How do you whip procrastination?

Over the summer, while I was in the field, I was listening to a book called "Predictably Irrational." It was a great book about behavioural economics, a sort of wedding between the findings of psychology, and what it should tell us about economic decision making by individuals and large groups of people. It's a very good book, and a very practical book, because it's full of gems about how to use innate human tendencies against themselves so we can do what we actually want to do - exercise more, save more money, be more honest, and so on. Here's a great example from the author himself, explaining how procrastination can be gamed.

Bear safety while hunting

Some sage advice from Rick Sinnott summarizing the research on bear attacks on Alaskans, and the best defence against them:

Is a firearm better protection than bear spray? Bear spray -- a concoction of propellants and capsaicin (from red pepper) that burns the eyes and mucous membranes -- is effective up to about 30-35 feet. Dr. Tom Smith, Herrero and others assessed the effectiveness of bear spray in 72 incidents in Alaska where someone used it in defense. Bear spray was effective in 92 percent of the 50 cases involving grizzlies and 90 percent of the 20 cases involving black bears. No one who used bear spray was killed. In the nine instances where a grizzly charged a person, the bear broke off the encounter after it was sprayed, and only one person was injured. The injury was relatively minor, deep scratches requiring stitches. Eventually, someone who uses bear spray will be severely injured or killed by the bear. But it seems clear that bear spray promises to be at least as effective at preventing maulings as a firearm.

I would actually go further than he would, and say that despite my earlier critique of of research on the subject, bear spray is more effective than firearms. I've been sprayed before, and even with my puny human nose, it was incapacitatingly painful. And I only got a short burst. When I hunt, I always carry bear spray too, despite the fact that I obviously have a gun, and have it at the ready.

Of course, the best deterrent is the one you actually use. Bear spray is uesless if it's at the bottom of your pack, or you don't spray the bear...

Things that have always been issues

Here are some things that have always been issues, except for when they haven't been an issue at all. I'd first like to show the google timeline that I'm using is a generally good representation of what's important at a given time.

The search I did was for 'War' You can pick out the major wars on this ol' graph. Bigger bars mean more was written about it at the time. A bar twice as big is twice as written about. The bars don't scale to the same height, so what might be a blip on one graph, if plotted on another graph would be massive.

Interestingly, we're less interested in war these days than we were back in WW1 and WW2. Then again, in the WWs, the whole country was effectively mobilized to fight it.

Here's something that was a major point of contention in the 2000 election, but no one talks about anymore.

Here's something from the 2000 election that has periodically cropped up, but is mostly ignored between long stretches of the US nationally fixating on it.

I cropped all these timelines so they covered 1900 to today, but it's interesting to know that the last one was also a major issue periodically in the 1800s. Somehow, the nation avoided collapse then.


Here's something that was major in the 2008 election, that we were told was a brand spanking new issue that we must tackle now. Does the 80s count as new?

And here are two issues that I've been told have always been important, and people have always cared deeply about it, and they must be addressed now. 

And here's Hanging Chad. The most important thing of its time, and something we really don't care about now.

And here's a pet rock.

Not a very scientific analysis, but I guess what I'm saying is that there sure is a lot of what looks like fads in politics. Most of which never reach any form of resolution. And yet the world doesn't come quite to an end, like the politicians predicted if we didn't do what they wanted to do, right that moment..

Moose on the loose

A moose decided to check out UAA's student union. Some suggested captions:

1. Hey buddy, aren't you a little young to be taking college classes?
2. More proof the university doesn't really care about the students: there's not even a sprig of willow in any of dining halls! You have to go off campus for some decent food!
3. UAA decides to hedge their bets against UAF next hockey season by recruiting a new netminder who can simply sit down in front of the goal.
4. Yes, UAA's admission standards have slipped a little bit. Still, he had an impressive list of extra curriculars.
5. Yes, I am a bit fuzzy from the lack of sleep. Why do you ask?
6. A moose looks for biologists to netgun and radio collar. 

This is what you get from me when I'm running caffeine and old episodes of Top Gear in the background while I scramble to get everything done in the next two weeks. What would you caption it with?

[Photo Credit]

Pilot bread gets serious

Pilot bread is practically a staple in the bush, and it's pretty common to offer it to folks along with some coffee when they come by visiting.  It's also quintessential outdoor food for backpackers, hunters, rafters, and so forth, because the stuff is just indestructible. It's also incredibly calorie dense, and something like a 100 and change per cracker. You need a big chunk of club crackers to come close to that many calories (Though, IMO, club crackers are tastier than pilot bread).
Now my idea of a pilot bread recipe involves taking a chunk and either slathering it with mayo (mmm, mayo) or making a tiny pizza out of it. If I'm feeling really creative, I'll crumble it for use in mooseloaf (two eggs. 1/2 milk-like-substance. 2 lbs ground moose. 5ish crumbled biscuits. Garlic powder, parsley, oregano, and basil to taste. Bacon if you got it) or make a salmon casserole (crumbled biscuits, bowtie noodles, a can of cream of mushroom, salmon, and hunks of Velveeta).

These, people, though, take pilot bread way too seriously. Sundaes made from pilot bread? I'm not sure if that's brilliance, or if down that path lay pure madness. The blackened salmon dish sounds very tasty though - I wish ADN would post the actual recipes!

I love the short story at the end, though,

When [Elsie Pavil Mather] was growing up in Kwigillingok, Pilot Bread was one of the few non-Native foods, she wrote. People used to say the crackers first showed up after a shipwreck and villagers, unaware they were edible, tossed them around like a toy.

"Do not play Frisbee with crackers!" wrote Mather, who lives in Anchorage now. "We are supposed to respect all our food."

Pictures

Yes, I know the photo is on the wrong day! Photos on a Thursday? Why, it's unthinkable!
I actually have photography block. I haven't seen anything and though, `wow, that's pretty` lately, and that's unsurprising. After all, we're in full-on melt-down mode here in Fairbanks. The snow is nasty, mud is getting all over, and ice is building up on any depression or level surface. Add to that the fact that most of westridge on campus is being dug up right now, and you got yourself a pretty ugly place. Luckily, soon it'll be warm enough for foliage to start coming out, and the place will be greener than you can shake a stick at.

You could have picked a worse locale...

... Paul could have tried to set up shop in Ester. That's my attitude towards the Goldstream General Store. About two years ago, you may recall there was a stink about the employees going on strike. The store used to be owned by some nice folks who decided to sell it quietly. So quietly that almost no one knew about it until it was done. The problem was the new owner had strong opinions about tattoos, religion, politics, and just about everything else. And they were 100% to the right of right. And he was rather vocal about them. Well, that's fine - that's anyone's right - but you have to question the business savvy of starting an outwardly conservative business in what's basically a valley full of hippies, dilettante dog mushers, unwashed students and university staff. The valley isn't as liberal as Ester, but it's pretty close. 

The problem, and the reason this  is back in the news, was because the new owner tended to talk to his employees about religion. A lot. In a hostile manner. Leaving aside the wisdom of talking about religion at work (there's a time and place, and that's neither), the employees thought the content of the conversation amounted to harassment at the least. Things to the effect of `Catholics are the root of all evil` and how they would go to hell. At least two employees have sued over this, and thus far, one has won. I'm surprised it's taken two years for the case to worm its way through the courts - this was about as open and shut as it gets, given the amount of evidence that Paul was saying those things. Getting redress for being obviously wronged through the courts is an incredibly slow process. I might have just said `forget it` and dropped the case myself.

What really gets me is the guy's business plan. It's terrible, to be blunt. This is Goldstream we're talking about here, no one wants to buy stuff they picked up at safeway, brought to the general store and slapped a mark-up on. You want to make bank in the area, open a store that sells local foods, or organic food, or anything of that sort. Make it a pick up location for those organic farm distributors that are so popular on campus. Sell to the clientele you can get,  not the one you wish you had. If they had even a little bit of local goods there, they would have many more customers than they actually do.

Pictures

Pictures

Fairbanks is looking for a bioinformatics guru!

Here's an announcement that was recently sent out over evol-dir:

University of Alaska Fairbanks seeks a Unit Manager for the Life
Science Informatics/ Epidemiology Biostatistics cores. These cores
provide technical computing services, such as database development and
management, data dissemination services, optimization of technical
software, custom data analysis pipelining, maintenance of
computational clusters, and user training workshops to facilitate the
growth and maintenance of a diverse user group. This position is
jointly supported by campus-wide research groups, including the Center
for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR), the IDeA Network of
Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), the IAB Spatial Ecology
Laboratory, and grants to individual researchers.

The position requires significant attention to both substance and
detail and a commitment to working collaboratively with faculty and
staff involved in the Institute of Arctic Biology, as well as at other
UA campuses. The Manager will interact with up to 150 researchers on a
regular basis, and oversee the work of programmers and system analysts
with an operational budget of approximately $750,000/yr.  Experience
with computer hardware including networks, clusters and servers, as
well as an understanding of programming and scripting are also
required. Capability in Red Hat or any Linux is required, while
familiarity with SQL, PHP and/or Perl are strong pluses.
Additionally, experiences in any field of bioinformatics are pluses.

Also desired are strong communication skills; human resource skills
for management of the work flow for a small highly skilled and
professional team, including direct supervision, budget authority and
planning responsibilities.
Typical education should include a graduate degree in bioinformatics,
biology, medical science or a related field with strong computational
aspects, or information technology/mathematics/statistics or related
field with demonstrated biology underpinnings.

To apply, go to UAKJOBS.COM.


More information about the supporting programs can be found here:

CANHR
INBRE
Life Science Informatics

University of Alaska Fairbanks is the flagship
university of Alaska with more than 10,000 students.  There are active
research programs in Biology as well as in
Chemistry and Biochemistry .  LSI also
provides the support to researchers in UA Anchorage
.

Additional information about Fairbanks, Alaska:
Fairbanks, Alaska is an exciting place for many people.  This job
offers a life-time opportunity for you to experience vibrant, diverse,
and adventurous life with the comfort of medium-sized city.  It is
conveniently located and the direct flight from Seattle WA takes only
3.5 hours.  It takes about 2 hours of driving to the magnificent
Denali National Park, which offers unparalleled wilderness experience.
For more adventurous, Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge or
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

can be easily accessed.  You can enjoy the midnight sun during the
summer.  Even in the winter, we have a lot of fun things to do.  The
shortest day is about 4 hours, but there are plenty of light before
the sun rise and after the sun set.  We generally do not have wind, so
it does not feel as cold as Chicago in the winter.   We have lots of
cultural activities such as active music community and arts, film and
music festivals, too (e.g., ).

A lot of us did not know how high the quality of life is in Fairbanks
until we moved here, and most of us fell in love with the "Last
Frontier" State.  I hope you'll take up this opportunity and join us.

What are you supposed to get out of college, anyhow?

The most excellent Dr. Palmer has written an interesting post on how she views many biology graduate students shoot themselves in the foot through focusing on the wrong skills in their tenure as students. While on whole I would agree with what she's written, especially the bits about non-transferable skills, I think the focus on `soft skills,` things such as lit reviews and public speaking, is slightly misguided.

While soft skills might help you get a job in the future (potentially one goal of a Ph.D. student), I'm not convinced they're the major determinant of your ability to get hired. You see, I've just suffered through a hiring committee - I wasn't actually on it, but everyone even tangentially affiliated with me was, which meant I might as well have been on it given how often I was caught up in conversations about it. While quite a few of the candidates were highly polished presenters, with style and panache, that didn't necessarily correlate with  getting into the final list of candidates.

What's more important, I would argue, is not the technical skills - those will vary over time. Learning R now is like learning SAS 15 years ago. Sure, it gives you a temporary window of relevance, but unless you're constantly chasing your tail picking up the latest technical skills, you'll quickly become irrelevant (Yes, I am arguing SAS is passé). But nor is it the soft skills - Billy Mayes would not be a top candidate in any academic job search, should he still be alive, no matter how much useless junk he can convince people to buy. The important things to get out of a Ph.D. education is an integrated worldview and conceptual framework upon which to hang your hat. It's raw knowledge.

Don't forget you're at an institute of higher learning. While there's just a bit more to a job search than being bright, in academia we tend to be awfully capitalistic in how we pick professors. Results matters, and to generate really good results, you either need to be a) lucky or b) good. Since you generally can't count on a lucky career path falling in your lap, it's better to focus on being good. And the most important aspect of conducting good research is not methodological prowess, or your ability to communicate your results to the public, but your ability to have the conceptual framework to conduct robust, appropriately nuanced research.

Here's a question I've found really reveals the strengths and weaknesses of any graduate, be it Ph.D. or B.S. Ask them, quite simply, "What do you think the big, unanswered questions in your field are?" If they start prattling on about P52 protein structure, it's clear they don't have the right conceptual framework, or they're hopelessly mired in the details. Likewise, if they feel there aren't any big parts of the map with "Here Be Dragons" written on it, they haven't thought critically about their field either.

Pictures

Pictures

Beer notes from last week

I had this written up last week, but for some reason never sat down at the computer and typed it up. I've been emptying out all those bottles I've been hanging on to with the intention of trying. Hopefully I have a Japanese beer in the queue, and an Aussie (Sorry, it's not Boag's Premium). I'm hoping to crack them open in the next week, once I'm done with this great pomegranate juice I found...

Alaskan Barley Wine Ale, Alaskan Brewing Company, Juneau AK
Wrapped in the typical Alaskan Brewing Company 65cl bottle, I can't find any indication of the date of origin for this particular bottle. When I pour it out, the beer looks smooth and thick, a deep burgundy who's head dissipates into a thin white ring while I'm still smelling the beer. The hops are incredibly floral, and leaps out after fragrance of the grains. There are subtle hints of something malty lurking underneath that I can't quite put my finger on, with how strong the other two odours are. When I sip it, the Barely Wine Ale opens up with a bitter taste, followed by a mere whiff of the grains involved, and ending with a crisp and bitter aftertaste. How can something so thick be so crisp? It's like drinking oil, it's so thick, and yet there's a distinct bite at the end. It's a paradox, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a beer.

There's something underneath the hops that feels almost oaky, but it's hard to work it out from the power of the rest of the beer. It's vaguely disappointing, because Alaskan seems to do better balancing their beers than they've done with their Barley Wine Ale. The end effect is that the beer tastes too simple, and too heavy on the hops for my tastes. That's not to say I couldn't finish the bottle - you barely realize there's alcohol in this beer at all, it's so well hidden. Still, one bottle is a bit much for one person, and it might be best split between friends over dinner.

3.8 out of 5. B+

Alaska Census changes, 2000 to 2010

Data time, people! Behold, tables:

 

Borough or Census area	2000 estimate	2010 estimate	% change
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	6,551	5,588	-14.70%
Ketchikan Gateway Borough	14,070	13,477	-4.21%
Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area	6,146	5,559	-9.55%
Valdez-Cordova Census Area	10,195	9,636	-5.48%
Kodiak Island Borough	13,913	13,592	-2.31%
Bristol Bay Borough	1,258	997	-20.75%
Lake and Peninsula Borough	1,823	1,631	-10.53%
Yakutat City and Borough	808	662	-18.07%
Dillingham Census Area	4,922	4,847	-1.52%
Denali Borough	1,893	1,826	-3.54%
Sitka City and Borough	8,835	8,881	0.52%
Aleutians West Census Area	5,465	5,561	1.76%
Haines Borough	2,392	2,508	4.85%
Nome Census Area	9,196	9,492	3.22%
Northwest Arctic Borough	7,208	7,523	4.37%
Wade Hampton Census Area	7,028	7,459	6.13%
Aleutians East Borough	2,697	3,141	16.46%
Juneau City and Borough	30,711	31,275	1.84%
Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	6,174	7,029	13.85%
Bethel Census Area	16,006	17,013	6.29%
North Slope Borough	7,385	9,430	27.69%
Kenai Peninsula Borough	49,691	55,400	11.49%
Fairbanks North Star Borough	82,840	97,581	17.79%
Matanuska-Susitna Borough	59,322	88,995	50.02%
Anchorage Municipality	260,283	291,826	12.12%
Hoonah-Angoon Census Area	3,436	2,150	-14.79%
Skagway Municipality		968
Wrangell City and Borough	6,684	2,369	-21.11%
Petersburg Census Area		3,815
Statewide	626,932	710,231	13.29%

I have the table organized by the number of citizens gained or lost. Note that Hoonah/Skagway and Wrangell/Petersberg is reported differently between 2010 and 2000, so they take up two lines (Only one value in 2000 per either pair). What leaps out at me is most of the change comes from the MatSu - a wopping 50% change in population! Yikes! Fairbanks has also grown at an accelerated rate, but not nearly as much. I was wrong about the North Slope - it has a greater % change than the North West Borough. I was correct about the YK, but too conservative about the rate of growth since both major census districts topped 6% growth. I was too conservative about how horribly hard SE is getting hammered. Aside from Bristol Bay, the biggest percent changes were in SE. The biggest absolute change, though, was in the Yukon-Koyukuk area:

Borough or Census area	Absolute Change	Percent of State Change
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	-963	-1.16%
Ketchikan Gateway Borough	-593	-0.71%
Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area	-587	-0.70%
Valdez-Cordova Census Area	-559	-0.67%
Kodiak Island Borough	-321	-0.39%
Bristol Bay Borough	-261	-0.31%
Lake and Peninsula Borough	-192	-0.23%
Yakutat City and Borough	-146	-0.18%
Dillingham Census Area	-75	-0.09%
Denali Borough	-67	-0.08%
Sitka City and Borough	46	0.06%
Aleutians West Census Area	96	0.12%
Haines Borough	116	0.14%
Nome Census Area	296	0.36%
Northwest Arctic Borough	315	0.38%
Wade Hampton Census Area	431	0.52%
Aleutians East Borough	444	0.53%
Juneau City and Borough	564	0.68%
Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	855	1.03%
Bethel Census Area	1,007	1.21%
North Slope Borough	2,045	2.46%
Kenai Peninsula Borough	5,709	6.85%
Fairbanks North Star Borough	14,741	17.70%
Matanuska-Susitna Borough	29,673	35.62%
Anchorage Municipality	31,543	37.87%
Hoonah-Angoon Census Area	-318	-0.38%
Skagway Municipality
Wrangell City and Borough	-500	-0.60%
Petersburg Census Area
Statewide	83,299	n/a

Anchorage had the greatest growth (Gold star for me) followed by MatSu and Fairbanks and the Kenai. Juneau, as I anticipated, remains essentially flat. I might have to double back on the Rural-to-Urban migration idea. There's 214 more rural residents than there were in 2010, which is a minuscule increase. Either there's more immigration than emigration, but elevated death to compensate, or births are higher than deaths, and there's a net emigration. The second scenario seems more likely.

Why didn't this show up in the school enrolment records in Anchorage? Well, it could be that people more likely to move don't have children yet, or maybe they're not all moving to Anchorage. Or, what I think is most likely - there's serious flaws in how we calculate enrolment in schools, where students from the bush are more likely to skip classes (true) and therefore not be reflected in the annual counts. This downward biases the enrolment numbers, and therefore funding, of schools with the students who need the most help.

But, that's navel gazing and guesswork. The real way to address this is to follow individuals, not counts of individuals. Census summaries we have access to can't show that that +1 person in the Kenai came from Juneau as opposed to Kansas. You need to do a more detailed breakdown than that to find those sorts of trends.

Finally, on the diversity front, diversity increased slightly (69% White to 66% White descent) mostly to an additional 1 percent more people of Asian descent, and a grab-bag of other.

There's a lot of information here, and I've barely played around with it. Hopefully, I'll get more time to dig deep into this well of information in the next little bit.

Before the AK census data

The AK census data will be posted today at 10am, AKDT.  Before they post it, I want to make some minor predictions about what the data will show.

This is like the Nenana ice classic, except I don't get anything if I'm right.  ;)

Big winners - Anchorage and Fairbanks. Juneau will remain relatively flat (less than 2% growth if any). In South East, some of the islands in the Alexander archipelago will show a decline; I'd be surprised if it's more than 5%. The YK will show flat to moderate growth (the couple of districts will show 1-5% growth). North-West (Kotz area etc) will show some minor growth, while North Slope will shrink slightly.

I'm torn - I know the nation, as a whole, is diversifying. But the big drivers in state population are migrants to Fairbanks and Anchorage/Matsu, who are predominantly white. So whether the state follows the trend and becomes more diverse depends on the exact balance between internal growth and migration.

I strongly think the data will not reflect a rural to urban migration like people (including me) were suggesting a few years back. I think the preliminary data in the form of enrolment makes that dubious - total rural migration will be small, or zero.

And, as a wild card prediction, Anvik will become the new state capital, stunning the rest of the state. In your face, Juneau!

Pictures

CNN Skepticism

Last night, I was having dinner out at what I thought was a normal time, but thanks to DST was really nearly 9 at night. Consequently, the restaurant was very empty, and there wasn't many people to talk to or do the normal social things with while you wait for that one cook left around to fire up the grill again. I started watching TV, to kill some time. And let me say something that's been bugging me for a few years now.


Now, I'm willing to accept that some people have a nice, well-rounded education. I'm even willing to accept that these people are more likely to end up as TV anchors - thought I might think it has to do more with their looks than what's going on upstairs in some cases. But some anchors try too hard to come off as knowledgeable about everything. Here and Now, on NPR, is horrible about it. I can't listen to that show, because the host tries to act like she's an expert on car engineering as well as Mid-East geopolitics. I'm even willing to accept that the TV has an anchor that knows something about earthquakes, and disaster recovery. But honestly. Am I really to believe that their anchor just so happens to be an expert on nuclear power too?

It's not a topic you can B.S. your way through - I remember enough of my nuclear chemistry from college to know that the person was far past the limits of their knowledge. They couldn't pronounce any words right, and they had a frazzled idea of how things worked . It's clear someone tried to bone up on the subject in the 3 minute commercial break from reading off flash cards. Did she really have to act like she was familiar with the inner workings of a modern(ish) reactor? Honestly, if there's one subject where you can say "Well, I'm not sure what's going on, but the here's what the real experts say:" it's got to be nuclear power. But now, the "Energy Corespondent" was acting like they'd just got done teaching a short lesson to a class of graduate students and where now favouring us plebs with their bountiful knowledge.


So, to keep me from giving in to the same temptation that they have, let it be known I only have two areas of expertise. The first is critters. The second is Justin Beiber-ology. Maybe I am qualified to be a news anchor afterall.

DInner, deconstruted

What do you do when you're richer than any human could possibly want in a lifetime? If you're former Microsoft CTO, Nathan Myhrvold, you start out advocating searching for dinosaur vomit. After all, birds will sometimes spew, and what are birds, if not modern dinosaurs? But a man has to have a hobby between encouraging people to dig for Dino-Pellets. Nathan's is running a food science lab of his own making, which has just released a 2000+ page, 6 volume set on their years of research. It's called Modernist Cuisine.

Quite a few people have written about the kitchen lab, such as this current Network Today article, and this older New York Times article that shows that its been on their radar for a while. But I've noticed people have focused on the equipment Nathan's lab has, more than the really interesting bit - he's employed a scientific hypothesis testing framework for organizing his romp through the gastronomic world. Here's an example from the above NY Times article:

The conclusions have often been backed up by careful scientific exploration. For example, confit, the French technique of cooking slowly in fat, is supposed to impart a unique taste and texture as the fat penetrates the meat.

But Dr. Myhrvold said: “There’s no way it could penetrate. The molecules are too big.”

He said double-blind taste tests proved that the same tasty results could be achieved by steaming and then rubbing some of the fat on the outside.

This isn't new to the world - people have used it before -  but even normal advocates for culinary science are applauding him for how far he's take the process with this work. Cooking, sadly, is filled with too much woo - such as the load of misinformation surrounding organic vegetables (Isn't it enough to eat them because they're sustainable?), or the linking of cost with quality (the best thing you can do to improve someone's wine tasting experience is to tell them it's an expensive and rare wine). Some rigour is nice to see.

Sadly, such a book is not for the likes of me - it's 625 dollars for the full set. I'll have to be content with this really cool hamburger deconstructed infographic from the WSJ that came with their own story about Modernist Cuisine.

photo from the WSJ infographic mentioned above

Pictures

In the annals of Dim Things To Do.

I've said it before. Heck, I've said it here. Do not pet the moose. You do not share a deep spiritual connection with them. They won't recognize you as a kindred spirit.  They aren't your bestest friend in the world. Some of them may be quite cute, but forget about taking them home with you. It isn't going to end well for either of you.

Even not counting car collisions, a moose is more likely to injure you than a bear or a wolf. People fail to appreciate that even a small moose can weigh 800 pounds, and can kick hard enough to break bones. It's not uncommon for wolf biologists to find that wolves in our area have had their skull fractured seriously at some point because a moose kicked them in the head. And a wolf skull is a lot more robust than a human's skull.

And besides, you probably wouldn't like it if a total stranger (and a different species to boot) came up and started petting you, either. Even moose like their personal space.

Petting a moose is about as dumb as it gets.

Moose-petters: 

Immunize!

I saw this on the lovable Orac's webamablog, a parody of the song "Billionare" about vaccination. Watch. It's hillarious.



Almost as good is the blurb on the creater's YouTube channel:

I'm a hospital physician and purveyor of educational medical satire. On staff at a major academic institution, I strive to practice only evidence-based comedy...everything on this site is clinically proven to be (slightly) funnier than placebo.

You can check out the creator's web page here.

Pictures

Beer notes from Tuesday

This is a beer I tried at the Alaskan Beer and Barley Wine festival, and it was the first amongst all of the beers I tried that day. This... this is excellent. 

---

Alaskan Smoked Porter, by Alaskan Brewing Company

The bottle is 65.1cl brown glass, with a single, simple label that has no clear indication of brewing date. Pouring it, the beer is a dark brown with a light beige head that fades to mere ring. It smells of oak, the smoked salmon, and dark malts. It tastes like pork fat and smoked salmon, with a light coffee like maltose taste beneath it all. It has a crisp bite, with an airy hint of the smoked taste lingering. It drinks easily, especially with other, stronger flavours.4.55 of 5 A+

Pictures

A little about moose hair

One of the more common questions people ask is why they don't seem more moose hide clothing items around. It's a fair question: moose are large animals with lots of fur, so surely some of that is useful. And even many people who grew up knowing not to use moose fur for anything serious don't know why they shouldn't use it. It's a simple enough answer, though: the hair sheds like crazy. The hair shafts are constantly breaking and shedding over time, meaning very quickly you'll lose some of your best guard hairs, and be left with little warmth. You can tan moose hide, but the only thing I've ever seen it used for is the de-haired leather.

The reason moose hair sheds so much is that the hairs themselves, like hair of all deer, are hollow. They almost look like someone's blown bubbles into the middle of the shaft. I'd love to post a picture of it right here, but I don't have one that I have rights to. But I can link to this picture here on another website. That beautifully shows the inside of a red deer (aka, elk) hair shaft. Most deer (including Caribou, moose, and so on) have hollow hair; most thinking is that this is a trait to help them thermoregulate, or maintain a consistent body temperature. The hollow shafts provide additional dead air space to keep a pocket of air warmed (or cooled) to their body temperature. I haven't seen this idea rigorously tested, though.

Where's the stastics?

After reading over and digesting Nelson's (1998) "Development of migratory behaviour in northern white-tailed deer" the group had gradually come to the conclusion that the paper did not really belong in the otherwise good Canadian Journal of Zoology. The paper is very little more than a case study of the fates of 36 collared white-tail fawns. Case studies have their value, but the problem arose when they tried to translate this into hypothesis testing.

The study, in short, radio collared the affronted 36 fawns in the winter and followed their fates. They found that the majority of them returned with their mothers to their 'natal summer ranges' and a portion of those back-migrated to the same winter ground. Some deer dispersed to new summer grounds, and would back-migrate to a winter ground. Everything else in the paper is individual case summaries too tedious to recreate here.

The most glaring omission throughout this paper was that there was almost no statistics to speak of. I could only find one instance where I knew a confidence interval, and it was on a trivial value. Everything else is presented as percents, without any way of knowing if the differing value of percentages means the effects were significant. Secondly, we have no way of knowing whether the deer truly returned to their natal ranges - the author just assumes where they went after their first winter was their natal range. They collared the fawns at the wrong time of year to really wrap their head around the phenomenon. Finally, in the discussion, the author included unpublished data to bolster their own hypothesis. We were not overly impressed by this.

The big disappointment is that this topic is of general interest. Migratory behaviour in ungulates is understudied compared to birds, and many species that engage in migratory behaviour are of considerable human importance. It would be fascinating to repeat this study with fawns collared at birth (or soon after) to tease apart how white-tails establish their migratory behaviour in more mobile populations. This does not shed much, if any, light on the issue.
(X-posted)

A total lack of envy

Where last year's Yukon Quest's weather was unusually mild and fair, this year has been more par for the course - varying degrees of brutal. When I read about Hans Gatt going through the overflow, it sent shivers down my back (and not because it's cold inside). I've seen that situation before, and rarely does it end well for the person who goes through - especially in this weather. Right now, the remaining teams are headed for Eagle Summit.

The thing you need to know about Eagle Summit is that as brutal as the low-laying areas can be - it's -50F in the village of Eagle right now - Eagle Summit is worse. It's got all the cold, plus torrential winds that eat through everything. It's not uncommon for the air to be so thick with blowing snow that you turn into a walking snowman, but there to be so little snow on the trail that your snowgo is bumping and scraping the whole way. I've been caught out in a groundstorm out there before, and really the only thing you can do is hide down behind whatever passes for shelter, and wait it out. Some clever soul described the weather as "Visibility -10 feet:" Visibility is so low you not only don't know where you're going, but you have no idea where you've been.

With all due respect to the Iditarod, the Yukon Quest is the most difficult race to be had.

Dangit, I don't have any of my pictures of Eagle Summit on this computer. But just imagine some sort of winter-hellscape, and you're pretty close.

PSA: 40 Mile hunt entirely open for short period

If you're like me, you'd put the 40 Mile winter hunt out of your mind, since it started back in December. However, if you still have interest in hunting it, the corridor along the highway will be open for a short period. You can read about it at the News Miner or at the 40 Mile Hotline (907 267-2310 in fairbanks, 8832971 in Tok).

Pictures

Oh no! Someone told him about Emzymes!

The biomedical community is in biiiiig trouble now. Their secret is out. A "shaman" figured out why people age, die, feel old, and gradually get discoloured teeth. It's emzymes.



According to his theory, which I must stress is 100% true, the body has a finite emzyme resource. Eventually, you will run out of your precious bodily fluidsemzymes and begin to age. He says most people run out at 25, although some very lucky people run out in their 30s.

We're done. Science has been revealed as a shallow hoax to cover up our emzyme technology. Now that he has teh_truth, we might as well pack it in.

Pictures

Sometimes, it does matter where you're from.

One of the major thrusts of the research I've involved with in the last few years is in the world of "domestic introgression." Some times, when we move animals around, there will be a pre-existing wild form of that species. For reindeer transplanted to Alaska, it's the endemic caribou. Some mink farms are in areas that already have a wild mink population. And a dog is nothing, if not a very funny looking, strangely behaving wolf. The concern is often that our tame species - the domestic species - will breed with the native wildlife, introducing genes that have more to do with living with humans than in the wild. That's what we call introgression - broadly speaking, it's when genes from a species or subspecies sneak into a new species. In many cases, natural selection can do its thing and purge these genes, but with the right conditions, even these very poorly-adapted traits do filter in to the wild population.

Red foxes have been extensively bred for farm fur, not unlike mink. The sort that have ended up in these farms are a total hodgepodge of various foxes bred together for the best fur characteristics, while still being tame. You might remember the tame, Russian foxes I talked about earlier, with their collie like appearance and their cheery disposition. Some foxes escaped in Californian fur farms in the mid-1900s, where they established a growing invasive population in the Sacramento Valley over the ensuing time. From here, they've come into contact with the native foxes - foxes that have long been there, and are well adapted to the local environment.

Enter Benjamin Sacks and colleagues, working out of the University of California, Davis. They took DNA from foxes throughout the Sacramento Valley, and looked at a variety of markers - some mitochondrial, some microsats, and some SNPs. In addition to the typical analyses (For HWE, Linkage, and so on), they assessed whether there were domestic introgression into the wild foxes using STRUCTURE (a package that assigns individuals to populations when you don't know the number or placement of the clusters) and BayesAss, which assigns individuals to populations based on prior knowledge of the populations. Finally, they used Migrate-N to assess how much the geneflow there was between the domestic foxes and the native foxes.

From the traditional stats, they had a microsat HE of 0.65 and 0.69 - something I would think is low given an average number of 6.1 and 6.6 alleles per locus. They didn't have any HWE issues. Additionally, it was clear that the wild and the introduced groups of foxes assorted with themselves spatially - that is, there was a region of native fox, and a region of introduced fox, and not the two intermixed in the same area. You can check out the figure to the right to get the general feel for the lay out - the caption has a lot of useful information in reading it.

When they looked at information about potential migrants, and admixture, they found a small number of individuals who didn't match either the 'native' or the 'introduced' groups that they resided within. When they looked at the mitochondrial DNA with the nuclear DNA, it was clear that all of them were of clear hybrid origin - not migrants, but the first generation cross between a migrant and the local group of fox. However, the authors also argue that there's a region of individuals who are primarily of hybrid origin. Finally, the analysis of Migrate-N showed a generally low level of introgression between the groups, of about 1.31 and 0.91 effective migrants per-generation.

Taken together, Benjamin Sacks and colleagues argue that there is some sort of selection preventing the groups from intermixing. Something about the inherent ecology of the wild or domestic foxes (or both) is preventing too much of the domestic genes from bleeding into the native foxes, and vice versa. They suggest that the hybrids they do find are due to a low density area, and but that the mating system of red foxes makes it difficult for introduced foxes to interbreed with the native foxes. I remain somewhat skeptical of this argument, and I'd like to see some experimental evidence to back the claim.

The study was generally well done, but I do have a few general critiques. The sample size from their "hybrid zone" is very low indeed. I would really prefer to see additional data from there, to actually elucidate the strength (or lack there of) of the hybridization. Getting samples isn't always easy, but drawing inferences about those regions on the basis of n=3 and n=3 seems perilous to me. I'd like to see a better treatment of hybridization using BayesAss. Ideally, there should be 'reference' populations to check against. I recognize this isn't available for one or both groups sometimes (oh, what I wouldn't give for reference populations in some of my own work), but results must then be interpreted in light of the lack of reference populations. There could be previous introgression that we don't see, because it's gone to fixation in one or both groups. It is unlikely that this has happened here, given the high Fst and that hybrids seem to be selected against, but it's something I keep in the back of my mind.

SACKS, B., MOORE, M., STATHAM, M., & WITTMER, H. (2011). A restricted hybrid zone between native and introduced red fox (Vulpes vulpes) populations suggests reproductive barriers and competitive exclusion Molecular Ecology, 20 (2), 326-341 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04943.x

Figure reproduced from the above cited publication under a fair-use rationale.

Spare change

I was checking out Craigslist, when I noticed an interesting property up for sale:

Arctic Circle Hot Springs is located in the heart of some of Alaska’s best gold county, access is by the Steese Hwy. 134 mile N. from Fairbanks, or from lighted and State maintained, 4,400ft airfield. This property is in need of much TLC however it is definitely one of a kind, and the potential to the right owner is virtually unlimited.

It looks like someone finally moved Circle Hotsprings back to the market. Rumour was that it was tied up off the market for various and sundry reasons, most of them stemming from personality issues. I wouldn't know anything about that specifically, beyond the hearsay, but it'll be exciting to see if that gets up and running again.

Pictures

For the lazy Skiier

I love Gizmodo.com because it's full of random gadgets, and I like gadgets. I don't own many, but I really like knowing they exist. Gadgets are all futuristic. But in this case...

Here's a gadget for the lazy skier. The Skizee is a four stroke that you put behind you, which pushes you along like a snowmachine track. But the Skizee (that's the link to their company webpage) looks horribly awkward, and the stance for that looks just plain unnatural. And more importantly, why would you? I can't think of a use for the gadget that isn't better suited by something else.

Scenario 1: You're using it as a skiier. That means you need to haul around a 4 stroke engine and that contraption on your back, or on a polk. In the case of the former, you don't get to carry anything else. In the latter case, what are you going to do with the sled after the fact?

Scenario 2: You're using it fulltime, as a snowmachine. You're going to have shorter range, it's going to be harder to service it, and you don't have any cargo space. Standing's got to be a pain, vs sitting. And it doesn't really have a smaller footprint than something like an Elan, so you're not likely to get into anywhere that you can't get with a snowmachine. The weight savings can't really be enough to make up for the float of a real mountain snowgo. And I can imagine the first time you stumble and the machine goes up between your legs is going to be preeeetty dang uncomfortable.

So... what's the point? Who, exactly, are they trying to sell this too?

photos via gizmodo.com

Nothing but cold and ice

Sorry for being absent. When the blog gets quiet, it’s because something in my life has either gone fantastically well, or horribly awry. Lately, it’s been more of the latter than the former. But I was taught not to complain when things go bad, so I won’t say more about that. I have been spending an awful lot of time out on the snowgo, hunting for a couple of things here and there.

I’ve also been sewing, though I’m embarrassed to show the final product. My aana would be annoyed I didn’t pay more attention when she taught me to sew.

We’ve been gaining daylight.



That wasn't a picture of yours truly, but a buddy of mine. My parka is far prettier. ;)

And the trip to Manly Hotsprings is now especially pretty.



But honestly, you can say that about almost anywhere in the state right now.



I’ve got more science-foo planned; I’m in talks with a grad student in my department about potentially blogging a journal club. Hopefully that’ll pan out.

Anyone know where I can get such awesome facemasks as they're wearing here? I wear a helmet for just riding, but hunting with a helmet on is very stupid. However, I've decided I don't like freezing my face off each time I ride, and most people I know either tough it out by just piling on the scarves or whatever (the frostbite solution) or put up with wearing the helmet (the stupid solution). Kotzebue brand not-freezing-your-face-off sounds especially appealing to me!

Pictures

Pictures

Not a reccomended Mfg Method

The sign allegedly translates to "Dependable handling of chemical products" (Sadly, I don't speak Dutch). Hat tip to Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline and Keeees (comment #1) for the link to the picture and translation.

Snowmachine HUD

One thing I've always disliked about riding my snowmachine is that I have no idea how fast I'm going. I have a general feel for things, sure, and I divide it into two speeds - safe, and not safe (but fun). But the problem is that my speed gauge frosts over, and I can't actually read it all winter long. My snowmachine never gets hot enough to thaw the frost off the watchglass.

That's got me dreaming about a snowmachine helmet that's like a fighter jet helmet, where important information is projected directly on the visor of the helmet. That way you can see speed, fuel, oil, and GPS location without having to look down from the trail at the dashboard. I've found that when I'm riding in the interior (where I do the bulk of my riding now), you can't really take your eyes off the trail for very long at all, because most of the time you're in some very closed forest. Your snowmachine won't blow up like in True Lies if you hit a tree, but it's generally very un-fun to hit one.

Well, via Gizmodo, it looks like a company called Recon is going to produce goggles with integrated LCD screens. They're looking to sell these to skiers, but I think some things, like an HUD GPS, would be a godsend to snowmachiners. Of course, like everything else, a GPS isn't a replacement for good old fashion knowledge of the trails around you, and a map and compass never have dead batteries, but it'd be a really cool toy to have for riding!

Pictures