Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

James A Campbell

@rtbecard.bsky.social

1.6K followers 930 following 300 posts

(he/him) Former bird dude, current fish guy; currently based in Berlin. I'm into ecology, stats, bioacoustics, and artificial light. Currently working as part of this ETN: https://www.msca-ribes.eu/

www.msca-ribes.eu

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Mar 17

New #FishSci #AcousticTelemetry positioning paper: PMC-TOA positioning.

I used adaptive importance sampling & mixture distributions to position fish in environments prone to tag reflections. Mixed with post-processing, this gives great tracks!

doi.org/10.1111/2041...

A comparison of PMC-TOA & CTCRW and YAPS within a case study on smolt migrations. Here, YAPS consistently failed to fully converge and didn't return standard error values (i.e. no confidence ellipses).

A comparison of PMC-TOA and TDOA positioning applied to a smolt migration dataset. Positions are post processed with a Kalman filtered CTCRW model. Tag reflections resulted in incoherent tracks for TDOA positioning.

Satellite image of the study area where the case study data was collected and which the simulated study was based on. The fishpass and spillway are hard structures and likely culprits for causing the reflected tag transmissions detected across the receiver array.

1 3 13

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 2d

"A,B,C, D" would become "A;B;C, D"

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 2d

actually, you would have to use substitution groups... ",([A-Z])" and replace with ";\1". Regardless, I think you should be able to regex your way out of this. (if I recall... using substitution groups requires a perl regex expressions option?)

1 1

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 2d

you could just `gsub`, and replace the regex pattern ",[A-Z]" (a comma followed by an upper case letter) with a unique delimiter like ";". Then just do a normal strsplit on ";".

1 2

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 2d

Want to give a shout-out to Pollock et al. (2014) 👇.

I'm learning JSDMs right now, and this is an absolute gold-tier introductory article: Concise, inclusively written (wrt non-stats readers), and covers all the fundamental math. #rstats #sdm

What an absolute joy to read!

Understanding co‐occurrence by modelling species simultaneously with a Joint Species Distribution Model (JSDM)

A primary goal of ecology is to understand the fundamental processes underlying the geographic distributions of species. Two major strands of ecology – habitat modelling and community ecology – ap...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

1 3

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 4d

Apparently there have been no international agreements on catch rates since 2010, so Mackerel has been consistently over fished for quite a while already?

Very alarming that the good will of Dutch supermarkets and consumer awareness seems to be the only mechanisms that can lower catch rates :/

Makreel, Atlantische

Makrelen zijn migrerende roofvissen die in scholen zwemmen en enorme afstanden kunnen afleggen.

www.goodfish.nl

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 12d

I had these Amiga demo disks with 2 games on it, and you have to use "F1" or "F2" to select the game... I kept on pressing "F" then "1" and after like 5 minutes of this not working, I gave up and remember my frustration to this day.

Needless to say... I wasn't' hacking anything in those days 😅

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 12d

Shocking, but not surprising, that a German university's 2-factor authentication consists of a physically printed piece of paper.

1 2

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 12d

Is anyone old enough to remember how videogame piracy protection worked in like 1994? On my Amiga, to play "Indiana jones", I had to open the instruction manual to the stated page and read off a code.

This is basically how the "new" 2-factor authentication works at Freie University (Berlin) now...

1 1

Reposted by James A Campbell

⚡️🔩Felsenstein's Monster🔩⚡️ @josephwb.bsky.social · 14d

Congrats CD on your well-earned achievement!

(This is _actually_ on the "journal" website)

＼(〇_ｏ)／

Screenshot from journal website. There is a picture of of Count Dracula. Text:

BEST AUTHOR Of The Month

Professor Thomas Count Dracula, MD, PhD

Distinguished Professor of Haematology Head — Experimental, Historical & Sensory Haematology Vlad the Impaler University, Wolf’s Lane, Wooden Stakes Grove 666, Transylvania.

4 22 38

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 16d

Has anyone heard of "The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences"... reviewing job applications and this journal came up at least twice...

Is this a sketchy predatory journal? Or is it a legit remote sensing journal with a weirdly specific name?

#GIS

Cover image of the journal "The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences".

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 18d

For those who come after...

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 21d

Thanks. I had no idea... Dude is pretty slimy :/

Reposted by James A Campbell

Christos C. Ioannou @ccioannou.bsky.social · 26d

Elon Musk has damaged science in the U.S., and here he is this weekend undermining democracy in the U.K.

Yet @royalsociety.org still has him as a Fellow.

If "a Fellowship of the world's most eminent scientists" doesn't stand up to fascism, something is very, very wrong.

Farrukh @implausibleblog.bsky.social · 28d

Elon Musk, "There's got to be a change of government in Britain"

"We don't have another four years or whenever your next election is, it's too long, something has got to be done"

"There has got to be a dissolution of parliament and a new vote held"

1 15 39

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · 26d

I think the take home message here (for me at least) is that scientists, when grouped into elite clubs of "prestige and achievement", are just as shit as everyone else.

I wish we'd stop pretending these affiliations hold value.

1 2

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Sep 9

Just discovered the subreddit r/AdamDriverCats

Reposted by James A Campbell

Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · Sep 1

This should be the lead story in all major national news outlets. Public health people prefer to stay out of the limelight unless there is no other choice. I can’t overstate how bad things have to be for 9 former CDC directors to band together and pen an op-ed in the NYT warning the entire country.

Atul Gawande @agawande.bsky.social · Sep 1

9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American."

It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

Opinion | We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health

www.nytimes.com

2 1.1K 2.6K

Reposted by James A Campbell

Republicans Against Trumpism @rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social · Aug 29

RFK Jr: We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.

1.2K 540 1.9K

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Aug 25

My google newsfeed was already like 90% grocery store tabloids... But now it's AI boosted grocery store tabloid trash 😮‍💨

Reposted by James A Campbell

Timmons Roberts @timmonsroberts.bsky.social · Aug 25

My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up.

NYT just covered it. 1/n

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...

Law Firm Pressures Brown University to Erase Research on Anti-Wind Groups

www.nytimes.com

20 2.2K 4.4K

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Aug 24

Didn't read the article... But this plot seems to validate my negative opinion of Elsevier.

*Note the sample sizes are quite small here

Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · Aug 24

Huge variability documented in how publishers respond when informed about a problematic body of work by a research group. www.jclinepi.com/article/S089...
#publishers #retractions

Bar chart showing % of articles retracted, with expression of concern, or no action from different publishers. 100% no action from Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer; 100% retraction from Taylor and Francis.

Reposted by James A Campbell

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Aug 24

New York Times story with profiles of researchers whose grants were terminated.

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

Opinion | America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.

www.nytimes.com

6 320 480

Reposted by James A Campbell

Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · Aug 23

Great analysis of Macedo and Lee's "In Covid's Wake," revealing it to be cherry-picked storytelling that is often disconnected from evidence. Their institutional affiliation doesn’t make any of their arguments more true 🎁

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

COVID Revisionism Has Gone Too Far

If the center and left succumb to the view that “nothing worked,” no one will remain to defend sensible public-health measures the next time a pandemic comes around.

www.theatlantic.com

2 11 30

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Aug 23

It is a bit strange that if u recommend reject, you no longer participate in the review. Seems like it biases positive takes.

Just checked, it is up to the editors discretion to find a new reviewer. Regardless, recommending reject removes u from the interactive review process.

1 1

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Aug 23

Interesting, no idea frontiers did this. I have a pretty negative impression from frontiers, since they invited me to be an editor for "frontiers in remote sensing", despite having almost no qualifications for such a role.

@ecologistgreen.bsky.social , do u have comments on this?

1 1

James A Campbell @rtbecard.bsky.social · Aug 23

Theres a new multi-disciplinary journal launching: stacks.

It aims for more streamlined, transparent and generally better peer review.

You can register to be a reviewer below 👇

Can we give this a shot and support ppl trying to improve our awful publishing systems?

#academiclife #fishsci #fishsky

Our Unique Peer Review | Stacks Journal

Learn and grow as a researcher, advance your reputation, and contribute to your field through our unique collaborative peer review.

stacksjournal.org

2 2 7