Deep thoughts and silliness

Everyone’s doing it, so why shouldn’t I? I’ve joined the twitterverse, and I have to blog about it.

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(I was asked if I could pass this on. Here you go!)

2009 Workshop for Young Researchers in Mathematical Biology (WYRMB)
August 24-26, 2009

Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
The workshop is intended to broaden the scientific perspective of young researchers in mathematical biology and to encourage interactions with other scientists.
Workshop activities include plenary talks and poster sessions, as well as group discussions on issues relevant to mathematical biologists. Several abstracts will be chosen for short talks as well as to be presented as a poster. The deadline for applications is May 1 , 2009.
More details

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The first edition of Scientia Pro Publica is up. It’s the new blog carnival with lots of scientific goodies (and something naff about phenology). So go along and see what’s new!
The next edition will be in two weeks, so when you’ve blogged something about science, submit it to the carnival with the automatic form. It’s a good way of getting yourself better known about the blogosphere.

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Grrlscientist has decided to start a new blog carnival, for good science writing from the blogosphere. She wants to call it Scientia, which is indeed a good name, but an anonymous commenter from Vancouver pointed out that the name was similar to Scientiae, a carnival about women in science (and also worth supporting).
Now, if someone can suggest a name that appeals more to Grrlscientist, I’m sure she’ll use it. But until then, and as it’s Friday afternoon, I’d like to hear a few suggestions for names. Either that could be used for the carnival, or which most definitely shouldn’t.

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I know none of you noticed, but I wasn’t around the blogosphere much last week, because I was in York, at a workshop. I had left Helsinki in the depths of winter, with snow and ice on the ground.

Helsinki, a couple of weeks ago
The north of England, by contrast, was gearing up for spring. The trees were starting to produce buds, and over breakfast we could watch a female blackbird carrying the materials to build her nest.

And thus the hay-fever season begins

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This evening I gut an email from a new Open Access journal: Trends in Evolutionary Biology:

Trends in Evolutionary Biology, March 2009
We would like to invite you to submit your next paper to Trends in Evolutionary Biology.
http://teb.pagepress.org/

Looking around, it’s evidently a new journal from some publishers who are moving into OA. But I was sceptical about how long they’ll last. Poking around their websites, it seems they are a small operation that is just starting up, but don’t seem to be doing a great job. For starters, the title is a bit too similar to one of Elsevier’s journals, Trends in Ecology & Evolution. I can see Elsevier getting upset about this, and would you really want to annoy a company involved in the arms trade, eh?

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I just got myself really confused, reading this in an etoc:

A record of plant migration in the main asteroid belt

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Recently we’ve had a visitor on the balcony

hiding from the snow, and eating the bird food. Yesterday, The Beast

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I hope none of you will object to a bit of advertising. I’ve been co-editing¹ a special issue of Annales Zoologici Fennici on Methods in Ecological Research. I’ll blog more about it when it comes out, but for now here’s an advert in case you want to buy the special issue in one handy bundle of dead tree.
FWIW, I don’t see any of the money, but we do need to cover the cost of production.

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I think we all know who is really right.