Science online, looking forward to #Scio11 edition

Clownfish, anemone—and zooxanthellae makes three. Photo by jby.

First, the latest on ScienceOnline2011: The keynote speaker for the annual online science conference will be Robert Krulwich, the inimitable NPR science correspondent and co-host of Radiolab. And NESCent has announced the winners of its (now annual?) Science Online travel award for science blog posts: How Some Females Respond to Nuptial Gifts by Danielle Lee and Do mother birds play God? by Neil Losin. Go give them, and all this year’s entries, a read.

  • Twenty-eight thousand copies of “Romeo and Juliet.” In one genome. Sequencing the human genome, by analogy to Shakespeare. (The Occam’s Typewriter Irregulars)
  • Take your time, fellows. Men who put on condoms too quickly are more likely to experience “breakage, slippage and erection difficulties.” (NCBI ROFL)
  • Is Yossarianensis taken yet? Online journals are great for rapidly publishing new taxonomic names—but taxonomic descriptions must be published on paper to be “official.” (Open Source Paleontologist)
  • Don’t get your hopes, up just yet, Mom. Some clever genetic shuffling has produced mice with two genetic fathers. (Dan Savage, Wired Science)
  • It’s a regular undersea love-in. The mutual protection relationship of clownfish and sea anemones has another mutualistic wrinkle: anemones’ symbiotic algae benefit from clownfish, um, nitrogenous waste. (Sleeping with the Fishes)
  • X-ray apparatuses, Zeiss microscopes, and fire insurance. That’s what Dr. Skyskull figures scientists wanted for Christmas in 1903, based on ads in a contemporary issue of Nature. (Skulls in the Stars)
  • P(interesting|Bayesianism) = surprisingly high. Nate Silver explains Bayesian logic in the context of the legal travails of Julian Assange. (FiveThirtyEight)