• Fine Read­ing: A Chalk Talk

    by Roberto — As a means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing sci­ence, chalk talks can be ex­tremely ef­fec­tive way to en­gage the au­di­ence. These days such pre­sen­ta­tions have be­come part and par­cel of the in­ter­view process of those seek­ing aca­d­e­mic jobs in the life sci­ences. As much as I love such chalk talks, that's not what I will dis­cuss to­day. Rather, I want to bring to your at­ten­tion a...

  • A Snip­pet: Oceanic Con­ver­sa­tions

    by Elio — In the ocean, bac­te­ria and eu­kary­otic mi­crobes (mainly the phy­to­plank­ton) in­ter­act in var­i­ous ways, some mu­tu­ally ben­e­fi­cial, oth­ers detri­men­tal. Many, per­haps most of these in­ter­ac­tions, take place via chem­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. If you had a hy­dro phone-like gad­get that could de­tect chem­i­cals in­stead of sound, the racket would be deaf­en­ing. Yet, we know lit­tle about these go­ings-on.