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Two Depressing Infectious Disease Anecdotes

Over at denialism blog, PalMD has two posts which, to me anyway, are related. The first has describes how sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are actually treated with antibiotics: After hours, we see walk-ins, and that's where the STD fun really begins. For whatever reason, I see STDs daily at the walk-in clinic, but almost never in my private practice. Most commonly, we see only one partner, and, at least in my state, treatment of the absent partner is prohibited. Basically, we only get one shot at folks, and we don't have access to rapid tests. So what do we do? We order a lot of "…

The Different Between the First and Second Derivative: The Jobs Edition

I've posted several times about how confusing a slowdown in the rate at which things get worse (the second derivative) with an actual improvement (the first derivative) has led to some ridiculous claims about economic improvement. Keith Hennessey has a similar complaint: He [Obama] said this first after the 2nd quarter GDP report showed a 1.1% decline, and again after last Friday's jobs report showed the U.S. economy lost 247,000 jobs in July. The President is making a common error by looking at the rate of change of a rate of change.... Wrong. Things are still getting worse, but more…

The Maturation of Charter Schools and Their Teachers

One of the things that I've long suspected about charter schools is that they're an unsustainable model: they rely on incredibly motivated teachers (who I think are a pretty motivated lot to begin with) who are willing to work even longer hours for essentially the same pay (or sometimes less). I'm not sure how to scale that up. Even if there were a significant number of teachers who fit this description, it's not clear how long they could remain like this. Not only is there a real possibility of burning out, but, as teachers get older, other considerations--legitimate ones--come to the…

Rep. Sen. Chuck Grassley Puts Foot in Mouth Over Public Healthcare

He wasn't as pithy as let them eat cake, but the sentiment is the same. What's gone missing in the debate over a public option for healthcare (although when more the seventy percent support it, it's hard to see how this qualifies as a debate) is that tens of millions of people already have a public option: it's called Medicare. So, if you're 65 or over, you get government healthcare. So why can't I have the same options my parents have? One of my parents works so they can choose the employer's private plan or Medicare. Why can't I? Having said that, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of…

You can't even trust ELCA

There are a lot of small four year colleges around, and the competition is tough. We feel it at my university, the University of Minnesota Morris, and it's difficult because we can't honestly say that all those other colleges are bad — they're actually very good because they value the same advantages that we do — small class sizes, personal attention to every student, a curriculum that emphasizes breadth of knowledge and the integration of ideas. So it's always good to see some place where we, as a secular and public liberal arts university, have a clear advantage. Concordia College is one of…

"Affordable" Healthcare in MA? I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Does

One of the claims that has been going around is that healthcare in Massachusetts is affordable; in fact, MIT economist Paul Jonathan Gruber, who has come under fire for conflicts-of-interest, has made this claim: In considering affordability for a group, we need to establish a sensible benchmark whereby insurance is considered affordable if "most of" a group can afford it. We can disagree about what "most of" means, but it would be wrong to define "most of" only as "very close to 100%." Well, that's good to know. Because most humans, as opposed to MIT economists, would think, when it comes…

Imagine If 'Genomics Denialists' Get Their Grubby Hands on the Top Sekrit Microbiome Emails

I've stayed away from the CRU Swifthack brouhaha, largely because the experts are far better at debunking this denialist crap than I am. But, if there were such a thing as 'genomic denialists', they would probably have a field day if they were to get their hands on what we say. For example, I'm involved in the Human Microbiome Project and we sometimes use phrases like 'bad data' or 'mediocre data.' I'm not talking about when something goes obviously wrong (i.e., controls fail), but the recognition that the technologies can fall short: technologies designed for genomics where every…

Sunday Sermon: The Need to Know Things In Order to Think Critically About Them

Because the Mad Biologist isn't nearly curmudgeonly enough, especially about things like education [/snark], I thought this post by Ed of Gin and Tacos hit the right notes: Should our educational system emphasize information retention or "critical thinking?" Here's the problem. We do neither. Exams like this are no longer given, at least not commonly, but has it been replaced with anything more useful? In my limited experience we are producing wave after wave of students who reach adulthood utterly unable to distinguish between their puckered assholes and a hole in the ground but with access…

Antibiotic Resistance and the House and Senate Healthcare Bills

I've been looking at the House and Senate Bills, and, on antibiotic resistance, they're not bad. Both bills would evaluate hospitals on hospital-acquired infection rates (although there's no mention of nursing homes, which are a significant focus of infection). This is good. The House bill focuses primarily on reporting of hospital-acquired infections. It's actually very specific, and there's an entire section dedicated to it (starting at p. 913). Hospitals would be penalized if they fail to report. Infections (and pertinent information, which includes resistance) would be publicly…

Vanity Fair reviews the Creation Museum

A good take-down is a thing of beauty. A.A. Gill visited the "museum" in Kentucky, and gets right to the heart of the matter: it's not a museum, it's a national embarrassment. The Creation Museum isn't really a museum at all. It's an argument. It's not even an argument. It's the ammunition for an argument. It is the Word made into bullets. An armory of righteous revisionism. This whole building is devoted to the literal veracity of the first 11 chapters of Genesis: God created the world in six days, and the whole thing is no more than 6,000 years old. Everything came at once, so Tyrannosaurus…

The Fundamentals of the Housing Crisis Were Not Complicated

Economist Dean Baker makes an excellent point about the supposed complexity of the housing crisis: There are some very basic points here that everyone should understand. The details of any form of regulation will be "complicated." For example, the actual fire safety rules for schools are undoubtedly very complicated. How many of us could write up the appropriate safeguards to ensure that our children will be protected from fire risks as they study? Similarly, the safety rules that are necessary to ensure that our food is not contaminated would also require background that very few of us have…

Geithner's Top Aide: No Conflict of Interest At All

The reason the AIG bonuses are upsetting isn't the amount of the bonuses--although the bonuses are larger than the entire National Endowment for the Arts budget--it's the complete impotence of and cooptation of the government by the financial sector (yes, we need banks and a financial sector, but they are means, not ends). So I'm thrilled to read this about Treasury Secretary Geithner's chief of staff: Obama noted that he was quickly developing policies to prevent future AIG-like catastrophes.... Noting that he and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) had each introduced legislation on this front in…

Did I Mention Something About the Foreclosure Foulups?

Why, yes, I did. For a while now, I've been writing about how improper paperwork could completely screw up the foreclosure process. While I've never thought foreclosure was the way to go (I wanted subsidized cramdowns), we can't even get foreclosure to happen, which is a huge drain on the economy: Lawyers for distressed homeowners and law enforcement officials in several states on Friday seized on revelations by GMAC Mortgage, the country's fourth-largest home loan lender, that it had violated legal rules in its rush to file many foreclosures as quickly as possible. Attorneys general in…

We Have STEM Subcrises, Not a National Crisis

A recent report bemoaning the sorry state of STEM training and education has been updated and re-released. Like most of these reports, it fits into the typical morality play of educational decline. Sadly, even bloggers I respect have bought into this. We'll leave aside the calls for more awarding of advanced degrees in the sciences, even as there is a scientist glut (that's been going on since I was an undergraduate; why do you think all those quants went to Wall Street?). What I want to discuss is STEM (science and mathematics actually) education in K-12. As regular readers of this blog…

How to Take a Government-Approved Poop

Shamelessly stolen from Dr. Isis Yes, you read the title correctly. As I've mentioned before, I'm involved with the Human Microbiome Project, which examines how the microbes that live on and in us affect human health and disease. One of the things we do is look at human gut communities. In most cases, examining the bacteria growing on the side of gastrointestinal tract is...difficult. Think the Mother of All Protological Exams. So we use feces as a proxy of what lives in your gut. And since you were going just flush that stuff anyway, mind if we.... Well, you get the idea. Now you…

Education, Elitism, and Zoning

In light of yesterday's post about teachers and education, I think this column by The Washington Post's Courtland Milloy comes very close to identifying the a key problem facing urban education. Milloy: From a commentary by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee that appeared in the Feb. 8 issue of Spotlight on Poverty and Education: "I believe we can solve the problems of urban education in our lifetimes and actualize education's power to reverse generational poverty," Rhee wrote. "But I am learning that it is a radical concept to even suggest this. Warren Buffett [the billionaire investor]…

But, Really, Park 51 Has Nothing to Do With Exclusionary Identity Politics

Or bigotry. Because union carpenters are the new Muslim. Or something. Here's a refreshing exchange of free speech (italics mine): ...at an anti-Mosque demonstration down in Lower Manhattan, when a black man walking through the crowd was... mistaken for a Muslim by the crowd -- angrily. The video, shot by amateur YouTube videographer "lefthandedart," opens with chants of "No Mosque Here!" as it traces a black man wearing a white cap walking through the crowd. It's not clear where he's coming from or why the videographer had decided to film him, but the man seems to be trailed by a…

How Not to Make Iraq-Like Mistakes Again

In the movie Quiz Show, which is about the quiz show scandals of the 1950s (and a wonderful period piece), there is a scene at the end of the movie which has always stuck with me. Van Doren, the disgraced upper-class professor who cheated, gave a teary mea culpa in front of Congress. The gallery applauded, but was shocked into silence when a congressman called him out, and noted that he doesn't get credit for admitting his wrong doing--he still did the wrong thing. Last week, Matthew Yglesias wrote a post about how he came to support the Iraq War (which he later renounced). Some have…

Not Walking Away from Underwater Mortgage Is for Suckers-and People Who Aren't Rich

I've mentioned before how the decision to walk away from a mortgage that costs more than your house is worth ('strategic default') should be based on how that decision affects you financially (and, of course, if you want to stay in the house anyway). In an environment where loans were approved such that there could be a strong incentive to walk away, there's no ethical issue--caveat mutuor. So I find this NY Times report very interesting: Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds…

The Unspoken, yet Vital Component of Hertability Estimates: Is This a Problem for GWAS?

A problem in genome-wide association studies ("GWAS") is the"missing heritability" issue--identified genetic variation can only account for a small fraction of the estimated genetic contribution to variation in that trait. Razib has a good roundup of several explanations (and I added some speculation about nearly-neutral mutations). GWAS also have problems accurately characterizing the trait. For example, not all heart diseases (note the plural) are alike, so we have to be certain that we accurately assess the trait of interest. But what is very rarely discussed is the environmental…

I, Too, Will Defend Honest Scientific Ignorance

Over the weekend, as the tweets that only 18% in the U.S. could correctly define what a molecule is and less than a third could define DNA--and these were an open-ended questions--my first thought, after looking at the study (pdf, p. 48), was that all of the open-ended questions did worse than the multiple choice ones. (An aside: The DNA answer has improved over twenty years). It's much easier to answer a multiple choice question for something you might not have seriously thought about for decades, simply because you don't remember it. My second thought was that most people don't have to…

The Genomics Bottleneck: It's the Computation, Stupid

The exciting thing about the recent technological advances in genomics is that we have a massive amount of data. The terrifying thing about the recent technological advances in genomics is that we have a massive amount of data. A while ago, I brought this up in the context of bacterial genomics: Most of the time, when you read articles about sequencing, they focus on the actual production of raw sequence data (i.e., 'reads'). But that's not the rate-limiting step. That is, we have now reached the point where working with the data we generate is far more time-consuming... So, from a…

Mystery Bird: Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps

tags: Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps, photographed in California. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Steve Sosensky [larger view]. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: It's always a good idea to figure out just what parts of the bird you're seeing; it isn't always obvious. This chunky, lax-plumaged waterbird is in profile, with its aft end to the right and its breast at…

LavaAmp: The Amazing Handheld Thermal Cycler

tags: handheld thermal cycler, LavaAmp, PCR, Polymerase Chain Reaction, DNA, molecular biology, Unreasonable Insitute, DIY, technology, Guido Núñez-Mujica, streaming video Millions of people in the Global South suffer from neglected diseases, many of which could be treated, even cured, if they were detected early enough. But reliable, low cost diagnosis hasn't been available, as drug companies have no incentive to invest in the diseases of the poor. New pandemics can go undetected until they have spread out of control, like HIV, and treatable ailments can cripple impoverished communities…

Birdbooker Report 57

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "One cannot have too many good bird books" --Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927). The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…

Only $514 Away from our Sunday Fund-Raising Goal!

tags: DonorsChoose, science education, teaching, fund-raising, poverty One of my donors, Hewlett-Packard, has notified me that they are willing to provide my Challenge classrooms with an additional $2000 IF I manage to raise a total of $2500 by Sunday. That means we're only $514 away from being able to nearly double our ability to help impoverished classrooms throughout the United States! I've already donated $300, so I am completely tapped out, so I am asking you: please donate to my DonorsChoose classrooms! In recognition of your kind gifts to help others, Princeton University Press is…

At Long Last: A Little Good News

I have been pinching myself for the past three weeks for two reasons: first I have good news to share with you and second, I was afraid that my good news was a dream that I'd awaken from. My good news is that I just sent off a book review to be published in Nature magazine. Nature? you say .. Do you mean .. ? Why, yes, I do mean ... ! I don't yet know when it will appear in print, but believe me, as soon as I know, you'll know! (aaand the author will know, and the book publisher, editors and publicity agents will know) Additionally, I am working on a longer version of this book review…

Hotel stay needs a hazmat suit?

A couple of days ago Bloomberg's John Lauerman had an interesting story about guests leaving viruses behind in their hotel rooms. During an overnight hotel stay, people with colds left viruses on telephones, light switches, television remotes, and even ice buckets, researchers said today at an infectious disease conference in San Francisco. Infectious disease specialists caution people to wash their hands and avoid touching their noses and faces to avoid catching colds that infect about 60 million people in the U.S. annually. [snip] "When you touch surfaces a day later, the virus may still be…

Border state flu planning

The headline -- U.S. border states preparing for pandemic flu threat -- sounded weird, but this is about some good ideas. The weird part was expecting this was about hardening the borders to keep bird flu out. In fact, however, it is about something much more sensible: the clear understanding that this virus doesn't care about political borders: California and Arizona, two states bordering Mexico, are working together to address the emerging threat of an influenza pandemic. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano have co-sponsored a joint declaration at…

War crimes in Lebanon and Israel

There can be no doubt that the combatants in the battle between Hezbollah and Israel engulfing southern Lebanon have lost all moral credibility. Both sides are waging a war without any regard for innocent human life, except insofar as it is regard for the public relations problems it causes. The conflict across the border between Lebanon and Israel has now displaced up to 1 million people in Lebanon, of which nearly 700 000 are living in temporary accommodations, and another 220 000 are in Syria, Jordan, Cyprus and the Gulf area. Addressing the vital needs of the displaced and other affected…

We all have "Life Experience"—you get it by living

OK, this Dean Dad fella substituting for Dr. B got me a little sniffy with his first post (telling little kids easy lies about heaven is a pet peeve. Dead is gone, sugarcoating it is the first step to a life of delusions), but his latest is much more interesting and sparked some cranky comments—is it just me, or are the trolls on a hair-trigger everywhere lately? Anyway, it's a good snarl. It's not unusual for downsized or early-retired professionals to show up asking for faculty positions, thinking that we'll be tripping all over ourselves for the opportunity to bask in their reflected…

Indonesian local news on bird flu

Two articles in local Indonesian news sources are of interest. They illustrate the difficulty of trying to figure out what is happening using local news reports. Both relate to the hospitalization of a reporter for the Indonesian magazine Tempo who had covered the culling of poultry and the funeral of a bird flu victim. I have had both articles translated by a native speaker, since previous translations were via machine (see, for example, here). The machine translations are much more difficult to read but the essential elements of the reports are discernible. Since we have more idiomatic…

Since you asked . . .

If they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked. In 2003 Congress passed a bill creating the Citizens' Health Care Working Group. The bill was the infamous Medicare prescription drug "benefit." The Working Group was something else. They just recommended universal health coverage. "Assuring health care is a shared social responsibility," says the interim report of the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 14-member committee that went to 50 communities and heard from 23,000 people. The committee describes its recommendations as a framework. The recommendations don't say who would pay…

Nick Matzke on Banning Nuclear Weapons

Below, Nick Matzke responds to the question: The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social issues, such as poverty, conflict, financial crises, etc. On what specific issue/problem do you feel we need to bring the scientific lens to bear? Obviously there are hundreds of important problems that scientists need to work on. But if we are talking about prioritizing, the number 1 problem that the world needs to solve can be summarized in one word: nukes. It's the same problem we've had for 60 years. The case…

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka on Public Health in the Developing World

Below, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka responds to the question: The boundaries of science are continually expanding as scientists become increasingly integral to finding solutions for larger social issues, such as poverty, conflict, financial crises, etc. On what specific issue/problem do you feel we need to bring the scientific lens to bear? I think that we need to bring the scientific lens to bear on the larger social issue of the role that public health and sustainable environments play in reducing poverty, and in some situations, conflict in war torn areas. In developing countries and…

Friday Fun: Get your Ig Nobel prizes here! Hot off the presses!

w00t! It's Ig Nobel Prize season again! A brief description: The Ig® Nobel Prizes The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. "Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" -- Nature The video of last night's ceremony is archived here. Here are some highlights…

Hacking stereotypes in educating people about computing

Computer science and computer science education are a couple of my evergreen topics here on this blog, as you can see by perusing the computer science tag. And of course, my trip to Harvard for LIAL this past summer perhaps has that institution on my radar a bit more than usual. So how wonderful is it to find a way to connect those two things? Along comes Hacking Stereotypes by Steve Kolowich. It's about a program called HackHarvard which is part of a series of efforts at Harvard to encourage technology entrepreneurship: and increase enrollments in their basic computing course, HackHarvard,…

Friday Fun: Top 10 truly bizarre programming languages

Twitter brings us some truly wonderful and, yes, bizarre things. I saw this one a few days ago via Vitor Pamplona and thought it was too good to pass up. Anyways, here's the story from the original Listverse post, Top 10 truly bizarre programming languages: This is a list of some of the most bizarre programming languages you will ever see. These types of languages are usually called "Esoteric Programming Languages". An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a computer programming language designed either as a test of the boundaries of programming language design,…

Best Science Books 2010: Jennifer Ouellette and Brian Switek

Another couple of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. I've tended not to highlight individual people's bloggy lists that much here, just for the sake of my sanity and so as not to go too crazy with the number of posts, but I thought that these two list were interesting enough to merit inclusion. I've done it before, maybe I'll do it again! Jennifer Ouellette The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by…

Saving Coral

In the April-May issue of Seed, Josh Braun wrote that the Center for Biological Diversity was moving to get two species of coral & the polar bear listed under the Endangered Species Act. The NY Times article on the news makes no mention that the strategy behind this was to get the US to do something about global warming which seems to be harming the species, but it provides plenty of info on how the govt. will be able to escape a change in policy. For one thing, there's no consensus that global warming alone is what's harming the coral. And we've seen what Republicans can do with a…

Reading Diary: Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration by Chris Impey and Holly Henry

Sometimes a book isn't quite what you expected. And you're disappointed. Sometimes a book isn't quite what you expected and you're pleasantly surprised. Chris Impey and Holly Henry's Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration definitely falls into the latter category. What was I expecting? From the subtitle I was hoping the book would be a fairly straightforward account of the history of unmanned space exploration -- all the missions, how they were planned, the engineering challenges involved in getting them off the ground, the logistical challenges of keeping…

The grid is smarter than you think

The most charitable comment I can come up with for the just-released Department of Energy Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability is the refusal of the authors to use what is surely a candidate for Most Overused Term of the Year: resilience. Not that resilience isn't important, but it's to their credit that the staffers responsible for telling Secretary Rick Perry sort-of what he wanted to hear understand that reliability is really what it's all about. After all, if there's one thing that defenders of fossil fuels and nuclear power like to remind us more than…

How I Became A Science Writer

Ed Yong recently published a post called "On the origin of science writers" asking that science writers (anyone who regularly writes about science) tell the story of how they got started. The idea is to establish a resource for future writers. I joined the thread and have reprinted it here. As far back as I can remember I loved to read and I loved the wilderness. In fact my favorite times were reading in the wilderness, preferably in a tree near our mountain cabin, high enough where my brothers could not reach me with stones or snowballs. I did not think much about being a writer myself until…

Beachy Comes Clean on "Prank AFRI RFP"

> WASHINGTON- (AP) The leader of the United States Department of > Agriculture's National Institute for Food Research, Dr. Roger Beachy, > admitted that the release of last week's request for proposals (RFP) > from scientific researchers was "simply a gag to lighten the research > funding environment" and that the real one will be released this week. > > "Researchers are too stressed out; it seems that all they do is write > grants. The request for proposals to address extremely finite subject > areas would alienate 95% of them and give them all an opportunity…

God and sex: two potent ideas that never get along well together

Imagine yourself in this situation. A young girl is accused of a heinous crime — use your imagination here, too, and think of the most horrible thing a person can do — and she is trapped in front of you, helpless. You have a rock in your hands. People around you are urging you to kill her; they say that you are justified in taking her life. What would you do? Let's say you don't have a rock, but are just part of the large crowd of spectators, witnessing a small group of men killing this girl. What would you do then? Be honest now. I wouldn't be able to do kill anyone, and I would try to stop…

Join Us In Honoring These African American X-STEM Symposium Speakers During Black History Month!

African American scientists and engineers have made extraordinary contributions to STEM and high-tech innovation, and you'll meet some of these key pioneers at the Festival Expo's X-STEM Extreme STEM Symposium hosted by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune on Thursday, April 24 in Washington! In honor of National African American History Month, the Festival would like to acknowledge these trailblazers and their achievements as they prepare to present at this extraordinary event. The all-day symposium will bring students, teachers and others up close with these and other leading STEM…

Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, and Planetary Radio Headline The Planetary Society's Upcoming Presentations at Expo 2014

Are you wowed and awed by the mysteries of the Universe, the courage of astronauts, innovative space technologies, and stunning images from other worlds? Want to learn how you can become a space explorer? Well, get ready to find "Your Place in Space" with The Planetary Society – the largest and most influential space interest organization on Earth – as the Society returns once more as a major Festival sponsor and presenter this April in Washington, D.C.! Just as it did in the first two Expos, the Society will ignite enthusiasm for space science. Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray,…

Northrop Grumman Foundation Sponsorship Encourages The STEM Message!

The Northrop Grumman Foundation returns as a major Festival Sponsor, and will be significantly enhancing the Festival's focus on STEM through impressive activities at the Expo -- including exciting new competitions in cyber defense and robotics! "The Northrop Grumman Foundation is committed to helping advance STEM education and sparking interest in young people," says Sandra Evers-Manly, vice president of Global Corporate Responsibility and president of the Northrop Grumman Foundation. "Our mission is to fund educational projects that make a difference in the lives of our country's students…

Win the Opportunity to Walk With Moon Astronaut Buzz Aldrin in This Year's Cherry Blossom Festival Parade

By Larry Bock Founder and organizer, USA Science & Engineering Festival A visit to Washington, DC in the spring is always exciting, but this season the 'wow" factor in the nation's capital goes up a notch with the 100th Celebration of the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade on Saturday, April 14. Always a must-see event with its spectacular array of lavish floats, marching bands, performers, giant helium balloons and other festivities heralding the arrival of spring, the Festival Parade this year will add another special highlight to its compendium of excitement: science and…

U.S. Science Education: Rethinking How Kids Learn

Reprinted from HUFFPOST EDUCATION: The U.S. is becoming increasingly concerned over learning among the country's youth in areas of science and math. International testing has shown that American students fall behind foreign counterparts in a number of subjects. But is it just about the text and the test? Students in Shanghai who took international exams for the first time outscored every other school system in the world. In the same test, American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading. A 2009 study showed that U.S. students ranked 25th among 34 countries in math…