education
kkrisberg | July 19, 2013When I asked Teresa Schnorr why we should be worried about the loss of a little-known occupational health data gathering program, she quoted a popular saying in the field of surveillance: "What gets counted, gets done."
Schnorr, who serves as director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies at CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), was referring to the Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance program (ABLES), a state-based effort that collects and analyzes data on adult lead exposure. For more than two decades, NIOSH has been…
drorzel | July 16, 2013I forget who pointed me to the Tenure She Wrote piece on mentoring, but it's something I've been turning over for a couple of weeks now. Probably because I became aware of it right around the time my two summer students started work last week. It keeps colliding with other conversations as well, though, so I may as well get a thinking-out-loud post out of the whole thing.
I told my summer students even before they started, back when they were just writing proposals to do summer research with me, that I'm going to be very hands-off with the whole business. This is at least partly a matter of…
drorzel | July 12, 2013I spend a lot of time promoting Rhett Allain's Dot Physics blog, enough that some people probably wonder if I get a cut of his royalties (I don't). I'm going to take issue with his latest, though, because he's decided to revive his quixotic campaign against photons, or at least teaching about photons early in the physics curriculum. We went through this back in 2008 and 2009 (though Rhett's old posts are linkrotted away, so you only get my side of the story...). I'm no more convinced this time around, even though he drags in Willis Lamb and David Norwood for support.
There are basically two…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2013Last year, reported cases of West Nile virus in the United States hit their highest levels in nearly a decade. It's a good reminder to keep protecting yourself from getting bitten, but it also begs the question: Is this just a sign of a much bigger threat? The answer is just as wily as the pesky mosquito.
According to recent data published June 28 in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the federal public health agency received reports of 5,780 nationally notifiable arboviral disease cases in 2012. (Arboviral diseases are those transmitted by arthropods, such as ticks and mosquitoes…
drorzel | July 3, 2013There was a brief flurry of discussion yesterday kicked off by Matt Yglesias posting People Don't Major in Science—Because It's Hard, which more or less says what the title would lead you to believe (either title, since he's blogging for Slate where they like to give pages titles that don't match the post titles...). This was inspired by a National Bureau of Economic Research paper, the full text of which seems to be paywalled, sort of-- they emailed it to me at my work address for free. And since I could get it, I figured I should dig into it a bit to see what it really said.
I'm not going…
carlyo | June 17, 2013As announced earlier, the Festival has joined forces with U.S. News & World Report to host the U.S. News STEM Solutions Conference at the Festival Expo during the week of April 21, 2014 in Washington, DC -- bringing together the largest K-12 STEM outreach event and leading advocates of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from the Solutions Conference.
Today marks the start of the 2013 U.S. News STEM Solutions National Conference in Austin, Texas! The 2013 conference, titled "Teach. Inspire. Hire., will feature some of the country's most prominent change agents in…
carlyo | June 12, 2013Today's guest blog post is by Featured Science Author Dr. Fred Bortz
Tune in Thursday, June 13th on our Facebook page at 10 am EST to discuss this post with Dr. Bortz!
More than ten years after it was posted at the "Ask Dr. Fred" page "Why Isn't Pluto a Planet Anymore?" remains by far the most popular page at "Dr. Fred's Place" on the web, getting anywhere between 50 and 100 hits on a typical day.
That's a lot of interest in an icy world that is smaller than the moon and so far away that sunlight takes at least 4 hours to reach it! What could possibly be so fascinating?
The reason, of…
jtoney | June 12, 2013This post was co-authored by Ali Arab, Ph.D., an assistant professor of statistics at Georgetown University.
We are living in a global society driven by innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Success depends upon free access to information and unfettered research by scholars. Yet targeted academic boycotts are increasingly common, throwing more and more roadblocks on the way to progress.
Earlier in May 2013, the decision by the world-renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking to withdraw from a major academic conference in Israel reignited discussions among scholars on whether or…
lborkowski | June 11, 2013by Kim Krisberg
It seems we barely go a week now without news of another violent gun incident. Last week's shooting rampage in Santa Monica, Calif., has resulted in the deaths of five people. And since the Newtown school shooting last December — in the span of less than six months — thousands of Americans have been killed by guns.
Just a couple days before the Santa Monica shooting, the Institute of Medicine (IoM) and National Research Council released a new report proposing priority research areas for better understanding gun-related violence, its causes, health effects and possible…
lborkowski | June 7, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Every Tuesday night, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project welcomes standing room-only crowds to its Workers in Action meetings. During the weekly gatherings, low-wage, primarily Hispanic workers learn about their wage and safety rights, file and work on wage theft complaints, and organize for workplace justice.
Once a month, a representative from the local OSHA office would join the Tuesday meeting, giving some of Texas' most vulnerable workers the chance to meet face-to-face with the agency charged with protecting their health and safety on the job. Unfortunately, due to…
gregladen | June 5, 2013William Shatner reads Where the Wild Things Are to some kids.
Get More:MTV Shows
jdupuis | May 30, 2013Academic library existence at risk?
The Myth and the Millennialism of "Disruptive Innovation"
Fending off university-attacking zombies
The online threat to the American professor
Educational Hucksterism: Or, MOOCs are not an Educational Technology
Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online?
Libraries into career centres, campus residences into senior homes
Embrace Moocs or face decline, warns v-c
Library holds consultation sessions on proposed closure of the Life Sciences Library (McGill)
Editorial: why academic freedom matters to librarians
The Librarian Doesn’t Exist
Harvard…
kbonham | May 21, 2013Two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank) released a position paper based largely on the academic research of one Jason Richwine. The conclusion (roughly paraphrased): Hispanic people have lower IQ's than white people, so an overly permissive immigration policy will drag down the US economy.
Ethically, this conclusion is a deep affront to my liberal* sensibilities. The idea of basing our public policy on racism and bigotry is abhorrent.
Politically, this is dangerous territory. This is especially true after the 2012 election, when republican politicians were making…
esiegel | May 19, 2013"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence." -Frederick Douglass
I thought we were past this, I really did. Having grown up in New York, having lived in eight different states and traveled to 39 others -- as well as maybe a dozen different countries -- I truly thought there were a few things that were obvious. One of them, of course, is that you've got to give something a shot to know whether you like it or not. Hopefully, no matter who, where, or what you are, you'll enjoy this upbeat song by…
drorzel | May 14, 2013One of the perennial problems of teaching intro physics is getting students to do their homework, so I was very interested to see Andy Rundquist on Twitter post a link to a paper on the arxiv titled "How different incentives affect homework completion in introductory physics courses." When I shared this with the rest of my department, though, I got a link to an even more interesting paper from the same group, on the effect that doing homework has on student performance. This has an extremely surprising conclusion: for the weakest students in introductory physics, doing more homework actually…
gregladen | May 6, 2013My friend and colleague, executive director of the National Center for Science Education's Genie Scott, will retire by the end of the year. She's been director of the NCSE for 26 years. Genie is a key player, perhaps the key player, in the battle to keep science in the classroom and other things that are not science out of the classroom, in public schools. She's gotten piles of awards and has done a huge amount of great work. While a lot of people have been involved in this fight, I think it is fair to give Genie top billing in such major and momentous efforts as the fight in Dover (which…
esiegel | May 3, 2013“Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
You've probably heard the story, by now, of Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old girl who performed a mildly dangerous chemistry experiment on school grounds, mixing together household cleaner and aluminum inside a sealed container. You can get the full story (excellently covered) via DNLee, but to give you the 15-second version, she was arrested, expelled, and is presently being charged with a felony that carries up to 5 years in prison. The school board is not backing down, the attorney…
lborkowski | May 3, 2013by Kim Krisberg
On Feb. 13, 2012, Honey Stecken gave birth to her daughter Maren. Everything appeared perfectly fine — she ate and slept and did all the things a baby does. Even after a couple weeks at home in South Fork. Colo., with her newborn little girl, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
About two weeks after Maren's arrival, while Honey was at a children's birthday party for one of her son's friends, she received a call from a doctor she didn't know. He was calling on a Saturday, never a good sign. With an urgent tone in his voice, he asked if Maren was eating well, if she was vomiting…
carlyo | April 29, 2013By USA Science & Engineering Festival Founder Larry Bock
In what started out as a hopeful trickle more than four years ago has seemingly evolved into a full-blown trend: Suddenly it's cool and hip to be a scientist in Hollywood. Ranging from such blockbuster films as The Amazing Spiderman, Battleship, The Avengers, and Iron Man 2 to TV hits including House, Fringe, Criminal Minds, and Breaking Bad, an increasing number of Hollywood productions are using real-life scientists as advisors to not only boost the technical accuracy of scripts and video content but to also create more exciting…
esiegel | April 28, 2013"For I dipped into the Future,
far as human eye could see;
saw the vision of the world,
and all the wonder that would be." -Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This weekend, the Sun is shining here in Portland, as we've gotten our first annual spell of warm, sunny days recently. It's got me thinking of the approaching summer, and one of my favorite music festivals that's coming up. One of the great groups I'm looking forward to is Keller and the Keels, who have an unparalleled penchant for amazing bluegrass mashups, such as their rendition of two very different songs by Beck/The Grateful Dead artistically…