How Do You Keep Up With Science Developments?

malraid writes "As a nerd who used to love science back in high school (specially physics), I now find myself completely disconnected from any and all scientific developments and news. How do you try to stay up to date with scientific developments? Science journals? Whatever makes it into Slashdot's front page? Books? Magazines? I'm looking for something engaging and informative, for not something that will require me to go and get a PhD just to be able to comprehend."

Comments

The Internet, where else?

[BWJones]

Seriously though, the Internet is actually where just about everybody goes in academia to stay on top of the latest research and most areas of focus have their own resources like PubMed for biomedical research.

Also, a good way to make sure you keep up with the absolute torrent of work out there (slowing due to budget cuts) is by keeping a blog generated around the area of science interest you have. Webvision http://webvision.med.utah.edu/ is such an effort to keep up with the latest and greatest in vision research. While this one is tuned to be slightly more accessible to the general public, it has not been uncommon for other lay individuals to rapidly become "experts" in their fields through their blogs. This high school kid, Sawyer has established a blog http://www.talkingspaceonline.com/ that already has him winning awards and getting international accolades from folks like Xeni Jardin and Miles O'Brien.

Keep it simple

[Garridan]

Just read slashdot.

Re:Keep it simple

[Nasajin]

I just come here and hit F5 as fast as I can, just in case I miss something.

Re:Keep it simple

[tloh]

Slashdot is a great community for smart people. But, with respect, a person can be smart in one area but be embarrassingly ignorant in almost everything else. Slashdot is strong in technology and select physical sciences - perhaps to a fault. But those of us who've participated here for a while can relate a few cringe worthy episodes involving context in the biological sciences, history/geography, social/cultural awareness, etc. There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

Don't get me wrong - on most subjects, my personal views align more often than not with what I see on slashdot. But I experience intolerance/extremism and narrow-minded ignorance here more often than I would like from my own camp, and I am embarrassed by it. Slashdot is enjoyable as thought provoking entertainment that at times can be delightfully silly. But I would not trust Slashdot as a serious way to keep up with science developments.

Re:Keep it simple

[serviscope_minor]

There is a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant to topics and opinions to the point where innovations, tech, or ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision.

True to a point but your own post goes some way towards proving you wrong. Yes, slashdot does have biases. However, it is a much more open discussion forum than any other website I have visited and there are usually people either playing devils odvocate for the hell of it, or who simply hold different views. There are enough moderators that these views can and do become visible, too.

This is the reason I keep coming back here. I have actually had my opinions changed by slashdot discussions before.

As for keeping on top of science without ploughing through all new research by hand, it's probably worth using a mix of things like New Scientist, SciAm and yes, slashdot (for physics, engineering and tech).

Re:Keep it simple

[fredrated]

"ideas originating in "the enemy camp" (Chinese, GOP, etc.) is regarded with derision."

Are you seriously proposing that the GOP has something siginficant to say about science, as in contributions? After all, that is the topic of this thread. Please link to a serious contribution to science made by the GOP, and how it was attacked on Slashdot with "a fanatically liberal, pro-western slant".

Science News magazine

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

sciencenews.org

Slim weekly, decent reporters.

Re:Science News magazine

[frovingslosh]

Absolutely. Read it before it hits Slashdot (sometimes days before) at that site. The paper mag is well worth the cost also if you don't like trees.

As an American

[Riktov]

Here are some great science sites that I, and many of my fellow countrymen, can recommend.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php

Re:As an American

[Anonymous Coward]

With a 3 digit UID, he's as close to Allah as you will ever get.

Ted

[Neil Boekend]

I'd advise Ted. The short films are quite comprehensible.

new scientist

[thephydes]

is amongst the most accessible (easiest to understand) general coverage science magazines. Scientific American is amongst the least accessible of this type imo. The zinio http://zinio.com/ subscription to New Scientist is less than half the shelf price, and can be read on your computer or an ipad (don't know about other e-readers)

Re:new scientist

[dcmeserve]

Scientific American is amongst the least accessible of this type imo.

Not sure what you mean by "accessible", because I find it very readable in every subject area -- physics, biology, geology, what have you -- even though I have little or no training in any of those beyond some basic high school or college classes. (my degree is in C.S.)

And I still find new ideas and concepts in there that just knock my socks off -- the small-molecule theory of the origin of life, for example. This even though I've been reading it and Science News for nearly 30 years now.

Re:Journals, websites....

[tick-tock-atona]

Sciencedaily is good, but the sheer volume of content is very difficult to keep up with.

I personally like arstechnica's science coverage. Their articles are *always* well researched and written and usually very interesting. http://arstechnica.com/science/

Science podcasts

[emurphy42]

• This Week in Science
• The Future and You
• Changesurfer Radio

TED has already been mentioned. There are some others out there, I'm sure.

Depends on interest level and area

[interkin3tic]

I am a PhD student, so my specific topic I have a very high interest level in obviously. I have a google alert and an alert from pubmed (digital database of biomedical research) for certain key words on that very narrow topic. Partially so I my knowledge of that area is up to date, and partially because I'm worried someone else will publish similar conclusions to the ones I'm coming to.

If you have a broader, but still specific field you're interested in (like cell biology, or astrophysics), you might just skim through a relevant journal. There are several free online ones, like Plos one. Some other journals have highlights pages, with brief summaries of some of the most interesting research. They have very dense research articles in them written for experts in those particular fields, but the first parts of the printed journals are written for a general science audience. They'll have the highlights of the most interesting research and explain the significance, some interesting editorials. Some of that content is available for free on their websites. I don't see much use in getting a printed version delivered to you, but maybe a local library gets a copy. But if you know you're more interested in one general area that just "any science" then maybe work on regularly skimming the relevant journals.

Science at large, mostly slashdot. I seem to recall seeing some real fluff pieces, or fairly inaccurate posts on general science blogs like new scientist, but the real reason I don't frequent such websites is because I don't have much interest in such a wide scope of science. In high school I liked reading some introductory books about physics or ecology, but now if it's not cell science I feel like a fish out of water, I just don't have the background. Maybe I'm getting more closed minded. I hope not.

I read "Science"

[hey hey hey]

I subscribe to the journal Science. While I admit the actual research articles might as well be written in Linear B, the news articles, and the in-depth sections in front are written assuming the reader is intelligent and educated, but just not an expert in the particular field. It is such a joy to read articles that aren't aimed at the lowest common denominator!

I'm sure Nature, or other similar quality journals, would work as well (I choose Science, mostly because I found a subscription card for them).

MIT Technology Review and The Economist

[jmcbain]

As a CS PhD myself, I also feel the need to keep up with the general sciences. My favourite sources of science news are two magazines: MIT Technology Review and the technology section of The Economist. Both are extremely well-written and distill recent cutting-edge science down into laymen's terms. Both have great websites and great iPad applications. The Economist additionally has a Technology Quarterly issue once every 3 months (duh) that should definitely not be missed.

For Computer Science-related technology articles from research labs and academia that's written for laymen, IEEE Computer Society's Computer magazine and the ACM's Communications of the ACM are great.

If you want something a bit more dumbified, then Wired magazine is very good. I've been subscribing for over 10 years and just recently switched over to an iPad subscription.

Stick all these in your RSS

[Sarusa]

This is the best website for science news for reasonably educated but not specialized people: http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Science News has a website - http://www.sciencenews.org/ and a weekly magazine which are always good, if overly sober, though the magazine doesn't have near enough content to cover everything that happened that week.

New Scientist is a weekly mag that has drifted towards Omni or PopSci lately ('IS SENSATIONAL THING TRUE? (...no)'), but will still keep you up to date on most happenings including things you might miss online. http://www.newscientist.com/

Scientific American is a monthly mag that's a bit too political but has some good articles: http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Then there's Discover Magazine, which is a step down from either but has some good blogs: http://discovermagazine.com/

Live Science is a further step down, a good site for training wheel science: http://www.livescience.com/

I won't recommend the mag Science, because even though it's The Magazine, it's not suited for the dabbler.

My balanced suggestion is add the news feeds for all of these to your RSS reader (like Google Reader), click on what looks interesting, and subscribe to New Scientist in print or on Zinio and read it every week.

Quirks & Quarks

[psychonaut]

For the last thirty years I've been getting my weekly dose of science news from Quirks & Quarks on CBC radio. Shows are available for download or streaming online as soon as they air, and their online archive of episodes goes back to 2000.

Re:Not possible

[serviscope_minor]

I'm just saying that believing in science is no better than believing in anything else.

Science demonstrably works. The world around you has been built by scientific advancements. None of the "anything else" can claim that.

science is just a new religion

No, it isn't. You can use science to find out stuff. It may not be new or interesting to other people, but you can still use science to go and find it out.

but it doesn't make you really understand modern science.

Some science is more accessible than other science. My maths isn't good enough to understand the standard model, but that's one small part.

Not having time, skill or inclination to prove everything form first principles myself is not the same as blindly adhereing to religion.

ScienceNews

[cyberfringe]

I've been getting the print version of ScienceNews (bi-weekly) for 40 years. The online version http://www.sciencenews.org/ is just as good. There are many other good sites out there of course. This is one I can vouch for as a scientist without hesitation.

Re:Aggregation

[beckerist]

I've thrown all the feeds from each of these sites into Google Reader. In no particular order:

wired.com
slashdot.org
spectrum.ieee.org
scientistscanvas.com
arxiv.org
techcrunch.com
techdirt.com
news.discovery.com
physicsworld.com
newscientist.com
physorg.com
nationalgeographic.com
scienceblog.com

I have plenty more. Any RSS feeder app works. You get some repeats but there's a constant stream of science news.

Some Specific Places on the Internet

[ideonexus]

I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing