One of the most difficult aspects of scientific writing is the premium placed upon a concise style.  This highlighted statement is an excellent example of wordiness (as are most of my lectures:-).  Unless writing in the first person, pronouns are very often an indicator of wordiness.  I recommend that you try to minimize pronouns as much as possible from your papers.  Since pronouns refer to another person, place, or thing, you can usually be more concise and precise in scientific writing by simply writing the thing to which the pronoun refers.  The use of 'it' is the ultimate indicator of wordiness.  In this example, a significantly more concise wording would be to change from:

             To: