Dr Urska Demsar
banner
udemsar.bsky.social
Dr Urska Demsar
@udemsar.bsky.social

Associate Professor. GIScience, Movement Analytics and hiking/walking photos.

Environmental science 43%
Computer science 17%
Pinned
New paper with @beatezein.bsky.social & @jedalong.bsky.social:

⭐A new data-driven paradigm for the study of avian migratory navigation⭐

We propose how the multi-modal multi-scale nature of navigation could be studied w/ data mining, machine learning & AI.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A new data-driven paradigm for the study of avian migratory navigation - Movement Ecology
Avian navigation has fascinated researchers for many years. Yet, despite a vast amount of literature on the topic it remains a mystery how birds are able to find their way across long distances while ...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Urška Demšar

📊 Latest HUXt forecast shows 2 CMEs from AR4274 arriving on 12 Nov at ~4 & 15UT respectively. AR4274 is delivering a one-two punch!⚡️🥊 G2+ storm conditions increasingly likely. Aurora prospects strong for northern UK despite poor weather forecast.
#SpaceWeather #StephsStormWatch

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Direct hit! A beautiful, full-halo CME is now leaving the Sun following the X1.2 flare, and it's heading right for us. We'll have to see what the models think about this one, but we now have two Earth-directed CMEs coming at us and a good chance for geomagnetic storms Nov 11-12.

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Name one thing the Romans have done for us
‘Google Maps’ for Roman roads reveals vast extent of ancient network
A high-resolution digital map nearly doubles the known length of the ancient road network.
www.nature.com

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Friday flyover…

daily for weeks we hear the noise of literally thousands of pink footed geese travelling south filling the skies over the Scottish Highlands

This is only a small bunch this morning, you hear them coming long before you see them !

@rspbscotland.bsky.social #Birds #Scotland
We’re looking for an enthusiastic #PhD candidate to explore the resilience of sea turtle populations in a changing climate, supervised by Leo Clarke and myself. Interested in sea #turtles, #marine #biology, #conservation & #fieldwork in Cape Verde. Funded by ACCE+ NERC DLA tinyurl.com/dm573yrm
2nd edition of our The AI Shift newsletter is out. The question today: could AI be making us LESS productive? @jburnmurdoch.ft.com www.ft.com/content/2480... At the individual level, it's clear we're not reliable witnesses on this Q. At an organisational level, it gets even more interesting...

Reposted by Urška Demšar

In cooperation with RWE, we proudly announce the installation of the first #MOTUS station in an offshore wind farm (Amrumbank West) in Germany and in Europe. This will help to fill key knowledge gaps in offshore environmental monitoring. We were supported by our colleagues from Wind Energy Systems
The eye of Hurricane Melissa.

Image taken today by Sentinel-2.
You might’ve heard the news: SpaceX just passed 10,000 Starlink satellites launched. And that number is already old news, as there’s now a new Starlink batch launched every other day. Here’s what that looks like in a short animation of Comet A6 Lemmon courtesy of Michael Jaeger:

Reposted by Urška Demšar

#Melissa latest satellite view and rain radar.

Winds 180 mph. Pressure 896 mb. 25 miles from landfall over Jamaica 🇯🇲🙏

Reposted by Urška Demšar

4 days of seismic records from a seismic station in Jamaica shows Hurricane Melissa roaring towards the island.

Hurricanes increase the amplitude of ocean waves which beat on the coast and sea floor. These produce Rayleigh waves that can be seen as increasingly thick “wiggles” in seismic records 🧪

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Evidence from 14 research funding programmes confirms that early winners tend to keep winning (Matthew effect). But the idea that an early setback makes you stronger later doesn’t replicate widely.
buff.ly/UEtcRd4
After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:

- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%
1 week left to apply to our Postdoc job with our lab using AI to analyze camera trap images at the NC Museum of Natural sciences and NCSU and in collaboration with Wildlife Insights https:/​/​jobs.ncsu.edu/​postings/​223025
"It's just the weather"

"Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time.

Iceland was one of the only places in the world that did not have a mosquito population.

The other is Antarctica."

#GlobalBoiling
Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country
Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the only places in the world without the insects
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Urška Demšar

I'm offering a funded PhD position on nighttime lights #RemoteSensing in the Institute of #geography at the @ruhr-uni-bochum.de https://jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/62065e5be70a916f65edd647cd1b1740b04cd72e0

I'd love for the ad to be seen by as many potential candidates as possible, so […]
Original post on fediscience.org
fediscience.org

Reposted by Urška Demšar

😎 First glimpses from space!

The new #Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission has delivered its first preliminary images during commissioning.

Sentinel-4’s spectrometer is hosted on @eumetsat.int's MTG-S1 satellite 🧪🌍

@josefaschbacher.esa.int @ec.europa.eu @esaearth.esa.int

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Autumn Days 🍂

The Old Packhorse Bridge, which dates back to 1717.

Dulnain Bridge

Scottish Highlands

#Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 #Bridges
#History
We’re hiring a doctoral researcher in the area of migration ecology.
The work will focus on the question of how and when migratory songbirds learn where their home is using #Motus.
Part of the Cluster of Excellence NaviSense and linked with @sfb1372.bsky.social

uol.de/job788en

#ornithology

Reposted by Urška Demšar

Starting a new week with another sumptuous selection of lakeside reflection photography from around Finland.

Photos shared on IG by huulari85, riittarauta, aerijyr, and silvop:

www.instagram.com/p/DQBq4tkjGhx/

Reposted by Urška Demšar

📷 This was our #WeekInImages 13-17 October 2025 👇

www.esa.int/About_Us/Wee...
I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.

Reposted by Urška Demšar

But no major grants and his teaching evaluations suck.
How easy is it to fudge your scientific rank? Meet Larry, the world’s most cited cat
“Exercise in absurdity” reveals flaws in Google Scholar’s productivity metrics
www.science.org

Reposted by Urška Demšar

The team just picked up the latest data from the Swiss National Parc. Full of goodies - find out more about the first paper from the project: eceo-epfl.github.io/MammAlps/

Reposted by Urška Demšar

'The long and winding road'
When you start a #PhD you are learning how to do research. You don't know how to do it so ask questions. Lots of questions. If you already knew how to do a PhD there wouldn't be any point in doing it. You are doing it to learn #PhDchat #PhDforum #ECRchat #postdoc #AcademicChatter
wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...
Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”
www.404media.co
New visual story: Bird migration is one of nature’s greatest spectacles — and scientists are uncovering extraordinary insights into how new threats are reshaping these epic journeys. Follow the remarkable travels of three birds as they fly across the planet. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Here we were at 60% attendance already in week 3 of the semester.
Well done Shafaq Aftab. When a reviewer stole her work and published it under his own name, she fought for a YEAR to get the journal to retract the paper. Just wondering why it took Wiley a YEAR to do this. 🧪 #academicsky

retractionwatch.com/2025/10/03/w...
Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage
A Wiley journal has retracted a paper more than a year after a researcher reported the work was hers and had been stolen by a reviewer for another journal. As we reported in July, Shafaq Aftab, now…
retractionwatch.com