Around the Blogs

Once again, we bring together the best of this weeks posts from around the science blogosphere for your delectation. This week: Stress-sensing bacteria, mad biologists and how beer could seriously affect your publication rate.

Phages see the light. At Small Things Considered, Merry writes on an ingenious mechanism used by cyanophages when infecting their photosynthetic prey.

Don’t stress about getting ill. In this very nice article at Microbiology Bytes, Alan Cann describes how stress increases your chances of getting a bacterial infection.

Publications database entries. At Seven Stones, Thomas suggests that a more data-centric approach to literature publishing might make the job of scientists and peer-reviewers easier in the future.

The cell biology of cancer: A history [part 1][part2] At The Daily Transcript, Alex has written a fantastic historical perspective on the cell biology of cancer. In particular he shows how cell biologists viewed cancer initially as metabolic , then a genetic phenomenon… and then a genetic and metabolic phenomenon.

Don’t believe everything you read in a sequence run. At Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Sandra Porter talks about DNA sequencing errors she has encountered in a lab class she has taught.

Cn3D at the movies. Also at Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Sandra has made a movie tutorial on how to use Cn3D, NCBI’s molecular structure viewer. Cn3D featured in our article 10 links: Free PC Software for Molecular Biologists.

Mike the Even Madder Biologist. A creationist called Michael Egnor has made Mike the Mad Biologist even madder. The resulting three (yes three - told you he was mad) articles make interesting reading:

• 1: The Intellectual Cowardice of Michael Egnor
• 2: Egnor and the Creationists: Partying Like It’s 1859
• 3: Egnor: Don’t Know Much about Antibiotic Resistance

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008) After the passing of Arthur C. Clarke, Laurence Moran posted a few of his thought-provoking quotes.

Want to be a Scientist? Stop drinking beer. Bayblab covered a rather depressing article, written by the appropriately named Dr. Grim, apparently showing that beer drinking negatively affects publication output.

…and finally…

PowerPoint Karaoke. Don’t miss this great movie from the recent SXSW Battledecks II contest in which speakers try to give convincing presentations using powerpoint slides they have never seen before. It’s posted at Science of the Invisible.