Scientific Blogging fave Greg Critser has a new book out, Eternity Soup: Inside The Quest To End Aging(available at fine retailers everywhere, or at that link if you want us to make a nickel) and in celebration he has put together a short quiz to find out what you know.

The Pragma Hypothesis

A speculation on the possibility of the accurate prediction of future, hind-sight based, historical worldviews, and the application of such prediction to the current climate change debate.

Pragma - mass noun: the practical outcome of a decision-based action as viewed from a historical perspective.  Pragma is to science and politics as karma is to spirituality.

"This is not just some intellectual argument between people who think they know the answer, we are talking about the future of the globe.

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When asked to justify the research I do, I always struggle a little to explain my dissatisfaction with the traditional descriptive, non-quantitative explanations of molecular biological systems. As a glance at a classic molecular cell biology textbook will easily demonstrate, molecular biologists have been tremendously successful with verbal or semi-quantitative explanations of what goes on inside the cell. And in any case, the complexity of the cell is extremely daunting for the would-be theoretical biologist.

Last fall, ScientificBlogging introduced our first ever University Writing Competition. We were blown away by the quality of science articles we received, and are excited to announce that we’re doing it again this spring. This time the contest is open to ALL graduate students. The official rules are below, but the big idea is that we are inviting graduate students to write about science – on any scientific topic of their choosing. It is our hope to discover those exceptional students that not only know their science, but can also effectively communicate it to the scientific community as well as to the general public.

This morning, upon leaving Brussels to go back home after my seminar in Louvain-la-Neuve, my attention was caught by a big green banner hanging from a tall building at Place Schuman. It said "Safe Internet Day" and below, in smaller fonts, "think before you blog". I found it inspiring.

A blog, if used correctly, is a very nice tool which enhances one's possibility to express one's ideas, or to do scientific outreach, as in my case. It may also be used for self-promotion at times (and the opportunity does not escape me, although I try to self-contain these outbursts). But a blog, if it attracts traffic, may become also a dangerous instrument, which must be handled with care.