lbillings | May 14, 2007As the floor of the convention center fills with completed displays, an overwhelming sense of significance is growing, like static in the air before a lightning strike. In terms of technical precision and real-world relevance, most of the entries here are light years beyond the stereotypical projects that come to mind when most people think of a science fair. Walking through the aisles, one consistently encounters projects tackling the most intractable problems facing global society today, reconceiving and addressing them with fresh perspectives. These are harbingers of greater things to come…
vhughes | May 14, 2007Nope, it's not the movie trailer for Armageddon II. The clip below is a new animation from NASA meant to get us excited about its Constellation Program and our upcoming trip--erm, 13 years from now--back to the Moon.
The Constellation Program includes: Developing the Crew Exploration Vehicle, Orion, by 2014; returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020; and once on the Moon, according to NASA's Constellation Program website, "extending human presence across the solar system and beyond."
(Hat tip: Clive)
lbillings | May 13, 2007The Student Pin Exchange is two hours away, but finalists have already broken out their cultural booty to swap in the aisles between their projects.
It's not just students who collect and exchange pins, though. For example, check out our friend Bill Chown:
We caught up with another compulsive pin-hoarder, John Turner, and asked him a few questions about the habit. The Q&A is below the fold.
Q: Can you tell us your name and where you're from?
A: My name's John Turner, I'm from San Jose, California, and I'm on the Host Committee. We're putting on the 2010 international science fair. That'…
lbillings | May 13, 2007The world's largest baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano is now fully operational at our Intel ISEF booth. All morning and afternoon, unsuspecting finalists have fallen victim to the noxious vapors and bubbling lava spewing from the sinister cinder cone. Oh, the humanity...
Some more choice pictures are posted below the fold.
Don't forget to upload your own photos from the Fair to Flickr and tag them with "intelisef"!
lbillings | May 13, 2007Intel ISEF 2007 officially began this morning at 8 a.m.! Students, teachers, parents, and observers have been streaming into the Albuquerque Convention Center to prepare the projects for review and judging. In only two hours, we've already seen delegations from Ireland, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Peru, and Russia rush by bearing boxes, showboards, and strange devices draped in plastic.
Official judging doesn't begin until Wednesday, but that doesn't mean there isn't much to do -- the schedule here today is packed with project drop-offs, setups, and inspections by the Fair's Scientific Review…
lbillings | May 12, 2007In 2006, Shannon Babb won both first prize at the Intel Science Talent Search (STS) and the prestigious Seaborg Award at Intel Intel ISEF for her work tracking water quality around her home in Utah. The Seaborg Award allowed her to travel to the 2006 Nobel Prizes in Stockholm, Sweden. Shannon is currently a freshman in Watershed Sciences at Utah State University.
We spoke with her last week about her Intel ISEF experiences.
Q: What are you currently working on at Utah State?
A: I'm researching paleoclimate indicators and paleocurrents in the Neoproterozoic Era, so I'm working with about 1-…
lbillings | May 12, 2007This is a website by, for, and about some of the most inspiring young people in the world: the finalists of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. This year over 1400 finalists from over 60 countries will arrive in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a week of socializing, learning, competition, and fun.
In keeping with the theme of this year's Fair, "Creating a New Element," Intel and ScienceBlogs.com are creating a new ISEF community website that will expand upon and continue the Fair's incredible tradition of international camaraderie and collaboration.
Starting the week of Intel…
ksharpe | May 9, 2007
Looking at religious and monumental architecture the world over, you might be tempted to assume that a high ceiling has always been correlated with feelings of expansiveness and grandiosity, and more confined spaces with homelier contemplation.
Nevertheless, no one had investigated the effects of ceiling height on human emotion and cognition until now.
University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management marketing professor Joan Myers-Levy will publish research in the Journal of Consumer Research that links higher ceilings with freer, more abstract thought, and lower ceilings with thought…
ksharpe | April 26, 2007How do copyright and fair use laws, framed before the internet was a twinkle in the eye, apply in the world of blogging? The answer, as a case that unfolded on ScienceBlogs this week demonstrates, may be "not so clearly."
Ergo, we've asked a few experts and stakeholders to weigh in on the issue of copyright and open access. How ought fair use to be interpreted today—as the blogosphere grows, changes, and searches for a mutually satisfying way to coexist with the traditional publishing world? We'll be adding commentary to this post periodically all week. Stay tuned.
Johannes (Jan) Velterop,…
ably | April 25, 2007
Paul J. Steinhardt
Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University and is on the faculty in the Department of Physics and in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. He received his B.S. in Physics at Caltech in 1974; his M.A. in Physics in 1975 and Ph.D. in Physics in 1978 at Harvard University. He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1978-81 and on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania from 1981-98, where he was Mary Amanda Wood Professor from 1989-98. He is a Fellow in the…
ksharpe | April 25, 2007Blacksburg, says ScienceBlogger Benjamin Cohen in Tuesday's issue of The Morning News, has a "bucolic town" reputation so entrenched as to almost have become a cliche. Cohen spent 11 years in Blacksburg—long enough to know the area's natural beauty deeply, and also to know that no town is simple enough to be reduced to a one-word tag. He writes:
I went to Virginia Tech because its application didn't require an essay. When I graduated, I had no idea why I'd chosen my major (chemical engineering), and I wasn't even particularly fond of the school itself. But Blacksburg was significant to me. In…
vhughes | April 23, 2007
In the urban metropolis, a small patch of rooftop garden is often the closest you can get to green landscape. But what if skyscraper roofs held not just geranium patches and brick patios, but full-scale farms that produced fruit and veggies year-round, generated clean energy, and purified wastewater?
Six years ago, Columbia University professor of environmental sciences and microbiology Dickson Despommier came up with a concept he calls "vertical farming" to alleviate the growing demand for farmland.
As the world gets warmer and more populated, Despommier says, we'll need to curb the…
vhughes | April 20, 2007New York's American Museum of Natural History presents Beyond, a new IMAX show of 30 tweaked--and stunning!--space photos. Michael Benson, the brains behind the exhibit, spent years browsing the digital archives from NASA and the European Space Agency, selecting photos from Mars, Venus, and Jupiter's moons, Europa and Io. He enhanced the photos to highlight exotic features of these faraway landscapes, like Europa's frozen plains and the lava flows of Venus.
As Beyond's website describes:
Bringing together science and art, Benson asks us to consider questions of life in the universe, the past…
vhughes | April 18, 2007
Meet freelance journalist Enrique J. Gili of commonground, who'd like to remind everyone that Payment Must Be Received Within 30 Days of Date on Invoice.
What's your name?
Enrique J. Gili, third in a long line of Enriques.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I'm a gainfully under-employed freelance writer covering LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) issues for regional magazines in the Southland and beyond.
What is your blog called?
commonground
What's up with that name?
Blogs are heavily politicized forums, whereas environmental issues ought not to be. The tagline is…
ksharpe | April 17, 2007Today, New York City is wringing itself out after a late-season Nor'easter. Saturday, it dealt with another kind of flood. On April 14, a "Sea of People" dressed in blue and bearing boats, beach balls, and other watery accoutrements descended on lower Manhattan. They gathered in Battery Park at noon to hear brief speeches by community groups and leaders, and then fanned out along Church Street to the West and Pearl Street to the East, physically demarcating what would be Manhattan's new shoreline if sea levels were to rise by ten feet—a possible reality within the next hundred years according…
vhughes | April 16, 2007
Alan Saunders, a.k.a. Kaptain Kobold, is a 42-year-old computer programmer and former biology student from Staines, England. He uses Lego blocks to depict famous scientists at work.
"I have no idea why I started making Lego scientist scenes," says Saunders, who's married with two children, one cat, two guinea pigs, "and couple of cockroaches." His children like the scientist figures, though they have no idea yet who they are.
At top right, Gregor Mendel cultivates his pea plants. Next, Charles Darwin stands in a "family portrait" with a yellow Neanderthal, an angry-faced Lucy, and an…
vhughes | April 13, 2007
(Dr. Porter discovers there's a physical world, too!)
Today meet Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World, a bioinformaticist, bioinformatics teacher, and expert detector of bull excrement.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
Lots of things!
Work-wise, I do a lot of things that revolve around teaching people how to use bioinformatics. This involves researching different kinds of problems, helping to design "bioinformatics" assays, overseeing and editing our user manual, testing software, and doing scientific consulting. I also have my own research grants (from the NSF…
vhughes | April 11, 2007
We'd like to thank the Academy...the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, that is, for their designation of ScienceBlogs.com, Seedmagazine.com, and the
Seedmagazine.com video spot "The Synthesizer: A Video Portrait of E.O. Wilson," as "official honorees" in the 11th Annual Webby Awards.
According to the Webbies, based on creative and functional criteria, honoree websites "truly represent the best of the Web."
We'll take a bow to that.
ksharpe | April 9, 2007If you've ever complained that the kids today just don't understand how things used to be in the good old days, then you've grasped the concept of shifting baselines.
The phrase, coined by University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre Director Dr. Daniel Pauly in 1995, refers to the way that as reality changes over time, peoples' standards change along with it. The way things are today begins to seem natural, like the way things have always been. The 'shifting baselines' effect masks change—in Pauly's example, it hides the creeping progress of environmental degradation.
Marine biologist…
ksharpe | April 6, 2007It's Friday afternoon, and scores are in for the Erlenmeyer Flask vs. Fossil Fuels game at Chemical Arena.
Erlenmeyer Flask went into the first quarter hoping to contain Fossil Fuels. The team (sometimes known by its nickname, Conical Flask), clearly—and of necessity—adheres to the philosophy that the best offense is a good defense. As long as it could keep Fossil Fuels from getting out there and running amok on the court, Erlenmeyer Flask had a chance.
The strategy worked like a charm for Erlenmeyer Flask for the first three quarters of the game. Fans in the stands—including a dazzling array…