Big news!  This morning I got the long awaited email that my first manuscript made it through another step of the publication process: Review.  This journal is known for its quick turn-around time so we actually got a formal apology for how long it took (although it was a blessing in disguise that reviewer #3 held onto it until after my prelims were over.  I should bake them a cake.) So, now I have 45 days to really hit the grindstone and channel my inner Carl Sagan (scientist and Pulitzer Prize winner) because not only do I have to make the "major revisions" to my manuscript to ensure it's publication but I also have to finish writing and submit my dissertation proposal  as well as complete another $50,000 grant proposal all due by the end of October.  

Lions went extinct in Rwanda 15 years ago after the 1994 genocide when the Akagera National Park went unmanaged and cattle herders poisoned many of the animal species.  And this week, in a big conservation effort, seven lions, 5 females and 2 males, are being relocated from the South African province of KwaZulu Natal to repopulate Rwanda with lions.  They are starting their journey from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg to Rwanda today!

Update:
7/1/2015 - While doing a bit more research combing through article after article reading the same shpeal over and over I finally found something that somewhat confirmed my suspicion but with no real concrete evidence... there is political mumbo jumbo afoot....

The Christian Science Monitor (um, the what?) says that Kenya offered to donate eight lions to Rwanda last year but Kenya's wildlife conservation groups fiercely opposed the plan saying "Rwanda had not sufficiently addressed issues that resulted to the loss of its own lion population."

There isn't much genetic research on the puma (FYI: puma, cougar, mountain lion, catamount, panther... all the same thing, just depends on where you are and who you talk to).  The scientific community seems to be quite torn about taxonomic assessment and there has been much debate around subspecies distinction, particularly in the case of using cougars in Texas to repopulate the Florida panther population.  Some say they are distinct enough that they shouldn't be hybridized while others say they are the same so one can successfully repopulate the other.  According to the Federal Register,  "the best available information continues to support the assignment of the eastern taxon to Puma concolor couguar as distinct from other North American subspecies" based primarily on biology and life history. 

The proposal to remove the eastern cougar from the endangered species list does not affect the status of the endangered Florida panther subspecies, a cluster of conservation genetics issues to discuss in more detail at another time.  But, although the extinct animals will no longer be protected under the Endangered Species Act, which is intended to save animals and plants that still have a recorded population, it will also no longer be able to be used to protect similar animals, such as the Florida panther.  Not sure if that matters since the Florida panther is already protected (and possibly diluted with Texas cougar) but its interesting nonetheless. 

Scientists measure their impact on the scientific community by their number of publications and how many times those publications have been cited within other publications.  To an academic, publications are kind of like a form of notoriety based currency.   But it's not just about how many publications you have, the quality and impact factor of the journal it's published in is important as well.  Basically, someone who has 3 publications in Nature, Cell and Science (impact factor > 30) is better off than someone who has 20 publications in Animal Biology (impact factor of 0.614).  Not only will an article in Nature, Cell or Science get read, and likely cited, by a wider academic audience but publications in those journals are also more likely to be picked up by the media (which could be a good thing or a bad thing...).  Journals with an impact factor over 5 can still have a lot of impact, just maybe not expanding into the general public like 20+ journals would.  But, in the blossoming age of open-access, its getting a lot easier for anyone, not just academics, to get their hands on scientific literature (which, again, could be a good thing or a bad thing... and could change what we deem as "impact").  

Getting published is also a time consuming process.  Peer-reviewed journals are considered better than non but can take months for a manuscript to get through the review process.   A journal with a quicker turn-around may not have as high of an impact factor, possibly due to more lax or no review process, but could get your results out to the world faster, leading to people citing you sooner.  Meaning, for the right study, the benefits from publishing in a mid-tier journal with a quicker turn-around could outweigh the benefits of publishing in a top-tier journal.  So, when publishing, a scientist has to weigh the pros and cons of quantity, quality and timing.