Monday Morning Salvage: February 20, 2017

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on Monday Morning Salvage: February 20, 2017
Weekly Salvage

For all our US-based Readers: Happy President’s Day! For everyone else, this is the reason none of you USian colleagues are answering e-mails. Unless they are, in which case, *grumble grumble grumble* *something about work-life balance*

Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)

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Thursday Afternoon Dredging: February 16th, 2017

Posted on By David Shiffman
Uncategorized

Cuttings (short and sweet):

Logo by Ethan Kocak

  • Watch cownose rays migrate past Destin, Florida, filmed by a parasailer

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R1 research universities – is a biased, flawed ranking system crippling academia?

Posted on By Chris Parsons
Academic life

If you are at a university that has graduate students, you have probably heard about whether your university is an R1 or R2 or R-whatever research institution. Universities tout their position in this ranking system, awarded by the Carnegie Foundation, to denote how “prestigious” they are in terms of research. From 1994, the ranking used to be given according to how much federal research funding they were awarded.

Source: clipart panda

Because of this, all the ranking told you was how much federal money a particular university received. This system is incredibly flawed. For example, if you have faculty more dedicated to writing grants and less dedicated to teaching, mentoring graduate students, publishing articles or doing other activities that are supposed to be the mainstay of academia, then certainly you will get more money. However, this will be at the expense of teaching, mentoring, publishing, etc.

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Conserving Chicago’s Lungfish Legacy

Posted on By Solomon David
Conservation, Science

Adult Australian Lungfish, part of a captive breeding program in Queensland, Australia.
Credit: Gordon Hides (used with permission)

On Sunday, February 5, 2017, Granddad the Australian Lungfish, the oldest fish in any aquarium or zoo, was euthanized due to health complications. Although his exact age is unknown, he arrived at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago as an adult in 1933. Australian Lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) take over a decade to mature, so we can estimate he was over 90 years old when he passed.

The Australian Lungfish is a unique species, considered a “living fossil”, resembling its ancestors whose lineage dates back over 380 million years. The Australian Lungfish genus (Neoceratodus) itself has been around for about 100 million years. When first described, they were believed to be amphibians; one look at their elongate body and flipper-like fins, and you can imagine the classification conundrum. The fish even possesses a primitive lung, allowing it to breathe air in low-oxygen environments (although they usually breathe with their gills).

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A Reading List for Environmental Resistance

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on A Reading List for Environmental Resistance
Blogging

We have entered a challenging new era for conservation and the environmental movement. Some of us feel as if we are hanging from the edge of a cliff. Others are preparing for the battles ahead. And many of us are still reeling from the whirlwind of changes taking place seemingly overnight.

We can’t tell you how to feel or how to act. We can’t really offer any comfort either, at least none that feels sincere. What we can provide are resources culled from a lifetime working in conservation science to provide, if not a map, than at least a scattered set of guideposts to remind us of where we’ve been and direct us to where we need to be going.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been collecting and curating a reading list for the conservation professionals, managers, and activists. I’ve culled from a diverse groups of writers to both focus and expand my vision of what conservation could become in the coming years.

This is, of course, not a comprehensive list of writings, but rather those which I have turned to, or turned back to, in the last few months, for inspiration and understanding. Some of them may seem a little out of place, but they have all offered guidance and insight as we move forward into this brave new world.

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New achievement milestones for academic life

Posted on By Michelle Jewell
Academic life

Overall job satisfaction in academia has been steadily declining for many independent reasons I won’t get into here (see Nature 1 and 2). However, we do need to accept some ownership for this dissatisfaction. Our expectations and goal posts are understandable set very high.  Indeed for many of us, our impossible standards and stubborn determination are the only reasons we got this far, so it can be painful – nigh impossible – for those who are hardwired to overachieve to step back and be happy with the big picture. We need to, because the stakes are as high as health, sanity, and relationships.

This inspired me to develop a new set of milestones to measure our academic careers by. Not only for our sanity, but especially for those younger scientists and students still fighting their way up the ladder.

Here are 12 new milestones of achievement I recommend we measure our career success by:

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