Cephalopodcast

SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science. Created for scientists, by scientists, SciVee moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice. SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).

SciVee^alpha is a video sharing site for science. The concept is that a researcher links the PubMed ID or DOI of their paper to SciVee, then records ten minutes of video or audio discussing the highlights and concepts in the article. The site allows the video or audio to be synchronized with figures from the article. The next step involves the SciVee community then commenting on and discussing the new pubcast.

For an example, here is Christopher L. Dupont from Scripps discussing his co-authored work, Modern proteomes contain putative imprints of ancient shifts in trace metal geochemistry from PNAS.

Currently the site is in its alpha release. There does not appear to be any way to embedded SciVee videos on your own blog, a la YouTube. It would also be nice if their was a recommendation scheme, where the site suggested related materials or similar research. But it might be too early to effectively do that with a small database.

In addition to discussions of original research, there are several educational science shorts you can view. In particular, BioMEDIA has snippets from several of their videos on animal diversity (see below). BioMEDIA allows some limited educational use of their content. They are also offering a couple of free posters if folks register with their site.

So what do you think? Can scientist master the art of communicating to an Internet audience? Should they be expected to? Know anyone who has uploaded content to SciVee?

• A Video Overview of SciVee
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Echinoderms (seastars and sea cucumbers)
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Cnidarians (sea jellies)
• BioMEDIA Associates: Biology of Annelids (worms)
• Microbe World: Save the Oysters
• Robert Alan Weiss’ free love Protein Synthesis

If you suckers didn’t get enough of a cephalopod fix between Cephalopod Awareness Day and TONMO, you can now embrace the efforts of Matt Stagg, who is extending a tentacle into the mired depths of Facebook. He has started an International Cephalopod Appreciation Society group therein.

Dr James Wood apparently has a ceph group in Facebook too, but it appears to have entered a stage of senescence.

UPDATE: You know, there are only ~89,000 of these facebooktopuses left. If someone wanted to get me a gift, you know, I wouldn’t mind.