Weekly Picks
TWiV’s Science Picks of the Week
Through episode 30 of TWiV, we highlighted a science blog, science podcast, and science book to help promote other excellent sources of science information. More recently, TWiV hosts and guests are asked to pick anything having to do with science.
Below are listed all the TWiV weekly picks since episode #1 – most recent first.
TWiV #96
Rich – Breast milk sugars give infants a protective coat (NY Times and PNAS article)
Vincent – The Great American University by Jonathan R. Cole
TWiV #95
Alan – Families Fighting Flu
Rich – Food, Inc.
Dickson – Fuel
Vincent – MIT Open Courseware
Michael – Waiting for Superman and Can Science Feed the World? (Nature)
TWiV #94
Alan – The new Federal Register site (see also regulations.gov)
Rich – The Florida Museum of Nautural History Butterfly Rainforest
Vincent – JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments
TWiV #93
Alan – Southern Fried Science
Rich – Tree of Life web project
Vincent – Dickson Despommier at Big Think
TWiV #92
Marilyn – Viruses in the faecal microbiota of monozygotic twins and their mothers (Nature)
Rich – The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History
Vincent – The Red Queen by Matt Ridley (thanks, Jesper!)
TWiV #91
Welkin – Advice for a Young Investigator by Santiago Ramon y Cajal
Rich – How microbes define and defend us
Dickson – H1N1 virus lacks 1918 virus killer protein
Alan – The Xtal Set Society
Vincent – Antibodies and the quest for an AIDS vaccine
TWiV #90
Eric – Year of Darwin by Sean Carroll
Rich – March of the Penguins
Alan – Standing-height desks
Vincent – DengueWatch (thanks Richard!)
TWiV #89
Alan – Tree of Life graphic
Vincent - TEDx Oil Spill
TWiV #88
Marc - Apple iPad as a tool for writing, with Papers, Pages, and GoodReader
Alan – The Bacterium and the Bacteriophage
Vincent - Naturally Obsessed (thanks, Sharon!)
TWiV #87
Rich - CDC Public Health Image Library
Alan – Great Microbiologists – A Lego Movie
Vincent - March of the Microbes by John L. Ingraham
Graham – Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas by Forest Rohwer
TWiV #86
Rich - Google Crisis Response – Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Vincent - HHMI resources for teachers and students (thanks, Jim!)
Eric – Vaccine by Arthur Allen
TWiV #84
Rich - Charles F. Littlewood photographs
Vincent - Not so humble pie (thanks, Sophie!)
Grant – The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
David – Is Parkinson’s Disease a prion disorder?
TWiV #83
Alan – Evernote
Rich - The Knife Man by Wendy Moore
Vincent - The Pump Handle
TWiV #82
Rich The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle by Eric Lax
Vincent Proteopedia (thanks, Erik!)
TWiV #81
Rich Google Chrome browser ‘speed test‘ (and how it was made)
Vincent Inside the Outbreaks by Mark Pendergrast
TWiV #80
Rich PBS Frontline: The Vaccine War
Alan Readability
Vincent Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle
TWiV #79
TWiV #78
Dickson Medical News Today: Infectious Diseases and Eaarth by Bill McKibben
Rich U can with Beakman and Jax by Jok Church
Alan UnderwaterTimes
Vincent The Reef Tank
TWiV #77
Rich The Way We Work by David Macaulay
Alan DimDim
Vincent Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky
TWiV #75
Matt Bitesize Bio
Alan Free printable graph paper (see also doane paper)
Vincent Avian Flu Diary
TWiV #73
Dickson Whole-Genome Sequencing in a Patient with Charcot–Marie–Tooth Neuropathy (NEJM and NY Times)
Rich Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene by Stephen Hall
Vincent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections – videocasts
TWiV #72
Dickson Scientist as Chef by Dickson Despommier (pdf)
Alan Networked Organisms and Habitats (NOAH) iPhone app
Rich Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
Vincent The Dish
TWiV #71
Dickson and Alan NSF/AAAS Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge
Rich Foundation by Issac Asimov
Vincent Natural Obsessions by Natalie Angier
TWiV #70
Dickson Chemical Ecology – edited by Thomas Eisner and Jerrold Meinwald
Alan Scripps Center for Mass Spectrometry
Vincent Folding@home (thanks Jesper!)
TWiV #69
Rich John Moran Florida Nature Photography
Alan Periodic Table of Videos
Vincent The Protein Databank Educational Resources
TWiV #68
Rich Foundations of Virology – PowerPoint by Frederick A. Murphy (bio/interview pdf)
Alan Spoonful of Medicine – Nature Medicine blog
Vincent The Feynman Lectures (thanks Ilya!)
TWiV #67
Marc Association of Science-Technology Centers Passport Program
Alan Zooniverse
Vincent Grand Rounds at the Mailman School of Public Health
TWiV #66
Vincent Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS
TWiV #65
Matt 100 Incredible lectures from the world’s top scientists
Alan The Amateur Scientist CD
Vincent The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
TWiV #64
Rich Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings, and Albert R. Hibbs
Alan Spaceweather.com
Vincent The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus
TWiV #63
Rich Infectious Awearables
Alan Darwine
Vincent Microbial Art
TWiV #62
Dick Smallpox – The Death of a Disease by DA Henderson
Alan Olympus Bioscapes Digital Imaging Competition
Vincent Microbe Magazine
TWiV #61
Dick New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers by Robert S. Desowitz
Vincent Information is Beautiful – is swine flu vaccine safe?
TWiV #60
Dick The Double Helix by James D. Watson
Vincent Worms and Germs Blog
TWiV #59
Rich Longitude by Dava Sobel
Alan Heil Pro Set Media Headset (for a good price, order from a ham radio store)
Vincent MicrobeWorld app for iPhone and iTouch (iTunes or MicrobeWorld)
TWiV #58
Dick Science News article: Enter the Virosphere
Alan WHO H1N1 timeline interactive map
Vincent Cheap Google accounts storage and How CDC estimates flu cases
TWiV #56
Dick 27″ iMac and Powers of Ten by Philip Morrison and Phyllis Morrison
Alan ImageMagick
Cliff ePatient Connections 2009
Vincent Cell size and scale
TWiV #55
Dick Nikon photomicroscopy contest winners at SciAm (Dick’s article on vertical farming)
Alan Make:
Rich BBC’s Planet Earth (DVD at Amazon)
Jason The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate
Vincent An Epidemic of Fear and Misinformants at Wired Magazine
TWiV #54
Lynn Francis Crick: Hunter of Life’s Secrets by Robert Olby
Vincent ViralZone
TWiV #53
Alan scienceline
Dick Younger by Judith Sulzberger MD
Vincent FluView
TWiV #51
Alan Bat Rabies and Other Lyssavirus Infections
Dick Boosting Vaccines: The Power of Adjuvants (Scientific American; subscription required)
Vincent The Ig Nobel Prizes by Marc Abrahams
TWiV #50
Jason Glass Microbiology
Vincent FluWeb Influenza Historical Resources Database
TWiV #49
Dick Discovery Channel: Planet Green
Vincent Influenza videos at BigThink: one, two, three, four, five, six
TWiV #48
Rich Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Dick Eliot Porter at the Carter Museum and bookstore at Amazon
Alan Dr. Clarke’s H1N1 rap at the HHS sponsored YouTube contest
Vincent Coast to Coast Bio Podcast
TWiV #47
Dick Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas by Sylvia A. Earle, Linda K. Glover
Vincent Bionumbers
TWiV #46
Dick West Nile virus website at CDC
Vincent PLoS Pearls
TWiV #45
Jennifer Art of Science 2009
Alan MediWiki (install tips)
Dick Diversity of Life by EO Wilson
Vincent Nobel Intent
TWiV #44
Jennifer Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD Comics)
Vincent Giant Microbes (thanks Stephen!)
Dick Virology in the 21st Century
Alan Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
TWiV #43
Dick Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth by Lynn Margulis and Karlene V. Schwartz
Vincent A Genetic Switch by Mark Ptashne
TWiV #42
Delthia 100 questions and answers about influenza by Delthia Ricks
Alan Tinychat
Dick Mythbusters
Vincent Effect Measure
TWiV #41
Alan For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner
Rich Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
Dick Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Vincent Gallileoscope (thanks Zach!)
TWiV #40
Alan Coming to Life by Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
Dick Monsters Inside Me from Discovery Channel
Vincent Microbeworld
TWiV #39
Dick Visual Explanations by Edward R. Tufte
Vincent The Youngest Science by Lewis Thomas
TWiV #38
Glenn Riddled with Life by Marlene Zuk
Vincent All the Virology on the WWW
TWiV #37
Alan Forrest Mims (website)
Vincent The Machinery of Life by David S. Goodsell
TWiV #36
Dick The World’s Water by Peter H. Gleick
Hamish Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond; Complications by Atul Gawande
Alan Eurekalert
Vincent Respectful Insolence
TWiV #35
Dick Three papers on origins of infectious diseases (one, two, three)
Rich An Imperfect Lens by Anne Roiphe
Alan Zotero, a FireFox plugin
Vincent e! Science News
TWiV #34
Alan Org-Mode
Vincent Human/Swine A/H1N1 Influenza Origins and Evolution
Stephen The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
TWiV #33
Alan Beginning Mac OS X Programming by Michael Trent
Dick National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine, Leiden
Vincent Vaccinated by Paul Offit
Raul HubbleSite
TWiV #32
Alan The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia
Vincent Pi Cubed for iPhone/iPod Touch (Sunset Lake Software, $9.99)
Raul Science and New England Journal articles on H1N1 influenza
TWiV #31
Marc Celestia, an application
Dick US Geological Survey website
Alan Society for Amateur Scientists website
Vincent Sneeze, an online game













{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Please talk about Enterovirus in the future, thank you !
I like the review comment “”As the saying goes, human beings are born as originals and die as copies. Not Hilary Koprowski.”
Thanks so much for this list, I am discovering more and more podcasts.
I enjoy your podcast a great deal and have listened to it since Dec 2008. I recetnly heard you discuss West Nile vaccines for horses. The first Vaccine that came out was and is made by a cvaccine company called Fort Doges. It is a simple killed vaccine. Its cam out within a year or so of the out break of West Nile virus in the US. It isnt an elegant vaccine. Aobut 3 or 4 years ago another company called Merial came out with a version made by the use of a canarypox virus. Now how often should a horse be vaccinesed. Some veterinarians suggested at one point every 6 months. The scince really has not bben there. SO the practice is to just do it wvery year
James Ferguson DVM
Vet Immunol Immunopathol. 2008 Jun 15;123(3-4):230-9. Epub 2008 Feb 16. Links
A West Nile virus (WNV) recombinant canarypox virus vaccine elicits WNV-specific neutralizing antibodies and cell-mediated immune responses in the horse.El Garch H, Minke JM, Rehder J, Richard S, Edlund Toulemonde C, Dinic S, Andreoni C, Audonnet JC, Nordgren R, Juillard V.
Merial SAS, R&D, 254 rue Marcel Mérieux, 69342 Cedex 07 Lyon, France.
Successful vaccination against West Nile virus (WNV) requires induction of both neutralizing antibodies and cell-mediated immune responses. In this study, we have assessed the ability of a recombinant ALVAC-WNV vaccine (RECOMBITEK WNV) to elicit neutralizing antibodies and virus-specific cell-mediated immune responses in horses. In addition, we examined whether prior exposure to ALVAC-WNV vaccine would inhibit B and cell-mediated immune responses against the transgene product upon subsequent booster immunizations with the same vaccine. The results demonstrated that the recombinant ALVAC-WNV vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies and prM/E insert-specific IFN-gamma(+) producing cells against WNV in vaccinated horses. Prior exposure to ALVAC-WNV vaccine did not impair the ability of horses to respond to two subsequent booster injections with the same vaccine, although anti-vector-specific antibody and cell-mediated immune responses were induced in vaccinated horses. This report describes, for the first time, the induction of antigen-specific cell-mediated responses following vaccination with an ALVAC virus recombinant vaccine encoding WNV antigens. Moreover, we showed that both WNV-specific IFN-gamma producing cells and anti-WNV neutralizing antibody responses, are not inhibited by subsequent vaccinations with the same vector vaccine.
I enjoy your podcast a great deal and have listened to it since Dec 2008. I recetnly heard you discuss West Nile vaccines for horses. The first Vaccine that came out was and is made by a cvaccine company called Fort Doges. It is a simple killed vaccine. Its cam out within a year or so of the out break of West Nile virus in the US. It isnt an elegant vaccine. Aobut 3 or 4 years ago another company called Merial came out with a version made by the use of a canarypox virus. Now how often should a horse be vaccinesed. Some veterinarians suggested at one point every 6 months. The scince really has not bben there. SO the practice is to just do it wvery year
James Ferguson DVM
Vet Immunol Immunopathol. 2008 Jun 15;123(3-4):230-9. Epub 2008 Feb 16. Links
A West Nile virus (WNV) recombinant canarypox virus vaccine elicits WNV-specific neutralizing antibodies and cell-mediated immune responses in the horse.El Garch H, Minke JM, Rehder J, Richard S, Edlund Toulemonde C, Dinic S, Andreoni C, Audonnet JC, Nordgren R, Juillard V.
Merial SAS, R&D, 254 rue Marcel Mérieux, 69342 Cedex 07 Lyon, France.
Successful vaccination against West Nile virus (WNV) requires induction of both neutralizing antibodies and cell-mediated immune responses. In this study, we have assessed the ability of a recombinant ALVAC-WNV vaccine (RECOMBITEK WNV) to elicit neutralizing antibodies and virus-specific cell-mediated immune responses in horses. In addition, we examined whether prior exposure to ALVAC-WNV vaccine would inhibit B and cell-mediated immune responses against the transgene product upon subsequent booster immunizations with the same vaccine. The results demonstrated that the recombinant ALVAC-WNV vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies and prM/E insert-specific IFN-gamma(+) producing cells against WNV in vaccinated horses. Prior exposure to ALVAC-WNV vaccine did not impair the ability of horses to respond to two subsequent booster injections with the same vaccine, although anti-vector-specific antibody and cell-mediated immune responses were induced in vaccinated horses. This report describes, for the first time, the induction of antigen-specific cell-mediated responses following vaccination with an ALVAC virus recombinant vaccine encoding WNV antigens. Moreover, we showed that both WNV-specific IFN-gamma producing cells and anti-WNV neutralizing antibody responses, are not inhibited by subsequent vaccinations with the same vector vaccine.
its been a week that i have started listening podocats.
i am loving it.