Stem cell research is very dynamic with research trends, focus, and approaches evolving rapidly - but increased government restrictions on the private sector have led to a steep decline in venture capital, which threatens to slow the pace of research and development. 

New analysis from Frost&Sullivan, 'Strategic Analysis of the European Stem Cell Research Tools Market', finds that the market earned revenues of $148.4 million in 2011 and estimates this could reach $322 million in 2017. The segments covered include: bio-imaging and microscopy, cell biology tools, immunochemical, molecular biology tools, and protein biochemistry tools.

'The cloud' is so cliché Microsoft even has housewives using it in commercials.  All it basically means is that you can have a new way for your data to be hacked and stolen.  Unless the company storing it goes out of business and you made no backups.  Plus, that's not really a cloud, it's stored in a solid medium, it just happens to be outside your house.

But true cloud storage is on the horizon. 

Light signals have been stored as patterns in a room-temperature atomic vapor by scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute. They stored two letters of the alphabet in a cell filled with rubidium (Rb) atoms. 

I forgot my phone charger for the conference I went to last week.

If this was just a year ago then I would barely have noticed. Mostly because my trusty old Nokia that I had then would have lasted long enough (I mean, the conference was only 2 friggin days long), but also because now, I rely on my phone for everything. Not just making phone calls (which I routinely forget it can do) but reading feeds, checking Twitter, facebook, but most importantly, checking my email.

Well, the upshot of this was that when I finally turned my phone on after being bereft of it for a sunny couple of days, I was presented with a glut of emails saying that people had been commenting on my blog.

June 5, 2012 you get to share a communal experience with scientists from hundreds of years ago.  No, I don't mean Calculus, I mean one of the rarest and more interesting recurring events science has been able to witness since the invention of the telescope - a transit of Venus.

You may not have heard of it but you know of it if you ever wondered how astronomers were able to calculate how far away the Sun is from Earth - the basis of the Astronomical Unit (AU) that is eponymous today.

It seems like there's always something to be mad at or feel threatened over when it comes to autism-related reporting or blogging. Sometimes it's reasonable outrage, like an article on autism that doesn't involve autistic individual perspectives or an article on autism that goes to Jenny McCarthy for her thoughts. I mean, Jenny McCarthy? Surely we can find a better celebrity? No? Double-Ds are headline bringing?

A recent placebo-controlled study showed evidence of trans-cranial bright light's effect to brain functions when administered through the ear. Bright light stimulation was found to increase activity in brain areas related to processing of visual sensory information and tactile stimuli. The findings are the first ever published scientific article about functional modulation of the brain with bright light delivered to the brain through the ears.

Today's primer: orbital mechanics, or how we have to manuever to catch debris.  There's a lot of debris in low earth orbit, ranging from paint chips and spare bolts to a heavy toolbox up through entirely dead satellites.  It's tracked, it's plentiful, it was even featured in Wall-E.  How is it a satellite in orbit runs into debris?

Dear readers, your input is appreciated. Please read the following quotes and let me know what are your thoughts on the matter in the comments thread. You need not leave your name if you wish to remain anonymous, but I'd appreciate it if you mentioned your degree of education and whether you are/were/will be a scientist.

Quote 1:

Measuring the value and the impact of a scientist on her field of research using as data her scientific papers, the number of citations these papers got, and the prestige of the scientific journals where these were published is no easy matter.

Grading Researchers: The H-Index

There is a large body of literature on how best to account for all these factors together: the discipline is called "scientometrics". Of course, the goal is to summarize the productivity of a scholar in a single number; possibly one with at most double digits, since decision-makers who hire or fund are usually incapable of handling more complex data. One notable attempt is the Hirsch Index, proposed in 2005 by a physicist, Jorge Hirsch.

The fourth FQXi essay contest is underway. There is a lot questionable about FQXi and what it at times supports, but this year’s topic is just so clearly up my alley that I simply cannot resist:

Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?