Tribute to a turtle

Sad news today. Our little turtle friend, Milagro, has died. He was well and alive yesterday and mysteriously turned up dead today. We are not sure what happened. Yesterday I saw him attempting to eat the starfish in his tank, and he was picking at their feet. He may have gotten underneath the starfish attached to the wall--starfish tube feet are very sticky and hard to get off. Possibly he couldn't free himself from the starfish and drowned. Another possibility is that he had some internal ailment, but we just will never know. We are very sad here at the lab and wish it hadn't happened.

 Goodbye, little guy. 

Animal sightings in the dry season

Greetings from Panama! It's the dry season here, so sloth sightings have been rare...they like new green leaves and there are not a ton of those out right now. Instead of sloths, I bring you the following:

 A river shrimp from the genus Macrobrachium, found in a black mangrove forest:

A satiny parrot snake, found alongside the road:

And a baby hawksbill sea turtle who washed up in a storm and is being kept at the Smithsonian station until he gets bigger. His name is Milagro, or Miracle. 

Take note, people!

http://jbdeaton.com/2010/things-you-never-say-to-a-graduate-student/

Fashion for women in science...part 1

Just wanted to link to this post about women's dress for a scientific meeting. I'm impressed by how professional everyone looks. The average outfit at the Ecological Society of America meeting (ESA) is tevas with cargo shorts and a tie-dye shirt. I would LOVE to do this at ESA but get the full range of outfits. There would be QUITE a range, but I can tell you suits would not be present.

http://cobblab.blogspot.com/2012/12/womens-attire-at-agu.html

Another great thing about Florida

...is the armadillos!

News Flash...Cookies!

Keebler coconut dream cookies are THE SAME as Girl Scouts' Caramel Delights  (or Samoas if you come from that part of the country). So delicious. I'm not usually into buying store-bought cookies (why buy them when you could make them yourself, better?), but field work makes me bend my rules and buy things I don't usually buy, like coconut dreams and flavor-blasted Goldfish. So good. I keep telling myself I'm going to reduce my sodium intake, and then buy flavor-blasted Goldfish. To be fair, I have been sweating all day out in the sun. So I figure I need the salt.

Funding science

I was recently discussing the current state of research funding with some other scientists. Most science funding for university researchers comes from the government--National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, Department of Energy, NASA, etc. As most of us know, funding rates are decreasing, especially with changes to National Science Foundation policies. As more people get PhDs and go into research, the chance of getting money for research isn't likely to go up anytime soon. I think we need a new system. I see two models: 1) a patron system, like artists in the Renaissance used or 2) a sales system, where we develop products to fund our research.

Under a patron system, individual researchers or teams of researchers would be funded by a donor (the patron), and the scientists would research exactly what the patron wanted. Unfortunately, I think we would get a lot of superficial or inane questions that wouldn't necessarily further scientific knowledge. Unless of course, that patron is a scientist him/herself. Could universities or institutions be patrons? Perhaps, but they still need the money to come from somewhere.

The sales system is already used by pharmaceutical companies and probably every company that does R&D. Develop a product, sell it, use some of the profit to fund more research, get rich in the process. Or at least that's the goal. Could individual researchers use this method? I suppose we could to some extent. The problem is that developing something that people actually want to buy takes time, and wouldn't leave a whole lot of time for the actual "useless" research that is contributing to our knowledge of the world around us. Basically, we would have to develop immediate applications for our research that are marketable, or sell awesome souvenirs. Crowdsourcing sites like Petri Dish encourage researchers to give a souvenir of their research to donors. Photos, hats, and having a species named after you are cool rewards for donors. I could sell mangrove mud masks, photos of insects, and maybe some aquarium plants...I wonder if that would work. Hmm...