A TED talk by science writer Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor of Skeptic magazine.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Demographics of the review process
Grod et al. (2008) Systematic variation in reviewer practice according to country and gender in the field of ecology and evolution. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3202.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Friday, November 9, 2007
Attack of the flies!
The 12 genomes are out!
Check out the relevant papers in Nature, Genome Research, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Biology, Genome Biology.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Elephant on a trampoline
I couldn't resist (doing reseach on elephants and all)... a great animation movie!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Webservers for detection of positively selected residues accounting for 3D protein structure
Three webservers so far that estimate ω (=Ka/Ks=dn/ds) taking into account the protein's tertiary structure (PDB ID):
- SELECTON by Tal Pupko's group at Tel Aviv University
- SWAKK by Laura Landweber's group at Princeton University
- Ka/Ks w/ 3D-windowing by David Liberles' group at the University of Wyoming
- SELECTON by Tal Pupko's group at Tel Aviv University
- SWAKK by Laura Landweber's group at Princeton University
- Ka/Ks w/ 3D-windowing by David Liberles' group at the University of Wyoming
Friday, October 12, 2007
What's the impact factor got to do with paper quality?
Postma E. (2007) Inflated impact factors? The true impact of evolutionary papers in non-evolutionary journals. PLoS ONE 2(10):e999.
Too much ado about high impact factor journals. Evolutionary papers in lower-ranking non-specialized journals are undervalued. A call for a more elaborate journal classification system including field-oriented impact factors.
Too much ado about high impact factor journals. Evolutionary papers in lower-ranking non-specialized journals are undervalued. A call for a more elaborate journal classification system including field-oriented impact factors.
Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward
Lenoir et al. (2007) Intense sweetness surpasses cocaine reward. PLoS ONE 2(8):e698.
A cool experiment showed that rats prefer saccharin-sweetened water (calorie-free) to intravenous cocaine. The authors speculate that intense sweetness being a supernormal stimulus can override homeostatic and sel-control mechanisms and lead to addiction – greater than cocaine addiction! In most mammals sweet taste perception is primarily owed to the existence of two G-protein-coupled receptors (T1R2 & T1R3) that evolved in sugar-free ancestral environments not adapted to really sweet conditions.
A cool experiment showed that rats prefer saccharin-sweetened water (calorie-free) to intravenous cocaine. The authors speculate that intense sweetness being a supernormal stimulus can override homeostatic and sel-control mechanisms and lead to addiction – greater than cocaine addiction! In most mammals sweet taste perception is primarily owed to the existence of two G-protein-coupled receptors (T1R2 & T1R3) that evolved in sugar-free ancestral environments not adapted to really sweet conditions.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
RAxML black box
RAxML comes now in a new webserver flavor called RAxML Black Box. This is in addition to the RAxML webserver on the CIPRES Portal.
Accepts multiple outgroups (thanx, Alexis :-), does DNA and AA (not combined), accepts partitioned alignment (mixed models), emails a link to the results URL.
Brought to you by Alexandros Stamatakis & Jacques Rougemont.
Accepts multiple outgroups (thanx, Alexis :-), does DNA and AA (not combined), accepts partitioned alignment (mixed models), emails a link to the results URL.
Brought to you by Alexandros Stamatakis & Jacques Rougemont.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Nature Editorial: ERC not disclosing the state-members distribution of its grants shortlist
Nature 448, 727-728 (16 August 2007)
Division of labour: The European Research Council shouldn't be coy about saying who will get its first set of grants.
The first Europe-wide research agency to distribute funding purely on the basis of scientific merit is working with commendable efficiency. Its officials have just ploughed through more than 9,000 first-stage applications for the inaugural programme of grants and asked 559 of them to submit a complete application. Around half of these shortlisted candidates will eventually win five-year grants worth up to euro dollar400,000 (US$550,000) per year.
The European Research Council (ERC) has done well to get so far within eight months of its official creation. But it is already facing criticism for its reluctance to reveal the exact distribution of nationalities on the shortlist. The ERC's decision to keep this information to itself for the time being can be read two ways: as a failure to be transparent or as a pragmatic response to a tricky political environment.
The ERC's mission is perhaps unprecedented in the brief history of the European Union (EU). It has to distribute large amounts of European money — building up to euro dollar1 billion a year within a few years — to the best research proposals, regardless of nationality or other political criteria. Both the EU member states and the European parliament have fully signed up to this mission.
Nonetheless, the young agency's leadership can expect to take some political heat if, as is likely, most of its grants go to those EU countries that are already most established scientifically. A comparable dilemma has been encountered in the past by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), an agency that, perhaps more than any other, the ERC seeks to emulate. NSF grants have always flowed disproportionately to certain states, such as Massachusetts and California, where US scientific excellence is most heavily concentrated. The agency has dealt with the political challenge that this presents by publishing reams of relevant data upfront, while developing programmes (at the prompting of Congress) that assist researchers in the states that do less well with their applications. It has done this without compromising its criteria for grant selection.
One of the council's top priorities is to make sure that it establishes a reputation for excellence in its processes. It must do this to win the solid support of European scientists ahead of its first formal evaluation by the EU authorities, which will take place in just two years' time. For now, the council is still negotiating the details of the final EU executive agency within which it will eventually operate. Evaluation of grant proposals, meanwhile, is being overseen by a modest number of staff, most of whom have been seconded from national research agencies.
It is in this fragile context that the ERC is eager to avoid rocking political boats by publishing a national breakdown of who is being considered for its first grants. Instead, it has broken down the shortlist into the groups of nations that joined the EU at different stages of its evolution.
So it has revealed that 45% of the applicants, and 53% of the winners, come from Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — the six original members of the European Economic Community, as it was then known. The nine countries that joined after 1973, but before the entry of the former communist states, account for 36% of applications and 27% of the winners. The 12 members who have joined since 2004 did not do so well, putting in 9% of the applications and winning 5%. (Nine 'associated countries', such as Russia and Israel, as well as participants from farther afield account for the rest of the applications.)
Policy-makers might benefit from fuller information about the geographical distribution of both those who apply and those who make the shortlist, if only as a snapshot of how excellence in European science is currently distributed.
Division of labour: The European Research Council shouldn't be coy about saying who will get its first set of grants.
The first Europe-wide research agency to distribute funding purely on the basis of scientific merit is working with commendable efficiency. Its officials have just ploughed through more than 9,000 first-stage applications for the inaugural programme of grants and asked 559 of them to submit a complete application. Around half of these shortlisted candidates will eventually win five-year grants worth up to euro dollar400,000 (US$550,000) per year.
The European Research Council (ERC) has done well to get so far within eight months of its official creation. But it is already facing criticism for its reluctance to reveal the exact distribution of nationalities on the shortlist. The ERC's decision to keep this information to itself for the time being can be read two ways: as a failure to be transparent or as a pragmatic response to a tricky political environment.
The ERC's mission is perhaps unprecedented in the brief history of the European Union (EU). It has to distribute large amounts of European money — building up to euro dollar1 billion a year within a few years — to the best research proposals, regardless of nationality or other political criteria. Both the EU member states and the European parliament have fully signed up to this mission.
Nonetheless, the young agency's leadership can expect to take some political heat if, as is likely, most of its grants go to those EU countries that are already most established scientifically. A comparable dilemma has been encountered in the past by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), an agency that, perhaps more than any other, the ERC seeks to emulate. NSF grants have always flowed disproportionately to certain states, such as Massachusetts and California, where US scientific excellence is most heavily concentrated. The agency has dealt with the political challenge that this presents by publishing reams of relevant data upfront, while developing programmes (at the prompting of Congress) that assist researchers in the states that do less well with their applications. It has done this without compromising its criteria for grant selection.
One of the council's top priorities is to make sure that it establishes a reputation for excellence in its processes. It must do this to win the solid support of European scientists ahead of its first formal evaluation by the EU authorities, which will take place in just two years' time. For now, the council is still negotiating the details of the final EU executive agency within which it will eventually operate. Evaluation of grant proposals, meanwhile, is being overseen by a modest number of staff, most of whom have been seconded from national research agencies.
It is in this fragile context that the ERC is eager to avoid rocking political boats by publishing a national breakdown of who is being considered for its first grants. Instead, it has broken down the shortlist into the groups of nations that joined the EU at different stages of its evolution.
So it has revealed that 45% of the applicants, and 53% of the winners, come from Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — the six original members of the European Economic Community, as it was then known. The nine countries that joined after 1973, but before the entry of the former communist states, account for 36% of applications and 27% of the winners. The 12 members who have joined since 2004 did not do so well, putting in 9% of the applications and winning 5%. (Nine 'associated countries', such as Russia and Israel, as well as participants from farther afield account for the rest of the applications.)
Policy-makers might benefit from fuller information about the geographical distribution of both those who apply and those who make the shortlist, if only as a snapshot of how excellence in European science is currently distributed.
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