Networks of species.

By evaluating the role of a species in an ecosystem such as its position within the network of species in the community/ecosystem and thus the stability that it provides to the community, we could evaluate the importance of that species. The loss of some species on the periphery of the food web might have a much lower impact than central species that are interconnected with large numbers of other species. This still makes it bloody hard to put a £ value on a species but at least they species could be ranked in order of importance within the ecosystem. Then again maybe not?
diversity
conservation

Beckett in rebuke to US over Scottish stop-off for Israeli bombs

I think it is great that someone in the government, i.e. Margaret Beckett, is standing up to the US and lets hope that we continue to distance ourselves from the terrible US foreign policy. I think that we should publicly deny the US request for 2 further stopovers at Prestwick in the weeks to come. This would demonstrate that we are not their lap dog and that we do not support their foreign policy. Also, we would not be seen as hypocrites, helping Israel bomb Lebanon while sending humanitarian aid to Lebanon.
Hezbollah
Israel
Lebanon

Public opinion polls on the war in Lebanon

Only 22% of Brits believe Israel has reacted proportionately to the kidnapping of soldiers..

64% of Canadians back Israel's unjuste war in Lebanon.

43% of web opinion think Israel's war on Lebanon is unjustified.

28% of British voters back Palestinians versus 14% supporting Israel

Israelis still overwhelmingly back the war, with 90 percent wanting it to go on until Hizbollah is driven from southern Lebanon

59% of Europeans interviewed describe Israel as the top threat to world peace ahead of North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran.

69% of Lebanese and 98% of Egyptians are against the United States policies and the country as a whole.

20 out of 23 countries think that Europe would do a better job than the US in world affairs.

66% of a French opinin poll was against the invasion of Iraq before the war started.

Biodiversity information: where is it all?

Finding information about species at a particular location (continent, country, region) is almost impossible. Why? Because that information is behind the closed walls of our natural history museums worldwide, usually inside ancient journals, on little paper cards or pinned in huge specimen cupboards. How much of it is digitilised? I wouldn't know, the museums do not readily share their information with the general public, eventhough it is us who pay for the work they are doing.
Unlike the "Vase with twelve sunflowers" by Van Gogh which is worth over $39,921,750, it is difficult to put a price on a species or biodiversity. Why is it easier to put a price on a painting than on the sunflower species, Helianthus annuus? I think that is only once we start releasing the information that naturalists, ecologist and systematists have gathered on the millions of species which we know about, that we will begin to be able to put a value to the diversity of life on this planet and then at last we will be able to protect the planet's biodiversity.

Buying a flat in Scotland

This is the first in a series of blogs about buying flats in Scotland. In Scotland it is really quite different to England and Wales. The offers over pricing system is a real pain! This is always the lowest amount that you can pay (as opposed to the value that the seller would like to get, like in England) and when the property comes to a closing date with blind bids from other interested parties, the sold price can be way above the offers over price. This makes it difficult to know the relative value of property especially as estate agents always try to bump up the price by pretending that lots of people are interested.
I have started to wonder whether as a first time buyer, I might be better off waiting until prices stabilise or come down but before leaving the game, I feel it is my duty to give a bit of guidance to first-time buyers. So come back to this site soon as I will be giving you the prices at which properties were put on the market, the price at which it sold and the schedule for a number of properties in Glasgow. Hopefully, this will be usefull for determining what offer to put on a property when it is on the market at offers over.

Nuclear Power. No thanks!

I'm getting really worried that the government is seriously thinking about nuclear power. They are even suggesting that to get rid of nuclear waste, they bribe communities to bury the waste under their houses. The waste will only be safe after more than 100 years. The government is so thoughtful. They only think of the immediate future: the next election. Who cares about the next generation?
We could be taking a central role in the development of clean, renewable sources of energy and lead other countries by example but Tony Bliar prefers to follow the gringo way, i.e. lets pollute the planet so that the next generation can't survive on it.

Switching to Gizmo: Is it worth it!

I thought I might use Gizmo instead of Skype because it uses SIP which is open source enabling communication with other SIP software such as X-Lite Softphone, it works fine and even looks very much like Skype. With Skype, you can only Skype-to-Skype whereas with Gizmo, you can Gizmo-to-XLite or Gizmo-to-IM. I think that by hidding the portocol that Skype uses for VOIP, it is stopping the expansion of VOIP and monopolising a market in which it has a strong-hold. Other software like Gizmo use an open source protocol and work just as well as Skype.
I am considering changing so have compiled price comparisons for Skype, VOIPcheap and Gizmo for countries I call on a regular basis.

Prices in pence per min incl. VAT

Table	VoipCheap	SkypeOut*	Gizmo
mexico (Landline)	2.25	6.28	6.67
mexico (Mobile)	3	6.28	6.67
Mexico-Guadalajara (Landline)	2.25	1.98	1.62
Mexico-Mexico City (Landline)	2.25	1.36	1.62
Mexico-Mexico City (Mobile)	3	6.28	2.75
Mexico-Monterrey (Landline)	2.25	1.36	6.67
france (Landline)	free	1.36	2.75
france (Mobile)	10.5	12.9	14.74
norway (Landline)	free	1.36	3.31
norway (Mobile)	12	13.51	13
spain (Landline)	free	1.36	2.18
spain (Mobile)	15.75	17.26	18.14

* Rates mentioned are per minute, and calls are rounded up to next minute.
your billing address is in the EU, you will be charged 15% VAT when you buy Skype Credit.
However, the calls will be shown on your call list and your account will be credited exclusive of VAT.
At the moment it is not really worth me changing completely, but I will use Gizmo when phoning Mexico city mobiles. That is the advantage of VOIP software, is that you can so easily switch from one company to another for calling different countries.

How to make your city flat greener.

I was inspired by the program "It's not easy to be green"; on BBC2 yesterday but was thinking that it is much easier to be green in the country when you have loads of space. In the city it is not possible for a flat owner to build a water wheel or have solar panels. I suppose you could have solar panels but all the flat owners in the block would need to agree. It is a shame that the government and city councils are not encouraging home owners to be a bit more green. There is only so much we can do: energy saving light bulbs, water saving flushes, taps and shower heads, recycling paper, cans, glass and plastic at your local supermarket. However, when it comes down to producing your own electricity or recycling grey water, it is not really feasible if you live in a city flat.

Still, I have been looking for products that are energy efficient and water saving and here goes (CAREFULL not all products on the sites are necessarily energy saving):

Household equipment for saving water and energy-saving light bulbs
http://www.neco.com.au/default.asp

Energy saving light bulbs
http://www.light-store.co.uk/catalog/index.php/cPath/3
http://www.electricbikesdirect.co.uk/productlist.asp?category=8
http://www.maplin.co.uk/family_free_delivery/Energy%20Saving.htm

Garden compost and rainwater collection
http://www.trycomposting.com/sww/index2.htm

Range of water-saving taps, shower heads and toilets flushes
http://www.niagaracorporation.co.uk/index.php?action=shop
Tap inserts to reduce flow
http://www.tapmagic.co.uk/products.html
Bathroom products
http://www.thomasdudley.co.uk/water_saving.asp

Everything from Eco Kettles to water-saving flush
http://www.proeco.co.uk/
http://www.shopeco.co.uk/

Lots of energy saving gadgets:
www.ecotopia.co.uk

Only two steps away from the chinese surveillance system

It seems that Blair has been looking to China's survelliance system for inspiration. Imagine if the Ntional Identity Registry was accepted and made compulsory, we could do exactly what the Angry Chinese Blogger is talking about. Scary world we're living in!

Technorati Tags: NO2ID, ID card, ID cards

Dispatches: stealing freedom

It is about time we heard about the role the government is taking on ID cards. I thought the Dispatches: stealing freedom was quite balanced in its approach. It is a shame that there is not a bit more talk about the ID cards and the National Identity Registry in the media. I am afraid that once again, the government and its whips are going to manage to push through another legislation that will take away our freedom like the last time. It is now illegal to demonstrated within a mile of Westminster and if you do, you can be searched and finger printed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. The guys and girls in blue seem to be using this to search and arrest anybody that gets in the way especially if you are voicing your opinion against the government.
I have written to a couple of peers about the 6th of March ID card bill that is going through the House of Lords. I am glad to see that I am not the only one. Well done CuriousHamster. I hope that this issue picks up a bit of momentum in the blogosphere before it is too late. I think it is imperative that the House of Lords stand by their re-amendments. I really hope they do.

See how big Blair's nose gets when you pull it!!!


Technorati Tags: ID cards, freedom, terrorism

No2ID cards.

ID cards are wrong. I am a sovereign citizen and I do not live by permission of the government. The government should be the servant of the people and I should not be its servant. I have the right to my privacy and my freedom and the government has no right to take them away from me. It is not the role of the government to engage in the surveillance of all of its citizens. Maybe the few citizens that have broken the law or are likely to break the law but NOT every single citizen. The National Identity Registry is the main problem with the governments proposal: I will become a number and more and more personal information such as spending habits, ethnicity, religion, sex preference, health records, criminal records, driving records will be linked to it.
These cards seriously threaten my freedom! Join me and say no to ID cards.

Technorati Tags: freedom, ID cards, trust, NIR

Blondes had a selective advantage 10,000 years ago?

I read a recent article in the Times suggesting the diversity of hair colour arose some 10,000 years ago and that blonde hair was a selective advantage for women. I have gone to the original scientific publication (Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 2, Pages 85-168, March 2006) because I was intrigued at how they measured that this trait arose prior to 10,000 years ago. Essentially, it seems that sexual selection must have played a role in Europe as humans moved further north 35,000 years ago. The women became more reliant on the men for food and men having to hunt further away from home were more likely to die probably resulting in a higher proportion of females competing for the males attention, thus colourful hair being an advantageous attention-seeking trait.

It turns out that the molecular data gives a rather different date for the origin of the hair colour: "Harding et al. (2000) have investigated this evolutionary scenario and found that the time to the most recent common ancestral hair color would be about a million years, with the redhead alleles alone being approximately 80,000 years old. Templeton (2002) has come to a similar conclusion: If the cause were relaxation of selection, the current level of hair-color diversity would have taken 850,000 years to develop."

The more rapid evolution suggested by the anthropologist Frost is a result of positive selection (rather than relaxation of selection being the cause for polymorphism in hair colour).

Performincing from Firefox to Blogger

I have been trying to figure out how blog to blogger using Performancing extension in Firefox. Solutions Watch give a good explanation of how to set it all up: Blog from Firefox with Performancing for Firefox
Performancing have also added functionality for Technorati Tags making it really easy to add tags to your blog.


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Technorati Tags: internet, blogspot, blogging

Blog posting from Gmail

Blog posting from Gmail

I think I have figured out how to post a blog with hyperlinks and pictures that are on a server. I found this site useful. Essentially you need to write an html file in a text editor and save it as a .html file. You need to set up you blog to automatically publish the emails that are sent to it. Then you attach the .html file an send it without any body text or subject to your blogspot. I use Flickr to post pictures by pasting the html into the website. I would be grateful to anybody out there who has figured out an easier way to post emails containing pictures and hyperlinks on their blog.

I am also trying to figure out a way that I can send the emails or post the blogs at a specific time. At the moment I am usiing iCal on my iMAc to send an email automatically to my blog, but this does not allow me to attach hyperlinks or pictures. Any advice or help is very welcome

The taxonomy revolution

The way we do taxonomy (and to a certain extent systmatics) hasn't changed for over 200 years and yet other sciences (Is taxonomy a science?) have changed tremendously in several decades, think of the field of genetics for example. I believe this is because genetics has embraced a range of new technologies whereas taxonomists are set in their ways and any changes to the way they do things are fought against even if the chanes could make their work more efficient. One particular example, is the way they have fought against DNA taxonomy which in my view could provide a very valuable technology for sorting of large numbers of unknown specimens prior to more traditional morphological species identification and naming (see the barcoding of life initiative).
Other technologies that they have been slow to embrace, are the web and oline publishing. The web provides an ideal working platform for a field like taxonmy as it enables the dessimination of work across the world instantaneously. Rather than needed to travel across the world to search through publications and specimens draws, the web and online publishing could facilitate the sharing of information.
I think this is a topic that will be blogged sporadically as it is dear to my heart.

Problems with postdoc supervisors

Have a read of this article, it will give you an idea of how to choose
a postdoc
supervisor who will be essential for your future in academia.
link

The life of a postdoc.

Being a postdoc can be bloody hard. Not knwoing what will be next and
whether there will even be a next job is probably the most depressing
thing. Funding is never easily obtained even though postdocs are the
backbone of research these days. It seems that the number of PhDs
continues to increase, whereas the faculty positions for us to go into
have not. link

I think that a revolution in the way academia is run is desperatly needed.
First, I would suggest that some security is provided to postdocs, by
that I mean a salary provided by the government so that postdocs can
continue working until they are awarded a grant or fellowship. This
would save us from claiming unemployment and at the same time give us
the financial support we need to continue our work.

Secondly, the countries like France that force postdocs to go abroad
should provide garanties for reentries to their homeland link

Thirdly, most importantly we need to be listened to. For that I
suggest that we form a postdoc union so that we can collectively
bargain for issues specific to postdocs. The postdocs at the
University of Connecticut Health Center have already gained status as
both employees and trainees as well as improved pay and benefits link

If a union of european postdocs (Europan Postdoctoral Association)
could be built, we might improve our plight.

I am really interested in knowing of anybody you feels the same way
and anybody you knows about setting up such a union.

Religious cartoons.

I have been debating this with a pakistani friend, french friend and scottish friend. All had very different points of view. The whole issue really made me think about the chapter on comedy in Status anxiety a book by Alain de Botton. Essentially, he explains that the cartoons that were drawn of kings, queens and Napoleon have the aim of bringing about change. In hist words: " The underlying, unconscious aim of comics may be to bring about - through the adroit use of humour -  a world in which there will be a few less things to laugh about." 
I think the cartoons that have been recently published of the prophet Mohammed are just trying to improve the way we understand one anothers culture and I hope that the people that have seen these cartoons as disrespectfull can attempt to see the funny side of some of the cartoons.

Chat within Gmail:

I love it. It is just so easy to use. Google is really in a league of its own. Still it is a bit scary how much information they are gathering on us.

What is karma!

Well this is a good definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma

but I prefer the following poem that explains it well:
"Each thought, each word and each deed
has to be accounted and compensated for in Nature.
Every cause has an effect and every action brings about a reaction.
Uproot the cause and the effect disappears.
This has been done by the Masters
who have transcended these laws..."
- Sant Kirpal Singh

I think the idea of having a balance in Nature and everything we do,
is central to much of the research life scientist do. They try to
understand why species are kept in check and how ecosystems stay
stable. Critically, in this time of change where humans have had and
are still having a huge impact on the environment, life scientist are
trying to understand how the balance in Nature could return and
stabilise before we go extinct. "Every action brings about a
reaction". We know that we are the cause of climate change but for its
effect to disappear we really need to start changing our behaviour.