New paper on Constructive Neutral Evolution

Don't have time to blog this right now (off to protistology conference today -- will bring back lots of goodies!), but there's a new review paper about CNE out a couple weeks ago. It's paywalled at some rather obscure journal that an institution as big as UBC doesn't have access to, so here's a pdf y'all can [hopefully] access!

Lukes et al. 2011 IUBMB Life: How a Neutral Evolutionary Ratchet Can Build Cellular Complexity

(original journal link)

See, if this was published in a proper (ie, open access) journal, I wouldn't have to do this. As taxpayers you all have the right to see this, outdated publishers be damned.

I'm taking off to ISoP in Seattle - I might attempt to live tweet parts of it (as @ocelloid), so do follow us on twitter using the #isop11 hashtag! And for those of you who are gonna be there... let's see if you can find me ;-) (spoiler alert: Psi is a pseudonym. Seriously! o.O)

Big Announcement: New blog -- The Ocelloid

After several months of contained excitement and preparation, the embargo has been lifted and I can finally announce the unveiling of the new Scientific American blog network, of which I am honoured to be a small part at The Ocelloid, my new blog -- focusing, like this one, on protists and evolution, although with a stronger attempt at reaching the lay audience. I will continue blogging here at Skeptic Wonder as before, and since I already don't blog as frequently as I should, not much of a difference should be noticed. Basically, my goal is to have The Ocelloid more general audience friendly and introducing people to the protist world from a more superficial 'wow' angle, while Skeptic Wonder will be cater more to the current crowd that seems to consist mostly of people more qualified than I am about this stuff. It has been a bit awkward trying to reach both types of audiences from the same blog so I think this may work out well for everyone. I'll also keep more raw discussions here and The Ocelloid should be more polished up. We'll see where this goes. From time to time I'll cross-post between them but perhaps it's better to keep the recycling to a minimum.

Bora has an amazing detailed introduction to the SciAm network which discusses its purpose as well as awesome overviews of the individual blogs. The official launch press release is here, as well as a welcome post from the Editor-in-Chief and a post on The Observations. More once I get home, am out of town right now until tmr with crappy internet and no control over own time...

EDIT 23:30 05.07.11: Just to clarify things: I am keeping Skeptic Wonder and staying here at FoS as well! And there may be another change here coming up, for the better!