Dead salmon have meaningful brain activity, or how to get scientists to stop using outdated methods
We’ve all seen in our science bad approaches or terminology that get established and are difficult to kill. Chuck Doswell has his pet peeves, I’ve battled against my share: conditional symmetric instability to explain banded precipitation and moisture flux convergence as a diagnostic for severe storms forecasting. Bennett et al. were awarded the 2012 Ig […]
An example of an excellent figure
I had been showing this figure to several students recently about an effective way to plot a lot of spatial data without the figure looking cluttered. I think this is one excellent way to do it. The plots are all ordered around the perimeter of the map, yet the points take you to the locations […]
Eloquent Science eBook and PDF chapters
For those who want a digital copy of Eloquent Science, the book is now available through Springer for immediate PDF download (no copy protection, watermarked). The price (as of 26 February 2013) is £22.99 / $39.95 / €29.74. If you are at an educational institution, your library may have purchased the rights to the whole […]
Accepted at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics after nearly two and half years
February 22, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Publishing
On 25 January 2013, 904 days from the date it was submitted (5 August 2010), a manuscript was finally published at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Not only was this manuscript noteworthy for how long it remained in limbo before a final thumbs up or thumbs down from the Editor, but it was noteworthy for other […]
Can you explain your science using the 1000 most-used words in the English language?
Give it a shot here: http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ (The title Up Goer 5 refers to xkcd’s comic of trying to explain the Saturn 5 rocket blueprint using only those 1000 words.) (From Jim Steenburgh and his student John; Image from xkcd.com.)
The Editor’s Royal Flush
Lately, I’ve been seeing quite a few manuscripts sent out for review that receive one of the following sets of reviews: • reject, accept, major revisions • reject, minor revisions, major revisions I guess these are the equivalent of a royal flush in cards, although I’m not sure the result is as hoped for by […]
Booed for Keeping Speakers on Time
February 3, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Presentations
I was session chair at a recent meeting. The meeting was running behind, and they crammed a speaker from the morning session into mine, effectively taking away my 15 minutes of free discussion time at the end. Each slot was 20 minutes long, which as most experienced speakers would infer means that you get 15 […]
Time management skills: Walking
As time gets ever more precious to me and I have an increasing number of scientific articles that I want to write, I have found that I have had to develop more efficiency in my writing. Naturally, as I’ve becoming more experienced, I spent less time making the same mistakes that I did before. But, […]
Book Review: Fake Science 101
OK, it’s not strictly about communicating science, but this book was so freaking funny, I had to post something about it here. Fake Science 101: A Less-Than-Factual Guide to Our Amazing World. Here are some snapshots of the type of humor this book contains. Scientific fact: In order to save money, the Ivory Tower is […]
Review of Explaining Research by Dennis Meredith
January 16, 2013 Filed under Blog, Featured, Presentations, Resources
I love to read books, journal articles, and magazines. During the academic semester, I have almost no time to read. I try to catch up during the summers and the Christmas break. This break was no exception, and I got to wrap my fingers around Dennis Meredith’s Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to […]
