More tiny saltwater sightings for #MacroMonday: a baby gorgonian about four weeks old, 2mm tall, celebrating its successful production of eight pinnate tentacles and many tiny purple sclerites. Gorgonians (members of the octocorallia) are close relatives to corals and anemones (i.e., the hexacorallia). I should also admit I took liberties with the "macro" concept today; this photo was captured with a Canon G9 through a Zeiss stereomicroscope.

My first contribution to #ScienceSunday , curated by +Allison Sekuler and +Robby Bowles! These are coral embryos (the mountainous star coral Montastraea faveolata) that I photographed through a microscope a few hours after they were fertilized last September in Curacao. The perfectly round circles are unfertilized eggs, and the rest are embryos busily going through cell divisions. In only 20 hours, they will form a hollow ball of cells, fold back on themselves, and produce cilia all over their surfaces to become swimming, smelling, feeling, tasting, coral larvae. Then they have the simple task of searching the entire ocean for a safe place to live for the next few hundred years.

Although I'm a coral biologist, I've been indoors and landlocked for the past two months, writing grant proposals. So, today I am taking extra time to (well, distract myself on Google+ and also) remind myself WHY I am writing all these proposals. This is why :)

(PS, G+niuses: definitely go check out +ScienceSunday, it's fantastic!)

For a birthday-themed #MacroMonday, here's one of my favorite photographs ever: corals about to spawn! Each coral polyp is holding a bundle of ~100 eggs in its mouth, in preparation for the once-a-year mass-spawning-party that happened a few minutes later. (Captured with my trusty Lumix, an underwater flashlight, and a little bit of underwater patience.)

How some coral species survive life on a sandy, possibly smothering, seafloor... they are crafty creatures! Thanks to Ayana for tipping me off to the article and props to the videographer, Pim, a good friend-of-CARMABI.

While staring through the microscope today, I found a tiny tiiiiiny sea slug, only 2.5 mm long, slurping across a piece of coralline algae. Can any of the molluscan cognoscenti out there identify this little thing for us cnidarian fans? I'm sort of assuming there's sufficient worldwide obsession with nudibranchs to cover all social media platforms but I welcome any leads in any direction.

PS: Liberally pinging +Chris Mallory, #molluscmonday, despite this being neither about lichen nor on Monday!

Scientists have been yelling for a good while now that "false balance" in science journalism hurts the public's scientific literacy, and by extension, hurts people and the environment.

In a sign that things are changing for the better (and clearer), this past February, National Public Radio changed its ethics guidelines to avoid "he said/she said" coverage, aiming not to "create the appearance of balance but to seek the truth."

Now the new Public Editor of the NYT is taking on this issue straightaway. In discussing the increasing obligation of the press to fact-check politicians, she also discusses why science journalism must be carefully protected from false balance.

In case all this Open Access Week stuff sounds what's-the-point-? to you, the G+ genius bank, here's a nice piece by the Guardian explaining what #OpenAccess publishing is all about...

Says the Guardian, "The academic publishing game has changed irrevocably."

Impressively, 17% of academic papers are now published open access. And this number will surely rise: the UK has a new policy requiring all publicly-funded research published after April 2013 to be published open access or submitted to open-access repositories.

Academic publishing may be the LAST realm of publishing to be revolutionized by the internet... but it's happening at last, and it's happening fast!

Mike Taylor is preaching to our choir here but this is an Open Science must-read for its resolve-strengthening powers:

Who wants to hang out with some coral larvae? (HWCL?)

I just got hit with a brainstorm: what if I start a G+ hangout with a container of swimming coral larvae in my place? Anyone could stop by to watch the coral larvae swim in real time. Interesting? Boring? Same-as-a-movie-on-YouTube? Already-been-done? If a modest amount of interest bubbles up here, I'll set up a hangout not with myself but with some Caribbean coral larvae, born last week in Curacao. They're already pretty good swimmers!!

(Below: coral embryos proceeding through cell divisions on the way to becoming swimming larvae.)

It's confirmified: I'm giving a talk at Google, inspired by my blog(rant) on ScienceProgress.org. Time to organize some scientific information like we mean it. I'm speaking on August 25th... but I'm sure TheGoogle+ already knew that.

Photos taken by a Caribbean coral biologist confronted with a large-ish Pacific coral reef.

A riddle: What fits in an envelope, costs 50 cents, and can be used to diagnose malaria? UNTIL recently, the answer was, "Nothing, and this riddle is DUMB." BUT NOW, the answer is: Manu's paper microscope. Check it out - the maker revolution begins!

Mother nature: respect her, because she does good work. (Explanation: my Brugmansia tree flowered for the first time this year! I love any plant that makes cartoon flowers.)

Big THANKS to the Googlers who made it to my talk yesterday. Giving a set of ideas The Google Treatment was eye-opening, motivating, and a lot of fun. I hope the conversation continues....

A mini Yosemite #LichenPoker photo album for you guys... I blame all close-up blur on cold fingers and the snowboard stuck to my feet.

It felt like a dream, but I guess it was REAL. Talking corals on the fellows stage at TEDGlobal this week, or rather, talking CORALSSSSS!!!!!

The blues had a baby...

YESSS. When I gave a talk at Google last year, I mentioned to a few of the engineers how much I'd love underwater Street View. Little did I know (and little did they tell me), this was already in progress.

This isn't just a cool toy, either. Using these cameras worldwide will let everyone see which countries are taking care of their reefs and which are letting their reefs slip down the slope to slime.

I just hope the reef bots don't find ME underwater, because I have some seriously crazy scuba hair.

This is a pretty big deal. Academic publisher Elsevier will now give free access to 2,500+ scientific and medical journals to members of the National Association of Science Writers.

Not long ago, Harvard Library said that they could no longer afford Elsevier's prices. And earlier this year, Elsevier was boycotted for supporting legislation in the US that would help protect their closed-access publishing model.

Is a sea change underway?

Woah, attack of the Science Circle! Hey there, G+niuses. I was MIA last weekend, tromping around Yosemite and shooting my first ever photo for #lichenpoker . +Chris Mallory, your ID assistance is requested. I love all branching organisms, but I can only identify the ones that are corals.

Circle-friends, your solution for any and all cases of the Mondays is #MacroMonday, curated by +Kerry Murphy, +Jennifer Eden, and +Kelli Seeger Kim. I promised more saltwater sightings, so here's the next one: a teeny shrimp sitting on a star coral in Curacao. (Each coral polyp is only ~3mm wide!)

Spent the week planning my #TEDtalk for TEDGlobal 2012. Top secret insider information: It's about corals. Sneak preview below :)

New research by my Scripps classmate +Miriam Goldstein documents just how much plastic we've dumped into the ocean and how it is starting to change animal habitats.

The data on ocean plastic are fascinating to me because they show how humans CAN change and HAVE changed the contents of the whole, entire, massive, miles-deep ocean. Just decades ago that was thought to be impossible.

Geniuses, can you help ID this mystery seafoam for the Curacao newspaper? It floated ashore yesterday when the wind shifted - definitely organic, but what is it?? (Pinging +Chris Mallory for your expertise on biology and your expertise about biology experts!)

It's #sciencesunday and here's where I'm hanging out. (Day 5 of a 6-day protocol.) A popular sport among young scientists, Science-on-the-Weekend features less competition for equipment, and much louder music.

My long-time circlers know that fall brings a smattering of G+ posts about coral spawning. Aaaaaaand here we go:

This weekend, we expect some of the Elkhorn corals to spawn in the Caribbean. Listed as Threatened on the Endangered Species List, they're doing relatively well on Curacao but we need more of them Caribbean-wide.

The Secore Foundation holds a workshop here every August to teach scientists and aquarists how to raise and outplant juveniles of this species. The goals: more corals, and more knowledge about how to grow more corals. Side benefits: lots of underwater photos and a great excuse for some night diving.

You can follow the Secore blog during the next week to find out how the corals (and the humans) are doing!

In honor of Open Access Week, (attn +Open Science Federation) the Royal Society is making all of their content open access until November 29! This is a truly admirable move and one that complements their recent decision to make a huge back catalog of journal articles open access forever. Browse around at: http://royalsocietypublishing.org/

And in case you were simply dying to read some research from here on Curacao about microbial communities on coral reefs... NOW is your chance!

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And from now on, my G+ posts will consist entirely of awesome things found by +Miriam Goldstein.

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New petri dish collage for my upcoming show at Montgomery College (imagine it with better lighting ; ) )

Dear G+niuses, I'm super excited to share that I've been awarded a TED Fellowship... yes THAT TED! I'll be speaking on the Fellows stage at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh this summer and posting on the TED Fellows blog. Standby for more on my favorite subjects: corals, communication, conservation, and... corals.

Hi to everyone who added me through the Science Circle! I post underwater photos, stories from my research in the tropics, and some of the fantastic nature photography I run into on G+. I also post about science communication and the scientific publishing process - I'm working on a few side projects to improve both.

Here I am with a Ctenophore (pronounced "TEEN-a-for") found in the shallows in front of CARMABI field station in Curacao. I named it Kristeen. Kristeen was returned to the ocean a few minutes later, and probably teased about its name.

My favorite part of G+ was already the amazing photography... then today I discovered #MacroMonday, thanks to a repost by +Christian Mörsch. What a blast! Here's my first saltwater addition to the macro soup: a Triplefin Blenny found on a night dive in Curacao, sitting between the tentacles of a brain coral.

A must-read for all academics, with arguments like: "Dammit, we're scientists. Our job is to make knowledge. If we make it, then brick it up behind a wall, we're wasting our time and our funders' money – which ultimately means we're squandering the world's wealth."

Tear down the paywall!

Great article about who goes to grad school and why... I loved this: "You complain, “Ugh, I spent 15 hours in the lab yesterday,” but part of your brain says, “Yes, I spent 15 hours in the lab yesterday!” You complain that no one understands what you’re working on, but inside, you gleefully think, “No one understands what I’m working on!”"

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If you're browsing for some new circlees, Jason shared this Science and Sustainability circle today. (Thanks, Jason!). I'm looking forward to poking around for good ideas in here...

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Content Sharers II (Science and Sustainability)
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I have combined frequent sharers from my sustainability and science circles to provide a high-quality clean technology experience. Enjoy!
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Frequent sharers on:
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T echnology
R esources
E nergy
E nvironment
S cience
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#technology #resources #energy #environment #science #sustainable #sustainability #renewable #green #batteries #storage #conservation #solar #wind #geothermal #hydroelectric #natural #organic #ecology

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Science communication blitz continues! Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Daily Show last week. The end of the interview is possibly my favorite Daily Show moment ever. Tyson gave a good interview for Ira Flatow last week, too, and this morning he testified in front of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

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A new model of plate tectonics predicts that the Caribbean will be gone 50 to 200 million years from now. (This Caribbean coral biologist is tempted to yell "Noooooooooooooooooooo" for that same length of time.) But the Isthmus of Panama only finished forming 3 million years ago. The Caribbean is in fact very young, and so are many of its coral species. We still have 50 million years of Caribbean natural history to study, folks. That sounds like job security to me.

The obvious next move is some sort of art project in a Google, UNO, or Olympics theme using these science ants.

I'm starting to think the theme that ties together my underwater photography is "eyeballs not to scale". This is a juvenile Caribbean reef squid that I found on a night dive two years ago. What big eyes you have, on account of how small the rest of you is...

A 2012 morning in Curacao: bananas on the way out and a new CARMABI research building on the way up.

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I love this excerpt. The best way to discover something new about the world is to stop and admire the humorous, whimsical, and incidental things that happen in the course of doing rigorous research.

Incidentally, I've been quiet here on G+ this past week due to the fact that I'm in San Diego participating in humorous and incidental things with my favorite troupe of scientists. A big HI to all the people who just circled me :)

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The Art of Science: "Science is an inherent contradiction — systematic wonder — applied to the natural world. In its mundane form, the methodical instinct prevails and the result, an orderly procession of papers, advances the perimeter of knowledge, step by laborious step. Great scientific minds partake of that daily discipline and can also suspend it, yielding to the sheer love of allowing the mental engine to spin free. And then Einstein imagines himself riding a light beam, Kekule formulates the structure of benzene in a dream, and Fleming’s eye travels past the annoying mold on his glassware to the clear ring surrounding it — a lucid halo in a dish otherwise opaque with bacteria — and penicillin is born . Who knows how many scientific revolutions have been missed because their potential inaugurators disregarded the whimsical, the incidental, the inconvenient inside the laboratory?”

Excerpt: A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon.
Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/23/systematic-wonder/

☼ Do You want to Live in the Overlap? ☼

Dear Google Geniuses,
Please help spread the word about (and help out with!) the Parkinson's Voice Initiative. My fellow TED fellow Max Little is building mathematical algorithms for early Parkinson's detection through voice analysis. Now he needs data! The initiative is 40% of the way to its goal: to record 10,000 voices. Anyone can call, and they have local numbers set up in seven different countries. Give it a shot! Tell your relatives! The TED fellows offer their huge thanks!

One of the bravest and boldest projects from the my class of incredibly brave, incredibly bold TED Fellows: Open-source advocate Salvatore Iaconesi hacked the proprietary file formats on all of the medical records from his recently-diagnosed brain cancer, made it all openly readable, and posted it all online, so that doctors, hackers, and artists can make diagnoses, cures, art ... you name it. Amazing.

A bunch of really nice sentences written down about how to make nice sentences in your head without writing them down.

The most radically open talk at all of TEDGlobal - Elyn Saks describes her own struggle with schizophrenia and tells us how to think about, interact with, and help those who carry this burden. Truly moving. Amazingly courageous. A must-watch.

Love this article! It's true: You Google wrong. But you can learn to Google less wrong than most...  

Hi to all the new people in my circles! Though I've led many of the G+niuses to believe that I'm always taking photographs of baby corals... it's not true! Sometimes I'm taking photographs of baby anoles. This is a reminder to myself today to be tenacious. It's not like I'm climbing a vertical wall!

PS, not a real hashtag but hey: #ReptilePoker

From last night's News Hour: this is a really good explanation of why Great Barrier Reef corals have died so much in the last 3 decades, and why coral reefs matter to all of us. Meanwhile, some top notch science communication skills are on display.

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Nudibranchs aren't my favorite half-animal half-plant, but this is still really cool.

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Via +Mary Mangan.  This is so awesome, I'm positively giddy.

The other day, I stumbled across this Wired article on the cost of creativity (fascinating and slightly scary stuff...). Immediately after, I ran across an article about "gravel on ski lifts" energy storage, which instantly reduced how scary the first article was to read. http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-startup-behind-bill-gates-ski-lift-for-energy-storage/

Can we be creative fast enough to keep up with our resource use? Perhaps, but we will need to keep the creativity of innovators and scientists well-funded and held in high esteem.

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Y'all know how I feel about tiny reptiles.

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#MacroMonday with thanks to +Kerry Murphy +Jennifer Eden and +Kelli Seeger Kim

In celebrating their 5th birthday, the journal PLoS One mentioned many of the issues I raised in my Google TechTalk a few months earlier: the limits of impact factors and citation numbers, the current lack of literature organization beyond subject categories, and the fact that a broad readership of scientists, journalists, educators, health practitioners, and citizens will benefit in the future from a having a customizeable interface for interacting with the literature. Did they watch my talk, or just read my mind?

Tiny stuff from the #coralreefs of Curacao

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I love this article for many reasons. On a personal level, I'm quite sure that taking art courses throughout grad school made me a better photographer, a better naturalist, and thus a better scientist. On a higher level, giving everyone training in art and design would not only empower scientists to communicate their work more creatively but also make room in science for more creative and artistic minds. My new position statement: Art school for everyone!

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I really think going to art school and taking design courses helped my scientific creativity in research. It teaches you how to look at different perspectives and really opens your mind to new ways of thinking about a problem.

Definitely do NOT dilute your contact solution with water and then keep using it, or you will get vEYEruses. Inside amoebas. Inside your eyeballs.

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I've followed many of these women for a while on G+ and am honored to be in the group... Highly-recommended circle material here, folks!

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STEM Women on G+ Shared Circle (Release 3)

This is the first crowd-sourced, collaboratively curated circle of Women who work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields that are also active on G+.

We had some simple criteria for inclusion in this circle; every woman in this circle has a job that relates directly to STEM or is an advanced student of STEM. They are all active users of G+ and post Publicly about their STEM discipline regularly (i.e. at least once a week).

• Import these people into a brand new circle, and then move people over into your permanent circles if you like what they post.

• Reshare this post, to get the STEM goodness out to as many as people as possible :)

• If we have missed someone that should be included in this circle in time for our next update, please nominate them at http://goo.gl/rvKEf. We will be actively curating this circle once a month or so, removing inactive users, adding new active users, so consider this a work in progress :)

• Please also make sure that the nominee has added the STEM Women on G+ Brand Page to their circles (we cannot include the nominee in this shared circle unless she does that).
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This circle is curated by +Buddhini Samarasinghe, +Rajini Rao, +Christine Paluch, +Liz ℚuilty and +Liz Krane. A HUGE thank you to everyone who supported this crowd-sourced effort by sharing the original post and by nominating people for it - this wouldn't have been possible without you!

#STEM #stemeducation #science #technology #engineering #maths #sharedcircleday #SharedCircles  

This is brutal for adult corals. I wonder if coral larvae can sense UVB rays and make settlement decisions accordingly or acclimate to increased levels... if not, we are in bad shape!

While some coral larvae were content to settle down and turn into primary polyps, one continued the search.

(Canon G9 / Zeiss Stemi2000 Microscope)

Anolis lineatus, the striped anole. Thanks to the placement of his eyes and my shaky hand, we're breaking most of the rules of photography with this one.

How much OHI is in your EEZ? And how much do you personally weight preservation versus extraction? Time to find out.

Postscript: GO SURINAME!

Haven't posted to  #MacroMonday  lately, but had to share this behind-the-macro-scenes moment: our museum of flooded underwater cameras here in Curacao. The "museum" is only two years old, but at a busy marine research station, that's more than enough time for quite a few cameras to donate their bodies to science!

Today I'm heading back to my home science stomping grounds in San Diego to be part of the "Next Decade Symposium" at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. Armed with some of the ideas I presented at Google last year, I'll be part of a panel on Friday that explores the role of science communication in bringing about marine conservation solutions. Stay tuned, ocean fans, for more chatter about science communication later this week!

Fossils from ichthyosaurs (extinct dolphin-like reptiles) show evidence of Dysbaric osteonecrosis, ie bone degeneration from the buildup of nitrogen in the blood while diving. The same thing happens to scuba divers with the bends, but not whales or dolphins, thanks to evolution.

Ironically, us digging up their bones from under a bunch of rocks and breakin em up into pieces is yet MORE dybaric (depressurizing) osteonecrosis (bone break down). Sorry, saurs.

This week brings a small-but-important victory for advocates of open-access academic publishing.

Last year, academic publisher Elsevier paid US representatives Maloney and Issa to sponsor legislation that would prevent public access to publicly-funded research. Lucky for the scientists, teachers, doctors, writers, and NGOs who depend on that access to the literature, Elsevier got zero return on their investment.

However, Elsevier states they will still oppose any bill that mandates public access to publicly-funded research. Keep up your guard, folks, keep boycotting Elsevier, and go throw your support onto FRPAA.

Starting today, a good friend of mine is blogging for the San Diego Union-Tribune about life as a scientist: he's going reveal the day-to-day details of the job and dispel myths about who can grow up to be a marine biologist. Please forward this to the eager students in your life: we need as many talented and diverse whippersnappers in science as possible.

I'm glad this issue has reached the public's eye. Unsurprisingly, the #openaccess publishing revolution in academia has attracted both eager idealists and seedy opportunists...  Most worrisome is the fact that good resumes are now more difficult to tell from the purchased and padded ones.

I have an almost-mystical belief that a scientist might make her biggest contribution to marine conservation not through her research per se, but by saying the one right sentence to the one right person sometime in her life. And she may never know which sentence or person it was. I was charmed to see Drew Dudley pose a similar idea in this TEDtalk: small moments can be amazingly powerful.

New research from my classmate at Scripps, Dr. Katie Cramer: Katie literally dug deep down into the rubble under the living reefs of Panama, comparing the types of corals and mollusks found decades ago with those that live on the reef today. She found changes in the reefs closest to human development that started centuries ago. The good news - because some of reef decline is due to things we can still change (deforestation and overfishing), we have options for protecting these reefs in the future.

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My Sci-Comm promotional spree continues. Posted on Science Sunday a few weeks ago, this interview with physicist Brian Cox is loaded with wisdom on particle physics and public science communication. Check it out.

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Brian Cox is one of my favourite science presenters. In this (rather long, but totally worthwhile) interview, he explains his thoughts on the universe, science communication, academia, rock music and more. His enthusiasm for science just feels so genuine, and his passion is infectious.

It's a fascinating interview, and most Americans might not be aware of him, so I think this is definitely worth watching if you have 1.5 hours to spare (or bookmark it for later!)

#sciencesunday curated by +Allison Sekuler and +Robby Bowles

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I don't always like fish, but when I do, I prefer the ridiculous ones.

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A seahorse father makes a good mother. Male seahorses undergo pregnancy and give birth to their sons and daughters.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/ykmme3l

The Sci-Comm blitz continues! Renowned communicator-of-underwater-science and trainer-of-Scripps-science-communicators Professor Jeremy Jackson gives a fast rundown on how we wrecked the ocean. (Some of my original G+ crew may recognize that this is the TED talk I mentioned at Google last year.) The last sentence is one of my favorite JBCJ quotes ever.

My alma mater Georgia Tech recently started C21U, a center meant to disrupt, redefine, and produce innovations in university education. This article has lots of good insights into the future of education, and I couldn't help but smile at the description of the hypothetical 17-year-old Tech student...

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And if you want to set some PDFs free without the TOS-violationy flavor of JSTOR Liberator...

Caveat quote from +Jonathan Eisen: "The license on the PDF may affect what people can do with them if they feel constrained to follow the law"

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Headed up the PCH to Big Sur... on the lookout for whales, elephant seals, and.... #lichenpoker entries. I'll report back in a few days. Cheers until then, G+niuses!

Mondays are always better when they're #macromonday s. Esteemed curators for everyone's favorite day-o-macro are +Kerry Murphy, +Jennifer Eden, and +Kelli Seeger Kim. Here's another of my all-time faves: a goby observing the underwater world from the safety of a tube sponge. (Cayman Islands, July 2011)

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Best thing ever. Divers and photographers are the kinds of people you can count on.

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The photographs, having spent 440 days on the ocean floor, have been reunited with the photographer and the family. I am very happy to have facilitated the journey back to where the photographs belong! I certainly didn't anticipate the attention this created, any photographer finding my camera would do the same, right? Thanks again for the great help that came from all of you - the Google+ community. I received an email from the recipient of your help this morning:

"Again thank you so much!!! Seeing the pictures brings tears as we really had forgotten what we were missing by not having them."

I love Google+, it's brilliant!

Previous Update: Thank you to everyone who responded with ideas (some listed below) - proof that the google+ hive-mind can be utilized to complete a simple gesture like returning someones photos :) Did I mention that I love Google+?

three pics were posted in the album from the SD card (photos aren't mine, so the child remained anonymous).
exif data was examined.
Kamloops Fire Rescue and Firefit were contacted.
Canon Canada was contacted re: camera serial number (reply received - no record of the serial number).
photos were dropped into google search and specific websites mentioned in the comments (no luck - nothing matching the exif serial online).
camera serial - canon eos rebel xs: 0520213746
SD card (for those who inquired): Sandisk Extreme III 20mb/s 2GB (it's not uncommon for SD cards to survive underwater - regardless of brand).

an interesting comparison: I posted this on facebook early this morning to try my luck there - it received one 'like' - that's it (there's a reason I left).

Media: please feel free to use the information posted here. I will not be providing interviews or contact information. to those who inquired re: use of my photographs and the story, and provided credit - thank you.

Original Post:

For Sale: Canon EOS 1000D
Description: only used underwater once, in the Pacific Ocean, for approximately one year.

Actual story: found off the end of a wharf in Deep Bay, BC while I was diving (completing a biological survey) in the harbour. I removed the SD card, cleaned it up, stuck it in a card reader and after being underwater in a corroding camera since August 2010 - it works! Approximately 50 pictures on the card from a family vacation. If you know a fire fighter from British Columbia whose team won the Pacific Regional Firefit competition, has a lovely wife and (now) 2 year old daughter - let me know. I would love to get them their vacation photos :)

There are other clues on/within the pictures - I think we should be able to track them down (not sure they'll want the camera back tho).

Applications for the 2013 TED Fellows are open! They're looking for young innovators who would contribute to and benefit from the annual TED conference and the TED network of collaborators and mentors. You know you're out there, g+niuses, give it a shot!

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I should type something here but my mind is still recovering from last week's boggling.

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Oxford Nanopore's (company) USB memory sized DNA sequencer is making waves in the field of genomics. This small USB sized device is said to sequence DNA directly from a drop of blood!

more on this here http://pathogenomics.bham.ac.uk/blog/2012/02/oxford-nanopore-introduces-dna-strand-sequencing-on-the-high-throughput-gridion-platform-and-presents-minion-a-sequencer-the-size-of-a-usb-memory-stick/

The technology behind Oxford MinIon sequencer
http://vimeo.com/36907534

#Sciencesunday #Genomic #Nanopore

The latest #microscopeimage from Curacao: One of the gorgonian embryos I collected on October 18th has developed into a proper settler. And in an impressive showing of taxon-loyalty, this settler already has the key identifying feature of the octocorals: eight pinnate tentacles!

A big funding boost for cnidarian research by UC Merced scientists (I LOVE cnidarian research by UCM scientists...): the NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity program will fund four professors at UC Merced for a five-year project to study the marine lakes of Palau. These lakes are isolated enough from the open ocean to have different evolutionary trajectories and they first became famous for the dense smacks of non-stinging jellyfish*. The researchers will combine studies of microbiology, paleoecology, paleoclimate, and ecosytem dynamics, to understand how changes in climate affect the evolution, adaptation, and extinction of marine species.

*And yes, while it's a pod of whales, or a school of fish, jellyfish in a group are called a smack!

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A most nutritious photo.

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No flower, but a close up of a Savoy cabbage which will be part of tomorrows dinner. My contribution to #MacroMonday curated by +Kerry Murphy, +Jennifer Eden and +Kelli Seeger Kim / +Macro Monday


I think this also fits to #MinimalMonday curated by +Olivier Du Tré.

George went to college to study marine biology and graduated with a degree in painting. With his naturalist's eye, he creates large-format ink drawings of North American wildlife. I truly love his work AND he's an all-around great guy. For those in the NYC area, his exhibition is open at PPOW Gallery until mid-April. For those of you playing #Birdpoker - you might like this!

A bit of underwater zen for the morning: “Ocean conservation seems like a daunting problem, but the solutions can be simple."

Congrats to +Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and thanks to all of you G+niuses who voted for her work in the Solution Search.

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One of the most mind-blowing things that happened to me in grad school was a professor describing the development of this new DNA sequencing technology: an enzyme pulls a single strand of DNA through a pore in a membrane, and the changes in the electrical charge of the membrane are used to determine which nucleotide passed by. Again today, mind-boggled.

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I want my own minion.

Check out the beautiful biomimicry art of Elaine Ng Yan Ling

Today my friend +Aaron Hartmann wrote in his blog for the San Diego newspaper about collaborative research teams - makin' the whole more awesome than the sum o' the parts. Pass this along to any youngsters you know who are interested in science... it's important!

(Also, check out my my underwater photography OF underwater-photography-in-action.)

Perhaps because it's Open Access Week (www.openaccessweek.com), the Royal Society just put their archive of 60,000 articles into the open access world forever. #teardownthispaywall

Knowing how to run the 100m HIRL (Hurdles In Real Life) is only helping me so much. Cartoon dude doesn't three-step at slow speeds? And why does my right wrist hurt but not my left knee?

Just returned from travels to the Carib, prepping with colleagues for coral spawning, and then along comes a low pressure system to make things interesting. HMM.

Shameless #openaccessweek  self-promotion! This is a piece I wrote for #ScienceProgress  a while back about why ecosystem conservation depends on free and open access to scientific research. We can't hold our elected officials accountable, and we all-too-easily ignore expert warnings, when we can't get our own hands on the science or understand what it means.

Just go poke around the ocean health index of your EEZ and that of your neighbor.

Here's some new research from my classmate at Scripps, as reported yesterday by the New York Times. In the past, fisheries in Hawaii produced more fish per hectare, and humans used less effort to catch them. How is that possible? Back then, we ate only the interest produced by the fishery and refrained from dipping into the principal. To switch up my growth metaphors, it looks like it's time for us to learn from our ancestors and stop eating the seed corn!

Scripps research--using archived plankton collections from the 1950s and 1960s--reveals the reason for the crazed birds that inspired Hitchcock's film. Diatoms: they're small, but you can still trip on 'em.

From the twitter stream of the president of Rhode Island School of Design, a nice article about the importance of art training as a complement to education in STEM fields (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).

I firmly believe that one cannot be a good scientist without being creative.  It  follows that having formal training in art makes one a better scientist. Conclusion: Full STEAM ahead.

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This is the year academic publishing gets shaken up in 100 different ways... It will be fascinating to see which ideas win.

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++BREAKING NEWS++

RT @catmacOA @p_binfield leaves @PLoSONE to co-found new #OA publishing company http://peerj.com - sad for PLoS but more evidence that OA unstoppable

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Soon we'll know exactly who liked each band first...

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Reshare this post so we can test the new Google+ Ripples! The more reshares, the more interesting the graph.

So please, everyone reshare.

https://plus.google.com/ripples/details?activityid=TupMP3ZjqUg

Back from the biodiversity-mind-boggle of Big Sur. (+Chris Mallory, SO MANY lichen photos have been captured...) Next up is Yosemite!

In the meantime, I'm stopping by to remind all your science-minded G+niuses to check out +Aaron Hartmann's blog every Monday on the San Diego Union Tribune website. This past week he wrote about marine science jobs that don't involve scuba diving. Engineers, mathematicians, captains, chemists - the jobs are almost as diverse as the creatures.

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This is a great example of how artists and designers can help us scientists communicate better, with each other and the world. I would love to see these kinds of graphics built right into the original publications... let's have open access to beautiful graphics in addition to long blocks of science text :)

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This is so wonderful. Why can't we publish things like this?

My favorite coral-I-don't-study is Dendrogyra cylindrus, aka pillar coral. Just this month, colleagues in the Florida Keys captured the FIRST-EVER photos of this coral species reproducing! In the case of this species, a colony is either male or female... and they caught pictures of both!

This is yet more proof that we have MUCH more to learn about what happens in the ocean at night.