The Ten Hundred Word Challenge OR Who Eats Who[m]

I regret not participating in the 1,000 (read "ten hundred") word challenge put on by the Forum on Science Ethics and Policy at last week's grad student happy hour at the Burke Museum. But I am extremely proud of my fellow Biology Grads who won three out of four categories! 

The inspiration evidently came from this XKCD comic.

You can absolutely hear it when someone switches into the voice and cadence and construction style of describing their research - because it sounds nothing like the way we speak the rest of the time. The purpose is not to sound smarter (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here to my fellow scientists), but to try to get in as many words as you can, before someone goes cross-eyed and checks out - which is, of course, ironically counter productive.

So the idea is to describe your research using only the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language.  Here is my first go, in the language I would use to speak with someone in my field. The words that are not allowed are underlined in red.

Figure 1.  Oh Sweet Jesus, even the pictures are words this time!!  Attempt number 1. 
All the underlined words are not-allowed

TA DA!

There is also an Up Goer 6 editor that colors your words along a green to red continuum based on frequency of usage, rather than imposing such a Draconian threshold. Presumably, the greener your passage the better. Mine is pretty brown - brown red (maybe burnt umber?) 

Figure 2. Woah that's a lot of red, and burnt umber! Isn't it true that red makes your blood pressure go up?

Now, really, I would argue that only half the bright red words are "jargon", even loosely defined: e.g., plasticity, trophic (even spell-check doesn't know that one). The others (e.g., interactions, systems, risk, history) aren't jargon, necessarily. There have to be a top 1,000 words, and, evidently, "addition" just isn't as useful in the everyday parlance as is "shit".  But the way we arrange these, let's say, less-common-but-still-accessible-to-most-people words can also rapidly induce torpor (or "bring sleep quickly" if you prefer - and are still awake).  

So, without further ado, try this on for size:

Figure 3. Success! Not a single red underlined word!

And for those of you seeking greater precision in the results:

Figure 4. Increased resolution from Figure 3.  Some things look red-ish, but not bright red, evidently.

Does that work for you?  Hard to fit into an elevator speech...

Figure 5. Can you hear me now? 

P.S., both this image and my above ten hundred word challenge description are absolutely going on all my professional correspondence from now own.

Scientistas of the World Part II OR More Swoonage

This post closes the loop on my promise to write about TWO Scientistas back in October for Ada Lovelace Day.  Get off my back, man, I said I'd do it!  Just kidding, absolutely no one but me is actually concerned about whether or not I write this post.  Except maybe my reader in Russia! Google tells me that I have three views on Rah Rah Radula from Russia.  Probably it's just someone phishing for my credit card number.  They'll probably succeed, but in the meantime maybe learn something about snails and science.  SUCKERS!

Part II: Sharon Strauss and More Swoonage

So, recalling that Ada Lovelace Day is all about inspirational women in STEM fields, I'd like to call your attention to Sharon Strauss.  Now, I have a bad habit of letting my first impressions get the best of me.  I first paper-met her  when I read a review she wrote with colleagues at UC Davis about how native species evolve in response to introduced species.  This is undeniably a cool topic.  To give you just a taste of what's going on out there:

Witness the Black Snake of Australia

Figure 1. Witness! Are you Witnessing? You better be! This handsome devil,
helpfully demonstrating "gape-limited predation" is Pseudechis porphyriacus. 

The Black Snake, Pseudechis porphyriacus, is native to Australia, where it preys on anything smaller than it's head (witness Figure 1), rodents, amphibians, whathaveyou. Wait did I just say amphibians?! In Australia?! That's right, Ima talk about CANE TOADS!!!  For those of you who haven't watched the never. -ending. parade. of documentiaries. about this particular poster-child of biological invasions, cane toads were introduced to the continent-cum-island to control cane beetles in 1935. The beetles were accidentally introduced earlier and were problematic for the sugar cane growers.  Folks thought the toads (incidentally Bufo marinus) would solve their problem by eating the cane beetles.  But toads found everything else in Australia much tastier.  So cane toads became super abundant without solving the beetle problem.  In addition to eating everything except what they were supposed to, they also killed native things that ate them, because they secrete a toxin (witness Figure 2) when they are threatened or have road rage (it's ALL about inducible defenses people!).

Figure 2. Oh gross, that white stuff is bufotoxin and this toad is MAD!

So black snakes were eating cane toads and dying from actual food poisoning. But!...BUT! It appears that in approximately 23 generations of snakitude, this species has not only evolved increased resistance to the toxin (Phillips and Shine 2006), they also have evolved smaller heads (Phillips and Shine 2004).  What?! Smaller heads?! That's dumb.  No, smaller heads for a gape-limited predator means you can only eat smaller toads.  Smaller toads make less toxin.  Pinhead snakes eating small toads live to pass on their pinhead genes to the next pinhead generation. EVOLUTION: WIN! 

Anyway, that's way cool, but let's get back to the point

Shocking Upshot: I got really excited about this paper and this concept. Evolution happens so fast, and humans can cause it and we can see the effects!  So, naturally, the author was elevated to Science Goddess status.  But my hasty opinion of Sharon Strauss was formed on one paper only.  Last spring, as part of an ecology seminar, I reviewed and presented on a larger portion of her corpus, and you can imagine how much higher Sharon rocketed in my esteem (hint: way higher) when I realized how broad her research was (hint: pretty, pretty broad, witness the breadth of Figure 3).

Figure 3. Portrait of Sharon Y. Strauss and Friend.

In addition, and I wish ESA hadn't removed or archived this information because it will not have the same impact if I just tell you about it, she wrote this great piece in a profile about the joy of doing science that serves our curiosity.  Or at least that was what I took away from it, so it's entirely possible I'm getting this wrong or projecting.  I'm pretty sure it was something along those lines anyway.  My point is that my perception of Sharon Strauss is that she approaches not only the content of science thoughtfully, as demonstrated by the strength of her research program, but also the act of doing science, the living of a scientific life, of training more scientists.  If that sounds a bit grandiose, that's because it's how that makes me feel.  This is, I think, how we all start out, as scientists and/or students, but something we quickly lose sight of when we get bogged down in logistics of funding and politics of publication.  Or even before then when we have to cram so much knowledge into our heads because we are studying for qualifying exams and trying to remember why we thought this was a good idea in the first place and what do you with all this information that you don't have a context in which to place and didn't I learn all this before and why don't I remember it, it's a good thing I'm learning it now because I'll definitely remember it this time NO I'll never remember it it's too much and I don't even know what they're going to ask me I will definitely embarrass myself horribly in front of my committee and my life will be OVER!


...


OK. So that happened. Sorry.


Like many other passions one turns into a career, you can at least imagine how one might lose track of why one does Science when one is panicked about doing Science very well.  For me, Sharon Strauss was a timely reminder about big-picture thinking.  Inspirational scientists (and all scientists for that matter) aren't only about good science - lots of people do good science.  They are about doing good science with grace and generosity.  

Other things Radular OR The bus is a caterpillar and it threw up

I am phoning it in twice today, but hopefully providing the radula-philic among you with new ways to waste time.  

"DO NOT stand under this structure in the event of an earthquake."

Thing the first: Accessible science

People keep telling scientists that they should blog to make their science more accessible to "the public".  But sometimes the science blogs I read are really only for scientists - splenic commentary or response to other work that (perhaps rightly) doesn't inform anyone.  This is a bummer.  

As part of a class I am also writing on "The Bill Nye Effect" a blog by a collective of grad students from different departments across UW who want to be better at talking about science.  I think many of us can count Bill Nye as a positive influence, directly or indirectly, on our decisions to do science, so the name is apt.  In a way, Bill Nye should be in my academic family tree (maybe as a Godfather?).  In any case, the blog seems to be evolving into vignettes of life as a science grad student, and has some very fun things to read.  

More on Bill Nye, because once I get started, it's hard to hold back: In all seriousness, this man has done more than almost anyone to convince me that the best way to teach is to let go of ego entirely. His work has been valuable not only in teaching science, but in demonstrating how to teach science.  By the way, have you ever looked at how many great pictures of Bill Nye there are? I have! Here, let me google that for you.  

Thing the second: 2 videos that will change your entire perspective on transportation:

I have already pointed out how behind the times I am when it comes to most things pop-culture.  But this being a gastropod-centric blog, I would be remiss if I didn't spread the gospel of Marcel.  Thanks to Mike "I wish my middle name started with a C" Hammer for filling me in on what I should have known about at least a year ago: