Introducing Mapping Scientific Excellence - a new, interactive web app/map which ranks scientific institutions around the world based on citations (more on that shortly). The app was designed by Lutz Bornmann and colleagues at Germany’s Max Planck Society, and looks at institutions around the world, ranking them in 17 subject areas and according to according […]
Science and Society
If Ptolemy had been right, and the magical theory of relativity
Two excellent pieces of visual science communication today. The first is a visualisation of what our solar system would look like it Ptolemy had been right. As you no doubt remember, he’s the chap who posited that the _earth_ was the centre of, well, everything. Sadly I can’t embed it here, but go and check […]
Graphic: Magnitude 5+ earthquakes this year (in NZ)
UPDATE: See bottom of post for updated graphic, as of 26 July 2013 I’ve just made my first ever data visualisation :) Spurred by this morning’s nasty bump near Wellington, and because I love me the learning of the new skills, I’ve made the graphic below. Using data I sucked down from geonet, it shows […]
Jawdropping (also ft ICT sector reports, fiscal calculators and Mongolia)
Well, that was my reaction to this video, at any rate. Picked up off Twitter, from fellow Sciblogger Mr David Winter (@TheAtavism) himself*, it’s stunning high-speed camera work explaining the mad physics behind the Prince Rupert’s Drop. Don’t know what that is? Well, watch the video, and the marvel, MARVEL I SAY, at what you’ll […]
Software Carpentry Bootcamp - a delicious name for a delicious thing
Friends! Readers! Random people who ended up here alone and confused! As hopefully all of you* know by now, the 2013 eResearch Symposium is next week in Christchurch. Started in 2010, this illustrious and awesome event is all about the burgeoning field, of, well, eResearch. Which is still in the process, in many ways, of […]
A Perfectly Archetypical Title for This Journal
Wow, the weather’s foul. And it’s enfoulenating the moods of many, I imagine. So a brief, funsy Friday frivolity :P From the Pipeline column, a list of The Perfect Papers For Each Journal. Some of my favourites include: For Science: “People Only Read One or Two Papers Out of Any Issue of This Journal, and […]
On sexism, with humour
A friend of mine just posted a quotation up on her Facebook feed and I thought it so good I figured I’d share it with you all. Well, to be fair, I read it, and then went and found the full thing, some of the first part of which I’ve retyped from the Google Books […]
Here is today
One of the many uses of my inbox is for me to email to myself things to blog, share, write about and read. Of course, this means I have a great many unacted-upon notes in my inbox, but c’est la vie*. However, my eyes lit upon this interactive exploration of time (emailed to myself a […]
Fantastic data vis of US language differences
As with all countries, large OR small, there are going to be variations in dialect and pronunciation. Given its size and history, one would expect the US to have some pretty fantastic ones. And it does! PhD (Statistics) student Joshua Katz hasjust published a fantastic set of data visualisations from a linguistic survey of how […]
The danger of science denial
This, ladies and gentlemen. THIS. Journalist Michael Specter gives an impassioned TED Talk on the danger of science denial. A brilliant talk, and something to be shared as widely as possible. _Especially_ with the anti-science people you know! Vaccine-autism claims, “Frankenfood” bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public’s growing fear (and, often, […]