I think we got the issues with the database server fixed. It appears something went horribly wrong with the search indices or the actual modules, we still don't know yet, but disabling them stopped the memory-sucking madness that has been happening. We'll get it fixed tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience and general slowness.

Dan Rhoads just started a site called Bitesize Bio - making cell and molecular biology make sense. Check it out.

Submissions for OpenLab 2007 can be made here. I am not sure what it is, but it's a disservice to science and web 2.0 not to include some of the terrific writing here.

I don't know anything about this Weblog awards other than to know they really messed up. I have never read Climate Audit but allegations that some vast right conspiracy ( and it's the same old people drumming up this hysteria, time and again ) was stacking the votes for them motivated people to actually stack the votes against them. The solution by these weblogawards clowns? Reward the confirmed cheaters by granting them a tie.

Vote for the 'best' science blog of 2007 here. Okay, I'll admit it, I don't read any of them ( and they don't read us - most successful science sites don't read each other because we're busy, you know, writing stuff ) but I see there is the usual "help we're being oppressed" tizzy because a 'global warming denier' ( read: must be a shill for Big Oil, Bush, Religion, Republicans, etc. ) is in the running.

Open Access to Research Funded by U.S. Is at Issue A long-simmering debate over whether the results of government-funded research should be made freely available to the public could take a big step toward resolution as members of a House and Senate conference committee meet today to finalize the 2008 Department of Health and Human Services appropriations bill. At issue is whether scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health should be required to publish the results of their research solely in journals that promise to make the articles available free within a year after publication.