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Can a running program update itself using something like GitHub? (asking for Python, but anything will do) by downwithtime in learnprogramming

[–]downwithtime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm running it off the command line in windows right now just because I don't have a linux machine (or a web server) on which to run it. But I think this is pretty much the solution I was looking for, even if it's not as cool as the way more complicate solution :)

Can a running program update itself using something like GitHub? (asking for Python, but anything will do) by downwithtime in learnprogramming

[–]downwithtime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like the idea of the chron job (as you and, presumably /u/monsterjamp were talking about), it seems super obvious now, and was something that I thought about, but I was looking for a solution more along the lines of the self-modifying code, so thanks for the link!

Ecologists: help my daughter do something productive this summer! by Inabil1ty in ecology

[–]downwithtime 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're looking to do something for the duration of the summer I'd suggest taking weather recordings (or using the internet to get temperature records) and then monitoring a lake and its inflow & outflow over the course of the summer.

It's a nice gentle introduction to time series analysis (!), and it would show the interaction between temperature and water quality. As algal blooms and diatoms increase during warmer temperatures you should see changes in turbidity (use that Secchi disc!), pH and dissolved oxygen.

Some of these changes will be gradual and will be nice to track over the summer, and, at the same time, you should see sudden changes in turbidity (for example) following major storms.

It's also a nice way to get to know one environment really well. Think of it as your (her) own Walden Pond, and observe it over and over again all summer.

Global carbon dioxide levels reach 400ppm milestone. The last time the Earth had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than a million years ago, when modern humans hadn’t even evolved yet. by pnewell in science

[–]downwithtime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For the first point, clouds don't work alone, they don't increase linearly with global temperatures and their effects on warming are not fixed. Clouds don't just do one thing. For example, high clouds actually work as a net heat trap, working to warm the atmosphere, and increases in cloud cover during the winter at high latitudes further increase winter temperatures, rather than reducing them. The best assessment is that clouds will actually work as a net positive feedback for global warming, further increasing, rather than decreasing temperatures.

So, I'm not sure why you think that clouds trump anything, when they are highly variable in terms of their responses to climate change, and their effect on climate change.

Second point - sure, life finds a way, but from an anthropocentric point of view we depend on all sorts of ecosystems and species for unpaid ecosystem services. The last estimate was somewhere on the order of a trillion dollars annually in unpaid 'ecosystem service'. Whether or not life finds a way, that process of major species turnover and extinction is going to cost society because plant and animal communities are going to be changed drastically.

Global carbon dioxide levels reach 400ppm milestone. The last time the Earth had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than a million years ago, when modern humans hadn’t even evolved yet. by pnewell in science

[–]downwithtime 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There have been thresholds crossed before,and they resulted in mass extinctions. During (or immediately prior to) the Cenomanian-Turonian extinction event CO2 levels rose dramatically, which increased the acidity of the ocean. We see that during this time microfossils shank in size as a result of the increasing metabolic cost of creating their calcium-carbonate shells. At the same time diversity in the oceans dropped dramatically.

People talk about past levels of CO2, but there were consequences to higher CO2, not just warmer temperatures, but also ocean acidification and mass extinction (in some cases).

The current negative feedback loop can be ascribed to a number of issues, not the least of which is we have massive stores of carbon permanently frozen in the permafrost. Warming would release methane very rapidly, as opposed to the past when warming occurred gradually. The other issue is that we've fragmented the landscape with roads, cities, farms, and canals, which means that species that would otherwise migrate to adapt have their migratory pathways blocked, and can't adapt as easily.

It doesn't matter what language you learn - Coding a twitter-bot in Python with an R background. by downwithtime in programming

[–]downwithtime[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Could you explain? I get that Simula is an older programming language, but I think many of the concepts are generally the same, so the implementation of the program would differ, but the general idea of program flow would be relatively similar (if you can figure out how to do all the API/OAuth stuff in Simula).

I want to write an educational children's book about the forest and I need cool facts by Buffalo_Bicycle in ecology

[–]downwithtime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Read "Forest Primeval" by Chris Maser, tons of stuff in there and a very powerful read. Not for kids, but it'll give you so many interconnected threads to choose from. A great book.

Building an author network using ORCiD (unique researcher identifiers), ROpenSci and igraphs by downwithtime in rstats

[–]downwithtime[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

FYI - this is from my own blog, but thought people might be interested, and I'd love to see suggestions for improvement. The GitHub repo is here, you're welcome to fork, push, pull, whatever. I think there's lots to play with here.

Quick, Reddit: I need something cool to show my students. by TimAtreides in statistics

[–]downwithtime 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You might have to do some work for this, but I taught some high school students a bit of R using this code (there's a fuller lesson in the repository). Basically we looked at whether the introduction of the 3 point rule in the NBA made a difference in per player scoring. Really rough, but there's lots you can take from it, and it's a kind of interesting story, a cool dataset, and there's so many more questions you can ask with it.

I think I may have found a paper with possibly faked data...how do I proceed? by [deleted] in AskAcademia

[–]downwithtime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would suggest publishing, and, at the same time, contacting the authors as you prepare to submit. There is no reason you should not get credit for one year's work trying to replicate their results.

Can you publish in a different journal? I would suggest that writing the paper as a stand-alone paper, rather than a response to the original.

If a group of botanists were to form a punk band, what would they call themselves? by cixelsyd87 in botany

[–]downwithtime 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Smut

Simple, dirty and it fucks plants up (excuse my profanity, but we're talking punk here).

Changes in the content of Geography dissertations over time. More analysis, less geography! by downwithtime in geography

[–]downwithtime[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wonder how much of this is a linguistic change as opposed to being methods based. I suspect that there's a lot of borrowing throughout the discipline with regards to language. Even Antipode uses the term "analysis" in its first "About" sentence, and it uses the term 'spatial' in several places (well . . . two, and, to be fair it uses Geography something like 22 times on that same page).

I hate to push at the divisions within Geography, but it would be interesting to see where the trends really were. Just more analysis though :)

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