Sharing this purely because it’s amazing. Hat-tip to John Hutchinson for sharing!
The 12 days of PhD Christmas
Twelve Dinners Delivered (to the lab)
Eleven Papers Prepping
Ten Bugs-a-Bugging
Nine Ladies Dancing (but not with you)
Eight Bunsens-a-Burnin’
Seven Dance Solos
Six Words a Minute
Fiiive Grants Rejected
Four Calling Mates (“I’m busy“)
Three Absent Supervisors
Two Days off a Year (maybe)
And a h-index of nooought.
(source)
Merry Christmas everyone!
A new power is rising…
This post originally appeared at: http://the-briefing.com/a-new-power-is-rising/
People always under-estimate the power of the fossil record. There has always been this stigma surrounding it that it is too poor, or too biased to read ‘properly’, and is consequently of no use. I still hear this quite a bit, and there are a couple of reasons for it.
Over the last ten years or so, there has been a substantial increase in the methods we can use to interpret the fossil record, based on an increased understanding of the interaction between large fossil data sets, the geological record, and the way in which we as humans have sampled these archives. This has dramatically changed the way in which we think of, and use, the fossil record – we see its imperfections, but we also know how to compensate for them, making the fossil record a new rising power for understanding biological patterns in deep time.
An interesting step for open access..
If you haven’t heard of it yet, a new tool, the Open Access Button has just launched, coincident with a large open access conference in Berlin. Below is a copy of their press release, the original of which can be found here. In the mean time, check out some of the EGU’s open access journals – there’s quite a decent variety! Also, for those interested, the Finch Committee who kicked off open access policy development in the UK just released a review of their progress, which is worth a peek.
[Begin press release]
November 18, 2013
Contacts:
Students Launch “Button” to Put Denied Access to Research on the Map
BERLIN – Today, at an international meeting of student advocates for expanded access to academic research, two undergraduates from Great Britain announced the highly-anticipated launch of The Open Access Button – a browser-based tool to map the epidemic of denied access to academic research articles, and help users find the research they need.