March 2015
Using a ‘Big Brother’ Approach to Help Combat TB in Badgers and Cattle
Badgers are a very common mammal in Ireland, but few of us have actually seen one of these iconic creatures in the wild. That’s because they are nocturnal, mostly coming out of their setts only at night to forage, patrol their territories and meet the opposite sex.
Evolution is - surprise! - Darwinian!
I sometime come across papers that I missed during their publication time and that shed a new light on my current research (or strengthen the already present light). Today it was Cartmill’s 2012 Evolutionary Anthropology - not open access, apologies… Cartmill raises an interesting question from an evolutionary point of view: “How long ago did […]
Is the medium a monster?
“Dinosaurs have become boring. They're a cliché. They're overexposed” - Stephen Jay Gould Dinosaurs have always been inextricably linked to popular culture. Despite going extinct 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period they pervade our society. Dinosaur exhibits are the main attractions of natural history museums and outside of this setting, they can be […]
A Day in the Life of a PhD Student
We thought it might be interesting to share what the daily life of a PhD student actually looks like. So here are three perspectives on the average day. Adam A typical day for me begins between 8 and 9. I start out by checking my emails for correspondence and any interesting new papers that have […]
War of the Words – The Conflict between Science and Journalism, Part 2
In a previous post I outlined some potential areas of conflict between scientists and the journalists who are reporting on research. Here I want to continue my look at this relationship. First off let's start by looking at some surprising results from the social science literature which show that more often than not scientific findings […]
Do you speak Yamnaya?
I bet you do! One nice non-biological thing you can do with phylogenetics (unlike beers) is study the evolution of languages. If you aren’t familiar with evolutionary linguistics, it’s basically the same principles that we use to study the descent with modification of organisms but applied to words. Even though words do not evolve in […]
Radio skills for scientists
The Irish Academy of Public Relations recently hosted a free event, “Radio Skills - A Special Evening for the Science Community” at the FOCAS Research Institute in DIT. The points raised and ensuing discussions provided interesting insights into relationships between scientists and journalists. Ellen Gunning, director of the Academy, chaired the evening. From her experience of […]
An obituary to Leonard Nimoy
Being a Trekkie for as long as I can remember, Friday's news of the passing of Leonard Nimoy certainly saddened me. Even though I have moved on and haven’t really followed Star Trek since the original airing of Deep Space Nine back in the late nineties, it had a profound impact on my life, including […]
What do professors do?
Whenever I go home I repeatedly deal with the age old question non-academics ask academics: what do you actually do? I always find this a tricky question no matter who asks. Some people have tried to make it easier by asking me to describe a typical day or week, but this doesn't really help as […]