User talk:Allens/Archives/2012/January

"Greatly"

Thanks for your update of the animal research page. I particularly favor your sentence structure over my original version. However, I must quibble with your point about needing to keep the adjective "greatly." This seems to me far too qualitative to keep in this section. Where would you draw the line between "different" and "greatly different?" I suppose it could be argued that the adaptive immune systems of insects and animals are greatly different; in the sense that insects don't have one at all. The innate immune systems, on the other hand, are very similar and much of what we know about innate immunity was originally discovered in insects with subsequent identification of similarities in mammals (i.e., toll and toll-like receptors). Anyway, that is a long-winded way to say that I think "different" is accurate while "greatly different" seems biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nathan a fisher (talk • contribs) 06:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops - forgot to reply; sorry! One difficulty I can see is that the innate and adaptive immune systems in mammals interact, and the lack of an adaptive immune system in insects thus makes a difference for their innate immunity. I really should locate a reference for this point, of course... I can understand the question about where to draw the line between "different" and "greatly different"; perhaps one could look to see what description is typically used by review papers on the subject? Allens (talk) 12:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Thanks for your help with peer reviewing and in getting the backlog reduced. I have restored a couple that you took out of the backlog – NBC logos and Hurricane Lenny – because I don't think the extent of comment was really sufficient to justify their removal. It's a difficult call, but we try to ensure every article gets a fair chance of significant comments, and neither of these had been overlong in the backlog. Please continue reviewing, your help is much appreciated. If you're uncertain whether to remove or not, leave it; I monitor the backlog quite regularly. Brianboulton (talk) 21:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I wasn't sure exactly how much comment was needed; that info will help me judge. Allens (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Metagenomics reviews

Allens, I just wanted to say thanks for the time you took to review Metagenomics in both the peer review and GAN. I've added your content suggestions (HMMs, etc.) to the todo list, right along getting genomics and microbiome up to speed. And that pesky thesis, I suppose. Best regards, Estevezj (talk) 10:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Blush... you are quite welcome, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you (and others, of course) make of those articles. (Among other classes, I teach microbiology for the health sciences, and I always mention the human microbiome project. BTW, don't forget that thesis! I know it can be a drag sometimes... From personal experience, I would also suggest not waiting on making papers out of it, if at all possible.) Allens (talk) 13:18, 29 January 2012 (UTC)