Barn, sunset. Photo by jby.Taken on my Saturday run around the old neighborhood.◼
Actually all this snow is already gone
Barn, sunset. Photo by jby. Barn, sunset. Photo by jby.Because credit cards are probably symbols of the Papacy or something
Image via the Tamworth Herald.On the off chance that anyone you encounter over the course of this holiday season should happen to mention the “War on Christmas,” and go on to complain that political correctness has stifled the celebration of real, American traditions, the appropriate response is to nod in vigorous agreement and say, “I know! And the worst part is, who has five shillings to pay the fine these days?”
Have a merry Foolstide, everyone!◼
Science online, winter solstice edition
Photo by The Tedster.- This week at The Molecular Ecologist: How realistic are the non-overlapping generations assumed by lots of ecological models? And doing population genomics without a reference genome.
- Inflatable moth-butt feather dusters. They’re not genitalia—but they’re just as important.
- Cryptic variation put to adaptive use. Or, how Mexican cave fish went blind.
- Data science. It’s about the science, first.
- Yay! The FDA cracks down on antimicrobial consumer products in hopes of slowing the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
- Requiescat. The space robots lost in 2013.
- I think yes. Can we make grad school better by training fewer grad students?
- Including the excellent Kate Clancy! Nature picks ten people who mattered this year.
- Ancient DNA sequencing means even a piece of toe-bone contains Us Pleistocene. The new reconstruction of hanky-panky among ancient human species.
And finally, a video I may very well use in class a few weeks from now: some thoughts on how to read science news.
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Home of the Double Original
Photo by jby.Home of the Double Original.
(AKA the Original. Doubled.)
(i.e., twice as much Original as the Original.)
(That is, the Original x2.)
(As in, essentially two Originals.)
(Whatever the Original is. Probably a hamburger?)◼
The science gender gap gets personal with #MyGenderGap
Part of the 2010 Joshua tree field crew. Photo by jby.Thanks to Anne Jefferson on Twitter, I see that Alex Bond has called our collective attention to Nature‘s great feature on gender equity in the sciences by making the whole thing as personal as possible: asking people to total up their collaborators and see what female-to-male ratio they find:
There’s lots out there on women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the challenges they face, and the degree to which they are under-appreciated (including historical figures).
So what can I, a white man, do?
Well, the data in the Nature article had to come from somewhere. So as an actively publishing scientist, I contribute to this phenomenon (regardless of whether my data were included in Nature).
It so happens that I just put together a comprehensive list of everyone with whom I’ve ever co-authored for a grant proposal, so this took exactly as long as I needed to go down the list and recall everyone’s gender identity. As of right now, I have 42 (!) co-authors; with the addition of three undergrad research assistants who didn’t rate (or haven’t yet rated) co-authorships, I’ve directly collaborated with 29 men and 16 women, which gives a gender-gap ratio of 0.55. That’s better than the US-wide average of 0.43 given in the Nature piece, but still not nearly what I’d call parity.
Folks are tweeting their ratios with the #MyGenderGap hashtag, so it’ll be interesting to see what emerges.◼
Science online, Googling the closet edition
No big deal for some animals? Photo by Will Clayton.- This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: An interview with Richard Lenski.
- And, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Should peer review be more subjective?
- Everyone’s all, “why do we need to fund ant taxonomy?” until they’re covered in ants. What that story about “crazy ants” tells us about U.S. science funding.
- Drat. Bone marrow transplants have failed to clear two patients’ HIV infections.
- Also on searches for “is my husband gay”? A new estimate for the size of the U.S. gay population is based on Google searches for porn.
- Deal with it. You are, in fact, the sum of physical things happening inside your own skull.
- Really depends what you mean by “age.” Are there such things as living things that don’t age?
- Vaccinate, please. Measles cases in the U.S. tripled in 2013.
- Not sure I’d call it “scary” so much as “sobering.” The story of Easter Island may be both an ecological disaster and an exemplar of human resilience.
- Data for the masses, but what about interpretation? A geneticist on the case of the FDA versus 23andMe.
- Better than nothing? The FDA finally kinda, sorta moves to restrict agricultural antibiotic use.
- “… it was like an addiction.” How scientists make the transition from lab work to programming.
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Snow-covered campus
Snowy campus. Photo by jby.Yeah, so this is about what we can expect from now till March.◼
The Hitchhiker’s Guide, animated
I tweeted about this yesterday, but whatever. It’s lovely. The original incarnation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a BBC radio play; so, in the wake of a charming but ultimately rather flat attempt at a big-screen film adaptation a few years back, Nick Page has been animating the radio play!
Via io9.◼
Science online, craziest of ants edition
It was probably all because Eve’s brain is so different. Photo by Sebastian Bergmann.- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! How to get (scientifically) published, in ten rules and two cents.
- Technically, the selfish gene != single-gene thinking, but still. Looking for new language in a world of non-Mendelian genetics. But see also; and then also.
- In twenty easy steps? How non-scientists should interpret scientific claims.
- Want to buy an authorship? Apparently doing that is shockingly direct.
- Bad news gets worse. On funding rates for the NIH.
- Here we go again. No, the fact that men’s brains are detectably different in structure from women’s doesn’t mean the differences are not learned.
- “But anyway, the ants.” This is the best story about invasive ants you will read all year.
- Creationism: bad for bunnies! Based on plans published so far, the creationist “Ark Encounter” theme park is going to be an animal welfare catastrophe.
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Right on cue
Photo by jby.The first serious snowfall of the year, in the first week of December.◼