This guest post was written by Adam Gold. Adam is a second-year master’s student in the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology (CEE) working at UNC IMS. He works in the Piehler Lab researching urban stormwater and its effects on water quality. Follow him on twitter at @acgold_04 for tweets about science and stormwater. This past summer, … Continue reading
One of the very first things anybody learns about science is the scientific method. Observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. It’s the scientific creed. The motto scientists live by. But, despite the seemingly simple 4-steps, in reality, the scientific method is a tortuous path that can be slow, complicated, winding, and at times, incredibly frustrating. To really … Continue reading
Over the winter break I interviewed Chris Anderson of Science Over Everything about how science researchers can be better science educators. Outside of his scicomm blog, Chris is a consultant with the Hamilton County Educational Service Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. He primarily works as an instructional coach to educators and curriculum managers to help them build science … Continue reading
Most productivity gurus say that when you hit a wall, you should switch tasks. This is how I ended up reading a paper about beavers who managed to hijack a wetland restoration for their benefit. So congratulations! You’re in the right place to learn some fancy philosophy terms and think about wetlands from a whooole … Continue reading
I am a second year Ph.D. student in the Ecology program at UNC-Chapel Hill. This semester, I have been teaching, taking classes, mentoring, and also working on my first manuscript from my current research. Exciting, right? Well, not exactly. It is stressful and sometimes just hard to keep up with everything. At times, it is … Continue reading
Congratulations, you’ve decided to learn R! This programming language will streamline data analysis, facilitate statistics, and drive you insane! And if you’re reading this, you’ve probably decided to go next-level-nutjob and teach yourself R. Although no blog post can take away all the pain this will entail, I’m hoping to make your experience slightly less … Continue reading
Oceanographers generally love maps. They’ve made some pretty great ones like Marie Tharp’s who created the first map of the entire ocean floor: Recently, I wanted to make an oceanographic map for one of my projects. The World Ocean Atlas publishes data such as temperature, salinity, and nutrients for 1° grids all around the world. … Continue reading
UNdertheC was founded 3 years ago this month, which may lead you to ask, what other outlandishly successful marine initiatives share our inaugural year of 2013? The most prominent seems to be the Ocean Cleanup, and HOLY COW. The last time I’d paid much attention to the project, it was still a somewhat dreamy approach … Continue reading
Funding. The single most dreaded word for any aspiring scientist and one that conjures up a nightmare of thoughts, tangents, and spontaneous sweating. But, it’s something we have to deal with, we have to talk about, and we have to find. Fellow UNdertheC writer, Justin, has complied a great post about Where to find funding … Continue reading
Hi UndertheC readers! My name is Olivia, I am a new grad student at UNC and will be contributing periodic posts. Anyone who has done field work knows that even simple projects can easily go awry (not familiar? Check out Marooned at “C”) . For my first post I want to share some knowledge and … Continue reading
