Science
kcollins | July 15, 2010
Amgen, a leader in biotechnology, and the Amgen Foundation are committed to supporting science education programs and are proud to be a sponsor of the USA Science & Engineering Festival to further encourage bright young minds to explore a future in science and strengthen science literacy.
Jean L. Lim, President, Amgen Foundation
"Amgen applauds the Festival for bringing together leaders in science education to create an exciting educational event for students and the community," said Jean J. Lim, president of the Amgen Foundation. "The Festival can leverage the passion and expertise…
drorzel | July 15, 2010In the comments following the silly accelerator poll, onymous wrote:
[T]he point of the LHC isn't to discover the Higgs. No one in their right minds would build a 14 TeV pp collider if their only goal was to discover the Higgs.
While it's true that the ultimate goal of the LHC is to discover more exotic particles that may or may not exist (blah, blah, supersymmetry, blah) most of the hype has focussed on the Higgs, which is the one thing they're pretty sure they'll find (comments later in that thread notwithstanding). This is one of the potential problems with the way the machine has been…
drorzel | July 14, 2010Via Crooked Timber, there's a silly web site that lets you put in a chunk of text, and does some sort of statistical analysis of it to determine what famous writer's prose it most closely resembles. It turns out, I'm kind of hard to categorize.
For instance, when I'm writing about Holy Grails, I apparently sound like Dan Brown. When the subject turns to the size of the proton, though, I sound like Douglas Adams.
Maybe it's just that the random variety of topics on the blog throws it off, though. I have, after all, written an entire book explaining quantum mechanics through conversations with…
drorzel | July 14, 2010With the rumors of a Higgs Boson detected at Fermilab now getting the sort of official denial that in politics would mean the rumors were about to be confirmed in spectacular fashion, it's looking like we'll have to wait a little while longer before the next "Holy Grail" of physics gets discovered.
Strictly speaking, the only thing I recall being officially dubbed a "Holy Grail" that's been discovered was Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), first produced by eventual Nobelists Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell in 1995. Somebody, I think it was Keith Burnett of Oxford, was quoted in the media calling…
ably | July 13, 2010From The Atlantic's Niraj Chokshi: "Seed magazine explores the idea that humans are eradicating cultural, language and species differences. Rates of species extinction have grown by as much as 10,000 because of us and half of the world's languages are expected to vanish by the end of the century. A worthwhile read."
Even before we've been able to take stock of the enormous diversity that today existsâ--âfrom undescribed microbes to undocumented tonguesâ--âthis epidemic carries away an entire human language every two weeks, destroys a domesticated food-crop variety every six hours, and kills…
drorzel | July 13, 2010we have a summer student seminar series, in which students who are doing summer research give 15-minute talks about their research. These are generally pretty good-- our students are, by and large, very good public speakers.
One thing that I always find interesting about this is how many of the students end up sounding just like their advisors. It's not just the content of the talks-- which obviously is approved by the advisor before the talk is given-- but also the style. Some students even pick up the mannerisms of their advisors-- verbal tics, hand gestures, etc. You see the same thing…
drorzel | July 13, 2010Yesterday's poll about "outreach" activities drew 117 responses by this morning. Since PollDaddy stupidly calculates percentages for ticky-box polls based on the number of total selections, not the number of people who vote, the graph you get when you view the results is kind of useless. A better version, using the "CHECK THIS BOX" count, is here:
These responses line up reasonably well with my own impressions of the term. I'm a little surprised that "Demo Shows" doesn't get 100%, even if you factor out the three people who clicked "I would not deign to know what outreach is." This probably…
drorzel | July 13, 2010It looks like I may well be getting together with some friends from college in Alabama on the first weekend in October, to go to a college football game. The logistics of getting to Tuscaloosa make this seem like an awfully long weekend, but I would feel guilty taking two days off just for football and college nostalgia.
It occurs to me, though, that the state of Alabama contains many fine educational institutions, which must have physics departments and students. If any of them would be interested in hearing a talk from me (I can talk about research (single-atom trapping for radioactive…
grrlscientist | July 13, 2010tags: The 2009 Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health, humor, funny, comedy, fucking hilarious, sports, science, technology, invention, public health, gas mask, brassiere, streaming video
I know this is a little late, but the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health Prize was awarded to Dr. Elena Bodnar for her invention of a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to a needy bystander of her choice. Her acceptance speech is absolutely hilarious (which is the reason I am sharing this with you today…
drorzel | July 12, 2010Rumors that the Tevatron at Fermilab may have discovered the Higgs boson have escaped blogdom to the mainstream media. This originates in a blog post by Tommaso Dorigo, which I can't read because it doesn't display properly in Firefox, but I'm sure is very interesting.
Anyway, this is a good excuse for a dorky poll:
If the Tevatron were to discover the Higgs boson before the LHC does, that would be:Market Research
There's a 99.7% probability that this poll is completely meaningless. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining, though.
jdupuis | July 12, 2010As if Pepsigate wasn't enough to get people riled up, this could be even move apocalyptic!
H. Steven Wiley takes a close look at the real Two Cultures, Scientists vs. Engineers!
In the past, I have heard there was conflict between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities. I don't see a lot of evidence for that type of conflict today, mostly because my scientific friends all are big fans of the arts and literature. However, the two cultures that I do see a great deal of conflict between are those of science and engineering.
*snip*
At one extreme, you have basic scientists, who seek to…
drorzel | July 12, 2010I spent this weekend in Baltimore for the summer meeting of the Committee on Informing the Public, held at the Maryland Science Center, which is a really nice science museum. This has left me feeling jet-lagged, a neat trick when I never left the Eastern time zone, but perhaps Saturday's visit to Pub Dog had something to do with it...
We had a number of discussions about the meaning of the word "Outreach" in a physics context, which is one of those Damon Knight/ Potter Stewart, "I know it when I point at it" kind of terms. I'm interested in what opinions people outside the committee have,…
grrlscientist | July 11, 2010tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books.
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature, environment and behavior books and field guides that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "…
grrlscientist | July 10, 2010
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Well, after the big explosion over ethics at ScienceBlogs, it's been a rather exciting week, hasn't it? Too exciting, if you ask me, especially since the most recent edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) -- "Scientia Pro Publica 34" -- has been mostly overlooked. But nonetheless, it was published by Denis at This View Of Earth.
To share yours, or others', writing, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (be aware that widget doesn'…
drorzel | July 9, 2010The big physics story at the moment is probably the new measurement of the size of the proton, which is reported in this Nature paper (which does not seem to be on the arxiv, alas). This is kind of a hybrid of nuclear and atomic physics, as it's a spectroscopic measurement of a quasi-atom involving an exotic particle produced in an accelerator. In a technical sense, it's a really impressive piece of work, and as a bonus, the result is surprising.
This is worth a little explanation, in the usual Q&A format.
So, what did they do to measure the size of a proton? Can you get rulers that small…
drorzel | July 9, 2010Thoreau offers without qualification some complaints about a paper in a glamour journal, ending with:
All of this might have been excusable if the big flashy Glamour Journal paper had been followed up with more detailed papers in other places (a common practice in some fields). However, when I searched to see what the authors have done since and whether they've cited that paper, the only places I found them citing their own paper was in papers only marginally related to the work published in the glitzy place. So there was no follow-up, just something that was trendy enough to get into a…
sb admin | July 8, 2010After hosting blogs for four years, it's about time I started my own. So, welcome!
Let me begin with a bit about me and what I believe.
I believe that science has the unique potential to improve the state of the world. I think this potential is being hindered today by a lack of science literacy around the world and by the largely closed and restricted nature of the world's scientific information. Two connected topics (ie. Science Literacy and Open Science) that I care passionately about and will delve deep into on this blog. I also believe that science can be more than a subject; it can be a…
oracknows | July 8, 2010I've been a critic of Arianna Huffington's massive group blog, The Huffington Post, since three weeks after it first blighted the blogosphere. That's when I first noticed that the "health" section (such as it is) of HuffPo had already become a wretched hive of scum and anti-vaccine quackery, something I began documenting again and again and again and again and again over five years ago, before Salon.com and Rolling Stone flushed their credibility right down the crapper with Robert F. Kennedy's infamous conspiracy mongering about thimerosal in vaccines. Indeed, I continue to document the…
drorzel | July 8, 2010Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin's emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of students:
Since the early 1990's, I have pre and post tested all of my introductory mechanics classes using a research based diagnostic instrument, the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation. This instrument is based on research by Ron Thornton at Tufts that…