Science Lush

The Lush List: National DNA Day, Warhol and the Commodore Amiga, Net Neutrality

NATIONAL DNA DAY

Friday, April 25th is National DNA Day, which commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, and the discovery of DNA's double helix. The National Human Genome Institute (NHGI) has all kinds of ways to celebrate and participate on their website.

One of the highlights is the American Society of Human Genetics Essay Contest. The 2014 winner is Rachel Gleyzer, a 10th grader from Hackensack, NJ, who wrote about the role genetics and the environment play in absolute pitch, "a person's ability to accurately and instantly identify a musical tone's pitch." As a recovering musical theater major who struggled through music theory classes, I'd love to finally have something besides my bad ear to blame for my difficulty with sightreading.

I love that her biology teacher, Carol Zepatos, emphasized the fact that "It's very important that good scientists are good communicators." Along with my fellow Scirens, I'm participating in the LIVE CosmoQuest Hangoutathon this Saturday at 12pm PDT to raise money for the virtual research center whose goal is to provide anyone with an interest in space the opportunity to partner with scientists using NASA data to explore the Solar System. One of the things we'll be talking about are communication skills and ways that scientists can better use the media for both education and outreach to the general public.

Of course, my favorite hero of DNA Day is Rosalind Franklin, whose research was crucial to the discovery of the helical structure of DNA. Sadly, she did not win the Nobel Prize in 1962  along with James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, as she passed away at the young age of 37 in 1958. The Nobel Prize can only be awarded to the living; had she been alive at the time, one can only hope her work would have been recognized. For more on Franklin, check out the following books and plays:

-Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox
-Rosalind Franklin and DNA by Anne Sayre
-Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler

 
COMMODORE AMIGA'S 15 MINUTES OF FAME
Back in the mid-1980s, Andy Warhol created a series of images, doodles and photos on the Commodore Amiga home computer. Until now, the only record of these were was an image of Blondie's Debby Harry that's part of a collection at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

But then YouTube came to the rescue!

New media artist Cory Arcangel saw a clip of Warhol from 1985. In the video, Warhol is at the Commodore Amiga's promotional launch event where he's working on the image of Harry.

As described in the press release from the Andy Warhol Museum:  

During Arcangel’s November 2011 visit to Pittsburgh for his exhibition Masters, at Carnegie Museum of Art, he followed up on this topic with curator Tina Kukielski.  Kukielski, who was also a co-curator of the 2013 Carnegie International, subsequently joined the Hillman Photography Initiative at CMOA.  Kukielski and Arcangel reached out to CMU’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, run by Golan Levin, who connected them both to the CMU Computer Club, which is a student organization known for their comprehensive collection of obsolete computer hardware, as well as their prize-winning retro-
computing software development.

In 2011, Matt Wrbican, chief archivist at The Warhol, was approached by Arcangel and Kukielski to discuss the possibility of searching for files on the disks which he first saw in Warhol’s former New York City studio in 1991.  Having himself been an Amiga user, he shared their enthusiasm for the hunt for images.

Andy Warhol. Venus. 1985. Courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum.

In a statement, the Warhol’s Director Eric Shiner said, “Warhol saw no limits to his art practice. These computer generated images underscore his spirit of experimentation and his willingness to embrace new media – qualities which, in many ways, defined his practice from the early 1960s onwards.”

[Initial Source: The Verge]

NET NEUTRALITY UPDATE

I hope you like reading my posts. Wouldn't it suck if it took forever for my page to load in your browser, or if the videos that I shared with you took too long to play? Well, that could be the new harsh reality because of this week's decision by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to allow companies to essentially purchase a pass to the fast lane on the Internet.

Basically, it means that if a company has the money, they can pay for their content to get to consumers faster. Which pretty much puts an end to a free, open and democratic internet. Because we're all busy and impatient, which means that if something takes too long to load, we click away from it. There's no way the little guys can compete against huge corporations that have the dough to purchase their fast pass. It also means that the costs for those fast passes may make their way to the consumer. 

Or, as explained in this piece in The Guardian:

Consider: an ISP like, say, Time Warner Cable, tells, say, Google that its YouTube videos won't reach us at the, say, "gold package" speed we've already paid for ... unless Google, too, pays a gold-standard fee. That is nothing short of a protection racket, run by a company that has little or no competition. In an actually competitive market, an ISP couldn't conceivably get away with such a thing.

Not everything about the proposed rules, as leaked, is awful. Forcing ISPs to be much more transparent about the level of service they actually provide, for example, is highly useful. Getting them to comply honestly, given their record, is another story.

As an independent content creator, this is an issue that is extremely important to me. I'll continue posting thoughts and information about it. And if you need some background or want to take action, a good place to start is the article quoted above, which breaks down the situation and recommends several things to do in response.

The Lush List: 12/18/12 - Gifts for Science Lovers

 Looking for something fun for the science lover on your list?

Dvice.com has a neat list of "11 Cheap Gifts Bound to Impress Science Geeks." From plushy microbes to Mars rocks, the list includes items for both adults and kids. My favorites are the Gallium samples and the Aerogel.

GALLIUM
As described on dvice.com:

Gallium is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It's used in semiconductors and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting point, which is only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid gallium crystal in your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly melt into a silvery metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes back into a solid.

This video from the Periodic Table of Videos shows how Gallium will melt in the hand, and features a cool experiment called "the beating heart" where the scientists use sulfuric acid to change the surface tension of a gallium sample. Sidenote: Video is also worth watching for the fantastic hair on Scientist #2.

AEROGEL

I had my first experience with Aerogel when I was at the NASA Social for the Mars Curiosity landing at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and we got to see a sample of it. You can get your very own piece of the world's lowesty density solid over at ThinkGeek.com. This QUEST Lab piece gives the basics on the substance, including a little blowtorch demo showing off its insulation properties.

SCI-JEWELRY

GeekSugar's gift suggestions trend more towards the scientific lifestyle, with suggestions ranging from Laboratory Beaker Mugs to the Hungry Scientist Handbook. I'm a girl who likes her jewelry, so I am partial to the DNA Ladder Earrings from NB Designs. The shop on Etsy has a whole bunch of science-themed pieces, including Petri Dish earrings and a Bacterium tie tac. 

SCI-SLEEPOVER

If you're looking for something a bit more experiential, Business Insider's suggested gift list features a night at the American Museum of Natural History. Bring your sleeping bag and a flashlight, and get ready to frolic after-hours at the Museum before settling down to slumber beneath the big blue whale.

                                                                        Image: AMNH

The Lush List: 5/7/10 - Art & Bones, Neanderthal DNA and a Free Program at Griffith Observatory

1. ORGANIC ART

When one thinks art, "cockroach" isn't the term that usually comes to mind. However, a group of visual artists profiled in THE NEW YORK TIMES article "Of Compost, Molecules and Insects, Art Is Born" find their inspiration in such unlikely, organic subjects. Examples of such art are currently on display in the show “Dead or Alive,” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Reports Natalie Angier:

The museum recently hosted a round-table luncheon in which scientists and artists addressed the hardy evergreen issue of how much the arts and sciences had in common and where they differed. The basic conclusion: both enterprises are important, difficult, creative, driven by insatiable curiosity and a desire to solve problems, but artists are allowed to make stuff up and scientists really shouldn’t.

Helen Altman creates skull-shaped, spice-enhanced sculptures to turn death into a "sweet" thing; this made me think of my trip to Rome in 2008 during which I visited the Capuchin Crypt. The small space features artwork created out of the bones of over 4000 Capuchin friars who died between 1528 and 1870. Though some might find it a bit macabre, I was fascinated by it. Clearly, the bones hadn't just been thrown up on the walls - someone had to sort the bones and design the intricately constructed images I was now looking at, such as that of a skeleton surrounded by angel wings created out of pelvic bones.

As a writer, the Crypty piqued my curiosity about what kind of person would have been able to find the beauty in the bones. Did he or she see him/herself as an artist? As someone sentenced to a horrible task? Did they view it as a service to the dead? Angier's article shows that finding inspiration in such unusual materials is not a lost art.

Perhaps a clue from an inscription in the Crypt:

"Quello che voi siete noi eravamo; Quello che noi siamo voi sarete."
What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be." 

2. NEANDERTHAL + MODERN HUMAN SITTIN' IN A TREE...K-I-S-S-I-N-G...

Next time someone says you're acting like a Neanderthal, you may be able to reply, "Well, that's because we share DNA." As reported by Chris Stringer in TimesOnline,

In this week’s issue of the journal Science, a truly international team of more than 50 researchers have published their findings from a reconstructed Neanderthal genome of more than three billion bits of DNA coding...Using massive improvements in DNA recovery techniques and computing power, three small fragments of bone excavated from the Croatian cave of Vindija have provided most of the sequence. These three female Neanderthals who died around 40,000 years ago have been immortalised through their DNA.

The Neanderthal genome was compared to those of 5 modern day humans. Turns out that if you are European, Asian or New Guinean, the research suggests you may have between 1%-4% in common with the Neanderthal genome. Not so much so if you are from Africa, although researchers only looked at the genomes of a west African and a south African. A mixture would have been more likely to occur in someone from northeast Africa.

For a more in depth look at this story, including video commentary and a timeline of Neandertal-related discoveries, check out Science Magazine's special online feature on the Neandertal Genome.

3. LOS ANGELES EVENTS

If you're looking for something fun & science-y (& free!) to do in Los Angeles on Friday, May 7th, stop by Griffith Observatory for ALL SPACE CONSIDERED, their monthly astronomy update. Topics this month include the first images of the sun from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, volcanoes in the solar system, the May sky report, and birthday celebrations for both Griffith (75!) and the Hubble telescope (20). The event is held in the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater from 7:30-9:15pm

The Lush List: 4/23/10 - Earth Day, DNA Day and Fireballs

1. Thursday, April 22nd was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, with celebrations of Mother Nature around the globe. The Earth Day 2010 Action Center, a project of the Earth Day Network, has a variety of resources including sections for campaigns, events, petitions, action pledges and organizing tools. 

On Sunday, April 25th, the Earth Day Climate Rally will take place in Washington, DC, on the National Mall from 11am - 7pm, with the goal of urging the government to enact comprehensive climate legislation. If you can't make it to DC, the event will be streamed live on EarthDay.org. The line up looks pretty dang impressive, as well as entertaining. According to the Earth Day Network:

The Climate Rally will include notable speakers Reverend Jesse Jackson, film director James Cameron, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Olympic gold medalist Billy Demong, producer Trudie Styler, author Margaret Atwood, NFL player and television personality Dhani Jones, environmental photographer Sebastian Copeland and many more.

The rally will also feature live music from Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Jimmy Cliff, Passion Pit and Joss Stone, among others.

Need some inspiration? In a piece at The Huffington Post, Gene Karpinski, President, League of Conservation Voters, urges the public to look at Earth Day as more than just a yearly opportunity to install energy efficient light bulbs.

We can let ourselves once again be inspired to act boldly and think big. We can rally for new laws to ensure that all Americans can enjoy the clean air and water we asked for forty years ago. We can demand legislation that curbs global warming pollution and creates the jobs of the future. Perhaps most importantly, we can tell our legislators that the time for action is now. Since January 1st, over one million Americans have contacted their senators urging them to pass a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill this year.

2. Friday, April 23rd was National DNA Day. As described by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health:

National DNA Day is a unique day when students, teachers and the public can learn more about genetics and genomics! The day commemorates the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, and the discovery of DNA's double helix.

A moderated chat was held from 8am - 6pm during which NHGRI Director Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D. and genomics experts from across the institute and around the nation took questions from students, teachers and the general public on topics ranging from basic genomic research, to the genetic basis of disease, to ethical questions about genetic privacy. My favorite li'l tip: when a 9th grader asked the easiest way to remember the complementary base pairs, Sarah Harding, M.P.H. responded: 

I'm sure people have different ways to remember, but one option is to remember that G and C are both curvy letters, so they go together. That leaves A to pair with T.

3. For a little piece of outer space you can touch, head out to southwestern Wisconsin. If you're lucky, perhaps you can find a bit of debris from the that fireball streaked across the sky on the night of Wednesday, April 14th. As described by Space.com:

A camera mounted to a campus building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison caught the Wisconsin meteor's explosive demise. The meteor's sonic boom and explosion were also seen and heard by numerous witnesses, and sparked frantic 911 emergency calls across six different states, according to the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

Science Online 2010: Am Amazing Experience + Science & Entertainment Panel Review

Finally catching up on some long overdue blogging!

I spent a big chunk of January on the road, first in North Carolina at Science Online 2010, then at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. To read about my festival adventures, head on over to the News on the Doc blog at Documentary.org, where I chronicled my daily dose of movies and events and posted filmmaker interviews for the International Documentary Association.

While I'm a bit embarrassed that it's taken me so long to get something up about Science Online, aka scio10,  it's also been useful to have some time to reflect on the experience (multiple plane rides = good thinking time). A huge thank-you to conference organizers Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, the masterminds behind the 4th annual event.

I must admit, I wasn't quite sure what I was getting myself into when I agreed to head out to the Research Triangle. Compared to the rest of the attendees, I'm relatively new to the science blogging community, though I've had a lot of experience in the online space. But something about the participatory nature of the way the conference was put together (and the exuberant nature of Bora's Tweets!) gave me a good feeling, and now I'm so glad I followed my gut and made the trip. I knew it would be a weekend full interesting discussions about science; what I never expected was that there would be so many wonderful conversations about writing as well. Indeed, Science Online is just as much a conference about 21st century communication as it is about what happens in the lab.

Another unexpected delight at Scio10 was the diverse group of panelists and attendees. In addition to the expected authors, bloggers and scientists, there were museum outreach directors, high school students, teachers, science pranksters, iPhone app developers, underwater cinematographers, librarians, software developers, and more. The connective tissue amongst the group was a love for science and an interest in how it's being explored in the online space.

To that end, the event and its attendees made excellent use of Web 2.0 tools. Conference tweets, tagged with #scio10, were projected onto screens at the event venues. While you were in one session, you could see what you were missing in the others by keeping an eye on your phone's Twitter feed. Several panels were streamed into Second Life and live streamed on U-Stream, and those observing from afar could submit questions to the room. The wireless during the sessions, provided by SignalShare, rocked - it was robust enough to allow me to Skype in a guest speaker during my session. Almost everything was videotaped, and Bora & Anton & Co. are in the process of getting the vids online. You can find them here on Science in the Triangle's YouTube channel.

Science & Entertainment Session
I co-hosted a panel on Science and Entertainment with the lovely Jennifer Ouellette, author and science blogger extraordinaire. I presented several examples of cutting edge online campaigns and content pieces that either made use of or were inspired by real-life science, and Jennifer talked about her work with the Science & Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences.  In true UnConference model, we then posed several questions to the audience and opened it up to the whimsy of the room.

Topics of discussion included:

• If science's responsibility is to accuracy and Hollywood's responsibility is to good storytelling, where and how - or should - the two meet in the middle?
• How can science bloggers pursue relationships with Hollywood studios? Does Hollywood really care about what they have to say?
• Studio films such as Angels & Demons, Terminator, Star Trek and Avatar have the budgets to create innovative online content as part of their marketing campaigns. How can science adapt what they've created in the fictional realm and use it to explore real science online in new, attention-grabbing ways?
• With rich media experiences becoming more common online and drawing more eyeballs, how can good ol' fashioned blogging evolve so that it doesn't become the print media of the Internet?
• Currently, it's common for bloggers to point out the errors in the science contained in movies and television. Yet, film and TV have proven to be sources of inspiration for students, as good storytelling stokes the curiosity that eventually leads kids to pursue careers in science. With this in mind, is there a way to establish a more cooperative relationship between the the worlds of science and entertainment?
• As entertainment consumers move from a lean back experience to a more participatory role, how should science on the web adapt? 

Thanks to all who joined in the robust conversation; this sampling of Tweets from our panel will give you a sense of it...

@f1000 talks about scientific consulting on films like Avatar, TV shows like CSI and video games at #scio10 http://bit.ly/5PYlLn

@thegarbagegirl  Love this! http://www.thesoulstoragecompany.com/ Presented at #scio10 session on science and entertainment

@abelpharmboy  Alastair Jeffs: Have to be able to tell a good story; the science is great but...people want a story. Work w/a classical writer

@abelpharmboy  @tamarakrinsky noted that some networks have diversity mandates #scio10 12:09 PM Jan 16th from TweetDeck

@abelpharmboy @edyong209 @docfreeride So if one convinces a filmmaker that a young black girl discovering a drug would be a money-making story...#scio10

@edyong209  Passive consumers of entertainment are becoming active consumers. Want to take part. #scio10

@thegarbagegirl  @tamarakrinsky said something I've believed all along: people want to be involved in the story telling process

@abelpharmboy Hrynyshyn: why aren't there more "normal" people on Bones or House - Jen-Luc says normal does not make compelling characters

Janet D. Stemwedel (@docfreeride) has archived her extensive tweets from the session on a post on her blog Adventures from Ethics in Science - a great collection of observations! 

Another thing I'm digging about Scio10 is the continuation of conversations begun in North Carolina via blogs and tweets. Over on The Intersection, Chris Mooney posts: 

Science and Entertainment: Beyond Blogging – Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette: Hollywood getting into science = definitely cool. But will Hollywood’s ace marketers ever see a real need to court science bloggers to get the word out about films, given the relatively small size of our audiences and the vastness of their ad budgets? Not clear to me how much *we* matter, at least so far.

My response to Chris is that Hollywood will care as long as they think there's money to be made. And when I say Hollywood, I'm talking about the studios and the marketing engines...individual creatives like directors and writers usually have much more genuine interests in the science that's inspired them. Increasingly, bloggers fit into that revenue-generating equation. As audiences become more and more fragmented, finding ways to catch hold of the individual shards who may have interest in a film becomes increasingly important. For example, the online campaign for Coraline was built on identifying and generating interest from several different niche audiences. They buzz created by these early fans bubbled up to larger outlets, feeding the campaign and driving coverage by more mainstream media, thus helping the film to attract a wider audience.

LINKS
If you want to take a peek at some of the projects we showcased during the panel, here are some handy-dandy links for ya'...

Star Trek
This is an example of the innovative banner ad campaign designed for the film which allows users to rotate through the bridge (this one appeared on MySpace). At various places, hidden features allow you to launch a picture gallery and videos. Museums and labs take note: this could serve as inspiration for a virtual tours.
Agency Credit: Avatar Labs

Terminator: Salvation
[Note: the title link takes you to images used in the application, which is no longer available]
This Skynet Adobe Air Application developed for the Terminator: Salvation domestic movie release campaign featured a faux information processor. The sinister Skynet Corporation invited users to download the app to their desktops to help process information.  It mysteriously “broke” the day the film was released. This kind of app is an engaging way to distribute new video and text information to fans.

The designers were inspired by “SETI at Home,” a distributed computer programm  where users can download and analyze radio telescope data to help with SETI. Agency credit: Crew Creative

Cold Souls
This film stars Paul Giamatti as a man who puts his soul in storage for awhile so he can deal with some of his issues. As part of the marketing campaign, they created a humorous site for the fictional "Soul Storage Company," which allows customers to store their souls online. Site features include the ability to browse the soul catalog and take an office tour, complete with some lovely B-movie-esque video.

Angels & Demons
The “On Location” section of the movie site is an interactive map that contains factual information about the various historical locations used in the film. Hotspots open images, video, models and behind-the-scenes commentary to bring to light the fact behind the fiction. It's an engaging example of the way that a sci-fi film could potentially showcase real science, differentiating between movie and theory in a way that celebrates both the truth of the science and the imagination of the storytellers.

Avatar
The site for the film features an Adobe Air application which allows users to download an interactive trailer to their desktops that includes regularly updated newsfeeds and links to external content on sites such as YouTube and Twitter. The site creates a community by incorporating social networking tools such as the Typepad community and Facebook Connect.  

Routes Project
This groundbreaking multi-platform exploration of genetics and bio-ethics used a variety of platforms to engage a young audience. The science underpinning Routes was developed in partnership with the Wellcome Trust as part of the Darwin200 program celebrating the bicentenary of Darwin's birth. It included the following elements:

• An eight-part online mini series called ROUTES in which Katherine Ryan, a Canadian stand up comic, submits herself to a series of genetic tests by 23andme. The Routes website tracked Katherine's progress as a video documentary.
• The site featured community challenges and flash based games based on genetics. Taking part allowed users to amass points. The highest scorers each week were entered into a prize drawing for a chance to win a gaming console.
• A corresponding fictional murder mystery intertwined with the documentary. Eight 4-5 minute episodes aired online and on Channel 4. The audience could delve deeper into the mystery through character video blogs, images from the "investigation" on Flickr, and SMS/text clues.
• Live promotional events included a launch event and comedy show.

**A special thanks to Alistair Jeffs from Oil whom we Skyped in during the panel to talk about the details of the Routes project.

Agency Credit: Oil

The Lush List: 6/20/09

THE LUSH LIST
An irregularly, posted list of SciCultureTech that catches my eye...

1. Quote of the Week: Iran and Science
Sometimes I find I have to go backwards to go forwards. As part of my attempt to better understand what's been happening in Iran this week, I went back and re-read "Tehran or Bust: A Journey Through the Heart of Iran," a piece by Hooman Majd in the June 1st issue of Newsweek. I found an interesting comment about Iran's attitude towards scientists. Discussing current events with his driver, an off-duty policeman from Isfahan, Madj writes:

"He [the driver] felt he should leave the big political issues to the experts, for he had only a high-school diploma. That Iranian scientists have mastered enrichment technology at Natanz is not only a source of pride for Isfahani policemen, but also for almost all Iranians, who place a premium on scientific study and who rigorously apply an honorific - "Mohandes" - to anyone who has a degree in engineering."

While the resurgence of "geek culture" seems to be giving a boost to the American public's view of scientists, we still have a long way to go before spending time in the lab becomes a source of national U.S. pride.

2. Back to the Moon: Step 1
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) successfully blasted off on June 18th from Cape  Canaveral, FL. According to NASA's website, the goal of the unmanned mission is to create a comprehensive atlas of the Moon’s features and resources to aid in the design of a lunar outpost. If we're going to send astronaut's back to the moon by 2020, we gotta pick out a nice, comfy landing spot.

For a look back at our earlier efforts to get to the moon, check out "From the Archives to the Moon," a collection from the the US National Archives on YouTube. Right now there are three films up, including a biography of Astronaut John Glenn, a piece about Dr. Robert Goddard, the "father of rocketry," and this piece from 1967 about trying to get photos of the surface of the moon so they could figure out whether it was safe for a man to land there. Where's Google Sky when you need it?

3. Opera in Space
I was lucky enough to catch the Wooster Group's performance of La Didone at the Redcat theater this week. The show is a mashup of Francesco Cavalli's 17th century Baroque opera La Didone and Mario Bava's 1965 cult sci-fi movie Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires). The combo of the mythological story of Dido and Aeneas and a the crew of a spaceship who makes a crash landing on a planet full of body snatchers is exquisite and surprisingly funny. As past and future collide, Wooster uses a variety of multi-media elements to help tell the story, leaving the audience in a rapturous limbo of time and space. For more on the show and the history of the company, the review in  The New York Times has a good write up.

4. SNEEZE and DNA Games
I stumbled across RoutesGame.com thanks to a post from the ERV blog on scienceblogs.com. The collection of casual flash games includes fun stuff like a "viral" game that challenges you to infect as many peeps as possible with your sneeze, and a take off of Guitar Hero called DNA Heroes. After wasting far too much time playing the Sneeze game, I delved a bit further into the Routes site, which aims to take players into a world of genetics, evolution and the human genome using a variety of new media tools. For example, there's an interactive murder mystery that makes use of video, blogs and links across the web to help solve the crime. In another section, Canadian comedian Katherine Ryan embarks on a genetic testing quest to explore pressing issues such as whether her hangovers are caused by genes or gin.

According to the description on the site, Routes is a project of Channel 4 Education in association with the Wellcome Trust. The game was live from January 26th through to March 26th, 2009, but full archives are available so viewers can see the scope of the project.

5. Don't Be a Twit When It Comes to Safety
A piece in The Washington Post reminds folks to be mindful when tweeting on vacation. The great thing about social networking tools is they allow you to share your experiences with friends. But sometimes those 'friends' turn out to be thieves who capitalize on the fact that by posting pics & status updates, you've let it be known that you're out of town. As tempting as it can be to post the shot of you swimming with the Dolphins or partying in Prague, if no one else is at home, leave the vacation updates til you've returned. It's no fun getting away for some R&R, only to come back and find all your stuff gone.

15 Year Old Researcher Shares Thoughts on Stem Cells

Kyle Loh is 15 years old. He's also a researcher at Harvard's Stem Cell Institute. Recently featured on The Big Think's "Tomorrow's Great Minds: Big Think Presents 10 Under 25," here's what he has to say about where stem cell research is going.  

Experimental Porn

If petri dishes and injections turn you on, this is the video site for you! JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, features videos of experimental procedures. The site aims to take the private public, and provide a new tool for scientists to learn and share.

Each video has a table-of-contents-esque menu and narration that explains what's happening. Definitely a bit more complicated than the foolin' around I used to do with my chemistry set in the  kitchen as an inquisitive 9-year-old....

The site states:   

With participation of scientists from leading research institutions, the Journal of Visualized Experiments was established as a new, open access tool in life science publication and communication. We utilize a video-based approach to scientific publishing to fully capture all dimensions of life science research. Visualization greatly facilitates the understanding and efficient reproduction of fundamental experimental techniques, therefore contributing to the solution of two of the most challenging problems faced by today’s life science research community: (1) low transparency and reproducibility of biological experiments and (2) time-consuming learning of experimental techniques.

WARNING: If you could not stomach frog dissection in junior high, this is not the site for you.