Education
clock | November 15, 2007
Today is a super-exciting day for me and I hope you will find it exciting as well. Why?
Because today PLoS ONE published a paper I am very hyped about - Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur by Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al.
Simultaneously with the publication of the paper at 10:30am EST today (and such perfect synchrony took a LOT of work, sweat and nail-biting!), the fossil itself will be unveiled at the National Geographic in Washington D.C. (and you'll see some snippets from there on TV tonight - more information on channels and times later).
First,…
purepedantry | November 14, 2007(I am going to try not to go on a big rant here; we'll see how well that goes.) Jonathan Cohn wrote an article in The New Republic looking at one of the critiques of universal health care: that it might stifle innovation. He presents his case as a balanced one where the relative trade off between costs and benefits need to be considered:
But one argument against universal health insurance isn't so easy to dismiss: the argument about innovation and the cutting edge of medical care. It goes more or less along the lines of my conversation with Mike Kinsley: In a universal coverage system, the…
oracknows | November 14, 2007Over the last couple of days, I've discussed "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) in terms of a meme upon which evolutionary forces are acting to select certain forms of woo over others in academia. Although, in my usual inimitable fashion, I probably carried the concept one step too far, in the end I concluded that the relationship between CAM and academic medical centers is probably best characterized as parasitic rather than symbiotic.
After I finished that post, I started thinking (always a dangerous thing). Regular readers know that I've sometimes raised a bit of a ruckus by…
gregladen | November 13, 2007(Santa Barbara, Calif.) - A team of political scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of New Mexico, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Notre Dame has completed a groundbreaking survey that explores how race and gender is changing the political landscape of the United States. The scholars presented their findings today at a press conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
The Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project is, to date, the most comprehensive multiracial, multi-office national survey…
pontiff | November 11, 2007Here is the story of a seven year old (supposed) prodigy whose parents are looking for a university which will enroll him. I always find it interesting in these stories that such an emphasis is put on degrees and tests. It also reminds me of my high school math teacher who told us he could teach his six year old son to do calculus.
clock | November 10, 2007There are 71 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.
Kim Gainer teaches Literature at Radford University in Virginia. She also writes fantasy fan fiction. Her daughter Patty Gainer…
gregladen | November 10, 2007Kentuckians can be less embarrassed starting soon. This from the NCSE ... it's a bit old, but it had slipped past in a flurry of other emails, and I think it is really interesting.
FLETCHER LOSES KENTUCKY GOVERNORSHIP
Kentucky's incumbent governor Ernie Fletcher (R) was soundly defeated in the November 6, 2007, election, by Steve Beshear (D), a former lieutenant governor of the state, who took 59% of the vote. A Baptist minister, Fletcher was perhaps the most outspoken supporter of creationism to serve as a governor anywhere in the country in recent years. He expressed disappointment about…
jrosenhouse | November 7, 2007You might have noticed that blogging has been a bit erratic lately, and I have fallen off my usual pace of updating every weekday. There's a reason for that! Regular readers of this blog are aware that I have a small obsession with the Monty Hall problem. I managed to convince Oxford University Press that a book on the subject would be a good idea, and now I'm supposed to submit a manuscript to them by New Year's. And since there is a limit to how many hours a day I can spend typing away at a computer, well, you get the idea.
I've also learned something else lately. Writing a book is…
revere | November 5, 2007I don't like to be a curmudgeon and I'm pretty tolerant when students write research papers that don't quite make professional grade. Writing papers may look easy -- you just have to report your results, right? -- but it isn't. Nor is designing a study or collecting the data. It takes time and practice to learn this and you make a lot of mistakes. I know from personal experience. It's the job of mentors, advisors and journal editors to educate students, bring them along, show them how to do it.
Apparently none of these guardians of the literature were awake when the paper, "Medical students…
clock | November 4, 2007Plano teen wins regional science award, moves on to national competition:
The awards, which recognize exceptional achievement in science, were announced Saturday at the University of Texas at Austin.
Alexander, who won a $3,000 scholarship, was honored for developing a realistic mathematical model detailing how biological clocks work.
"This is publishable, graduate-level work," said Claus Wilke, an assistant professor of Integrative Biology Section at UT.
He called Alexander's entry -- "Mathematical Modeling of a Eukaryotic Circadian Clock" -- a key component in understanding jet lag and…
oracknows | November 3, 2007If you think Orac's insolence doesn't live up to the name of this blog, at least when it comes to lamenting the infiltration of unscientific, non-evidence-based modalities into academic medicine, such as the use of reiki in a top academic trauma hospital, woo finding its way into the mandatory curriculum of a prestigious medical center and becoming more prevalent in the elective curriculum of others (even to the point of credulous acceptance of quackery such as homeopathy), woo being trumpeted by the largest medical student organization in the U.S., and even what I thought to be the most…
thusspakezuska | November 1, 2007David Perlmutter, professor and associate dean for graduate studies and research in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, has a column in the November 2 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on knowing when to keep a secret. Perlmutter offers up some good advice about managing one's career by knowing when to hold one's tongue, or even by avoiding hearing the secret someone else is dying to share. He suggests you fend off the would-be gossipers by saying, "I think I know what you are going to tell me, and it's really none of…
jstemwedel | November 1, 2007With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it's time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it's just a start.
To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we'd like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you'll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action.
From Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority:
There are a lot of children in this country who don't have much in the way of…
oracknows | November 1, 2007Despite the diatribes that appear here on a regular basis bemoaning the unscientific and sometimes dangerous claims made for so-called "alternative medicine" modalities, I'll be among the first to admit that in some cases it's not always clear what is "alternative" about some therapies. Indeed, there seems to be an intentional effort to "rebrand" some aspects of conventional medicine as being "alternative." Because these methods have a scientific rationale and at least some evidence that they work, by successfully marketing them as "alternative," woo-meisters can then point to them as…
drorzel | October 31, 2007There are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed today talking about college graduation rates. One is a passing mention that the NCAA has released complete graduation rate data for Division I schools through its impressively awful web site (the statistics are available as a series of one-page PDF files, one for each institution, which you can select from a set of 26 pull-down menus, one from each letter...). They also have sport-by-sport data, though these files are so full of gaps and omissions as to be essentially useless.
The other article is a longer piece about lagging graduation rates…
pharyngula | October 30, 2007This is a troubling story if you just read the right-wing perspective: a student at Hamline University (an excellent liberal arts college in the Twin Cities) was suspended for writing a letter to the university administration. That shouldn't happen, I'd say — we want to encourage free speech. Even if the student seems to be a bit of a far-right nut, and if the letter was supporting that lunatic idea that school massacres wouldn't happen if everyone were carrying a concealed weapon, people should have the privilege of expressing their opinions.
So I read John Leo's opinion piece on the issue…
pharyngula | October 27, 2007Those crazy rascals behind Expelled have some new games they want to play: they've put out a casting call for victims of persecution. It's a pitiful plea, but it will probably net a nice collection of complaints — because it's true. We do reject Intelligent Design from the academy, from science, and from science education, and there's a very good reason for that: it's the same reason we reject astrology, alchemy, creationism, haruspication, necromancy, ornithomancy, and witchcraft from our science courses. Because they aren't science.
Taylor Kessinger gets it. He's a junior at the…
drorzel | October 24, 2007
Welcome to Syracuse University News.
"Andrea Farina, a senior communications design major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts' School of Art and Design, won the World Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) Championship"
(tags: silly sports)
Cocktail Party Physics: just an ordinary man
Celebrating 50 years of the Bardenn-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity.
(tags: physics quantum Nobel science low-temperature)
Three first-ever atomic nuclei created at NSCL; new super-heavy aluminum isotopes may exist
Exotic nuclei created at Michigan State
(tags: physics experiment nuclear science…
oracknows | October 23, 2007Regular readers know that I've long been disturbed by the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based "alternative" medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). I've come across another example of how much this has occurred. This time around, it's come in the form of a "debate" being held at 2 PM on Thursday, October 25 at the University of Connecticut Health Center entitled Homeopathy: Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine? It's being touted thusly:
On October 25, 2007, the University of Connecticut Health Center will be hosting a historic debate on…
pharyngula | October 19, 2007I was just turned on to this recent issue of the McGill Journal of Education which has the theme of teaching evolution. It's a must-read for science educators, with articles by UM's own Randy Moore, Robert Pennock, Branch of the NCSE, and Eugenie Scott, and it's all good. I have to call particular attention the article by Massimo Pigliucci, "The evolution-creation wars: why teaching more science just is not enough", mainly because, as I was reading it, I was finding it a little freaky, like he's been reading my mind, or maybe I've been subconsciously catching Pigliucci's psychic emanations.…