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The Canadian war on public science, basic research and the free and open exchange of scientific information

You would think that such apple pie issues as public science, basic research and the free and open exchange of scientific information would be hard to disagree with. You would think that a resolution in the Canadian parliament would to such effect would meet with resounding support, resulting in a unanimous vote, the room resounding with shouted Yays. You would think that anyone who would vote nay to such a resolution would be a virtual pariah in an open democratic society, a society that values an informed citizenry and evidence-based decision making. Apparently you would be wrong.…

Scitech librarians take note: The Western Conference on Science Education

The biennial Western Conference on Science Education will be taking place this coming July 9–July 11, 2013. I'm thinking very seriously of going and I think science/engineering librarians in general should consider doing so as well. Here's how they describe it: The biennial Western Conference for Science Education creates an ongoing organizational infrastructure that invites teaching and research faculty, librarians and other educational professionals, regardless of their experience level, to collaborate on the improvement of post-secondary Science education through the exchange of…

Music Mondays: Five Clapton collaborations

I'm a huge Eric Clapton fan, particularly of his blues output, always have been, always will be. There's only one artist I've seen in concert more time that EC, but more on that later. One of the things I've always found interesting and admirable about him is his desire to collaborate with other artists, to try and stretch himself a little bit farther. It's also evident in the vast array of wonderful blues guitarists he's recorded with or gone on tour with over the years, either as sidemen or as opening acts. Mark Knopfler, Derek Trucks, Jimmy Vaughn, Bonnie Raitt, Doyle Bramhall II,…

From the Archives: The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science by Sheilla Jones

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science, is from November 19, 2008. ======= Enough with the physics books, already! After a summer of more or less nothing but physics books, I should…

Periodic Table of the ScienceBlogs, Part 7: Blogs L-M

Living the Scientific Life Categories: Biology, Academia GrrlScientist is an evolutionary molecular biologist with a BS in microbiology (specializing in virology), and a PhD in zoology (specializing in ornithology and hormone receptors). She blogs about evolution, the environment, birds, dinosaurs, avian influenza, conservation, and literature. The Loom Categories: Biology, Medicine Carl Zimmer is a science writer whose work appears regularly in the New York Times and many magazines. He is also the author of five books on science. (For more details, go to http://www.carlzimmer.com/author.…

Best Science Books 2015: Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Science and Technology

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. And here we are in 2015! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Science and…

Lane Anderson Award Winners: Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada

Last night I attended the Lane Anderson Award dinner where this year's winners were announced. A huge congratulations to all the winners and nominees and sincere thanks to the organizers for inviting me to such a wonderful event. Here is the press release from last night: $10,000 Lane Anderson Award Winners Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada Toronto. 26th September, 2013: The Fitzhenry Family Foundation announced the winners of the 2012 Lane Anderson Award. Finalists and winners were feted at an intimate dinner in Toronto. The annual Lane Anderson Award, now in its fourth year,…

New Major US Water Policy Recommendations: “Water Strategies for the Next Administration”

My new Science Magazine article “Water Strategies for the Next Administration” has just been released (embargo lifts 11am Pacific, November 3rd; the print version will appear in the November 4th issue of Science). It identifies six major water-related challenges facing the United States and offers explicit recommendations for strategies the next Administration and Congress should pursue, domestically and internationally. The article begins: “Issues around fresh water are not particularly high on the U.S. political agenda. They should be. Water problems directly threaten food production,…

Tennessee

Tennessee's House passed this disingenuous piece of legislation the other day. They're not to the first to try this sort of thing and they probably won't be the last. HB0368 00242666 -1- HOUSE BILL 368 By Dunn AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10, relative to teaching scientific subjects in elementary schools. BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE: SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10, is amended by adding the following as a new, appropriately designated section: (a) The general assembly finds that: (1)…

The climate consensus: How to take a quote out of context

In a desperate bid to help staunch the propagation of a particularly insidious meme, I offer this attempt to help clear up any confusion: Mike Hulme and Martin Mahony of the School of Environmental Sciences University at East Anglia have a paper forthcoming in Progress in Physical Geography that explores the IPCC, "its origins and mandate; its disciplinary and geographical expertise; its governance and organisational learning; consensus and its representation of uncertainty; and its wider impact and influence on knowledge production, public discourse and policy development." The paper does…

Jules Hoffman and Bruce Beutler share the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Two great scientists, Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman, who have changed the way we view the immune response of plants and animals, have been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Tragically, Dr. Ralph M. Steinman of Rockefeller University, who discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system dies a few days ago. It is unclear if his family will be able to share the prize because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. Hoffman's group showed that Drosophila Toll, originally known for its function in development, is also…

Sweet Success

Clearly, transparency is critical but how much does the source of funding matter if it is fully disclosed? Among the scientific community, government funded research is generally considered trustworthy and as a benefit for the public good. Still, that view is not universal. I have been accused of "taking government funding" for my research (which is funded entirely from government sources: DOE, NIH, USDA, and NSF). The person asking clearly felt that the US government was not to be trusted and therefore the research funded by the US government was not to be trusted. But what is the…

HoneySweet Plum Trees: A Transgenic Answer to the Plum Pox Problem

Tonight's dessert is plum cake: Tante Lissy's Flaumen Kuchen (Plum Cake) 1 c Butter 1 c Sugar 1 Egg 2 tsp Almond extract (or vanilla) 1 tsp Salt 1 c White fl our 1 c Barley 10 Plums, pitted and cut in half 2 Tbsp warmed apricot jam 1. Beat together butter and sugar. Add in egg, almond or vanilla extract, and salt. 2. Mix in fl our and barley to form a dough. 3. Pat 2/3 of the dough into an ï¸-inch pan with removable rim. Arrange plums, cut side down, in pan. 4. Lattice rest of dough on top; drizzle with apricot jam. 5. Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes. I saved some Santa Rosa plums last summer…

For Earth Day, Celebrate Stewart Brand

For Earth Day, let's celebrate Stewart Brand, the distinguished writer, lecturer and author of the classic Whole Earth Catalog, which won the national book award in 1972. He also has a new book called "Whole Earth Discipline" where he argues that the established Green agenda is outdated, too negative, too tradition bound, too specialized, too politically one-sided to address the scale of environmental problems that we face today. You might want to check out John Tierney's column. "[Stewart Brand] was the one, after all, who helped inspire Earth Day by putting the first picture of the planet…

Meet Jeff Potter: The Computer Software Engineer With Culinary Science Smarts!

The ‘Nifty Fifty (times 4)’, a program of Science Spark, presented by InfoComm International, are a group of 200 noted science and engineering professionals who will fan out across the Washington, D.C. area in the 2014-2015 school year to speak about their work and careers at various middle and high schools. Meet Nifty Fifty Speaker Jeff Potter Some of the finest and most engaging scientists don't wear lab coats or work at universities. Instead some of them can be found in the top kitchens of America donned in aprons and chef's hats as they skillfully blend their passion for cooking with…

Role Model in Science & Engineering: Lonnie Johnson

  PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! (Tell Us What You Think:  What are some of the science and engineering skills that Lonnie used to invent the Super Soaker?  He proves that science can be TOTALLY fun!) It seems that Lonnie Johnson was born to be an engineer.  Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, he was a quiet and curious child who was fascinated about how things worked. “Lonnie tore up his sister’s baby doll to see what made the eyes close,” his mother recalls. As he grew older, he began making things, including rockets powered by fuel cooked up in his mother’s saucepans. In his…

The Buzz: Honoring Honorifics in the Media

The Blogosphere is abuzz about an article in the LA Times regarding Second Lady Jill Biden's preference to be acknowledged by her honorific title of "Doctor," which references her Ph.D in education. The article states that many prominent newspapers, including the LA Times and the Washington Post, only use the honorific title in articles if the doctorate degree in question is in a medical field, calling into question the context in which the "Dr." title is used in other situations, and whether it is more accepted for males to be acknowledged by this title than females. Related ScienceBlogs…

Economics Drives Beef Into the Limelight

Summer is nearly here, and beef is in the air: or at least in the mainstream media. A cursory search of Google news earlier this week turned up eighteen different stories about beef posted within a twenty-four hour period, among them: South Korea Opens to US Beef Imports, Pampered Beef Cattle Generate a Niche Profit, United Food Group Recalls More Beef, and my favorite, Roast Beef Helps Restore £9m Church. Why is beef on everybody's brain? Although beef production has levelled off in the U.S., global demand for beef continues to rise. According to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture…

The A, B, Z's of DNA

Today (4/25) is national DNA day.  Digital World Biology™ is celebrating by sharing some of our favorite structures of DNA. We created these photos with Molecule World™ a new iPad app for viewing molecular structures. As we are taught in school, the double stranded DNA molecule is a right-handed helix as determined by Watson and Crick using Franklin's x-ray diffraction images [1]. This B-form of DNA has approximately 10 nucleotides per turn of the helix and is the most common form of DNA found in nature. Classic structure with the elements colored. Classic structure with the bases…

Marking classes interactive: better learning or just more fun?

One of the newfangled ideas that's popped up in education in the past few years has been notion that more interactive methods of teaching will lead to better results. There's an appealing logic to this notion. Figure 1. A traditional lecture may not be the ideal way to transfer information.  Technorati Tags: education, active learning, clickers To quote Eric Mazur (1) quoting D. Huff (2): I once heard someone describe the lecture method as a process whereby the lecture notes of the instructor get transferred to the notebooks of students without passing through the brains of either…

In defense of Lakoff

As I have written so much about Lakoff before, I feel I should say something - anything - to defend him from the onslaught he's seen lately on Seed's scienceblogs here, here, here, here and here. What I think is important is to distinguish between several different things that Lakoff does. It appears that the word "Lakoff" triggers different frames in different people! 1. Theory of metaphors. As I stated repeatedly before, I am agnostic about his science. I defer to Chris on that issue. It is possible that Lakoff is wrong on his ideas about mind, language and metaphor. Future research…

Judge tells USDA it is legal for a meatpacker to try to keep us safe

The US only requires meatpackers to test a small fraction of their cows for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as Mad Cow Disease. Literally. They cannot test a larger fraction. Does that sound stupid? It sounded stupid to a federal judge, too: The federal government must allow meatpackers to test their animals for mad cow disease, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Kansas meatpacker Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all its cattle for the disease, a move that larger companies feared. If Creekstone is allowed to advertise its meat as tested and safe, that could…

The federal Open Access bill

Even Republican jerks like Texas's Senator John ("I never met a surge I didn't like") Cornyn can get it right sometimes. Law of Averages? I don't know, but I certainly approve of his promise to re-introduce the Federal Research Public Access Act (S.2695) which would require tax-payer funded research to be freely available within 6 months of publication -- in other words, Open Access for federally funded research. Even more amazing, the bill is co-sponsored by Independent (as in "really a Republican") Senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (as in, "I never met a surge I didn't like"). Maybe he…

Sick birds and sick workers

Yesterday we took note of the mirror image of absenteeism, presenteeism. The concern here is that people will show up to work sick and if they are infectious, spread influenza or whatever else is going around. As we noted people have various reasons for working sick, not the least of which is that they cannot afford to "waste" a sick day in case they need the few they have for family emergencies (like a sick child) or simply because they don't have paid sick leave and need the money. Almost half of US workers are in that position. So various proposals have been made to require paid sick leave…

What did Asa Gray think?

The Atlantic has republished Asa Gray's review of Darwin's Origin from 1860. It's a fascinating read: Asa Gray was a general supporter of Darwin, and the two of them corresponded regularly, and the review is generally positive, pointing out the power of the evidence and the idea. However, Gray is also quite plain about the way the implications of the theory make him very uncomfortable, and you can see him casting about, looking for loopholes. The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the…

The woo is strong in Glastonbury

Glastonbury is the legendary burial place of King Arthur, so as you might imagine, if you're a fey English wackaloon with a fondness for magic crystals and pagan rituals, it's a magnetic attraction. How bad can it be? Well, the wicked government of Great Britain, always trying to suppress the Old Ways and encourage this horrible practice of "modernization", has flipped the switch and turned on free wireless networking for the whole town. Evil! "I don't want my son exposed to risk 24 hours a day, including at his primary school, which is within the Wi-Fi zone," yoga teacher Natalie Fee tells…

The BPA cabal gets a letter

Here is an interesting follow-up to the leaked meeting minutes of the BPA cabal. Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee has a Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. As a result of reports in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Washington Post about the meeting minutes of BPA spinmeisters (the full contents of the memo were posted here and then by the Environmental Working Group), Waxman and Sub-Committee Chair Bart Stupak have sent the following letter to Dr. John Rost, Chair of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, Inc. (the tin can people who line their cans with a…

Public health: how to join the conversation

The Holiday Season is upon us so we won't post daily on the Public Health Conversation series. But you can join in at any time, in two ways. Effect Measure and The Pump Handle, the two blog sites hosting the discussion, have comment threads for each post. You can make a comment at any time on any post. If you want to see all the posts on this topic, just click the Progressive public health category on the left sidebar on Effect Measure. We will put an appropriate tag on The Pump Handle posts as well. If you have produced a more polished piece, send it by email to The Pump Handle. We will be…

Mass murder in Zimbabwe

Cholera is a vicious disease. It can take a healthy person and kill him or her in a day by rapidly dehydrating them from a massive, watery diarrhea. The resulting electrolyte imbalance can lead to vascular collapse or cardiac arrest. Cholera is usually spread by fecally contaminated drinking water, and hence is completely preventable. It is also easily treatable by keeping the patient hydrated with the oral rehydration therapy, basically minimally fortified water. Yet this preventable and treatable disease is now epidemic in the country of Zimbabwe. Government sources admit to over 400 deaths…

Who uses alternative medicine and for what?

This week CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) has a quick statistical snapshot of the percent of adults (over the age of 18) who used Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) by sex and selected conditions. CDC defines CAM as A group of diverse health-care systems, practices, and products not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine. CAM includes acupuncture; ayurveda; homeopathic treatment; naturopathy; traditional healers; chelation therapy; nonvitamin, nonmineral, natural products; diet-based therapies; chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation; massage…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Onward Christian Soldiers

The more things change the more they get weirder. In my day, the only way you could be a Conscientious Objector was to claim that status on religious grounds. If you were an atheist, tough shit. Now if you are an atheist, they don't want you to fight. This is something for all you young folks to keep in mind when President McSame or President Hilary get us involved in a war with Iran and they have to re-institute conscription: When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending. But…

Does the flu virus know where the 49th parallel is?

All I can say is that it's a good thing Canadian Press's Helen Branswell isn't a blogger or she'd put all the rest of us flu bloggers out of business. She is the professional flu reporter's professional (one of the best of the flu reporters once described a story of hers to me as "annoyingly good"). Being in Canada she also has more of an international perspective, as in a recent story about differences between seasonal flu in the US and Canada this year, a story that would have escaped the notice of US based reporters (hat tip to crof): Maps generated by the Public Health Agency of Canada…

FDA speaks up a little more often

I'm away from home and I did something really, really bad to my back. I could hardly tie my boots this morning (boots needed; it is snowing like stink up here). One of my fellow scientists took one look at me and said, "I guess you need some Vioxx." Then he laughed. Since I hardly know this person I don't think he was trying to kill me -- he wouldn't have laughed, then, I'm guessing. But Vioxx has killed some other people before the FDA finally acknowledged it could do that. They were soundly (and appropriately) criticized for keeping too quiet. Now, it seems, some are complaining because…

Health care in Canada: the emergency room

There is so much crap written in US media about alleged fatal flaws of the Canadian system of universal health care that it could be used to fertilize the crops of US agribusiness for a year. One apparent myth is that Canadians hate their system and that it results in long waits and unsatisfactory service. The province of British Columbia surveyed its citizens twice on how they feel about one of the most important aspects of the system, the Emergency Room (for American readers: before you read the results ask yourself how satisfied you were with your last trip to the ER): The survey was…

Let's hope the nightmare ends soon

Please go away, Mr Bush. And please, President-elect Obama, clear away the rotting debris of this ghastly administration. The latest example of dreadful Bush appointees: Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA. Asked about the evolution/creation debate, this is what he had to say: It's not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there's theistic or God-controlled evolution and there's variations on all those themes. Wobble and waffle. Religion and science, it's all the same to him. Now you might say that maybe this is irrelevant — as the EPA chief, he's just a…

Joshua Bell and Framing Science

Brilliant! Brilliant! Why didn't I think of this? A post on Anomalous Data connects the Framing Science debate to the recent Joshua Bell experiment (check some more good bloggy reactions to it). If you are not familiar with the story (follow the links): Joshua Bell played violin in a subway station and almost nobody stopped to listen or to give him money. Saw Lady explains exactly why - no framing! In the experiment/stunt, Bell deliberately played at a wrong place (in the hall where everyone walks through, not at the platform where people wait for trains), at a wrong time (morning rush hour…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Is Bigger Better? Breast Surgery Linked To Boost In Self-esteem And Sexuality: Women who undergo breast enlargement often see a sizable boost in self-esteem and positive feelings about their sexuality, a University of Florida nurse researcher reports. Study Focuses On Wandering Minds: Do your thoughts stray from your work or studies? Do you catch yourself making to-do lists when your attention should be elsewhere? Welcome to the club. College students reported mind-wandering almost one-third of the time in their daily lives, according to a new study led by faculty and graduate students at The…

The Best Sneetches on the Beaches

An olde but fun (February 16, 2006): ----------------------------------------- When I went to pick up Coturnix Junior from school today (he is in 7th grade), we bumped into his English teacher who informed me that he did not turn in his book review. He started coming up with excuses, that he lost the book, or it was stolen, etc. She said something like "Well, you better read something really fast, so you can turn in the review tomorrow. And it has to be something at middle-school level, not Dr.Seuss". I doubt Dr.Seuss ever crossed hs mind up till that moment, but he was quick to see an…

My picks from ScienceDaily

New Research Finds People And Pigeons See Eye To Eye: Pigeons and humans use similar visual cues to identify objects, a finding that could have promising implications in the development of novel technologies, according to new research conducted by a University of New Hampshire professor. Brett Gibson, an assistant professor of psychology who studies animal behavior, details his latest research in the journal article, "Non-accidental properties underlie shape recognition in mammalian and non-mammalian vision," published in Current Biology. Gibson and his colleagues found that humans and…

New potential sleeping pill

If you discover a brain chemical which, when missing or malfunctioning (due to a mutation in its receptor) abruptly puts people and animals to sleep when they don't want to - a condition called narcolepsy - then you can work on creating a drug that acts in the opposite way and induces sleep when you want to. Apparently, that is what a Swiss team just did (Nature news report here and Nature blog commentary here). The drug, still without a sexy name, is known by its "code-name" ACT-078573. The target of the drug is the orexin system. Orexins (also known as hypocretins - the discovery was…

Only the ducks are dead

BP has this great reputation for being an environmentally friendly and responsible company. I know it because their incessant television ads tell me it's true. The ones that flank the national news stories about their horrendous safety record of explosions and worker deaths or their catastrophic oil spills. Those ads. When something happens they start the noise machine and appear to be the innocent party let down by their lessee. BP ("British Petroleum") is a British Company operating in the US. A US company operating in Britain is called Innospec. You probably never heard of them because…

Food that makes you sick: not much progress

It would be surprising if failure to fund local public health and neutering regulation would result in a decrease in foodborne illness. Alas, there is nothing surprising about CDC's latest report on incidence of foodborne illness in the US. They put the best face on it they could, pointing to a decrease in E. coli O157H7 cases, but they've seen that kind of progress in E. coli before only to slip back. In reality we aren't sure how much food poisoning occurs each year. Most of it is self-limited and never comes to the attention of medical or public health authorities. It never gets counted.…

Well may the world go, when I'm far away

Every two years the US National Science Board does an analysis of how the country is doing on research and development (R&D). While an important measure of the ability to innovate and compete in a highly competitive and globalized world, I have a hard time getting excited about how this is being portrayed as a horse race, who is ahead, who is coming on strong, who is slipping behind. I'm a scientist and I don't think of this as a national competition. I understand how the President's science advisors might, since they are interested in science as a handmaiden to the economy. But if…

US health care system pronounced healthy

Rush Limbaugh has done a personal biopsy of the US health care system and found it healthy: "Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there is one thing wrong with the American healthcare system. It is working just fine," he said. Limbaugh, a multimillionaire, said he got no special treatment, but the staff made his stay "almost like a hotel." (Reuters via ABC News) What "happened to him" was that the obese 58 year old media bloviator with enough internal rage to kill a dozen normal sized people was afraid he was having a heart attack and called his girl friend, Kathryn Rogers, to let…

News Flash: your safety program stinks if workers lose fingers in machines

The Houston-based firm Piping Technology & Products devotes a page on its website to "company safety."   There are photos of safety banners displayed at its manufacturing facility, and pledges of continuous improvement.   The company says: "Safety is extremely important to us."   "At PT&P, we know that all injuries can be prevented."   "Together, we can eliminate unsafe situations and strive for an accident-free workplace on a daily basis." Those words ring hollow when you look at the firm's encounters with federal OSHA.   Just this week, Piping Technology & Products received a…

Obama's regulatory czar: worse than I imagined

On this blog, we've not minced words about the damaging impact on new worker safety and other public health regulations by the actions of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).   It began causing trouble for OSHA the moment it was created by President Reagan, and its interference continues to this day. During those early hope-and-change days, I had my fingers crossed that our new President had a fresh vision about the role of his regulatory czar.   But in January 2009  my hope was dashed when President Obama nominated law professor Cass Sunstein to lead OIRA. …

Technically Feasible Doesn't Mean "Going to Happen."

One of the hardest things for people to get their heads around is the fact that just because we can do something doesn't mean we will. For affluent people in the west in an era of rising energy availability, for the most part can and do went together. In an era of declining resource availability and declining wealth, however, many of us are likely to get to know the experience of much of the world, which is that what we can do doesn't have much to do with many people's experience.. One of the hardest concepts for many Americans to absorb is this - that technical feasibility rests on a…

NRC-CISTI's announces new public-private partnership with Infotrieve

Such is the subject line of an email I got from the NRC-CISTI people last week. NRC-CISTI is Canada's National Research Council -- Canada Institute of Scientific and Technical Informamtion. In other words, Canada's national science library. Many of you probably know them for their document delivery service. The basic message is that the document delivery service has been outsourced to a US company: NRC-CISTI, Canada's national science library is changing and we are energized by the possibilities as we move forward in the transformation process announced in February 2009. Today, we are…

Keywords of an Embedded Librarian

Keywords of a Librarian is the title of a new blog by academic librarian Mary W. George. What's very interesting about the blog is where it's being hosted. It's part of InsideHigherEd's BlogU community so Mary George is a fellow academic library blogger embedded within a faculty blogging community. This is a great development as I think it's incredibly important to raise librarians' profile within the broader faculty/academic community; so having regular blog posts bring our perspectives and concerns to that audience is great. A hearty congratulations to Mary on her new post! She's taking…

Distracted driving meets workplace safety

At today's 2nd annual Distracted Driving Summit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood laid out the U.S. statistics: "thousands of people are killed or injured every year in accidents caused by distracted drivers" and 500,000 more are injured. Distractions while driving can be new age, such as using a Blackberry or IPhone, or classic like looking at a map or unwrapping a sandwich. Distractions for drivers fit into three categories: Visual: Taking your eyes off the road Manual: Taking your hands off the wheel Cognitive: Taking your mind off what you're doing Its easy to see how certain…