Sunday, January 13, 2008

Google Oikos?

In last Friday's morning when I thought that "finally this batch of data has been analysed", a new idea came up. As different situations of species-abundance matrices and environmental variable matrices in ecological communities correspond to different analyses, to choose a analysis combination is somewhat an art, and often difficult for a beginner, but still a program can give proper advices according to results of preparatory tests.

So I thought of Google Analytics, an analytic tool, a web service for website managers. Since much data can be organized and analyzed with it, and real-time results in the forms of tables and figures (some items change daily) can be sent to users in time, analyses on ecological community data will not be a tough task.

For beginners, this system can give advices and provide corresponding ways to do it, from ANOVA to its nonparametric counterpart, from regression to correlation, from principle component analysis or factor analysis to correspondence analysis or detrended correspondence analysis, from redundancy analysis to canonical correspondence analysis or detrended canonical correspondence analysis, or else multi-dimensional scaling, no matter users believe "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." like Python, or "There's more than one way to do it." like Perl, they can get results in the way they prefer, as long as they have basic knowledge and master basic skills in this field - even not, a good user interface and detailed help files in the system can provide much help.

Rights of former algorithm and program developers should be protected. Google can pay for it with its AdSense profit, and the amount can be determined by agreements, but the service should be free to users, while users' privacies should be protected too. Data access should be controlled by users, falling to different secrecy categories.

As success of facebook reveals a trend of social networking service, web services of analytics may also benefit from social networking. With users' consentience, the system can synthesize data attained with same or varied protocols, after standardization and comparison. Community data and ecosystem data, as well as the analytic results and revelations can be situated on Google Earth. This may leads to global discoveries and conclusions.

How do we call this Google service on ecology? I suggest "Google Oikos".

17:03 2008-1-13

I Love Ecology but I'm not Conservative

"Pass the point of no return, no backward glances: ... the bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn ..." (The Phantom of the Opera)

I Love Ecology, but I'm not Conservative

Robert E. Ricklefs reviewed William Cronon's perspective in the "Introduction" Chapter of "The Economy of Nature" (5e). Cronon challenged two cliche ideas:

1. Natural ecosystems have tendencies to restoration.
2. Nature would be purified if human was excluded.

Ricklefs' idea is that ecology's proceedings support Cronon, and I deeply agree with him. On the first theme, the largest tendency lies in the largest temporal scale: Evolution, although I don't know how the idea of restoration arose and maintained in the evolutionary progress. Movements in evolution showed more tendencies of acceleration, tendencies of complexity and tendencies of uncertainty, caused by lots of non-linear mechanisms and by-products, rather than tendencies of restoration.

On the second theme, I personally think that Homo Sapiens, if not other intelligent species, is what the arrow of time point to. Evolution enabled, or even "demanded" emergence of such an intelligent species. Given enough time, a living planet without an intelligent species ever is not an evolutionary stable system. As to the mechanism, researches on entropies in evolutionary dynamics may be illuminating.

It's said that many ecologists are conservative, one proof is their adoption of computer program and web services. I don't know whether this is because of conservation ecology's influences. Danger of biodiversity's loss and global environment's degeneration is pressing, but that doesn't mean it's human's original sin who brought the danger. We are tied to the chariot of evolution, and the better way is not trying to return to the past, but spend more on researches revealing rules behind. After all, as Hubbell said, there is not still a workable theory of biodiversity, to guide our ecological protection practice.

More attentions should be paid to theoretical researches in ecology, while in a large scale, an open attitude to potential change may be needed. The world may never restore a state as we thought, because "the heaven will never return, neither has it been." It may be more wise to be obedient to evolutionary rules, so I love ecology but I'm not conservative.

Harrison
2:03 2008-1-13

Monday, January 7, 2008

An Interview with Albatross Song

"Applied sciences can be done by everyone, but theoretical sciences summon geniuses." (Albatross)

An Interview with Albatross Song

It's both a pleasure and an honor to have an interview with Albatross Song. I remember most details of last visit to Albatross, and was fairly grateful for his reception: delicious food and comfortable lodge he provided, and especially, the illuminating answers he gave to me.

Albatross's research field now is ecological and economics modelling of nature conservation zone, and he is applying for a doctor candidate's position in Germany and United States. His interests continued from biology to ecology, from evolution to history, from economics to politics, from cyberspace sociology to complexity, but focused on the dynamics of organizations on each level, as well as driving forces behind, from an evolutionary viewpoint. It's really exciting. For example, why freedom? Why equality? Why love? Albatross and his colleagues are and will fix them in a mathematical and evolutionary way.

Due to my curiosity and zest, the interview lasted long and cost much time of Albatross. However, I still had many questions unasked. Nonetheless, the log I made in fragments is enlightening to me.

1. Search skills of books in foreign languages: Google Scholar for PDF; douban.com and Amazon for introductions and online selling; use the search engine of Chinese National Library's website. If you can't get access of the defined book (recently published, most likely) still, refer to the author's personal homepage. Maybe you can find a PDF there, but in a different name: that's why you can't find it with Google. The third and fourth way is really useful for me. I added the search box to my firefox browser's toolbar on my return, with the add-on "Add to Search Bar".

2. "Applied sciences can be done by everyone, but theoretical sciences summon geniuses."

3. Global media. Reuter's: real-time reporting; New York Times: the greatest tabloid in the world; AFP and German Spiegel: continental views.

4. Why did douban.com survive? What's its lesson?
a) Democracy and equality; b) Encouragement of accumulative reputation value.
A rectifying mechanism should be working to ensure b is working. Indirect rewards are better than direct ones; virtual coins are not good enough.

5. Quotes before a chapter or a speech: interesting, indicating and generalizing, probably poetical.

Other questions about software preferences, music recommendations, vocational planning and advices on studying mathematics, were not advanced in the interview in time. Really a pity. Hope I can consult Albatross again before long.

Harrison
2008-1-7

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Get over Great Firewall

Sadly, many valuable online resources are not available in China Mainland now, as well as many best web services. These covers wikipedia, flickr, feedburner, google cache, google blogger, wordpress, and youtube. Meanwhile, many best services, such as gmail, google reader, google analytics, google pages, can not accessed fluently. Fortunately, we have many skills to deal with the "wall" (Great Firewall in China). Foreign friends in China Mainland now may benefit from this item most.

1. Visit gmail or google reader with the protocal "https", not "http":
https://mail.google.com/mail/
https://www.google.com/reader/
You can add the very two links upper into your favorates.

2. To access wikipedia, use a mirror site (at least working now):
http://www.mirrorin.com/wiki/
To access wikipedia, use these mirror sites (at least working now):
http://www.inblogs.net/yourname
http://www.pkblogs.com/yourname
http://yourname.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/

3. Use the firefox add-on, "Access Flickr!", to see your pictures.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4286
"gladder add-on" to get over the wall.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2864
These sites were added into my list to be visited with this ladder automatically:
technorati.com
72.14.235.104
pravsworld.com
www.wikipedia.org
zh.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org

4. Or you can "start"-"run"-input "cmd"-enter the console mode in windows.
ping the url blocked, get the ip address, then add a line to the end of this file:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Your addition will be like this:
72.14.219.190 yuhc.blogspot.com
72.14.219.190 songalbatross.blogspot.com
72.14.219.190 abc.blogspot.com
72.232.101.41 www.wordpress.com
72.232.101.41 yourname.wordpress.com
203.212.189.253 www.wikipedia.org
203.212.189.253 en.wikipedia.org
203.212.189.253 zh.wikipedia.org

Editing it with notepad will just be ok. Direction of WINDOWS may be different.
This can make your access even with IE6.

5. At last, whatever URL blocked can be visited here:
http://www.orzin.com/

Ok, hope the situation be changed soon. However, maybe before that, we will need to change our strategies once for a while, to adapt to the new trends of GFW.

Harrison

Thursday, January 3, 2008

A Separation of Entries

"What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame."
(by Friedrich Nietzsche)

A Separation of Entries

Rereading entries released two years ago in my Chinese blog "海德成堡" (http://yuhc.yo2.cn), reminds me of how naive I was; reading an entry published in the internal newspaper "青青水杉" of IBCAS (Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences), informs me of my simplicity.

"Too simple, too young, sometimes naive." (Zemin Jiang, a former chairman of China, said to reporters)

If the feeling of shame is luckily a result of fast evolving, as pains going with gains, I'll accept it calmly; however, readers may feel me self-contradictive when reading entries of different posting date. Therefore, a separation may be needed. From this year, fresh thoughts will be posted in the citadel here in English, while summarizing items, which is more likely to endure as time goes by, will be published as an Chinese version (http://yuhc.yo2.cn).