The 500k Apex

I am pleased to report that as of the beginning of December 2022, Synthetic Daisies blog has reached 500,000 reads. The blog started over the 2008 Holiday season (14 years ago) and took about a year to garner significant readership. Over the years, Synthetic Daisies has participated in the Carnival of Evolution, several SciComm (Science Communication) initiatives, and charted the research progress of a number of initiatives (including the DevoWorm group).

Number of posts by year. Click to enlarge.

Although the number of time investment has declined in recent years, the posts have continued to accumulate reads. Synthetic Daisies has a Github repository and overlay site where some of the more popular posts are profiled. The Github repo also features associated code and other items from these posts. 

Number of readers over the course of 14 years. Click to enlarge.

More to report in another 200,000 to 300,000 reads!

Ten years of "Virtual Reality in Neuroscience Research and Therapy"

Ten years ago today (November 3), me and co-authors Corey Bohil and Frank Biocca published the paper "Virtual Reality in Neuroscience Research and Therapy" in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Happy Birthday, paper!

Click to enlarge.

This article made the issue cover of the containing issue. A closeup of the cover art (below) is entitled "Virtual Reality Reaches New Heights" by Kirsten Lee. Great image of a digital mountain range.

Click to enlarge.

After 10 years, this publication has been cited about 730 times. Even after 10 years, the citation rate per year is still increasing. Not only does the paper cover examples of human engagement with VR, but examples from model organisms as well. This paper is different than many other reviews of VR in that it does not focus on the latest technology, but more fundamental research questions and applications. 

COURTESY: Google Scholar. Click to enlarge.

About four years later, I single-authored a paper at F1000 Research called "Animal-oriented virtual environments: illusion, dilation, and discovery", a paper that delved into speculation about neural mechanisms in model organisms during VR exposure. This was before the current VR hype came of age, so it was tough to find reviewers for this one. Nevertheless, there is much more to explore in this area.

Synthetic Daisies Summary for 2020

It has been awhile since I've done a readership post. But as 2020 comes to a close, let's do a Top 10 review of posts and pages for the past 12 months, ranked by readership. 

Top 10 posts for 2020 (by readership). Click to enlarge.

The Carnival of Evolution posts (#46 and #58) and "Playing the Long Game of Human Biological Variation" are the top three posts of all time. "Ratchets in Nature" is the only blog post to be formally cited (2 times according to Google Scholar). Readership seems to be down from years past. Only two of the top 10 posts for the year were actually written this year ("Welcome, Summer of Coders" and "Silver Linings of COVID19"). Another post that made the 11 spot (nearly making the list) was another post from 2020, the post on the ASAPBio Preprint Symposium from September. 

Post on the ASAPBio Session on the "Past, Present, and Future of Preprints" (Post #11 for 2020 by readership). Click to enlarge.

I have also posted a view of the top 10 pages viewed in 2020. The pages were created several years ago, and are not typically updated as much as I would like. The top view was on the "Hard to Define Events Workshop", a session from 2012 hosted at that year's Artificial Life conference. We never followed up on this workshop (it's been eight years!), but might be an interesting thing to create a virtual presence around. A meaning of the blog name, a list of favorite blogs, and various presentations round out the top 10. One more page of note is the "Popular Algorithmics" page, which is an accessible presentation of various algorithms. This is something that might be moved to the Synthetic Daisies Github organization as an open-source collection where people can contribute their own entries (a sort of Wikipedia of algorithms).

Top 10 pages for 2020 (by readership). Click to enlarge.

Aside from code and open-source content related to specific blog posts, the Synthetic Daisies Github organization also hosts the Synthetic Daisies meta-blog. This is meant to be a collection of more substantial content from the original blog, organized thematically and presented in a manner similar to an overlay journal. This includes featured posts and thematic collections, such as posts on Evolution or Models, Philosophy of Science, and Representation.

Check out the Synthetic Daisies meta-blog. Click to enlarge.

That's all for this year. Check us out in 2021 with a whole new set of posts!

Twenty years ago in complexity.....

It's always a 20th Anniversary somewhere, but these two are particularly notable for the complexity community:

1) Swarm Intelligence

2) Scale-free Networks

Pseudo-Heliocentric Readership Information in Gravitationally Bound Form

Or, how to get 300,000 reads by being persistent [1] and getting results in unexpected places. Let's review our milestones in three cartoons.

The made-up planetary orbits featured here [2] may violate the physics of actual solar system orbits, at least as simulated by Super Planet Crash [3].

NOTES:

[1] Candy, A. (2011). The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers. Copyblogger, October 25.

[2] Previous readership milestones, in order of distance from central star: 20000, 50000, 100000 (first image), 120000, 150000 (second image), 200000, 250000 (third image).

[3] Featured in the Scientific Bytes and Pieces, August 2015 post.

Crossing the Rubicon of 10^6 * 0.25

Synthetic Daisies will has achieved another milestone (250,000 reads) in just a few short days! When I started this blog in December of 2008 (roughly 8 years ago), I did not have any real expectations for readership. I was, however, drawn to analytics and the power of blogging as a platform to reach new audiences. And I kept updating milestones for the blog when the number of visitors hit 20000, 50000, 100000, 120000, 150000, and 200000.

Readership has increased exponentially since blog inception, despite the uneven sampling points in time.

Since the blog's inception, I have increasingly used social media for outreach activities (both at this blog and elsewhere). Part of this has been motivated by a deliberately radically open science strategy [1-4]. For a while, I was cross-posting from a Tumblr blog (Tumbld Thoughts), as well as a blog run by #SciFund (Fireside Science). I also have my entries cross-posted to the OpenWorm Foundation blog.

Visualizing radical open access. COURTESY: Open Reflections blog.

NOTES:
[1] Kriegeskorte, N. (2016). The selfish scientist’s guide to preprint posting. The Winnower, 4. doi:10.15200/winn.145838.88372.

[2] Chawla, D.S. (2017). When a preprint becomes the final paper. Nature Research Highlights, doi:10.1038/nature.2017.21333

[3] Lancaster, A. (2016). Open Science and its' Discontents. Ronin Institute blog, June 28.

[4] Faulkes, Z. (2012). Why I published a paper on my blog instead of a journal. NeuroDojo blog, September 7.

200K, 1K (or less) At A Time

While I have not been keeping up with my blogging habit over the last 18 months or so, Synthetic Daisies is still reaching milestones. As of today, we have reached 200,000 reads! While this took 7 years and 6 months (as of June 15), it is quite a milestone. A few historical points.

Frequency of posts over time

The bulk of posts (particularly the longer posts) were written during a period from late 2011 to early 2015. Some of them have had longer lifetimes than others, as you will see below.

Logos over time

2008-2012. Classic version

2012-2015. New design, pretentious slogan.

2016-present. Cleaned up new design.

Here is a reading list with some of the lesser-read but perhaps most interesting posts in the blog's history.

Network Science:
Six Degrees of the Alpha Male: breeding networks to understand population structure. August 22, 2014.

Fireside Science: Inspired by a visit to the Network's Frontier.... December 16, 2013.


Meta-science:
Scientific Paradigm Network. February 8, 2015.

Academic Connectivity and the Future of Scientific Ideas. September 9, 2011.

Fireside Science: The Representation of Representations. June 21, 2014.


Book Reviews:
Review of "Arrival of the Fittest". March 9, 2015.

Metabiology and the Evolutionary Proof. January 11, 2013.

Review of "Intelligent Movement Machine". April 19, 2009.


Cognition, Biology, Technology, and Innovation:
Merging electronics and biology: the future of touch. November 1, 2012.

The "nature" of materials: evolution and biomimetics. December 26, 2011.

I, Automaton. September 16, 2013.


Evolution, Alife, and Complexity:
Artificial Life meets Geodynamics (EvoGeo). November 21, 2012.

Reflections on Chaos in Biological Evolution. May 25, 2013.

The Neuromechanics and Evolution of Very Slow Movements. April 18, 2012.


Systems Biology:
Modeling Processes with No Beginning, an Adaptive Middle, and No End. October 27, 2013.

Facilitated Variation (FV): a random (walk) tour. October 29, 2011.

"Reining" in Diabetes. January 10, 2011.


Game Theory and Complexity:
Games, Noise, and Science-related Obscure References. April 8, 2013.

Makin' Pha-ses. March 11, 2013.


Although the blog got off to a slow start, I learned a lot about "how to blog" (use interactive media to greater effect) over the course of time. Nevertheless, hooray for 200K!

Breaking the Threshold of 150,000 Reads

Great news! According to Blogger analytics, Synthetic Daisies blog has just surpassed 150,000 reads! This calls for a milestone post -- as a cake with candles would be logistically and conceptually difficult. In addition, Synthetic Daisies now has 300+ posts in the archives.

Most recent logo design, trite subtitle.

When I started Synthetic Daisies, it was loosely modeled on a style typical of the science blogosphere in 2008 (with a bit more casual approach). I was also (and have been since the late-90s) inspired by what Wired's approach to web content. This landscape has changed quite a bit, and so has Synthetic Daisies. Having my own blog has allowed me to address my own set of interests in my own style. I've also been presented with unique opportunities for scholarship which are not typically "blog-like", but interesting nonetheless.

Allowing myself to be myself since December 2008.

Finally, aside from the ten pages hosted here, the nine most read posts (circa June 2015, courtesy Blogger Analytics) are as follows:

Post Name	Type	Reads
Carnival of Evolution #58	Blogroll	9677
Carnival of Evolution #46	Blogroll	5426
Space as a BIG Mental Space	Essay	2168
Fictitious Life-history	Feature/Cartoon	1696
Bitcoin Angst with an Annotated Blogroll	Blogroll	1460
Overproduction in Nature	Theoretical Essay	975
Google Doodle – Leonhard Euler	Feature/Cartoon	820
Retinas, Retinas, and Technology	Essay	788
Historical Contingencies at the Birthday Party	Theoretical Essay	689