ScienceOnline’09: Liveblogging a Friday Fermentable wine-tasting.

Abel Pharmboy set up a wine-tasting for this evening with a selection of wines from Wine Authorities for us to taste.
Abel professes to be an “amateur” at wine-tasting, but I’m coming here from Northern California, so I have to represent! Also, after this morning’s coffee tasting, I’m kind of sold on the idea that looking, smelling, and tasting carefully can give me something like a better appreciation of the complexities of fermented grape juice. So, I’m going to attempt something more detailed.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: One less fish.

OneLessFish.jpg

One less fish
by Kim Michelle Toft and Allan Sheather
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing
1998

Within the past week, each of the two Free-Ride offspring picked up this book, read it all the way through, and said to me, “You should write about this for the Friday Sprog Blog.”
Instead of replying, “No, you should write about it,” I said, “OK, I’ll try.” Not just because I’m the mature one here, but because this is a really good book.

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On my way to ScienceOnline’09

Once again, I’m sitting in my favorite airport with free wifi, bound this time for Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, for ScienceOnline’09. The conference has grown to feature two days of official sessions, plus a third day of semi-official goings on, and the place will be lousy with blogospheric glitterati.
I’m going to be leading a session late Saturday afternoon on “Online science for kids (and parents)”. I’ll be highlighting a selection of the good content that’s out there already, and I’m hoping that there will be some folks at the session interested in talking about how to create new kid-friendly science content. Our wiki page is here, so you can play along at home and join the discussion virtually.
In case you’re wondering why my posting has been relatively light in the days leading up to this conference, well, I seem to have been channeling Dr. Isis.

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Won’t someone think of the children?

Around these parts, folks sometimes get het up about issues like scientific literacy (or lack thereof) in the general public, public interest (or lack thereof) in matters scientific, and whether scientists have the chops to communicate information clearly to non-scientists.
It’s worth remembering that a large group of non-scientists are kids, and that they are actively sucking information from wherever they can get it — parents, teachers, television, internet, even books.
Ahh, books. We like books. Books can get kids interested and excited about a topic even in the absence of an adult expert or enthusiast in the vicinity.
So it’s a good thing if the books are actually providing information rather than misinformation. And this is why Miriam Axel-Lute at Strollerderby would like to have a word with children’s book authors. Specifically, she’d like them to cool it with their persistent mistakes about the natural world:

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ScienceBlogs upgrade this weekend.

You’ve probably already gotten the news that ScienceBlogs is getting a backend upgrade to MT4 this weekend.
While this is going on (from Friday 1 PM Eastern until sometime Saturday, we hope), you’ll still be able to read the ScienceBlogs posts that are already up, but Sb bloggers won’t be able to publish new posts and you won’t be able to leave new comments.
(Actually, I’m hearing rumblings that the comments might already have been disabled. Hold that thought! Jot it down on a Post-it or something, ’cause I want to read it when the comments return in MT4)
During our radio silence, you might want to pass the time by checking out some of the excellent blogs listed in the blogroll in the left sidebar. For particularly good reading, let me recommend:

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Help jailed AIDS researchers in Iran.

You know what makes an already scary world a lot scarier? When a government decides it’s a crime for disease researchers to do their job.
From Declan Butler:

Iran has summarily tried two of the nation’s HIV researchers with communicating with an “enemy government,” in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since their arrest last June (see Nature story, subscription required). Kamiar, the younger of the brothers, holds a master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and was to have resumed doctoral studies at the University of Albany’s School of Public Health in New York. Arash, former head of international education and research cooperation at the Iranian National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, runs a clinic in Tehran. The brothers are not thought to have been politically active. …
In August, the prosecutor publicly accused the men of fomenting a velvet revolution, arguing that they had collaborated with other scientists around the world, including some in the United States, attended international AIDS conferences, and met frequently with AIDS NGOs. “Those are not crimes, that’s good medicine,” says [Physicians for Human Rights spokesman Jonathan] Hutson, adding that it has casts a chilling effect on academic collaboration between Iran and the rest of the world. In December, the US National Academies suspended visits to Iran after the temporary detention of one of its officials in Tehran.

It’s not clear from all this whether the “crime” for which the Alaei brothers are being held is communicating scientific information with other researchers (which is part of how scientists together solve scientific puzzles like the causes and cures of diseases), or whether it is bothering to focus on HIV and its treatment in the first place.

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