Last week was a garbage fire, with the news and all. As a result, I’m (Rachel) going to give myself a pass on this post being many days late. We hope these links give you a good distraction and help you welcome in October and the changing seasons.
This is a fascinating article about methane entering the atmosphere from thawing permafrost. They dive into an arctic lake! “Overall, if Walter Anthony’s findings are correct, the total impact from thawing permafrost could be similar to adding a couple of large fossil-fuel-emitting economies – say, two more Germanys – to the planet. “
If you want to up your #SciComm game check out this huge, free resource.
This is a very thoughtful piece about how teaching students the common underlying point of statistical tests might help them learn more, as opposed to parading as many tests as possible out over the course of the term.
Want to check out a fascinating and strangely beautiful #DataViz of how random the success of an individual published work can be? Click right here. I found this weirdly mesmerizing.
The Atlantic takes a stark look at what was lost in the burning of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the month. “Many of these presumably lost specimens were holotypes—the first, best, and most important examples of their kind.” We both thought this fire was significant and each added an article about it. This one does a really nice job of putting into context the importance of museum specimens to ongoing research efforts.
How much of the ocean is impacted by fishing? This is actually a fascinating question of scale and a good example of how open data can lead to better science.
This article is a bit repetitive, but the point it gets to in the end is a good one. “But there is one hard limit. No better future will be possible if those most able to bear the costs — those who’ve benefited the most, the wealthy and the vested interests of this world — don’t step up to pay for it.”
Researchers at Penn State are creating a real version of an old thought experiment about decreasing entropy in systems (2nd Law of Thermodynamics anyone?), which has potential implications for quantum computing. Physics blows the mind, y’all.
This is a revealing essay by Dr. Lauren Robinson about the process, and associated mental hurdles, of submitting corrections to a published paper.
Researchers from all across the West Coast are collaborating on studies using a five-person submarine to study the ecosystem at the bottom of the Salish Sea. One study looks at sand lace, which “…dines on tiny organisms like copepods and zooplankton, transferring energy from organisms at the bottom of the food chain to animals at the top, like killer whales.”
The National Science Foundation has a new program for graduate students to get funded internships in industry for six-months!
As per usual, the Dynamic Ecology blog has produced a really thought provoking discussion, this time about exploratory statistics and the importance of true a priori hypotheses.
Physicists think they have solved the mystery of how Vikings found their way across the sea before the invention of the magnetic compass. Spoiler alert, it’s similar to how many insects, cephalopods, amphibians navigate!
The esteemed mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah thinks he’s solved an age old problem in mathematics, writing a proof for Riemann hypothesis. “…we could be about to see the most significant discovery in mathematics for over a quarter of a century.”
Check out this extremely useful post about common writing mistakes. We should all be working to make our writing better!
This article tells the charming story of how a scientist got the idea for a drone to collect whale snot. #careergoals
Sweet Tea, Science 