jdupuis | February 5, 2011I got an email the other day announcing the 2011 Canadian Engineering Education Association Annual Conference. It'll be held from June 6 to 8, 2011, at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador.
The conference page is here and the call for papers is here.
The call for papers:
The Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) is an organization whose mission is to "enhance the competence and relevance of graduates from Canadian engineering schools through continuous improvement in engineering education and design education." This second annual CEEA conference…
jdupuis | February 4, 2011Out of Context Science is the latest and greatest amusing shiny shiny new thing on the sciencey web these days.
Basically, the idea is to take a line or short quote out of context from a larger piece -- a paper or blog post, say -- and see how ridiculous such a thing can be.
Here's a few:
One: We then observed the male's sexual behaviour for 15 min... such contacts were immediately recognizable from the females' 'startle' response
Two: they immersed 11 women up to their necks in chilly water, monitored their rectal temperatures, and compared the results
Three: But the alpha males in the…
jdupuis | February 3, 2011YASBC. But this time an engineering blog community. This is a fantastic new development if you ask me, especially in a blogging environment domininated by science blogs. Time to let the engineers into the clubhouse, even if that means that we'll have to start serving massive quantities of various beverages to keep them all happy.
Let them explain:
This is a collection of some of the top engineering bloggers on the internet. Surprisingly, scientists seem to outnumber engineers, though we don't think that will happen for long. Some posts link directly back to the author's web page and some…
jdupuis | February 2, 2011Every year for the last few years I've collected lists of notable science books from various media sources. I certainly continued this tradition for books published in 2010! I can tell it's a very popular service from the hit stats I see for the blog and from the number of keyword searches on "science books 2010" or whatnot I see in the logs.
Last year I started taking all the lists and tallying up all the "votes" to see which are the most mentioned books from the year. An interesting exercise, to say the least! While the "winner" wasn't in any sense the best book of the year, it was…
jdupuis | January 31, 2011The women science bloggers conversation is getting so long and elongated, I thought it would be interesting and, I hope, useful to put all the posts in rough chronological order. By rough I mean that I haven't attempted to order the posts within each day of publication. Perhaps I'll take another pass at the list later on for that.
The original list of posts is here.
2011.01.18. Woman science bloggers discuss pros and cons of online exposure
2011.01.22.Science Online 2011: Even when we want something, we need to hide it.
2011.01.22. Women science bloggers: Some thoughts (er, sorry, felt I…
jdupuis | January 30, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, is from January 23, 2009.
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The first wave of social media books, like Wikinomics or even Here Comes Everybody, were of the "what the heck is…
jdupuis | January 29, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change by Clive Hamilton
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in various media outlets. If you see one that I haven't covered, please let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca or…
jdupuis | January 28, 2011Er, right, I think I'm going to have to tread carefully on this one. *looks over shoulder*
Polls prior to the event showed that only 1.7 percent of DelMonte students knew that Marsh Chaumbers was the CEO of Chaumbers Linoleum Solutions and a generous donor to the College. Following the quarterly board meeting, 2.4 percent could identify the Trustee.
"We used assessment and showed almost a 50 percent increase in Trustee-related learning outcomes," said Burrows. "It's tremendous. Even better, we still have over 900 Chaumbers bobbleheads left over, so we can keep the event going for months to…
jdupuis | January 28, 2011Since the Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name panel at ScienceOnline 2011 there's been quite a bit of commentary floating around the science blogosphere about how women are represented within that community.
A kind of introduction:
The perils women sciencebloggers face are not that different than those we face in the real world... though the exposure of the internet can occasionally make it less safe. And the risks that women avoid out in the world, are not unlike those we avoid in the blogosphere. That was one of many important conclusions made in the panel Sheril Kirshenbaum,…
jdupuis | January 27, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The World According to Monsanto by Marie-Monique Robin
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements by Sam Kean
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon
Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World by Stan Cox
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance…
jdupuis | January 26, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman
I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted by Nick Bilton
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
A Lab of My…
jdupuis | January 25, 2011I'm always very happy to see a librarian blogger embedded in a science blogging network. It's very important to get the library message out beyond just the library echo chamber and to the faculty, students and researchers who are out patron community.
So I was very pleased to see Elizabeth Brown's new blog, Social Disruption, on the Science 3.0 blog network.
From her inauguaral post:
I've been able to found contacts and establish connections to quite a few people through Twitter, friendfeed, Linkedin, and Mendeley. This is/was an important resource as I'm the only person in the library with…
jdupuis | January 24, 2011A few days ago I posted some thoughts on the programming of the recent ScienceOnline 2011 conference and yesterday I posted some thoughts about the more social and fun aspects of the event.
In this post I like to look forward to next year's conference and start thinking about some of the sessions I might like to organize. My very early thoughts are coalescing around undergraduate education around. I have a couple of ideas which I think might be interesting to pursue.
First of all, I'm interested in collaborations around teaching undergrads about the scholarly information landscape. On…
jdupuis | January 24, 2011
The Chicago Way: A respected style manual advises scholars against open access
To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
Tenure and all that
Arsenic, cold fusion and the legitimacy of online critique
Teen's Bubble Ball game tops iTunes free app chart (used library book to learn programming)
The Invisible Computer Lab
Academic Boredom
How I Think About E-Books
45% Of Students Don't Learn Much In College
My Students Know Far Less Than I Ever Expected
Blogging with the Invisible Community - and Why It Matters
On building a better blogosphere
The Cowbell of Communications
Social Media,…
jdupuis | January 23, 2011A few days ago I posted some thoughts on the programming of the recent ScienceOnline 2011 conference. In this post I like to do some quick takes on some of the more pleasurable aspects of the conference.
Some random observations:
Amazing organization. What more can be said about Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker and all the rest of the great people they've attracted to the ScienceOnline cause? Not much. They all did an amazing job. Bravo! And yes, #ihuggedbora!
My Librarian Superpower. The highlight of the Book Fair on Friday night was getting to pick one of the wrapped books from one of…
jdupuis | January 23, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Balanced Libraries: Thoughts On Continuity And Change, is from June 6, 2007.
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The library literature. I don't know about you, but those three words strike fear in my heart. When I think library literature,…
jdupuis | January 22, 2011
Growing Concern Over Digital Thesis Deposit
An Open, Digital Professoriat
10 New Business Models in 2010 -- A Primer on Innovation
Could chess-boxing defuse aggression in Arizona and beyond?
What shops have to do when their products go digital
A manifesto for the simple scribe - my 25 commandments for journalists
What the powers-that-be think about DRM, and an explanation of the cloud
Digital music sales: Growth is slowing, industry group says
Heads they win, tales we lose: Discovery tools will never deliver on their promise and The games we play
U.S. Department of Labor and Department of…
jdupuis | January 21, 2011Two recent developments that I think are connected in a strange way.
Starbucks just came out with a new drink size, the Trenta, where the volume of coffee is bigger than the human stomach. Wow, that's a lot of caffeine.
In the same vein, there a company out there that's come up with a 12 oz "Whisky in a Can" product. Yeah, that's 8 full shots of whisky. In a non-resealable can.
Ok, so my idea is this. Buy the coffee, empty out a little of it and dump in all booze from the can. Instant Scotch coffee. Or Irish coffee. Or rotgut coffee, more likely, given what they're probably putting in…
jdupuis | January 21, 2011Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
USA Today
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Chicago Sun-Times
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns & Ellen Harasimowicz.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science by Sean Connolly
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in…
jdupuis | January 20, 2011Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History by Kalee Thompson
Lunatic Express: Discovering the World... Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains and Planes by Carl Hoffman
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
Come Up and Get Me: An Autobiography of Colonel Joseph Kittinger by Joe Kittinger and Craig Ryan
More Show Me How: Everything We Couldn't Fit in the First Book by Lauren Smith and…