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?

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.

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?

[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.

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.