This Sunday morning at the International Congress of Genetics, Tony Griffiths gave an interesting presentation with the above title. He identified 12 possible reasons why students have problems learning genetics. His main argument: students should learn concepts and principles and apply them creatively in novel situations (the research mode). Instead, too many details are often crammed into seminars and textbooks.

One of the opening lectures this Saturday of the International Congress of Genetics was held by Mario Capecchi. His talked was entitled Modeling human disease in the mouse: from cancer to neuropsychiatric disorders. In the first half he described his mouse model of synovial sarcoma. Synovial sarcoma is an aggressive and often fatal soft tissue tumor.

The 20th International Congress of Genetics started in Berlin yesterday. This is the first time that I attend a meeting as a science blogger. An interesting experience since you look at the talks from a different perspective and you have to try to cover topics that are of general interest but often not really your area of expertise.

Last night we had the first in a series of Nature Network Berlin dinners scheduled around the International Congress of Genetics.

We have been talking a lot about Web 2.0 approaches for scientific papers. Now Elsevier announced an Article 2.0 Contest: Demonstrate your best ideas for how scientific research articles should be presented on the web and compete to win great prizes! The contest runs from September 1st until December 31st.

For my Paper Writing Dream Machine I obviously need a reference manager. My list of required features includes: * Easy addition of references by integration with Pubmed, Google Scholar and other online databases. A special bookmarklet would be a bonus.

I’ve written a similar post before, put I would like to talk about some of the features that I would like to see in an ideal paper writing application. Intelligent Formatting Content and formatting should be separated from each other. A manuscript should require as little formatting as possible, and that formatting (including the format of references) should be defined in a Journal style that is automatically applied to the manuscript.

As I said before on this blog, I do like poster sessions. The poster sessions at the just finished American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting didn't offer food and drink, but were otherwise very enjoyable. The meeting is probably special because a lot of high quality research will be presented as poster, as there is just not enough time for enough oral sessions. Many of the poster presenters were senior faculty.

I'm currently in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). This is a large meeting on clinical cancer research with about 30.000 people attending. Rather than writing about the specific research presented and discussed at the meeting, I would like to talk about how (web) technology can help in having a better conference.

Microsoft yesterday announced on the Live Search Blog that their Academic Search will be closed next week. And Google Scholar still has shortcomings, including the lack of special limitation features that are found in PubMed. A more detailed comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar can be found in this paper.

Earlier this week Matt Brown announced important changes to the Nature Network software: The first step towards new local hubs. Most importantly, it is now possible to set your location and hub. The hub can be the same as the location, or a city or region nearby (as in my case Berlin). Later this year, Nature Network will add new hubs to the existing London and Boston.