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Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE)

To encourage innovation and excellence in education, Science magazine has established a prize for online resources in education. The SPORE prize will recognize outstanding projects from all regions of the world that bring freely available online resources to bear on science education. Winning projects should reinforce one or more of the four strands of science learning recommended by the National Academies and be consistent with the science education standards published by the National Academies and the AAAS. Read more about SPORE rules and where to send your entries.

Nerdy Gift Ideas Part 2: Nerdette Gifts

Got a lovely nerdette in your life and desperately trying to sweep her off her feet this holiday season? I've got a few ideas that might bail you out... If you can't think of a better way to show her how you light up when you see her? How about a T-Shirt! Well, this one, anyway. These shirts show a set of hearts that, when separated, are only half-lit. But magically, or, you know, scientifically, when the two are brought together the hearts on the shirt - like your own - light up! Of course, nerdettes are still women, and there's a gift all women love: Jewelry. But if you're going to buy…

DEBATING THE INTERNET AND COMMUNITY, PART B: American University Students Examine 'Virtual' Society

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on "Communication and Society," we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature of community, civic engagement, and social relationships. For many college students, having grown up "online," it's easy to take for granted the "virtual" society we live in, seldom pausing to consider how it might be different from more traditional forms of community life. One of the goals of the course was to encourage students to think systematically and rigorously about the many changes introduced by…

The interesting experiment is already getting interesting

Speaking of the untrustworthiness of corporate drones, the decision by Blizzard to end online anonymity is already having consequences. Protests have gotten so hot that they are banning complainers and shutting down threads, and people are unsubscribing from the game in protest (impossible to tell if there are enough numbers there to make a dent in their obscene profits, though). There have already been instances of people revealing their own names, only to have a horde of prickly adolescent gamers descend in force on their facebook pages and email, and doing the unimaginative trick of…

Whitey Bulger Caught, and the Trivers Willard Hypothesis

Apropos this, a timely repost: This may or may not be a recent photograph of fugitive Whitey (James) Bulger of Boston's Winter Hill Gang. Most of you won't know who Whitey Bulger is. He is actually on the FBI's ten most wanted list. He may have been spotted in Italy last Spring, and the FBI is just now asking for assistance from anyone who knows where he might be. (That's not gonna work.) Whitey was top dog in Boston's Winter Hill gang. His brother was a Senator for the Commwealth of Massachusetts, and served as Senate President for several years. It is said that Whitey was an FBI…

Gas Tax: My Two Cents

href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/10/raise_the_gas_tax.php">Jonah and href="http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/10/if_we_did_raise_the_gas_tax_wh.php">Kevin have already chipping in on this topic.  Bob Lutz, the VP of General Motors, turned a few heads.  Not with an eye-catching new auto design, but with a comment in the Wall Street Journal: "I'd say the best thing the (U.S.) government can do is to raise the gas tax by 10 or 15 cents a year until it reaches European levels," Mr. Lutz said, during an impromptu interview just before GM Europe's media event last Thursday.…

The Evilest Spam EVAH!

I received the most bizarre spam email. It claims to be from the company that makes Guinness: Guinness Online Lottery. Diageo Ireland P.O. Box 1759, Killorglin, Co. Kerry Ireland www.guinness.com THE GUINNESS COMPANY OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded draws held by Guinness Company. Your E-mail was among the 5 Lucky winners who won £2,500,000.00 GBP (Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand, British Pound Sterling's) each in the Guinness Company online Lottery. This draw is being organized to enhance awareness and publicity of the…

Look into the eyes of the PGP-10

Emily Singer has a fantastic article in MIT's Technology Review reviewing the current state of play in human genomics. A curious highlight for me was this panel of mug-shots from the PGP-10, the 10 high-profile volunteers currently having their genomes sequenced as part of the Personal Genome Project: Top row from left: Misha Angrist, Keith Batchelder, George Church, Esther Dyson, Rosalynn Gill. Bottom row from left: John Halamka, Stanley Lapidus, Kirk Maxey, Steven Pinker, James Sherley. Links for each participant are to their profile on the PGP website, which includes information on…

Is Lynda Resnick's Admiration Good or Bad for Fareed Zakaria?

Earnest reporting or catty criticism? Fareed Zakaria, according to the Times, is on the short list of Lynda Resnick's dinner parties, along with "Queen Noor of Jordan, George Soros, the financier, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California." Is the Times' Christine Haughney critiquing Zakaria or not? Resnick is well known for being a marketing personality, one that makes broad, unsubstantiated health claims about "POM," her silly juice that you should not waste your money on. Nor should you ever buy anything from her former business, the Franklin Mint, or Fiji, her overpriced…

Beer Run

I drank the last of the Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre last night (I don't go through beer very quickly these days), which means the fridge is nearly empty, and it's time for a beer run. Which, of course, is a great excuse for a filler-iffic audience participation question: What sort of beer should I buy? Not that you could tell from my behavior last weekend, but I'm not a big fan of pilsner or light lagers-- if I'm only having a few, I prefer a heartier, darker beer. Belgian beers and IPA's are great. Fruit flavors are right out. So what should I get?

Blogging the book.

Thanks to Coturnix from a Blog Around the Clock: Yes! It is finally here! What you have all been waiting for, impatiently, for three weeks! The Science Blogging Anthology is now for sale. Go to Lulu.com by clicking here (or click on the picture of the book to your right) and place your order! You can choose to buy a PDF to download (but do you really want to print out 336 pages!?) or order the book with its pretty cover - it takes only a couple of days to arrive at your doorstep. I've ordered it? Have YOU!?

Science blogging anthology

Bora of A Blog Around the Clock is the hardest working man in science blogging. He put together a Science Blogging Conference that I'll be sorry to miss, he posts a bajillion times a day, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the blogosphere, and organized and produced the first annual Science Blogging Anthology. The Open Laboratory was undoubtedly a labor of love, pulling together 50 of the best blog posts from 2006. It includes one post by yours truly, but you already know how I write. You should buy it to learn about the rest of what's out there, and to support one of the blogosphere's…

A pipe dream of proper priorities

This is an education plan I could get behind. One additional requirement, besides diverting reasonable amounts of money into education: demand improvements in quality. Not this misbegotten accountability of No Child Left Behind, but shakeups in how school boards manage budgets; remove the elected officials from the business of dictating pedagogy and content, and let the qualified professionals design curricula that actually works. I listened to the video and just felt a sense of dread at the thought of the Texas Board of Education suddenly flush with new money and deciding to buy Bibles for…

John Lynch is or was a terrorist

I was on the TSA’s no-fly list up until six months back. Apparently "John Lynch" was a suspected terrorist - if so, he probably was in the Irish Republican Army in the 1980’s and thus receiving funding from a good number of patriotic Americans on the east coast during that time. It meant I could not check-in online or for that matter using the computer terminals at the airport. Instead I had to get in line and wait while the attendant phoned some unknown entity who - often after ten minutes - decided that I was fit to fly the friendly skies. No doubt you all felt safer because of it. There…

Battle of the Opens

I'm committed to a lot of different kinds of "open." This means that I can and do engage in tremendous acts of hair-splitting and pilpul with regard to them. "Gratis" versus "libre" open access? Free-speech versus free-beer software code? I'm your librarian; let's sit down and have that discussion. Unfortunately, out there in the wild I find a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about various flavors of open, sometimes coming from otherwise perfectly respectable communications outlets. (Pro tip: If you're not completely sure you understand, please find someone to ask. A librarian is a good…

Harry Potter Personality Quiz

I have been preoccupied with other things recently, so I did not post an online quiz over the weekend, as I usually do. I hope that you can forgive me, especially since I found this quiz that you might enjoy. Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc. But if I change the answer to question 15, I end up being .. Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc. Who did you end up as? And were you one answer away from being someone else amongst the Harry Potter crew? tags: Harry Potter, online quiz, personality

What City Are You?

This is another in a long line of on-line quiz silliness. You Are New York Cosmopolitan and sophisticated, you enjoy the newest in food, art, and culture. You also appreciate a good amount of grit - and very little shocks you. You're competitive, driven, and very likely to succeed. (GrrlScientist note: um, yeah, whatever you say) Famous people from New York: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Tupac Shakur, Woody Allen What American City Are You? What other possibilities are there? So far, I found Austin, Boston, and Miami. Oh, and Los Angeles. tags: online quiz

Join Our NC Science Blogging Conference Session Online on Saturday!

Karen Ventii has posted information about how to join our session online at the conference wiki. Here's the details: [The Gender and Race in Science Blogging] session will be broadcast LIVE on Saturday January 19 at 11am on Ustream.tv. Please tune in and participate online. Please note that you DO NOT have to register on Ustream to post comments. We look forward to hearing from you and reading your questions. Use the link above or copy and paste the address (http://ustream.tv/channel/gender-and-race-in-science-blogging) into your browser.

Important things for you to read

First, following Ethan's Fitness Challenge (to which I responded here) there is another new entry by Dunford here. Discovering Biology in a Digital World gears up for Science Online 2010: Citizen Science: all fun and no data? ScienceOnline 2010 Isis is branching out from the realm of incivility to the world of diversity, also at Science Online 10: Dr. Isis Continues to Ponder Diversity for #scio10. She's asking for your ideas as to how to respond to certain question about diversity. EM Johnson has the third (and I think final) installment of his Social Darwinism posts.

Links for 2012-05-04

Amazon.com: The Best Science Writing Online 2012 (9780374533342): Jennifer Ouellette, Bora Zivkovic: Books Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way we think about science-- from fluids to fungi, poisons to pirates. Featuring noted authors and journalists as well as the brightest up-and-comers writing today, this collection provides a comprehensive look at the fascinating, innovative, and trailblazing scientific achievements and breakthroughs of 2011, along with elegant and…

Too Many Cultures

During my first semester of college I took an introductory chemistry class from a poet, playwright, and Nobel laureate -- that's all one guy, not three. His Nobel Prize is in chemistry, which made him more than qualified to teach us about acids, transition metals, and the other basics of chemistry. He also advocated a well rounded education, and he required we read The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. In addition to our exams and lab reports, we had to write an essay about one of Levi's short stories. I bring this up because the intro-chem instructor, Roald Hoffmann, gave a lecture last night…

What Is Really Required to Move to a Renewable Energy Future: The Lance Mannion Edition

A while ago, I raised the problem--an inconvenient truth, if you will--that moving to a renewable energy future is going to be difficult: My impression reading a lot of commentary about renewable energy is that there's this fantasy that we just have to build a bunch of windmills, install some solar panels, buy a Prius, and replace our windows and all will be well. But the brutal reality is that we need to urbanize our suburbs. We need to discourage detached housing. We need to massively fund local mass transit--not just SUPERTRAINS. We can't have people firing up their own personal combustion…

we wuz robbed

The proposed text of the law to bail out financial institutions is extraordinary to say the lease - the biggest blank check in world history is being written and given to a single person to share with his friends. Without review or recourse. NYTimes source of proposed text This is for $700 billion, at a time - the treasury can buy more crap if they manage to offload any after they max out. The idea is that the US government will buy unsellable debt off select financial institutions, who will basically get US Treasury bonds in return. The sale ought to be at some discount - which is the catch…

It's the Stupid Economy

Kevin Drum is pondering the economy: A few days ago, in passing, I remarked that I was impressed (surprised?) by the ability of our economy to absorb so much catastrophe in such a short time without things being even worse than they are. What accounts for this? He goes on to quote part of a proposed answer ("foreign capital," basically), which Brad DeLong has in more detail. Other versions of the same basic question have popped up a few other places, as well. My personal guess at an answer is pretty much in line with my recent reading: the good times were never all that good for the…

The "Monetary Diversion via Coffee" Effect

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about good old 0.7%. This is the hallmark figure suggested by Pearson as a target for foreign aid to developing nations. In other words, the main idea is that wealthy nations do something nice and set aside about 0.7% of the gross domestic product, so that the sorts of things that the UN Millennium Development Goals are focused on, can be proactively tackled. Problem is, that not many countries actually do this, and this is why you have people like Bono and Bob Geldof all in an uproar, etc, etc, etc. For example, the United States puts aside approximately…

All the Soda Pop You Can Drink - But Don't Tell Anyone

I spent a lot of time on airplanes in the last few weeks, and so I spent a lot of time reading in-flight magazines. Southwest's Spirit is not so bad. In the pages of the September edition I learned about Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, dedicated to preserving all the unique and tasty soda pops of the world. John Nese decided in 1995 to devote part of his small Los Angeles grocery store to the fizzy concoctions. Disturbed by the idea that Coke and Pepsi would forever wipe out his beloved rare sodas, Nese started stocking the goods. Along the way, he contacted small soda makers,…

Fastener Technology Puzzle

If you buy a loaf of bread, it comes in a plastic bag closed with either a metal twist-tie or a little plastic tab. Either of these may be re-used to close the bag again after you have used some of the bread. If you buy a bunch of carrots, they generally come in a plastic bag that is closed with a little piece of tape. The tape is generally stronger than the material of the bag, making it really hard to remove the tape without ripping the bag open. And even if you do get the tape undone, it can't be re-used. Why do they do that? I'm not any more likely to use the entire bag of carrots at once…

On Replacing Science Online

That's "Science Online" as in the conference that folded, not "science, online" as in the practice of trying to understand the universe from in front of a networked computer. Specifically, I'm posting about David Zaslavsky's call for help in putting together a replacement meeting. There was a lot of talk about this right when Science Online went under, but that's pretty much died down, at least in public. David's trying to get something more active going. This is, of course, a massive undertaking, and something fraught with peril. And it's not like I have any free time to make really…

ScienceOnline2010 - Program highlights 9

And today, to finish with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Sunday, January 17 at 11:30am - 12:35pm: A. Medical journalism - Walter Jessen and Karl Leif Bates Description: It could be argued that healthcare already has a "killer app" - search. According to research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 61% of us look online for medical information. In an age of horizontal information distribution and social networks, what sort of medical information, disinformation and misinformation does one find? How do we fight publishers of medical…

Happy Darwin Day

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. - Charles R. Darwin, the closing paragraph of the Origin Of Species, 1st edition, 1859. Support…

Comps readings: virtual communities

Sunday morning I was all set to do another essay - just had to pick a question source and question - when my mother in law called to say she would be stopping by at about the same time I would be finishing up the 2 hour window, leaving no time for emergency house cleaning (no, I haven't grown out of that yet despite being married for >10 years). So here are a few readings on "community" which I'll drop like a hot potato and then run to clean the house. Both Wellman and Rheingold dispute the idea that we're all " href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43599073">Bowling Alone" and assert…

Parents These Days

Ethan Zuckerman has an interesting addition to the discussion of class and networking, offering a description of a talk by danah boyd (whose name I have been capitalizing, which apparently isn't right) about the history and usage of MySpace and Facebook. What's particularly striking is the opening: danah began her discussion with two quotes, one from über-blogger Kathy Sierra's 16-year old daughter Skyler, who observed, "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist." The other quote, from a 16-year old named Amy, explains the appeal of these spaces for some American teens: "My mom doesn't let…

The Future of the Quik N' Easy Meal

Busy week here, as Eric attempts to wind up his online teaching class, my parents descend for a week of family projects and fair going, and we deal with the daily realities of a rapidly-onrushing fall, complicated (happily) by a long trip and an early Jewish holiday season. So I give you something I wrote way back in 2007. The other day I thought I'd try out three "fast, easy, healthy, local" recipes that were sent to me from a green website that shall remain nameless because I'm not trying to give them a hard time - I appreciate what they are trying to do. Why? Because my job now is to…

Science Blogging FTW

As you might have noticed, I've added a new badge to the left sidebar. That's right - you can start submitting posts for next year's Open Laboratory already! So find your favorite science blog posts from around the interwebs that were published in the past couple months and get submitting! On a similar note, submissions are also open for the The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Communication Awards. These awards are "designed to recognize, promote, and encourage effective communication of science, engineering, medicine, and interdisciplinary work within and beyond the scientific…

Blogging with (bad) style

For, well, about 6 months now I've been meaning to riff on this riff about internet writing from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything. As I can't seem to get in tune, or plugged in, or somehting, I'll just let Steamboats take it away: If I were to interpret those tugs, I would say that writing on the internet tends to be more popular when it satisfies the reader's wish to be connected—the wish not to miss out. The writer, too, may have such a wish. I admit that I love it when another blog links to mine; there is great consolation in the feeling of having a posse. And of course many readers…

Mashable and the future cost of education

Here is an interesting article from Mashable: In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero In the article, the author Josh makes the following points: College is expensive and some people can't really afford it. There is a growing trend in online universities. University of the People is one example. Other universities are putting a lot of their material online - example MIT's OpenCourseWare project. There are a growing number of free textbooks available online. I would like to point to an example of a free physics textbook. Josh also points out that everyone should have a chance to…

Anti-Kerry but Pro-Moon?

Much has been made of the decision by Sinclair broadcasting to preempt regular programming to air an anti-Kerry documentary in 25% of the nation just before the election in a couple weeks. Democrats are predictably up in arms about it and want the FCC to step in; Republicans are predictably just fine with it. If the tables were turned, and a network or TV chain was showing Farenheit 911 just before the election, the argument would naturally be reversed, with each side taking the opposite position and pretending to be objectively right regardless; such is the nature of partisan politics.…

Best. Tweet. Ever. Or, library people at Science Online 2012

It all started with this innocent little tweet from @seelix: In going through the twitter list, I believe that half the #scio12 people are either a librarian, a marine scientist or named Emily. To which I responded: @seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12 @BoraZ had to chime in as well: The holotype #scio12-er RT @dupuisj: @seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12 With @seelix getting the last word: Found my new career path! RT @BoraZ The holotype #scio12-er RT @dupuisj: @seelix is there a marine science librarian named Emily? #scio12 Over the…

Medicine at ScienceOnline2010

Of course, our conferences always attract a nice contingent of physicians, nurses, medical journalists, biomedical researchers and med-bloggers, so it is not surprising that ScienceOnline2010 will also have sessions devoted to the world of medicine. Check them out: Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0--where do they intersect? - Walter Jessen Description: Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are defined as Web-based services for healthcare consumers/patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to…

Thomas Jefferson and Richard Dawkins

I'm looking for the source of a quote, attributed by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (p. 31) to Thomas Jefferson. Dawkins writes: Thomas Jefferson - better read - was of a similar opinion: 'The Christian God is a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.' I cannot find a citation online for this quote, and Dawkins does not provide one. The Jefferson archive at Virginia (which has over 1,700 items online) has a single document (a letter to William Short) which contains the phrase "a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust". In…

Medicine at ScienceOnline2010

Of course, our conferences always attract a nice contingent of physicians, nurses, medical journalists, biomedical researchers and med-bloggers, so it is not surprising that ScienceOnline2010 will also have sessions devoted to the world of medicine. Check them out: Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0--where do they intersect? - Walter Jessen Description: Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are defined as Web-based services for healthcare consumers/patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to…

Latest Toy Hazard: Asbestos

The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a group created by asbestos victims and their families, bought products from national retailers and had them tested at independent labs. One of the most disturbing findings was high levels of asbestos in powder from a toy CSI fingerprint kit. The powder is intended to be sprinkled on surfaces and brushed with a soft-bristle brush â creating conditions ripe for inhalation. Andrew Schneider reports on the groupâs findings in the Seattle P-I, and notes that CBS, which licenses the kit, has asked its licensees to have the kits tested immediately and to…

School Quality Can't Be Separated From Students (and Parents)

One of the key differences between those who favor educational 'reform'--that is, those who view education primarily as a personnel issue--and those that oppose it is how each group thinks good schools come to be. Consider this by Matthew Yglesias, an education reform supporter (italics mine): School funding inequities are obviously unfair, and I think we should get rid of them. Still, local governments are a distinct minority of school finance these days. It's also difficult to point to very clear correlations between per student funding and school performance. What's more, a school full of…

Nursing PLoS

Kim of Emergiblog explains nicely why you should support Open Access publishing: The Public Library of Science: You are writing a paper. You need to do some research, so you google your topic. Ah ha! There it is! The perfect article for your paper. The abstract is right in front of you, but you must go to the actual journal for the full text. Hmmm...you can access the full text of the article, but you must pay to do it! Anywhere from nine dollars to almost thirty dollars for twenty-four hour access. "No way", you say! "I have access to my university's online library, I'll just go there and…

Fornvännen's Spring Issue On-line

Fornvännen 2014:1 is now on-line on Open Access. We've had trouble with our on-line archive for more than a month. This was because the UV units, Sweden's largest contract archaeology organisation, moved from the umbrella of the National Heritage Board to that of the Swedish History Museum. The IT folks were super busy with the move, but now they've got Fornvännen's stuff up and running again. Sven Kalmring on evidence for contacts with Eastern Europe from the Viking town Hedeby. Anne Monikander on Early Iron Age strike-a-light stones. Robin Lindblad on Viking Period fishing and sheep…

Still more on social networks: Behaving yourself online!

This is the third in my informal trilogy on engaging in social media. The first two are here and here. I left off last time with this sentiment: It seems to me that one possibility if we want to engage these groups, is that we have to figure out where they already are and how we can fit into and improve that rather than try and build something completely new that we'll then try and entice everyone to join. Where do we go from here? Maybe if the communities we build were more accepting, civil and inclusive, that would be a start. Well, I like what Clay Shirky said recently about how our…

Library people at Science Online 2010

Following along in the tradition of Bora's introductions of the various attendees for the upcoming Science Online 2010 conference, I thought I'd list all the library people that are attended. I'm not going to try and introduce each of the library people, I'll leave that to Bora, but I thought it might be nice to have us all listed in one place. I did a quick list in my post a while back, but I revisited the attendee list after it closed and noticed a couple of people that weren't in the first list. As I said in the earlier post, there's been a good tradition of librarians and library people…

Never Say Goodbye: St. Andrew Beach Mouse

tags: St. Andrew Beach Mouse, Peromyscus polionotus peninsularis, Joel Sartore, National Geographic, image of the day St. Andrew Beach Mouse (Peromyscus polionotus peninsularis) 6,000 (Estimates range from 3,500 to 6,000). Image: Joel Sartore/National Geographic [larger view]. Joel Sartore has shared some of his work on this blog before, so I am thrilled to tell you that National Geographic also appreciates his exemplary work. You can view more endangered animals of the United States that were photographed by the talented Joel Sartore here at National Geographic online. All images appear…

Zoo School X-Press

Regular readers must be familiar by now with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Today's news from the school - their students have put up the first issue of their online newspaper, the ZSX-Press. Go check it out! In related news, and also at the Asheboro Zoo and related to education, The NC Zoo and NC Zoo Society will be hosting the No Child Left Inside Conference Thursday (today), March 6th, which will be held in the MPR [multi-purpose room] of the Stedman Education Building. I wish I could go. Perhaps someone there will write about it and post something online.

Spontaneous Generations

By way of Sage Ross, a graduate student in history of science at Yale: Spontaneous Generations is a new online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The journal aims to establish a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and debate about issues that concern the community of scholars in HPS and related fields. Apart from selecting peer reviewed articles, the journal encourages a direct dialogue among academics by means of short editorials and focused discussion papers which highlight…