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What We're Talking About Thursday, September 2, 2010

Going Back to School with ScienceBlogs

It's that time of year again, where we close the book on summer and students and teachers alike gear up for the fall semester. You wouldn't know it from the weather (where it'll be pushing 100 degrees around SB HQ) but we're all reluctantly switching off vacation-mode and preparing for that pillar of the scientific life: passing on foundational knowledge to the scientists of the future. To get the ball rolling, we have Greg Laden laying out his plan for reaching teachers this month, as well as a pair of posts from Chad Orzel and Rhett Allain on that great bugbear of students everywhere: grades. Rhett also has a nice post for focusing the mind at the beginning of the school year, asking "What are you an expert at?" Here at ScienceBlogs, we're lucky to have experts from all manners of scientific disciplines, so keep an eye on this space throughout September, as they'll be providing introductory courses free of charge. Better pay attention though, there may be a quiz at the end.

A Bloggy Announcement

Greg Laden's BlogAugust 31, 2010

"Starting tomorrow, September 1st, and running through the entire month, I'll be posting one or two (or more) items each day specifically written for (or at least, that I think will be useful for) teachers, as part of the usual 'Back to school' effort I do every year."

Grenade Tossing About Grade Inflation

Uncertain PrinciplesAugust 27, 2010

"If you think that this is a good way to assign grades, then there's probably something to this-- the correlation between class grade and GPA is excellent as far as this sort of study goes. If this sounds like a ridiculous way to assess students' knowledge of introductory astronomy, then the rest of the argument probably falls apart."

And just suppose you had no grade

Dot PhysicsAugust 27, 2010

"One of my brothers is a biochemistry faculty at Appalachian State University. We were talking (and surprisingly agreeing) that grades were dumb. What would happen if we stopped grading? Wouldn't that be awesome?"

You are an expert (at something)

Dot PhysicsSeptember 1, 2010

"This is something I use at the beginning of a semester. I ask the class: 'How are you an expert?' What is an expert? Let me call an expert someone that is comfortable answering questions about that particular topic."

Community

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K-12 students explain why science is cool in the Kavli Video Contest, and you can vote for the best of the 107 entries on the USA Science and Engineering Festival blog.

Video

A fuzzy baby porcupine snacks on banana bites on Pharyngula.

Video

Visualize every asteroid discovered in our solar system on Dynamics of Cats.
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In Conversation

“What is the point in putting solar cells in wet cloudy northern latitudes when the same cells will work so much better further south? Oh, the transport and political problems. Well, we'll get round them somehow. Or maybe we'll just move there. Who wants to live in Cambridge anyway?”

Solar power across the Sahara

stoat

Channel Surfing

Life Science

erv

Oh no... Cedric died.

Oh no... Im genuinely crying over this. Cedric the Tasmanian Devil died. Here is the obvious reason for...

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Big News: This Blog Has Migrated to a New Home

Goodbye and hello: I am moving to my new blog home at The Guardian

Pharyngula

Botanical Wednesday: Fungus that thinks it's a flower

Aseroe rubra...

The Life Science Channel RSS Feed

Physical Science

Greg Laden's Blog

Hurricane News and Coolest Pictures EVAH!

As predicted, Gaston has emerged from from the ITCZ as a named tropical storm in the eastern Atlantic....

Starts With A Bang

The View From Mercury

They will see us waving from such great heights "Come down now," they'll say. But everything looks perfect...

Greg Laden's Blog

Hurricane warnings likely for Earl

North Carolina will receive hurricane warnings (a significant notch above watches) within a few hours, as the forecasted...

The Physical Science Channel RSS Feed

Environment

The Pump Handle

Light Rail and Obesity in one NC City

Researchers use the introduction of a new light rail line to study the relationship between public transportation and obesity.

The Pump Handle

Struggling for Health, Labor and Justice: Los Mineros of Cananea, Mexico

Miners striking at the Grupo Mexico copper mine in Cananea are concerned about health and safety problems, and their community worries about environmental contamination, too.

Stoat

Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz vs Hansen

Right, the previous thread has spilled off a discussion of Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz and their representation of...

The Environment Channel RSS Feed

Humanities & Soc. Sciences

Aardvarchaeology

Archaeology 101: Chronology, or, How Can I Get A Date?

Archaeological chronology aims to answer the question "When did this or that event happen?". This question can usually be re-phrased as "When was this or that thing made?".

Uncertain Principles

Ode to a Rubber Dinosaur

Rubber dino, you're the one, You make bathtime lots of fun Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you...

Greg Laden's Blog

Stones, Bones, Shards Dirt

Natalie Munro (UCONN) and Leore Grosman (Hebrew University) have reported an interesting site dating to about 12,000 years...

The Social Sciences Channel RSS Feed

Education

Uncertain Principles

Good Advice Is Good Advice

Over at Inside Higher Ed, there's a list of "survival tips" for women entering grad school in the...

Greg Laden's Blog

What is life? New Biology Textbook

My old friend, colleague, suaboya, and educator extraordinaire, Jay Phelan has written what many believe will be the...

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

The Benefit of Working Bankers Hours?

Earlier today I picked Little Isis up from daycare and then drove to the gym. On our way...

The Education Channel RSS Feed

Politics

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

The Emergence of Gay Republicans

The last few weeks have brought several apparently unrelated news stories that add up to something quite important....

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Gay Marriage Destroys Civilization Itself!

The more clear it becomes that the bigots are going to lose in their attempts to stop equality...

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Won't the Real Glenn Beck Please Stand Up?

Media Matters put out a video contrasting some of Glenn Beck's self-righteous claims at his rally with some...

The Politics Channel RSS Feed

Medicine & Health

Respectful Insolence

Acupuncture quackademic medicine infiltrates PLoS ONE

Nearly a month ago, I expressed my dismay and displeasure at the infiltration fo quackademic medicine into what...

Mike the Mad Biologist

So Can I Sue for More Grant Money?

Suing for funding? Not a good decision.

Uncertain Principles

Simple Answers to Complex Medical Questions

There's a new medical study of the effects of alcohol consumption that finds a surprising result: Controlling only...

The Medicine & Health Channel RSS Feed

Brain & Behavior

The Thoughtful Animal

Wolves Are Smart, but Dogs Look Back

Dogs are pretty smart. They can have huge vocabularies, they can infer meaning in the growls of...

The Thoughtful Animal

Editor's Selections: Psychedelic Drugs, Narcissism, Cephalopods, and Friendship

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week: "Distorted perceptions and an altered state of mind:...

Neurophilosophy

The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry

This post is part of a Nature Blog Focus on hallucinogenic drugs in medicine and mental health, inspired...

The Brain & Behavior Channel RSS Feed

Technology

Science is Culture

Reproducible Research

Our friend Victoria Stodden is the lead author on a paper published today in Computing in Science and...

Pharyngula

What is this abomination called knol?

I'd never heard of knol before, but apparently it was Google's attempt at creating a competitor to Wikipedia....

Mike the Mad Biologist

The Price of Sequencing Versus the Cost

I'm willing to go along with the costs of reagents plus minimal ancillary costs running around $5,000. Maybe. But the cost of sequencing, including the externalized costs, is much more.

The Technology Channel RSS Feed

Information Science

Confessions of a Science Librarian

How come no LibrarianTopia blogging community?

The last little while has seen an amazing proliferation of science blogging communities. Scientopia, Guardian Science Blogs and...

Confessions of a Science Librarian

Welcome to yet another science blogging community: PLoS Blogs

Yes, YASBC. Yet another science blogging community. Welcome to PLoS Blogs! From the introductory post: Today we are...

The Thoughtful Animal

The Expanding Sciblogosphere: Musical Blogs and New Networks

The universe is expanding, and so is the science blogosphere. Directly on the heels of the announcement last...

The Information Science Channel RSS Feed

Jobs

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

Dr. M. Gives Advice on How Not to Get a Post Doc. Isis Cracks Up.

I got this email the other day from one of you lovely darlings and wanted to share it....

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

The Benefit of Working Bankers Hours?

Earlier today I picked Little Isis up from daycare and then drove to the gym. On our way...

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Big News: This Blog Has Migrated to a New Home

Goodbye and hello: I am moving to my new blog home at The Guardian

The Jobs Channel RSS Feed
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SB Basics

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Synthetic Biology

Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:

Pharyngula May 30, 2007

“Playing God”

The Loom January 31, 2008

"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti

Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006

Build your own virus


See Also:

Cribsheet: Synthetic Biology
Seed’s downloadable science guide

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