Education
nisbetmc | April 2, 2007
Florida and Ohio State face off tonight in the Men's NCAA basketball championship, a re-match of January's national title game in football. Both schools feature the best athletics programs that money can buy, as they each spend an astounding $100 million dollars annually on their sports programs. Yet, as I wrote back in January, though these schools might be "turning pro" in athletics, they are quickly being left behind by the elite universities in terms of investment in science and research. Ohio State will invest more than $1 billion over the next ten years in athletics. In comparison,…
sb admin | March 30, 2007By David Michaels
The Center for Public Integrity has launched an exciting project examining the work of the federal advisory committees. It's been named âThe Shadow Government,â and it is directed by veteran journalist Jim Morris. The project's first report focuses on the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, a panel that provides advice related to the program that compensates civilian nuclear weapons workers who developed occupational illnesses following exposure to radiation, beryllium and other toxic materials encountered in the production and clean up of nuclear weapons. (I'll…
clock | March 30, 2007There is a growing, glowing discussion about the usefulness of college science labs that was started with an anti-lab post by Steve Gimbel and responded to, with various degrees of pro-lab sentiment by Janet Stemwedel, Chad, Chad again, Chad yet again, Razib, Jeremy and RPM and numerous commenters on all of their posts (also check older posts on the topic by Sean Carroll and Janet). Of course, I felt a need to chime in. I teach labs, after all (and I took many as a student as well).
The core of the problem is the very existence of the institution we call 'college'.
Let me explain.
There is…
bcohen | March 30, 2007Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and the guy who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, writes today in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the lessons and conduct of that pyschological test.
The conclusion of his updated reflections on the good-v-evil pairing:
Group pressures, authority symbols, dehumanization of others, imposed anonymity, dominant ideologies that enable spurious ends to justify immoral means, lack of surveillance, and other situational forces can work to transform even some of the best of us into Mr. Hyde monsters,…
drorzel | March 29, 2007Yes, the unofficial Admissions Policy Month continues here at Uncertain Principles. The problem really is that it's Admissions Season in academia, so all the navel-gazing academic journals are loaded with articles about it, which means that having wandered into talking about it, I can't get out without a major effort of will...
Today's worthwhile article is from Inside Higher Ed, where Alan Contreras puts the cost of higher education in perspective in a way that makes the class problem very clear:
In 1974, a year of attendance at the University of Oregon (the flagship university in my state)…
vhughes | March 28, 2007
Meet Alex Palazzo, cellular biologist and "postdoctoral fellow-at-large" of The Daily Transcript.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I'm a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard medical school. There I spend my time poking cells and in the process I hope to learn a bit about how cells handle mRNA, how the endoplasmic reticulum works and what are all those other intracellular animacules are doing.
Why's your blog called The Daily Transcript?
OK let's start at the beginning. Each cell is loaded with DNA that is stored in this specialized compartment, the nucleus. This DNA contains all…
pharyngula | March 27, 2007Ken Ham's fabulous fake museum is going to open soon, on May 28. There are grounds for concern here.
But Eugenie Scott, a former University of Kentucky anthropologist who is director of the California-based National Center for Science Education, said the information provided in the museum "is not even close to standard science."
Scott visited the museum recently as part of a British Broadcasting Corp. radio program. Although she didn't get a tour, she saw enough to know that the museum will be professionally done. And, she says, that's worrisome.
"There are going to be students coming into…
vhughes | March 22, 2007
This time around, the 3.14 Interview tackles the "excessively outspoken and sardonic" Steinn Sigurdsson of Dynamics of Cats.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Paperwork—proposals, forms and occasional actual research papers; herding and tending of kids and cats; in between I read and sleep, in that order.
What is your blog called?
Dynamics of Cats
What's up with that name?
Well, in about 1993, a colleague at CERN sent me an e-mail with a "heads-up" on this new network protocol called http, a significant improvement on previous distributed data protocols. He also said this group at…
jlynch | March 21, 2007Nearly ten years ago I started a book on Creationist misuse of intellectual history. I never finished it, which is probably for the best. The file is unfortunately MIA and all I have remaining was a section that I turned into a talk that I gave at ASU in 1999. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting the text of that talk. Enjoy and feel free to comment.
"Pithecophobes of the World, Unite!"Revisionist ’History’ and Creationist Rhetoric.
"This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornography,…
drorzel | March 21, 2007There was an interesting collision of articles about college admissions in my RSS feeds the other day. Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily had a post about a proposal to make college admissions random. The idea is that we could reduce stress on students and parents by having colleges identify those students who meet their academic standards, and then select randomly from among them, rather than trying to find perfect matches.
At around the same time, Inside Higher Ed had an article about Davidson College's decision to eliminate student loans from their financial aid packages. Students who qualify…
vhughes | March 21, 2007
After a bit of a hiatus, ScienceBlogger interviews are back! And today, in honor of his one-year blogging anniversary, we feature Steve Higgins of Omni Brain.
What's your name?
James Stephen Higgins, but that James name is one of those crazy family things where every first-born male gets the name and every other one goes by their middle name—so I guess I'm the every other one. Steve is the short answer.
What's your blog called?
Omni Brain
What's up with that name?
There used to be this great sciency magazine (back in elementary school) called OMNI, published by the guy who publishes Hustler…
apalazzo | March 20, 2007Yesterday we had a look at the science funding sutation south of the border, today we look up north.
In their new budget, the Tories have allotted some extra cash for graduate-student scholarships and university research. The increase will amount to an additional 40% for postsecondary education which now stands at $3.2-billion per year. This includes 1,000 new scholarships for masters and PhD students. Remember, up north all the schools are public and so their budget is set in part by the federal and provincial governments. So in all it sounds good ... right? From the Globe and Mail:
The…
sb admin | March 20, 2007By David Michaels
The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is holding a public meeting tonight in Texas City, Texas, to release the final report of its investigation into the explosion at the BP refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more in March, 2005. Thursday, the House Education and Labor Committee will be holding a hearing on the disaster.
Both these events will focus on ways to prevent more explosions in the future. There are many lessons to be learned from the explosion, but its clear to me that the one lesson managers of other firms will take home from the BP disaster is that…
jlynch | March 18, 2007Following on from yesterday's section, Here's the second installment.
Creationism, Cultural Politics and Clashing Ideologies.
If this were solely an issue of scientific observations or the veracity of hypotheses, it is doubtful that the Creation/Evolution debate would inflame such passions. While purely scientific controversies excite the scientists within the respective fields, they rarely make headlines, and never become part of legislation, or rulings of the Supreme Count. It is clear that what is being argued about here, at least as far as the ICR is concerned,
is the status of biblical…
tsmith | March 14, 2007Just a reminder that there will be a symposium this weekend discussing evolution and intelligent design at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. The event is geared toward those interested in matters of faith or science; teachers; principals; college students majoring in education, science and religion/philosophy; clergy; and parish educators. Scholarships are available for the first 200 K-12 educators, board of education members, school administrators, etc. who apply--still plenty of those left, so if you know anyone who'd be interested, point them in our direction. I'm including the text…
oracknows | March 13, 2007I'm on the record multiple times as saying that I reject the entire concept and nomenclature of "alternative medicine" as being distinct from "conventional" medicine as a false dichotomy, when in reality there should be just "medicine." Moreover, this "medicine" remaining should, whenever possible, be based on sound scientific and clinical trial evidence. In essence, I advocate treating "alternative" medicine the same as "conventional" medicine subjecting it to the same scientific process to determine whether it has efficacy or not, after which medicine that is effective is retained and used…
sporte | March 12, 2007It looked like just any other rainy Saturday morning in the Pacific Northwest, but no, this Saturday was a day for microbiology. Reluctantly, I crawled out of my warm bed and headed over to the University of Washington to attend a meeting of the Pacific NW branch of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
My goals for this venture were diverse. Of course, I wanted to go hear some good science and see some old friends. But I also wanted to learn more about what microbiologists are actually doing these days, out there in the wild.
In my world, since all we hear about are nucleic acid…
purepedantry | March 12, 2007David Ignatius has a great column about the underestimated power of American education. American-style education is being rapidly exported all over the world, and foreign students are lining up to attend American universities at both a graduate and undergraduate level. In some cases, these students stay. In some cases, they return, bringing the values they learned here to their home countries:
America's great universities are in fact becoming global. They are the brand names for excellence -- drawing in the brightest students and faculty and giving them unparalleled opportunities. This is…
grrlscientist | March 8, 2007Have you noticed how you tend to remember things better after you've figured them out for yourself rather than listening to someone else's explanation? Well, this phenomenon is typical for toddlers, too.
According to a study published today, toddlers have an easier time learning new words when they figure out the meanings themselves.
"There are two ways to learn as a child: you either learn because you figured it out yourself, or you learn because somebody told you, and lots of our school-based education is engaged in people telling us things," said Justin Halberda, assistant professor of…
sb admin | March 8, 2007by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Itâs International Womenâs Day, and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is holding its 51st session with the theme of âthe elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.â Elisha Dunn-Georgiou at RH Reality Check reports that this theme, which youâd expect to get broad support, is under attack from some groups because itâs linked to sexual and reproductive health.
For those who donât believe that itâs a moral imperative for women to have control over their reproductive lives, thereâs another compelling argument in favor of…