essay. Apart from this, writing experience was minimal. A few lab reports and a dissertation at the end, none of which we were specially trained to write before we actually had to do it.

As a graduate student I had an opportunity to supervise some undergraduates for some of their biology courses. I was horrified to find that second year and even some final year students were never told to list references at the end of their essay. Since many of these supervisions are often similar and somewhat boring for students, I thought I’d make it interesting and get them to read some science blogs and practice writing about their course in blog style article.

The task was to read some blogs on specific topic and then choose the one that really intrigued them and comment on it as they would on a blogging site. Then they should attempt writing a brief blog on the topic from their course. Unfortunately my enthusiasm somewhat surpassed theirs when it came to doing this…Only two of the five students I set this assignmet actually did it. Even these two didn’t submit it thinking this was not important and more or less irrelevant to their course. They were there to get some facts out of me, not to learn about how great blogging was for science. Is this why web 2.0 is failing in biology as Martin reports?

It is nice to know that some people work to encourage science writing even in schools. For a good example of this see the Canadian science journal for school kids Eye on Science.

EuroScience Open Forum 2008 in Barcelona lined up a cool looking programme for their event this summer 18-22 July in Barcelona. From “human mind and behaviour” and ” engineering the body” to ” science and art” and ” science communication” their scientific sessions look fun, but not as fun as the events “Tapas with the Prof.”!

Science communication might be of interest to blogers, but I’m afraid they don’t mention blogging at all:

”Scientists increasingly see communication with the public as an essential part of their work. But it is hard for them to communicate directly with non-scientists, so researchers normally have to go through the broadcast and print media. What are the pressures on journalists reporting on research, from editors demanding ‘sexy stories’ on one side and researchers denouncing hype on the other? How far should journalists go in simplifying and popularising complex issues? Maybe a little humour could help? And can scientists improve the underlying scientific understanding of the population by becoming more involved in schools?”

They also have some interesting stuff for the pupils and students:

What is science in Eastern Europe like? From a brand new institute for life sciences MedILS at Split, Croatia, two researchers discuss the current state and future of science in Eastern and South Eastern Europe in their Nature Reviews article.

They say the current university-based science is not functioning properly in these countries because of the remnants of the old system and mediocre, ageing academics are hindering progress of the younger scientists. As a way forward they see establishments of small, focused research institutes, the kind that have been popping up all over Eastern Europe in the last couple of decades. In these, international collaborations, especially with expatriots, and international peer-review and funding may be the way forward for excellence in science in Eastern Europe.

I just posted my first blog post on a Croatian science portal, not dissimilar to Nature Network. It’s very exciting.

It’s a big site for a small country; journalists, scientists and students from Croatia and abroad can come to blog and collaborate through this portal.

There is a heated debate at the moment (16 comments in last 2 hours) about the newspaper article I bloged about a few days ago how cure for cancer is about to be found in Croatia. The nice thing is the author of the paper is there arguing her way and explaining the need for and rise of sensationalism and ‘tabloidism’ in not just the newspapers but also in journals such as Nature.

When there are no big sport news, political affairs, public scandals and celebrities don’t do anything too exciting Croatian newspapers turn to reporting science.

Image from the Slobodna Dalmacija article

This week I read two brief ‘reports’ on science in Croatia in Slobodna Dalmacija and Vecernji List.

As an aspiring science journalist I was glad to see that someone is finally asking scientists in Croatia about their work and potential applications. But as a Croatian I was dissapointed with the way the articles were written and intrigued by the comments after one of them.

The second article reported on a young chemist who tested a few chemicals and found some anti-cancerogen activity in vitro but is now short of funding for in vivo experiments.

The comments on the story seem to be of three basic types:

1) the ones attacking the sensationalist title: “At the tracks of cure for cancer” and invalidating the importance of the reported research by the young scientist

2) the ones saying the scientist should emigrate and become famous in the UK, USA or similar

3) the ones about conspiracy theory where pharmaceutical companies are blocking anyone from finding cure for cancer because it’s not in companies’ interest

I think the comments give a general picture of Croatian society as a whole:

1) scientists and educated people who can form an educated opinion about a scientific issue (minority)

2) general public who believes anything they read, if they understand it, about science and then blame the politicians for the lack of funding and opportunities; they also believe it’s all ‘milk and honey’ abroad (majority)

3) loud minority of people with strong opinions that are often very misinformed and twisted (minority)

Both articles go for the silly approach that Croatian society suffers from: the ‘we’re the best in the world but people don’t realize it’ syndrome. If our sportmen are not winning medals, scoring goals in the European football league or one or two of our intrenational actors are not starring in some obscure Holywood movie then our scientists are creating tornadoes, turning water into biofuel and finding cure for cancer.

“We even create tornadoes” is the title of the first article I mentioned above; “the cure of cancer could be found in Croatia” states the other article. When individuals in Croatia do something good we all want to be part of it: we’ve done it, we’re great!

I’m afraid until everyone starts doing their bits for the society and until we stop having false pretences for being acknowledged as the best country for everything we won’t even make it to the EU let alone anything else. Perhaps many Croatian scientists are doing exciting and relevant research; it might be a while until journalists manage to find the right stories to report and to do it properly.

Map of Croatia from: http://www.island-cres.com/Croatia-Map.jpg

A brand new issue under my editorial has just come out in print and online. Here’s my editorial for those interested:

” Welcome to the eleventh issue of BlueSci, your science magazine!
Instead of diving straight in to tell you about what you can read in this issue, I will first tell you about the articles we did not publish. These are the excellent articles submitted by our readers, but there was just not enough space to publish them all this time round.

Among the topics discussed in these articles are the ethical issues surrounding the pollution, kidney transplants and graduate research funding; paranormal research; evolution of human sexuality and cuckoo trickery; defence of the natural selection theory; role of genomics and micro-antibodies in cancer research…If these sound interesting, read on, because we have included equally intriguing articles and worked with authors to make them an informative and easy read for you.

Focusing on synthetic biology, a new field of bio-engineering at whose forefront in Europe are the researchers from the University of Cambridge, we bring you an insightful discussion about the benefits and fallbacks of this fascinating field in our Focus section.

The Arts and Reviews article reviews the science fiction art and discusses just how good sci-fi is in predicting development of new technologies. How our diet and life-style affect our health features in the A Day in the Life of… where Dr Rosemary Hall explains her work and research interests.

History article brings you etymology of the word ‘scientist’, which was coined in Cambridge at a revolutionary time for science. Initiatives article looks into new plagiarism software used by the University of Cambridge while Away from the Bench article brings you adventures of an african rock-art archaeologist. As usual, there is a host of complementary online material: films, podcasts, extended articles and further information about the topics covered.

I hope you enjoy the new issue as much as we enjoyed preparing it.”

There’s only a few hours left until simultaneous orgasm by thousands of people worldwide in their attempt to bring more peace with their joyful activity.

Global orgasm for peace is an interesting anti-war organisation that organises this global orgasm effort. Whether you believe the science behind it or not, why not join in just for the fun of it?

You can read more about it at various news websites.

Merry Christmas :)

Bee-rilliant. Really enjoyed the film: the colours, the animation, the characters..especially the depiction of a hive as a classy accomodation complex/cool city/big corporation workplace.

When it comes to science though, which plays a crucial role for lots of the issues touched upon in the movie, it seems a bit off. Opening scene is especially disapointing, it states something along the lines of “All the laws of nature say bees cannot fly” Wrong. This gets re-iterated later on in the film when Barry, the lead character, says he doesn’t care about what we humans think we understand about bees-he can fly even though we think in principle he shouldn’t be able to (according to our science). Well, wrong again, Barry.

The problem is exposed in the scene where Barry attempts to fly a plane after accidentally knocking down both of the pilots..He says something along the lines of:”Planes are just like bees, only bigger.” Well, no they’re not. Planes don’t flap their wings, bees do, and do so very quickly. It is the wing movements that allow the bees and other insects to fly. The so called unconventional aerodynamics of insect flight result from various movements of the wings.

Of course, a simple calculation modelling bee on a plane with stationary wings will tell you bees are too fat to fly with their tiny wings. Yes, if they flew like a plane, not moving their wings. But they don’t-they do move their wings. Scientists do understand how insects fly and bees are not too big for their wing size to fly-it’s a misconception.

Then, all the bees in the film have 4 legs. In real life it’s 6. All the nectar collecting bees in the film are males. In real life male bees do no work-females collect all the nectar and pollen. In film a bee gets one job for a lifetime (“they work you to death”). In real life bees progress through various jobs as they mature. Also, the film doesn’t mention production of propolis which is used in human diet and cosmetics; it’s too honey-centered.

Then they are the miraculous scenes of pollen bringing back to life all the flowers and dying plants…boy, will kids who see this movie struggle with their botany classes.

To be fair there were some correct bits such as that all bees are cousins (not strictly correct but on the right track), they produce honey and collect pollen, they pollinate flowers, sort of have special vision to detect flowers, cannot fly in the rain, their school years are turned into days in the movie (Barry spends three days in high school, three days at univeristy) which would be more accurate given the short life span of a bee.

It’s funny how this film has an amazing potential to acutally teach some biology to viewers without negatively affecting the storyline, yet no-one seemed to think it would be a good idea to make the science accurate. In stark contrast to this is the graphic novel series for kids Clan Apis which likewise describes adventures of a bee hero-this time a female, Nyuki, but with the engaging story also delivers biology to the readers.

scientificmatch.com promises to find your perfect match based on analysis of your DNA:”Our patent-pending technology uses your DNA to find others with a natural odour you’ll love, with whom you’d have healthier children, a more satisfying sex life, and more”, they say.

They quote a lot of research to argue how nature created us to avoid people with similar immunity genes in order to avoid inbreeding and produce healthier babies..they offer to help us with this choice for some reason (I guess the reason is so they can make money during this process).

The founder is an engineer who ‘spent years on researching about what scientists have discovered about human chemical attraction’. I’m a biologist and I think it would be difficult to spend more than couple of days to get a good feel for what scientists have discovered about human chemical attraction: really not all that much.

Although I’m all up for research on evolution of human sexuality, is this the way the society is going to misinterpret the results?

This makes no evolutionary sense to me…A new study claims 15 years age difference between man and a woman was an ideal difference for maximizing their biological fitness (number of surviving children, therefore genetic output).

The study looks at 17-19th century Sami people from Finland which were under influence of natural and sexual selection as natural fertility and mortality rates applied, argue the authors.
However, further back in our history we must have been even more at the influences of nature.

Assuming that people lived shorter in our evolutionary history than they do now and that women reached puberty and sexual maturity later than they do now, to achieve this age difference man would have to be around 30 years old in order to marry a reproductively mature woman who is 15 years younger than him.

Now is it just me or would this be some 15 years of reproductive potential wasted for this man? I find it difficult to believe that benefits of him being so much older would be enough to outweigh the costs of not reproducing for such a long time. We have to assume that such an older man would have the better resources to support children, but wouldn’t life span be much shorter in those days and wouldn’t 30 year olds be quite old in those days?

Image of Sami people from around 1900: