Brain Drain Theory- Fuga de cerebros, leyenda urbana?

Correcting citations in the Web Of Science

It is annoying when due to a mistake in a reference, your citation does not get registered on the Web Of Science (WOS) properly. On the Science Survival blog:
http://www.sciencesurvivalblog.com/tips_for_juniors/increasing-your-h-index-by-reclaiming-misspelled-citations_3612
it is explained how to correct this. Basically, by sending a data correction report to Thompson. The website is:
http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/techsupport/datachange/
I guess you will need to have (institutional) access to the WOS.
Before, for each citing paper, one would have to fill in a web form. This takes some time, but when I did this, changes were implemented promptly, well within the eight-week timeframe they give themselves (in fact they did it in a few days).
Now, for correcting citations, an Excel template is provided where you add the title of the cited reference, its WOS number, the title of the citing reference and its WOS number. I added another column for the reference number in the citing paper, not sure whether they will find that useful or not. I will try to remember to update this post when I know if the latest corrections have been implemented correctly.
Apart from “claiming” your missing citations and so improving your citation index, I would suggest authors check their published papers when they enter the WOS and see if any references need correcting. The reliability of the database depends on it.

Roles of Editors and of Reviewers

When reviewing manuscript for many Journals, an obligatory question list is included in which a reviewer has to judge the general interest and quality of the work, often in the form of a percentage. I.e. does this work fall in the best 10%?
Personally, I think this is a job for the Editors, not the reviewers, who are often specialists in the exact subject of the paper and thus do not necessarily have the correct overview to give a meaningful answer to this question. Editor, on the other hand, see many more papers, even if more cursorily, so they can make these judgements much better. The reviewer role should be much more limited to judging the technical quality of the work, and can always include a voluntary remark if they want to comment on the perceived interest.
If there are any readers, what is your opinion on this?

Nature of 25 Feb 2010

Two interesting papers in the issue of 25 Feb of Nature:

- a study of Chinese dinosaur fossils, in which melanosomes, organelles that help give feathers their colour, are found.

- and a study of microRNA evolution, in which presence of certain ancient microRNAs is correlated with cell-type.

Solution NMR vs Crystallography resolved by solid state NMR

On page 689-692 In the 4 Feb issue of Nature Cady et al. describe the solid state NMR structure of the influenza virus M2 proton channel in complex with amantadine (an inhibitor) in a lipid bilayer. From solution NMR studies four binding sites had previously been identified, although a high resolution crystal structure identified a single binding site in a different place (see references in the paper).

The solid state NMR structure identifies a single high-affinity binding site and four low-affinity binding sites at locations as shown in the previous studies. This shows both solution NMR and Crystallography were "right", although the second one perhaps a bit more so, because it appears the single high-affinity binding site is more biologically relevant.

A roundabout way to obtain protein structural information

In the paper "Rational design of a structural and functional nitric oxide reductase" Yeung et al. describe a way to get structural information on an enzyme, nitric oxide reductase, which could not be crystallised. They mutated sperm whale myoglobin to yield the same enzymatic activity and then crystallised that... Not as nice as crystallising the real thing of course, but if it's the only thing that works...

Following chemical reactions in special crystals

In their paper "X-ray observation of a transient hemiaminal trapped in a porous network" (plus commentary), Kawamichi et al. show how a chemical reaction can be followed in a crystal. Well, strictly, taking three snapshot - of the starting compound, of a kinetically trapped intermediate, an then, after heating, of the product. Impressive, nonetheless.