New year is always a point to review the year past and make unrealistic predictions for the year ahead. My two days a week for research mean that a high level of focus is needed on how to use those days. The main activity has to be on the systems ecology project with databases apparently available from ECN and Forest Research. These are needed to parameterise the tree growth and allometry for the starting vegetation (tree) models - Aris and I have decided that SORTIE is the way to go but we need a lot of data to make it work for UK forests. Apart from that I think that 2012 must be the year to finish the analysis of the zebra finch gene expression change data. Highlights of last year have to be the Royal Society and ESF conferences, which were a lot of work (and I got pretty cranky) but were well worth it. The publication at the end of last year of the proceedings of the RS meeting was an excellent moment.
