Tasty » Adam Sampson's research bookmarks

The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge edit / delete

Answering a seemingly trivial question, with a lesson about research.

to amusements history research transport ... on 29 August 2023

Home | St Kilda Soay Sheep Project edit / delete

"The Soay Sheep Project has been running in its current form since 1985, with continuous collection of information about individuals including genetic parentage, morphological data and life-histories. This has enabled ground-breaking research into topics including population dynamics, evolution and genetics, ageing and parasite infection in a natural setting." It turns out Soay sheep are very cute and have terrifying population dynamics.

to biology research scotland sheep st-kilda statistics ... on 18 January 2019

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (Bill Spindler's Antarctica) edit / delete

Everything you could possibly want to know about the construction and maintenance of the South Pole research station since the 1950s. Some highly entertaining photos and stories here.

to antarctica cold engineering research science south-pole ... on 06 January 2018

The Journal of Open Source Software edit / delete

An open-access journal along the lines of TOMS (i.e. Netlib), but with a wider remit and a more formalised software engineering review process. Nice.

to open-source publication research software ... on 12 September 2017

graydon2 | "What next?" edit / delete

"After memory safety, what do you think is the next big step for compiled languages to take?" Some interesting suggestions.

to compiler language-design research ... on 12 September 2017

From the Trenches | Ideas | CBC Radio edit / delete

"PhD students spend years hunting for answers to the world's unanswered questions. They usually toil away in obscurity.... until now! Producers Tom Howell and Nicola Luksic shine a light on these emerging thinkers and their work." What a great idea for a radio programme!

to cbc phd radio research ... on 06 April 2017

Student Teacher Ratings: Males Are Brilliant, Females Are Bossy! edit / delete

"While many feel that students can reliably rate the quality of their teachers and that they should have a strong voice in things such as tenure, there are many studies that suggest that such ratings to evaluate teacher quality are NOT the way to go." A review of publications in this area over the last few years.

to rating research survey teaching ... on 06 April 2017

How to write a scientific abstract in six easy steps | Serendipity edit / delete

"The first sentence of an abstract should clearly introduce the topic of the paper so that readers can relate it to other work they are familiar with. However, an analysis of abstracts across a range of fields show that few follow this advice, nor do they take the opportunity to summarize previous work in their second sentence. A central issue is the lack of structure in standard advice on abstract writing, so most authors don’t realize the third sentence should point out the deficiencies of this existing research. To solve this problem, we describe a technique that structures the entire abstract around a set of six sentences, each of which has a specific role, so that by the end of the first four sentences you have introduced the idea fully. This structure then allows you to use the fifth sentence to elaborate a little on the research, explain how it works, and talk about the various ways that you have applied it, for example to teach generations of new graduate students how to write clearly. This technique is helpful because it clarifies your thinking and leads to a final sentence that summarizes why your research matters."

to abstract academia honours research writing ... on 11 October 2016

What's worked in computer science edit / delete

Looking back at Lampson's conclusions.

to cs history research risc security strategy ... on 28 February 2016

Static vs. dynamic languages: a literature review edit / delete

Metastudy of the effectiveness of static typing. Well worth reading. "The summary of the summary is that most studies find very small effects, if any. However, the studies probably don’t cover contexts you’re actually interested in"

to language-design research software-engineering type-systems ... on 28 February 2016