the skeptical alchemist: Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival #4

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival! Let's get down to business right away...

FParrish presents Fly Flight Simulators: Science Videos - Science News - ScienCentral posted at Flies Playing Video Games...Could Lead To New Flying Robots. This is hands-down the most interesting submission of today's carnival, so I suggest you watch their YouTube video to find out more.

Phil B. presents Evolution is Dead posted at Phil for Humanity. This might be considered a controversial post, but I wanted to include it in this edition. Phil does not usually write strictly about science, but it is great to see that people who are not "in the works" take interest in these topics.

Larry Moran also contributed to this edition with his Gene Wiki posted over at Sandwalk.

GrrlScientist is the biggest contributor to today's edition (and I would like to invite her to become a host for one of the next editions). Her contributions are:

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life introduces a new book by Carl Zimmer telling the fascinating story of E. coli, and how this common gut bacterium has shaped our understanding of life.

DNA Reveals Tempo and Chronology of Speciation for Dendroica Warblers , a discussion of Science paper which reconstructs the molecular phylogeny of birds

A Closer Look at Preserved Dinosaur Soft Tissue Reveals .. Slime. This discusses new findings that question the initial discovery of soft tissue on a T rex bone, and in fact suggests that this is nothing but a "biofilm" -- slime growth!

Sputnik Challenges Our Current Definition of Life, discussing the surprising discovery by a French group that viruses can infect not only living cells, but other viruses as well!

For the ones who think it's time for protein-interaction talk, 96well presents just another protein-interaction model, posted at Reportergene.

Cellular metabolism

Dr Shock presents Facts about Chocolate and Health posted at Dr Shock MD PhD, giving us an overview of what is known about the mechanism of action of cocoa polyphenols including clinical, pre-clinical and in vitro studies consistently show changes in biomarkers related to oxidative status and/or vascular function.

Methods

SciPhu presents Use of polyethylene glycol for drying polyacrylamide gels to avoid cracking posted at SciPhu.

Other

In this section, we have a submission regardin career options for biologists, and a funny letter by a human-created organism:Khan presents Byte-Savvy Biologists, while Paras Chopra gives voice to the new organism in This is Synthia talking.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of molecular and cell biology carnival using our carnival submission form, or sending me an e-mail (address in the right column of this blog). Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. We are still looking for hosts -- so if you are interested in hosting this blog on one of the second Sundays of the next few months, give me a shout!