In our previous post we learned about Python virtual environments and how conda makes it easy for us as scientists to use virtual environments and access hundreds of useful packages. Despite the number of packages directly available through conda, not all packages can be downloaded this way. In this post we will learn how to add such packages to our
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I have been coding with Python for several years and I only recently took the time to learn about Python environments. Now that I understand them, I can see why they are so useful, especially in this day and age of large team collaborations, research reproducibility, and sharing data and code when research results are published. The purpose of this
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In the previous posts, we learned how to use python scripts and modules to avoid repeating ourselves when we write programs. This is important. If you subsequently discover an error in your code (i.e. a bug), you have to fix it in only one place. Problems arise when you have to find and fix the same bug in multiple places.
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Academics and researchers must apply for grant funding. These grants provide the financial support required to carry out the research proposed in the grant. These funds are used to purchase equipment, pay salaries, cover publication and travel costs, etc. Being successful in a national funding competition is a key indicator of success. Not only can the researchers carry out the
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Academics and scientists, especially those in administrative positions looking to rate their peers/staff/candidates, have traditionally used impact factors as an indicator of quality and influence. Only the best, most trustworthy and innovative research gets published in journals with high impact factors. At least, that is what they would like us to believe… What is an impact factor? The impact factor
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In our previous post we learned how to find an appropriate LaTeX template to write a scientific article. To illustrate how simple it is to download and start working with one of these templates, I used the example of preparing a paper for one of the PLOS journals. In this post we are going to add a little content to
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