Science
crowdfavorite | March 14, 2011The Art of Science Learning is an NSF-funded exploration of how the arts can strengthen STEM skills and spark creativity in the 21st-Century American workforce. The project will be launched this spring with conferences in Washington, DC (at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, April 6-7), Chicago (Illinois Institute of Technology, May 16-17) and San Diego (CALIT2 at UCSD, June 14-15).
These conferences will bring together scientists, artists, educators, museum professionals, business leaders, researchers and policymakers, to explore the role of the arts in science education…
sb admin | March 14, 2011The Art of Science Learning is an NSF-funded exploration of how the arts can strengthen STEM skills and spark creativity in the 21st-Century American workforce. The project will be launched this spring with conferences in Washington, DC (at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, April 6-7), Chicago (Illinois Institute of Technology, May 16-17) and San Diego (CALIT2 at UCSD, June 14-15).
These conferences will bring together scientists, artists, educators, museum professionals, business leaders, researchers and policymakers, to explore the role of the arts in science education…
dgreen | March 14, 2011A major focus of The Art of Science Learning project is about attracting more students into the sciences and helping these STEM students become more creative and imaginative as they participate in the workforce.
But we should remember this is not just about the "STEM students" and assisting our physicists and engineers become more creative. It's also about bringing "science literacy" to a broader public - so that we are all better informed about our world and can make smarter personal decisions about issues that intersect with, say, how our bodies work, whether biofuels are good for the…
bioephemera | March 11, 2011On Wednesday, I gave a breakout session talk on science policy jobs at MIT. I love talking about science policy, so it's not too hard to get me to do it - it's harder to get me to stop - and we had a great group of Boston-area grad students who asked excellent questions. Very fun.
The talk did force me to reflect on how different things are in my life since I left the bench. I'm certainly working no fewer hours (apparently Scienceblogs has been experiencing a denial of service attack this week, and I did not even notice. Bad sign). I still often have to do things I don't particularly enjoy,…
drorzel | March 11, 2011I've got three months to decide. I'll be giving an invited talk at the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP) with this title, with a goal of introducing the field to students and physicists from other fields:
In recent years, DAMOP has expanded to the point where the meeting can be quite daunting for a first-time attendee. This talk will provide an introduction to some of the most exciting current areas of research in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics, intended to help undergraduates, beginning graduate students, or physicists from other fields attending their first…
drorzel | March 11, 2011One thing that I thought of while writing yesterday's mammoth post about scientific thinking and stereotypes was the notion of stereotype threat, the psychological phenomenon where students who are reminded of negative stereotypes right before a test tend to score worse than they do when taking the test without the negative reminder. This is a hot topic in education research at the moment, and it seems like EurekAlert throws me about one press release a week relating to the topic (or, at least, it seemed that way before I got too bust to keep up with EurekAlert).
I ended up not throwing it in…
drorzel | March 10, 2011A few more comments on the scientific thinking thing, because it's generated a bunch of comments. As usual, some of them are good points, and some of them have completely misunderstood what I was trying to say. so let's take another crack at it.
While the post was worded somewhat strongly, I'm not really trying to stake out a position diametrically opposed to what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said. In fact, I suspect we agree more than we disagee. We certainly share the same broad goal, namely to see more people thinking more scientifically more often. The difference is really a question of emphasis.…
oracknows | March 10, 2011Not too long ago, I posted a rather amusing little video called Immunize! One line in the song that amused me went something like this:
Don't give Chuck Norris shots!
That'd be dim.
Chuck need vaccines? Naw
Vaccines need him?
Actually, not too surprisingly, it turns out that the word "dim" should be applied to Chuck Norris, particularly when it comes to "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), also known as "integrative medicine" (IM), or, as I call it, "integrating" quackery with real medicine. Of course, as fellow Sb bloggers have demonstrated, Chuck's well-toned biceps aren't the…
drorzel | March 9, 2011As a sort of follow-on from yesterday's post, thinking about the issues involved reminded me of a couple of browser tabs that I've had open for a while, namely this story about an education session at the AAAS meeting, and this Inside Higher Ed article on "Teaching Ambiguity". From the IHE piece:
Tidy may be comforting, but it is also banal, boring, conventional and unrealistic. That's why I have been asking faculty to infuse their classes with the element of surprise. By surprise I do not mean mysteriously taking a rabbit out of a hat, but rather incorporating experimental, untidy open-ended…
pharyngula | March 8, 2011I received email from one of those astrobiologists, the people behind the Journal of Cosmology, in this case Carl H. Gibson. I was…amused.
Dear Professor Meyers:
I understand you have some problem with our interpretation of Richard Hoover's article proposed for the Journal of Cosmology. I certainly hope you will write up your comments for publication in a peer review, along with the article.
Attached is an article that might interest you on the subject of astrobiology. Have you written anything in this area?
Regards,
Carl
Ah. He understands that I had some problem with Hoover's…
drorzel | March 8, 2011Everybody's favorite science blogger did a podcast with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and has been posting highlights of it. One of these, on scientific thinking, has a bit that I don't quite agree with. Tyson says:
I think the, if it were natural to think scientifically, science as we currently practice it would have been going on for thousands of years. But it hasn't. It's relatively late in the activities of a culture. Science as we now practice it...this is a relatively modern, that's been going on for no more than 400 years. And you look at how long civilizations have been around, and you say,…
pharyngula | March 7, 2011That was sarcasm in the title, everyone. NASA has released a public statement in which they gingerly edge away from Hoover's paper.
NASA is a scientific and technical agency committed to a culture of openness with the media and public. While we value the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts. This paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology. However, the peer review process…
pharyngula | March 7, 2011Since the World Atheist Conference is in Dublin this June, you should go just to test this scientific conclusion: the Guinness does taste better in Ireland. I think so, too. So here's the experiment: buy a glass of Guinness in your airport bar, fly to Ireland, drink some more there. Attend the atheist conference to cleanse the palate, as it were. Drink more Guinness, get on the plane and fly home, and have another one.
Compare.
So now you have another reason to go. It's an Experiment!
bioephemera | March 5, 2011Let's be honest: the past two weeks have been horrible. On Thursday and Friday, for example, I worked for over 24 hours straight (who needs sleep) on a single project. You may have noticed BioE's silence - no, when I don't have time to sleep, shower or go to the gym, I generally don't find time to post either. Yet during the past two weeks, or two years, I have never once wished I were back in the lab. This Experimental Error post pretty much sums it up:
Growing up, we were the smart ones. We were the valedictorians and the science fair champs, the celebrated nerds who read books for fun and…
oracknows | March 2, 2011The other day, I wrote to express my disappointment with Dr. Kevin Pho, of KevinMD, for posting credulous crap about alternative medicine. I noted in an addendum that he responded with a comment that in essence said that he posts things he "doesn't necessarily agree with myself to promote discussion and debate":
Orac,
I appreciate the critique. As readers of this blog know, I often post pieces here I don't necessarily agree with myself to promote discussion and debate. Your concerns are certainly valid, and will be taken into consideration as I choose future pieces.
Best,
Kevin
My initial…
drorzel | March 2, 2011Another shameless self-promotion post, but since I was confirming some arrangements this morning, I thought I'd throw up a post, so:
- On March 15, two weeks from yesterday, I will be giving a talk for the Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association at 8pm on the campus of SUNY-New Paltz. If you're in the downstate NY sort of area, and want to know what your dog should know about quantum physics, stop on by.
- On March 19th, two weeks from this Saturday, I will be doing the same presentation at 9:30 am at the University of Toledo, as part of their Saturday Morning Science program (warning: PDF). If…
drorzel | March 1, 2011Blogging will continue to be minimal, as I'm buried in grading, and feeling significant time pressure regarding the book-in-progress. I thought I'd pop up briefly, though, to provide a look at the current status of the book-in-progress.
The way this process works (or at least has worked for me) is that I write up a proposal describing what I plan to write about and giving some samples. For both books, this has included one full chapter worth of prospective text, plus a bunch of dog dialogues for other chapters. My agent then shops this around to publishers, one of whom buys it and sets a…
drorzel | February 22, 2011I grew up in Broome County, NY, down by the PA border, and my parents still live in scenic Whitney Point. Broome County is one of the areas affected by a huge environmental controversy, because it sits on top of the northern bit of the Marcellus Shale formation, which contains huge amounts of natural gas. For years, this has been deemed too difficult and expensive to extract, but gas prices and drilling technology, specifically hydraulic fracture drilling where they pump large amounts of water down the hole to break up the rock and let the gas escape, have moved to a place where it's…
pharyngula | February 21, 2011As long as I'm stranded in a snowstorm (thankfully fading right now) and unable to teach my human physiology class this morning, I thought I'd at least put a small part of the story I was going to tell on the web. We're currently talking about muscle physiology, and I've already gone over the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction…oh, you know that one, right?
Muscles contract using interlaced filaments of myosin (in red, above) and actin (blue), and myosin acts as a kind of motor gear, burning ATP to ratchet the actin filaments along their length, shortening the muscle. The ratchet…
oracknows | February 21, 2011Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer?
If we can harness the atom, why can't we cure cancer?
How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask this question myself. Saturday was the two year anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law from a particularly nasty form of breast cancer, and, even though I am a breast cancer surgeon, I still wonder why there was nothing in the armamentarium of science-based medicine that could save her from a several…