Catherine Sheard

Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable

I do enjoy hearing how Nobel winners find out they won, because it's frequently extremely endearing.

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

I totally get it -- it's a truly, stupidly awful system.

FOR SURE.

(It's on the list of things GEB is trying to get Wiley to change, fwiw.)

Ah, gotcha. I haven't bothered in years trying to get a GEB EA to invite people in the way/order/quantity that I wanted -- I always just invited them myself. 😅

Again, moot point, but in the new system I use the notes section for my list. (In defense of REX, I genuinely like the notes section.)

I suppose a moot point since you've resigned from GEB, but fwiw -- most of my invitations are marked as "declined" (probably the same proportion as actively declined in the old version?), and I can invite as many reviewers as I want (and in whatever order I want). 🤷‍♀️

At the moment authors can only suggest reviewers via the cover letter (and please do!).

AFAIK, there is indeed no way for reviewers to suggest alternates when declining (besides emailing the handling editor, I guess)

It is SO BAD. We're trying so hard at GEB to fix things, but holy cannoli y'all.

(This is the thing I was ranting about earlier today.)

For realz. Why the hell does REX think that papers where a revision has been requested belongs in the same category as "papers where 1, but not 2, reviewers have agreed". Why. WHY.

Also, REX tells you when *one* reviewer has submitted their review, but not when *all* reviewers have submitted their reviews. I hate it.

Well. I just learned that Wiley's new REX system allows you to invite people to review their own papers. How did I learn that? I bet you can guess...

(and before you @ me, I'm handling like 10 papers at the moment, and most with author lists >20)

China bolsters controversial claim to Pacific languages with new museum Nationalist narrative holds that Austronesian language and culture originated in China, not Taiwan

Well, this is fascinating

www.science.org/content/arti...

🎯

This is true, and I've been on that flight! The train is usually cheaper, though, especially if booked >1 month in advance

The Dess waterfall

The River Dee with the sun shining.

Forest in foreground, hills in background.

The Falls of Feugh (impressive rapids)

Day 3. Decent elevation and some nice waterfalls. I was badly under-caffeinated, but at least the weather held.

Farmland and some trees

a path strewn with yellow leaves, through a birch forest

the River Dee, with some fall colour in the yellow bracken

Day 2 (today) was much colder and windier, but at least it stayed dry!

Two Highland cows

A view from a trail with (smol) mountains in the distance

A selfie of Catherine, wearing a hat

Bright sunny farm field with rolling hills in the background

My adventure this month is to walk from my flat to the nearest national park (in stages). Day 1, last weekend, was very sunny!

Article reads: Woman named as Archbishop of Canterbury in historic first The 63-year-old archbishop-designate is married to Eamonn Mullally, with whom she has two children. Originally from Woking in Surrey, she was the UK's chief nursing officer from 1999 to 2004.

This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Windy up there (values are gusts in metric)

Semi-related fun fact: I never actually took a biology class in high school (oops), and I managed to get out of taking the 'introduction to ecology and evolutionary biology' undergrad class.

This possibly explains my chaotic approach to science.

I'm now trying to write up an actual scientific manuscript that uses actual Fourier analysis, and I kind of want to scream.

Why is the one undergrad math class I hated the one that I'm actually using in my professional life. (NB: I never actually took multivariate calc / linear algebra, whoops.)

To fulfill my final requirement for a Bachelors of Science in mathematics, I took a seminar on representation theory (of which I understood maybe 10%) and then wrote up a paper on Fourier analysis (of which I understood maybe 20%).

Arizona Jeans Co, purchased at JCPenney for me by my mother in 2001. 😂

(Lest anyone be concerned that the temporal math doesn't quite math, I was a *very* tall child.)

This morning I put on a shirt, realised it was no longer in good enough condition to wear to work...and then realised that this shirt is older than at least one of my grad students.

The march of time is horrifying.

Webpage on the hidden curriculum of applying to ecology and evolution grad programs in the US (a lot of the info applies to other fields too, but perhaps less well): applyingtoeeb.info

#AcademicSky 🧪

A screenshot of a 9-hour train journey from Aberdeen to Bristol. The price is 314 GBP. This is, uh, not a normal price.

I'm sorry, that price is what now? (Looking 9 weeks in advance -- not, like, tomorrow.)

Applications for the Royal Commission of 1851 fellowships are now open. Virtually any UK-based STEM PI would be delighted to host an application (myself included, if you like trait macroevolution), so get in contact with potential hosts!

royalcommission1851.org/fellowships/...

Senior Research Associate in Mammal Vertebral Evolution at University of Bristol An opportunity for an academic position as a Senior Research Associate in Mammal Vertebral Evolution is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.

Y'all palaeo folks on the postdoc market! Go apply for this postdoc on mammal vertebral evolution at the University of Bristol, it looks 🔥🔥🔥

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOW940/s...

A Neolithic rock engraving apparently showing a Great Auk being captured We evaluate whether a Neolithic engraved rock image at the Alta archaeological site in Finnmark, Norway – of a bird being held by a person – represents a Great Auk Pinguinus impennis. There are sever...

Birds! In rock art!

(The Alta Helleristningene is one of the coolest places I've been, 10/10 highly recommend if you ever find yourself in that part of the world. Also, go hike Sautso while you're at it.)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

One of my favourite ongoing history bits is the 800 years of attempts and failures to establish regular transport links between Oxford and Cambridge. it’s hilarious