Other posts
- June 22, 2009
- 09:01 AM
- 1,133 views
Not so widespread butterflies
Honey bees, birds, bats and insects play a vital role in the pollination of the majority of fruits and vegetables. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than 75% of flowering plants rely on animals for pollination. Over the last 10 years the U.S. Department of Agriculture has referred to the declining populations of [...]... Read more »
VAN DYCK, H., VAN STRIEN, A., MAES, D., & VAN SWAAY, C. (2009) Declines in Common, Widespread Butterflies in a Landscape under Intense Human Use. Conservation Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01175.x
- June 22, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 1,066 views
Life (and Death) on the Ocean Wave
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
To predict the height of crests and the depths of troughs of ocean waves, scientists can turn to the well-known work of German mathematician and scientist Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss. The so-called Gaussian function provides a mathematical formula from which one can determine the normal distribution of wave heights based on probability theory and statistics.
Gauss [...]Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog... Read more »
Francesco Fedele. (2009) On the statistics of oceanic waves. Int. J. Reliability and Safety, 3(1/2/3), 258-266.
- June 18, 2009
- 09:55 AM
- 1,114 views
Mollusks: Out of sight, out of mind, out of luck?
If you haven’t yet heard, the Nature Conservancy recently released a report that documented a staggering decline in oyster reefs. According to the report, “Globally, 85% of oyster reefs have been lost, making oyster reefs one of the most severely impacted marine ecosystem on the planet (Shellfish Reefs at Risk, Nature Conservancy, 2009).”
But as oysters [...]... Read more »
RÉGNIER, C., FONTAINE, B., & BOUCHET, P. (2009) Not Knowing, Not Recording, Not Listing: Numerous Unnoticed Mollusk Extinctions. Conservation Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01245.x
- June 17, 2009
- 11:00 AM
- 1,234 views
Carrot Tops Healthy Veg
by David Bradley in SciScoop Science Forum
News from my Newcastle University published today reveals that cooking carrots whole and then chopping them before serving is better for your health than slicing and dicing before you boil.
Apparently, less of the “anticancer” compound falcarinol leaches out of the carrots and into the cooking water if carrots are boiled whole. Of course, the truly [...]... Read more »
Christensen, L., Vach, W., Ritskes-Hoitinga, J., & Brandt, K. (2005) Inhibitory Effects of Feeding with Carrots or (−)-Falcarinol on Development of Azoxymethane-Induced Preneoplastic Lesions in the Rat Colon. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 53(5), 1823-1827. DOI: 10.1021/jf048519s
- June 17, 2009
- 09:09 AM
- 828 views
It's always good to know there's someone
by steffi suhr in Science behind the scenes
I was quite excited recently to receive an alert about this new paper by Nomaki et al. The authors ‘labelled’ phytoplankton – microscopic algae – with the carbon stable isotope 13C, which is easily done by adding amounts of the isotope to a batch of growing algae who will happily incorporate it into (among other things) the fatty acids they contain. The tracer can then later be detected in the algae and any organism that eats them. Nomaki et al. then fed these labelled algae to foraminifera living on the seafloor in Sagami Bay, Japan, at a water depth of 1450 m.
Building (among others) on this and this previous work with their approach, Nomaki et al. were able to show that foraminifera don’t just selectively ingest the tastiest bits of algae, they also modify certain components of it. This means that they don’t just change the availability of fresh, yummy food to other benthos by ingesting it, they also change its composition – so, even if someone eats the forams, they might not get the prime bits.
Globobulimina affinis, courtesy Dr. Hidetaka Nomaki
Even if you don’t know what foraminifera or benthic organisms are, this may still interest you because foraminifera are used as proxies for productivity in palaeoceanography, meaning that people use them to make inferences on past productivity patterns of the surface ocean. Of course, the more you know about the proxy you’re using, the better your chance of getting it right – and, considering that past surface ocean productivity can tell us about climate patterns, this is important information to have.
If I still haven’t convinced you, it’s probably because you just don’t care. But I do. Which brings me to the more personal part of this post.
We all have something we think is really interesting/important/absolutely-groundbreaking-and-will-change-the-way-we-see-things. This is one of those things for me, and it’s the kind of work I would have loved to be doing now if I was still active in science myself. Instead, I am very happy that Hidetaka is making steady progress in this area. I wouldn’t be able to compete with him anyway – when I met him at a conference three or four years ago, I seem to remember him saying that they actually have technicians at JAMSTEC who do the fatty acid analyses for them (yes, even for postdocs). No way would I have been able to work fast enough to keep up with that, especially since I had to scrub down the entire clean room every time before I could even start after some other PhD students had messed it up with filthy goo from ginormous organisms like sea cucumbers (you know who you are!!!) while – in comparison – I was trying to look at minute amounts of material {sigh}.
So, just as I am about to finally turn my back on marine science (future strange turns of fate or luck notwithstanding, and of course I’ll still pursue it as a hobby – or as a kind of female ‘gentleman scientist’) to work here, I am happy that someone is carrying the torch. Especially since Hidetaka (please forgive me for saying this, it’s only because I’m finally out that I want to say it!!) actually called me the ‘pioneer’ in this type of work :)
Going a few steps further, it would now be interesting (what am I saying: essential) to nail down the effect the uptake and degradation of fresh phytoplankton material has on the stable isotope signature of foraminiferal tests.
Please, Hidetaka?
Nomaki, H., Ohkouchi, N., Heinz, P., Suga, H., Chikaraishi, Y., Ogawa, N., Matsumoto, K., & Kitazato, H. (2009). Degradation of algal lipids by deep-sea benthic foraminifera: An in situ tracer experiment Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2009.04.013... Read more »
Nomaki, H., Ohkouchi, N., Heinz, P., Suga, H., Chikaraishi, Y., Ogawa, N., Matsumoto, K., & Kitazato, H. (2009) Degradation of algal lipids by deep-sea benthic foraminifera: An in situ tracer experiment. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers. DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2009.04.013
- June 14, 2009
- 11:41 AM
- 1,813 views
Sage advice?: NC to join 13 states in outlawing Salvia divinorum
by David J Kroll in Terra Sigillata
Salvia divinorum (Salvia, Magic Mint) is a plant used for entheogenic purposes by the Mazatec people of Mexico. A relative of the common garden plant "scarlet sage" (Salvia splendens), S. divinorum contains several hallucinogens that include salvinorin A, the first non-nitrogenous agonist known for kappa opioid receptors (KOR).
I had known of salvinorin A since a highly-cited 2002 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper by Bryan Roth, Richard Rothman and colleagues (full text here). At that time, I had read several anecdotal reports (that I cannot locate now) that the hallucinations rendered by Salvia ingestion or smoking were so bizarre and disturbing that 8 of 10 first-time users declared they would not use it again. Hence, I never really thought that Salvia would become much of a public health problem or be embraced by recreational hallucinogen enthusiasts.
However, just Google "Salvia" and take a gander at the ads on the right sidebar.
I'm still not certain if Salvia is enough of a public health problem to warrant legislation but we just learned this week that North Carolina will join 13 other US states in criminalizing possession and use of the plant or extracts made thereof:
A bill that would outlaw the psychoactive herb Salvia divinorum has passed the state Senate, prompting consumers to rush to buy it legally.
Senate Bill 138, sponsored by Sen. Bill Purcell, D-Laurinburg, would prohibit the "manufacture, sale, delivery, or possession" of Salvia divinorum. The law calls for a fine for the first two offenses and misdemeanor charges for subsequent offenses. Purcell stressed that North Carolina's law would not be as strict as those of 13 states, which made Salvia divinorum a drug on par with heroin. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Roth, B. (2002) Salvinorin A: A potent naturally occurring nonnitrogenous kappa opioid selective agonist. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(18), 11934-11939. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.182234399
- June 14, 2009
- 01:39 AM
- 2,175 views
Is Taylor's "compromised need" pseudoscience?
by Christina Pikas in Christina's LIS Rant
If you've read my blog at all, you probably know I'm a Taylor (1962,
1968) groupie.
In fact, in a recent post
I talked about going from a visceral need to a compromised
need. This is a central idea in library science. So when I
saw this article in my feeds today, I had to pounce on it:
Nicolaisen,
J. (in press). Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of
claims and evidence Journal
of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
1-6 DOI: 10.1002/asi.21129
Let's look at this paper, its claims, and discuss it a bit, shall we?
As a reminder, compromised need is what comes out of the information
seeker's mouth or is typed by her hands when interfacing with an
information retrieval system (here, an information retrieval system can
have a librarian as the interface - and that librarian can be there in
person or connected via some electronic means - or can be a web search
page or research database search page, or even a book index).
The idea is that what actually comes out might be very
different from the actual need because there are labeling problems, you
might not know what you need or how to describe what is
needed, and because you change what you say based on what interface
you've got and what you think
the system can do with your input (see for example, my comps reading
from Wolfram (2008) in which the searches were different for two
systems, with similar google boxes).
Nicolaisen starts by talking about the importance of this concept - the
compromised need - and how it wasn't really used for much until the
1980s, when researchers started to use cognitive and psychological
research in LIS. Apparently though, this theory has
never been validated as such and tested to see if it holds water.
It's basically been taken at face value and reference
training for librarians has changed accordingly. His point in
this article is to compare Taylor's claims to empirical
studies that track reference questions received to see if there is
support for "compromised need."
In describing the claims, I think Nicolaisen says some things that seem
obvious, but do not match with my experience or what I've seen
in articles on evaluating reference service in the public library. The
first of these is that this compromised thing makes sense for areas
outside of one's expertise but makes no sense for a known-item search
or someone with a "verificative need". He says:
If the information need is
a verificative need, the inquirer is in possession of bibliographical
data, and if the information need is a conscious topical need, the
inquirer is in possession of terms and concepts necessary for
expressing the required information. However, when confronting the
intermediary, inquirers allegedly tend to specify their needs using
other terms and concepts, which mitigate or misrepresent their true
information needs. It almost seems like the inquirers deliberately pull
the wool over the eyes of the intermediaries, thus making it much
harder for them to provide the desired information.
He seems very skeptical (the way this is written) and questions how
often this happens. But actually, there are many instances when this is
indeed the case. For example, when the information need is on
a sensitive subject or if the patron doesn't have any faith that the
information system can respond to that request. He lists a
pile of references in which this is taken as a given, and found none in
which this idea is questioned. Indeed, in the literature
reviews everyone apparently relies on a study by Ingwersen that
essentially had a sample size of 2 - which is ok for qualitative work,
but it's not, by definition, generalizable.
When looking through the evidence provided in the studies he
reviewed, he found that only a very small proportion of the
questions required extensive interviews and likewise very few of the
questions changed from the initial question after the reference
interview. He ends the article by describing what's needed for
induction - going from some observations to a universal statement -
including large sample size, works in different settings, no
conflicting information. Further he calls this pseudo
scientific because it faces unresolved problems and it is accepted
without question and testing (whoa... them's fightin' words)
I think Nicolaisen's sample of literature is weak, to be honest. Many,
many public libraries have evaluated reference service and time and
again they've shown that failure to do a proper reference interview
leads to poor results. No interview -> few questions
are answered correctly -> there is something in the interview
process that allows the system to make a better match with the need
than without it. The patron could have perfectly specified the need -
but if it is not understood by the system, then they won't get the
answer. How about studies of search engine logs?
Clearly the needs are imperfectly specified because the
system returns documents matching the terms, and yet the user enters a
new search.
I was one of the student investigators on a study by Kaske
and Arnold of virtual reference services. We did a typical
Hernon and McClure study and it was the same old thing - librarians who
asked what we needed and checked back to see if what they gave us was
appropriate were the only ones who successfully answered the question.
It's not that we weren't saying what we needed, it's that it
couldn't be interpreted correctly most of the time in isolation. Just
because interviews were not performed does not mean that the questions
did not require an interview! It is often the case that someone will
come in for a specific book, but really have a much bigger problem, and
that you can only address this bigger issue through an interview.
Of course my experience and the myriad studies in the state of Maryland
do not contradict what Nicolaisen found in the studies he looked at;
however, I think he picked the wrong studies. He was only looking for
studies that specifically looked at before and after statements of
information need. It's not that it's not studied and questioned so it's
pseudoscience, it's that it is part of all of the studies that we do in
certain areas of our field.
My arguments are somewhat confused, but basically:
1) studies showing importance of reference interviews to answering
patrons' questions are relevant to this topic
2) reports that interviews aren't required do not say if/how the
patron's actual problems were solved or if the patrons were satisfied
with the service
3) people put 2-3 words into a search engine - that's it - there's no
way that can perfectly specify their information need
And I'm going to stop writing now, as I stopped saying anything new a
while ago!
Taylor,
R. S. (1962). Process of asking questions. American
Documentation, 13(4), 391-396.
Taylor, R. S. (1968).
Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries.
College & Research Libraries, 29(3),
178-194.
Wolfram,
D. (2008). Search characteristics in
different types of Web-based IR environments:
are they the same? Information Processing &
Management, 44,
1279-1292
Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Nicolaisen, J. (2009) Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of claims and evidence. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 1-6. DOI: 10.1002/asi.21129
- June 11, 2009
- 06:43 PM
- 1,422 views
Risk Management: Contingent versus Mitigative
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
The risk management literature separates between mitigative actions or strategies and contingent actions and strategies. It is important to keep these two perspectives apart. Why? Because risk management needs to address both sides of the risk: what lies behind the risk (source) and what lies in front of it (consequences). Here is my attempt at [...]... Read more »
Bjørn Egil Asbjørnslett. (2008) Assessing the Vulnerability of Supply Chains . International Series in Operations Research , 15-33. DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-79934-6_2
Jüttner, U., Peck, H., & Christopher, M. (2003) Supply chain risk management: outlining an agenda for future research. International Journal of Logistics, 6(4), 197-210. DOI: 10.1080/13675560310001627016
Tomlin, B. (2006) On the Value of Mitigation and Contingency Strategies for Managing Supply Chain Disruption Risks. Management Science, 52(5), 639-657. DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1060.0515
- June 10, 2009
- 10:01 AM
- 1,356 views
The incredible shrinking reef fish
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and in the case of Loren McClenachan’s June 2009 publication in The Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology there is evidence of a major decline in the size of fish caught in the Florida Keys. McClenachan used a unique method for quantitating the changes of [...]... Read more »
McCLENACHAN, L. (2009) Documenting Loss of Large Trophy Fish from the Florida Keys with Historical Photographs. Conservation Biology, 23(3), 636-643. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01152.x
- June 8, 2009
- 10:00 AM
- 1,366 views
Sea-cage pathogen factory: Salmon and Sea Lice
I wish I could remember the exact quote and context, but I was intrigued by the sheer denial of a salmon farmer’s claim that the aquacultured fish were not endangering wild stocks. I guess the preservation of the business drives the denunciation but there has been many peer-reviewed publications over the years presenting evidence that [...]... Read more »
FRAZER, L. (2009) Sea-Cage Aquaculture, Sea Lice, and Declines of Wild Fish. Conservation Biology, 23(3), 599-607. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01128.x
- June 5, 2009
- 08:00 AM
- 966 views
Can Death be Sustainable?
by sciencebase in Sciencebase Science Blog
A case study
Few people like to dwell on the subject of death, but it’s up there alongside taxes with life’s inevitabilities. But, consider it we must, for the sake of the environment.
At some point in our primordial past the dead were left to the scavenging dogs, the vultures, the flies, and the microbes. There were [...]Post from: Sciencebase Science Blog... Read more »
Eva Collins, Kate Kearins, & Helen Tregidga. (2009) Exiting in a State of Grace: can death be sustainable?. Int. J. Sustainable Strategic Management, 1(3), 258-284.
- June 4, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,233 views
Guest Post: Shark toothed theropods in Asia – introducing Shaochilong
by Dave Hone in Archosaur Musings
I may be headding off to sunny Inner Mongolia, but have left the keys to the Musings behind in the hands of theropod specialist and memeber of the worldwide Bristol mafia, Steve Brusatte to talk to you about a new paper (and a new taxon) we have described with our colleagues (though I honestly and [...]... Read more »
Brusatte, S., Benson, R., Chure, D., Xu, X., Sullivan, C., & Hone, D. (2009) The first definitive carcharodontosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Asia and the delayed ascent of tyrannosaurids. Naturwissenschaften. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-009-0565-2
- June 2, 2009
- 04:58 PM
- 1,412 views
Plagiarism... what can be done? simply suffer it?
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Some comments on the impact of plagiarism on science. How affect scientists; what can we do as scientists and more... (ah! and some recommendations on restaurants too).... Read more »
P.Artal, S. Marcos, R. Navarro, D. R. Williams. (1995) Odd aberrations and double-pass measurements of retinal image quality. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, 195.
- June 1, 2009
- 10:00 AM
- 833 views
Towards Hydrogen Storage in Hydrazine Borane
by Michael Long in Phased
Dieter Lentz (Freie Universitat Berlin) and coworkers
have made progress towards applying hydrazine borane as a
highly effective hydrogen storage medium.
This news feature was written on June 1, 2009.... Read more »
Hügle, T., Kühnel, M. F., & Lentz, D. (2009) Hydrazine Borane: A Promising Hydrogen Storage Material. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 131(21), 7444-7446. DOI: 10.1021/ja9013437
- May 28, 2009
- 01:30 PM
- 944 views
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: Vying for the Future of Bio-Powered Transport
by Michael Long in Phased
Elliott Campbell (University of California, Merced)
and coworkers have found that electricity from biomass is
more ideal for use in battery-powered vehicles than internal
combustion engines, when evaluating the issue solely
from a land-use perspective.
This news feature was written on May 28, 2009.... Read more »
Campbell, J. E., Lobell, D. B., & Field, C. B. (2009) Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol. Science, 324(5930), 1055-1057. DOI: 10.1126/science.1168885
- May 27, 2009
- 10:23 AM
- 1,120 views
Free drugs: Just say no?
by zayzayem in It's Alive!!
“Everybody likes something free.” I don’t think anyone is going to disagree with Chimonas and Kassirer there.
Drugs are expensive. And even if in a country like Australia, universal insurance may mean that vital medicines are cheap for the end-consumer, somewhere someone has pay the full price (i.e. the government).
Because drugs are so expensive, many [...]... Read more »
Chimonas, S., & Kassirer, J. (2009) No More Free Drug Samples?. PLoS Medicine, 6(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000074
- May 19, 2009
- 04:08 PM
- 687 views
Meet Ida!
by The Science Pundit in The Science Pundit
Meet Ida! a.k.a. Darwinius masillae. Ida is a 47 million year old fossil primate that was discovered in the Eocene fossil beds in Messel Germany. Ida was 24 cm. (~10 in.) from head to tail, meaning that--by some estimates--she probably weighed a little over a pound. In the picture below you can see the whole skeleton. It is fairly rare to find complete Eocene mammal skeletons--particularly primates. You can read online research paper about Ida here.And Ida is just wonderful! On the downside, her skull was crushed, but on the upside, you can actually see where her fur was! (click on picture to embiggenize) Kewl!!!You might have noticed that Ida kind of looks like a lemur. But there are morphological traits there that put her into the Cercamoniinae, from which modern anthropoids (monkeys and apes) evolved. In other words, we have ourselves a complete transitional primate fossil. This is super exciting! Another thing we know abot Ida is that she was a juvenile. How do we know that, you ask? Check out her teeth!You can clearly see that she has a mix of fully developed and developing teeth. For example, the M1 molars above are developed and in place but the M2 molars are still moving and the M3 molars probably haven't broken through the gums yet. We can compare this pattern to the dental development of similarly sized modern primates to estimate that Ida was about 80% of the way to full maturity when she died. And as I said before, there's much more in the paper.Yay for science!Franzen, J., Gingerich, P., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J., von Koenigswald, W., & Smith, B. (2009). Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723... Read more »
Franzen, J., Gingerich, P., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J., von Koenigswald, W., & Smith, B. (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
- May 19, 2009
- 03:26 PM
- 921 views
IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DIVIDING ABORIGINAL PEOPLE? CAN IT STOP?
by Christopher Leo in Christopher Leo
I'll be at the Canadian Political Science Association conference in Ottawa next week delivering a paper originally entitled "Building cohesion, aggravating division", with an even more obscure, academic-sounding subtitle. But I've changed the title and the new one is the one I'm using for this blog entry. My article grows out of studies I did recently in Winnipeg of aboriginal policy and policy regarding immigration and settlement. Originally, these studies had nothing to do with each other, but when they were finished, I was struck by the contrast between them.... Read more »
Christopher Leo. (2006) Deep Federalism: Respecting Community Difference in National Policy. Canadian Journal of Political Science 39:3, 2006, 481-506., 39(3), 481-506.
- May 17, 2009
- 02:50 PM
- 1,492 views
Open Source Psychic
by Bryan Perkins in Science. Why not?
As I was reading the post about open access science in which Bora over at A Blog Around the Clock mentions the research paper I posted on this blog, I found one line in particular that expresses the importance of Open Access science in my mind. In the article Bora says:
"In any case, it is much better for data to be out in the open, available to anyone who knows how to use Google search, than gathering dust in some manila folder."... Read more »
MacCallum, C., & Parthasarathy, H. (2006) Open Access Increases Citation Rate. PLoS Biology, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040176
- May 16, 2009
- 05:25 PM
- 1,193 views
Finding the right location – minimizing disruption costs
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
Classical facility location models assume that once optimally located and set up, facilities will operate as planned, smoothly, and without interruption. In reality, though, operations seldom go as planned; interruptions, unscheduled downtime and failures occur every once in a while, with unplanned and unbudgeted disruption costs as a consequence. Is it possible to know beforehand which locations that have the least disuptions costs?... Read more »
Snyder, L., & Daskin, M. (2005) Reliability Models for Facility Location: The Expected Failure Cost Case. Transportation Science, 39(3), 400-416. DOI: 10.1287/trsc.1040.0107
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