Thomas Hesselberg's blog

Are you interested in science? Then get a free magazine

The name of the magazine is research*eu and as the name implies it is the official research magazine of the European Union. However, unlike what you may think the magazine is far from a boring technocratic description of European research projects. It is true that it focuses on large research projects funded by the European Commission, but the magazine is independent and has a dedicated staff of professional journalists. Besides covering European research projects, it also covers events and small research notices through the European Union. It, furthermore, sometimes covers special topics from a global perspective. The latest issue, for instance, has an in depth coverage of climate change, but also covers topics such as the 2007 Polar Year, nanotechnology and a scientist portrait.

Biomimetics and intelligent design

Scientists are well aware that the majority of the research papers they publish in scientific journals, usually are only read by a few colleagues and fellow specialists in the area. Thus scientists are mostly pleased when their papers reach a wider audience. However, there are situations where this does not fully apply.

I had a review paper about biomimetics and my doctoral research on locomotion in ragworms published in the journal Naturwisseschaften in July. I have just discovered that this paper has been discussed and commented upon in a blog about intelligent design (ID, the idea that living things are so complex and perfectly designed that they cannot have arisen by a random evolutionary process. Instead there must be some non-defined intelligent designer, i.e. God, behind).

Launch of a new life science portal

During the summer, a new life science portal Life of science has been launched.
The portal covers all areas within biology, medicine and pharmacology as well as their interaction with biotechnology. It focuses on new interesting scientific findings which are overlooked or too complicated for the traditional media. Not all fascinating and curious science is published in Nature or Science. Life of science also occassionally prints longer feature articles within these fields and has so far written about biomimetics and morality from an evolutionary perspective.

The portal has been up and running for a few months now and some of the articles published so far include

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