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Mokele

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Everything posted by Mokele

  1. And to check against the right version. My very first paper, I submitted version A, then got reviews, which led to submitting version B, which the reviewers signed off on, after which I made a few more tweaks (version C) and sent that in to be formatted. When I got the proofs back, I was very, very confused until I realized they'd used Version A to make the proofs, not version C. That resulted in some very hasty emails, but everything got sorted out in the end. Yes. If it's been more than 6 months, you might want to send the editor a quick email (she's probably as frustrated with whichever reviewer is dragging their feet as you are). From what I know, time from submission to publication can range from 3 months to upwards of 9. I recently reviewed a paper that had been waiting for over 7 months (presumably, I was picked because another reviewer just never bothered to turn it in). A large part of the problem is "Crap rolls downhill". Everyone submits to Nature/Science, gets rejected, then submits to the top-tier journal of their field, gets rejected, then submits to the next-best, etc. By the end of the cycle, a paper may have consumed the time of *dozens* of reviewers, especially if it's not very good. I know faculty in my dept get asked to review a paper several times per week, and have to turn most of them down simply due to time issues.
  2. As others have already said, it's considered bad form or against the rules to submit to multiple places at once. Now, what happens when you click "Submit": 1) Paper arrives in email of the editor 2) Editor is busy, ignores it for 2 weeks 3) Editor picks peer reviewers who are qualified to review it. 4) Peer reviewers are too busy 5) Editor picks more qualified peer reviewers 6) Peer reviewers are too busy 7)After a month, the editor finally finds 2-3 reviewers, who may range from world experts to barely or unqualified grad students. 8) First reviewer turns in review after 2 months. 9) 2 months later, editor harasses reviewer 2 10) 1 more month, reviewer 2 turns in perfunctory review which misses the point entirely. 11) Editor notifies you of decision. If he rejects you, go back to #1 for a whole new journal and hope nobody scoops you. 12) Try to accomodate as many reviewer comments as possible, even if bad, in order to justifiably hold out on the *really* important points where they've missed the point, etc. 13) Turn in revised version which goes back to the editor, then the reviewers. 14) Reviewers accept changes just so they never have to see it again. 15) 1 month later, editor sends you "proofs", prepared and ready for publication. You have 48 hours to check every line for errors and typos (and you NEED to check every line), no excuses. 16) 3 months after that, your paper is published. So, yeah, don't expect to hear anything for a long time.
  3. But not in the same parts of the ocean as great whites - just like the land, different animals live in different parts of the ocean, and temperature is a big factor. There are warm-water sharks and cold-water sharks. Great-whites are cold-water sharks, while salt-water crocs will only swim in warm waters. No. As powerful as sharks are, their head is mostly just ossified cartilage, which could not sustain the damage a large saltwater crocodile could inflict. Of course, the whole thing is moot due to the stupidity of the entire program, but eh.
  4. Firstly, it's bullshit from the get-go - salties are inhabitants of the warm tropics, and will avoid cold water whenever possible, while great whites inhabit cold waters and only rarely venture beyond that. Second, the entire fight sequence is BS. Crocs do *not* travel long distances underwater (they swim at the surface), sharks generally are cautious around anything that seems "new" or "odd", crocs do not ram things underwater with their mouths open, animals retreat when wounded (or even if the fight looks avoidable), and the head-to-head ramming thing was assinine. That show is everything that is wrong with modern science "documentaries". I've seen bits of a few episodes (usually passed around the bio department to laugh at) and the errors are absolutely astounding - this is stuff they could have fixed by looking at Wikipedia. Jurassic Park was more scientifically informative than that show.
  5. You're right about density displacement - a large part of the sea level rise comes from the fact that antarctic ice is on land, not water. So it's not like a melting ice cube, but rather dropping a new ice cube into an already-full glass.
  6. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1382860 Apparently, it can be both erected and folded back voluntarily.
  7. Look, it's perfectly simple: You, as a human, have to do various things like breathe and piss (and, when hot, sweat). These result in your body losing water. ALL food, when digested, PRODUCES water, even if totally dry. A dry sugar cube gives your body water, and the amount is fixed, a product of chemistry. Total body water = water drunk + actual moisture in food + water gained from digesting food - water lost to essential processes. Now, your body *will* have to use some water to digest food (and a bit more to excrete protein by-products as urine), but the transaction will be a net positive. The actual key to surviving is to reduce water loss, either at the individual or evolutionary level. As an individual, you aren't going to be able to suddenly evolve the ability to excrete uric acid rather than urine, so you need other ways. As a human, your biggest losses of water are breathing and pissing. These are basic functions to meet metabolic demands. If you don't eat, your metabolism will automatically slow down, resulting is less breathing and less pissing, thereby reducing water loss. Now, the whole insect thing is bullshit. Fruit contains tremendous amounts of liquid, without the high protein levels of insects (which will cause more pissing). Hell, if you can kill an animal, eat its liver ASAP, raw - it's full of glycogen, a polymerized sugar which is very high in both calories and metabolic water. Summary: ALL food produces metabolic water. Humans, however, constantly leak out water, and the best way to conserve it is to reduce your metabolic rate via voluntary starvation. The survivalists were over-simplifying, either to convey the information simply or because they simply didn't understand the underlying physiology.
  8. It's not actually a bone; apparently it's called the styliform cartilage, an addition to the wrist which can be moved to erect the patagium. http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/10088/4761/1/VZ_rwt5.pdf
  9. Ok, this is just getting assinine. Zolar V, you have been *proven* wrong on this. Go back and read my prior posts, particularly about metabolic water. You GAIN water from digesting food. Quite a bit, too. The only reason humans can't sustain themselves on food alone is that we lose too much water from sweat and respiration - other animals, particularly desert species, are more than capable of life without any water beyond what's in their food.
  10. Even dried food. Feed someone a rasin (mostly sugar), and they'll get water from it due to the breakdown of sugars into CO2 (exhaled) and water (retained).
  11. Completely and utterly wrong - it's called metabolic water, and some organisms rely upon it exclusively. It's not from special types of food, and can be gleaned from any fat, carb, or protein.
  12. I actually disagree with Cap'n & CharonY - Unless someone has a *highly* distinctive style of writing, it's pretty hard to tell who's who from an anonymous review. A few of my profs have noted that "No matter who you think gave you a bad review, you're wrong. Attempting to start something over it is a guaranteed mistake."
  13. Yes, I know of one "peer-reviewed" journal from Australia which is the sole output of one crackpot for his "revised" taxonomies. The dead giveaway is that he's the editor, sole reviewer, and the only author ever published. However, as I mentioned in another thread, just because it's peer reviewed doesn't mean it's *right*, or even not embarrassingly wrong. Always read critically.
  14. No, it hasn't. Those are just wild stories fueled by movies and TV shows. As for your mind changing genetic expression, you do it every day. Right now, I'm about to get breakfast, and once I eat it, it will cause massive changes in gene regulation throughout my gut in order to produce the enzymes needed to break down my food. Whether I eat cereal or bacon (a conscious choice) will determine which enzymes are upregulated by how much. It sounds fancy, but it's really not.
  15. Basically, check the journal website. If it's a peer-reviewed journal, it'll say as much. If it doesn't have a website, it's probably not worth reading.
  16. Why would you *want* to curve a bullet, anyway? We've spent a lot of time inventing things like rifling and and high muzzle velocities to make the bullet's path *straighter*, thus more accurate and predictable. A mechanism to make a bullet curve on its path sounds like something from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy.
  17. Plus, do you want to track by journal (what % do they accept?), with high-end journals obviously being more picky, or do you want to actually track individual papers (not possible and considerably more difficult) as they "roll downhill", getting rejected over and over until they finally get an acceptance in some obscure rag.
  18. Sink like a stone - birds can only get away with it because their legs are uncoupled from their wings. Bats, for instance, cannot launch from the water (though apparently they can swim).
  19. Crocodiles. Worldwide distribution, but now there's only 23 species (give or take, depending on the study) with highly limited ecological diversity, compared to a rich paleontological history with everything from herbivores to massive oceanic predators to duck-like sifters.
  20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQxpS0bEA&feature=related It's a consequence of development, not an adaptation. Like many other things in our body, the heart is a twisted up tube, and just happens to twist in a certain way.
  21. Some things are instinct - learning your name and basic commands within a few training instances isn't. Some reptiles seem to have learning on par with some mammals, and crocodiles have developed a particularly nasty reputation as fast learners and innovative hunters (often of their keepers). Remember, "the brain" is a whole mess of stuff, parts for sensory processing, parts for motor coordination, parts for memory, etc. A bigger brain is meaningless to intelligence if it's because of a massively enhanced optic lobe.
  22. Don't just assume that synapse number equals intelligence, even in particular portions of the brain. Crocodiles and monitor lizards have brains smaller than a bean, and show some pretty cunning behaviors.
  23. So, you're only OK with taking time to understand things if that time was in the past? News flash: there's ALWAYS going to be some important topic that we don't yet know the answer too. Complaining that we're in the middle of studies won't get you anywhere. You don't have any actual science experience, do you? So, how do you know what factors to control for? Prior studies. And what happens when you design one of the 20-year-long studies you favor, then 10 years into it someone points out a factor that you couldn't possible have known about 10 years ago, that's only been discovered recently due to technological advances? This myth of a single, perfectly designed, perfectly controlled study is pretty much an illusion from crappy high-school biology textbooks. Too late on the rude part, and FYI, I'm a doctoral student at an Ivy League university (the best program in the world for my specialty).
  24. So, your idea is just "more"? And if "more" doesn't solve it? If we need to actually address dozens of confounding factors that are each only revealed by a subsequent study? Never mind that in order to carry out your plan, we need to triple or quadruple funding to the NSF and NIH. That means you need to vote Democrat, and be willing to pay the higher taxes that more scientific study requires. And what if one of your studies has a fatal flaw in it's design? You just put all your eggs in one basket, now have no good information, and just flushed $30,000,000 down the toilet (because yes, large scale medical studies cost that much). Frankly, this whole thread boils down to you having a temper tantrum like a whining, impatient toddler. Science takes time, and answering a question fully often takes multiple studies. Deal with it, or go live in a cave.
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