nodalpoint.org

I'm not much of an evolutionary biologist, but Jonathan Eisen asked for help and I can't resist. So, in the name of Science, and via the goodness of nodalpoint, here is some deserved Google Juice for various Trees of Life on the Web.

• Jonathan Eisen's "Tree of Life" blog
• Tree of Life Web Project
• Tree of life (science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Green Tree of Life at Berkeley
• Fungal Tree of Life Project
• Beetle Tree of Life project
• Fly Tree of Life project
• Mammal Tree of Life project
• Cypriniformes Tree of Life project
• Liverwort Tree of Life Project
• Early Bird Tree of Life project
• Angiosperm Tree of Life project
• Cnidaria Tree of Life Project
• Decapoda Tree of Life Project

There, I've done my bit for Science, now it's your turn. Spread the ❤ link love ❤,and since we will soon be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, why not marvel at the coral / shrub / lungs of life too?

(CC-licensed Tree of Life picture by Phitar)

Twenty one years ago this month, in May 1987, Irish rockers U2 released their classic Joshua Tree single, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Those twenty one years have seen incredible technological change: the adoption of desktop computers, mobile phones, the birth of the Web and the widespread use of search engines like Google. So with sincere apologies to Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry, it's time we updated the lyrics for the 21st century. So, I give you "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Googling For" (21st anniversary, 2008 webby edition)...

The Ensembl Weblog provides news, views and announcements about the Ensembl Genome Browser. The blog has been going for a few years now, but I’ve only just become aware of it thanks to a recent Ensembl Genome Browser Tutorial by Bert Overduin. Catching up on posts from Ensemblians this year, Ewan Birney wrote a piece about The Gene Love-in last week and Paul Flicek briefly described the 1000 Genomes project back in January. The Ensembl Weblog is fairly low traffic, so if you don’t already read it, it’s worth considering subscribing to the feed.

And it’s good to see more scientists using blogs to communicate. Long may this trend continue!

There are a few remaining places left on the Building Scientific Workflows for Bioinformatics and Systems biology using Taverna course held in Manchester, UK on 15th April 2008. Attendance at the workshop is free, but participants will have to cover their own travel costs. Due to the hands-on nature of the workshop, numbers are limited to 30, so there is a ‘first-come, first-serve’ policy on bookings. Book now to avoid disappointment!

Bio::Blogs 19 is fast approaching, hot on the heels of Bio::Blogs 18 which was hosted by Michael Barton. I'll be hosting this one over at O'Really? and publishing it at the beginning of March, so send any interesting stuff to bioblogs /ate/ gmail.com. The broad theme of this issue of BioBlogs will be the relationship between Biology and Engineering, following on from this interview published on Edge.org "Engineering and Biology": A Talk with Drew Endy.

Well it's that time of year again. The 15th annual stamp collecting edition of the journal Nucleic Acids Research (NAR), also known as the 2008 Database issue [1], was published earlier this week. This year there are 1078 databases listed in the collection, 110 more than the previous one (see Figure 1). As we pass the one thousand databases mark (1kDB) I wonder, what proportion of the data in these databases will never be used?

♫ PCR, When you need to know who the Daddy is ♫ ...

There is a famous place in London town, inside Hyde Park, known as Speakers' Corner. It is a space where free speech and self-expression prevail. At Speakers' Corner, anyone can say anything they like about anything they want to anyone who cares to listen. There are some obvious parallels between blogging and Speakers' Corner as well as one rather striking difference.

As of 2007, the Internet is mostly still a wild untamed jungle. Many people have tried to chart the territory, but what should a map of the internet look like?

Taking down A.I. town?

The Semantic Web is (quote) "a new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers". It will "unleash a revolution of new possibilities" using a magical "new" artificially intelligent technology called ontology. So says a much-cited article in Scientific American published back in May 2001. Most people who have read this article, fall into two camps: "believers" and "non-believers". Let me tell you a short story about a religious war between these two groups...