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Bandwidth and Community Expectations

Derek Lowe has posted an article about X-ray lasers in chemistry, which amused me because of the following bit: Enter the femtosecond X-ray laser. A laser will put out the cleanest X-ray beam that anyone's ever seen, a completely coherent one at an exact (and short) wavelength which should give wonderful reflection data. This is funny to somebody in my end of the science business, because we usually think of femtosecond lasers as have an extremely broad spectrum, not an "exact wavelength." It's a striking example of something I see all the time with chemists-- what chemists think of as "…

Wind and Temperature: Why Doesn't Windy Equal Hot?

I got forwarded a physics question last night asking about the connection between wind and temperature, which I'll paraphrase as: Temperature is related to the motion of the atoms and molecules making a substance up, with faster motion corresponding to higher temperature. So why does it feel warmer when the air is still and why does wind make you feel cold? This is a moderately common point of confusion, so while I responded to the question in email, I'll also appropriate it for a post topic. So, why doesn't "windy" equal "hot," given that wind consists of moving air molecules? The full…

Through the Wormhole

The Science Channel debuted a new show last night, Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, with the premier apparently designed by committee to piss off as many Internet types as possible. The overall theme was "Is there a creator?" and it featured physicist-turned-Anglican-priest John Polkinghorne talking about fine-tuning but no atheist rebuttal. It spent a good ten minutes on Garrett Lisi and his E8 theory, making it sound a whole lot more complete than it is. And it got this aggressively stupid review in the Times: Oh, let's face it: it was hard to concentrate on the first half of the…

So You'd Like to Learn Some Physics...

Via Twitter, Michael Barton is looking for some good books about physics. I was Twitter-less for a few days around the period of his request, and this is a more-than-140-characters topic if ever there was one, so I'm turning it into a blog post. The reason for the request is that he's going to be working as an intern at the Einstein exhibit when it visits Portland, which makes this a little tricky, as relativity is not an area I've read a lot of popular books in (yet-- that's changing). That will make this a little more sparse than it might be in some other fields. There's also an essential…

The Three Button Mouse Phenomenon: A cultural trait found in those who love their computers

I am told that all Macs come with a three button mouse. I'm not sure I believe that, but it is what I'm told. But to me the three button mouse on a Mac represents one of interesting cultural features of Mac users. Years go, when I was arguing with my friend Mike about which was better, Windows or Macs (Linux was not really an option at the time), he kept insisting that Macs were better for all sots of reasons. After he listed a long list of made up (I assume) reasons that Macs were better, I said to him: "Mike I've got three words for you that make all that irrelevant. 'Three button mouse…

"Rape Switch Hypothesis" still going strong: US rape stats evaluated.

I would like to go into a little more detail about the rape switch which is being discussed here as well as the statistical trend in rape rates in the US being discussed here . It has been shown again and again that large numbers of males will carry out what by anyone's definition is rape, under certain circumstances. Yet at the same time, it seems that in most societies it is impossible to imagine that such a large percentage of men would carry out this heinous act. It is difficult to have much faith in the data for rape frequency, for two reasons. One is definitional and the other is…

Where have all the ducklings gone??

Or, more exactly, where are they all going to go during the next two or three months? I'm sitting here between a large frozen lake and a small "pond" (connected to the lake with a channel) that has patches of open water on it. (The melting on the pond is probably because the bioactivity at the bottom of the pond increases water temperature.) There is a pair of mallards on the pond, and I expect that in a few weeks there will be two or three mallards and three or for mergansers, all females, and each with between six and 12 or so ducklings. These 60 ducklings will initially hang out only…

I really don't think Randy Olson is a fan of the Discovery Institute

Carl Zimmer tells us that there are going to be showings of Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos all across the country next week—do you know where your nearest exhibition will be going on? Here it is for us Minnesota people, along with a little rebuttal of a Discovery Institute hissy fit: SCIENCE ON SCREEN Bell Museum Auditorium Thursdays at 7 p.m. $7; $5 students, seniors and Bell Museum members Each Thursday, the Bell Museum's Science on Screen program presents topical films focusing on scientific research and related issues, personalities, and controversies. Thursday, February 15, 2007 Flock…

South America on Five Dollars a Day

What do you eat when you are traveling the world in search of truth about the natural world? Most of the time Darwin ate pretty well... ~repost~ While traveling through the South American interior near Rio, Darwin makes note of some of the agricultural practices of the region. He is visiting farms ... plantations .. carved out of the forest. The chief produce of this part of the country is coffee. Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, two pounds; but some give as much as eight. Mandioca or cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity. ... that would be Manihot, or…

Monkey Girl

Oh, but I am dragging this morning. Have you ever done that thing where you start reading a book and you don't want to put it down, and eventually you realize it's late and you need to get some sleep, so you go to bed but you can't sleep anyway so you get up and finish the whole book? And then you get a couple hours of sleep before you have to get up again? And your whole day is like trudging through molasses afterwards? That's me. The book is Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Edward Humes, and from the title I think you…

What are the universities to do?

Sara at Orcinus has an excellent article on the UC/Calvary Chapel Christian School lawsuit, in which a Christian private school is suing the University of California system to require them to accept their dreck for credit. She's right that the universities need to stand up for standards, but I do have some problems with her opening statement: it ignores some complexities. I've been saying for a long while now that the power to end the Intelligent Design fiasco, firmly and finally and with but a single word, rests in the manicured hands of the chancellors of America's top universities. The…

Nature Re-Attacks Open Access and PLoS

Nature (left) vs. OpenAccess A number of bloggers, including myself, had recently responded to a news item in Nature by suggesting that anti-OpenAccess and anti-PLoS position taken by the author, Delcan Butler, constituted an attack of one company against another. How silly of us to have done so. Here's what we should have been thinking instead: There were also quite a few comments to the effect that the article was self-serving given Nature's business interests. That completely ignores the overall balance of Nature's coverage, which in my opinion is broadly supportive of open access…

Branch Discusses Falsifiability

In a lengthy comment to my post on probability and evolution, I pointed out that for scientists engaged in biological research, natural selection is not an abstract principle. It is not something that is invoked casually as a catch-all explanation for whatever complex biological system crosses their path. Rather, it is a tool that they use for generating testable hypotheses about the origin and history of whatever they are studying. This point is highly significant, since anti-evolutionists tend to argue at a very abstract level. This is especially prominent in the work of William Dembski…

Counterintuitive Math Problems

Looks like I've just added Ian McEwan's new novel to my reading list: During one of their Brighton rendezvouses, after a round of oysters and a second bottle of champagne, Tom Haley asks Serena Frome the question every mathematician longs for her lover to utter: I want you to tell me something...something interesting, no, counterintuitive, paradoxical. You owe me a good maths story. Frome (“rhymes with plume”), a twenty-something blonde blessed with the looks of Scarlett Johansson might be the last person one would expect capable of satisfying Haley's request. But readers of Booker-winning…

The Horror of PEMDAS

Slate has an interesting article, by Tara Haelle, discussing a math problem that recently received some attention on Facebook. The problem is to evaluate this expression: $latex 6 \div 2(1+2)$ Obviously, the challenge here is not the arithmetic itself. It is to figure out the order in which to do the operations. I suspect most people would naturally do the parentheses first, leading to this: $latex 6 \div 2(3)$, but what now? We could argue that we should first multiply the two by the three, leading to this: $latex 6 \div 6$, which is obviously equal to 1. Alternatively, we could…

The More Things Change ... Part Two

I am happy to report that my back is doing much better now. Not quite good as new yet, but rapidly getting there. In this previous post I mentioned that spending a lot of time flat on your back does allow you to get a lot of reading done. Lately I've been having a go at Bleak House, by Charles Dickens of course, first serialized in 1852 and 1853. The upside of a Dickens novel is that he wrote truly beautiful sentences. The downside is that he was never in much of a hurry to move the story along. But that's just perfect for my present situation, since I haven't been doing much “moving…

The Only Reasonable Reply to the Problem of Evil

In this post over at HuffPo, Rabbi Adam Jacobs serves up one of the standard replies to the problem of evil. After recounting a harrowing story of having to subject his 16 month old son to a difficult medical procedure, he writes: I have found this story to be helpful for explaining to people the nature of suffering. In truth, our ability to perceive what is happening around us is extremely limited; as Thomas Edison once said, “We do not know one millionth of one percent about anything.” With such limited and flawed faculties, how can we rightly expect to have any more perspective about the…

XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome: Delusions of Grandeur

Pop science journalists are finally getting a bit wary of the XMRV-->CFS story. The first to stick her neck out is Trine Tsouderos. You know Trine. She wrote that great piece calling out Dr. Oz, and the krazies at Age of Autism HATE HER. Trine is super cool. So I was a little annoyed she wasnt as ruthless when it comes to Judy Mikovits and the WPI. This article seemed to be more like "Heres what Judy says, heres what other scientists say. Heres what Judy says, heres what other scientists say. etc etc." Not the more pointed jabs Trine took with autism woo and Dr. Ozs silliness.…

Mainstream Baptist

Being an out, proud, vocal atheist, one thing I seem to have trouble communicating to people is just how very little I care about their own personal beliefs. I dont care if you love Jesus any more than I care if you love Big Macs or tap dancing or MAC lipstick. Its your life, whatever. My problem is, people just cant keep their hands to themselves. For instance, it is against the religion of Muslims to generate artistic renditions of their choice of deity. That means that Muslims cant make a velvet painting of Mohamed riding a bucking bronco. I can. Alternatively, in some branches of…

St. Anthony as a replacement for responsible dog ownership

Know whats easier than making sure your dog wears a collar or is micro-chipped? St. Anthonys Prayer!! My daughter and her family own three Shar-pei dogs: a mother, its son and a girl. The three dogs had never been past the front door, only in the backyard or in the house. Last summer, my son-in-law opened the front door, and Sake, the girl, shot out the door and bolted down the cul-de-sac to the open street and was quickly out of sight. My son-in-law ran to get the car to try to catch her, but she was gone. ... One evening, I had dinner with friends and told them what we were doing. One…

Evolution, randomness, and neurodegenerative diseases

Hey, remember a while back when I mentioned how scientists used evolution (random mutation and natural selection) in the lab to 'perfect' gene therapy vectors? Theyve just one it again! In a BIG way! Molecular Evolution of Adeno-associated Virus for Enhanced Glial Gene Delivery. These folks were looking for a way to get man-made viruses to deliver therapeutic genes to infected/defective cells. Now, you dont want these viruses to infect EVERY cell of a sick person, necessarily, you want to target the specific, sick cells. A golden target for these folks is glial cells-- as their…

Science Immersion

During my 'debate' with Creationist Charles Jackson, he let loose lots of funny accusations like "People like you are why kids think science is boring!" heh. See, Chuck wanted kids to 'debate' Creationism in science class, and I wanted kids to, you know, learn in science in science class. If you the kids dont have a basal level of science literacy, they werent really 'debating' Evilution vs Creationism-- they were parroting talking points they had learned from their elders (both sides). Science is a foreign language, and you have to learn the words first. We do need to make this as…

The rise and fall of zinc as a cure for the common cold.

Zincs connection to the common cold isnt as wooie as you all might be thinking after this weeks Zicamscepade (cough, sniffle). Though Zicam was marketed as a 'homeopathic' remedy, zinc-->common cold connection wasnt established by some naked sweaty white guy pretending he is a Native American deciding that Ayurvedic law dictates 'colds' require a 'hot' metal like zinc to neutralize viral chi. Zinc-->common cold was discovered by boring 'science' a long time ago. In 1974, Korant et al tested a ton of metals ions at lots of different concentrations to see if they had any effect on cold…

Lentiviruses: Me, and you, and Zaboomafoo Part Two!

Alternate post title: Why Charles Jackson is a tool who can quote papers, but doesnt understand what he is reading. I get this question all the time, and its totally valid: How do you tell the difference between an endogenous retrovirus that is shared because of common descent, and a retrovirus that was endogenized independently in two species? A follow up paper to the one I wrote about here (Me, and you, and Zaboomafoo) provides a lovely example of how we do this! So heres the back story: There are a ton of different retroviruses. Its not one big homogeneous group of 'virus kind', each…

Immunology Woo: MHC Mates, Part 2

After last Fridays post on a curiously orchestrated media event for a crappy paper (DUNT TAKE TEH PILL OR U CHOSE BAD BOIFREND!), I decided to bully some of my immuno professors for more information. I mean Ive got MHC experts just down the hall, surely they would know more about this topic! ERV: "What the hell?? Did you read the news today??" Professor: *blink* ERV: "Did you see that crappy paper about humans 'sniffing' MHC molecules and women on the pill???" Professor: *blink* ERV: *explains crappy paper* Professor: Its kind of a well known mating trick with mice. Youre trying to get…

Another Way to Be Confused About the Monty Hall Problem

In the Monty Hall problem, you are confronted with three identical doors, one of which conceals a car while the other two conceal goats. You choose a door at random, number one say, but do not open it. Monty now opens a door he knows to conceal a goat. He then gives you the option of sticking or switching. What should you do to maximize your chances of winning the car. As we are all by now aware, the correct answer is that you double your chances of winning by switching doors. Most people find this counterintuitive on the grounds that after Monty opens a door, only two, equally likely…

Maher States it Plain

Bill Maher turned up on Hardball the other night. As usual, he had some insightful things to say. Here's the first item I especially liked. Matthews' question was about the surge in Iraq: MAHER: Well, you know, when you have to make a secret trip to Iraq, I think probably your surge plan isn't really working. Is it working in the sense that we can stop violence in different pockets because we have a kick-ass army? Yes. Yes, they can do that. But this has always been about forming a government in Iraq and having an Iraqi army that could back up the will of that government. And that's…

Brayton on Sternberg

Ed Brayton has the must-read post of the day. Remember Richard Sternberg? He's the former editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. A while back he published a pro-ID paper in the journal. Sternberg was a research associate at the Smithsonain Institution at the time. It quickly became clear both that the paper itself was total garbage, and that the normal editing procedures of the journal had not been followed in its publication. The result was a big black eye for the Smithsonian and for the journal. But things got worse when Sternberg began alledging…

What Sort of New Car Should I Buy?

We spent the weekend down in the Boston area, where Kate was doing stuff at Readercon and I was running the kids around the New England Aquarium and the Museum of Science (nominally in the company of a friend form college and his family, and some of Kate's cousins (respectively), but either SteelyKid or The Pip was usually in a different room than everybody else, so there wasn't a lot of adult conversation...). Adding a fun element of excitement to this was the fact that some sort of electrical fault in my car had caused the speedometer to go dead right around the time we reached Boston on…

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson [Library of Babel]

I've gotten out of the habit of blogging about the books I read for fun here, mostly because I've gotten out of the habit of reading for fun. Not for lack of desire, but because between my job and the kids and the massive amounts of research reading for the book-in-progress, I haven't had time. Of course, I make the occasional exception, and when one of my very favorite SF authors comes out with a new one, that's a great reason to read a little fiction. Robert Charles Wilson isn't the most prolific author, but he's consistently excellent, and always thought-provoking, so I was very happy to…

The Flying Bus

"Daddy, you know what? I bet you didn't know, but my school bus can fly." "Really? I didn't know that." "Yeah, there's a button up at the front with a picture of a flying bus, and if you press the button, the bus flies." "That's amazing." "Yeah, and guess what? The other day, the bus driver called me, and said '[SteelyKid] come up here, and press the button,' and I pressed the button, and the wings came out, and we went flying." "Wow. Where did you fly to?" "Um, to school. And then to the JCC." "You didn't go anywhere else interesting in between, ith the flying bus?" "Well, we flew to Grandma…

Monday Math: Solving the Cubic, Part One

We mathematician types like solving polynomial equations. The simplest such equations are the linear ones, meaning that the variable appears to the exponent one. They have the general form: \[ ax+b=0. \] If you remember anything at all from your basic algebra classes, then you know that this is readily solved by bringing the b to the other side and dividing by a. We obtain \[ x=\frac{-b}{a}. \] Of course, we are assuming here that a is not zero, but let's not be overly pedantic. We can think of this as “the linear formula,” since it can be used to solve any linear equation we might…

The Big Tax Deal

Here's an interesting nugget from Ezra Klein: If you look at the numbers alone, the tax cut deal looks to have robbed Republicans blind. The GOP got around $95 billion in tax cuts for wealthy Americans and $30 billion in estate tax cuts. Democrats got $120 billion in payroll-tax cuts, $40 billion in refundable tax credits (Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and education tax credits), $56 billion in unemployment insurance, and, depending on how you count it, about $180 billion (two-year cost) or $30 billion (10-year cost) in new tax incentives for businesses to invest. But that's not…

The Purposes and Problems of Labs

Over at Jim Henley's place, Thoreau further justifies his status as an essential academic-physics blogger with a really good post about the problem of introductory labs: In freshman labs, generally you’re trying to measure something (at least as it’s done at many schools). The measurement is never as clean as the stuff being taught in lecture (or interactive discussion-based peer-involved blah blah whatever). There is nothing wrong with the fact that lab measurements are not as clean as the stuff in lecture! However, it does mean that you aren’t spending those 3 hours thinking about the…

Schrödinger's Virus?

The ArXiV Blog and several other sources last week linked to a new paper titled Towards Quantum Superposition of Living Organisms: The most striking feature of quantum mechanics is the existence of superposition states, where an object appears to be in different situations at the same time. Up to now, the existence of such states has been tested with small objects, like atoms, ions, electrons and photons, and even with molecules. Recently, it has been even possible to create superpositions of collections of photons, atoms, or Cooper pairs. Current progress in optomechanical systems may soon…

Unhealthy Obsessions of Academia

Over at Cosmic Variance, Julianne is annoyed at Nature's embargo policy. It seems that somebody or another posted a paper to the arxiv while submitting it to Nature, and included a note on the arxiv submission asking people to abide by Nature's embargo. So, instead of blogging about the Incredibly Exciting Discovery (which I'd loooove to talk about), I'm writing about what a ridiculous fiction the authors are asking us all to participate in, for the sake of the authors' potentially getting a publication accepted to Nature. The authors advertised a paper to thousands of interesting, engaged…

Links for 2010-01-10

Philip Guo - On Popularity "In sum, whether you are popular in middle and high school is largely out of your control, so it is unreasonable to aspire to become popular if you are not already popular. From my experience, the happiest teenagers are the ones who have accepted their status in the high school social hierarchy and made good friends with people of similar status." (tags: culture education kid-stuff society essay) Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 013602 (2010): Manipulation of Nonclassical Atomic Spin States "We report successful manipulation of nonclassical atomic spin states. We apply an…

Links for 2009-12-22

The Mid-Majority "Sports information is like electricity or water. When the power's on and everything's flowing regularly, nobody notices. Everybody takes these things for granted. But whenever anything goes wrong, people act like it's the end of the world. Sports information directors are expected to be perfect, to have the entire school record book on the tip of their tongues, to make sure everything along every scorer's table runs correctly and efficiently during games. And they usually are perfect, spending their days in perfect anonymity. Which is why they're the true saints of this…

Links for 2009-10-17

Career Advice: A Regular Writing Routine - Inside Higher Ed "In this article, I'm starting a four-part series on developing a regular writing routine. In this column, I'll discuss and debunk two popular myths about writing. In my next column, I'll review two of my favorite articles, one on expert performance and the other on writing research and apply it to developing a regular writing routine. Then I'll write a piece on what a regular writing routine looks like in real-time; that is, when you put your bum on the chair on your fingers on the keyboard, what really happens. To wrap up this…

Pop-Science Past: The Collapsing Universe, by Isaac Asimov

Some time back, I was a little surprised to hear James Nicoll use Asimov as a touchstone for science popularizers. I only really knew his fiction, and can't recall hearing his pop-science books cited by anybody who wasn't also an SF fan. So, when I ran across one of his science books while we were sorting through a bunch of old books left in the department after we cleared out Ralph Alpher's old office and some other old book collections, I grabbed it figuring I should check out some of his science writing. The book in question is The Collapsing Universe: The Story of Black Holes. It has a…

links for 2009-03-12

Matthew Yglesias » The DC Voucher Program Has Nothing to Do With Sidwell Friends "Virtually none of the recipients of the DC voucher program could go to Sidwell Friends like Barack Obamaâs kids. For one thing, they couldnât get in. And for another thing, they couldnât come close to affording the tuition. But the former point is actually more fundamental. Elite schoolsâbe they colleges, high schools, or whateverâare largely in the business of selecting their own students. Sidwell has a lot of interest in having Barack Obamaâs kids as students. Sidwell has virtually no interest in having…

A Game of Timing

One of my coaches, back in the day, always used to say that basketball was a game of quickness. Usually when he had just stolen the ball from somebody thirty years younger than him. It's true, quickness is a big asset in basketball. But it's also a game of timing-- knowing when to shoot, when to pass, when to cut to the basket, and when to step into the passing lane and steal the ball to secure Cleveland State's first NCAA bid since 1986. And, if you're talking pick-up basketball, there's also the important question of when to show up at the gym. Arrival time is a major issue in places where…

Why We Immunize

Over at Making Light, Jim Macdonald has a response to the anti-vaccination movement, taking his cue from the Navy: There's a manual that every Navy gunnery officer is required to read or re-read every year: OP 1014; Ordnance Safety Precautions: Their Origin and Necessity. It's a collection of stories about, and photographs of, spectacular accidents involving big guns and ammunition. Gun turrets that have fired on other gun turrets on the same ship. Holes in the coral where ammunition ships were formerly anchored. That sort of thing. It's simultaneously grim and fascinating. Nowadays there's…

links for 2009-02-14

Notes on sociopathy "Sometimes, a day of interacting with the rest of the human race on the roads and streets leaves you convinced that the world would be a much nicer place if most newborn humans were tossed in a burlap sack with some stones and then deposited in the nearest pond. But hereâs the funny thing - thereâs the rest, which we tend not to notice. " (tags: blogs society culture) blarg? » Additional Songsmithery "That Johnny Cash thing is the one thatâs going to keep the developers of Songsmith awake at night, staring at the ceiling and hoping thereâs no afterlife in which…

Gorillas In Our Midst

When I finished residency, I took a position at a University clinic north of town.  In order to get there, I had to cross a bridge over a river.  I drove over that bridge about 100 times before the first snowfall. On the first snowy day, while driving over the bridge, I noticed a sign.  The sign warned that the bridge could be icy.  Prior to that first snowy day, I had not noticed the sign.   Fast-forward to the present day.  A title="Quirky Outtakes" href="http://quirkynomads.com/wpt/">thoughtful reader sent a suggestion that I write about the subject of title="Wikipedia link"…

Women graduate students and the importance of mentors

Mary Ann Mason has a column in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education describing the importance of role models and mentors for women graduate students. Though Zuska recently wrote a provocative post that argued that "the problem of motherhood" might be a red herring for those interested in increasing the representation of women in science, Mason's column provides some data that suggest the problem of motherhood is very real. Role models, particularly ones with children, can make the difference in whether a female graduate student takes the next big step along the tenure track. While…

Fossilised embryos are the work of bacteria

Animal fossils are usually the remains of hard structures - bones and shells that have been petrified through enormous pressures acting over millions of years. But not all of them had such hard beginnings. Some Chinese fossils were once the embryos of animals that lived in the early Cambrian period, some 550 million years ago. Despite having the consistency and strength of jelly, the embryos have been exceptionally well preserved and the structure of their individual cells, and even the compartments within them, have been conserved in all their beautiful, minute detail. They are a boon to…

Mind your words - how stereotypes affect female performance at maths

On 14 January 2005, Lawrence Summers (right), president of Harvard University spoke of the reasons behind the disproportionate lack of women in top-end science and engineering jobs. Avoiding suggestions of discrimination, he offered two explanations - unwillingness to commit to the 80-hour weeks needed for top level positions and, more controversially, a lower "intrinsic aptitude" for the fields. According to Summers, research showed that genetic differences between the sexes led to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end". For years, scientists have battled over the…

Do off-topic posts put you off?

I just commented over at DrugMonkey's on a question he re-posed on behalf of a question posed by blogger, Lorax: However, I am concerned about message. I do not want the interesting and important science to be diluted (to some potential readers) by the fact that I am an opinionated bastard. So, I have been considering starting a new blog that would contain the science- and education-oriented posts and maintaining this one until no one IWOTI. As is common in my commenting elsewhere, my diatribe grew longer than the blogpost itself and, therefore, is now a blogpost here presented to you for…

Irving Epstein on why we need to cultivate nonwhite students in the sciences

In today's Los Angeles Times Dr. Irving Epstein, Brandeis University chemistry prof and HHMI investigator, writes in "The science of science education": In 2005, more than two-thirds of the American scientific workforce was composed of white males. But by 2050, white males will make up less than one-fourth of the population. If the pipeline fails to produce qualified nonwhite scientists, we will, in effect, be competing against the rest of the world with one hand tied behind our backs. Let me repeat: By 2050, white males will make up less than one-fourth of the [U.S] population. There are…