strangely quiet around here

never fear - I will get back to the occasional post, but we have become new homeowners, and currently - well, our bathroom looks like this: 

 

so we are occupied trying to make the place livable, as well as research and we each have a lot of undergrads in the lab this summer!

 

Will get back to posting bits of science trivia soon!

 

drew

 

blogtastic - check out these cool updates

lots of entries to catch up on - Hayley has a couple of great entries about southern CA species, the CA Horn Snail and “dead man’s fingers”. Check out http://hayley144.wordpress.com/

And Brian did a nice writeup on Cryptomya at http://bjuhl472.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/delving-deep-for-the-mysteries-of-the-cryptic-cryptomya-californica-14/

While Sam did a nice writeup on the bean clam at http://sammsanfran.wordpress.com/ , Morgan was busy covering Melampus and Zostera, and Kevin, not to be outdone, took to the books to learn all he could about a little-known bivalve http://kstolzenbach88.wordpress.com/

 photo credit stone bird via flickr

my favorite non-profit meets my favorite president

photo courtesy White HouseShara Fisler, Executive Director of Ocean Discovery Institute, the greatest science education non profit ever, receiving the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from Obama.

 

I could not be prouder of Shara, the organization (its staff and students), or my (small) role as Science Director.

 

as you can imagine, my daughter is proud too!

all wetlands are not created equal

photo: drew m talley

 

Not surprising, but interesting finding out of UC Berkeley demonstrating that some restored wetlands, even 100+ years old, do not end up being equal to natural wetlands in terms of animal communities or carbon storage. The study looked at factors such as wetland size, latitude, and inundation, and saw strong relationships between these and restoration success.

 

So - we still have work to do on learning how to better manage and restore these systems! 

TideCal - an OS X program for intertidal scientists & teachers

photo from NASA

I just discovered this great program that runs on OS X. 

Essentially, you tell it the tidal heights (or range) in which you are interested, the timeframe of interest, and it spits out an ics file (like iCal or BusyCal use) containing the dates, times, and tide info that fit those parameters.

So, say you want to perform a study that requires minus tides (<0.0m MLLW), and you want to do your sampling in April or May, and it needs to be done during the afternoon. You can simply give the program those parameters, hit "compute tides", and it will magically spit out a .ics file (or text file) that you can then use to plan your sampling dates. I can think of a ton of ways this could be great - trying to find specific tidal heights for sampling or tidepooling; planning trips to locations that require low tides for access; or making sure certain stretches of water will be navigable. 

Peer Review Revolution?

 

There has been a lot of talk recently (and even not-so-recently) about the problems with peer review in science. This article in Wired is particularly good, in that it provides links to many of the primary resources to allow you to evaluate the problem (and the proposed solutions). Interesting reading.