Tag Archives: PLoS ONE

Critically endangered: the Galapagos mangrove finch (Camarhynchus heliobates), the rarest of Darwin’s finches

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

By definition, endangered species consist of low numbers of individuals, which also affects the probability of being able to take good images or recordings of the species, or to find such materials if they already exist. Wikimedia Commons has the … Continue reading →

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Walking with bent knees and hips

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day puts the famous Laetoli footprints (C) into the perspective of a modern human walking either normally (A) or with bent knees and hips (B).   Fig. 1 of the article Laetoli Footprints Preserve Earliest Direct Evidence of … Continue reading →

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Biomass in the eyes of children

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day is a composite figure: Part A illustrates how children perceive the relative contributions of some eukaryotic taxa to the overall biomass on our planet, part B puts this into a scientific perspective. The size of … Continue reading →

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Animal skeletons meet Open Access

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today, I played around with CatScan, trying to identify Open Access files in certain subject categories on Wikimedia Commons. One of these was the intersection between Animal skeletons and Open access (publishing), which gave the following results: Dinosaur skulls File:Pachycephalosaurus skull.png (Media from PLoS … Continue reading →

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Open Access featured twice on English Wikipedia homepage today

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

On the English Wikipedia, the entry about the Research Works Act that aims to roll back the NIH’s Public Access Policy is currently featured on the Main page under “Did you know” (bottom left in this screenshot): … that the Research Works Act proposed … Continue reading →

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Miniature open-access frogs taking over?

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day really is a file of the day, i.e. of January 12, 2012: published as part of the taxonomic description of a new species yesterday, it is currently featured on the main pages of the Thai, Bulgarian, English and German Wikipedias. Why? It depicts … Continue reading →

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The lab notebook is attached

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Missing data is a big obstacle in the way towards making science more transparent and efficient, and Open Notebook Science attempts to overcome this barrier by posting any research-related data and notes as they arise, such that – as Jean-Claude Bradley put … Continue reading →

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Preparing for its 78th birthday, a species of fly begins to thrive on Wikimedia projects

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Apocephalus borealis is a species of small parasitoid fly that had long been known to science - in fact, the original paper from 1924 by Charles T Brues is in the Public Domain already – but had not been covered by any Wikimedia project before … Continue reading →

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Sounds from the deep sea

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Daniel Mietchen

Today’s Open Access File of the Day brings to you the sound of a hydrothermal vent from the bottom of the sea, recorded as shown in the image. Turn on the bass and then click through to the sound. Fig. 2b and … Continue reading →

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Wanted: A skin doctor for Tyrannosaurus

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Daniel Mietchen

Little do we know about the skin of dinosaurs, but progress occurs nonetheless. I still remember the touch of the dinosaur skin model in the Natural History Museum in London, and catching an infection was not amongst the thoughts I think … Continue reading →

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