Science
mstorksdieck | April 1, 2011Within certain education and policy circles the acronym STEM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, math) has become a common term, used frequently to be inclusive when referring to a broad area of scholarship and enterprise we deem particularly connected, i.e., those listed four subjects. How, or even whether the acronym is understood and fashionable outside these education "insider" groups is not well know. What is known, though, is that the acronym and associated term is not well defined even within groups that make heavy use of it.
When we say STEM, do we simply mean any of the four…
catdynamics | April 1, 2011Word is that President Obama will be announcing a bold new initiative in the physical sciences later today, providing major sustained funding boost and significant increases in funding across the board, including new major research faciltiies, accelerated funding of ongoing projects and more money for pure "blue sky" research, as part of a coherent plan to boost the economy and provide a long term path for sustainable growth.
Confidential sources at NaSA tell me the President will make space science the cornerstone of the new policy:
"Obama is sick of hundreds of billions of dollars being…
oracknows | April 1, 2011
Ah, April Fools' Day!
I had thought of trying to do a typical April Fools' Day post, you know, something like trying to write something but the last time I tried to do that it fell really flat, so flat that I'm not even going to link to it. It's better not to remind my readers of my jokes that fell completely flat. Better to move on to a more appropriate April Fools' Day topic, a topic like the James Randi Educational Foundation's annual Pigasus Awards. The basic idea is to give recognition where recognition is due for the five worst promoters of nonsense from the previous year.
For 2011…
bioephemera | March 31, 2011The myriad miseries of graduate school are reserved to no one discipline, but there may be something to the contention that biology graduate programs are particularly bad. Here's what Mike the Mad Biologist says, in response to Science Professor, and I think he's quite right:
The basic problem stems (so to speak) from too many biology Ph.D.s and not enough funding, leading to an immensely cutthroat environment--and one that is psychologically damaging to boot. . . .So why does this dysfunctional cultural paradigm exist? I think it has to do with two things: specialization and Ph.D. training…
drorzel | March 31, 2011Via Mad Mike, a discussion of why it sucks to be a biomedical scientist:
87% of my blog-related e-mail is from unhappy, bitter, troubled, distraught biomed grad students, postdocs, technicians, and early-career faculty. Others write to me with problems, but these tend to be of the "I'm frustrated with my advisor" sort rather than the "I'm being tortured, abused, deported, sued, and I fear my academic career is over" sort that I routinely get from biomed people.
I specify biomedical rather than the life science in general because, as far as I can tell, the ecologists and botanists and…
bioephemera | March 30, 2011Here's Alexis Madrigal on why the slow loris' newfound YouTube fame could be the worst possible thing for the little primates:
Talk about a buzzkill: watching a video of a cute animal on the Internet may -- in some small way -- lead to it being ripped from its mother, abused, and sold on the global market.
I know, I know: most of us can coo over small furry critters with extreme neoteny, while refraining from buying them on the black market. And it's not YouTube's fault that the loris is adorable. It's just truly sad that popularizing an endangered animal most people don't even realize exists…
oracknows | March 30, 2011Yesterday, I learned of how animal rights terrorists are targeting college students as the "soft underbelly of the vivisection movement." As an example of their new strategy, these thugs gloated over the "recantation" by a Florida Atlantic University student named Alena Rodriguez, who, because of her e-mail to a Negotiation Is Over editor named Ghazal Tajalli rejecting her request to become involved in an animal rights event, was targeted for a campaign of intimidation, smears, and harassment. As a result, Rodriguez was sufficiently terrified that she basically gave the thugs what they wanted…
oracknows | March 29, 2011I've made no secret of my disdain for self-proclaimed "animal rights" activists, the ones who are more than willing to terrorize scientists doing research to understand disease better and thereby develop better treatments and even cures. None of this means that I am some sort of "animal abuser" (to steal the animal rights jargon) or that I'm cruel and advocate "torturing" animals. There is a difference between animal rights and animal welfare; animal rights activists in essence equate a mouse with a rat with a dog with a pig with a human being. In any case, I've reported how animal rights…
catdynamics | March 29, 2011Are Economic Maxwell's Daemons allowed by the laws of econophysics?
If so, who would have one?
Presumably following the flow of hot money would reveal it.
oracknows | March 29, 2011Well, it's over.
The grant is in, but it was painful, and I was exhausted, both in brain and body, last night. That's why there's no Insolence right now. Last night, I chilled, cracked open a cold one, watched some utterly mindless TV, and crashed early in order to be ready for a day in the OR. So that means it's time for my favorite blog space-killing gambit when things get too busy for me to lay down my daily dose of Insolence: Open thread!
Have fun. Well-rested, I'm off to the OR. I'll be back later.
oracknows | March 27, 2011Grant time again! Since today--yes, today!--is the deadline for a rather big grant I'm writing (not quite R01 level, but a respectable three year project if I can get it), I was up until the wee hours of the morning trying to put this sucker to bed. Being the ever-benevolent blogger, though, far be it from me to deny you some Insolence. It's just recycled Insolence. Of course, given that this is nearly four years old, if you've been reading less than four years, it's new to you! I'll be back tomorrow; that is, assuming I've recovered. As I look at this post, it occurs to me that I haven't…
bioephemera | March 27, 2011I have a copy of "Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower" (1998 edition) that I'll mail to the first person who emails me their (US) address. Sorry, It's taken!
drorzel | March 27, 2011Occasional commenter Evan Murphy emailed to bring my attention to Siege Toys, a new venture that aims to make desktop snap-together wooden trebuchets. Why? Because medieval siege warfare engines are awesome.
They're looking for funding via Kickstarter, so if you've ever wanted your very own trebuchet, go place a pre-order. And lest you think this is a complete lark, their web page includes this design note:
We spent a solid month and a half adjusting the prototype after figuring out the rough dimensions on a 4th-order runge-kutta simulator that I wrote a year and a half ago.
So, you know,…
oracknows | March 27, 2011These are two videos that appeared to have disappeared from YouTube for a while, thanks to takedown notices from the distributors of the film. Fortunately, they appear to be back, which is pure awesomeness. Unfortunately, because I'm busy putting the final touches on a grant today, the first one resonates in a rather eerie way. Unfortunately, neither of them appear to allow embedding:
Scientific Peer Review, ca. 1945
Hitler NIH rejection
Back to work, now...
bioephemera | March 26, 2011I can think of a few answers, but the Name Inspector points out that naming food is one: apparently the Corn Refiners Association is trying to rename "high fructose corn syrup" "corn sugar."
it's gotten an especially bad rap lately, partly because it has a name so long and scientific sounding that it has to be abbreviated.
First off, I don't think "high fructose corn syrup" is all that "scientific sounding"; try "monosodium glutamate" on for size and get back to me. It's also not that long: six syllables, people! But the interesting issue is that the aura of high-tech innovation and space-…
bioephemera | March 25, 2011A really interesting post from Deborah Blum on the "radium girls" who painted wristwatches in the 1920s - to fatal effect:
At the factory, the dial painters were taught to shape their brushes to a fine point with their lips, producing the sharp tip needed to paint the tiny numbers and lines of watch dials, the lacy designs of fashionable clocks. Each worker was expected to paint 250 dials a day, five and a half days a week. They earned about $20 a week for that work, at a rate of one and a half cents per completed dial.
The painters were teen-aged girls and young women who became friendly…
peconomy | March 24, 2011I can still remember how excited I got in junior and senior high school when it was science fair season. My friends and I would kick around ideas and make elaborate plans for what we were certain would be that year's shoo-in winner of the school fair. And once we captured the school's top prize, we would surely breeze through the city, county, and state prizes -- all the way to the nationals. But while we never made it to the nationals (nor to the state, county, or city competitions), we still couldn't wait to work on our science fair creations each year.
One year I used some little-known-at-…
catdynamics | March 23, 2011NISA has a concise summary of the status of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi (pdf)
Includes temperatures on reactor vessel surface where available.
They show reactor 2 as cold and unpressured, the rise in temperature in reactor 1 - so something in there is generating heat at a significant rate, but at least the rector vessel is pressurized; and reactor 3 is a mess, warm core and unpressured.
bioephemera | March 23, 2011"You'd think that art is based more on intuition and science is based more on knowledge and fact, but what I think happens is that as you get more proficient in either of those fields, the intuitive knowledge base and the factual knowledge base become equally important. In this sense, Einstein may have been an artist because he used an intuitive sense of how things worked."
Yo-ichiro Hakomori, biochem BA & architect
wHY Architecture & Design
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