Peer review: love it or hate it, it’s an integral part of every scientist’s life. The reviews are usually kept secret, but the editors over at Environmental Microbiology like to give a little back during the holidays, and have gifted the internet with a list of some of their favorite quotes from peer reviews done this year:

Our referees, the Editorial Board Members and ad hoc reviewers, are busy, serious individuals who give selflessly of their precious time to improve manuscripts submitted to Environmental Microbiology. But, once in a while, their humour (or admiration) gets the better of them. Here are some quotes from reviews made over the past year, just in time for the Season of Goodwill and Merriment.

Here are some of our favorite catty reviewer quotes from this year’s list:

• This paper is desperate. Please reject it completely and then block the author’s email ID so they can’t use the online system in future.
• The biggest problem with this manuscript, which has nearly sucked the will to live out of me, is the terrible writing style.
• Ken, I would suggest that EM is setting up a fund that pays for the red wine reviewers may need to digest manuscripts like this one. (Ed.: this excellent suggestion was duly proposed to the Publisher. However, given the logistical difficulties of problem-solving within narrow time frames, combined with the known deleterious effect of transport on good wine, a modification of the remedy was adopted, namely that Editors would act as proxies for reviewers with said digestive complaints.)
• I agreed to review this MS [manuscript] whilst answering e-mails in the golden glow of a balmy evening on the terrace of our holiday hotel on Lake Como. Back in the harsh light of reality in Belfast I realize that it’s just on the limit of my comfort zone and that it would probably have been better not to have volunteered.
• I suppose that I should be happy that I don’t have to spend a lot of time reviewing this dreadful paper; however I am depressed that people are performing such bad science.
• The presentation is of a standard that I would reject from an undergraduate student. Take Table 1: none of the data has units or an explanation. Negative controls gave a positive signal, but there is no explanation of why and how this was dealt with; just that it was different.
• The lack of negative controls. . . . results in the authors being lost in the funhouse. Unfortunately, I do not think they even realize this.
• Reject – More holes than my grandad’s string vest!
• The writing and data presentation are so bad that I had to leave work and go home early and then spend time to wonder what life is about.

Hit this link to view the whole long list. Can’t get enough? Check out last year’s picks.

Related Content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Snappy answers to stupid questions: an evidence-based framework for responding to peer-review feedback.
Discoblog: What Kind of Peer-Review Would Jesus Want?
80beats: ClimateGate Inquiry: No Scientific Misconduct From “Squeaky Clean” Researchers
The Intersection: Citizens Against Peer Review
Gene Expression: Peer review sucks?
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Arsenic bacteria – a post-mortem, a review, and some navel-gazing

Image: flickr / gingerpig2000

A lawsuit by Vancouver businessman Wayne Crooke might just break Canada’s Internet.

Crooke is suing the publisher of a site called p2pnet for a post about free speech in Canada, written in response to a libel lawsuit brought by Crooke. In the post, publisher Jon Newton linked to the allegedly libelous articles. Crooke asked him to remove the links, but Newton refused, so Crooke accused him of defamation.

If Newton loses in court, anyone who shares a libelous (whether they know it or not) link over the Internet would be guilty of libel themselves, a ruling that would essentially shut down the Internet, Newton explained to Ars Technica:

“If I lose there won’t BE an Internet in Canada,” Jon Newton wrote me this morning as he prepared to step aboard a Vancouver Island seaplane. “Just a shadow.”

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How could the government know about a chemical attack before it wreaks havoc? By smelling it.

But the problem is, to detect an abnormal stench, the government first needs to know the city’s normal aroma, to have an idea of its “chemical profile.” To that effect, DARPA just released a solicitation looking for suggestions on how to best build chemical composition maps of major United States cities. Spencer Ackerman over at Wired’s Danger Room t0ok a look at the solicitation and explained what DARPA is looking for:

The data Darpa wants collected will include “chemical, meteorological and topographical data” from at least 10 “local urban sources,” including “residences, gasoline stations, restaurants and dry cleaning stores that have particular patterns of emissions throughout the day.”

Then, subsequent chemical readings from the area could be compared to the “map” to check for abnormal chemicals in the air. Since many chemicals that can be used in a terrorist attacks are normally found around our cities, it’s difficult to just screen for them without having an idea of their baseline levels, explains Wired:

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Man’s best friend can also be man’s best tandem parachuting partner. The Guardian reports that UK forces have been sending Taliban-hunting dogs into Afghanistan.

Dogs have been used previously by American and Austrian paratroopers, which sheds some light on how the British might be using their pups, says Wired:

SAS pooches are trained for High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jumps, in which parachutes are deployed at a high altitude and long horizontal distance away from a target location in order to allow jumpers to glide in without detection.

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By Rose Eveleth

Bomb squads have long used metal detectors, x-ray machines, and dogs to uncover threats. Without these tools, authorities may not have intercepted some of the thirteen homemade explosives that froze Greece’s outgoing mail earlier this week. But soon they may have a new tool to help find the bad guys and their bombs: microscopic worms.

In a paper published last month, researchers at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization described the effectiveness of Caenorhabditis elegans–a millimeter-long, mud-loving nematode–in detecting chemicals associated with explosives. If they’re right, bomb detection could get cheaper and easier. But not everyone is convinced.

This nematodes isn’t the first organism investigated for its keen sense of smell. Dogs, rats, pigs, cows, insects, bacteria, and even plants have been used to find explosives. So far, nothing has worked as well as the trusty canine snout.

But according to lead researcher Stephen Trowell, a machine that uses his worms could surpass all these in sensitivity. “All signs are that it’s as good as it gets,” he said.

The nematodes smell chemicals like nitroglyceride and cyclohexanone—both found in the air around homemade C4 explosives—through tiny scent organs on the sides of their mouths called amphids. Each amphid has twelve different kinds of receptors that relay signals to the brain.

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A decision made Tuesday by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors may make little kids (and probably some adults) cry. With an un-vetoable vote of 8 to 3, the board banned restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Burger King from giving out toys with “unhealthy” happy meals within San Francisco’s city limits.

The decision is preliminary and will be followed up by a second debate and vote on Tuesday, November 9.

Under the proposed rule, meals deemed healthy can still be packed with action figures. To meet the city’s “healthy” standard a kid’s meal must contain fewer than 640 milligrams of sodium and 600 calories, and under 35 percent of those calories can come from fat. It also has to include a serving of fruit or vegetable with each meal and meet a number of other requirements (pdf).

The majority of McDonald’s Happy Meal options don’t meet these standards, including ALL of the cheeseburger options and any meal with fries. McDonald’s spokesperson told The New York Times they don’t agree with the Supervisors’ stance:

McDonald’s called the bill misguided. “It’s not what our customers want,” said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement. “Nor is it something they asked for.”

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A glitch in the iPhone’s alarm software gave many Europeans an extra dose of sleep this morning, when their alarms went off an hour later than expected.

While the time on the phone correctly “fell backward” with Europe’s scheduled switch from daylight saving time, because of a software bug the alarm function didn’t recognize the switch, and all recurring alarms went off an hour later than intended. Frustrated iPhone users took to twitter, said the Daily Mail:

Users of Twitter were also quick to make jokes at Apple’s expense today. Garrettc wrote: ‘Daddy, do you remember where you were during the great iPhone alarm calamity of 2010?’ ‘No son, I was asleep’

Siobhan-83 wrote: ‘Ben’s iPhone alarm didn’t go off this morning, used it as an opportunity to tell him younger, newer models aren’t always the better option.’

And Jamiei said: ‘A whole hour of peace and quiet in the office this morning without any iPhone users courtesy of Apple.’

Hilariously, the bug was discovered a month ago when the exact opposite thing happened in Australia and New Zealand following their “spring forward” daylight switch–everyone got up an hour early. Apple had promised a fix to the problem then, and still claims the bug will be fixed with the release of an update (iOS4.2) in the coming weeks. But it probably won’t come out in time for the American daylight saving switch next Sunday (November 7) night.

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A McDonald’s in the Dutch city of Rotterdam has decided to crack down on burglaries with a high-tech security system previously used in the city’s jewelry stores. To catch anyone who makes off with the cash from the till (or a bag of Big Macs), the store’s managers installed a device that stealthily sprays synthetic DNA on the thief.

The system involves a small, strategically placed orange box that shoots out synthetic DNA when an employee pulls an unusual trigger: Removing a €10 bill from a special bill clip behind the counter not only activates the device, it also alerts the police that a robbery is in progress. The synthetic DNA spray is visible under ultraviolet light and contains markers that are unique to that location’s device, allowing police to match a suspect with the locale.

The security-conscious McDonald’s advertises the presence of its system with a sign on the door reading, “You Steal, You’re Marked.” The New York Times explains that the effect of the device is, well, subtle:

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Dried blood on a handkerchief, a $700,000 gourd and one dead king. A forensic murder mystery?

Nope, just another genetics paper. I mean, it is gourd season, what did you expect?

The dead king in question is Louis XVI (the last of the French kings), who was ceremoniously beheaded on January 21st, 1793. After the beheading, attendees rushed the stage and dipped their handkerchiefs in the royal blood.

Over two hundred years later, some of that blood may have been found–dried to the inside of a decorative gunpowder gourd. The story goes that one of the attendees rushed home and stuffed the bloody handkerchief into the gourd for safekeeping.

In a study published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, researchers analyzed some of the dried blood scraped from the inside of the gourd to find out if it really could be the king’s blood. They checked the Y chromosome to see if the blood-donor was male, and checked for the presence of a blue-eye gene, HERC2. The blood was indeed from the correct time period and belonged to a blue-eyed male–so far, the evidence fits the blue-eyed king. More genetic information about the family will be needed to confirm the identity, the study’s lead author told Wired’s Dave Mosher:

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Motion-activated cameras have been used to catch bad nannies and adulterers for years. But in the forest, a high-tech, heat-detecting nannycam has caught video not just of the rare tigers that were its intended targets, but also of some unexpected forest-dwellers: illegal loggers.

In the video to the right, you can see a rare Sumatran tiger (one of only 400 left in Indonesia) strolling up to the forest spy camera and saying hello in Indonesia’s Riau Province. Seven days later a beast of a very different kind awakens the camera: a bulldozer leveling the forest.

The next day, another tiger passes by the spot, across the front of the clear-cut forest. The forests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, according to the WWF:

“Because of its status, both as a protected area and limited production forest, the area cannot be developed as a palm oil plantation, therefore any forest clearance, including bulldozing activities to clear the path, strongly indicates this excavation was illegal,” said Ian Kosasih, director of WWF-Indonesia’s forest and species program.

The forest in this area, called Bukit Batabuh, is protected because it serves as a corridor between two wildlife parks. Continued bulldozing in this area is fragmenting the Sumatran tiger’s habitat, making it more difficult for the big cats to find food, mates, and shelter.

Across the world, researchers are trying another high-tech tactic to keep an eye on logging practices. A new study in Brazil has been radio tagging trees in the Amazon to monitor the sustainability of the logging operations occurring in the area.

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