What are you working on?

[klw]

Ok, I’ll start off this new opening of the thread in science-y mode by attaching a link to a recent paper of mine on snowy owls. You’ll need to click on the pdf link on the webpage yourself for a copy, but the journal is open access so hopefully it works OK…
Anyways, I’m following this one up with some work on migration routes of snowies in relation to landscape features. If you’re not into all the boring stats in the paper , you may still appreciate the visuals in the figures that show the annual movement tracks of the owls into the high Arctic where they breed. These birds amaze me!

Snowy Owls in central North America have regular migration and high philopatry to wintering sites though not always to home ranges - Avian Conservation and Ecology

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Wow. That more than maybe reflects a lot of watching and waiting? And hiking.

[klw]

Well…a lot of driving around the backroads of Saskatchewan in winter at -30 C to trap and tag the owls. And yeah, I was out with a few grad students then doing behavioural observations for their own thesis topics and at times we froze our butts off. But other times, you sit in the cab of the truck with a thermos of hot coffee, waiting for the owls to do something.
Once the transmitters are on, the cool thing is that they download GPS locations via cell phone towers. So one can just track the positions of owls from the warmth of indoors, by looking at a computer screen. Lazy fieldwork then!

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Nice.  

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

Okay, well, for science stuff I’ve done since I posted on this thread last, I’ve actually published an identification guide on the Waccamaw Formation mollusks. I think I’m up to about 50 copies having been sold or given away. I also now have a 2.5 page erratum/addendum for it…

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

This is the last thing I’ve worked (and worked, and worked) on that has produced output: Malaria surveillance reveals parasite relatedness, signatures of selection, and correlates of transmission across Senegal - PMC

[Randy]

Thanks. I greatly appreciate anything to do with malaria. I have flashbacks of cerebral malaria on the wards with kids, and a hematocrit of 4 (normal being about 40), etc–in those who survived!.

[St.Roymond]

@beaglelady

The interval of an augmented fourth (a.k.a. the “tritone”) is called the Devil in Music (diabolus in musica) because it is so difficult to sing.

In college choir we did a piece where that was used, bouncing from tenor to soprano to bass to alto and back to tenor. Rehearsing that piece up to concert quality was annoying until suddenly the interval made sense.

@jammycakes

keeping laboratory notes

And field notes. My volcanology professor insisted on thorough field notes, which were to be attached to the papers we turned in.
These days with a smart phone and the ability to record voice I think things would be different, probably more sketching and less writing.

@jammycakes

and the only thing to explain it is a comment in source control saying something meaningless such as “A bit more refactoring.” Sometimes, the person making such an idle comment has been none other than myself.

LOL
I recall in a computer science course where my “documentation” was little more than reminders to myself that were pretty much worthless outside the context of my own thought processes.

@beaglelady

@David_Lee

It does occasionally appear in singable tunes. Two example:

True, but that doesn’t change what I said.

I think the difference is whether it is sung as an interval or as a chord.

[St.Roymond]

I just finished writing the annual report for my NfP organization.

Now it’s time to scour the national forest dunes near here for small pine, fir, and spruce to transplant to increase the native forest extent out in the dunes where we removed a lot of invasive scotch broom over spring and summer. It will be nice if we can get enough funding we can buy small saplings though searching out the young trees where the national forest people don’t want them has become a bit of a tradition.

[beaglelady]

@St.Roymond

I think the difference is whether it is sung as an interval or as a chord.

(Don’t know exactly why this ancient thread is open again.) Sometimes a composer will deliberately use the “crudeness” of the tritone to make a point. Consider Stravinsky’s ballet “Petruska” ( Don’t worry; this is just a short clip)

Petrushka Chord

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

What, not Le Sacre du Printemps? That has way more of them (and an insanely complex series of changes in time signature, but that’s a different issue).

[St.Roymond]

@beaglelady

(Don’t know exactly why this ancient thread is open again.)

Primarily because I decided to share what I’ve been working on, and it wasn’t a locked thread.

[Kendel]

@jammycakes

Is anyone working on anything that might be of particular interest to those of us involved in discussions about science and faith?

I’ve frequently made the point that science is a very hands-on and practical enterprise, and that being the case I thought it would be good to have a thread where we could showcase any science-related activities in action.

This could be something as part of your job, or something from school or college, or a hobby side project. It could be a short weekend project or something more long-term. It could be something that illustrates various scientific principles that we discuss here, or perhaps something that was inspired by discussions about science and faith in one way or another. Anything that might inspire or inform us, really.

I wonder if this thread of @jammycakes could be revived. Honestly, we need something fresh and scientific.

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

at this point in life, my scientific experiments involve botany (gardening), chemistry (cooking), and biochemistry ( the effect of drugs on the human body, focusing on the effects of testosterone depletion on the mentation and muscle mass of the aging male). I am currently having trouble recruiting volunteers for the last one, and strongly suspect as a participant, I am not in the placebo group. But, the observations are interesting, not that you ever want to be interesting when it comes to medicine.

[Mervin_Bitikofer]

Can any of us hangout at any observation windows?

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

Anytime! Let me know and can arrange multi day sessions in the native habitat.

More seriously, I am looking at how to volunteer more at such things as conferences to advance the interests on Biologos and the science community. If anyone has ideas as to conferences and such that Biologos would be appropriate to have a presence at exhibit tables etc., let me know. Hopefully, places that need a good word spread about science and faith.