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Margaret Turnbull on Localizing Energy

Below, Margaret Turnbull 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 the most important issue upon which technological innovation should be brought to bear is in energy efficient devices and the decentralization of energy production. Whether this would include something like photovoltaic paints or clothing that captures…

Welcome to The Art of Science Learning! [Art of Science Learning]

The Art of Science Learning is an NSF-funded exploration of how the arts can strengthen STEM skills and spark creativity in the 21st-Century American workforce. The project will be launched this spring with conferences in Washington, DC (at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, April 6-7), Chicago (Illinois Institute of Technology, May 16-17) and San Diego (CALIT2 at UCSD, June 14-15). These conferences will bring together scientists, artists, educators, museum professionals, business leaders, researchers and policymakers, to explore the role of the arts in science education…

Foraging in Philly

I've got a rather laid-back schedule here in Philadelphia, and I took advantage of it this morning — I took a little walkabout around the neighborhood. Unless you're from Los Angeles, cities are great places for walking, and it was very pleasant to idle along. Then, of course, I was required to get lunch at a truck. And, of course, I had a cheesesteak. Wow. They only make these greasy confections right in this particular city, I've found: onions and peppers and chopped beef all fried together and slathered onto a slightly chewy roll, with a little cheez-whiz and ketchup (not mustard, Sidaway…

Around the Web: Librarians dealing with data, Unbundling the university and more

Dealing with Data: Science Librarians’ Participation in Data Management at Association of Research Libraries Institutions Unbundling the University Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS): Search Result : Librarians, Archivists, Conservators And Curators (511) Open access: four ways it could enhance academic freedom Social Justice Librarianship Putting the “Expert” in Subject Expertise Making Things Happen and Getting Things Done Librarians as Partners: Moving from Research Supporters to Research Partners Project Information Literacy: What Can Be Learned about the Information-Seeking…

Friday Fun: "We never visited because we hate The Carpenters" say aliens

A fun sentiment if I've ever heard one. And I'm sure we all have a band/performer that we'd like to nominate as the "Performer most likely to keep aliens away from earth." Being Canadian, I think I can safely nominate Celine Dion. "We never visited because we hate The Carpenters" say aliens Aliens have confirmed that they’ve never landed on Earth because they can’t stomach easy listening music. ‘We buzzed a Lighthouse Family concert in Tunbridge Wells and thought “Has it really come to this?”’ said a spokesextraterrestrial. *snip* ‘It took me thirty or so of your Earth years to get there,…

Around the Web: The dismal state of Canadian science journalism, What matters and what doesn't in academia and more

Out of sight, out of existence: How lack of public awareness hurts Canadian science Outcry Grows Over Canadian Govt's Undermining of Climate Science What matters and what doesn't: open thoughts on academia Stop the silence, and some suggested reading (more about the state of academia) Changing Culture in Higher Education Personal Editorial: Managing High Potential Employees in Libraries: The Rock Star Dillemma The Internet of the Dead (The traces dead people leave on the Internet) Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access The entrepreneurial library How can we build a future…

Around the Web: The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research, Would you include your blog in your tenure file and more

The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment Would you include your blog in your T&P file? The Benefits of Open Data – Evidence from Economic Research and Part II Google Books Litigation Family Tree Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure Can You Spare a Little Change? Open Access on the Local Level Hacking the Open Textbook Going Meta on the Data (discussion of library eresource usage stats by non-librarian) Open Access: What is it and what does “Open” mean Education, Technology "Journalism,"…

Friday Fun: Particle physics ‘all made up’ admit scientists

One of my all-time most popular posts in the search engine keyword logs is Friday Fun: Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks. And a good chunk of the commenters seem to think it's true and not devilishly clever satire. A common occurrence with The Onion, apparently. Well, this one is in the same category, from the UK's News Biscuit this time. Brilliant! Particle physics ‘all made up’ admit boffins For years, billions of pounds have been pumped into state of the art labs to fund so called ‘particle accelerators’ in the hope that the secrets of the big bang are revealed. ‘It’s all…

Around the Web: Let's Talk about Academic Integrity, Mining the astronomical literature and more

Let's Talk about Academic Integrity, Part I: BI (Before the Internet) and Part II AI (After the Internet) Mining the astronomical literature 26 Internet safety talking points Save the [Insert Noun Here] (library catastrophism) Libraries and eBook Publishers: Friend Zone Level 300 An Unexpected Ass Kicking and 7 Things I Learned From My Encounter With Russell Kirsch Twitter Is Where Conversations Go To Die How should academic libraries communicate their own value? What You Need to Know About MOOC's Ask the Administrator: What Does “College Ready” Mean? The Post-petroleum Future of Academic…

Friday Fun: Agronomy Lab Calls Flesh-Eating Plants "A Mistake"

It's not everyday that The Cronk News has a science-themed article but when they do, I'm all over it! Today it's Agronomy Lab Calls Flesh-Eating Plants "A Mistake." "Yes, we admit our mistake," says Blackheart. "Of course this doesn't lessen the university's commitment to sound agricultural policy and responsible research. Nor does it reflect negatively in any way on the integrity of our technicians." When pressed on this point one of the labs' senior researchers, Dr. Seymour Krellburn, admitted that the release was "probably unintended...Actually, someone just accidently dumped the wrong…

Friday Fun: Homeopathic leak threatens catastrophe

How do no one every tell of this NewsBiscuit before? It's fantastic, kind of a UK version of The Onion, but dryer and more polite. Or something. Anyways, here's a recent one, my introduction to this fantastic site: Homeopathic leak threatens catastrophe. An accidental release of highly dilute homeopathic waste from a research institute in Swindon has led to calls for the centre to be shut down. Plant operators have admitted responsibility for massive safety blunders after a spilled drop of an enormously dilute test product was cleaned by a caretaker, and in complete disregard of all safety…

Friday Fun: Twitter To Add "Elitist" Verification for Higher Ed Big Deals

I contacted Twitter earlier this week but unfortunately they have been unable to activate the Academic Big Deal "Elitist" Verification Status on my Twitter account. Something about me being a "delusional status seeking famewhore megalomaniac." They also mentioned something about Klout, but I'm not sure what they meant by that. Anyways, The Cronk News details this great new service from the fine folks at Twitter: Twitter To Add "Elitist" Verification for Higher Ed Big Deals. Similar to its current "Verified" function, the Highed Elite feature will allow users to quickly identify whether they…

Friday Fun: Librarian Caught in Bed with Book

A fun one from the Scholarly Kitchen's Phil Davis to celebrate April 1st. I've seen quite a few amusing bits out there this year but nothing that really slays me. Any suggestions for good ones that you've seen this year? Anyways: Librarian Caught in Bed with Book Readers of the UK Guardian and Post awoke Friday to the scandalous photo of a university librarian embracing a copy of "Eat, Pray, Love." Authorities are still investigating whether it was a personal copy. The photo came to the attention of the press via WikiLeaks. Authorities in the UK and the US are working around the clock to…

The McCain record on the environment

John McCain made some pleasant noises about supporting science in his Science Debate 2008 responses. They were outright lies, however. If you want to get pissed off at a politician, read the analysis of McCain's voting record on environmental and alternative energy issues. His voting record is nearly indistinguishable from James Inhofe's — he has routinely either skipped out on crucial votes or voted against renewable energy and environmental conservation. And it's not just the environment! If you want to be really frightened, read what he said about health care: Opening up the health…

Best Science Books 2010: The Kansas City Star

Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. The Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon And a non-science book that, for obvious reasons, looks particularly…

New Blog: The Scientific Indian

Not only is it a temperate, low-humidity day in New York City, but it's a beautiful day in cyberspace as well, because today ScienceBlogs has welcomed the 48th member of its community of blogs. The Scientific Indian, written by Selva, won "Best Science/Technology Indiblog" in the Indibloggies awards of 2005. The blog's tagline is "Science as a Way of Life." Writes Selva, I make my living writing software. For personal enjoyment I read science and experiment with it as a way of life. But I am not a scientist. That puts me in the convenient disposition where I can talk science and blame my…

Quick Picks on ScienceBlogs, August 10

"Platensimycin: Putative New Class of Antibiotic Medication" Scientists from Merck report on a previously unknown class of antibiotic. "A Necessary Twist (Values, part IV)" Why can't we picture a fifth dimension? Stretch your mind with the fourth installment in Karmen's series, complete with illustrations by the author. "Debunking the Upper Tail: More on the Gender Disparity" Jake continues his previous discussion of gender differences in cognition: they exist, but are they significant enough to explain anything? "Hillary for President? Not If You're Old." Does Hillary make you feel proud…

John Scalzi (sort of) on the relationship between libraries and publishers

In a recent post on his Whatever blog, science fiction writer John Scalzi makes some very fine points related to the ongoing controversy surrounding the way Amazon treats various publishers and how this affects authors. He makes great points throughout the post and with a little tweaking we can very easily apply his remarks to libraries and publishers. Here's my tweaked version: I really really really wish publishers would stop pretending that anything they do is for the benefit of libraries. They do not. They do it for their own benefit, and then find a way to spin it to libraries, with the…

Around the Web: Publishing may be a button, but publishing isn’t all we need and more on scholarly communication

Publishing may be a button, but publishing isn’t all we need The Vacuum Shouts Back: Postpublication Peer Review on Social Media bioRxiv: The preprint server for biology Debt, Pensions and Capitalisation: Funding schol comms innovation How to maximise usage of digital collections Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals How to energize scholarship for the digital age Why universities should care about Altmetrics Some Things Last A Long Time (How long does it take to publish a paper) Do blog citations correlate with a higher number of future citations?…

Back home at last

I motored into my driveway at 1am last night, after a long day and a long flight from LA. And now you expect me to start blogging again? You people are so demanding. Oh, well, it was a fun weekend, and you can see some of it already on the web. That wild man Scooter was there, and he made an audio recording of my talk at Libros Revolución. There was a good crowd there, including lots of Pharyngula regulars, and it wasn't your usual 'guy lectures at mob' sort of thing — it was more like a comment thread here. People kept interrupting me and throwing out their own ideas. I'd come with a fairly…

Squid suckers

This photo won an honorable mention in the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. They were robbed! Grand prize or they'll rip the judges' faces off! Squidsuckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast Credit: Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer, Drexel University Crunch. The satisfying sound of a crushed cockroach comes from the destruction of its chitin-based exoskeleton. The white, fanglike circles in this electron micrograph of squid suckers are also chitin, but they are not so easily crushed. Their scant 400-micrometer diameter belies the true power of the suckers. A…

Around the Web: Admiting our agendas, Changing the world, The value of libraries and more

Admitting Our Agendas A queer, feminist agenda for libraries: Significance, relevance and power Agendas: Everyone has one I dreamed of a book … Why I'm not waiting for tenure to change the world... Value of Libraries Megapost Librarians, Gender, and Tech: Moving the Conversation Forward Silencing, librarianship, and gender: award hate and the silencing of recognition Public Libraries as Social Innovation Catalysts The private-data-for-services trade fallacy Business Model of the Internet Has Been Surveillance Science and Its Skeptics Why We Are Allowed to Hate Silicon Valley You Can't Get…

Chumbawamba drinks a toast to Charlie

All of nature in its place By hand of the designer Comes our Charlie spins the worldFrom here to Asia Minor In between the PlatypusAnd perfect Aphrodite Charlie come with opposing thumbTo question the Almighty Over the river and over the sea Through holy storm and thunder Steer a course for a brave new world Of common sense and wonder See the dancing President The congressman and teacher Jumpin' to the music of The wealthy Midwest preacherCharlie come with a brand new danceGet on the floor and follow Find yourself a partner and We'll swing into tomorrow Over the river and over the sea…

Radio reminder

In less than an hour, Atheists Talk radio will be on! This week, they're discussing how to talk to a christian proselytizer, and are also having a segment on fundamentalism. It sounds very depressing, but I'm sure it will be good. By the way, I am back home, and my laptop is still dead. I'm using an older, slower, smaller laptop while the other is out for repair, and I'm just now beginning the slow process of doing a complete restore to this little machine. I'm feeling sort of brain-damaged, but at least I'm getting some functionality back. One thing that never restores very well, though, is…

2009 Visualization Challenge

Science Magazine this week published the winners of this year's International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. Self-Fertilization: Heiti Paves and Birger Ilau, Tallinn University of Technology Within its tiny white flowers, thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) does what most plants avoid: It fertilizes itself. Heiti Paves of Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia took this photograph of the flower with its pollen grains and ovaries stained blue to show the process in action. From the six pollen heads, the grains grow thin tubes toward the bean-shaped ovaries in the flower…

Women Who Changed the World Through Science: Sally Ride

Science Question of the Day:  On your road to success in science and engineering, how willing are you to break down, and break through, stereotypes and other obstacles?  Sally was. Read her story! While completing her Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University in 1977, Sally Ride became intrigued by a NASA newspaper ad seeking astronaut candidates.  Her decision to answer that advertisement would change her life forever. When she and with four fellow astronauts blasted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger  in June 1983, she became the first American woman—and, at 32, the youngest American—in…

Naked chemists!

Phew. The fourth day in Lindau is about to end and I think I speak for everybody when I say extreme humidity is not exactly our favourite aggregate state concerning the weather in this town. Nevertheless we've had another great day at the Nobel Laureates Meeting and would like to share thus with you, fellow readers: Two laureates have been portrayed by our bloggers today: The young chemist Oliver Schuster met Aaron Ciechanover and listened to his very philosophical remarks on modern medicine. Then our very active guest blogger from the US, Ashutosh Jogalekar, portayed Sir Harry Kroto and…

The Buzz: Myths About Darwin

There are several misconceptions circulating about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas and theories in the field of evolution. That's why, in honor of Darwin's birthday last month, ScienceBlogger John Wilkins from Evolving Thoughts took it upon himself to clear things up. In his eight-part series, "Myths about Darwin," Wilkins addresses and debunks claims such as those that paint Darwin as a social Darwinist or Lamarckian and sets the record straight. Related ScienceBlogs Posts: Myth 1: Darwin Did Not Believe in the Reality of Species Evolving ThoughtsFebruary 10, 2009 Myth 2: Darwin…

Welcome, ScienceWoman!

So lately everybody's been blogging about the supposed dearth of prominent female science bloggers. In light of this, we at the ScienceBlogs editorial corner are oh-so-pleased to announce our newest scibling, ScienceWoman, a first-year assistant professor in "-ology." Her blog's title, On Being a Scientist and a Woman, is sufficiently self-explanatory. Here's what she said on her old blog platform about the move to Sb: I've been blogging here for almost two and a half years, and over that time I've probably had at least a dozen readers thank me for writing this blog, for talking about the…

Thanks for helping get the word out!

We have quite a few shout outs! Thanks everyone for helping us get the word out about the Festival. Very Spatial A Parent in Silver Springs Thanks Rhetoric & Rockets for running a booth at the Science Festival and helping get the word out about the Festival on your blog. ' I'm about a week out from attending the Science & Engineering Festival, where I'll be running the booth/tent for ScienceCheerleader.com. For the past few months I've been creating letters, forms, grant proposals, schedules, and gosh-knows-what-else to ensure that 11 cheerleaders have what they need when they need…

Satellite Festival N.C. Science and Engineering Festival at Clarkson Oct. 20

Thanks North Country NOW for publicizing a satellite event that is happening on Oct 20th! If you are in Potsdam, NY check this Satellite event out! POTSDAM -- Clarkson University will host the North Country Science and Engineering Festival from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20 in Cheel Campus Center. It is free and open to the public. The festival will feature many hands-on activities that challenge visitors' science and math talents. Paper Airplane Design and The Paper Bridge Challenge will test engineering savvy. Whose paper airplane can fly the farthest? Whose bridge can hold the most…

How to Host a Nifty Fifty Speaker

Ever wonder about the kind of chemistry that happenings during a Thanksgiving meal? Ever looked up at the sky and wondered if there was life out there? Or even just want to fly up into space? Want to be inspired by a migrant worker who became a neurosurgeon? Wonder about the physics of superheros? Watch too much CSI and wonder what a career in forensic science would be like? Read stories about the Kraken of the sea and wonder what monsters lie beneath? The 'Nifty Fifty' are a group of noted professionals who will fan out across the Washington, DC area next October to speak about their work…

Lunch with a Laureate--Kary Mullis

Sometimes kids label science as being 'uncool' and even irrelevant. It is sometimes believed to be inaccessible and worse yet that scientists have no fun. Check out these videos on PCR, Polymerase Chain Reaction invented by one of our Lunch Lunch with a Laureates, Kary Mullis, I have to say differently. Aside from having a bit of fun in these clips, PCR has a lot of relevancy in many aspects of life...forensics, conservation, new biological developments and many more. Leading PCR Companies like Life Technologies and Agilent will have an exhibit at the USA Science and Engineering Festvial's…

Having fun with the flu: digital biology activity I

Genome sequences from California and Texas isolates of the H1N1 swine flu are already available for exploration at the NCBI. Let's do a bit of digital biology and see what we can learn. Activity 1. What kinds of animals get the flu? For the past few years we've been worrying about avian (bird). Now, we're hearing about swine (pig) flu. All of this news might you wonder just who gets the flu besides pigs, birds, and humans. We can find out by looking at the data. Over the past few years, researchers have been sequencing influenza genomes and depositing those genomes in public…

A lovely Sunday in the garden

August is the time when gardens look their best. Fruit becomes showy, flowers abound, and plants are large and plentiful. Mendel's Garden #4, currently blooming at The Inoculated Mind, is no exception. Evolgen pointed this out, so I had to go take a look. I enjoyed this trip through the experimental garden at UC Davis. It's a nice change to see someone with a scientific bent planting such a spicy garden. It was interesting to learn about how genetic engineering saved the papaya industry in Hawaii and the strains of flood-resistant rice. Karl's own gardening experiences were…

Standing Tall for Vaccines

"Who fears or rejects vaccines, why do they do so, and how might we reach them to change their minds?" On Aetiology, Tara C. Smith answers these questions with a new paper written as a primer for those who want to stand up for vaccination. She says, "for many individuals on the vaccine-hesitant spectrum, it’s not only about misinformation, but also about group identity, previous experience with the health care field, and much more." The stakes of the vaccine debate are high. On Respectful Insolence, a mathematical model from Stanford shows that slight dips in uptake of the MMR vaccine would…

Out of the Earth, Out of the Blue

Greg Laden reports on a hominid fossil "recovered from the seabed near Taiwan" which reveals new levels of dental diversity among proto-humans and may qualify as a new species. Greg says the specimen known as Penghu "is yet another indicator that multiple different hominids lived on the Earth at the same time after the rise of Homo erectus." But why was it located underwater? In another example of what lies beneath, Dr. Dolittle marvels at "an unexpected find and very exciting moment for researchers;" the discovery of small fish and invertebrates thriving below 740 meters of ice near the…

No Star Unturned

On Dynamics of Cats, Steinn Sigurðsson sifts through Hubble's vast catalog of stars, gas, and galaxies, looking for a diamond in the rough. Many images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope have never really been looked at; Sigurðsson says "In some cases the PI died before doing so. More usually these are engineering test images, or 'parallel images,' where a second camera was set to take images of wherever it happened to be pointed." The European Space Agency wants your help to search through these pictures. In 2004, Hubble resolved the famous Ultra Deep-Field with 10,000 galaxies across…

Billions of B-Cells

On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham tells us all his thoughts on GoD—the Generation of Diversity that enables B-cells "to make antibodies that recognize almost any chemical structure that has ever existed or will ever exist." By recombining three essential pieces of an antibody (with 100, 30, and 6 variants respectively), using enzymes to slice up DNA and stitch it back together, and owing to a little extra variation from our parents and a dash of random nucleotides, B-cells can fabricate about 10 billion different antibodies to intercept viruses, bacteria, and other intruders. On ERV, Abbie…

Halloween in Toronto

So people want to know more about the Toronto visit… They're charging for people to listen to me? Wow, I feel like Celine Dion now. You can get more information and order tickets at the CFI site. I am a little uncomfortable with the hyperbole on the poster, though. Couldn't they have said "world's most famous atheist & science blogger from Morris, Minnesota"? Especially with Larry Moran right there in town, he is probably going to give me some grief over that line. There are also some other things planned for Saturday, but I don't have those details just yet. I know that the fabulous…

The Science of Kissing

Kissing remains popular among the people of the world, and in a new book former scibling Sheril Kirshenbaum delves into the emerging science behind the age-old practice. For one, the sensory experience of osculation (as sucking face is more formally known) forges new neuronal connections in the brain. On Dean's Corner, Dr. Jeffrey Toney says "these new connections represent learning, memory and can enhance sensory perception and even healing." We at Scienceblogs recommend five to nine servings a day. Dr. Toney also shares a video which demonstrates affection throughout the animal kingdom…

Excelsior?

We heard recently that 36% of university students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" upon graduation, although they may have bettered their Xbox skills, social lives, and tolerance to alcohol. Physics professor Chad Orzel isn't surprised by this number, saying it "seems consistent with my experiences both as a student and as a faculty member." According to Chad, laziness is just human nature, and there are other important (if not academic) lessons that college provides. The new statistics, drawn from a book called Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College…

International Carnival Of Pozitivities

Welcome to the fifth international carnival of pozitivities, blog carnival about HIV and AIDS founded and managed by my friend and neighbor (and great blogger) Ron Hudson. I have to say that preparing this carnival has been quite an eye-opener for me and that I have learned so much. I feel it would be presumptious of me to write any editorials for today's entries so I will just list them with brief quotes from each post, but I warmly recommend that you take your time and read each and every post here - perhaps they will be eye-openers for you as well. Eric Jost of Confessions of a gay…

What Works Best in Science and Mathematics Education Reform

From the press release (doc): The report, prepared by Potomac Communications Group of Washington, DC under a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, provides a candid glimpse into the NSF's Urban Systemic Program (USP), the first national effort to reform how a school district teaches and students perform in science and math throughout an entire school system. Launched in 1994, the USP was the first time that the NSF gave funds directly to school districts rather than through universities. It offered districts the opportunity to address their own education challenges and control how funds…

When your water starts tasting like dirt...

It could be geosmin. We encountered geosmin once before in our butter but most people notice it, about this time of year, in their tap water. Geosmin is a volatile compound that's made by soil bacteria like Streptomyces, as well as some plants like sugar beets, and cyanobacteria. It gets blamed quite often for making water taste like dirt. Only a small amount is required (10 nanograms per liter) for detection by the human palate (1) and it's been blamed for adding a "dirt-like" taste to many things like water, wine, apple-juice, and catfish. So, late in the summer when everyone is…

Can't do the math? Blame your brain!

It's dyscalculia. The curse of math instructors everywhere. A few years ago, students at the community college, where I taught, petitioned to have math removed from the list of courses that were required for a degree. Part of the reason, they argued, was that one student claimed that he shouldn't have to take math because he had dyscalculia. (Dyscalculia is like dylexsia, except that it makes it harder for people to do arithmetic. ) The math instructors argued that they weren't going to eliminate requirements for a "fictional disease." Now, it appears that miscalculations do have a…

Teachers step right up! Get your free "An Inconvenient Truth" DVD

Yes, indeed the DVDs are now available on a first-come, first serve basis. The NSTA has a link to the DVD giveaway page. And the NABT (National Association of Biology Teachers) has written about it, too. From the NABT: The DVD's will be given away starting Monday, December 18, 2006 thru Thursday, January 18, 2007. Teachers are encouraged to log on to www.participate.net to request the DVD, which will be delivered within 6-8 weeks. Every teacher must provide a nine-digit federal tax ID number belonging to the school where they teach. A free downloadable curriculum guide to accompany An…

Railroad safety: next stop oblivion

Maybe you didn't hear about the poison gas attacks on American communities this year. No? Well in January two towns in Kentucky were attacked, a day apart. OK, there weren't exactly not exactly attacked. That part isn't true. But assume for a moment that each of the following two incidents was the result of terrorists: Irvine, Kentucky, January 15, 2007: Four railway training cars were sent careening twenty miles down a track before colliding with unoccupied engines in a town of 3000 people. On impact, a flammable solvent, butyl acetate, ignited and then exploded. People living in twenty…

Blood money

The smell of coins. I can't resist blogging this. It's science. The signature metallic smell of a handful of coins isn't the scent of pure metal. According to Virginia Tech organic chemist Dietmar Glindemann, most people wouldn't even recognize the acrid smell of a vat of copper. But in a recent experiment, Glindemann showed that when we handle metal objects like coins (most U.S. coins are about 75 percent copper), our sweat begins corroding them immediately, creating a film of unstable ions that behave like partially oxidized rust. Fatty acids from oils on the skin are decomposed by these…

Parallel Universe Department, II: Jakarta branch

I'm sure you've read about this on other blogs (what? you read other blogs?), but it is just too juicy and too emblematic not to comment on here. Well, I won't actually comment on it. It is self-parodying: Indonesia claimed a major victory in the fight against bird flu Thursday, saying the heart of the capital had been cleared of backyard fowl and that residents elsewhere were handing in chickens for slaughter. But poultry could still be seen roaming freely in suburban neighborhoods and some people hid pet birds in their homes, raising doubts the campaign would prevent further human deaths in…