We just wrapped up the 2011 iEvoBio meeting. It was awesome! If you didn't go this year or last year, definitely think about going next year.

The Public Libraries of Science (PLOS) has an API so that developers can create cool tools to access their data (including full text papers!!).

Carl Boettiger at UC Davis and I are working on R functions that use the PLoS API. See our code on Github here. See the wiki at the Github page for examples of use. We hope to deploy rplos as a package someday soon. Please feel free to suggest changes/additions rplos in the comments below or on the Github/rplos site.

Get your own API key here.

I am writing some functions to acquire data from the OpenStates project, via their API. They have a great support community at Google Groups as well.

On its face this post is not obviously about ecology or evolution, but well, our elected representatives do, so to speak, hold our environment in a noose, ready to let the Earth hang any day.

Code I am developing is over at Github.

Here is an example of its use in R, in this case using the Bill Search option (billsearch.R on my Github site), and in this case you do not provide your API key in the function call, but instead put it in your .Rprofile file, which is called when you open R. We are searching here for the term 'agriculture' in Texas ('tx'), in the 'upper' chamber.

> temp <- billsearch('agriculture', state = 'tx', chamber = 'upper')
 
> length(temp)
[1] 21
 
> temp[[1]]
$title
[1] "Congratulating John C. Padalino of El Paso for being appointed to the United States Department of Agriculture."
 
$created_at
[1] "2010-08-11 07:59:46"
 
$updated_at
[1] "2010-09-02 03:34:39"
 
$chamber
[1] "upper"
 
$state
[1] "tx"
 
$session
[1] "81"
 
$type
$type[[1]]
[1] "resolution"
 
 
$subjects
$subjects[[1]]
[1] "Resolutions"
 
$subjects[[2]]
[1] "Other"
 
 
$bill_id
[1] "SR 1042"