Funny advert placement

I'm sorry to my more serious readers, but I just could not resist when I saw this. The ad placement next to a story about our work on sexual versus asexual reproduction is priceless. The full story appears here on the UPI site. The paper is here on the Molecular Biology and Evolution site.

People, Content & Technology @ ScienceOnline2010

I am a very frequent attendee and eager participant at scientific conferences: I have logged ~100 in my ~20 years in science. To me, meetings are easily one of the top five things that make being a scientist so much fun. Exchanging ideas (new & old), meeting people (new & old friends), showing off your work (usually new, but sometimes, old), having a good time (which never gets old!)....these reasons are all part of the experience. But sometimes meetings just get you fired up about something(s) and you leave with a fire lit under you. This was one of those for me. And although I knew that I would enjoy myself at Science Online 2010 (aka #scio10) and meet at least some of the criteria above, I was not prepared to leave with my rear side roasting with so many ideas and so much inspiration.

The jazz I got from #scio10 comes from three intertwined categories:

People. Meeting and interacting with people is my favorite conference activity. It's especially great when I first meet someone in person whose work I have followed. This is true for science meetings, but it worked on a wholly different scale for me at #scio10: of the 200+ attendees, I had previously met no more than 10 in person. However, I knew at least 50 more from their online work—mostly science bloggers. Come to think of it, that's probably alot like what happens at a graduate student's first scientific meeting, and I am reveling in that re-found sense of discovering a community that fits. And then there are the people that I met for the first time who I knew nothing about in advance. There are always new people to meet, especially when attending conferences for the first time. But I was stunned by the fraction of people I met who fell in the category of "why did I not know you before?". I can just hope that some of those folks had the same reaction to meeting me!

The intersection of people and content was probably the most amazing thing about this meeting. I have never seen such a meritocracy. Sure, science is based on merit, but there is a real ladder to climb and sometimes a glass ceiling to break. The participants at this meeting ranged from a 9th-grader who writes science computer games to internationally known science journalists (and a HUGE range in between). Many (probably most) of the presenters were self-made experts in newly emerging areas, some in the process of earning PhDs etc., and some that don't need to play in the academic world. Even in the currently-difficult times for both science and journalism (and many other things), there was a clear sense of "Yes we can!" that permeated #scio10 .

Content. The meeting couldn't have started out on a more content-relevant note for me: the first session I attended was "From Blog to Book: Using Blogs and Social Networks to Develop Your Professional Writing"As I am now digging into my sabbatical book project, this session jolted me to attention. The advice of Tom Levenson, Brian Switek and Rebecca Skloot was just what I needed. I must decide very soon whether to pursue the academic publisher route or to try the trade route taken by authors of most successful popular science books. Next on my schedule was "Rebooting Science Journalism in the Age of the Web" in which a panel discussed the sometimes uneasy ecosystem of blogs and more traditional media outlets. The somewhat controversial press-release site, Futurity, created some heat (and maybe some light), but the memorable lesson by Carl Zimmer about his reporting on the twisted biology of duck penises generated the most virulent meme of the whole meeting. In the third morning slot I joined the "Scientific Visualization" session in which Tara Richardson (@science_goddess) regaled us with the latest cool tools and facilitated some interesting discussion on this under-appreciated (and thus, under-developed) aspect of science communication.

On Saturday afternoon, I attended the helpful session "Scientists! What can your librarian do for you?"which reminded me that I can almost certainly make use of those smart people whose mission is to help me do my science (and writing) better. Next was "Open Access Publishing and Freeing the Scientific Literature (or Why Freedom is about more than just not paying for things)" moderated by friend and colleague Jonathan Eisen (aka @phylogenomics; pictured above). It's going to be a tough road to OA publishing, but I am starting to see that it is a fight worth waging. For the final session of the day, I joined the packed-to-the-gills session "Writing for more than glory: Proposals and Pitches that Pay" moderated by Rebecca Skloot with key insight from Ivan Oransky and Clifton Wiens. Although much of the session was aimed at pitching stories to magazines, there was a fair bit of discussion of book proposals and how to craft a project that publishers will buy—literally. Much to my chagrin, the first lesson was that the pitch "My book is on X" doesn't fly. Stories sell books and topics don't. OK, more homework for me...it might be a good thing that my book is "on Sex", but that isn't enough. So when the participants were invited to give their pitch to the experts, I knew that I wasn't up to snuff. However, shark researcher (and future author) David Shiffman (@whysharksmatter) bravely jumped right in—to our benefit. The most memorable line from the pitch-dissection was 'NPR is more important than PhD'; since David had been interviewed on NPR. Indeed, as I later found out to my surprise, David doesn't have his PhD (yet).

After a great banquet and party on Saturday night, I was ready to go again on Sunday morning, starting with "Broader Impact Done Right" hosted by a panel of postdocs, grad students and science communicators. The opening film, in which various portrayals of scientists in movies and television made us both laugh and cringe, presaged some great discussion about how we can appeal to various constituencies that we really need to reach. Since I wanted to hear more about science journalism, I next attended "Getting the Science Right: The importance of fact checking mainstream science publications — an under appreciated and essential art — and the role scientists can and should (but often don’t) play in it" I was surprised to learn about how unevenly the fact-checking is done, and when it is done, how arduous and expensive it can be! In the category of saving-the-best-for-last, the final session that I attended was "Blogging the Future – The Use of Online Media in the Next Generation of Scientists" in which a group of high school students from Stacy Baker's Biology Class individually presented their projects, ranging from an analysis of student use of blogging and the social web for education and fun to iPhone application development for science learning. These kids absolutely stole the show with their poise and content, giving many of us renewed confidence for science and its communication in the future.

Technology. As if the people and content weren't enough, in these three short days I also experienced some serious surges in my use of and appreciation for technology. For the first time ever, I didn't bring a pen or pad of paper to the meeting. I took all of my notes on my iPhone, which was the only device I used while onsite. In my office is a two-foot pile of legal pads and notebooks containing mostly illegible notes from 20 years of previous meetings. But in my difficult transition from paper to electrons (I am a very slow keyboard typist), I have gotten lazy about note-taking over the past years. So I was glad to find out for myself that I am a reasonably adept two-thumb note taker! And I can email myself my notes with one click!

I also jumped in with both feet to Twitter. As an occasional tweeter (@johnlogsdon), I use the medium for some things, but I had not yet figured out the ratio of function:fun. By using the hashtag #scio10 all of the meeting tweets were instantly readable by all of the twitter-ers (onsite & off) in REAL TIME. By the end of Day 1, I was hooked. As of writing, my total (13-month) tweet count is 235—of which ~70 were sent during the three days #scio10 (which currently total >6300)! Granted, some of those tweets were part of the fun game played at Saturday's banquet, in which the fastest tweet with the right answer won a prize. I apparently have mastered speed-tweeting, since I won one of the prizes: a signed copy of Rebecca Skloot's forthcoming book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (see image above).

There's so much more that I didn't say here, but I hope that my account will give you a sense of how pleased I am to have participated in #sci010. Thanks to Bora Zivkovic (pictured above), Anton Zuiker and everyone else (including the generous sponsors) who contributed to ScienceOnline 2010!

Mary Roach orates on orgasms

Mary Roach is the author of Stiff, Spook, and most recently—and very relevant to me—Bonk . She gave a very entertaining TED talk on "Ten things you didn't know about orgasm". It's both funny and informative.

I read Bonk last summer (?) and while I enjoyed much of it, I also had some mixed feelings. Perhaps I'll put together a review sometime.

In the meantime, enjoy...

Thanks to Pleiotropy for the lead.

Nature's 15 Evolutionary Gems

This week's issue of Nature (1 Jan 2009) includes a 17-page article by Nature editors Gee, Howlett & Campbell entitled "15 Evolutionary Gems". It's a tidy summary of key articles published in Nature in the past decade that each provide clear evidence for evolution. The summary article (and apparently all of the primary articles) are "free to download and disseminate, and each is accompanied by a brief editorial introduction to its context and significance". The article is featured in Nature's special website Darwin 200.

The summary article starts...

"Most biologists take for granted the idea that all life evolved by natural selection over billions of years. They get on with researching and teaching in disciplines that rest squarely on that foundation, secure in the knowledge that natural selection is a fact, in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun is a fact.

Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful for people to have to hand. We offer here 15 examples published by Nature over the past decade or so to illustrate the breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking. We are happy to offer this resource freely and encourage its free dissemination."

Obama: Science and Facts are Valued

I don't know much about Steven Chu yet, but I am pleased that Barack Obama has selected a real scientist for his cabinet.

I heard the following quote from Obama twice on my home from work yesterday and again this morning:

"His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science, we will make decisions based on the facts..."

I cheered out loud! The full text of Obama's announcement can be found here. (Photo from Change.gov)

I voted for Obama this morning

I like to vote on Election Day, and I sucessfully resisted the considerable urge for Early Voting this year. Since I was anticipating a wait at the polls, I got up a bit early this morning. I arrived with my 11-year old son, Evan, at the polling place for Coralville 6 (Wickham Elementary, his school) at ~7:40am. Evan went over to the Kid's Voting booth and voted while I initially got in the wrong line (no coffee yet)... After waiting in line for a few minutes, I realized that I needed to sign-in. So I did that and returned to the line to pick up my ballot. The line was ~20 people long and was moving briskly. There were ~15 voting carrels on one side of the gymnasium (the same gym that was jam-packed with Democrats on Caucus night).

The ballot was a two-sided legal-sized document with bubbles to fill in. As it turns out, I could have just bubbled-in the Democratic strait ticket. But it was a lot more fun to fill in the bubbles separately for Obama/Biden, Harkin, Loebsack and few others. I showed Evan my vote for Obama and he approved. We then together fed the ballot into the reader and each picked up "I VOTED" pins. All together it took about 15 minutes.

I am looking forward to a new start for this country!

Dodos: Free in Iowa City!

Tomorrow (Monday, Sept. 22) in Iowa City I will be co-hosting a free public screening of "A Flock of Dodos" in Biology Building East (BBE) 101 at 7:00pm. This event is part of Scienceblogs 10^6 comment festival, via our two Iowa City-based ScienceBlog-ers, Tara Smith (Aetiology) and Evil Monkey (Neurotopia). It is also associated with the Evolution undergraduate course (Biology, 002:131) that I teach with Bryant McAllister (can you say "extra credit"?)

According to Wikipedia:

"The film attempts to determine who the real "dodos" are in a constantly evolving world: the scientists who are failing to promote evolution as a scientifically accepted fact, the intelligent design advocates, or the American public who get fooled by the "salesmanship" of evolution critics. While Randy Olson ultimately sides with the scientists who accept evolution, he gives equal air time to both sides of the argument..."

Thanks to the filmaker Randy Olson for allowing us to screen this film for the public! I'm looking forward to it, since I have not seen it yet.

Future Sex in Iowa??

Things have settled down a bit here in Iowa City. Although a significant portion of the campus has been hit hard by the flooding, my Department, lab and home have all been spared. We are "suspending non-essential activities" on campus this week, which means that my Department and lab are shut down for the rest of the week. Thanks to everyone for their concerns and kind wishes in this difficult time.

The organizing committee has not been able to meet to discuss the possibility of re-scheduling the Sex & Recombination meeting for a future date. I'll be querying the registrants in the coming weeks for their thoughts. I am also strongly considering attending the Evolution 2008 meeting in Minneapolis next week (as I had originally planned). If so, I'll be looking forward to hearing peoples' thoughts on this matter in person.

Again, thanks to everyone for their patience in this difficult time.

(Wet) Sex in Iowa

For those of you who might be wondering, the Evolution of Sex & Recombination meeting is continuing as scheduled (Monday 16 June to Thursday 19 June). Although parts of Iowa City are being hit rather hard with floods, the meeting venue and most of the accommodations are still in good shape. Updates will soon be available on the meeting website.

Photo by atoomsen.

Dark Matter

A follow-up on a blog post from last year...

According to The First Post:

"The release of a new Meryl Streep movie about a campus killing spree, which was postponed last year after the shooting of 32 people at Virginia Tech, will not be delayed again – despite the recent spate of campus killings, including the gunning down of five students in a classroom at Northern Illinois University on St Valentine’s Day. Dark Matter is based on the true story of Gang Lu, a Chinese graduate student at the University of Iowa who shot and killed five people and paralysed another before killing himself in 1991. In real life, Lu's rage was fueled by his belief that he should have received honours for his doctoral dissertation that were instead awarded to a fellow student."

Here is a link to movie's website. (There is now a trailer that you can watch: Updated 7/29/08)

Darwin Day is Today!

Just a short post to wish everyone a happy Darwin Day! Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles' birthday. We are busy here in Iowa City finalizing the arrangements for our celebration.

Update: we got some nice press from the local blog, CorridorBuzz.com

Wired: Huckabee Denies Evolution

Wired Science has a good article on Mike Huckabee's denial of evolution. They feature the video that I have also placed here. This is a good opportunity to point folks to a great piece from Leonard Steinhorn and Charles Steinhorn where they consider "belief" in evolution: "Is the Theory of Evolution Really a Matter of Faith?".

Iowa Boy Goes to the Caucus

Last night I caucused for Joe Biden. Up until the last day, I was trying to choose between Joe and Bill Richardson. On the day before, I went to see both John Edwards and Joe Biden. Edwards was good (and a bit angry!) but Joe really sold me.

Biden's speech in Coralville was the best I had heard this year. He's really a smart, articulate guy. He's also a seriously-credentialed Democrat. And even though I don't agree with him on all the issues, I decided that he deserved a chance and my support. I truly thought he'd pull a decent fourth place that would launch him into the next contests. But that wasn't going to happen. At the end, only the big three (Obama, Edwards, Clinton) were left standing.

At 6:30 pm I arrived at Coralville #6 with my wife, Debbie, who was supporting Obama. The line was literally out of the door of our local elementary school. There was clearly something happening. After a few minutes in line, I got interviewed by the Press-Citizen (our local paper). I said that I'm supporting Biden since he is ready to be President tomorrow (admittedly, parroting his speech from the day before) AND that he can clearly beat the Republicans. Curiously, neither of these are reasons why I supported Kucinich in 2004, but I really don't want to see a repeat of the Kerry-2004 debacle...

In the end, 763 people showed up to caucus as Democrats in our fairly well-to-do upper middle class (and very white) precinct! This was almost twice the turnout of 2004. The results of our caucus were summarized by the Press-Citizen. But here's the inside view from my perspective.

First of all, the Clinton group was largely older people (50+), with a high fraction of women. Interestingly, they had a huge spread of food that was tempting me since I had not eaten... The massive Obama group was quite young, but included many middle-aged (35-50) people and some older. The Edwards group was largely middle-aged to older. The big three ruled Coralville #6.

Biden and Richardson were about equal in support and were largely comprised by middle-aged to slightly older people. At 42, I was among the younger of the Biden group. Dodd's group apparently shared a similar demographic to Biden's (no surprise).

The initial vote for viability indicated that the Big Three were all OK, but that neither Biden, Richardson, nor Dodd were viable. However, if these three could join up, we could generate a viable group (together, we had more than the required 15%). I was happy with this possibility since I was torn between Richardson and Biden until the end anyway. So I encouraged our Biden precinct captain to negotiate with the Richardson camp. The idea was to field an "uncommitted" delegate that would represent whichever of the three candidates were still standing by the time of the county convention. But the precinct captain for Richardson wanted to stick with him, so most of the Biden supporters left for the big three.

There was just not enough time (30 minutes) to convince most of the 129 (57+53+19) people that "uncommitted" was a viable option that would yield a delegate. Too bad. As it turned out, both Biden and Dodd dropped out last night, but we we couldn't know that... At one point, the Edwards captain was trying to get all of the Biden supporters to join in, including offering a possible county delegate slot in exchange. But there wasn't enough time...

Literally at the last minute in the second round of voting, I cast my lot with John Edwards. I still think that he is best Democrat of the Big Three. I had already decided that I he would be my #2. I'm glad that he got second place in Iowa. I hope that it will give him legs for the rest of the month. He's the real deal for populist Democrats. His message needs some more positives, but he's the only one telling it like it is for working people. I hope that this message will resonate.

I'm also really pleased for Barack Obama. Iowa showed its true colors last night even though we are not very racially diverse. I really think that most Iowans are color-blind and this result consistent with that assertion. I remain a bit uneasy about Obama as the nominee, especially against the Republican Nasties, but I'm optimistic for his chances.

The 2008 political banquet is now out of Iowa's hands. I hope that we set the table well..

Caucus Conundrum: Considering Compelling Candidates

For those of you still tuned in, thanks. I hope to have some more science content to share in the coming year...

In the meantime, the Iowa Caucus is weighing heavily on me—at least for the next three days. I'm uncommitted so-far, and that is weird for me. I'm usually a man of strong opinion and steady conviction... But none of the candidates (Democrats, of course) are floating my boat this time around. Perhaps it's because I'd vote and probably even campaign for any of them in November. I just don't see huge differences among them.

Politically, Dennis Kucinich is closest to my convictions as was re-iterated by my third assessment by this poll. But I have a hard time supporting Dennis this time around, even though I caucused for him in 2004 (when he & Dean were the only anti-war candidates). That's not to mention that Kucinch has all but forgotten Iowa this year (too bad for us).

The other choices are really pretty good. Last week I was leaning toward Joe Biden, who I blogged about earlier this fall. The recent debacles in Pakistan have certainly made me think even harder about international diplomacy (per se, not just foreign policy in general) as a key issue. I have always liked Joe's frank style, even if it gets him in trouble sometimes.

A few weeks ago, I went with my family to see Barack Obama (and Oprah) and it was made clear to me why people are excited about him. I like Obama, but there seems to be something substantive that's missing. My wife and many of our friends are Obama supporters, but I'm not sure what it is that's keeping me from jumping on the train. I think that Barack will be the nominee.

Which brings me to yesterday. Although I had not paid much attention to Bill Richardson so far, I saw that he was in town giving a speech and attending a few house-parties. So I decided to go and see for myself. I was impressed. I asked him about education and he was right on the mark. He knows that we are in dire straights for science and math teachers. When I asked Bill to guess how many of this year's ~60 student class that I teach (mostly junior/senior biology majors) were planning to be teachers, he correctly stated "zero" (usually 2-4 in previous years). This is scary—where will the next generation of teachers come from?? Richardson's plan includes a national minimum salary for teachers ($40K), which is a great start. Bill has a national service plan that would pay college tuition in exchange for voluntary national service. He's not just talking military here, either. His credentials in the international diplomacy arena (where we have lots of catching up to do) are really amazing. When I asked him about Science Debate 2008, he was interested and asked me to forward some info to the campaign (which I did).

How about today? Only three more days to go! I spent an hour this morning reading the Des Moines Register special Caucus section after watching some of the Sunday political talk. Hillary Clinton is giving a speech on Tuesday in Iowa City that I will probably attend. John Edwards and Chris Dodd are also in town in the next day or two. I hope that I'll be able to decide by Wednesday.

Science Debate

"Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy."

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum over at The Intersection have assembled a crack list of scientists and science bloggers to launch the the ScienceDebate2008 website. If you are so inclined, go over and pledge your support. They have also set up rapidly-growing groups over at facebook and myspace.

Elvislution!

A little Mojo Nixon for your pleasure!

Favorite Science Blogs

As ususal, I am late to the party where everyone is discussing their favorite science blogs. This was a no-RSVP-required affair that The Scientist has been hosting under the banner of "Vote for your favorite life science blogs". Most of my favorites are listed in the "Other Interesting Blogs" on the left of my blog. I actually use this list as my major navigation tool for blog-visiting. Of these, here are my most frequently-visited (and therefore most favorite):

Daily (or throughout the day):
Sandwalk. Bravo, Larry!
Pharyngula. Does PZ sleep?
Tree of Life. Jonathan says things that I wish I would have said (& some I'm glad I didn't).
FemaleScienceProfessor. Wow. FSP is anonymous and it really works!

Slightly less than daily:
Aetiology
Evolgen
Fungal Genomes & Comparative Genomics
Genomicron
Scientia Natura
The Evilutionary Biologist
The Loom

More than weekly:
all the rest.

My New Device

Yes, it's as cool as it seems. My wife got me an iPhone for my birthday this year! How am I so lucky? Although I was excited about it from the start, I let it sit unopened for a couple of weeks while I figured out whether I was really prepared to pay for it. My cell phone was with Verizon, so to activate the iPhone required me to switch to ATT (@ $60/month) and start another 2-year contract. And that's on top of the device buy-in (which was purchased prior to the $200 price cut). Anyway, it's out of the box now and I am really enjoying it. I recieved and sent multiple emails today while stolling across campus. My iCal is seamlessly synched between my laptop (MacBook Pro) and my iPhone, which means that I don't have to lug my laptop around so much. Sorry if this post seems like advocacy, but sometimes you just have to let out the joy! Back to science shortly...

Thomas "Vandy" Vanderford, PhD

Belated, but sincere, congratulations to Vandy on the successful defense of his PhD thesis on August 13th. His dissertation is entitled "Adaptation of a diverse SIVsm population to natural and non-natural hosts". Vandy was a student in the Population Biology, Ecology & Evolution (PBEE) program at Emory University and he was jointly supervised by myself and Silvija Straprans. Even though I moved from Emory to Iowa in 2003, Vandy continued to work with me on the evolutionary aspects of his research on SIV. To make things happen, he travelled mutiple times to Iowa City and I went to Atlanta a few times, too.

Vandy gave a clear talk which was followed by some questions by the audience and commitee members. His post-seminar defense was rather short--his committee didn't even grill him! What a lucky guy. Afterwards, Vandy was treated to a reception hosted by the Vaccine Center (where Silvija's lab was located--she is now at Merck). After the festivities, Vandy and I spent the remaining afternoon celebrating over a few beers (picture above taken at that time) while listening to The Raconteurs. Later, accompanied by Vandy's girlfriend, Mitzi (who drove) we had dinner and a few more beers at the Brick Store Pub. I'm proud to add Vandy to my list of PhD grads. Congratulations, Dr. Vanderford!

Dawkins Defends the OUT Campaign

Although I am a bit late to the party, I wanted to point OUT that Richard Dawkins has recently posted a nice essay about the OUT Campaign and why it is necessary. Here is a snippet:

"Our choir is large, but much of it remains in the closet. Our repertoire may include the best tunes, but too many of us are mouthing the words sotto voce with head bowed and eyes lowered. It follows that a major part of our consciousness-raising effort should be aimed, not at converting the religious but at encouraging the non-religious to admit it – to themselves, to their families, and to the world. This is the purpose of the OUT campaign."

PZ has already added his few cents to this and as I post, there are are already 319 comments.

Picture credit here. Thanks Matti A.