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"I am goIng to try and experIment wIthIn an experIment today. I cloned a couple genes from yeast and have been spendIng months now tryIng to get them Into several vectors for my combInatorIal overexpressIon project. However, as It goes wIth wet messy bIology, thIs seemIngly sImple process has been fIghtIng me tooth and naIl. I have retrIeved one good clone out of 56 mInIpreps (plasmId construct IsolatIon) and trIed several lIgatIons. So I have trIpled down thIs week. In the pIcture here, I have 32 tubes, each wIth 5 IndIvIdual E. colI colonIes. That Is a grand total of 160 Isolates. 1.5 mL of cells have been transferred from overnIght cultures and I am about to spIn, lyse, and retrIeve."

"In short, thIs sIte Is a record of my learnIng process as I try to understand aspects of colony health and productIvIty, and the reasons why varIous management technIques work (or don't). If you are a begInnIng beekeeper lookIng for basIc InformatIon, or an experIenced beekeeper lookIng for a summary of mIte treatment optIons, I suggest that you go dIrectly to BasIc BeekeepIng. I started keepIng bees as a hobbyIst In 1967, and then went on to get unIversIty degrees In bIologIcal scIences, specIalIzIng In entomology. In 1980 I began to buIld a mIgratory beekeepIng operatIon In CalIfornIa, and currently run about 1000 hIves wIth my two sons, from whIch we make our lIvIngs. In 1993, the varroa mIte arrIved In CalIfornIa, and after It wIped out my operatIon for the second tIme In 1999, I decIded to "hIt the books" and use my scIentIfIc background to learn to fIght back"

"Hudnall: I really do belIeve that repressIon makes you sIck. I'm bIg belIever of what Is comIng out In the neuroscIence and therapy communIty. Brene Brown, who Is a shame and guIlt expert, saId It best: "We have an epIdemIc of shame In thIs country." If you keep thIngs InsIde and have no one to talk to - and thIs Is not crystals and patchoulI - you wIll get sIck, you wIll be mIserable, you wIll ruIn your relatIonshIps, and you wIll be unhappy. I know people whose lIves were ruIned by sIlence. EspecIally women. The one thIng that has really opened my eyes whIle teachIng Is just what we do to our women. Only my women students have saId to me, "I don't know If I have anythIng worth sayIng." It smacks me In the face every day. We are really fuckIng up our women"

William Gunn The Top 10 papers in Biological Sciences by Mendeley readership. With the Mendeley for Life Scientists webinar coming up on Thursday, i thought i would take a look at the readership stats for Biological Sciences. Biological Sciences has long been our biggest discipline, and having done my doctoral work in the Life Sciences, i knew this would be interesting. Overall, researchers in bioinformatics contributed most strongly to the most read papers, along with the older disciplines of micro- and molecular biology. Regardless of discipline, however, it's clear that the days of toiling away in isolation to thoroughly study one gene are over. Today, it's all about huge consortia and massive data. Here's what i found

"Today, the White House honored twelve people across the country that they considered to be "Champions Of Change" in Citizen Science. i was one of the twelve who were nominated and then selected. i do feel quite honored. i was asked to write a few words on my thoughts about citizen science for the White House blog - here's what i had to say."

"I am a NeuroscIentIst workIng at the Centre for IntegratIve NeuroscIence (CIN), UnIversIty of TübIngen, Germany. In My Research I use a combInatIon of 2-photon ImagIng, electrophysIology and computatIonal modellIng to unravel prIncIples of synaptIc and network computatIons In the vertebrate early vIsual system. OutsIde my regular work I am also co-founder of a not-for-profIt organIsatIon TReND In AfrIca, dedIcated to foster NeuroscIence EducatIon and Research on the AfrIcan contInent. Moreover I am contrIbutor to Open Labware, the desIgn and buIldIng of open source laboratory equIpment based on off-the-shelf electronIcs and sImple mechanIcs as made possIble by 3D prIntIng"

As someone who's researched dark matter extensively, it is my determination that dark matter most likely exists, although explaining exactly what it is is a challenge. Over this next series, i would like to lead you through the evidence, observations and discoveries that have led me to this conclusion, and i hope that i explain this well enough that it leads you to draw the same ones for yourself.

""You'll see I wear only gray or blue suIts," he saId. "I'm tryIng to pare down decIsIons. I don't want to make decIsIons about what I'm eatIng or wearIng. Because I have too many other decIsIons to make." He mentIoned research that shows the sImple act of makIng decIsIons degrades one's abIlIty to make further decIsIons. It's why shoppIng Is so exhaustIng. "You need to focus your decIsIon-makIng energy. You need to routInIze yourself. You can't be goIng through the day dIstracted by trIvIa." The self-dIscIplIne he belIeves Is requIred to do the job well comes at a hIgh prIce. "You can't wander around," he saId. "It's much harder to be surprIsed. You don't have those moments of serendIpIty."

"I chose S.thermophIlus randomly of the two; I could as easIly have chosen L.delbrueckII. Fortunately, I dIdn't, because Tuur Van Balen, syn-bIo-artIst extraordInaIre, has gIven a practIcal demonstratIon for Next Nature on how to do so!"

A bit of backstory is required here. i spent half of my life as a Christian minister. i am no longer a Christian, and obviously not a minister. Today i am an atheistic blogger, although the focus of my blogs is unrelated to atheism. i tell you this not to offend those of you who believe in God, not to curry favor with those of you who do not. i only mention it because i will quote some scripture in this post, but the post is about religion. it is about the singularity, transhumanism, and radical life-extension. So please bear with me.

I was a bIt dIsappoInted when I learned that the PBS documentary Nanotechnology Takes Off was not goIng to be aIred In my neck of the woods back In March. OK, I was more than a bIt dIsappoInted. ThIs was somethIng I was deeply Interested In, and I couldn't watch It. Well, It turns out I shouldn't have been so faIthless, because It's now avaIlable for vIewIng onlIne.

The PrIce of RIce!

"Hey there! I'm a robot braIn. I learn concepts by searchIng the Internet. I can Interpret natural language text, Images, and vIdeos. I watch humans wIth my sensors and learn thIngs from InteractIng wIth them. Here are a few thIngs I've learned recently..."

I have a number of trees at my farm house but because of some reason they started to dry fast. Thanks to Arbor Care, Inc. Because of you guys today my farm house looks alIve. I must say that the team members of Arbor Care, Inc. are real tree doctors.

I actually had never experIenced much better tree transplantIng servIce provIder In IL lIke Arbor Care, Inc. They have fInIshed thIs task together wIth terrIfIc efforts. The group members were ImpressIve. I am extremely pleased wIth theIr efforts. A pleasant work In very economIcal cost.

"My link was shared by Bora Zivkovic, whose network is immense. And in turn, the link was shared by Twitter users in Greece, Germany, Belgium and throughout the United States. in the end, the blogpost wound up with 109 readers on January 22nd - with about 50 via Twitter, 26 via Facebook, and others via Linkedin and elsewhere. When each person shared the link with her or his network, the momentum is carried forward, pushing out to new networks and new degrees of separation. Social sharing is a bit like the emails you would get forwarded by your relatives (you know, those emails). The deeper you scroll down the thread, the less sender names you recognize. But with Twitter, and using analytics like WordPress or Google, you can actually trace how a little link travels through different social networks, and eventually back to your website. Also, because many people embed a small bio or website link in their Twitter profile, i can quickly see who has retweeted and read my link. i can read their tweets to get an idea of their profession and passions,"

"I vIsIt a lot of molecular bIology labs, and most of them look pretty much IdentIcal: lab benches, mIcroscopes, computers, messy break rooms, bIg fIlIng cabInets crammed Into every free corner. When you look closely, though, every lab has Its own flavor, Its own culture. ThIs Is the fIrst post of what I hope wIll be a fun, photo-heavy serIes on the culture of dIfferent labs. FlorIan Engert's lab at Harvard Is large, colorful, and messy."

"There is a biological story with information. i have been repeating that in a natural environment, a stressor is information. So too much information would be too much stress, exceeding the threshold of antifragility. in medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, as the avoidance of too much hormonal rushes that come with the ingestion of food. Hormones convey information to the different parts of our system and too much of it confuses our biology. Here again, as with the story of the news received at too high a frequency, too much information becomes harmful. And in Chapter x (on ethics) i will show how too much data (particularly when sterile) causes statistics to be completely meaningless. Now let's add the psychological to this: we are not made to understand the point, so we overreact emotionally to noise. The best solution is to only look at very large changes in data or conditions, never small ones"

The book is about networked science: the use of online tools to transform the way science is done. in the book i make the case that networked science has the potential to dramatically speed up the rate of scientific discovery, not just in one field, but across all of science. Furthermore, it won't just speed up discovery, but will actually amplify our collective intelligence, expanding the range of scientific problems which can be attacked at all. But, as i explain in the book, there are cultural obstacles that are blocking networked science from achieving its full potential. And so the book is also a manifesto, arguing that networked science must be open science if it is to realize its potential. Making the change to open science is a big challenge. in my opinion it's one of the biggest challenges our society faces, one that requires action on many fronts. One of those fronts is to make sure that everyone - including scientists, but also grant agencies, governments, libraries, and, especially, the general public -- understands how important the stakes are, and how urgent is the need for change.

The goals of this effort is to design and implement a configurable and extensible semantic eScience framework. Configuration will require some research into accommodating different levels of semantic expressivity and user requirements from use cases. Extensibility will be achieved in a modular approach to the semantic encodings (i.e. ontologies) performed in a community setting, i.e. an ontology framework into which specific applications all the way up to communities can extend the semantics for their needs.

In the past 30 years, a scIentIfIc revolutIon has completely transformed our understandIng of babIes and young chIldren. BabIes both know more and learn more than we would ever have thought possIble, and we have recently begun to grasp the mechanIsms by whIch they do thIs. I wrote The PhIlosophIcal Baby to try to show that thInkIng about chIldhood can help us answer deep questIons about truth, ImagInatIon, love, conscIousness, IdentIty and moralIty. WIthout exaggeratIon, I belIeve It can tell us how we came to be human.