• Lichens are even cooler than we thought! According to research published yesterday in Science, reported on by Ed Yong at the Atlantic, the NY Times here, and doubtless others, the symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae embodied by lichens is more complex than previously believed. I am really lichen this news and the reminder of how much more we have to learn about the natural world.

• Among the letters published in responds to an Upshot piece in the NY Times about the large number of research science graduates in relation to professorships was one from Joseph Deasy of MSK’s Medical Physics Department. He wrote to remind readers that there are still many challenges to humanity which could be explored by scientists provided policy changed to fund their work.

• Last but not least, Carl Zimmer reported in the NY Times about new work published Wednesday in Nature that describes a greatly expanded map of the distinct areas of the human brain.

From The Lab Bench has a post explaining some of the findings in their research surveying Science Blog readers. The post features delightful infographics exploring their findings which may surprise you! A paper on this work will be presented at the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference this August. Take a look here and see “Who’s Reading Science Blogs?”.

Some summertime humor from Easternblot.net: Beach Bodies, as Rated by Marine Biologists.

Gilead criticized for price hikes on older HIV drugs, from STATnews.

Jenna Wortham’s piece from the NY Times Magazine, How an Archive of the Internet Could Change History, is a smart discussion of the importance of primary sources and the rare opportunity that preservation of today’s social media could provide historians in the future. Consider this;

“The internet is pushing us ­— in good ways and in bad — to realize that the official version of events shouldn’t always be trusted or accepted without question. And historians are constantly updating the record by looking for primary sources that were overlooked in earlier eras, often from marginalized figures. These days, such omissions will still happen, but we can catch them faster. Oversights that would have taken decades to correct are now resolved in weeks, even hours. We now get a kaleidoscopic view of events as they unfold, often in real time, on our screens and devices. History is not neutral or synonymous with truth, but the internet affords us a newfound vantage on the totality of passing time — the profound implications of which we are just now beginning to grasp.”

A hat tip to @SLA-NewYork for sharing this article.

PubMed is 20! The news came via a post in NLM’s Technical Bulletin which discusses recent enhancements to the database we use so much. Continue reading →