SciBlogs

Christchurch earthquake geology hour Grant Jacobs May 19

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If you’ve got an hour to spare and are interested in the earthquakes at Christchurch, my hometown, could do worse that watch this lecture given by Martin Reyners, principal scientist at Geological and Nuclear Science. There’s lots of good stuff for non-geologists. (Like me! There’s also a few minor technical glitches, but let them slide.)

It’s hard to imagine a chunk of land that, apparently, once rivalled the Himalayas in height crunching into and pushing it’s way under New Zealand. (If you want to skip the introduction, jump to about four and a half minutes into the video.)

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As a bonus, here’s a map of the earthquakes at Christchurch to date,

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More at Code for life:

Crick’s letter to son, aged 12, explaining DNA structure model

Sea stars and mosaics

Dear journalists and editors, (again)

It’s a small, small world (and three wise monkeys)

One example of why all those genomes from different species are useful to biologists

When things grow wild – post-earthquake natural succession in Christchurch gardens

New Zealanders – opportunity to learn how our immune systems work Grant Jacobs May 15

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If you’re interested in immunisation, vaccines or viruses*—or all of these—here’s your chance to hear Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty speak on The Killer Defence to disease at Palmerston North, Auckland, Dunedin, Hastings and New Plymouth.**

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More details and the booking form (click the large blue ‘Register now’ button) are available on the Royal Society of New Zealand website.

His first talk was yesterday,*** but the last four talks are to be held over May 16th – May 23rd.

He’ll be promoting his new book, Sentinel Chickens(You may be able to pick a copy up from the events – ?)

He’s the author of several other books including The Beginner’s Guide To Winning The Nobel Prize: A Life In Science and Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know. (He also advocated Seth Mnookin‘s book The Panic Virus® that I’ve previously reviewed.)

We’ve often written about vaccines here at sciblogs. Recently Helen Pertousis-Harris’, head of Auckland University’s Immunisation Advisory Centre has joined us with her blog, Diplomatic Immunity. A recent post by Siouxsie Wiles looks at the coronavirus originates from Saudi Arabia that epidemiologists and virologists are keeping an eye on. A few of mine are listed below.

Footnotes

* Including the dangerous-to-humans Ebola and Hendra viruses.

** Note there appear to be two talks at Dunedin, May 20th and May 21st.

*** This is the first notice I’ve had of the lecture tour, too.


Other articles on Code for life (further reading can be found in the links at the end of these articles):

Immunisation then and now

Vaccination – why learn the hard way?

Are too many vaccines too soon harmful?

Vaccination rates in NZ and what do those that delay infant immunisation think?

Thoughts on, and for, those trying to choose to vaccinate or not

Fact or fallacy, a survey of immunisation statements in the print media

More winning science reading Grant Jacobs May 15

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I’d like to return to writing ‘proper’ posts, both for general readers and scientists. But there’s a lack of this thing called free time—I think it’s called that, I’ve forgotten—that’s getting in the way.

Readers could try the winners of the inaugural Science Seeker Awards. Don’t ask me how 3 judges whittle down over 350 entries to a bit over a dozen winners. You can browse the full list of nominations too. Go for it. Good reading for free!

Some of my older writing is under my Writing page. (Another thing long due for an update or, realistically, more content for it.)

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Dear Rodney Hide, Grant Jacobs May 12

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Seeing as my comment has not appeared in response to your opinion piece at the National Business Review and I am not familiar with the moderation approach used there,* I offer it verbatim below. As I do, I’ve left the climate science for others. Even without that your opinion piece has it’s problems, to be polite.

Well, it seems we shouldn’t listen to you – that’s for certain!

You are getting basics wrong.

Let’s start with your analogy that, “The best-ever scientific knowledge was Newtonian mechanics. And Einstein blew it to bits.”

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Adding a StatCounter visit count to your WordPress blogroll Grant Jacobs May 07

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Here’s how to install a StatCounter visit counter into WordPress blogrolls. Or at least sciblogs blogrolls! – this is mostly for my blogging colleagues, but I hope those with other blogs should be able to follow along. In future posts I’ll describe adding a Sitemeter visit counter or a ClustrMap, which tracks where in the world those who visit your blog are from.

It’s fun to see how your blog is going, to keep tabs on if it’s suddenly getting a lot of visitors and where your visitors are from. The three main tools for tracking visitor statistics (more than just how many visit) are Sitemeter, StatCounter and Google Analytics.*

I recommend people use StatCounter over Sitemeter, owing to the latter’s erratic failures over the past year or so. (An on-going issue that seems to be, well, on-going.)

My description is particularly for where the bloggers don’t have access to the backend to install plugins, like sciblogs.

1. Sign up and start your tracking project

StatCounter offers a page-by-page, step-by-step process. It’s friendly, but has more steps.

Go to statcounter.com and click on ‘Sign up’ from their tabs, then enter the details. (You might like to use the name of your blog as the username. It‘s not a bad idea to get a gmail account dedicated to your blog.)

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Additional to the NZ Science Challenges Grant Jacobs May 01

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As others at sciblogs have noted (two links), the National Science Challenges and their funding were announced midday today.

I’d like to quickly highlight a few items not in the science challenges, as noted in the Report of the National Science Challenges (PDF file) under section 12: Other points the Panel wishes to bring to Government’s attention.

There were many examples amongst the submissions where the real deficit was not the absence of knowledge but the absence of its application. This was true for example in relationship to addressing issues of fresh water but it was also true in many other domains, particularly those where public policy settings were involved.

[My emphasis added.]

A desire to see more use of evidence in policy formation is something I’ve seen widely remarked on – and not just from the science sector.* I’d certainly like to see more of this myself. Read the rest of this entry »

Ag Science hub to form near Christchurch, New Zealand Grant Jacobs Apr 30

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Now updated with images from concept drawings: see end of article.

A large agricultural science hub based on AgResearch has been announced to be established near Lincoln University, a few kilometres from Christchurch.

AgResearch is New Zealand‘s largest non-University scientific research organisation, based in a number of centres throughout the country, including Palmerston North and near Dunedin (Invermay). Lincoln University is an agriculture-focused university near to Christchurch, the scene of large earthquakes in September 2010, February 2011 and through 2011.

Press releases (2 links) sketch an outline the aims (from the first, introductory passages and most of the generalised ‘nice noises’ (!) omitted),

AgResearch is planning to invest $100 million in facilities and resources over the next four years to boost scientific support for what is New Zealand’s largest economic sector and most important industry. Read the rest of this entry »

Are too many vaccines too soon harmful? Grant Jacobs Apr 29

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Parents want the best for their children. One concern raised by those holding off giving their children vaccines[1] are if too many vaccines too soon might be bad for their child, in particular if several vaccines given together might increase the risk of their child suffering neurological damage.[2]

A recent study addresses specifically this question.

Things that trigger an immune response are called antigens.

To compare how much “stuff” in vaccines you gave to different children, you want to compare the number of antigens you gave them.

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological condition.

By comparing the number of vaccine antigens given to children with if they had autism or not, you can ask if the number of vaccine antigens affected the neurological condition of the children. (At least for autism.)

Autism spectrum disorders become apparent when the child is around 2-3 years old, so vaccines given up to two years of age where studied.

The researchers used data gathered during a previous study, using data from 256 children with ASD and 752 matched controls.

Two main different types of comparisons were made:

  1. The total number of antigens from vaccines given up to either of 3 months, 7 months or two years old
  2. The largest number of antigens given in any one day

They found that children that received different numbers of vaccine antigens all had the same chance of getting autism – the number of antigens the child received from their vaccines did not make a difference to the chance the child would develop autism.

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Social media for scientists Grant Jacobs Apr 28

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I’m preaching to the choir here, aren’t I? You’re already on social media!

Seriously, let me give a shout-out to Holly Bik and Miriam Goldstein’s little paper in PLoS Biology, An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. Leave a copy on the department coffee table for those less confident about use of social media in science, perhaps?

Bik and Goldstein highlight that many academics are reticent about utilizing social media,

In academia, there is often a particular stigma attached to online activities. Actively maintaining an online profile and participating in social media discussions can be seen as a waste of time and a distraction from research and teaching duties. We believe this perception is misguided and based on incorrect interpretations of what scientists are actually doing online.

I have some sympathies, it must seem that way from the gossip about general use of social media. And not helped by the wayward examples the mainstream media highlights!

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Nature’s reproducibility effort: when to get data specialists on board Grant Jacobs Apr 27

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Scientific magazine Nature has announced an initiative to aimed at aiding the reproducibility of biological research papers. They’re planning to expand the methods section to cater for this, introducing a checklist and offering a Protocol Exchange site.

I’d like to draw attention to one point ArsTechnica’s coverage of this development noted that has wider impact, outside of this Nature initiative:*

To let certain readers know exactly how likely a given result is, Nature will now provide the authors with a statistician to consult (which, really, they should have arranged for themselves before even writing the paper). Authors will be encouraged to provide the underlying data for any charts or graphs in the paper.

This is too late in the act for the research, although understandable from what Nature is trying to achieve for itself and the relationship with the wider public.

The time to start getting the statistician, the computational biologist or other ‘data’ specialist involved isn’t before writing the paper or even when you start the work, as one commenter there wrote, but when you write the grant application.

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