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

Various tentacly things aggregating in my inbox:

• Lovecraft x Sendak = Where the Great Old Ones Are
• Michael Leavitt’s Octogirl, an Audrey Kawasaki 10″ art action figure
• Williams-Sonoma: Octopus Cake Pan
  [tip of the tentacle to Karen]

Be sure to also check out Mike Levitt’s DIY Action Figure video. Fascinating.

We recently finished listening to the audiobook of the last Harry Potter book. There seemed to be quite a few supposal elements in the story that gave me the same vague kind of disappointment I got from reading the Narnia Chronicles as a youth. I can’t believe that these are original observations (edit: they are not), but you can tell me what you think after the jump.

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The American Fisheries Society is offering a free custom spellchecker/dictionary of the common and scientific names of North American fishes. Currently compatible only with Microsoft Word documents.

• AFS Fish Name Spellchecker

The newest issue of Sea Stories is available. Sea Stories is a quarterly online journal of international ocean writing and art, published by Blue Ocean Institute.

Sea Stories…features contributions by ocean-lovers from all backgrounds and walks of life - writers, artists, educators, students, scientists, fishers, conservationists, explorers, and just regular people. Educators are invited to use Sea Stories in the classroom or as a publishing opportunity for yourself or your students. Join us in celebrating all things oceanic!

• Sea Stories

A couple months ago, I picked up a reprint of The Whale Book by Adriaen Coenen (1585) at my local indie bookstore.

In the late 16th century, Dutch beachcomber Adriaen Coenen scanned the beaches of Holland for interesting marine material and produced several illustrated manuscripts of his findings, covering anything from the commonplace herring to the exotic moonfish. Coenen’s work contains the earliest European pictures of whales, naïve but easily identifiable, which makes it a rare visual and textual source for the natural world of his day.

You can thumb through a detailed, Flash-based facsimile over at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (click on Blader in het Visboek). Reading the commentary in the reprint, it’s interesting seeing the transition from medieval murk to rational enlightenment. Today technology makes the oceans less opaque to exploration, but back then most knowledge came from whatever rot washed up on the shore. Consequently, it was easy to get a distorted vision of what many sea creatures really looked like.

It is also interesting to compare the European naturalist’s depictions to those from Japan. Over at Pink Tentacle, they link to the works of Kurimoto Tanshuu (1756 - 1834), who sketched wildlife during the Edo period. Japan’s National Diet Library makes hi-res scans available of these original works.

Coenen and Tanshuu worked some 200 hundred years apart and both seemed to take some liberty with their depictions. But Tanshuu’s skill and level of detail is compelling. Be sure to check out the comments on Metafilter for some translations of the Diet website.

The National Science Teacher Association has started a “new series of conversations with authors of NSTA Press® books.” The series is called Behind the Books and so far includes converstations with:

• Tomas Bunk (illustrator) and Arthur Eisenkraft (one of the authors) of Quantoons: Metaphysical Illustrations [mp3]
• Karen Rohrich Ansberry and Emily Morgan, authors of Picture-Perfect Science Lessons: Using Children’s Books to Guide Inquiry [mp3]

They are nice productions. But I have one complaint. They are calling these things podcasts, however I do not think it means what they think it means. They have the audio files but I can’t find the RSS subscription file on their website or on iTunes. What’s up with that, NSTA? Where’s the syndication?

It’s summertime, and if you are heading to the beach this season, why not take along some easy ocean inspired reading? Right now I am halfway through Camouflage by Joe Haldeman.

Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman

In 2019, a mysterious, egg-shaped artifact is discovered on the ocean floor…Denser than any known material, the object defies all attempts to…break through…[but m]arine biologist Russell Sutton, whose last major feat was raising the Titanic, takes charge of the excavation, hoping to make a fortune by capitalizing on the artifact’s probable extraterrestrial origin. [He] little suspects that his destiny will soon intertwine with a pair of shape-shifting…aliens. One, known as the changeling, has been on Earth millions of years, assuming every identity from shark to human being, and slowly learning to love. The other, called the chameleon, has excelled in…killing. Neither knows of the other’s existence, but their slowly merging paths will meet in a stunning climax that determines their ultimate fates–and that of the artifact.

Starfish, by Peter Watts

If you don’t feel like buying Haldeman’s book right away, you can still get some underwater scifi satisfaction with Peter Watts’ Rifter series for free, starting with Starfish. Peter has “spent much of his adult life trying to decide whether to be a writer or a scientist…. He’s won a handful of awards in fields as diverse as marine mammal science, video documentary, and science fiction.” He is offering Starfish under a Creative Commons license.

You’re three kilometers below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. You’re perched on the shoulder of an active volcano. The local fauna is very large and very nasty. If it doesn’t kill you, a mudslide or an erupting smoker probably will.

Your fellow employees are rapists, pedophiles, borderline psychotics, and victims of same.

You feel very lucky to be here.

This is a damn sight better than the life you left behind.

I, Rowboat, by Cory Doctorow

If you would prefer to have your aquatic fiction read to you, check out Cory Doctorow’s new story podcast, I, Rowboat. It’s “about a theological dispute between an artifically intelligent Asimov three-laws cultist and an uplifted coral reef.”

Robbie the Row-Boat’s great crisis of faith came when the coral reef woke up.

“Fuck off,” the reef said, vibrating Robbie’s hull through the slap-slap of the waves of the coral sea, where he’d plied his trade for decades. “Seriously. This is our patch, and you’re not welcome.”

Robbie shipped oars and let the current rock him back toward the ship. He’d never met a sentient reef before, but he wasn’t surprised to see that Osprey Reef was the first to wake up. There’d been a lot of electromagnetic activity around there the last few times the big ship had steamed through the night to moor up here.

And if you are looking for more traditional fare, there is always the list of 101 Best Sea Books from Bookmark magazine and the NY Times beach reading list.

So what are your favorite sea stories?