Today is Charles Darwin’s birthday, and a welcome excuse for me to restart my very short sequel of Darwin quotes. Keeping in mind that Valentine’s day is lurking round the corner, I have decided that while others celebrate Darwin’s memory by remembering his fondness for beetles or his contributions to ecology, I want to remind…
Collaboration sizes increase across all scientific disciplines, and Ecology is no exception to this trend. One of the problems emerging from this development is that it seems more and more difficult to remember all your coauthors. This recent erratum in Nature adds no less than five forgotten coauthors, in addition to correcting various names and…
A colleague had a question about sampling design and we didn’t find a good answer … so, if you like to solve riddles, you might like that one: We want to distribute n=3 plant species across k=12 x m=12 grid cells, in a way that no individual has another individual of it’s own species in…
The website paperscape.org creates a beautiful dynamic visualization of the citation network that connects articles on the arXiv preprint server, resembling a view in the night sky. As you will see, quantitative ecology is a small cluster of galaxies in the lower left corner of the open access universe, dominated by the large network nebula.…
![See page for author [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://theoreticalecology.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/milkyway_pan.jpg?w=220&h=126&crop=1)
I just realized that, unlike in previous years, I completely missed the announcement of the Ig Nobel Price winners 2013, which took place at Harvard last week. My sympathy is of course with all laureates, yet, I can’t help but feel that our wider field (biology) contributed two particularly worthy studies to this event, with…
Are the research highlights of this paper by Prado et al. setting the trend for the logical sequel to #OverlyHonestMethods? Reminded me of another funny correction that I spotted a while ago.
“I have long discovered that geologists never read each other’s works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness, …” CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Down [1844 or 1845], Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (Project Gutenberg ebook), p.347
I don’t find the time to stay on top of current events, but at least some others do – Bob O’Hara posted some critical analysis of temporal autocorrelation in the length of papal reigns, crushing previous claims by the Guardian that longer papal reigns tend to be followed by shorter ones. Classic!
If you want to get published, then heed this advice: Cite your friends at least once and your enemies twice, The editor three times, yourself at least four, And write in a style that’s intended to bore. If you want to get published, here’s what you must do Above all: don’t come up with anything…
A new study in Proc. B looks at the ability of humans to detect false beliefs: The psychological capacity to recognize that others may hold and act on false beliefs has been proposed to reflect an evolved, species-typical adaptation for social reasoning in humans; however, controversy surrounds the developmental timing and universality of this trait.…
The blog of a US IT company reports a curious case: the IT department of a customer of theirs stumbled over some suspicious vpn logs. A vpn connection, established with the credentials of one of their programmers, was open from China while the same programmer seemed to be working in the US. It turned out…
For those who can use some distraction to get into the weekend mood, Research in Progress posts (mostly) hilarious gif animations about, well, research in progress.
Ok, I might be a bit too bloactive these days, but I couldn’t deprive you of that one, although probably you would have heard about it anyways as it will be all over the blogs by tomorrow. As Bob’s post made me aware, the European Commission has commendably taken it upon them to increase gender…
OK, I know, this is a classic … still, why not post it again? Created by (and I suppose copyright) Matúš Soták sotak.info/.
A great animation explaining, if you will, the very basics of ecology. From “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, http://www.phdcomics.com. If that leaves you wanting for more information, vixra gives an update about the current state of affairs.
Inspired by of some recent events in our department, where the media got hold of some research results that needed a “fresh” spin to make them more catchy, I’m highlighting another work by the ingenious Jorge Cham: from “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham, http://www.phdcomics.com
One of the things that you obviously need in science is a good name (not your reputation, I mean the actual name). This is true for the art of acronymia, as illustrated by the ingenious Jorge Cham above, but also for your core business, your articles. Names are everything. After all, remember that by far…
In what I consider a landmark paper of physiological economics, Tatu Westling of the University of Helsinki has finally brought some scientific rigor in the mess that is macroeconomics. His paper “Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?” examines the relationship of GDP growth with male endowment. I quote from his abstract: The size…
Aren’t we all looking for immortality, or at least some recognition in the fast flowing stream that is science? If you do, check out this detailed suggestions by Adam Ruben in Science.
I suppose we all make errors during preparing a manuscript, and despite careful revision, sometimes one of our coauthors slips our minds.
theoretical ecology 