Guidelines: apply for positions, bring your CV.

Guidelines: Short essay on education, aspiration, andachievements.

Some notes on preparing oral presentations

Essay: education and reflection

• An essay: – improve and apply your writing skills

• An essay : 6000-8000 (including blanks) characters , 2-2.5 pages.

• A documentation of your writing process : maximum 1500 characters (including blanks).

The essay

• An essay : 6000-8000 (including blanks) characters , 2-2.5 pages.

• Have a clear organization/structure with headings.

An essay about what you've achieved during your studies. Relate to your knowledge and skills prior this program. Relate to your expectations on the program and also as now becoming a professional biologist.

Write quite freely. This is an exercise in writing. Which also will make you aware of your achievements as a student.

Documentation of writing process

• Prewriting– Brainstorming, Formulate ideas– Oral, visual, jogging, writing based

• Researching – get facts etc

• Drafting– Get your ideas out,– Don’t make it perfect

• Revising– Time to organize

• Proofreading– Check for sentence and spelling errors

1. How much time spent on each2. Comment on how each was done 3. A final comment on difficulties and experienced gained by an organized writing process

Revision• Organize the ideas– Add and delete ideas– Arrange the idea in order

• Add content and details– Are there any gaps?

• To the reader…• What’s you’re style?– Tone appropriate for reader

• Formal, casual, persuasive, frantic..– Sentences, the phrases

• Get rid of some sentences, avoid redundancy (typical problem/error)

Revising ideas

• List your ideas• Combine overlapping to specific ideas• Split too general ideas• Make an outline of the ideas• Do this at least three times

Revising content- a big job

• Prioritize content elements• Transitions between content – within paragraphs – between paragraphs– between sections

• Content development/how much detail– Where to add– What to add– Why it have to be there– Think of your audience, what’s relevant

Revising content- a big job

• Prioritize content elements– Within a paragraph or section

Thesis - claims

Main ideas

Specific support

Transition

Thesis - claims

Transition

Thesis - claims

Main ideas

Specific support

Transition

Thesis - claims

Main ideas

Specific support

Transition

Thesis - claims

Main ideas

Specific support

Transition

Specific support

Transition

Methods to account for spatial autocorrelation in the analysisof species distributional data: a review

Dormann et al 2007 Ecography

• Species distributional data such as species range maps (extent-of-occurrence), breeding bird surveys and biodiversity atlases are a common source for analyses of species-environment relationships. These, in turn, form the basis for conservation and management plans for endangered species, for calculating distributions under future climate and land-use scenarios and other forms of environmental risk assessment.

The analysis of spatial data is complicated by a phenomenon known as spatial autocorrelation. Spatial autocorrelation (SAC) occurs when the values of variables sampled at nearby locations are not independent from each other (Tobler 1970). The causes of spatial autocorrelation are manifold, but three factors are particularly common (Legendre and Fortin 1989, Legendre 1993, Legendre and Legendre 1998): 1) biological processes such as speciation, extinction, dispersal or species interactions are distance-related; 2) non-linear relationships between environment and species are modelled erroneously as linear; 3) the statistical model fails to account for an important environmental determinant that in itself is spatially structured and thus causes spatial structuring in the response (Besag 1974). The second and third points are not always referred to as spatial autocorrelation, but rather spatial dependency (Legendre et al. 2002). Since they also lead to autocorrelated residuals, these are equally problematic. A fourth source of spatial autocorrelation relates to spatial resolution, because coarser grains lead to a spatial smoothing of data. In all of these cases, SAC may confound the analysis of species distribution data.

Spatial autocorrelation may be seen as both an opportunity and a challenge for spatial analysis. It is an opportunity………….

Revising content- a big job

Transitions between content – within paragraphs – between paragraphs– between sections

• Signal your transition to the reader– By a word or phrase– Check that your actually making transitions

Revising content- a big job

• Prioritize content elements• Transitions between content – within paragraphs – between paragraphs– between sections

• Content development/how much detail– Where to add– What to add– Why it have to be there– Think of your audience, what’s relevant

Revising content- a big job

• More on: Content development/how much detail– Develop your ideas• Do not repeat with new words, add something or be

more specific

– A way to be more specific: Choose examples• Discuss example, explain why it’s important and useful

with this specific example

Types of content

• Analysis: – how and why things are important and whit it

means and suggest• Other ideas– Avoid plagiarism, using other ideas incorrectly• Do check when ideas are others and check both correct

litterature and not plagiarizing• Check by marking and go back to reference for each

mark– Common knowledge, defined of audience

Revise for style

• Your audience – Define it, by a heading and a list a few names of

persons you know– Go back and test the different sections and

sentences, always referring to the audience• Clarity: Is it coherent and cohesive (understandable and

connected)– Organze phrases, get rid of some – check for independent clause, use : or ; (clause=sats sw)– Get rid of redundancy, repaeting words, phrases, ideas

Revise for style

• Clarity: Is it coherent and cohesive (understandable and connected)– Wordiness:

– Prepositional phrase, don’t start with it» The voice of the man is ..» The man’s voice is…

– Too many adjectives in the same sentence» Find more descriptive verb to get rid of adjectives» Or decide to leave some out, no relevance

– Passive voice. Avoid whenever posssible» The plane was flown by three officers» Three officers flew the plane

Finally

• Don’t make it more complicated than it is!• Short sentences• One message per sentence (in general)• Conclude now and then to keep it together• Make a statement, a body and a conclusion, over and

over again.• Use words that you are familiar with (otherwise

study when the word is used by others)• SIMPLIFY, BE CLEAR

The rest

• Finish….• Prepare (talk) Comments…..• Final essay• Applying for positions– Plan – what subjects, where– Make contacts– Apply your CV (what courses, projects etc– Alternatives – add courses or experiencies– Be creative – it’s in your hands