Grant Witness1 is a project to track the termination of NIH and NSF grants of scientific research agencies under the Trump administration in 2025. https://grant-witness.us
Post from John Dos Passos Coggin: The intrepid team of experts that made Climate.gov the pinnacle of digital climate resources is fighting back. With new partners and volunteers they are launching Climate.us, an independent, nonprofit successor to Climate.gov. Their first goal is to rescue the Climate.gov content, along with other critical federal climate information that’s gone missing, like the USGCRP’s Climate Literacy Guide, the CLEAN Collection for students and teachers, and the Fifth National Climate Assessment. Their second goal is to begin producing new content. They’re already on social media spreading the word and raising seed money at Donorbox. Join the fight for science today! https://lnkd.in/eKxRnivb
BioRender is unbeatable when it comes to scientific visualization… or is it? Here are some open-source alternatives. In general, open-source icons are free to use but are licensed under Creative Commons, which may require attribution. While BioRender employs professional artists to create its artwork, most open-source projects allow the community to submit icons. For this reason, the quality may not be as high, but the cost is much lower.
Mind the Graph was created in 2016 by Fabricio Pamplona, a Ph.D. scientist and specialist in scientific communication, and Leonardo Minozzo, an experienced and accomplished designer. Together, they created a tool for making simple, didactic, and beautiful science figures.
Bioicons is a library of free, open-source icons for biology and chemistry, with over 2700 icons across around 30 categories. Each icon has a license; many are CCO or BSD. For some licenses, the creator must be attributed in the figure caption or the acknowledgements. Many are in the public domain; for these, attribution or credit is not required but is appreciated. This project seems to have been created by Simon Duerr.
Open Science Art offers a comprehensive, open-access library of icons, 3D models, and illustrations for many scientific disciplines including biology, chemistry, physics and space science.
From their website: SciDraw is the work of Federico Claudi and Alex Harston. “SciDraw is a free repository of high quality drawings of animals, scientific setups, and anything that might be useful for scientific presentations and posters.” Users are not required to sign up to post a drawing, so submissions undergo a review and approval process before being published. Users are free to download, modify and use all drawings on the website, acknowledgment of the drawings’ authors and of Scidraw.io are appreciated. Each drawing has a DOI, many in Zenodo.”
Simplifed Science Publishing allows you to create your own professional scientific graphics with online courses and templates or you can buy banks of icons. They offer hundreds of vector graphics to create professional scientific designs using fully customizable templates. This service is not free but costs far less than BioRender.
2023.01.25 On the 25th of January, 2023, more than 50 female doctoral students met with Joël Mesot and members of the Executive Board to share testimonies about the challenges they face in their day-to-day activities, and to recommend measures for preventing, monitoring, and holding individuals accountable for inappropriate and disrespectful behavior at ETH. https://www.500womenscientistszurich.org/post/eth-president-meets-doctoral-students
Representatives of the three groups (Speak Up! in Academia, WiNS, and 500WS Zurich) that had initiated the petition, which had over 1300 signatures, to the ETH Zurich Vice President for Finance and the General Secretary of the ETH Zurich Executive Board. There were over 150 people at the assembly on ETH Zurich’s Polyterrasse to hand over the petition signed by almost 1500 people to ETH Leadership.
Good academic writing has a clear focus. there is a question the author is trying to address which has to be made clear right at the beginning. Then they say here is how we addressed that problem. Then you mention potential problems and what you could do to address them.
The purpose of the introduction is to give background information to help readers make sense of the text.
There are 3 approaches:
Place the study within a meaningful area of research
Strategy 1: Identify the problem
Strategy 2: Describe the established knowledge about the topci
Strategy 3: Refer to existing research
Identify a smaller part of the area that needs more research
Point to problems with existing studies
Show that it’s important to conitnue an existing line of research
Describe a knowledge gap
State the purpose of the study
Phrases that introduce a knowledge gap: “but no studies have investigated…”, “it is still not know whether…”, “currently there are no data on” or more in the Manchester Academic Phrasebank
The purpose of the methods section is to describe how the research was done. It helps readers judge how convincing they find the results and helps researchers who want to reproduce the study.
It is common to address 3 questions using past tense and passive voice. Phrases like “using” and “based on” are used to say how things were done. Make your definitions in the methods.
What kind of data were used: study design and case definition
How were they collected: data collection and processing
The results section presents the answers to the questions proposed both verbally and through tables, figures, and graphics. Results are expressed in the past tense. The results section addresses the expectations of the hypotheses set out in the introduction.
“no significant interaction tersm were identified among the fixed effects.”
“When clustering by trainer was accounted for…”
Hedging is common. Generally, older horses were at more risk…
In this video, Kerstin Gackle from the Academic Lab at the Universitaet Leipzig presents a fantastic set of tips that will help you improve your ability to write like a native speaker.
Here is a written summary of the video. The seven rules are:
1 Write like you Speak
Written German puts more weight into nouns
English puts the action in the verb
promotion of democracy -> promoting democracy
2 Focus on Subject -Verb -Object
Verb should be no father back than the 2nd or 3rd position
Move elements “disturbing middle elements” between the subject, verb, and object to the front or the back
3 Put important information at the end of the sentence
The Queen, my Lord, is dead. In order of importance 2, 3, 1.
Creates correspondance with previous sentence
Adverbs go in the middle
4 There are common ways to start academic sentences in German that are not used the same way or with the same frequency in English so avoid using thes as sentence starters: “Due to” (Aufgrund), “Especially” (Besonders), “Only” (nur), “Not only” (nicht nur), “Also”(auch)
The same goes for these phrases anywhere in the sentence: “due to” “different”, “more and more”, “nowadays”
Look at the frequency of usage in academic texts vs learner texts to judge whether usage is standard or not. source: MacMillenDictionary, Improve Your Writing Skills
“Only when a question was answered correctly, I confirmed the choice” -> “I only confirmed their choice when a question was answered correctly.”
BioRender is a tool for creating professional-looking science figures in minutes using templates and over 20,000 stock icons from 30+ areas in the life sciences using a web-based, drag and drop interface. The following figure is one of many templates; each element in the template is a simple icon.
Icons
BioRender contains an immense library of science-themed, simple icons including: cell structures and types, anatomy, different biomolecules, lab equipment, membranes and many different species from the simple to the complex. Have your own data you want to include in the figure? You can drag and drop images from your computer’s file system onto the canvas, they’ll appear as icons. Need something that is not in the library? With a paid subscription, you can ask BioRender to create new icons.
The simple icons in the library can also be grouped into compound icons in the same way that objects can be grouped (and ungrouped) in most drawing programs. A third type of icon, the bio-brush is unique to BioRender.
One of my favorite features is the bio-brush. If an icon has a brush next to it, you can use the bio-brush feature to draw repeating sequences of the icon, complete with the ability to make curves. Imagine drawing a lipid bilayer, a layer of cells or a string of nucleosomes as easily as drawing a line. Drawings that would take hours in a normal drawing program can be done in seconds with BioRender. For an example, see this BioRender tutorial for a demonstration of the membrane brush and a vessel brush.
The Biorender Learning Hub has a lot of videos on topics such as design, learning, usage and customization. This in combination with the intuitive interface means that the user can make professional-looking figures in an afternoon. Another feature is the ability to make and present slides within the BioRender interface; shared work spaces are planned.
The free license gives you the right to use the figures you create for educational purposes and in grants. If you want to publish your figures in journals or use your figure for commercial purposes, you need to upgrade to the commercial license which is $35 per month for individuals or $99 per month for a group of up to 5 members (in October 2021). Institutional licenses are also available.
Are there any negatives? The interface is optimized for Chrome so if you’re not using Chrome, there may be some issues. The price is too steep to keep a permanent license if you don’t have a research budget. However, even a student can cough up 35 dollars to buy a month-long license to make their final figures right before submitting.
During my daily commute from Zurich to Bern, I often noticed a big castle positioned on the Aare River. Finally, after 9 years of commuting I finally visited with a friend. This hike from Outdoor Active is a easy stroll from Olten to Aarburg, followed by a 7 kilometer hike including a 250 meter ascent to the Sälischlössli and a pass by an animal park on the way back to Olten. We included a visit inside the Festung Aarburg, an old castle which is now in use as a Jugendheim (Juvenile Detention Center) for boys aged 16-20. For this reason, visiting the castle is limited and currently, there is only one 1.5 hour tour per week on Saturdays at 14:00 (in Swiss German). It was well worth the visit.
Olten to Aarburg by the Aare River 3.8 kilometers with 50 m ascent
Aarburg to Olten via the Sälischlössli 7 kilometers with 237 m ascent
The walk to Aarburg is along the Aare by meadows, train tracks and farms.
On the path to Aarburg from Olten, the Sälischlossli, a rebuilt castle with a restaurant, can be seen across the river at the peak of the first hill. The view from a distance shows the size and location of the Festung Aarburg.
At 14:00 on Saturdays, the Festung Aarburg is open for a guided tour in Swiss German (cost 10 CHF). The guide explains the castle’s construction history, life in the castle, how the rooms were used and a bit of how it is used today as a juvenile detention center for boys aged 16-20. The fortress, strategically located at a narrow point of the Aare River, is built into a massive spur of rock with steep walls on the outside.
The Festung is built into the rock.
After walking in the front door, 72 steps lead up to the next level (Korinna verified).
The castle has rooms that were dedicated to soldiers, officers, storage and defense.
A well for water
The barred off courtyard speaks to the castle’s current use as a detention center.
Living space for the privileged at the top
View from the top of the castle
After the castle visit, we continued to the Sälischlössli, a small castle with a restaurant built in 1870/71 as an expansion of a castle ruin. After the walk up, the Restaurant Sälischlössli is a relaxing place to have an ice cream (or french fries) and a great view.
Restaurant Sälischlössli
view from Restaurant Sälischlössli
The way home passes by an animal park. Unfortunately, the raccoons were not out but we did find some handsome deer.
This 11.5 km hike from outdooractive.com has a gentle 200 meters up followed by 900 meters down. Travel started with a train from Bern to Interlaken Ost, another train to Lauterbrunnen, followed by a gondola to Grütschalp, and finally another train to Mürren, the starting place of the hike. Highlights include views of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau, many waterfalls including at one point the trail going behind a waterfall and an old water-powered sawmill.
View of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau from the train to MürrenView at the start of the hikeTown of GimmelwaldThe number and variety of wildflowers was amazing.This old sawmill is in the Sefinental. Powered by water, it is still functional as seen in this video.Stop for a rest and a foot bath in the ice-cold water.Thanks for the hike, Marta!
This video by Hans Rosling from the Gapminder Foundation paints a portrait of population growth that is less bleak than most people intuit. The video doesn’t address climate change but it does convince that population growth is not an unsolvable problem, nor will population increase always be exponential. Using population data collected from different countries, he shows how population growth is projected to level off at 11 billion people.
Achieving a state of the world that can sustain 11 billion people is not out of the realm of possibility. If resources are used wisely, sustainably, and shared somewhat fairly, the earth can accommodate this population size. He says at the end of this video that he is not an optimist but also not a pessimist. He is a possibilist, meaning he knows what is possible and works toward the best possible outcome. One way to feel better while being inundated with an overwhelming amount of pessimistic news is to get involved in local politics, vote and work towards sustainability both at home and in coordinated actions. Put your energy toward the possible!
