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free open life sciences resources designed to spread knowledge of life sciences using new mediums.

This is written by the SVP of Scitable, Vikram Savkar. Seems like an amazing guy. http://www.scienceprogress.org/2010/05/invest-in-teaching/ Nice find, by the way.

Gerald Edelman believes neurons are selected for using darwinian principles.  His views on science are "Science is imagination in the service of the verifiable truth and that service is indeed communal. It cannot be rigidly planned. Rather, it requires freedom and courage and the plural contributions of many different kinds of people who must maintain their individuality whilst giving to the group".

The Data Science Toolkit is a collection of data tools and open APIs curated by Mashables Pete Warden. You can use it to extract text from a document, learn the political leanings of a particular neighborhood, find all the names of people mentioned in a text and more. He unveiled it today at GigaOM Structure Big Data in New York City.

Starting in April, the Smithsonian is running Vanished, an alternate reality game that will put the "science" back in science-fiction, allowing players to work through the scientific process and explore a variety of disciplines. The young at heart can follow along with a special "watcher" account, but the full interactive experience is reserved for kids 11-14 years old.

heard about this open source company via NASA open source summit Bioclipse is a free and open source workbench for the life sciences.

As an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry and biochemistry, I spent a lot of money on science textbooks. When classes ended, I kept all of my books instead of selling them back for pennies on the dollar. I thought that I would be able to use those books as references in graduate school and beyond. Sadly, I never cracked open most of them again, and now they're too outdated to sell. 

It turns out your brain is organized even if you're not. At least that's the conclusion of a study in Science that looked at the network of fibers that carry signals from one part of the brain to another. Researchers used cutting-edge imaging technology to look at places where these fibers intersect. And they found a remarkably organized three-dimensional grid, says Van Wedeen of Harvard Medical School, the study's lead author. The grid is a bit like Manhattan, Wedeen says, "with streets running in two dimensions and then the elevators in the buildings in the third dimension."

The oxygen and food we consume are converted into energy by tiny organelles present in each cell, the mitochondria. These 'power plants' must be continuously supplied with fuel, to maintain all vital functions. A team led by Jean-Claude Martinou, professor at the University of Geneva, has identified this fuel's carrier, baptized Mitochondrial Pyruvate Carrier. The study, published online by Science, henceforth allows the researchers to investigate how the activity of the carrier is modulated.

Beautiful, multi-coloured images of neurones in mice brains.

If education as delivered in the modern American university were fulfilling its mission, would the world look the way it does? We are struck by a simple observation of the state of the world: there is more hunger, poverty, war, crime and disease extant than at any time in history. Even accounting for a growing population, one might reasonably expect that if we are a society that learns from prior mistakes and gains in wisdom as a result then shouldn't the world look quite different by now? Shouldn't we have managed to quell the negative tendencies of society so that life is substantially improved for the majority of humanity? One would think that with all the knowledge afforded by science and the clever technologies we have developed that education would have produced a generation of able citizens capable of making rational decisions in community, politics and economics. The evidence provided in the daily news suggests this is not the case.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science has released the world's first anatomically and genomically comprehensive human brain map.

HAP applications A team of engineers at Ohio State University have packed a nanoparticle full of fluorescent blinking quantum dots. When the particle is attached to a single molecule, it functions as a gaudily glowing beacon.

Lee cronin talks about creating life from inorganic chemistry or dead stuff as he calls it

""We've learned that the same pathway that is activated strongly and prematurely in kids with progeria is also happening in you and me. That toxic protein they make from the beginning is also in our cells as we approach senescence. So cell senescence is not just a running down of the system - it's an active process. A signal turns on this protein." And that aging signal, Dr. Collins added, is connected to the shortening of the chromosome tips that serves as a cellular clock. So the glimpse into aging the kids with progeria provide may have illuminated a new risk factor that can damage blood vessels even in a star athlete who eats only broccoli."

SNUBBING the outdoors for books, video games and TV is the reason up to nine in 10 school-leavers in big East Asian cities are near-sighted, according to a new study. Neither genes nor the mere increase in activities like reading and writing is to blame, the researchers suggest, but a simple lack of sunlight.

brilliant animation explaining how the nervous system is influenced by training and how to use this knowledge for better learning

Primitive moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth some 470 million years ago, say researchers.

What if every scientist could share their data as easily as they tweet about their lunch? Michael Nielsen calls for scientists to embrace new tools for collaboration that will enable discoveries to happen at the speed of Twitter. A physicist turned writer, Michael Nielsen believes online communication and collaboration tools are revolutionizing the way we make scientific discoveries.

"The Utrecht Biomolecular Interactions software portal provides access to software tools developed in the Computational Structural Biology group / NMR Research Group of Utrecht University with a main focus on the characterization of biomolecular interactions. Please note that this site is in active development."

Here's a good reason to pay attention in math class. Nature Communications has published a paper from Ottawa researchers today, outlining how advanced mathematical modelling can be used in the fight against cancer. The technique predicts how different treatments and genetic modifications might allow cancer-killing, oncolytic viruses to overcome the natural defences that cancer cells use to stave off viral infection.