A lit­tle break­ing news… 35 lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties have launched a new web site, Futurity.org, with a sim­ple goal — edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about new sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs. In the old days, uni­ver­si­ties depend­ed on the tra­di­tion­al press to spread the word about new sci­en­tif­ic advances. Now, with jour­nal­ism in cri­sis and news­pa­pers fold­ing, the schools can no longer bank on that. And so we get Futu­ri­ty, which is essen­tial­ly a non­prof­it wire ser­vice that will dis­trib­ute news through major news sup­pli­ers on the web (Yahoo News & Google News) and also through social media chan­nels (Twit­ter, Face­book and MySpace). On the list of par­tic­i­pat­ing uni­ver­si­ties, you will find UC Berke­ley, Stan­ford, Johns Hop­kins, Carnegie Mel­lon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Duke, Prince­ton, Yale and many oth­ers. You can get a full list here, and read more about the ven­ture here.

Thanks Denise for the tip on this one. Have some­thing you want to share with your fel­low read­ers? Send your tips to ma**@*********re.com

Speak­ing Wednes­day night at Har­vard, James Wat­son, the co-dis­cov­er­er of DNA, was asked by NPR’s Robert Krul­wich: “Can a gen­tle per­son do well in sci­ence?” His response: “Jesus would not have suc­ceed­ed.” Sad com­men­tary, and it’s the type of com­ment that you’d expect from Wat­son. But it’s also some­what dis­proved by the career of E.O. Wil­son, who shared the stage with Wat­son that night. You can get more cov­er­age of this con­ver­sa­tion over at the New­Sci­en­tist.

In the mean­time, check out our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion, which includes Krul­wich’s pro­gram, Radio Lab. These pod­casts are also avail­able on our free iPhone app.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dig­i­tal Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Cre­ation

httpv://vimeo.com/6087817

How can the web advance the progress of sci­ence? It’s a big ques­tion, obvi­ous­ly. And some smart folks have some­thing to say about it. Here we have Tim O’Reil­ly (founder of O’Reil­ly Media, one of the lead­ing tech pub­lish­ers), Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia Founder), Stephen Friend (founder of Roset­ta Inphar­mat­ics and for­mer EVP at Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries) and John Will­banks (VP and head of the Sci­ence Com­mons project at Cre­ative Com­mons) offer­ing their thoughts. The con­ver­sa­tion was held on July 28th at the The Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia.

Rather humor­ous. You can catch more of Steve Span­gler’s sci­en­tif­ic work on his YouTube chan­nel and web site. We’ve also added him to our list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Col­lec­tions.