Figures don't always add up

Statistical flaws revealed in top journals' papers
NewScientist.com news service, 28th May 2004

"Two of the world's top scientific journals, Nature and the British Medical Journal, have been found guilty of routinely publishing figures that do not add up.

The analysis revealed that at least one error appeared in 38 per cent of the Nature papers and 25 per cent of the BMJ papers looked at. Furthermore, the study estimates that four per cent of results reported to be statistically "significant" may not be significant after all."

Complete article at New Scientist.
It's not a conspiracy of lies but more an indication of sloppiness due to the pace of publishing. The number of papers sampled seemed very small anyways. But it does reflect the "publish and be dammed" principle. End of the day its your name on the article.

Wolves saves trees in Yellowstone National Park

As if we will never get enough stories and anecdotes of how the ecosystem is interlinked and how removal of one organism can affect the fragile web... blah blah. This is an interesting account of how the introduction of a top predator inevitably saves the trees and restores the Yellowstone National Park in all levels.
Call me a lazy man, but I do love it when things are arranged neatly for my reading... especially in the mornings. Needless to say, this example will be used when I meet students for ecology lessons next time, until I can find a better example from our region.
Enjoy guys.

Scientific American: Lessons from the Wolf [ ECOLOGY ]
Bringing the top predator back to Yellowstone has triggered
a cascade of unanticipated changes in the park's ecosystem

John Maynard Smith, biologist

B. January 6 1920; died April 19 2004

Read the Obituary by David Harper in The Guardian, 22 Apr 2004. And see his homepage at Univ. Sussex.

"...JMS helped to illuminate so many areas in biology that it is hard to know where to begin." "By introducing mathematical models from game theory into the study of behaviour, he showed that the success of an individual's behaviour often depends on what other individuals do. He introduced the idea of an "evolutionarily stable strategy": a strategy that, once common, cannot be bettered by alternatives. This work has completely revolutionised the way biologists think about behavioural evolution, and game theory is now one of the most commonly used tools in evolutionary thinking."

"JMS also tackled one of the most vexed - but superficially least obvious - conundrums of evolutionary biology: why has sex evolved? His book The Evolution Of Sex (1978) pointed out "the twofold cost of sex". One way to understand this cost is to notice that sexually reproducing organisms must produce both female and male offspring, whereas asexual, or clonal, organisms need only produce females. Since in most sexual populations around half the offspring produced are male, an asexual population with the same fecundity will produce twice as many daughters. This advantage applies generation after generation, seemingly providing a huge evolutionary advantage to clonal reproduction. Thus the problem is: why do we see so much sex in the world?

Like his mentor, Haldane, JMS was deeply committed to making evolutionary ideas accessible to a wide audience. His "little Penguin", The Theory Of Evolution (1958, 1966, 1975, 1993), inspired many leading researchers to become biologists.

Despite his fame, he would nevertheless take time to discuss ideas with undergraduate students and eminent professors alike. He displayed almost limitless intellectual energy, even in his 80s. On one recent occasion, a junior researcher from another university sent him a paper and included a question with it. Within a day, JMS had written three pages of detailed notes and calculations, to the questioner's surprise and appreciation."

Two reserves created for tigers in China

The Chinese government and NGOs have created two nature reserves with complete ecosystems and food chain for the South Chinese Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.

But sadly, I think the wild (30) and captive (60) populations are too small to sustain a viable gene pool for the subspecies. Even the reserves might be too little too late. At this point, only 2 tiger cubs were sent to South Africa for survival training. It might take up to the fourth generation for the tigers to be effectively introduced in the wild.

Poaching is still rampant in China even when convicted poachers get to face the firing squad. SARS has not awakened people to the dangers of eating wild game. Just go and see any wildlife market especially in South China. With China's economy booming and people getting more affluent, even the wildlife population of neighbouring countries are feeling the pressure. Russian conservationists are increasingly worried about the remaining Siberian Tigers (less than 300 surviving!) being poached to satisfy the Chinese market.

Ed's note: Read about the subspecies at 5tigers.org, and see:

The Davis' TRF challenge - source or sink for carbon?

The Clarks contributions at La Selva is indeed fascinating, Adrian. They shared the directors salary and set up an environment that facilitated reasearch, including a grid system that has outlived GPS since the forest canopy is too dense.

But are tropical forests are a sink or source for carbon? Their La Selva hypothesis is based on slowed tree growth during warmer (El Nino) years in the 80's and 90's - the trees were not growing, i.e. not fixing carbon but are instead respiring constantly, generating carbon dioxide. With their comprehensive dataset, they found this to be true even of warmer night temperatures.

When they combined forces with Keeling, essentially suggesting a positive feedback mechanism (rainforests are a source of carbon when warmer, making it warmer), they might have stretched it a little. Because what happens at La Selva may not happpen elsewhere, right?

But I guess that's how scientists have always approached tropical rainforest (TRF) biology - hypotheses built on site specific data (for practical reasons). When we cornered Ian Turner before our final exams, we had discovered most of the exciting TRF theories were based on a house of cards. He greeted our excitement with some amusement. That's why I, at least, found exams useful - so many of us had clarity then.

But tropical forests may not be a sink either - just that some ideas are more popular than others, and we love to believe, so theory eventually degenerate into false dogma.

The Smithsonian worldwide plots will attempt to pin some things down but remember to stay incredulous. After all, everything you know is wrong.

Good catch, dei.

Global warming and tropical rainforests

I was browsing through some old science issues and this title -An Intimate Knowledge of Trees caught my eye. A study by husband and wife team in La Selva, Costa Rica showed that at very warm times of the year, the trees in that forest slowed their growth and pumped out significant amounts of CO2. So they begin to act as sources instead of sinks. It really puts the brakes on the notion, that forests absorb CO2 from human activity, acting as carbon sinks and somehow slowing down green-house warming.

Ref: Joycelyn Kaiser, 25 April 2003. "An Intimate Knowledge of Trees." Science 300: 566-567.

[ed.] see also: Clark et al., 2003. Tropical rain forest tree growth and atmospheric carbon dynamics linked to interannual temperature variation during 1984-2000. PNAS, 100 (10): 5852-5857 (13 May 2003; published online 28 April 2003).

Cicada Brood X emerges in eastern US

The 17 year - periodical emergence of Magicicada spp. Cicaddas is upon eastern US now - reports from ENN.

New Scientist featured an article in April, and Univ. Michigan's Museum of Zoology has an informative page on the Periodical Cicada.

See also College of Mount St Joseph's Cicada Watch 2004, and pages by Ohio State Uni., Indiana Univ. and Univ. Tennessee.

They adult Cicadas live only 4-5 weeks. This largest emergence ever is believed to be linked to the increase in forest patches as the insect favour forest edges or "suburban savannas".



Update (20 May 2004): See the Baltimore Sun special on Cicadas.

Molecular Evolution

I love reading condensed articles where all the jargon is cut down into meaningful and digestable bits. And while we have been 'cringing' about the invasion of structural and molecular biology, it's still good to see things from the "enemy" point of view.

This link is pretty good: "Evolution Encoded." By Stephen J. Freeland & Laurence D. Hurst. Scientific American, April 2004..

My lab is on fire

My Lab is on Fire is a humorous biology blog that seems to have run aground in March. Perhaps the grad students are writing up? I doubt it as that is usually the most productive time for blogs and other unrelated activity.

Life, the Universe and Everything

When biodiversity-related topics were mistakenly (obviously) sidelined with the advent of molecular sciences, one module attempted to cram the basics of ecology, evolution and biodiversity into the already confused minds of our young undergrads. Well, sympathetically, it was a desperate attempt by biologists to pass on some basics to clueless undergrads, to inject society with some understanding of how to cope or improve things.

But it was too much. I hijacked the prac schedules (okay I wrote them) and renamed them "Life, the Universe and Everything".

Were we successful?

Well the students moaned a lot, but grinned in amusement during practicals in field sites around Singapore, as demos performed theatrics in an attempt to facilitate some understanding. We simplified the syllabus every year to the point a younger demo shook his head when I recently asked to see it - he claimed I would be shocked, for it had lost so much substance. But the elements conspired against us further by reducing the capacity and/or the interest of the student just as gradually each year.

Those were the good times. Then the ice age came. So now we meet surreptiously in corridors around the university to appraise each other of developments in ecology, evolution and biodiversity. And if that wasn't enough, most of us use macs.

But we got tired of whispering. And then one guy got posted to Beijing. And now its so hot *whine*. Perhaps in the monsoon it will be trendy to drink at Science Canteen Spinelli's once again. And then blogger.com got revamped. Don't you just dig those new templates?

So Hello World! Here's goes nothing...