Travis Drake

@kirkgoldsberry Dame

Who is most impressive here?

Leading Scorers By Zone, Last 25 Years. What jumps out?

@oomfmagazine In Switzerland its called 1. Klasse

The upper middle class yearns for public transit but without poor people

@MushtaqBilalPhD Does this study account for the fact that Nobel prize winners a) are likely working on a line of highly relevant research, b) important research likely attracts the best minds of the next generation and c) the historically best funded research institutions lie in NA and Europe?

This Nature article shows that most Nobel Prize winners are part of one big, incestuous academic network. Out of 736 Nobel Prize winners in science and economics, 702 are "part of the same academic family." Only 32 researchers out of this network have won the Nobel Prize.

I am looking for a PhD student (fully funded, 4 years) to start next year at Stockholm University. Apply before 5/11 online. Topic is described in the link but in a nutshell: effect is glacier melt on carbon cycling in Greenlandic fjords su.se/english/about-…

@GRocherRos @ERC_Research @umeauniversity Congrats Gerard! This is excellent news!

My project got funded! Next year I will start my @ERC_Research Starting Grant at @umeauniversity . The project is titled "A mechanistic Understanding of Arctic River Methane emissions".

The drivers of the loss of tree cover are different in each region. Recent data from Global Forest Watch shows trends in tree cover loss, split by five drivers: forestry, shifting agriculture, and wildfires, which lead to temporary tree cover loss, while commodity-driven deforestation and urbanization often cause permanent deforestation. This dataset combines time-series data of tree cover loss, estimated from satellite imagery using research by Matthew Hansen and colleagues, with research on the drivers of deforestation by Philip Curtis and colleagues. The drivers of tree cover loss vary markedly across regions. Wildfires and forestry (logging) are the main drivers of tree cover loss in Europe and North America, with wildfires mainly occurring in Canada and Russia. Tree cover loss from wildfires does not include fire clearing for agriculture. Commodity-driven deforestation is a key cause in Asia and South America, largely due to trends in Brazil and Indonesia. Shifting agriculture — where trees are cleared so the land can be cultivated temporarily before being abandoned — is the dominant driver of tree cover loss in Africa and a major driver in South America. (This Daily Data Insight was written by Fiona Spooner.)

Congratulations to Laura Summerauer who just successfully defended her PhD thesis! The thesis examines the effect of #deforestation on #soil redistribution and soil #degradation on #croplands along the steep topography of the East African Rift system.

Wildfires have surged globally in August 2024, mainly in Africa. The chart shows the weekly area burned by wildfires globally and in Africa from 2012 to 2024. This August saw an abrupt increase in the area burned by wildfires, with most of this rise coming in a single week. This global weekly burn rate was 64% higher than any previous week during this period. This data comes from the Global Wildfire Information System. This dramatic rise was mostly driven by severe wildfires in Africa, where approximately 22 million hectares burned in a week, accounting for around 80% of the global burned area. Two countries have been particularly hard-hit — Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo — where 6% and 2.5% of the total land area have burned in just one week. (This Daily Data Insight was written by Veronika Samborska.)

@MikePeacock86 Woohoo! Looking forward to it!

And it's done! First draft of the #LeafPadGHG paper complete at last.

@bariweiss TheDoomPress

"As I watched the global stock markets tumble, I thought of a trip I took earlier this year to the Louvre with my younger sons. Bored by the throng of people inanely taking identical bad photographs of the Mona Lisa, we stumbled upon a largely forgotten masterpiece, the representation of Milton’s Pandemonium by the Victorian artist John Martin. Take a good look, lads, I said. That’s where we’re headed. @nfergus in @TheFP: Welcome to the Pandemonium... thefp.com/p/niall-fergus…

@OurWorldInData % carbon neutral electricity generation would be more interesting than % "renewable"

Since 2020, 14 countries have consistently generated over 95% renewable electricity, according to Ember’s Yearly electricity data. In eight of these countries, electricity has been almost entirely renewable-based for over 20 years. Renewable sources include hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, tidal, and wave power. In all these countries, the largest source of electricity was hydropower. Sub-Saharan countries, however, use significantly less electricity in their energy mix compared to countries in Europe or North America. (This Data Insight was written by Pablo Rosado.)

The war in Ukraine is also a war for soil. @SebDoetterl, Professor for #SoilResources at @ETH_en explains what makes Ukrainian soil so valuable and why it will become even more geopolitically significant. ethz.ch/en/news-and-ev…

@MikePeacock86 Isn't this just a UV-spec? realtechwater.com/products/meter…

Wow, this is cool. Field portable TOC analysers are now a real thing! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rr…

Depth‐Partitioning of Particulate Organic Carbon Composition in the Rising and Falling Stages of the Amazon River - agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20… We explore depth trends in the concentration and composition of POC in the Amazon River Mainstem at Obidos. @saroraaustralis @drdrewsteen

@thomaschattwill We've been over this: youtube.com/watch?v=J5xGKi…

The slow-motion travel here is the purest distillation of all that is wrong in professional basketball

@StevenJRobbins Not sure how affordable they are anymore but: Chattanooga, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Bozeman, Ashland, Asheville, SLC?

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."

@mateosfo @uberfahr As an American west-coaster living in Switzerland, it boggles my mind when I return to the US why we let cars and their infrastructure dictate our entire living geography.

@uberfahr I took a train from Ljubljana to Bled, rented an e-bike, rode around the lake — car-free!! — then took a bus to Bohinj where I hiked up to huts in the Triglav high country. It is cheaper and easier to explore the Alps, without a car, than any American natural area with one.

Lake Tahoe is one of those places *so close* to greatness, but design of its built environment — basically, a sea of parking lots, with occasional homes/businesses — make it suck galactically. They could run a train around the lake, if they wanted to. sfchronicle.com/california/art…

@valiergaly Absolutely. The problem is when folks don't take these into consideration, which I'm afraid is quite often. I just think we could already improve citation metrics by having slightly more nuanced categories. Like a simple checkbox during submission to designate "data author".

@travisdrake True. But it’s only problematic if we only look at citation metrics. We should always look at content and impact (in addition to the metrics).

When are we going to create a new category for scientific "authorship" that is "only provided a few data points to a massive global synthesis"? These hundred+ author papers that get cited a ton should be listed in a different category...