Progress Report August 2012

1.            PROJECT AND RESEARCHER IN QUESTION         

1.1	Happiness-O-meter	No comment
1.2	Administering Organisation:	The University of Queensland
1.3	Project Title:	The evolution of terrestrial ectotherm metabolic rate
1.4	Project Leader:	Taryn Crispin

2.            PROJECT SUMMARY

2.1     100 word Project summary (as indicated in the original proposal)

The project focuses on (a) detecting and modelling major environmental factors that directly or indirectly affect the metabolic rate and scaling of terrestrial ectotherms (reptiles, amphibians, insects), (b) identifying the effect of selection for tolerance to environental change on the metabolic rate and scaling of terrestrial ectotherms.

3.            PROGRESS OF PROJECT

3.1     Have there been changes to or problems with the project?      YES

If No, please move on to section 4.  If Yes, please complete the remainder of section 3.

          If Yes, provide details

Not sure where to begin..... definitely both problems and changes. Also, I have been gaining weight, was this supposed to happen to researchers? And when am I supposed to submit a thesis again? Does not meeting a deadline count as a problem?

4.            ACHIEVEMENTS AND MILESTONES

4.1     What are your achievements and any research findings to date?

Milestones: successful confirmation and scraping through mid-candidature.

Research findings: N/A as of 2 weeks ago LOL

4.2     What are your research milestones for the coming year?

          FINISH THIS PHD AND GET A LIFE

The mutants of Fukushima

And suddenly being cross-eyed is not such a problem....

A month after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, scientists collected 144 pale grass blue butterflies, Zizeeria maha, near the plant. What they found was that the butterflies were starting to show mutations like deformed wings and dented eyes. Six months later another lot of butterflies were collected near the plant and, disturbingly, it was found that the incidence of these mutations had doubled. Lab-based exposure of butterflies to similar levels of radiation to that around Fukushima plant induced similar mutations, strengthening the link between the radiation and mutations butterflies on-site were displaying. Most worrying of all, is that there is an apparent accumulation of mutations down through the butterfly generations. This is likely a result of damage to the butterflies' germ line (cells that become sperm and eggs).

Having said all that, bear in mind that these butterflies are known as indicator species (meaning they are often used by scientists to assess impacts of, say, a nuclear power plant accident on the environment, as the butterflies are quite sensitive to small environmental changes). That means that all the important animals, like birds and other vertebrates, are OK (*prepares self for the onslaught from entomologists everywhere*).

Image courtesy of Hiyama et al. / Scientific Reports
Full paper available: http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120809/srep00570/full/srep00570.html

Paper FAIL

Not surprisingly, my latest submission to Oikos was rejected. It's funny, I don't actually care... possibly because the weather outside at the time was so gorgeous that I just frolicked about in the grass and sun. Much more enjoyable than grimacing over each and every comment. Having said that, I spent the last hour grimacing over each and every comment, but at least the comments are useful. My paper will be accepted next time, next time for sure!

What will inevitably happen to users of R

As per usual, most of what is wrong has everything to do with my lack of statistical know-how. There appears to be a flaw in my approach to thermal effects on metabolic rate in my model, so I will spend the next few months (probably) re-doing what I spent the last two years doing in my PhD. For the first few minutes with this realisation I was more than a little enraged. Am I depressed by this now? Not as much as I probably should be, I think that a PhD has made me incredibly resilient to absolute FAILs, I take everything with a grain of salt and move on.