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Silent Spring: Warblers

Posted on 17 October 2012 by KristiV

In the chapter And No Birds Sing, Rachel Carson describes the consequences of DDT spraying (for elm bark beetles) for various bird populations in the Midwestern US. Two ornithologists at Michigan State University, George Wallace and John Mehner, documented the effects on American Robins on the East Lansing campus, where 370 adult robins were count Continue reading →

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Trilogy

Posted on 16 October 2012 by Henry Gee

Do you like your trilogies served one volume at a time, or all at once? If you have an opinion on this Question of the Age, then my publisher would like to know. In the old days, he says, large works were split into three for reasons of cost – in other words, for prosaic reasons that had nothing to do with the reader. But now there are eBooks Continue reading →

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Changing ecologists’ statistics to statistics about nature

Posted on 16 October 2012 by Bob O'H

Whilst my back was turned, I had another paper published online early. It’s rather embarrassing that I didn’t notice, because I’m an Executive Editor for the journal. The paper is, of course, superb (most of the work was done by Konstans, my co-author, not me). But it got me thinking a bit about some of the deeper issues.

Konstan Continue reading →

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Bragging Rights Central archive, Oct 2012 – Mar 2013

Posted on 16 October 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

The recent lack of regular updates is due to my new job: I used to update the sidebar at my desk during my Friday lunch break, but now that I work in a much more social environment and have lunch with my colleagues, I don’t do that any more and haven’t quite got into a new regular routine yet. I’m sure it’ll all work outR Continue reading →

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Intense – Bangkok, a week later

Posted on 15 October 2012 by Richard Wintle

I don’t know where to start.

Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok – the Grand Palace.

I’ve been back from my trip to Bangkok for a week now, and I still don’t think that all of my experiences in this city have quite sunk in. Continue reading →

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The Self-Promotion Stakes

Posted on 14 October 2012 by Athene Donald

My university has recently run a consultation exercise for women from different parts of the university and across the different grades (with the exception of researchers, for whom a separate event will be held later).  Various key messages have come out, which will be mulled over by the appropriate bodies in the university. One that came out loud Continue reading →

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A frog on my blog is my goal and it’s gotten a “tee hee!”

Posted on 12 October 2012 by Cath@VWXYNot?

Many thanks to Mermaid for forwarding me this most excellent email signature from a local frog biologist, and for securing Dr. Helbing’s permission to blog it!

Screen Shot 2012-10-12 at 7.27.24 AM

I remember a phase of DNA helix squiggles in email signatures in the early 2000s, but I like the frog MUCH better. Continue reading →

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Imperial debate: light and heat on the RCUK open access policy

Posted on 11 October 2012 by Stephen

It is two weeks since the meeting organised by the Imperial College Science Communication Forum to discuss the new open access policy announced by Research Councils UK (RCUK) in the light of the Finch Report. Richard Van Norden of Nature chaired an initial discussion between RCUK’s Mark Thorley and myself that kicked off a wide-ranging questi Continue reading →

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In which numbers lie – except when they flatter us

Posted on 10 October 2012 by Jennifer Rohn

Bibliometrics have been making me cross recently.

In the past month, I’ve stumbled across two instances where journal impact factors were being used in a grossly inappropriate way to assess the worth and quality of scientist colleagues. This exposure in turn has really hammered home the inanity of our profession’s obsession with measuring the immea Continue reading →

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Bowson

Posted on 10 October 2012 by Henry Gee

At this very moment, Crox Minor is on a school trip to the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) where she’ll visit the Large Hadron Collider (A school trip! In my day we were lucky to get a day-trip to the Science Museum.) I have asked her to bring back a plush toy Higgs Boson for me. If they’ve run out, I said I’d settle f Continue reading →

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