Education

Virginia Apgar – Physician The New York anesthesiologist-researcher who helped establish the field of modern neonatology, and created the newborn APGAR Scoring System in 1953 – a simple but important test administered at birth to determine the physical health of infants.  This test is responsible for helping to dramatically reduce infant mortality over the last 50 years. If you were born in the last 50 years or so, chances are –within minutes after birth -- you underwent an important health evaluation devised by Virginia Apgar.  The work of this feisty, no-nonsense pediatric anesthesiologist…

New LJ Report Closely Examines What Makes Academic Library Patrons Tick Nate Silver and the Ascendance of Expertise Stables and Volatiles (balancing personalities in project groups) Academic Libraries, Information Literacy, and the Value of Our Values Facebook wants to organise our relationships. What's not to like? PeerJ: An Open-Access Experiment Engaging the Public, Citizen Science and Imperialism Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy Why Tablets? Why Are Physics Classes…

Alia Sabor -- Materials scientist Modern-day child prodigy who earned her Ph.D. at age 17, and became the youngest college professor in history in 2008. No doubt, materials scientist Alia Sabur has been ahead of the "learning curve" for most of her young life.  She was born in New York City in 1989 and started talking and reading when she was just 8 months old. She finished elementary school at age 5, and made the jump to college when she was just 10. By age 14, Alia had earned her Bachelor's of Science degree in applied mathematics (summa cum laude) from New York's Stony Brook University,…

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED Irène Joliot-Curie -- Chemist and physicist Shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her husband Frédéric Joliot for discovering that radioactivity could be artificially produced. You've heard of the achievements of Nobel Prize-winning scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. Now discover their brilliant scientist-daughter Irène Joliot-Curie who would also later earn the Nobel Prize based on groundbreaking research in radioactivity!  Born in 1897 in Paris, Irène, always a intellectually sharp and curious child,  began working as her mother’s assistant in the Radium…

This article was co-authored with Felice Vazquez, Esq., Special Counsel to the President, Kean University. What, really, do our children learn in school? While standardized tests and teacher accountability are the buzzwords of the day, our schools may be missing one of the most important lessons our children must master in order to reach their highest potential: how to get along. After all, the playground and cafeteria can be more challenging -- and interesting -- than the traditional classroom. These are places where children learn how to understand each other's emotions and motivations,…

One of the most influential structural engineers of the 20th Century You may readily recognize some his most famous works as a structural design engineer: the John Hancock Center building in Chicago; Chicago's Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower); the Hajj Terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; and King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. In his short lifetime, Fazlur Khan, perhaps more than any other individual, combined his love for structural engineering, architecture and art to usher in a revolution in skyscraper construction during the second half of the twentieth century, making it possible…

by Kim Krisberg This is the first in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story provides a look at the field of pain medicine and the patients it cares for; next week's story will look at the educational and risk reduction approaches physicians are employing to address opioid addiction and overdose. It took…

The term “War on Science” comes from multiple sources, one being Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” (see below) and another, the made up “War on Christmas,” a term attributed to Bill O’Really. Throw in a little “Culture War” rhetoric and I think we have a good basis for the origin of the term. The term “War on X” has been in used for decades if not longer, when some large perhaps organized group of people or institutions takes up the task of shutting down some thing or another. It does not mean an actual war with generals and troops and bullets, but the metaphor “war” is…

Gregorio Zara -- Filipino physicist and aeronautical engineer Creator of the first videophone ( a forerunner of such video telecommunication applications as Skype, Webcam and videoconferencing) and discoverer of the physical law known as the "Zara Effect." PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! Back in the 1950's, the videophone -- a telephone device that allows you to see the individual you are speaking with in real (or near-real) time -- was a mere dream of science fiction.  But physicist and aeronautical engineer Gregorio Zara, one of the Philippines' most celebrated inventors,…

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! (Send Us Your Comment: Dan Lipinski, one of only a few engineers in Congress, is responsible for bringing nanotech advocacy to the House!  What do you think of the role he’s playing?) Born in Chicago into a political family, Congressman Dan Lipinski (who represents the 3rd District of Illinois) is the son of former U.S. Congressman Bill Lipinski.  Dan replaced his father in Congress in 2005.  Always fascinated with solving problems, Dan gravitated to engineering and science as a young student. "I remember in high school," he says,  "my calculus…

On Naming Names and Calling Out Trolls Gawker, Reddit, Free Speech and Such Millennials: They Aren’t So Tech Savvy After All Project Information Literacy: Inventing the Workplace and How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace The Philosophy of Open Access Impostors, Performers, Professionals - I and II (feeling like an academic imposter, pt II on the job hunt) The Teaching Track? Really? Teaching them to fish… (on higher ed "disruption") Zeitgeist: On Ditching the Monograph and Digital Print Culture The B-School Twitter-Free Zone The future of higher…

Adopted when she was two weeks old, Lisa Perez Jackson grew up in the New Orleans, LA area of Pontchartrain Park with her adopted parents Benjamin Perez (a postal worker), his wife Marie and their two sons. While exploring less fortunate neighborhoods of New Orleans as an adolescent, she noticed the unsafe and polluted waterways and canals that plagued these areas caused by oil refineries and drilling. Lisa often expressed concern over the negative impact that these problems had on the surrounding environment and its residents. It was most then that she began considering a career in…

It seems that Brock University in St. Catherine's, Ontario really likes me. Two years ago, the Library kindly invited me to speak during their Open Access Week festivities. And this year the Physics Department has also very kindly invited me to be part of their Seminar Series, also to talk about Getting Your Science Online, this time during OA Week mostly by happy coincidence. It's tomorrow, Tuesday October 23, 2012 in room H313 at 12:30. Here's the abstract I've provided: Physicist and Reinventing Discovery author Michael Nielsen has said that due to the World Wide Web, “[t]he process of…

"Even though he is a world-renowned scientist -- including being the recipient of the prestigious National Medal of Science (the highest honor that the U.S. can bestow upon a researcher) -- Shu Chien is also known for mentoring a generation of high school, undergraduate and graduate students research, which speaks volumes about his dedication to science.  He is also respected for his willingness to collaborate with colleagues across science and academic disciplines to solve research problems.  Born in Beijing, China, Shu grew up in Shanghai and was a pre-med student at National Peking…

This article was written with Corina Hernandez, a Public Administration major at Kean University. The "college student" is fictional. On Election Day, New Jersey voters will be asked: Do you approve the "Building Our Future Bond Act?" This bond act authorizes the state to issue bonds in the aggregate principal of $750 million to provide matching grants to New Jersey's colleges and universities. Money from the grants will be used to build, equip and expand higher education facilities for the purpose of increasing academic capacity. Cranky taxpayer: Are you kidding me? New Jersey is already…

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! Dian Fossey's path to studying gorillas in Africa began in San Francisco, where she was born.  Her father (an insurance agent) and her mother (a fashion model) divorced when she was 6, at about the time she began developing a keen interest in animals, including becoming an avid horseback rider.  After high school she enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis, but she had difficulties with basic sciences including chemistry and physics, leading her to transfer to San Jose State College to study…

The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, and, for better or worse, health care is one of the major defining issues of the election. How can it not be, given the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also colloquially known as "Obamacare," was one of the Obama administration's major accomplishments and arguably the largest remaking of the American health care system since Medicare in 1965? It's also been singularly unpopular thus far, contributing to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, as well as the erosion of…

Co-inventor of "Hospital-in-a-Box", a solar-powered, life-saving operating room which can be transported to remote areas of Africa and set up quickly Although he spent part of his youth in America (including going to high school in Cleveland, OH), Seyi Oyesola's heart was always in his native country of Nigeria as he dreamed of returning there to become a physician and help his people.  After completing high school here, he returned with his family to his homeland where he earned his medical degree and began his internship training. But he soon discovered that on his meager salary as an…

I'm at the Access Conference in Montreal this week starting today, so I'm a bit behind on the readings for the Current/Future State of Higher Education MOOC I'm participating in. I'm hoping a nice long relaxing train ride will give me the opportunity to catch up. Anyways, Week 1 was a great introduction to the issues facing higher ed and here in Week 2 Week 2: Net Pedagogies: New models for teaching and learningReadings and Resources Blended Learning Models The Blended Learning Toolkit: Improving Student Performance and Retention, Educause Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 4, December 15, 2011. A…

 Read More…  Credited with helping to popularize physics and other fields of science for millions of students worldwide with his futuristic way of presenting these frontiers, Michio Kaku says his explorations into such realms began in childhood when his hero Albert Einstein died.  He was eight when he learned of Einstein's death, and he remembers that the public's reaction to the great physicist's passing "was as big as Whitney Houston dying."  Michio, who grew up in Palo Alto, CA, soon learned that Einstein had failed to finish his greatest work: a single, inch-long equation that would…