Correct use of the Kelvin temperature scale

Prof. Terence Day at Okanagan College, British Columbia, recently wrote an article describing the errors in textbooks. He argues that, “If the discipline of physical geography is a genuine natural science then the internationally recognized scientific units must be correctly used.” The issue is the Kelvin temperature scale. At the General Conference on Weights and […]

Appropriate way to label axes of graphs

Prof. Brian Fiedler of the University of Oklahoma recently published an article in Physics Education calling for a change in direction in teaching dimensionless ratios in physics. As he advocates, The tick marks [on an axis of a graph] are pure numbers. Labels with a solidus such as R/µm are orthodox notation for what the […]

The Importance of Good Communication – Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator

You’ve probably heard me say how much I value communications, both for the advancement of science and the good of our society. Good communication, at the most basic level, can unify us. It strengthens our democracy and creates an environment of transparency and trust. Good communication is essential for science. By translating complex science into […]

The range of reviewer recommendations from crocs to pigeons

Explains the evolutionary line of Rejectosaurus. From the A(frican) Blog of Ecology by Raf Aerts: “I’ve just spotted a Revisosaurus major on one of my manuscripts, even though the field characteristics were very close to those of a Rejectosaurus resubmittens (see Fig. 1, blue line).”

When to use north arrows on maps

This topic came up in an e-mail discussion with Jon Zeitler, Science and Operations Officer at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Austin, Texas. He advocated that maps should have horizontal length scales and north arrows on them. I agreed with him about the length scale, but felt that north arrows might be unnecessary […]

Bob the Angry Flower speaks out against improper apostrophe use

Or, in color: Buy the poster here!

Arial is a cheap imitation of Helvetica

While researching the book, I discovered this Web site proclaiming the glories of the sans serif font Helvetica and bemoaning the rise of Microsoft’s rip-off font Arial. As the Web page says about Arial replacing Helvetica, “To an experienced designer, it was like asking for Jimmy Stewart and getting Rich Little.” I have to admit […]

Be creative in constructing your figures

With Adobe Illustrator and other similar graphics packages, scientists are more in control of their figures than ever before. You don’t have to rely on the default values and font types in your graphics software. One thing that you can do is create composite figures where two types of figures are combined to create a […]

Did you know?

That “Web” as in “Web page” is capitalized? That “chapter 5” and “section 3.2” are generally not capitalized, but “Figure 9” and “Table 1” are? That Microsoft Word flags “a climatology” and “a cloud” as grammatically incorrect? [I don’t know why. Does anyone out there?] That “native English–speaking colleague” uses an en dash, but “English-speaking […]

Me and Archimedes

Last month, Russ Schumacher, John Knox, and I submitted to Monthly Weather Review a paper on a case of banded precipitation in Colorado. Yesterday, we got the reviews back. Two things impressed me about the reviews. 1) Reviewer C was very knowledgeable on the topics we were writing about: banded precipitation, symmetric instability, and inertial […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »