myResearchSpace

The good news (for some of the approximately 57,600 Greenlanders, at least): Greenland now has much more control over its destiny, following the decision from Denmark to allow self-rule for Greenlanders (see the article at the Sydney Morning Herald). The not-so-good news: the following excerpt from this, and other, articles on this event is a ...

It may be that we see a bit more activity on this blog, following Talitha's suggestion to crank up the old-style journal club. That is, a club with more than one person in it, who actually read and discuss journal articles, and post their musings on this site (formerly created for that very purpose). I'd be very keen on this sort of development, ...

The journal Urban Ecosystems has just published a Special Issue on Soils. As our planet and its human populations become increasingly urbanised, this would seem to be a growth area for the earth and ecological sciences. Some of the articles from this issue of the journal: A comparison of soil organic carbon stocks between residential turf ...

A recent article in Environmental Science and Technology identifies scientific facilities as high energy users. Mills, Evan. 2009. Sustainable scientists.Environ. Sci. Technol., 43:979-985. University sustainability, as rightly pointed out by Sky elsewhere in myResearchSpace (''A Sustainable Campus''), commonly focuses on 'green' or ecological ...

I've been doing a lot of marking lately, and not much else, it seems. Certainly no blogging for weeks, sadly. The reason is my experience of one of the less salubrious hazards of cycling to work; about a month ago I came off second-best in a bingle with a car at a roundabout. I like cycling; it keeps me fit, reduces my carbon footprint and saves ...

How's this for an eye-opener?  Budden AE, Tregenza T, Aarssen LW, Koricheva J, Leimu R, Lortie CJ. 2008. Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23:4-6. Abstract Double-blind peer review, in which neither author nor reviewer identity are revealed, is rarely practised in ...

An ABC story reports that blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new Australian research has found (I added the bit about sex and research).

Yamin Ma submitted her PhD thesis today. She doesn't run a blog, so I'm making sure that recognition for her achievement reaches as many in the UWA community as possible. Yamin's thesis ended up with the title ''Vegetation as a biotic driver for the formation of soil geochemical anomalies for mineral exploration of ...

The journal Nature is marking The Year of Planet Earth in 2008 with free access to their Year of Planet Earth feature - find it at http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/collections/yearofplanetearth/. Many of the articles in the feature have relevance to soil science: From landscapes into geological history - Philip A. Allen Nature 451, ...

Trevors, J.T. and Saier, M.H., Jr. (2007). Academics and their knowledge are underutilized. Water, Air and Soil Pollution, 186:1-2. ''Scientists and other academics are generally underutilized in numerous ways. For example, many scientists who also serve as instructors are not provided with the best infrastructure for use in teaching ...