Like diamonds, few pearls today are found by chance. Unlike diamonds, which can be manufactured on demand in a laboratory, pearls are still grown organically. Literally, they are grown inside of shellfish in response to a deliberately introduced irritant. I would sign off here saying ‘the rest is history’ but as this video shows, the process is actually surprisingly involved and painstaking care has to be taken to ensure a smooth, even, entire pearl is produced every time. It’s truly an expert process.

Finally in this week’s tour of popular online resources for finding academic journal articles that go beyond the Discovery Service, we take a look at the world’s most comprehensive reference database for life science research: BIOSIS Previews. Part of the Web …

Introducing… BIOSIS Previews Read more »

Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries with the goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap and improve the understanding of tropical medicine, infectious diseases, …

Introducing… Bioline international Read more »

First up in our showcase of Biological Science databases this week is Biomed Central.  The largest open access publisher in the world, BioMed Central publishes over 290 peer-reviewed open access journals across the fields of biology, chemistry, clinical medicine and …

Introducing… Biomed Central Read more »

How biological species got their name Have you ever wondered how biological species got their names? How biologists can claim to know which of the many species of earthworm or which of the millions of bacteria they are actually looking …

Scientist of the week: Carl von Linné Read more »