Eisen Lab Blog

Scientists have …. (impressions from #scio12)
Made using Wordle.Net
When I was enduring a painfully extended journey home from Science Online 2012 I kept thinking about the essence of the meeting.

And for reasons I am not entirely clear on, the essence kept coming up as single words.  So I tried to write them down but it was a bit too vague … so then I thought – what about giving those words some friends …

So I decided to try to come up with 100 words to complete the phrase “Scientists have …” I made a list and then gave each word a “weight” and used Wordle.Net to make a word cloud with them.

This word cloud, in the context of “Scientists have …” captures a lot of meeting for me.

Would be great to see other people come up with their 100 words for this …

My full list with scores is below:

art 15
awkwardness 5
badges 10
biases 10
bills 5
blogs 5
blues 5
bodies 5
books 20
bugs 5
cameras 5
cards 20
cash 5
cheerleaders 20
chocolate 10
circles 10
cliques 5
coffee 5
color 5
companions 10
computers 10
creeps 5
culture 10
data 20
debates 15
degrees 10
diversity 20
drinks 5
enemies 5
favorites 5
fears 20
feelings 10
fights 5
flavors 10
friends 20
fun 20
futures 5
glasses 5
goddesses 5
gossip 5
hangovers 20
hates 5
heroes 20
historians 5
homes 5
humor 20
ideas 10
institutions 10
issues 5
jargon 5
jobs 5
journalists 20
journals 20
languages 5
leaders 15
lemurs 15
love 10
lovers 20
microbes 5
money 5
museums 5
music 20
networks 5
nicknames 5
obsessions 20
papers 10
pasts 5
patience 20
pets 5
phones 20
pictures 5
piercings 10
pleasure 20
politics 10
porn 5
power 20
press 10
principles 5
prizes 5
problems 10
pseudonyms 20
respect 15
rights 5
scandals 5
science 20
sex 20
skin 15
stories 20
students 10
style 20
surprises 5
t-shirts 10
tattoos 20
teachers 20
tears 5
tolerance 5
toys 20
trolls 20
videos 5
weaknesses 10

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Microbial & Evolution art by @artologica has whole new meaning now that I met her at @scio12

P164 P165

See the full gallery on Posterous

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Microbial & Evolution art by @artologica has whole new meaning now that I met her at @scio12

P164 P165

See the full gallery on Posterous
——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

The Books of Science Online 2012 #scio12 #bookporn #sciencerocks cc: @avflox

Well, I am a book geek.  While others took pictures of all the tatoos, people, and more — the #1 thing I took pictures of were the books on display … (UPDATE – made a mini Amazon Store with all the books here).

UPDATE 2: August 2013.  Posterous is dead so deleted the links to the book pictures from Posterous below.  Changed it to Picasa.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/picasaweb.googleusercontent.com/slideshow.swf

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

——–

Draft post cleanup #22: Fun emails for another Jonathan Eisen

Yet another post in my “draft blog post cleanup” series.  Here is #22.  Written 5-5-2007 …
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I have decided to start posting some of the more fun real emails I have gotten relating to some of my scientific work or supposedly related to it.

The best I get are usually not related to my work but instead are related to another Jonathan Eisen out there. There is this other person with my name who has written some off-kilter books about conspiracy theories. And every once in a while I get an email means for him. For example, here is one (with some personal information about the sender removed)

Dear Jonathan:
My name is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. I am writing you from Ontario, Canada. The purpose of this e-mail is to gather information from you for the book I am writing for the World! The book is entitled “XXXXX.” The book’s purpose is to expose to the world, World Peace and how to achieve it – free energy and how to harness it, along with many government coverups, e.g. Who really killed J.F.Kennedy (the driver!)? and who is really behind the attacks of 911?, along with cures for AIDS, cancer, and a long list of other diseases that you have written about in your book that I intend to expose to the world!

I would appreciate a response via any means necessary…..a phone call (xxx) xxx-xxxx, e-mail, with a contact number I can get in touch with you personally!

The world must be made aware of what’s really going on and, along with your help and others, WE CAN SAVE THE WORLD!!!!!

I am one who is aware that anything I type and send to you will be read by not only yourself – but by others (the Government)! These people will go to any great lengths to prevent us from speaking or having contact, because, we, in fact, know what’s really going on, and we know who is responsible for suppressing all the information that the world must know. I will leave the rest of the conversation for, hopefully, a face-to-face sit-down, or any future conversations that we MUST have.

Your new best friend,
xxxx.

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Draft post cleanup #21: Tracking progress on the vertebrate tree of life

Yet another post in my “draft blog post cleanup” series. Here is #21; from March 2010:

A very interesting paper came out recently from colleagues of mine at UC Davis:  Rapid progress on the vertebrate tree of life.  I did not know they were working on this but perhaps should have.  It has some fun/interesting analysis of the accumulation of phylogenetic knowledge over time.  For example see Figure 1

Cumulative phylogenetic information amassed for the last 16 years. The accumulation of sequences for vertebrates in GenBank (a), papers using the term ‘phylogeny’ or ‘phylogenetics’ in the Web of Science database (b) and phylogenetic resolution (measured as the proportion of nodes with at least 50% bootstrap support) in the vertebrate tree of life resulting from these research efforts (c). In all cases, the data are cumulative from the start of each analysis. Phylogenetic resolution is calculated as in Table 1. Trend lines are exponential in (a), and second order polynomial in (b) and (c).

The rest of the paper is worth a look.

And alas I stopped there … I think I wanted to get Brad Shaffer and Bob Thomson’s comments on the paper but never got around to it.  Two years later the paper still is worth a look …

——–
This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Nice walk to #scio12 – now on o the virtual world

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Is stupidity important in scientific research?

Just got sent this article which came out in 2008 but I do not remember seeing previously: The importance of stupidity in scientific research.  The title seems a bit trite and in some ways the article is.  But it has a resonance with many people and I thought I would at least post the link here.  Some comments about it I found on the web include:

I can see why it resonates with people even though I am not sure I personally agree with the sentiments.  It is definitely worth a read.
Hat top to Melanie Melendrez for pointing it out.  
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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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Draft post cleanup #20: Retaking the biology GRE

Yet another post in my “draft blog post cleanup” series.  Here is #20:

In 2008, I had this idea that it would be interesting for biology faculty to retake the Biology GRE and see how they do.  I never got around to trying to register to take it and thus never wrote about it …  Any Profs. out there who have gone back and taking the GREs?

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This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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