Scintilla, a science aggregator and recommendation engine freshly from the Natureplex

The Natureplex (Nature Web Publishing Department on the second floor of a renovated warehouse with around 25 people near at King’s Cross, London) nerds are still busy: Scintilla, a science recommendation engine was launched based on aggregating science content from RSS/Atom feeds of various websites. How could Scintilla (check what the term scintillation refers to, it is a good name) be harmonized with other products of the NPG, like Postgenomic, Connotea, Nature Network…is a future question. For me it seems that the developers would like to convince me to use Scintilla feeds (in the long run) instead of Google Reader feeds when the content is about science in general and in details. The key word is personalization and personal filtering and in that respect maybe it is worth to think of Google’s personalized search trials and web history. More info (including the mail of Euan Adie, developer): Scintilla and Scintilla brings personalization to science

Abnormal whole body regeneration from the vasculature at the sea squirt

The sea squirt can regenerate its whole body from the vasculature. I asked Ayelet Voskoboynik, postdoctoral fellow from the Weissman lab, Stanford University, to tell us how. Their findings were published in a recent paper, entitled Striving for normality: whole body regeneration through a series of abnormal generations
(FASEB Journal, 2007 May;21(7):1335-44.)

Read the whole interview at The Niche blog of Nature Stem Cell Reports.

Image source: the FASEB Journal, thanks to Cody Mooneyhan.