How to Learn Stuff

Bruce sent me a cool link on 'How to learn stuff'. Scroll down the page and you'll find some priceless advice.

I don’t know what to believe…

Thanksgiving and Christmas are times where we traditionally meet with family, eat too much and have awkward conversations with relatives we barely know and realize we have very little in common with.

If they find out you are a biologist chances are you'll get asked about topics ranging from global warming to this week's cancer scare. Here's a handy dandy resource for putting people straight about why they shouldn't necessarily believe it when they hear that cell phone towers are killing plants, will cure/cause cancer, or how scientists are all faking global warming. 

Have a safe Thanksgiving.

Faculty Research Interests

Faculty in EEMB and MCDB sorted by Research Interests

MCDB
Molecular genetics

• Chris Hayes
• Chuck Samuel
• Ed Orias (ciliate genomics)

Plant molecular biol

• Rolf Christofferson
• Jim Cooper
• Ruth Finklestein

Microbial Pathogenesis

• David Low
• Mike Mahan

Neurobiology (molecular/cellular neuroscience)

• Dennis Clegg
  
• Stu Feinstein
• Steve Fisher
• Kenneth Kosik
• Zach Ma
• Carol Vandenberg

Developmental Biology

• Kathy Foltz
• Steve Poole
• Joel Rothman
• Bill Smith (& evo-devo)
• Tony DeTomaso (& evo-devo)
• Ruth Finkelstein

Biomaterials/Biomimetics

• Jim Cooper
• Dan Morse
• Herb Waite

Virology and Immunology

• Duane Sears
• Chuck Samuel

Pharmacology

• Carol Vandenberg
• Les Wilson
• Thomas Weimbs

Cell Cycle/Cell Biology

• Thomas Weimbs
• Zach Ma
• Kathy Foltz
• John Lew
• Les Wilson

Stem Cell Biology see also UCSB center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering

• Dennis Clegg
• Ken Kosik
• Bill Smith
• Joel Rothman
• Tony De Tomaso
• Erkki Ruoslathi

Nanomedicine see also Center for Nanomedicine

• Jamey Marth
• Erkki Ruoslathi 

EEMB
Biological oceanography

• Alice Alldredge Professor Emeritus
• Mark Brzezinski
• Craig Carlson
• Sally McIntyre

Freshwater ecology

• Scott Cooper
• John Melack

Physiology

• James Case Professor Emeritus
• David Chapman Professor Emeritus
• Peter Collins

Physiological ecology

• Jim Childress Professor Emeritus
• Gretchen Hofmann
• Raul Suarez

Ecology

• Cherie Briggs
• Joe Connell Professor Emeritus
• Ed McCauley
• William Murdoch Professor Emeritus

Plant ecology

• Carla D’Antonio
• Jonathan Levine
• Bruce Mahall

Evolution

• Todd Oakley
• Steve Proulx
• Bill Rice
• Steve Rothstein
• Tom Turner
• Bob Warner
• Sam Sweet

Marine ecology

• Steve Gaines
• Sally Holbrook
• Armand Kuris
• Russ Schmitt
• Bob Warner

Plant genetics/evolution

• Scott Hodges
• Susan Mazer

Marine Pharmacology

• Bob Jacobs

Parasitology and Infectious Diseases

• Cherie Briggs
• Armand Kuris

Behavior

• Steve Rothstein
• Bob Warner

Mathematical ecology

• Cherie Briggs
• Roger Nisbet

Microbial ecology

• Josh Schimel

Biostatistics

• Allan Stewart-Oaten Professor Emeritus

Writing, Reading, and Reviewing Scientific Articles

This coming week in the bio colloquium we're reading an article from the primary literature. To provide general background on the elements of a scientific paper we also handed out "guidelines for writing a scientific paper". To help you think about it from the other end (reviewer vs. writer) you may want to see what guidelines the scientific journals provide their reviewers, that is, what helps us decide whether a paper is "publishable" by a given journal. This is useful in writing (and reading) a paper to see what the "critics" are looking for.

Here is the link for reviewers for the journal, Ecology:
http://esapubs.org/esapubs/reviewers.htm

Also informative is the "Reviewers Information Pack" (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxteu/elsevier/reviewersinfopack/) for everything you might want to know about the review process for journal articles. This is provided by Elsevier, which publishes Developmental Biology, and hundreds of other journals (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journal_browse.cws_home)

Here's their reviewers' home page:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/reviewershome.reviewers

A World of Possum-bilities II

I'm reposting this, not just because I like the title, but because it is getting around to that time of year again. The picture to the left is just a very cute opossum, the picture below is the three baby opossums and this was originally posted at the start of April 2008.

Having just utilized the services of the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network to find a home for three baby opossums that were left in my yard I thought I would give them a plug here. The woman I spoke to on the phone said that in a few weeks they will be inundated with birds and mammals and can use all the help they can get. If you want to get some volunteer experience working with animals this is a great opportunity. Their new location in the Fairview Center is convenient for campus too. You can complete an application on their website and they can use you even if you can only spare an hour or two a week.

If you find injured wildlife during the day, you can take it to the Wildlife Care Network located near the OSH store in the Fairview Center in Goleta. After hours, weekends, and holidays, you can take it to the C.A.R.E. Hospital downtown (Garden & Haley) which is conveniently open 24 hours.

UC Museums

Todays visit to CCBER reminded me to remind me that as CCS students you are also UCSB students (well duh) but you are also UC students. The combined resources of the UC system are tremendous, and are potentially available to you as UC students.

Berkeley, for example, has a tremendous set of museums and has much of their data online and searchable already.

In another lifetime I worked on some websites at Berkeley and one of them had a table of all the departments, research groups and museums studying ecology and environmental change in California. This may be useful link to bookmark if you ever need museum data. Although I notice it's already out of date since I think I did most of the work in 2004 or 2005 and since then CCBER has replaced the Museum of Systematics and Ecology at UCSB. There are also pages of links to field sites, field stations, state agencies and much more.

Remember these are all resources that are available. The use that you put them to is limited only by your imagination.

A Smörgåsbord of evolution

A few earlier posts of relevance and a few links of interest.

Previous Blog postings

• Web sight - A 2006 Science paper about a fossilized spider web (I knew there was a good pun there somewhere)
• Tiktaalik - Some links to the fishopod discovery and what we mean by the term 'missing link'.
• Thirteen year old girls storming the Bastille - Sadly I did not come up with this wonderful imagery. It is from a New Yorker article on human height change and why Europeans are still getting taller but american aren't.
• Resources - Some links to online places you can read Erasmus Darwin's work. And listen to Charles Darwin's work for free.
  

Other links

• The Berkeley Understanding Evolution webpage.
• As Biologists you should be so thoroughly familiar with evolution that you know and can refute, as appropriate, the array of attacks against it. Icons of Evolution is a controversial book by the intelligent design advocate Jonathan Wells that focuses on 10 examples used to teach evolution. If you don't want to wade through the book you can read a summary article here. We have, or will, cover most of these examples in class. The National Center for Science Education has a nice paper by Alan Gishlick with the rather confrontational title of ' Why much of what Jonathan Wells writes about evolution is wrong.' Well worth a quick read.
  

CCS Biology Colloquium Resources available outside the Biology Departments

The following is an incomplete list of resources available for research purposes outside of MCDB and EEMB, both on campus and otherwise in Santa Barbara.

AT UCSB
Anthropology
Anthro has a teaching/reference collection of skeletal material of vertebrates that is largely focused to the interpretation of human habitation sites, but the collection and associated courses can be invaluable to students interested in questions of hard-part anatomy of vertebrates.

• Sabrina Curran - Human Evolution, paleoecology, skeletal morphology 
• Steven Gaulin – Evolutionary psychology
  
• Anabel Ford – Ethnobotany and El Pilar
  
• John Tooby – Evolutionary Psychology
  
• Susan Stonich – Ecological anthropology
• Amber Vanderwarker - Ethnobotany
  

Biomolecular Science and Engineering
The Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Biomolecular Science and Engineering epitomizes the highly interdisciplinary approach to research and education that is the hallmark of UC Santa Barbara. In this context BMSE offers a unique mix for graduate training and research at the frontiers of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Bioengineering and Biomolecular Materials. The BMSE Program may be for graduates, but an examination of Faculty research pages will lead you to some laboratories working on the forefront of materials and nano-technology where you might find a research option. See particularly:

• Cherie Briggs (EEMB)
  
• Deborah Fygenson (Physics)
• Jamey Marth (MCDB)
• Jean Carlson (Physics)
  
• Dan Morse (MCDB)
• Megan Valentine (Mechanical Engineering)

The Bren School of Environmental Sciences and Policy
The Bren School is technically a graduate program. However, there are some good biological folk there, and if you can talk your way in, so much the better:

• Patrica Holden (Microbial Ecology),
  
• Bruce Kendall (quantitative ecology of plant and animal populations),
  
• John Melack (Aquatic systems)
  
• Frank Davis (Biogeography, plant ecology)
  
• Hunter Lenihan (Restoration ecology, marine ecology)
  

Environmental Studies

• Carla D'Antonio is interested in invasive plants and general questions of plants in the human sphere - and is a neat person.
  
• David Cleveland - Ethnobotany,
  
• Oliver Chadwick – Soils
  
• Jordan Clarke – Hydrology
  

Geological Sciences
The department has several mass spectrometric facilities focused upon paleoclimatology recorded by isotopes of Carbon, Oxygen, strontium and others. These isotopes can be used to track other things too. The Paleontological Collections. Ostensibly part of the Museum of Systematics and Ecology, but housed in PSB South. Largely focused upon invertebrate fossils, particularly of the last 60 million years of southern California.

• Bruce Tiffney – Paleobotany
  
• Stan Awramik – Origin and early history of life, astrobiology
  
• Susannah Porter – Origins of animals, invertebrate paleontology
  
• Andre Wyss – Vertebrate Paleontology, origin of pinnipeds, biogeography
  
• Rachel Haymon – Life on deep sea vents
  
• David Valentine – microbial biogeochemistry
• David Lea - Really a geochemist, but with spectacular abilities with isotopes and CCS friendly.

Geography
Extraordinary strengths in remote sensing; both in the use of existing technology and the development of new technologies. Very important for any research involving widespread geographic coverage.

• Remote sensing: Keith Clarke, Dar Roberts, others.
  
• Biogeography: Dar Roberts.
  
• Hydrology (with Geology): Hugo Loaciaga, Ed Keller
• Global Climate: Catherine Gautier, Joel Michaelson & others
• Plant ecophysiology: Chris Still
  

The Department of Geography hosts a wonderful resource, Spatial@UCSB, dedicated to visualizing and analyzing data in a 3D manner. They offer consultation on your data sets at specific hours.

Psychology
The Evolutionary Psychology program has strong ties to the Neurobiology Research Institute. People include:

• Leda Cosmides (Psych)
• John Tooby (Anthro).
• Ben Reese (Neuroanatomy)

Psychology also contains many people who overlap in interests with MCDB:

• Aaron Ettenberg (Behavioral Pharmacology)
• Tod Kippen (Neuroscience and Behavior)
• Karen Szumlinksi (Neuroscience and Behavior)
• Ben Reese (Developmental Neurobiology)

Chemistry and Biochemistry

The sixteen faculty in the area of Biochemistry center around the common themes of bio-organic and bio-inorganic reaction mechanisms, protein-nucleic acid recognition, nucleic acid structure and dynamics, and membrane transport. They can offer expertise in a number of experimental tools such as Xray diffraction, computer graphics and computational analysis.

The UCSB Library
Beyond standard library resources, UCSB hosts the "Map and Imagery Library" (MIL) in the first floor of the SEL wing. This is a national repository, and has both digital and paper images of just about any kind of geographic reference you could want. This includes:

• Topographic maps
• Geologic Maps
• Maps & volumes summarizing vegetation, climate, hydrology, cultural and other features;
• Aerial photographs from landsat down to old plane-flown photographs.
• And much more!

The Marine Science Institute
The Marine Science Institute (MSI), established at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1969, is the focus for marine, coastal zone, and freshwater research; marine policy studies; and educational outreach in marine science. MSI administers and supports research projects involving faculty, professional researchers, technical staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students from 14 disciplines. There are a LARGE number of researchers associated with the MSI who are not faculty in one of the biology departments – and many are very student friendly. Some specific faculty to check out include :
Carrie Culver, Tom Dudley, Jenny Dugan, Mark Page, Dan Reed, Kevin Lafferty and Milton Love (See especially Milton Love’s web page – it’s cool!). A complete list of MSI associated faculty can be found here.
PISCO (Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans) is a large, long-term, ecosystem research and monitoring program that involves Santa Barbara and three other West Coast campuses (Oregon State, Stanford and UCSC).

Cheadle Center for the Study of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration (CCBER)
Located under the south end of the stadium. Used to be the Museum of Systematics and Ecology in EEMB, now independent. Houses the plant and animal collections of the University. Hosts a range of research projects, particularly concerning biodiversity and the reclamation of local ecosystems. Very strong programs in outreach to local school children. Check out their internships.

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
An outstanding international think tank on anything ecological and a lot evolutionary. It is a cross road of visiting scientists, in house researchers and periodic work groups who have access to a series of immense computerized databases that allow researchers to seek out explanations for gross patterns in Nature. Many UCSB faculty and graduate students participate, and there are frequent opportunities to work as paid data-collectors or enterers. NCEAS is located on State Street, in the center of the Paseo Nuevo. Note that they have a Thursday lunch seminar that hosts internationally known scholars.

The UC Natural Reserve System.
The UC System is unusual (not quite unique) in owning its own set of natural reserves dedicated to instruction and research. Each reserve is selected as representative of an important ecosystem in California. Most are managed by resident scientists. All are available for visitation or research with proper initial approval (signing of waiver forms indicating respect of the property, etc. ). Each Reserve has its own web site, and most list past research conducted on the Reserve. A good way to see who is doing what.

UCSB has one on campus (Coal Oil Point Note particularly here that Cristina Sandoval (director of Coal Oil Point) is an active researcher who interacts with undergrads) and two nearby (Sedgwick Ranch & Carpinteria Salt Marsh). We also manage the Santa Cruz Island Reserve, the Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve near Cambria, the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab in Bishop, and the Valentine Camp on the eastern face of the High Sierra.

OFF CAMPUS

Channel Islands National Park (And the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary)
The National Park Service manages several of the Channel Islands, and is interested in supporting research on them. Most of their voucher specimens come to Museum of Natural History

Lotusland Botanic Garden
Located in Montecito, Lotusland occupies 38 acres, much planted with exotic plant species in striking array. Lotusland has the world's third largest collection of cycads, and outstanding collections of Agave, Aloe and cool-tolerant palms. The garden is looking to become increasingly involved in research.

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Nearly a century old, the garden focuses upon native Californian plants. It has an outstanding living collection arranged by habitats, and a good library and herbarium focused in native flora. The Garden has a long-standing reputation for research into native Californian plants, and the biogeography of the Channel Islands. Research students interested in botany would do well to explore this.

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Sea Center.
The Museum of Natural History is likewise nearly a century old, and has an established research reputation. It has internationally-recognized collections of living Mollusca and bird egg shells, and a very strong collection of marine invertebrates of the Santa Barbara Channel. Other collections include an excellent collection of mammals, particularly marine mammals, of southern California, a wide range of fossil whale material, a decent insect collection, and collections of particularly Pleistocene fossil marine and terrestrial organisms. It hosts active researchers working on - Marine Mammals Krista A. Fahy, Michelle L. Berman, - Marine octopods, F. G. Hochberg - Marine gastropods, Henry Chaney - Marine Mollusca, Paul Valentich Scott - Entomology - Michael Caterino - see his spectacular site on the California Beetle project, Ethnobotany, Jan Timbrook and Vertebrate Biology, Paul Collins.

Santa Barbara Zoological Gardens
The Zoo is mostly dedicated to the culture and reproduction of living, endangered, taxa. However, while they might not take kindly to dissecting a living animal, they certainly offer opportunities to examine behavior, and who knows what else might be worked out.

USC Wrigley Marine Science Center, Catalina Island
For those of you with marine interests, a local (SoCal) resource is the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina island, run by USC. It offers research opportunities and summer courses.

REU site

A couple of the students on Wednesday mentioned the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates program. NSF maintains an extensive website where you can find details of what the REU program is all about and allows you to list the sites by subject or state. The list of sites in the Biological Sciences is impressive. Many (most?) of the REU programs run over the summer so this is early notice of something you may want to consider for next summer.