In the News
Our staff contributor of the month award goes to Tom Ezard!
First, a blog about Ecologists and the insidious evils of ANOVA http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/ecologists-need-to-do-a-better-job-of-prediction-part-i-the-insidious-evils-of-anova/
Second, the British Ecological Society has just 21 tickets remaining for its undergraduate careers conference! It is in London in February and costs just ÂŁ10, book now! More details here http://youngecobes.eventbrite.co.uk/
Finally, “The BES is currently surveying undergraduate students to gain their perspective on fieldwork prior to submitting UCAS applications and their undergraduate experiences. We are hoping to gather responses from 1st and 2nd year students in particular as they bridge the most recent changes in higher education funding and tuition fees. The survey is completely anonymous and we’ve not asked for any details that might identify a particular institution but we would very grateful if you could forward this link to as many of your contacts you know who have direct contact with undergraduates. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BJYBCB6 (I’m after Felix’s crown)”
I attended the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour’s winter meeting last week on “Cognition in the wild”, where one of the plenary sessions was given by Karen McComb from University of Sussex. She talked about her cognition studies carried out on elephants in the wild, using playback of particular calls. You can read one particularly interesting study here, which shows just how important older matriarchs are, which is of conservation importance because they are the target of ivory hunters (doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0168) http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1722/3270
For all you budding microbiologists, where beer comes from (something to wow your friends with, when you’re taking a short revision break, most likely nowhere near a pub) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nYxr950dA&feature=BFa&list=UUZD1LLp6e838Iw_UTMcxQiQ  (there are lots more Oxford University Press short films)
Nature special – After Kyoto http://www.nature.com/news/specials/kyoto/index.html
Eradicating rats http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/12/ecuador-could-soon-lead-in-anti-rat-race.html
Did Darwin steal the idea of Natural Selection from Wallace? No and here’s the evidence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE3kjQ2cr-s&feature=share
What we can learn from the Porcupine http://www.nature.com/news/barbs-make-porcupine-quills-into-nasty-needles-1.11986 – review
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/12/04/1216441109 – article
Wildlife crime is bad for the economy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20679454
The BBC has a website dedicated to David Attenborough’s 60 years of Natural History programmes http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildlife
James Cameron’s latest film (it’s not a sequel to Titanic) http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/12/james-cameron-releases-results-from-his-deep-dive.html
Biotechnology vs extinction (I would be interested in your comments about this) http://www.nature.com/news/extinction-need-not-be-forever-1.11956
Lots of interesting new articles in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, including this one (you can sign up to have tables of contents sent directly to your inbox):
Groups of related belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) travel together during their seasonal migrations in and around Hudson Bay
Gabriel J. Colbeck, Pierre Duchesne, Lianne D. Postma, VĂ©ronique Lesage, Mike O. Hammill, and Julie Turgeon
Proc. R. Soc. B February 7, 2013 280 20122552; doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.2552
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1752/20122552.abstract.html
The science of Christmas http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8188997/The-science-of-Christmas-Santa-Claus-his-sleigh-and-presents.html
Finally, something else to fill a revision break, The Royal Institution Christmas lectures http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000006393
Posted By : Alexander Furr