Sensory and Physiological Ecology of Plants
Decoding the acquisition and use of information by wild and cultivated plant species
If you can read Finnish, read this book. Otherwise at least look at the figures. Highly recommended to any one working with UV radiation or light. The pdf files are freely available on-line.
Ultravioletti- ja lasersäteily from STUK (Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland). Lasse Ylianttila is co-author of several chapters.
How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper
By Björn Gustavii
Cambridge University Press
First edition in 2002
Second edition in 2008
Honestly this is the only writing guide book until now that can make me miss the bus stop I should jump off at. Poor Matt recommended and lent it to me, but because I read it a lot on the way home, it is already not that new as he gave it to me. I still hold the book and hope somebody else can ask for this book from Matt after reading this post. Then I can deny it is my fault.
Continue reading “An easy recipe for writing a scientific paper”
I recently bought this book (a Christmas self-present), by Zuur et al., 2009, and am starting to go through it. If anyone is interested it is available in my office, to augment SenPEP’s already impressive R bibliography!
There is an associated website:
Mixed effects models and extensions in ecology with R
Talking this morning with Fang we thought that instead of me e-mailing her some links we were talking about, I would post them here.
Many books whose copyright has expired have been scanned and made available on the internet. One good place to search is The Internet Archive. If you are looking for Darwin’s books The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online is also a good source.
Here are some examples:
Francis Lloyd’s Physiology of Stomata from 1908.
Charles Darwin’s The Power of Movement in Plants from 1898.
Loftfield’s The Behavior of Stomata from 1921.
Francis Darwin and Edward H. Acton’s Practical Physiology of Plants from 1901.
Wilhelm Pfefer’s The physiology of plants: a treatise upon the metabolism and sources of energy in plants; volume 1 from 1900, volume 2 from 1903.
Julius Sachs Text-book of botany : morphological and physiological from 1882.
And the very nice colour illustrations I was telling Fang about are in Charles Darwin’s The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle published between 1838 and 1843.
Years ago, when I read it for the first time, I found this book extremely useful in improving my writing style, and in diagnosing problems in my own and other people’s drafts. I plan to read it again.
The approach is quite different to other writing style books. There are few hard and fast rules, it is mainly centred on how to make your ideas clear and write text that is easy to read. It is full of examples and good explanations of what works and what doesn’t.
There are two versions of the book: (links to amazon.co.uk)
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by JM Williams (also available in Helka)
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams, and Gregory G. Colomb
I read the first one, it is older and cheaper and does not include exercises. The second, newer version includes exercises and is meant to be used as a textbook.
This is a good book to read even if you write well. It will help you understand why your texts are clear and good, and surely it will make revising your drafts easier. It will also help you when you have to comment on other people’s drafts. If you need to improve your own writing and you want to understand the logic behind guidelines rather than just follow rules, reading this book is a must.
University of Helsinki