Update on ScienceSeeker's search functionality

ScienceSeeker's full-text search has been offline since October. As its downtime extends over months and I continue to struggle to put in the new search engine, I thought I'd explain to the community what's going on.

In October, the site suddenly crashed, and I could not get it back up. Poking and prodding turned up the information that the problem was database access. We keep all of the information about blogs that we index in a local database, and we weren't able to connect to it. But why not?

I managed to enlist the help of a database expert, who figured out that some of the database queries we were using were extremely inefficient. As more and more slow queries backed up, the system became more and more overloaded. Some queries were running for hundreds of minutes! (I expect none of the users who originated those queries had stuck around to see the results.)

The database expert helped me rewrite the worst offenders, and the site started running smoothly again. But the one query he could not speed up enough was our full-text search query. He looked at it and said, "Why aren't you using a real search engine? This query is never going to be able to do what you want."

A search engine. Why hadn't I thought of it before? There is actually a really excellent free search engine available, Solr. But the down side of search engines is that, by dint of being much more powerful than single database queries, they are also more complicated to run. Over the past few months, I have been trying to snatch a few hours a week to integrate Solr with the ScienceSeeker code, between managing other bugs which appear in the meantime.

And that's where we stand now: I'm working on it. Hopefully we'll get search back up soon! In the meantime, we appreciate your patience.


Jessica Hekman
Technical Director and Project Manager, ScienceSeeker

ScienceSeeker Editors' Selections: January 19-25, 2014

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors' Selections for the past week:

• Extreme defense in horned lizards- They shoot blood from thier eyes! at BiologyBizarre by Meredith Hanel


• Coloured Cells Chase Each Other To Make A Fish’s Stripes at Not Exactly Rocket Science by Ed Yong


• Bad Math from the Bad Astronomer at Good Math, Bad Math by MarkCC


• Billionaire money in mathematics at mathbabe by Cathy O'Neil


• Non-academic jobs for mathematicians at The Accidental Mathematician by Izabella Laba


• The question you should have asked about Fukushima, but probably didn’t. at Deep Sea News by Alex Warneke


• An insider’s story of the global attack on climate science at Ars Technica

Don't forget you can recommend your favorites as well - just click the little star icon next to the post's entry.

Want to become a ScienceSeeker editor and share your favorite picks for physics, chemistry, or the earth sciences each week? As a project of ScienceOnline, ScienceSeeker editors also get priority registration for the annual conference in Raleigh. Let us know!

ScienceSeeker Editors' Selections: January 12-18, 2014

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors' Selections for the past week:

• Chemical Guesswork in West Virginia at Elemental by Deborah Blum


• Biofluorescent Fish Light Up the Deep: Photos at Discovery News


• Immune cells inadvertently help bacteria form persistent infections at Ars Technica by Diana Gitig


• Breakthrough in Vaccine Delivery at European Biotechnologist


• Acceptance of global warming rises on warm days at Ars Technica by Allie Wilkinson


• Exercise Puts Me To Sleep – You Too at As Many Exceptions As Rules


• Freezing the Winter Away at The Scorpion and the Frog by Miss Behavior


• The Ladybug’s Secret Evil at Buzz Hoot Roar


• The biodiversity of Duckburg at DNA Barcoding by Dirk Steinke


• Ladybug Fungi at Cornell Mushroom Blog by Kathie Hodge


• Love Wine and Tea? Scientists Discover Plant Part Whence Their Pucker Springs at The Artful Amoeba by Jennifer Frazer


• The Passive War: "The blind warning the blind about a nonexistent danger" at Big Think by Neurobonkers

Don't forget you can recommend your favorites as well - just click the little star icon next to the post's entry.

Want to become a ScienceSeeker editor and share your favorite picks for physics, chemistry, or the earth sciences each week? As a project of ScienceOnline, ScienceSeeker editors also get priority registration for the annual conference in Raleigh. Let us know!

ScienceSeeker Editors' Selections: January 5-11, 2014

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors' Selections for the past week:

• Can birds defeat the emerald ash borer? at Conservation Magazine by Miles Becker


• The Road To Extinction Is Paved With Good Intentions at Conservation Magazine by Jason G. Goldman


• Words for odours at Neuro-patch by Janet Kwasniak


• Dijkstra’s 10 commandments for academic research at Punk Rock Operations Research by Laura McLay


• An editable database tracking freely accessible mathematics literature. at Secret Blogging Seminar by Scott Morrison


• 10 Awesome Land Creatures that can Glow at Life Science Exploration by Neha Jain


• What scientists ought to do for non-scientists, and why: Obligations of scientists (part 5) at Doing Good Science by Janet D. Stemwedel


• The chemistry of Breaking Bad, analyzed at Improbable Research by Marc Abrahams


• Even in 2014, influenza kills at Science-Based Medicine by David Gorski

Don't forget you can recommend your favorites as well - just click the little star icon next to the post's entry.

Want to become a ScienceSeeker editor and share your favorite picks for physics, chemistry, or the earth sciences each week? As a project of ScienceOnline, ScienceSeeker editors also get priority registration for the annual conference in Raleigh. Let us know! Email: jason at scienceseeker dot org

ScienceSeeker Editors' Selections: December 29, 2013 - January 4, 2014

Each week, the ScienceSeeker editors pick their favorite posts within their respective areas of interest. Here is a round-up of the Science Seeker Editors' Selections for the past week:

• Do Stoned Dolphins Give ‘Puff Puff Pass’ A Whole New Meaning? at Science Sushi by Christie Wilcox


• Three Reasons Why Fukushima Radiation Has Nothing to Do with Starfish Wasting Syndrome at Deep-Sea News by Dr. M

Don't forget you can recommend your favorites as well - just click the little star icon next to the post's entry.

Want to become a ScienceSeeker editor and share your favorite picks for physics, chemistry, or the earth sciences each week? As a project of ScienceOnline, ScienceSeeker editors also get priority registration for the annual conference in Raleigh. Let us know! Email: jason at scienceseeker dot org