This month on the Node: April

Posted by the Node, on 30 April 2013

Again, things have been busy on the Node this month and, as well as the usual flurry of job adverts, we’ve had some great research- and meeting-based posts.

Below are just some of the highlights. Remember – it’s easy to post on the Node, so feel free to get in touch (or simply post away!) if you have any developmental biology-related news, events or discussions that you’d like to share with the community.

Stem Cells Image Competition

The results of the competition were finally announced. Thanks to all of you who’ve submitted images and/or voted. Congratulations again to Lulu Xing of the University of Melbourne. Lulu’s winning image (“The Garden of Memory”) will be appearing on a cover of Development in the coming weeks.

Research highlights

– We had our first “Journal Club on the Node” post – thanks to the University of Chicago Development, Regeneration and Stem Cell Journal Club for sharing their discussion with us. We look forward to seeing many more of these journal clubs – from U. Chicago and any other journals clubs that are interested – on the Node in the future.

– Patricia Gongal highlighted a recent Nature paper that used a clever approach to visualize retinoic acid gradients.

– Rachael Inglis highlighted a recent report of the discovery of some fossilised dinosaur embryos.

Journal/publishing news

– Our new Editor, Benoit Bruneau, explained why he’s so excited to be joining the journal.

– One of Development’s sister journals, Disease Models and Mechanisms (DMM), announced the appointment of a new team of academic editors.

– SpotOn, Nature Publishing Group’s online forum for science policy, outreach and tools, featured the Node as a case study for using social media in science.

News from meetings and conferences

– Continuing with the reports from the BSDB/BSCB Joint Spring Meeting, Andrei Luchici summarised Day 1 at the meeting.

– Steff Knappe also painted an overview of some of the topics covered at the BSDB/BSCB meeting. You can also see the earlier report from Steff on the Careers Workshop.

– Robert Blassberg reported back from his recent trip to Japan during which time he attended the joint UK-Japan workshop on Neural Epigenetics, held at the British Embassy in Tokyo.

– If you’re interested in attending a hands-on dev biol course, read more about the upcoming International Course on Developmental Biology.

Happy reading!