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Food Storage Class Starting Thursday

So apparently in my sleep-deprived, brain rotted state, I managed to leave out the start date of my food storage and preservation class - it starts on Thursday, August 23rd, ie, this Thursday.  I still do have spaces, and as it is asynchronous and online, you don't have to be able to drive to my house ;-) (which is probably good, since it isn't very clean at the moment.)  It will help all of us build up that reserve and deal with the summer's glut before the long winter (and high foot prices) to come!  Email me for more details or to register at jewishfarmer@gmail.com.  Cost of the class is $…

The Best of May

I posted only 128 posts in May - the reason for this reduction in numbers I explained here. Traffic has suffered only a little bit so far, I'll keep an eye. Looking back at the month, I noticed how many videos I have posted: about half are very informative and thought-provoking, the other half are hilariously funny. Take a look. So, what did I actually blog about last month? There was some serious science on this blog last month, e.g., Why social insects do not suffer from ill effects of rotating and night shift work? and Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks! I celebrated my birthday and…

The Evolution of Peeps

It is really sad when an independent book store closes. It is even sadder when that book store was not just a shop but also a center of local community, a place where people gathered to have coffee, talk, interact with boook authors, take art or yoga classes, participate in theater or children's activities. But the economic downturn is affecting everyone and Market Street Books in Southern Village was forced to close by May 1st. I went there a couple of times last week, to commiserate with the employees and volunteers who were packing, wondering what the future will bring for them and picked…

Mindcasting

On Twitter, mindcasting is the new lifecasting: Even a few years ago the word "blog" inspired that peculiar mix of derision and dismissal that seems to haunt new media innovations long after they're proven. A blogger was a lonely, pajama-clad person in a dark room, typing out banal musings he mistook for interesting ones, to be read by a handful of friends or strangers if they were read at all. That blogs have now become a fixture of media and culture might, you'd think, give critics pause before indulging in another round of new media ridicule. But it ain't so. Twitter, the micro-messaging…

Olivia Judson needs a primer on Science Online

Oh-oh, Olivia Judson is not up-to-speed on Open Access, Open Science and Science 2.0 stuff - though the article is interesting and thought-provoking: As a system, it was a little clumsy -- photocopying was a bore, and if I wanted to spend a couple of months writing somewhere other than my office, I had to take boxes of papers with me -- but it worked. I knew what I had and where it was. Then the scientific journals went digital. And my system collapsed. On the good side, instead of hauling dusty volumes off shelves and standing over the photocopier, I sit comfortably in my office, downloading…

MS Excel is the tool of the Devil!

There is a good reason why scientists in general despise MS Excel. It is cumbersome, non-common-sensical, and the stats cannot be trusted. The graphs are ugly. I am sure it took a lot of hard work to design Excel (and Word), but if I were Charles Simonyi, I would hide the authorship of those two programs as much as possible. Charles went to the Space Station, after all, paying for the ticket out of his own pocket, so there is something much more exciting (and safe) to brag about (not to mention dating Martha Stewart). There are so many good pieces of software out there, many capable of…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Same-sex Attraction Is Genetically Wired In Nematode's Brain: University of Utah biologists genetically manipulated nematode worms so the animals were attracted to worms of the same sex -- part of a study that shows sexual orientation is wired in the creatures' brains. Secrets Behind Butterfly Wing Patterns Uncovered: The genes that make a fruit fly's eyes red also produce red wing patterns in the Heliconius butterfly found in South and Central America, finds a new study by a UC Irvine entomologist. Ancient DNA Reveals That Some Neanderthals Were Redheads: Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Power Of Altruism Confirmed In Wikipedia Contributions: The beauty of open-source applications is that they are continually improved and updated by those who use them and care about them. Dartmouth researchers looked at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to determine if the anonymous, infrequent contributors, the Good Samaritans, are as reliable as the people who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain. X-effect: Female Chromosome Confirmed A Prime Driver Of Speciation: Researchers at the University of Rochester believe they have just confirmed a controversial theory of evolution.…

The Death of a Friendship

Two months ago, Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received a call from the Pentagon: Donald Rumsfeld would like to see him as soon as possible. Adelman said he knew then that this meeting might be their last. "I suggested that we were losing the war," Adelman, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld, told The New Yorker magazine in an interview posted online Saturday. Adelman and Rumsfeld had been friends for 36 years. Adelman first worked for Rumsfeld during the Nixon Administration, and then was Rumsfeld's assistant when he was the Secretary of…

Not an “accident”: Joshua Halphin, 25 suffers fatal work-related injury in Springfield, MO

Joshua Halphin, 25, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, March 24 while working at a construction project in Springfield, MO. The News-Leader reported first: [The victim] “…was off-loading supplies from a lift onto the fifth floor of the complex when he lost his balance and fell.” The incident occurred at about 12:30 pm at the site of a new student apartments on E. St. Louis Street. The project developer is Aspen Heights. Springfield, MO is the home of Missouri State University (MSU). The Aspen Springfield student housing complex will be the largest to-date for MSU students. KY3…

Gingerbread Cult of Saint Lucy

A re-run from 12 December 2006. Tomorrow's the feast-day of St Lucy, and my son's school started off the celebrations a day early. So this afternoon, along with a lot of other parents, I had saffron buns and watched kids in Ku Klux Klan and Santa outfits form a long line and sing Christmas carols. One end of the line was mostly a few bars ahead of the other. As a pretty recent tradition, the morning of 13 December is celebrated in Sweden with quite a bit of ceremony. It involves white-robed, predominantly young female carolers led by a candle-crowned girl, performing a specialised repertoire…

Skiing Break

Last week was skiing break for my kids. I couldn't find anywhere good to stay in the mountains, so we didn't go off on holiday. Here's what we did for fun instead. Dinner at the home of a Chinese friend. It was one of those no hablar parties that spouses in multi-ethnic marriages know all about. The food was great and everybody there except me spoke Mandarin - loudly and incessantly. I've never minded much: this time I had brought a book and there was a computer to play with. Birthday party at the home of an Iranian friend. He used to be a death-metal kid. Now he's a pro-democracy Persian…

Monday WSOP Update

Warning: this post contains spoilers Day 5 saw some big names come and go. Annie Duke busted out in 88th place. She lost a huge hand with pocket kings and that crippled her. She managed to stick around another couple hours after that, but couldn't catch a hand. Jeffrey Lisandro is still in the top 10 with over 3 million in chips. Prahlad Friedman is right in the middle of the pack with about 1.6 million. Allen Cunningham is hanging in there at 1.3 million. And Humberto Brenes is squeaking along with 600K. All the rest are either online qualifiers or European players. The chip leader, Jamie…

Tangled Bank 96 - Toadally

Hey everyone, and welcome to the 96th Tangled Bank blog carnival! This is where you can toadally catch up with the best recent blog writing on the life sciences. Beasties Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life explains why bright blue tits make better mothers. Tangled Up In Blue Guy gives us a run-down of the phylogeny of bioluminescent animals. Podblack Cat describes her contribution thus A brief look at taxonomy quirks(and you thought being famous had perks...) -Crypto-zoo claims,Real wacky namesAnd Seuss shows some science in his works! Jeremy at Stand Up For REAL Science discusses…

Sociologist Disappointed With Skeptics

In the current issue of Antiquity is a review of G.G. Fagan's edited volume Archaeological Fantasies (available on-line behind a paywall). I reviewed this book favourably back in September: it's pretty much a skeptical attack on pseudo-scientific archaeology. Antiquity's reviewer, however, doesn't like the book at all, and for an interesting reason. Wiktor Stoczkowski is a sociologist of science working in Paris, and he isn't very interested in the interpretation of the archaeological record. His main concern is with the dynamics of current society. "The editor of the volume insists that its…

Internet Laws and Framing

Despite efforts to avoid such foolishness, Kevin Beck inadvertently drew my attention to what people are calling "Blake's Law," which apparently briefly had its own Wikipedia page, but now appears to redirect to the Pharyngula page. Blogdom really needs a killfile. Anyway, the Internet "Law" in question is stated as: In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one. This is notable mostly for being a really beautiful piece of-- wait for it-- framing. The "Law" is consciously formulated to…

Not All That Much of a Paradox, Really

In general, EuerkAlert has been a useful source for drawing my attention to interesting things that I might not otherwise notice. Every now and then, though, there are press releases that just make me faintly embarrassed for everyone involved. Such as yesterday's announcement from LSU: Subhash Kak, Delaune Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at LSU, recently resolved the twin paradox, known as one of the most enduring puzzles of modern-day physics. [...]The fact that time slows down on moving objects has been documented and verified over the years through repeated…

John West

Right now, as we speak, I am giving John West brain cancer with my mind. Update: Jesus Christ Im bored. 'Seven Myths about Darwinism'-- the last 4 have been the same damn thing. I should have gotten drunk first. He answered 3 4 questions. 3. 3. 4. I didnt ask my big-gun Q, but I got him over misrepresenting the New Scientists article. Please act shocked he boasted about DARWIN WAS WRONG! Update #2: I really wish I brought my Nintendo DS to John Wests presentation on 'The Seven Myths of Darwinism'. I just started counting things I was so bored. But Ill list the 'seven' here for…

Links for 2009-08-12

Pimp My Novel: Genre-Specific Sales, Part 1 of 8: Fantasy "The good news, however is this: fantasy is actually doing all right, and in many instances, sales of fantasy books are up over last year's sales. Without quoting you exact BookScan numbers, I can tell you that fantasy book sales are up at my house by roughly 10%, which is the number currently being quoted for most of the major trade publishers." (tags: publishing writing business economics books SF) Dealing With Corporate America | Mother Jones "Frankly, my dealings with the government, on average, are better than most of my…

Against Pointless Racism in Children's Stories

I'm taking some flak in the comments to yesterday's book recommendation request post, so let me illustrate what I meant with an example. Lots of people recommended the Andrew Lang Fairy books, which are freely available online. I looked at the first story in the first book, which is plenty entertaining, but also has this bit that stopped me short: Hardly had [an evil sorceror] reached his own house when, taking the ring, he said, "Bronze ring, obey thy master. I desire that the golden ship shall turn to black wood, and the crew to hideous negroes; that St. Nicholas shall leave the helm and…

SFGate.com Mark Fiore wins Pulitzer for animated editorials

If you've never heard of Mark Fiore, you should. And will. Mark Fiore of the San Francisco Chronicle was recognized today with the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. For a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing and pictorial effect, in print or online or both, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to Mark Fiore, self syndicated, for his animated cartoons appearing on SFGate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle Web site, where his biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues set a…

ON THURS: Harvard Panel with Andrew Revkin

A reminder for readers in Boston and Cambridge: Thursday this week I will be a panelist on a discussion about climate change and the media at the Kennedy School of Government. Details are below and at this link. Audio of the panel discussion will be archived online and I will post a link when available. The big draw, of course, will be fellow panelist Andrew Revkin, making one of his first public appearances since taking a buyout from his full time position at the New York Times. The Public Divide over Climate Change: Science, Skeptics and the Media Seminar Series: ENRP Seminar Open to the…

Did anyone else take the Jeopardy contestant exam?

I took the Jeopardy contestant search exam online last night on a whim, and quite frankly it kicked my ass. Did anyone else take it? The format of the test is 50 multiple choice questions for which you have 15 seconds to respond. Let me just tell you that 15 seconds is just enough time to choke and but not enough time to answer. The questions are obscure (expectedly)... Who was the only bachelor president? Buchanan, but I guessed Andrew Johnson What is the longest river in Asia? Yangtze (guessed right) Who painted Nude Descending a Staircase? Duchamps (which is one that I knew but choked…

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

I don't know if you caught it on these two posts, but I have started to add the Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research Icon whenever I am analyzing a peer-reviewed paper specifically. These icons were created by bloggers, including Sciblings Dave Munger, Mike Dunford, and John Wilkins, with the intent of clearly delineating when we are talking about peer-reviewed research, with the general aim of improving the quality of reportage on this research. If you are a blogger and use peer-reviewed research, I encourage you to check out their site to see how you can include these buttons. Here are the…

Why Good Sex is No Rat Race

I'm wondering why I don't write about sex more often, now that I've done it and found it so pleasing. Scientific American just published online a piece I wrote -- brief but gratifying, I pray -- about pacing in rat sex: "Good Sex is Not a Rat Race." The study in question seems to contradict many previous findings and much conventional wisdom about male rat (and human) preferences, namely that it's the natural way of things for males to X and run. This clever study, working the usual rat-sex research tools in some new ways, found that if a female rat is allowed to "pace" mating in a way that…

Why Good Sex is No Rat Race

I'm wondering why I don't write about sex more often, now that I've done it and found it so pleasing. Scientific American just published online a piece I wrote -- brief but gratifying, I pray -- about pacing in rat sex: "Good Sex is Not a Rat Race." The study in question seems to contradict many previous findings and much conventional wisdom about male rat (and human) preferences, namely that it's the natural way of things for males to X and run. This clever study, working the usual rat-sex research tools in some new ways, found that if a female rat is allowed to "pace" mating in a way that…

Are we getting stupid again? Two ways of reporting on a study

Is the Flynn Effect ending? Are kids getting dumber again? Could it be that after years of striking intelligence gains, we're now actually losing ground? We are if you read this article in the Times Online: After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools Philip Adey, a professor of education at King's College London confidently declares: "The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years' worth in the past two decades." It's an extraordinary claim. But it's one that should startle parents and teachers out of complacency. Shocked by the findings, experts are…

National Review on Science

This post is basically a pile-on. We're already flogging National Review over its promotion of Tom Bethell. So why not rub it in? In The Republican War on Science, I outline conservative attacks on science in a variety of areas. Not surprisingly, it turns out that many of the leading strategies are reflected in articles published by National Review Online. Three quick examples: Global Warming: Most of the pundits that NR publishes on this topic seem attached to one of a small number of well-known contrarian think tanks. Examples: Iain Murray and Christopher Horner of the Competitive…

The Science Project

We recently penned an article together in the current issue of Mother Jones: As the rhetoric from the campaign trail demonstrates (remember the ad with John McCain at the wind-turbine factory?), nobody is against renewable energy. But no amount of green talk can change the fact that our economy is dangerously fossil-fuel based and foreign-energy dependent. The reasons are numerous, and in some cases notorious. Congress is hamstrung by pork-barrel politics and regional interests (e.g. West Virginia coal). We still don't have a federal equivalent to the laws in more than half the states…

Transitions: How does your online persona change as your real life changes?

You've got a blog. You've developed a comfortable voice. Your writing has found a receptive audience, with thoughtful and supportive commenters. Things are going well. Then, WHAM! You defend your thesis. Or you get a new job. You have a baby. Or get a divorce. You move to a new continent. Your blog gets assimilated by a Borg. Or you decide to come out of the pseudonymous closet. Suddenly, you find you've lost some confidence in your writing. Maybe your usual stream of topics has been cut off. Maybe you worry about the appropriateness of your blogging in your new professional capacity.Maybe…

Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) Online Archive

Today FAS put up an online public archive of documents produced by the Office of Technology Assessment. As you may know, the OTA was a legislative office authorized in 1972 to produce comprehensive nonpartisan reports for Congress on a variety of scientific topics. It was defunded and closed in 1995, and the bulky paper reports it produced have been rather hard to find. Although these reports no longer represent the state of the science, they are remarkable, often prescient time capsules - a fascinating look at how teams of experts tried to predict the trajectory of new technologies we now…

PLoS One and Why I Believe In Open Access

I am very excited that the new year brings an exciting opportunity for me. I was solicited, and I accepted an Academic Editor position with the open-access journal PLoS One. PLoS one invited me to join to increase the presence of ecological and marine biological studies at the journal. Many of you may have noticed my hints in the last month. For those of you who don't know, or have a skewed view, here is what the open-access concept represents. Publications are full text, peer-reviewed articles, that occur online and can be accessed at no charge to the user. Note that these are permanent…

Friday frivolity: what's that in my office?

This week I had one of those rare moments between work projects to pause and take a look around. I mean that literally -- I actually took a look around in my office and noticed that I have accumulated some stuff in it that one might not be able to count on finding in your typical faculty office. For example: Wee containers of red pepper flakes, obviously left over from the last time I brought a slice of pizza to my desk. (That may have been Spring 2008.) A votive candle wrapped in fabric with a tag attached that says "Thank you!" I cannot for the life of me recall who gave it to me, or…

Dawn Closing In on Vesta: The Movie

NASA's Dawn space ship is getting closer to the asteroid Vesta, and has produced a very short movie. The movie is a compilation of 20 frames, shown here repeating several times: This movie shows surface details beginning to resolve as NASA's Dawn spacecraft closes in on the giant asteroid Vesta. The framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained the images used for this animation on June 1, 2011, from a distance of about 300,000 miles (483,000 kilometers). Vesta's jagged shape, sculpted by eons of cosmic impacts in the main asteroid belt, is apparent. Variations in surface brightness…

The Skeptics' Circle: Dedicated to Carl Sagan

Yes, I know that skepticism and Christmas don't exactly mix. After all, most people, even highly skeptical and unreligious ones, tend to enjoy at least a few, if not many, of the myths that accompany the season, myths such as Santa Claus. But we won't let that stop us from having a bit of skeptical fun next week on Thursday, when the next Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle lands at Humbug! Online on December 21. A while back PZ pointed out that December 20 just so happens to be the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan's death at the too young age of 62 and that a memorial blog-a-thon is being…

Ask Science... Live! Thursday at 6pm EDT #askscilive

I'm trying something new. For several years now, I've been contributing to an online community called r/askscience. It's a place where curious people can ask questions, and have them answered - often with great, yet understandable detail - by expert scientists that have a passion for explaining their work. It's an amazing forum, and I'm continually astounded that so many scientists are so willing to donate their time and expertise to educate people, and that so many people are interested in hearing them do so. Unfortunately, not everyone that would appreciate this sort of thing are using…

Helix Health announces hostile takeover of 23andMe

Personalised medicine pioneers Helix Health have announced their intention to seize control of the assets of personal genomics company 23andMe. Helix Health founder Steve Murphy (left) laid out his takeover plans during a press conference this morning. "It's time to seize the moral high ground!!!!" he proclaimed, physically spelling out the additional exclamation marks to the assembled reporters. "23andMe have played their BS PR games for too long, and I'm here to put that right!" During a four hour-long monologue that was often rambling and at times completely incoherent, pausing only for…

Madame Geoffrin's 21st Century Drug Salon

A Reading in the Salon of Mme Geoffrin, 1755 Madame Geoffrin's 18th Century salons, as a gathering place for public discourse, are regarded as Renaissance versions of online social networking. Such collective knowledge and discussion has found numerous creative uses, including fresh approaches to improve public health. In this case, NIH scientists are searching for new uses of old drugs - those already approved by the FDA for a particular illness by mining large databases and sharing their data, a 21st century version of Madame Geoffrin's salons - speeding up the process of drug discovery…

Elvis reincarnated as a mouse in the name of art

All That I Am is an art piece which involves a transgenic mouse imbued with the essence of Elvis Presley in an effort to model the late great's behaviour. Koby says: A combination of three online services make this project possible. Hair samples of Elvis Presley, bought on ebay were sent to a gene sequencing lab to identify different behavioural traits (varied from sociability, athletic performance to obesity and addiction). Using this information, transgenic mice clones with parallel traits were produced. The genetically cloned models of Elvis are tested in a collection of various…

Tidbits, 5 March 2010

I'm in Urbana-Champaign this weekend to teach an in-person day for my online collection-development class. I'm looking forward to it; every time I teach I am reminded that students are smarter than I am. For now, tidbits! As world plus dog probably knows already, The Economist tackled the data deluge. Adam Christensen gives us the modest, unassuming Data. The foundation for everything on an intelligent, interconnected, instrumented planet. Rethinking scholarly communication from the ground up: SciBling John Dupuis asks Are computing journals too slow? and Dan Cohen muses about how best to…

Friday Sprog Blogging: a map of the Earth.

Younger offspring: I drew this picture of the Earth! Dr. Free-Ride: Wow, that's quite a picture. Will you tell me what's going on in it? Younger offspring: Yes, but first scan it in. Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. Is it maybe not a coincidence that you're bringing home a picture like this on a Thursday night? Younger offspring: That's a really tall volcano. And over there is a smaller volcano -- for grilling stuff. [1] Dr. Free-Ride: I see. What else is there? Younger offspring: On the other side of the tall volcano is a meteor coming toward the Earth, and right under that is a meteor-catcher…

What It is Like to Live in a Developed Nation Struggling with Food Issues

Mark Notaras has a terrific piece on what things are like in Japan, in a culture that has for several generations not had to worry too much about their food. There are useful lessons there for all of us: But to what geographic point do people's concerns about radiation extend? Once nearby prefectures are associated with contamination, even if the contamination is confined to one small area or a few products, shoppers in Tokyo may choose to stay away from all raw or fresh products from an entire prefecture. When the Japanese government prohibited the sale of spinach from Ibaraki prefecture,…

The Biggest Baking Soda Volcano Ever

Ah, science fairs. To the left, observe my colleague, fellow Seed-ster Lee Billings, feeling the science fair glow at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Intel ISEF is the world's largest and most acclaimed gathering of pre-college-age scientists. Held each May, the fair brings together 1,500 students from over 40 nations to present their research, meet one another, and compete for prizes including a $50,000 college scholarship. As PZ Myers notes at Pharyngula, "when I was growing up, this was better known as the Westinghouse science fair, and…

Hackers Release More Emails Stolen from Scientists ...

For now, a press release. More later: WASHINGTON (Nov. 22, 2011)--In an apparent effort to discredit climate science, hackers again posted stolen emails from leading climate scientists online today, just days ahead of a United Nations climate meeting. According to the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, the emails released today are part of the same batch that was stolen from the university years ago. Only some of those emails were released in November 2009. Since then, multiple investigations exonerated scientists who had their emails stolen of misconduct. "These leftover…

Antiquity Editor Quotes Blogger on Creationism

Antiquity is the world's most respected and widely read academic journal in archaeology, our equivalent of Nature or Science. Its summer issue reached me last Friday and yesterday I brought it to the beach. On the first page of his editorial (entertaining, anti-po-mo, available on-line behind a paywall), Martin Carver attacks creationism and quotes a blog entry from March last year by Aard regular Chris O'Brien of the Northstate Science blog! After quoting Turkish creationist Harun Yahya and describing his propaganda efforts, Carver continues: Here is Christopher O'Brien, a Forest…

The story that will not die

Good morning, anti-censorship intellectuals! Remember that story from January about Abunga Books, the online bookstore whose sole unique feature is that it claims to "empower decency" by enabling prudes to vote to censor their offerings? Now it has made ABC News. It's amazing how much press this thing has received — I'm beginning to suspect there is some marketing genius behind the store who knows how to whip up a media frenzy. They've got a couple of quotes from me and from the founder of Abunga, Lee Martin. "Anything that irritates the right, they want off," Myers told ABCNEWS.com "They…

Links for 2010-10-30

The Forever Blog « Easily Distracted "There's been talk that blogs are over and Twitter and Facebook are king. I meant to say something about this issue when the end of Bitch Ph.D was announced, since that was an important blog for me and many other people. I think it's only half-right to say that the day of the blog is done. No matter what alternative venues might come into existence, many blogs were going to have finite lifespans. Even group blogs are not really publications with an identity that stands apart from their authors, into which new authors can come and old ones depart while…

The Semi-Amazing Spider-Man

Anybody still read newspaper comics these days? I do, but sadly for the newspaper business I read them online. Worse, usually in the context of people making fun of them. On the other hand, there are a few gems out there. Is Spider-Man one of those gems? Uh... Well, Shakespeare it ain't. But is Spider-Man justified in his optimism about being able to catch Mary Jane? If Doc Ock just drops her instead of throwing her (as he seems to suggest), she'll start with zero velocity and immediately begin to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared vertically downward. As soon as Spider-Man…

How to stop a rhino in its tracks

Since a number of other ScienceBloggers have posted lists of science websites for kids (Science sites for kids by Karmen; Online sources for hands-on chemistry for kids by Janet; Cool science sites for kids by Zuska; and Brain science is child's play by Sandra), I thought I'd share this cool practical activity for a lesson about microbes. The activity is designed for schoolchildren at Key Stage 3 (11-year-olds); I gave it a go during my short time as a secondary school science teacher, and thought it was quite effective. Aim To demonstrate how colds can spread from person to person…

A cool science and engineering challenge for curious kids.

Speaking of science fairs, if you know of kids (grades 5-12) in the San Francisco Bay Area who are looking for a challenge, this one might be of interest: It is not too late to participate in this year's Tech Challenge. The Tech Museum of Innovation's 21st annual Tech Challenge is designed to get at the heart of innovation for young people and is geared to the California Math, Science and Language Arts standards. This year's Tech Challenge focus is on the need for safe clean drinking water. One in five people in the world do not have regular access to safe drinking water. The challenge:…