Noch nicht genug Weltuntergang? Hier analysiert ein Ökonom die Auswirkungen des Coronavirus auf die Weltwirtschaft. Und zur Abwechslung befragen sie einen, der bei früheren Vorhersagen richtig lag.

Seine Einschätzung: Das ist ein Supply Shock, der wird die Welt in die Krise stürzen, die Politik reagiert viel zu langsam und die Notenbanken sind machtlos. Er glaubt, dass China einen Sündenbock brauchen wird und daher in Hong Kong, Taiwan oder gar Vietnam Ärger anfangen wird, und dass Trump seine Wiederwahl verliert, wenn das Virus die USA ernsthaft erreicht.

I expect global equities to tank by 30 to 40 percent this year. My advice is: Put your money into cash and safe government bonds, like German bunds. They have negative rates, but so what? That just means that prices will rise and rise - you can make a lot of money that way. And if I am wrong and equities go up by 10 percent instead, that’s also OK. You have to hedge your money against a crash, that is more important. That’s my motto: "Better safe than sorry!"

global equities ist der weltweite Aktienmarkt.

Last year, we added Google Docs integration to Zotero, bringing to Google Docs the same powerful citation functionality — with support for over 9,000 citation styles — that Zotero offers in Word and LibreOffice.

Today we’re adding a feature that lets you move documents between Google Docs and Word or LibreOffice while preserving active Zotero citations. You can now begin writing a document collaboratively in Google Docs and move it to Word or LibreOffice for final editing, or vice versa.

When you use this feature, Zotero will convert the citations and bibliography to a temporary format that can be transferred safely between word processors.

We’ve added instructions for specific word processors, but the basic process is the same:

1. Choose “Switch to a Different Word Processor…” from the plugin’s Document Preferences window.
2. Save the converted file.
3. Open the file in the other word processor.
4. Click Refresh to continue using it.

In Google Docs, you can also choose “Switch Word Processors…” from the Zotero menu.

While the process should be entirely reversible, we recommend performing the conversion in a copy of the file.

While this conversion process is required to move active citations in and out of Google Docs, you can also use it to move documents between Word and LibreOffice without some of the problems inherent in Bookmarks mode.

You can start using this feature today in Zotero 5.0.72 and Zotero Connector 5.0.57.

Matthew D Krasowski, Janna C Lawrence, Angela S Briggs, Bradley A Ford

Journal of Pathology Informatics 2019 10(1):16-16

Background: Professionals and trainees in the medical and scientific fields may receive high e-mail volumes for conferences and journals. In this report, we analyze the amount and characteristics of unsolicited e-mails for journals, conferences, and webinars received by faculty and trainees in a pathology department at an academic medical center. Methods: With informed consent, we analyzed 7 consecutive days of e-mails from faculty and trainees who voluntarily participated in the study and saved unsolicited e-mails from their institutional e-mail address (including junk e-mail folder) for medical/scientific journals, conferences, and webinars. All e-mails were examined for characteristics such as reply receipts, domain name, and spam likelihood. Journal e-mails were specifically analyzed for claims in the message body (for example, peer review, indexing in databases/resources, rapid publication) and actual inclusion in recognized journal databases/resources. Results: A total of 17 faculty (4 assistant, 4 associate, and 9 full professors) and 9 trainees (5 medical students, 2 pathology residents, and 2 pathology fellows) completed the study. A total of 755 e-mails met study criteria (417 e-mails from 328 unique journals, 244 for conferences, and 94 for webinars). Overall, 44.4% of e-mails were flagged as potential spam by the institutional default settings, and 13.8% requested reply receipts. The highest burden of e-mails in 7 days was by associate and full professors (maximum 158 or approximately 8200 per year), although some trainees and assistant professors had over 30 e-mails in 7 days (approximately 1560 per year). Common characteristics of journal e-mails were mention of “peer review” in the message body and low rates of inclusion in recognized journal databases/resources, with 76.4% not found in any of 9 journal databases/resources. The location for conferences in e-mails included 31 different countries, with the most common being the United States (33.2%), Italy (9.8%), China (4.9%), United Kingdom (4.9%), and Canada (4.5%). Conclusions: The present study in an academic pathology department shows a high burden of unsolicited e-mails for medical/scientific journals, conferences, and webinars, especially to associate and full professors. We also demonstrate that some pathology trainees and junior faculty are receiving an estimated 1500 unsolicited e-mails per year.

The data.table package provides an enhanced version of data.frame that allows you to do blazing fast data manipulations. data.table is being used in different fields such as finance and genomics, and is especially useful for those of you that are working with large data sets (e.g. 1GB to 100GB in RAM).

Although its typical syntax structure is not hard to master, it is unlike other things you might have seen in R. Hence the reason to create this cheat sheet. DataCamp’s data.table cheat sheet is a quick reference for doing data manipulations in R with the data.table package, and is a free-for-all supplement to DataCamp’s interactive course Data Analysis the data.table Way.

The cheat sheet  will guide you from doing simple data manipulations using data.table’s basic i, j, by syntax, to chaining expressions, to using the famous set()-family. You can learn more about data.table at DataCamp.com.

The post The data.table Cheat Sheet appeared first on DataCamp Blog.

TL;DR: Over the previous hundred years, a lot of work has gone into standardizing the way scientific data is presented. All of this knowledge has been largely forgotten. I want us to bring it back to life.

Before we talk about science, let’s take a short but scenic detour. A few months ago, while scrolling through the latest popular Kickstarters (as I tend to do in an effort to get motivated to get out of bed), I came across this fantastic project: Full size reissue of the NYCTA Graphics Standards. You see, in the 1960s, taking the subway in New York was a chaotic experience.

Walking down the stairs of a subway entrance (once you were lucky enough to find one), you were bombarded by a cacophony of diverse signs that took quite a lot of mental effort to comprehend. Figuring out exactly which train you have to take from which platform¹ on which side, was far from trivial.

In the late sixties the transit authority finally hired designers Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda (Unimark) to organize this chaos and devise a new system for wayfinding in New York’s subway system. When the work was finished in 1970 with the publication of the Graphic Standards Manual, it not only succeeded in its initial goals, but also became a timeless example of great design elegantly solving a real problem.

As a result, all of the various styles of conveying directions and wayfinding were unified into a single iconic graphic standard that helps you effortlessly find your way around New York to this day, enabling you to focus on your journey as opposed to focusing on deciphering signs.

OK, that’s cool, but what does all this have to do with science?

Hold on, we’re getting there. A few days later I was, coincidentally, reading up on the history of information and data visualization while working on a project at PLOS visualizing article metrics in various ways, when I stumbled on this little hidden treasure:

... a set of standards and rules for graphic presentation was finally adopted by a joint committee (Joint Committee on Standards for Graphic Presentation, 1914)

Uhm, what? What standards? I have never heard of standards in graphic presentation, i.e. standards for charts and figures. What is all this about? And with this question a journey into the knowledge black hole began.

And what an exhilarating journey it was, and really, still is. Take my hand and let’s go! First, let’s find this document from 1914: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2965153.pdf². Ideally, I’d like you to send this PDF to your tablet or print it out, make a cup of tea, take a deep breath, jump on the couch and just read it through. It's only 10 pages and even these are heavily illustrated.

This document was produced by a committee of several really smart people from all branches of science and engineering, people and organizations like Willard Brinton (chairman) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (of Graphic Presentation fame), the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, American Genetic Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and so on. I hope I’ve made the point that this was a very capable group people coming together for a common cause.

So what does this document contain? It begins with a great thought and rationale for standardizing scientific graphics:

If simple and convenient standards can be found and made generally known, there will be possible a more universal use of graphic methods with a consequent gain to mankind because of the greater speed and accuracy with which complex information may be
imparted and interpreted.

That's exactly what the Graphic Standards Manual achieved for the subway system, unifying how information is conveyed and thereby significantly speeding up and simplifying its use, to the point where you don’t think about how the information is presented, but instead think only about the information itself. And this is the connection between the New York transit authority’s efforts, and the efforts of the scientific community a hundred years ago. With one major, critical distinction: While the Graphics Standards Manual is still successfully being used today, the efforts of the Joint Committee on Standards for Graphic Presentation have been eroded by the sands of time and simply forgotten.

There are a lot of other pearls of wisdom to be found in this work, but there is one in particular that stood out:

This is essentially saying that data should accompany the figure. A hundred years later, we’re still far from applying this simple but powerful rule. Projects like The Content Mine expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to get data back from figures, and even then it’s a very lossy process. All of this could be avoided if we just follow this one simple rule.

It’s clear these people know what they’re talking about and it makes sense to try and find more of their work. After a lot more digging, I found that this was not the last time this committee convened. In Calvin F. Schmid's review of "The Role of Standards in Graphic Presentation"³, it’s mentioned briefly that several more meetings were held:

Since the publication, in 1915, of the report by the original Joint Committee, other committees prepared expanded reports on the standards of graphic presentation in 1936, 1938 and 1960.

Obviously, we need to find these documents as well. This, however, is not easy. In fact, I’ve only managed to find the 1938 report⁴ online. Consider this also a call for help: If you have any ideas about how to locate the 1936 and 1960⁵ documents (titled "Time-series charts"), please let me know. Additionally, upon further research I discovered there was one more publication, a final revision in 1979 of what was at that point an actual ANSI standard Y15.2M⁶. This document cannot be found online either, and is available only in select libraries in the States.

But let’s work with what we have: The 1938 revision is an incredible piece of work. It addresses everything you could possibly think of in terms of how to construct your charts. From good composition practices, such as centering a chart around an optical center, to usage of grids, inclusion of a 0 baseline to avoid perceptual distortion, the importance of scale selection, labeling of axes and curves, reference notes, line styles, and so much more. We should try and use this knowledge to improve the presentation of scientific data today.

Like the New York subway system in early 1960s, scientific figures are currently in a very chaotic state There are significant differences in presentation of the same types of data, which undoubtedly results in a loss of efficiency when researchers are interpreting this information.

On top of that, some other common issues are⁷:

1. There are too many lines packed on a single line chart.
2. The charts are needlessly ornamented with things like gradients or 3D effects.
3. The axis is missing or constructed in a non-intuitive way, or the baseline is missing.
4. The data is not included in the figure.
5. An improper chart type is selected.

All of these issues have been addressed in significant detail in the documents mentioned and while a lot of best practices have been established organically, there is simply no excuse for forgetting the vast knowledge that was painstakingly created so many years ago. On top of that, while it was possibly a bigger effort to follow these standards a hundred years ago, when each figure was drawn by hand, it is technically possible to follow these standards with a single click today. In fact, with the technical capabilities we have, it's unforgivable that we still allow figures to be flattened and mushed together into compressed images when they are prepared for publication. But I digress.

Show ... me ... the example!

I had a difficult time finding a figure which would be easy to rebuild using modern technology, purely because the data necessary to recreate figures is almost never available. One bright example which does include data is, not surprisingly, Heather Piwowar's paper on the open data citation advantage. Following some standards found in the documents and using some modern tools, I decided to rebuild Figure 2 of that paper: