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It started when two canine scientists decide to become pen pals in an era of digital media...

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Do you believe in dog? 2016

16 April 2013

Let's Tweet Up!

Let's Tweet Up!

Do You Believe in Dog? Tweeting @realscientists -- in a shell
Mia!
I am loving our time tweeting at @realscientists

What a great idea to showcase, “scientists, science communicators, writers and artists to talk about their lives and their work.”

Apparently, people who engage in the sciences are "real people" too.... ;)

Our @realscientists Introductory Post, STOP. PUPPY TIME, kind of had me in stitches. Yes, I did/do like MC Hammer, and apparently he's even big on Twitter.

Live Tweetup/Q&A tomorrow!!
Very much looking forward to our Live Tweetup/Q&A session tomorrow. Anyone, anywhere can join to talk science, dogs, cognition, welfare etc.

Follow using #realsci

Given our time zone difference, here's the date/time: 

NYC Date: Wednesday, April 17
Time: 8:30 PM

MELBOURNE Date: Thursday, April 18
Time: 10:30 AM 

 (convert to other time zones here)

More than just dogs...
We've only been @realscientists for 3 days and we've hit a number of expected (and unexpected) topics:

 Dogs using mirrors, play, cancer, poo, animal welfare, bunnies, drop box, dingoes and tool use, Working moms are not superwomen, personality and temperament of dogs (and working dogs), #dogsciencepuns, PhD, research, welfare of PhD researchers, veterinarians, careers in behavior, Australian Working Dog Survey, TIM TAMS!!, 

See you tomorrow!!

Julie 
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Twitter

12 April 2013

Real Scientists Tweet

Real Scientists Tweet

Hi Julie,

I hope you have an awesome time at Science Online Teen tomorrow! I hope you get asked lots of questions about your presentation, Dogs: Science in Your Living Room. It's so true that dogs make for a sensational gateway to scientific enquiry - and they're right there, in front of us!


If anyone happens to ask you "What's it like being a scientific canine behavioural researcher?", be sure to tell them to tune in to the @realscientists Twitter project from Sunday (or Saturday evening, USA time). 

 They can follow you and I for a whole week as we tweet from the @realscientists account, giving insight into our every day activities as canine scientists. 

Will our tweets sound like woofs? (source)
If anyone out there isn't already on Twitter and/or hasn't been following @realscientists, you really should! It's a super fun insight into the world of science, science communication, writers, clinicians and more. Each week features a different flavour of scientific endeavour and I like to think we'll be bringing the real lab science into the spotlight! 

 So far, I've seen wild jaguars while canoeing down a river in the Amazon with Phil Torres; learned about mosquito-borne disease management from Cameron Webb and whisked along for the ride of a week in the life of futurist, with Kristin Alford. 
Hypnotised by the eyes (source)
It's so much fun and really important, because some people genuinely believe that scientists look like this and that conducting science looks like this. 

 Scary stuff! 

 I'm hoping that while we might not be in particularly exotic locations, we can make up for that with our enthusiasm for all things dog and science. Plus, between the two of us, being here in Australia and there New York, we're always here. 

 The-blog-that-never-sleeps can now be be the scientists-who-always-tweet!

 If anyone out there wants to know how to find out how we spend our week, you can:

(source)
Here's hoping we can drum up some more interesting scientific questions about dogs during the week!

See you in the twittersphere,

Mia

Further reading:
Real Scientists: blog / @realscientists: twitter

Brossard D. & Scheufele D.A. (2012). Social science. Science, new media, and the public., Science (New York, N.Y.), 339 (6115) 40-41. PMID:

Wilcox C.  (2013) Guest Editorial: It's Time To e-Volve: Taking Responsibility for Science Communication in a Digital Age, The Biological Bulletin, 222 (2) 85-87. PMID: 

© 2013 Mia Cobb

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Twitter

4 April 2013

Ask scientific questions about dogs

Ask scientific questions about dogs

Source

Hi Mia!

Glad to hear your meta-analysis pool is filled with data, or better said, 5,000+ salivary cortisol samples, translating to roughly 1.3 gallons of canine saliva. Never did I think I would see a sentence written about that much saliva, from dogs or any other species. 

It's amazing what we can learn just from studying dog spit. Somebody, somewhere had to think to themselves, "Hey! Why don't we examine hormone levels in spit?" And then, they had to create a system for doing so (and now, this field of research has gone so far as to have Spit Camp, where people learn how to collect saliva samples). This all kind of leads into what I've recently been thinking about... 

 Science = Questioning
One of the challenges of science is to question what we already think to be true, to challenge what is possible.

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto recently reminded me of this when I was watching his 2012 TED talk. He begins:
TED Talk Science is for everyone

“Perception is grander than our experience. The brain takes meaningless information and makes meaning out of it. Which means, we never see what’s there, we never see information, we only ever see what was useful to see in the past.

Perception underpins everything, our hopes, our dreams. If perception is grounded in our history it means we are only ever responding to what we’ve done before. But that creates a tremendous problem. Because how can we ever see differently?

All new perceptions begin the same way. They begin with a question.”

New perceptions begin with a question.

Questioning is especially relevant in The Age of Dog where so many of us wake up to a dog’s nose pressed into our face, and we spend countless hours telling tales about the dogs in our lives. And outside of our own experiences, we are bombarded by advertisements telling us, “This is who dogs are” followed by, “And this is what they want, so buy THIS product.”

As applied researchers, we ask scientific questions about our perceptions of dogs and the stories we tell about them. To name a few possible questions: Are we able to visually recognize a dog’s dominant breed? What is the welfare of working dogs? What are the mechanics behind dogs drinking water? What does the “guilty look” mean for dogs? Do dogs have paw preferences and if so, what might that mean? Do all dogs share the same rates of behavioral development?

By asking questions, we are trying to unearth dog perspectives and dog storylines.


Video about ScienceOnline Teen 2013
ScienceOnline Teen!
Which is why I am incredibly excited to participate in ScienceOnline Teen on April 13th (connection coming soon).

Beau Lotto reminds us that young people, in particular, are pretty awesome at asking questions, and significant questions at that.

ScienceOnline Teen is an “unconference conference”, where teens and people involved in science and scientific inquiry coming together “to build connections between students & teachers and the online scientific community and discuss how new media is changing the world of science.”

My hope is to remind teens that we can ask scientific questions not just about atoms and cancer cells but also about the species we interact with on a daily basis.

My short presentation at ScienceOnline Teen is Dogs: Science in Your Living Room. Sure, everyone blogs, tweets and posts pictures of cute dogs, but can our interest in dogs be part of an actual learning experience? The session discusses how a well-known and often beloved companion species, the domestic dog, can help everyone learn about science and scientific principles.

Your post last week on meta-analysis of salivary cortisol research is a prime example of the interplay between learning about dogs and learning about experimental design and data collection.

I’m also participating in the Women in Science Panel by Maia Winstock with Hilda Bastian, Krystal D’Costa, Cynthia Duggan, Delaram Kahrobaei, Gabrielle Rabinowitz, and Jayne Raper (Bios found here). Based on my early titrating challenges and fear of fire (and the Bunsen burner), it's cool to see how much can changed.

Do you have a scientific question about dogs?
Which leads to my last thought: people of any age can ask scientific questions. So, people out there in Internet Land. What scientific questions about dogs do you have?

Bye for now!

Julie 

More reading
Cobb, M. 2013. Thinking laterality: steps, jumps and wonder-whorls. DYBID
Cobb, M. 2013. The heat(map) is on... The colours of canine welfare. DYBID
Cobb, M. 2013. Throw another dog in the (data) pool. DYBID
Hecht, J. 2012. . Dog Spies
Hecht, J. 2012. What kinds of dogs are troubled by fireworks & what to do about it. DYBID
McConnell, P. 2009. Podcast report; Breed ban info; MARS Wisdom Panel. The Other End of the Leash

© 2013 Julie Hecht
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Spit Camp

28 March 2013

Throw another dog in the (data) pool

Throw another dog in the (data) pool

Hello Julie,

 My, oh my! What an exciting time it was last week, witnessing Dog Spies' migration to the Scientific American Blog Network. 

Such a great day for dogs, for science and for YOU! 


 Yah! for this recognition of your fabulous writing achievements, communicating the field of canine science to a broader audience. WELL DONE!

As for your question about writing and how I do it, I have to admit I'm 'between systems' currently. By this, I mean that I sometimes map out ideas and plan my writing on paper before hitting the laptop; other times I just let rip straight onto the keyboard. 
I don't know if I'll ever migrate to a completely paperless system, but I feel that I'm moving in that direction. I still take most of my notes in meetings on paper, which is ridiculous as my handwriting is barely legible, even to me!
Thanks also for the link to that piece by Clive Wynne about academic writing - I really enjoyed reading it.

META-ANALYSIS

 You said it. I'm neck-deep in meta-analysis goodness right now and I'd love to tell you more about it. 

The meta-analysis data set I'm currently involved in compiling is about canine salivary cortisol (that just means cortisol found in dog spit). Cortisol is a hormone (more detail here) regularly used in research concerning animal stress and welfare. I've been interested in canine salivary cortisol  for a while now. 

That's partly because I collected a lot of it (dog spit, that is) from dogs living in home environments and working dog kennels as part of my PhD research; and partly because its really interesting! But my data alone is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. While it's really valuable information (of course it's valuable, it's part of my PhD!), it only offers insight into around 75 dogs from one population of purpose-bred dogs in one geographic area during one two-year period. How do the results of these dogs in my study compare to 'normal' dogs?

Well, you see - that's the thing. What is the normal range for salivary cortisol in dogs?
We don't really know. 

 What is it?
Meta-analysis is a way of evaluating and interpreting the results from research about a particular topic. It adds together the data from different studies, then looks at the compiled data pool to see what patterns and relationships might emerge in the larger body of available information created by the many research projects.
Throw another dog in the (data) pool! (source)

Why use it?
The patterns and groups we might look at within a meta-analysis of salivary cortisol (often used as an indicator of stress/welfare in dog research) are things like: 
  • Effects of different environments (do all the results from dogs housed in 'unfamiliar kennel environments' or 'familiar home environments' clump together at different or similar points within the range of values as a whole?); 
  • Effects of breed/age (is the range for labradors the same as that for german shepherds? Are all the young dogs in the same place as the old dogs?); 
  • Methodological aspects (such as what collection media was used: cotton swabs / synthetic rope / swabs with a saliva stimulant, etc. - does this effect where the cortisol results lie within the whole range?) 
All this information (and much more!) can be investigated and the information will help to provide further context for the existing studies, while also informing the design and interpretation of future studies.
Nancy Dreschel
Can you really do that?
Yep, you really can! Meta-analysis is a method used frequently in human health research and there are plenty of resources to refer to (check out 'further reading' section below). Of course, there are a few fancy statistical things you need to take into account and be aware of, to avoid tricksy sources of bias and subjectivity. 

Fortunately, my collaborator extraordinaire, Dr Nancy Dreschel, from The Pennsylvania State University, has set us up to work closely with an extensively experienced biostatistician, so we should be safe from any meta-analytic traps for young players.  

 Nancy and I decided to undertake this project together after meeting at last year's Canine Science Forum. It really is the best conference ever.

 You meet the greatest people there, no?!  

As I'm sure you already know, Nancy has done some very important research in the area of canine salivary cortisol, which I'll definitely write about in another post, another time (because cortisol in dog spit is SO worthy of being its own topic for discussion). She was recently chosen to receive the 2012 Excellence in Academic Advising Award from Penn State, and I'm so pleased to be working with her on this project. 
This dog could probably provide 5L of spit without trying (source)
So far we've had great support from our fellow researchers, who have shared the raw data from over 30 studies with us. This has allowed us to enter data that represents over 5,000 separate cortisol sample results. As Nancy pointed out to me in a recent conversation, that represents around 5L (or 1.3 US gallons) of canine saliva. Juicy! 

Want to see one?
Well lucky for you - here are three meta-analysis papers I prepared* earlier:
*These are not my research. By 'prepared', I meant 'hyperlinked'.

So there you have it. I'm excited about dogs and I'm excited about throwing their data into the compiled data pool. I imagine it will look something like this when we're finished compiling:
Data "pooled". Snorrrt. Get it? Pooled? Ha!

When I posted on Facebook about being excited about dogs and pools, you might have expected I'd talk about gene pools. Which is funny, because I wasn't intending to. Except that this week a study opened to collect data and the researchers involved in it ARE interested in gene pools, amongst other things - specifically the breeding, health, training and performance success of working farm dogs in Australia. 
The Farm Dog Project has launched (source)
Researchers at the University of Sydney, including Dr Joanathan Early, are seeking information via an online survey from working farm dog handlers about their dogs. Jono explained to me that "the information from this initial online survey will be used to focus the next stages of the Farm Dog Project's research into the specific areas that farmers identify as central to realizing the potential in farm dogs." 

If you have a working farm dog in Australia, you can take part in the online survey.

This will aid the Farm Dog Project's later endeavours, helping to focus and design objective behavioural measurements for traits that are highly valuable and/or difficult to train (remember when we talked about 'drive'?), so efforts can then be turned to identifying the gene behaviour associations which can assist future breeding programs. Dr Early expects that "this information can then be used over the longer term of the Farm Dog Project's scope to develop Estimated Breeding Values (EBV's) or Genetic breeding Values (geBV's) so that working farm dogs can benefit from the same access to science and breeding technology as the livestock they herd". Interestingly, some Guide Dog organisations have been using EBV's to genetically improve their dogs for guiding people with a visual impariment for close to a decade now.

This exciting body of research offers huge potential to the future of Australia's working farm dogs and has been supported by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC); Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and the Working Kelpie Council.
I think I should stop now, this has turned into a long post, but it's tough with all this exciting canine science going around me! What's going on around you? Is it exciting too?


 I truly hope so!

 Mia

Further reading:

 Liberati A., Altman D.G., Tetzlaff J., Mulrow C., Gøtzsche P.C., Ioannidis J.P.A., Clarke M., Devereaux P.J., Kleijnen J. & Moher D. & (2009). The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: explanation and elaboration, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 62 (10) e1-e34. DOI:

Dorey N.R., Udell M.A.R. & Wynne C.D.L. (2009). Breed differences in dogs sensitivity to human points: A meta-analysis, Behavioural Processes, 81 (3) 409-415. DOI:

Fratkin J.L., Sinn D.L., Patall E.A. & Gosling S.D. (2013). Personality consistency in dogs: a meta-analysis., PloS one, PMID:

Nimer J. & Lundahl B. (2007). Animal-Assisted Therapy: A Meta-Analysis, Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, 20 (3) 225-238. DOI:

© 2013 Mia Cobb
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University of Sydney

21 March 2013

Scientific American gets a dog

Scientific American gets a dog

Paper and pen VS THE COMPUTER
Hi Mia,

So I’m going to postpone the conversation I alluded to on Facebook. I wanted to ask you whether you opt for pen and paper when you're writing out blogs and work, or if you’re a computer gal, typing directly on a computer. I am quite attached to the pen and paper method myself, and it’s driving me a bit bonkers to keep track of ALL THAT PAPER. But, it can also be challenging to write directly on a computer. My thoughts come out a bit more jumbled when I type. Well, I think I just covered most of my pen vs computer diatribe! There! Done!

TODAY has been a big day!! My other blog, Dog Spies, left its old spot on Blogger and just joined the Scientific American Blog Network, so it looks like Sci Am got a dog ;)

My other blog, Dog Spies, takes a walk over to Scientific American.

 Scientific American blog editor Bora Zivkovic (who named Do You Believe in Dog? blog of the week last year) gave both Dog Spies and Do You Believe in Dog? a shout out today.

I’m going to hold off on my thoughts about manuscript writing, but actually, that is probably Step 1 of scientific manuscript draft writing: PROCRASTINATE! ;) All jokes aside, a while back I read an inspirational piece on writing by Clive Wynne, head of the University of Florida Canine Cognition and Behavior Lab. The piece is called Thoughts on Writing and Getting Published, and I refer back to every now and again.

Now I know you are doing some hardcore science over there with a meta-analysis, so do tell us what that's all aboot!

Here’s to the dogs!! 

 Julie
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Scientific American

15 March 2013

The heat(map) is on... The colours of canine welfare.

The heat(map) is on... The colours of canine welfare.

Hey Julie,

 All those conferences sound completely AMAZING! I love that both dog urine and poo are totally appropriate topics for us to discuss in our conversations. All the other scientists are so jealous right now!

 I hope you've been well since getting home again. We've just been through the longest heatwave ever recorded in Melbourne over the past fortnight (9 days over 30oC / 90oF in a row) and today it's finally cooled off, hooray! I haven't posted you the TimTams I promised you on Twitter yet, for fear they'd melt before leaving Australia!

Speaking of heat, I made a heat map of canine welfare for one of my presentation slides at the recent RSPCA Australia Scientific Seminar. It was very colourful and looked like this (click to embiggen):

Cobb's colourful heat map, depicting perceived welfare levels of different dog types.
This is based on data I gathered in an online survey that was conducted as part of my PhD. I asked participants to rate the welfare of different dog types on a scale of 1-5 from very poor to very good. Consequently, this image is a representation of the perception of welfare of different types of dogs rather than an indication of actual welfare. But perceptions are important! 

 Proceedings from the day, including my full paper, should be available early next week on the RSPCA Australia website.  

 I'll make sure to put a note up on Facebook when it does.
We wish we had a quick and easy indicator of animal welfare, but we don't!
My presentation covered:

- the increasing expectation from the general public for transparency and best practice from industries using animals in work and sport;

- how we have traditionally measured animal welfare in science;

- I used working dogs as an example to talk through the life cycle stages (breeding/sourcing; raising/training; housing/healthcare and retirement/endpoints), exploring what we have learned through our recent research projects in regards to welfare, current practices and where there is room for improvement. 

 - I also spoke briefly about research currently under way that is using cognitive bias (often referred to as testing to see if animals are optimistic/pesimistic) as an indicator of canine emotions.
Yep, I actually used this image in my presentation (source)

 - I related the changing dynamic within animal welfare science from researching welfare outcomes (how do we understand and limit the bad stuff) toward studying affective states (how can we understand and promote the good stuff) to similar trends in other fields of research such as human positive psychology and education.


So now I'm home again and focussing my attention on writing up the results of the data analyses (from that online survey) into a paper. I want to submit the paper for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. As you know, this can be a lengthy process. 

I first have to draft the paper to a standard that I am happy with; then forward it to my PhD supervisors who may (probably will!) suggest changes and redraft. I then need to decide which journal to submit it to, and format the paper accordingly. There are lots of factors involved in selecting which journal to submit to, including impact factors.Then I will contact the journal and submit it for peer-review. 

While scientific papers DO follow a formula (Abstract / Intro / Methods / Results / Discussion / Conclusion),
they are not THIS formulaic! (source)
After that, the paper will be reviewed, probably by two other scientists working in the same field, who act as peer-reviewers and provide feedback to the journal's editorial team about the suitability of my paper for publication in that journal. They may give me comments suggesting minor or major changes to the paper, or even say they don't think it belongs in that journal. 

All up, it can easily take over a year from writing a paper to getting it published, sometimes closer to two years! Right now, I'm just focussing on step one -- get a draft completed!

Sam Gosling and I,
obviously caught unaware, deep in thought.
I had the chance to catch up with Sam Gosling (University of Texas at Austin) yesterday after hearing him present at the University of Melbourne. He gave a fantastic overview of the research his team have done looking at what our 'stuff' (from bedrooms, to office spaces to facebook profiles and websites) says about our personality. Fascinating! 

 After his presentation, fellow Anthrozoology Research Group member, Tammie and I chatted with him further about his group's work into non-human (specifically DOG) personality as well, which was great. One of his PhD students just had a meta-analysis of personality consistency in dogs published through PLoS-ONE (hurrah for open access).
I look forward to talking some more about meta-analysis with you soon. It's a very exciting way of exploring existing data!

How's everything going with you? Any hot tips for getting my paper drafted for publication? 

Mia

Further reading:
Fratkin J., Sinn D., Patall E. & Gosling S. (2013). Personality Consistency in Dogs: A Meta-Analysis., PloS One, 8 (1) DOI:

Gosling S.D., Augustine A.A., Vazire S., Holtzman N. & Gaddis S. (2011). Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14 (9) 483-488. DOI:

Seligman M.E.P., Ernst R.M., Gillham J., Reivich K. & Linkins M. (2009). Positive education: positive psychology and classroom interventions, Oxford Review of Education, 35 (3) 293-311. DOI:
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