Science online, chasing the rainbow edition

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Photo by dachalan.
  • In case you missed it the first time around. BoingBoing marked National Coming Out Day this Monday with great pieces by Maggie Koerth-Baker and Steve Silberman documenting the experiences of sexual minorities in the sciences. See also the personal story of the gay son of a physics professor who called himself “a proud homophobe”, an article in Science Careers, and a forthcoming study of LGBT experiences in engineering [PDF].
  • Lucky for them, they never invented jet travel. Sea anemones—whose common ancestor with humans lived about 600 million years ago—possess some of the same physiological features that give us our circadian rythym. (Dave Munger for SEED Magazine)
  • Gesundheit! A universal flu vaccine may be possible, in the not-too-distant future. (Virology Blog)
  • Congratulations! Ed Yong wins a National Academies Communications Award for Not Exactly Rocket Science.
  • Being somewhat wrong is better than knowing nothing at all. Estimates of the rates at which species arise based on phylogenies still work pretty well if there is uncertainty or error in the phylogeny. (dechronization)
  • Oy. Nature‘s science news feature mistakenly refers to platypuses (platypi? platypodes?) as marsupials. (The Tree of Life)
  • Fossil forests! In commemoration of Wednesday’s National Fossil Day, Anne Jefferson presents a virtual field trip to the John Day Fossil Beds in eastern Oregon. (Highly Allochthonous)
  • To be fair, hoverflies are not very bright. Orchids pollinated by aphid-feeding hoverflies smell like aphids. (LabSpaces)