SUMMARIES FOR EVERYONE!

Not Exactly (Writing)

Rocket Science

Science Jargon: Not for Everyone!

Trappings of science writing:

Science Jargon: Not for Everyone!

Trappings of science writing: passive voice labored constructions round-about sentences technical language (JARGON!) Vagueness

Anne Marie Helmenstine’s “Interpreting Statements in Scientific Papers”

"It can be shown”."It has long been known”"A trend is evident”"Of great theoretical and practical

importance”"Typical results are shown”"It is believed that...”"It is generally believed that”"Additional work will be required to elucidate

the mechanism”

Anne Marie Helmenstine’s “Interpreting Statements in Scientific Papers”

"It can be shown” Somebody said they did this, but I can't duplicate their results. I can't even find the reference,

or else I would have cited that instead. "It has long been known”

I don't know the original reference. "A trend is evident”

Okay, a trend does seem apparent to me, but no statistical analysis in the world will support it.

"Of great theoretical and practical importance” Means it is interesting to me or else I want it to be interesting to somebody with money so

they will fund my research. "Typical results are shown”

Either means the only results are shown or the best results are shown. "It is believed that...”

I think this (and either no one agrees with me or else I didn't consult anyone). "It is generally believed that”

I think this and at least one other person agrees with me. "Additional work will be required to elucidate the mechanism"

I don't have a clue what is going on and I'm not going to be the one to figure it out.

Carl Zimmer’s list of Banned Words:

“By assembling this list, I don’t mean to say that no one should ever use these words. I am not teaching people how to write scientific papers. What I mean is that anyone who wants to learn how to write about science–and to be read by people who aren’t being paid to read–should work hard to learn how to explain science in plain yet elegant English–not by relying on scientific jargon, code-words, deadening euphemisms, or meaningless cliches.”

Audience, Audience, Audience

According to Ed Yong: “My working hypothesis (and I’d love to see some actual data on this) is that 90% of science blogs can be understood by no more than 10% of people.”

Who is your audience? What knowledge can you assume?What information will you need to define?

How much jargon should you use?

Ed’s Advice to Science Writers

Think carefully of syntax (sentence structure) and lexicon (word choice)

But…don’t eliminate the use of, or hesitate in using, complex words

Explain complex wordsWhen appropriate, replace complex words with

simpler alternativesTim Radford: “Don’t overestimate your

reader’s knowledge and don’t underestimate their intelligence.”

Educate your audience, share your expertise*THINK ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE*

The Challenge

To make things simple, understandable without compromising too much on accuracy: “I write about the shapes of living things but not the

morphology of organisms. I don’t delineate my cognitive processes for maximal accessibility, but I try to speak my thoughts as clearly as possible. I rarely elucidate, often explain.”

“The bottom line is that you educate people by explaining complex ideas in a simple way, not by explaining simple ideas in a complex way (or, for that matter, elucidating elementary conceptions in an abstruse fashion).”

A Few Thoughts on Summary…

PreviewReadRe-read: And Share! Evaluate

Define Research

Organize (Reverse Outline, anyone?)Summarize (Resist the urge to quote!)

Identify Main Points Methodological Approaches Interpret Information

Theory into Practice

Tim Radford: “So the first sentence you write will be the most important sentence in your life, and so will the second, and the third. This is because, although you may feel compelled to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.”

Summary Exercises

Huddle in your groups for the following summary activity!

1. Write a short summary of the research findings based on the abstract (next slide)

2. Craft an interesting, relatable title for your summary3. Identify one or two or three categories under which

you might categorize this article

Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior

Experimental evidence suggests that many people are willing to deviate from materially maximizing strategies to punish unfair behavior. Even though little is known about the origins of such fairness preferences, it has been suggested that they have deep evolutionary roots and that they are crucial for maintaining and understanding cooperation among non-kin. Here we report the results of an ultimatum game, played for real monetary stakes, using twins recruited from the population-based Swedish Twin Registry as our subject pool. Employing standard structural equation modeling techniques, we estimate that >40% of the variation in subjects' rejection behavior is explained by additive genetic effects. Our estimates also suggest a very modest role for common environment as a source of phenotypic variation. Based on these findings, we argue that any attempt to explain observed ultimatum bargaining game behavior that ignores this genetic influence is incomplete.

Genes affect our likelihood to punish unfair play

As a species, we value fair play. We like it so much that we're willing to eschew material gains in order to punish cheaters who behave unjustly. Psychological games have set these maxims in stone, but new research shows us that this sense of justice is, to a large extent, influenced by our genes.

Category: Altruism • Cooperation • Fairness • Genes and behaviour • Genetics • Psychology

Aero-tactile integration in speech perception

Visual information from a speaker’s face can enhance or interfere with accurate auditory perception. This integration of information across auditory and visual streams has been observed in functional imaging studies, and has typically been attributed to the frequency and robustness with which perceivers jointly encounter event-specific information from these two modalities. Adding the tactile modality has long been considered a crucial next step in understanding multisensory integration. However, previous studies have found an influence of tactile input on speech perception only under limited circumstances, either where perceivers were aware of the task or where they had received training to establish a cross-modal mapping. Here we show that perceivers integrate naturalistic tactile information during auditory speech perception without previous training. Drawing on the observation that some speech sounds produce tiny bursts of aspiration (such as English ‘p’), we applied slight, inaudible air puffs on participants’ skin at one of two locations: the right hand or the neck. Syllables heard simultaneously with cutaneous air puffs were more likely to be heard as aspirated (for example, causing participants to mishear ‘b’ as ‘p’). These results demonstrate that perceivers integrate event-relevant tactile information in auditory perception in much the same way as they do visual information.

How our skin helps us listen

What part of the body do you listen with? The ear is the obvious answer, but it's only part of the story - your skin is also involved. When we listen to someone else speaking, our brain combines the sounds that our ears pick up with the sight of the speaker's lips and face, and subtle changes in air movements over our skin. Only by melding our senses of hearing, vision and touch do we get a full impression of what we're listening to. 

Category: Neuroscience • Perception

Phylogenetic Analysis Reveals the Global Migration of Seasonal Influenza A Viruses

The winter seasonality of influenza A virus in temperate climates is one of the most widely recognized, yet least understood, epidemiological patterns in infectious disease. Central to understanding what drives the seasonal emergence of this important human pathogen is determining what becomes of the virus during the non-epidemic summer months. Herein, we take a step towards elucidating the seasonal emergence of influenza virus by determining the evolutionary relationship between populations of influenza A virus sampled from opposite hemispheres. We conducted a phylogenetic analysis of 487 complete genomes of human influenza A/H3N2 viruses collected between 1999 and 2005 from Australia and New Zealand in the southern hemisphere, and a representative sub-sample of viral genome sequences from 413 isolates collected in New York state, United States, representing the northern hemisphere. We show that even in areas as relatively geographically isolated as New Zealand's South Island and Western Australia, global viral migration contributes significantly to the seasonal emergence of influenza A epidemics, and that this migration has no clear directional pattern. These observations run counter to suggestions that local epidemics are triggered by the climate-driven reactivation of influenza viruses that remain latent within hosts between seasons or transmit at low efficiency between seasons.

Flu viruses take the summer off to go travelling

It's not just us who like to go travelling in the summer - flu viruses do it too. After a busy winter of infection, they turn into the gap-year students of the virus world. They travel round the world, meet new viruses, swap genetic material, and returning back, changed and unrecognisable (at least to our immune systems).

Category: Medicine & health • Viruses

Protection mechanisms of the iron-plated armor of a deep-sea hydrothermal vent gastropod

Biological exoskeletons, in particular those with unusually robust and multifunctional properties, hold enormous potential for the development of improved load-bearing and protective engineering materials. Here, we report new materials and mechanical design principles of the iron-plated multilayered structure of the natural armor of Crysomallon squamiferum, a recently discovered gastropod mollusc from the Kairei Indian hydrothermal vent field, which is unlike any other known natural or synthetic engineered armor. We have determined through nanoscale experiments and computational simulations of a predatory attack that the specific combination of different materials, microstructures, interfacial geometries, gradation, and layering are advantageous for penetration resistance, energy dissipation, mitigation of fracture and crack arrest, reduction of back deflections, and resistance to bending and tensile loads. The structure-property-performance relationships described are expected to be of technological interest for a variety of civilian and defense applications.

Three-layered shell of deep-sea snail could inspire next-gen body armour

Deep beneath the ocean's surface lie the “black smokers”, undersea chimneys channelling superheated water from below the Earth's crust. Completely devoid of sunlight, they are some of the most extreme environments on the planet. Any creature that can survive their highly acidic water, scorching temperatures and crushing pressures still has to contend with assaults from predatory crabs. What better place, then, to look for the next generation of body armour technology?

Category: Animal behaviour • Animal defences • Animals • Invertebrates • Material science