Editor’s Selections: the Milkomeda Galaxy, Ubiquitous Cybercheating, the Marine Life Census and Lots of Astronomy News
February 7th, 2011 Editor's Selections 12 Comments
Sarah Kendrew selects interesting and notable ResearchBlogging.org posts in the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science, geosciences and mathematics. She blogs about astronomy at One Small Step.
Welcome to the start of another new week, and I hope the US readers all enjoyed their Superbowl weekend. Here are some physical sciences highlights from the week on ResearchBlogging.
- The cosmologist at the end of the Universe. I enjoyed Niall Deacon’s discussion of a recent paper by Harvard astronomy professor Avi Loeb on the distant future of the Milky Way galaxy. What can we say? Cosmology will be a very different science in a few billion years.
- Online plagiarism and cybercheating still strong: 61.9%. Richard Landers shows results from a recent survey into “cybercheating” amongst undergraduates. The overall result shows that well over half of interviewed students admit to copying work from the internet without referencing, or using paper-writing sites. Even more depressing than the sheer number are the examples of students’ attitudes towards the practice that are quoted in the article. A sad but interesting read for anyone in the business of teaching.
- Deep Sea 101: Lessons from the Census on Marine Life. Last autumn saw the completion of this major research initiative to catalog marine life in our oceans. Kevin Zelnio talks about the importance of this work and describes some highlights from the census outcome. Great news too that the census results are published in an open access journal, PLOS One.
- In the news this month: a roundup of stories from the 217th AAS meeting. In her monthly roundup of astronomy news, Megan reviews lots of new results that were announced at the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle. This is the biggest annual astronomy meeting in the world, and several of these results have featured in the media in recent weeks. Megan gives a nice summary of some noted results, with links to papers and press releases.
Thanks for the great contributions, and I’ll be back next Monday with more selections.
