What Science/Bioinformatics Magazines Do You Read?

Eric asks: "I am a software developer getting acclimated to the bioinformatics space by reading through introductory texts like 'Genome : The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters' by Matt Ridley, 'Genomes' by T.A. Brown, and bio journals. I find these sources to be exceptionally interesting but frequently the information is too detailed or too light for my purposes. I think the ideal information would come from a monthly magazine or online forum (like Slashdot) that is geared towards bright non-biologist computery folk (think Dr. Dobbs with an emphasis on computational biology -- light but definitely not fluff). I am particularly interested in new discoveries, research techniques, and experiments in this space. I am also budget constrained, and only have $100 a year set aside to access this kind of material. Does something like this exist, if so which ones do you recommend?" I think this question serves as a fine follow-up to our last question on Bioinformatics, may I suggest yet another starting point for those interested in this subject?

Comments

BioInformatics Magazine

[JMZero]

Have you tried BioInformatics magazine? If so, why didn't you tell us?

If you didn't find this, which means you didn't try google, then why are you asking Slashdot?

is it that big of a field?

[ameoba]

I keep seeing "bioinformatics" pop up, but never really hear anythign serious about it. Is it really a big enough field to have much in the way of journals specifically for it?

Re:is it that big of a field?

[Kheldarstl]

It's getting there, I work as a System Admin. for a DNA Sequencing company and we recently hired another Bioinformatics guy, we recieved more resumes qualified for the position then I thought we would. As to sources for Bioinformatics Info, unfortunatly I have run into the same issue Most of what I have found has been gleaned from sitting down at my local College library with a good index and weeding out the 98% of the articles which I don't care about to get to the pearls which I want. A good online source although not as extensive as a good college library is: http://search.ebi.ac.uk:8888/compass Which has a decent online journal link collection. Keith

Medical library

[Ratbert42]

$100/year doesn't go too far. If you have a medical school nearby, there's a good chance you can use it for free. Probably not to check out journals, but browsing is free. Even if they don't allow the general public in, there is often a way to buy access. I mean legitimately, not by handing the guard a $10 bill. Even when I was in Princeton, my company had a sort of subscription with Princeton University to use the library.

Re:Medical library

[Chrome3]

I used a similar system when I did bioinformatic study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. My favorite journal was, appropriately, titled _Bioinformatics_. A subscription is something on the order of 2k$/yr. I was able to use the schools copies freely. The ACM also publishes a journal for their bioinformatics SIG. By far the best option for personal and acedemic usage is to get a library card or make friends with a local biology professor. You can also try looking at the bionet.* newsgroups.

Do slashdotters do science?

[DaoudaW]

I've noticed for some time now that articles about science have by far the lowest response rate on slashdot. For example, Designing An Astrophysical Virtual Observatory and Space Station Gets A Blanket got only 4 comments each, and none moderated up to my normal reading level. More typically a science article gets 20-30 comments, compared to the 100-200 comments on other topics. Anybody understand why?

As to what I read... I enjoy New Scientist (scientifiction) when I can get my hands on it, almost always read Scientific American, glance through Science to see if theirs something I might understand (excellent editorials). I'm also getting the email summary of Nature, and occasionally follow the links to their website. Oh, I also enjoy Natural History though it lacks something since since Stephen Jay Gould stopped writing his column.

Re:Do slashdotters do science?

[2moon2]

A recent poll seems to indicate a lot of interest in science articles. Maybe the poll was wrong (what with all the disclaimers etc.)? Maybe people like to read about science but don't have anything to say about it?

Re:Do slashdotters do science?

[Ouroboro]

• I've noticed for some time now that articles about science have by far the lowest response rate on slashdot. For example, Designing An Astrophysical Virtual Observatory [slashdot.org] and Space Station Gets A Blanket [slashdot.org] got only 4 comments each, and none moderated up to my normal reading level. More typically a science article gets 20-30 comments, compared to the 100-200 comments on other topics. Anybody understand why?

I would imagine that this is because the science articles are in general not on the front page. You either have to go to the Science section, or configure your preferences to put those articles on the front page. For this reason they get a much smaller number of viewers. I would like to know exactly what criteria they use to determine if a story goes on the front page or relegated to only being shown in a section.

Re:Do slashdotters do science?

[Manax]

Okay, so this is ranging further offtopic (but it's meta-ontopic!), but my preferred science periodical is Science news, pricy, but good articles on a variety of topics, and is sorta just a summary of a lot of the stuff that is going on. I stopped my subscription about 6 months ago, because it got to be too expensive in a $/page_read sort of way... ;/

I suspect the big problem with these topics are two or three fold: I suspect a lot of people are interested, but don't know a lot about some of the topics (admittedly, this is slashdot, but still). I suspect the frontpage issue (that others brought up). I suspect that it isn't quite as controversial as other things, like MS, encryption, fair-use, cloning, etc.

Wish I had a little more to contribute regarding BioInformatics....

Re:Do slashdotters do science?

[gtg625a]

I don't know .... I like that /. puts up relavent science news ... this is the only site that I have found that provides an open forum on my two loves ... computers and Physics. But I would disagree with your statement about not having anything to say. You should check out the argument on the Unified Theory, or some of the discussion of Bose-Einstein Condensates...

I'm an idiot

[JMZero]

I guess BioInformatics counts as a Journal and is probably more heavy than what you're looking for.

But I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for. Intermediate publications like Dr. Dobbs exist in CS because there's such a huge market of "practical" computer programmers. And the articles in BioInformatics aren't exactly incomprehensible.

intermediate publications

[Anonymous Coward]

> Intermediate publications like Dr. Dobbs exist in CS because there's such a huge market of "practical" computer programmers

Perhaps you are right about no such magazines existing. It's hard to guage the amount of people working in these fields.
Personally I'd love a magazine that focused on research results and computer techniques for acquiring them at an intermediate level.

Re:intermediate publications

[JMZero]

It's sort of the same problem that the "Intermediate Nuclear Physics" magazines have. Who's their subscribers?

As such, you either get Journals, Textbooks, or Fluff.

science magazine

[Phork]

science magazine is very good. It is not strictly bioinformatics,it covers biology in general, but frequently has bioinformatics related articles. A subscript is i think $90 per year, but it comes out every week, and is uasually about 180 pages. it is published by the american association for the advancement of science.

not too heavy... not too light... just right.....

[a tangy ray!]

Further to other suggestions, BioMedNet.com is a good source of review articles relating to bioinformatics. Here are a few bioinformatics-related online tutorials as well: protein structure prediction: http://www.bmm.icnet.uk/people/rob/CCP11BBS/index. html principles of protein structure: http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS2/top.html hidden markov models: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/scs-only/teaching-mate rials/HiddenMarkovModels/html_dev/main.html