Posts tagged research
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9 Dec, '24
New publication, one more rule
This week we got an article published in New Forests on phenotyping radiata pine for resin. This is part of… -
7 Dec, '24
Sometimes one has to wait a long time
While tidying up my office I found the handout that accompanied my presentation in a breeding strategy meeting, held in… -
28 Nov, '24
What is in your "incomplete project" drawer?
I love learning, trying new ways (to me) of analysing data. Most of my learning is self-taught (autodidact would be… -
10 Oct, '24
9,000 km to the East
The end (of the semester) is nigh, involving the typical drama of assignments, grades, etc. On top of that, Duncan… -
31 May, '24
Last day of teaching
…for this semester. I was really trying to keep my head above water, but gulp, glug, I kept on taking… -
4 Apr, '24
Taylor & Francis made me do it
Today I received an email from Taylor & Francis letting me know that the final volume and pagination for one… -
3 Apr, '24
I do not work in that topic, except when I do
—We are planning a conference on changes to silviculture because of forest fires and climate change… Do you wanna come?… -
15 Mar, '24
Water stress, Dothistroma and remote sensing
༄> Long-term effects of water stress on hyperspectral remote sensing indicators in young radiata pine. -
15 Mar, '24
Experiments in glasshouse
༄> Blocking and re-arrangement of pots in greenhouse experiments: which approach is more effective? -
14 Mar, '24
Plant image analysis
༄> The pliman (plant image analysis) package is designed to analyze plant images, particularly for leaf and seed analysis. It offers… -
5 Mar, '24
Tuesday evening mid-life crisis
There was a time, roughly 30 years ago, when my whole career extended to an unknown, distant future. What should… -
3 Mar, '24
Basic course on population genetics
༄> Population genetics course by Bruce Weir and Jerome Goudet. I added it to the Internet Archive as well. -
3 Mar, '24
Improving genomic selection
༄> Would data augmentation improve the performance of within-family selection in forestry datasets? -
2 Mar, '24
Processing LiDAR
༄> Looking for alternatives to the lidR R package, for research purposes, plus some resources to start working on it. -
1 Mar, '24
Background on research and memex
༄> “As we may think” by Vannevar Bush (1945), the introduction of the Memex (local copy PDF) -
14 Feb, '24
New publication on peeler cores and slabwood for pulp use
Second collaboration with my pals at Universidad de Concepción: Juan Pedro Elissetche and Rosa María Alzamora Mallea. This time also… -
28 Jan, '24
Python not suitable platform for reproducible research
While [Active Papers] has achieved its mission of demonstrating that unifying computational reproducibility and provenance tracking is doable and useful,… -
27 Jan, '24
The collapse of Eucalyptus globulus or future-proofing nonsense
I cringe every time I hear the term “future proofing”. It can be read as doing something to avoid facing… -
30 Nov, '23
Why did my breeding values go down?
At first, the question may sound strange. You have been collecting data, running analyses using various acronyms (PBLUP, GBLUP, HBLUP,… -
25 Nov, '23
I am a sucker… for interesting problems
As a child and as a young person I moved a lot (schools, cities, countries). On one side it gave… -
22 Nov, '23
Big blob thesis OR chapter = publication?
I have a PhD student that should be submitting by approximately Christmas time, so the last week has been a… -
18 Nov, '23
Are we working with a model organism?
There are organisms that are highly popular in research, like fruit flies or mice in animals,Arabidopsis or poplars in plants.… -
15 Nov, '23
Essentially
A month ago I said “trees are much more than wood and one of our PhD students at the School… -
11 Nov, '23
At the core of your breeding programme
Surely you have been in this situation: meeting, there is coffee and biscuits at the back, some fruit if you’re… -
7 Nov, '23
In between plant and animal breeding 1: economic weights
Unless you live in paradise and you have a single objective trait—so your whole breeding objective is “more X”—you have… -
3 Nov, '23
Even worse than pedigree errors: selecting for the wrong thing
Imagine this: you have been patiently assessing trees for wood density (selection criterion) thinking that you’re improving wood stiffness (objective… -
2 Nov, '23
In between plant and animal breeding 1
Let’s start with the obvious: trees are plants and—unless you are breeding Ents—they do not walk around. Therefore, the first… -
31 Oct, '23
Do I have pedigree errors?
We just finished a genetic analysis, got breeding values for all our selection criteria, combined them with genetic parameters and… -
27 Oct, '23
All that glitters is not GxE interaction
We are going over the fifth version(*) of a manuscript with a Ph.D. student and colleagues, polishing some details before… -
21 Oct, '23
Early selection: how early is early enough? Part 4
In the previous post we were able to screen trees for wood properties at 2 years of age, separating normal… -
17 Oct, '23
Early selection: how early is early enough? Part 3
In my previous post we were able to detect extremes of wood density and stiffness with leaning trees at 8… -
14 Oct, '23
Early selection: how early is early enough? Part 2
In the previous post I mentioned that we wanted to screen trees for wood properties as early as possible, BUT… -
12 Oct, '23
Early selection: how early is early enough? Part 1
Different people write for different reasons. In my case, I write to remember how and why I did research with… -
10 Oct, '23
Eucalypts essential oils
These days I deal mostly with quantitative genetics and wood properties. However, trees are much more than wood and one… -
16 Apr, '23
Dropping predatory journals
Web of Science de-listed (stopped indexing) 82 journals because of essentially predatory practices, including some long-suspected publishers (like Hindawi with… -
1 Mar, '23
Reviewing a manuscript in two hours
Today I declined to review a manuscript for a journal because the English language in the title and abstract, which… -
26 Feb, '23
Entrevista: información de fondo
El jueves pasado, miércoles en Chile, grabamos una entrevista con Gabriel León. Espero haber dejado claro que era mi opinión… -
24 Apr, '19
Implementing a model as an R package
In our research group we often have people creating statistical models that end up in publications but, most of the… -
6 Feb, '18
Being data curious: the strange case of lamb consumption in NZ
There is a lot of talk about the skills needed for working in Statistics/Data Science, with the discussion often focusing… -
21 Oct, '17
Keeping track of research
If you search for data analysis workflows for research there are lots of blog posts on using R + databases… -
1 Nov, '15
Financiamiento de investigación
He pospuesto muchas veces este post, así es que va en su estado actual, incompleto, parcialmente digerido, como para empezar… -
29 Jul, '14
Comment on Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest
After writing a blog post about the paper “Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest” I… -
15 Dec, '13
Should I reject a manuscript because the analyses weren’t done using open source software?
“Should I reject a manuscript because the analyses weren’t done using open software?” I overheard a couple of young researchers… -
15 Dec, '13
If one were to invent scientific journals today
While taking a shower I was daydreaming about what would happen if one were to invent journals today, with a… -
15 Dec, '12
When R, or any other language, is not enough
This post is tangential to R, although R has a fair share of the issues I mention here, which include… -
19 Oct, '12
Publication incentives
(This post continues discussing issues I described back in January in Academic publication boycott) -
21 May, '12
My approach to presentations
I give a fair number of presentations per year, some to university students (in classes from 6 to 90 students),… -
16 Apr, '12
On the destruction of a trial of genetically modified pines
The media in New Zealand briefly covered the destruction of a trial with genetically modified pines (Pinus radiata D. Don,… -
30 Jan, '12
Academic publication boycott
The last few weeks there has been a number of researchers calling for, or supporting, a boycott against Elsevier; for… -
31 Jan, '06
Idea fishing, idea growing
This month I started working for the School of Forestry, University of Canterbury, where I am supposed to teach, supervise…