Author: Sweet Tea, Science

Sweet Link ParTea (November 2018)

We hope everyone had a delightful Thanksgiving break and was able to relax and refresh with friends and families. We each did a little bit a traveling but now it’s back back to the Big Push to the end of the fall semester! This can be a tough time with lots of finals-related stress, seasonal depression, societal expectations of mass consumerism, or maybe just that one house that never shovels the sidewalk when it snows. We hope everyone is taking care of themselves and invite you take a quiet moment to sip some tea and peek at some of our favorite links from this month. 

Our first article seems like it might be a pretty divisive one. With the current #STEMmeToo movement working to address sexual harassment and abuse within academia we must figure out whether we can support the research and not the researcher. This opinion article attempts to answer “Do we still keep citing the scholarship of serial harassers and sexists?”. Do you agree with their conclusion? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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So many levels of excitement about this Smithsonian article about a recent paper using community science to explore the three way interaction between plants, arthropods that eat those plants, and insectivorous birds in residential areas leading to the recommendation of planting native to help the ecosystem. It’s delightful to have such a nice #scicomm story out of a research project. This work was done at the Migratory Bird Center in DC and Fun Fact: Meridith just submitted a research fellowship application to do stats-y bird migration research with them! 

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Sweet Link ParTEA (October 2018)

Don’t worry, y’all, we’ve still got nearly a week left of October! I’ve been here, there, and everywhere this month, so it’s been such a treat to sit down and read through our saved links for this month. Does it help that I’m working on this post over a solo dinner at my favorite State College bar (Chumley’s – this is fact) over a cheese sammie and some veg soup? Yes. Yes it does. I had the most delicious hot toddy, so it really had that ParTEA element! Treat yo’selves to a quiet evening of a hot beverage + lots of reading. You’ve worked hard, and we see you.

Trans rights are human rights. We’ve got not one, but two articles and a Twitter thread about how the idea of 2 genders is biologically and socially over simplistic. We can do better, and being informed is one of many steps we need to be taking.

I was going to move this link down in the list but let’s just pull of the bandaid. The EPA is planning on Discontinuing a Senior Science Advisor Position. And that sucks, but I am so excited to VOTE.

This next story elicited an “OMG that’s so cool” from my lips within seconds. I bet your nearest state park doesn’t have UNDERWATER TRAILS. Note: Pictured is Rachel, myself, and our college roommates during our trip near the site of this trail; I would NOT have been up for exploring the under water route. 

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I want to see mountains! Last day in Yellowstone

Long time readers may recall that shortly after completing our MS degrees (er…we were both so close to finishing, it counts) in the summer of 2012, we embarked on a celebratory adventure lovingly referred to as the Amazing Besties National Park Road Trip.  At first, we were blogging contemporaneously, then we were slowly catching up, then…  The last post in the series was written in October 2014, fully two years after we got back from our two month stent of life on the road!

Like all good Type As, this incomplete set of posts has been bugging us for ages.  Unfortunately, we haven’t had the time to go back through our journals to recall details, and the days without journal entries have gotten fuzzy around the edges.  We still wanted to share our amazing experience exploring public lands with you all!  To this end, over the next few months we will periodically be putting up posts that are mostly pictures from our trip with a few bits of memories that come to mind as we put together the images.  This was one of the most epic friend adventures either of us have ever had, so if you like best friend hijinks these posts are for you.  If you’re into pretty photos of natural wonders, you have come to the right place!  10 states. 9 National Parks and 1 National Monument. One summer of fun!

Want to catch up?  Check out the rest of the series here.

Day 16
Yellowstone National Park
Homeland of the Cheyenne, Apsaalooké, Shoshone-Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Salish-Kootenai***

When last you left us, we were tired after a day spent watching wildlife, checking out lakes, and learning about early tourists in the park.  Today, on the recommendation of our all time favorite park rangers, the married couple Jim and Dot, we were going to climb two different mountains. (More heart eyes about Dot and Jim here.)

First up, Avalanche Peak.

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