vhughes | October 10, 2007Studies have shown that kids whose parents are directly involved in their homework and classroom activities do better in school.
But for many parents, it's been a long time since they thought about basic science. One DonorsChoose project, created by a fifth grade teacher in rural North Carolina, aims to get parents involved in their kids' science projects. As the teacher proposes:
We want a family science night in which the parents are directly involved in being scientists, predicting, hypothesizing, experimentation, and finding results - all the time jotting their work in a scientific…
ksharpe | October 9, 2007Other ScienceBloggers have beaten 3.14 to the punch this time, but if you haven't already, stop by and give our newest blogger, Brian Switek of Laelaps, a gander!
vhughes | October 3, 2007
This time around, we're interviewing new blogger Coby Beck of A Few Things Ill Considered.
What's your name?
Coby Beck
What do you do when you're not blogging?
I am a software engineer specializing in artificial intelligence applications, so that is my bread and butter activity. To avoid being a total geek who works and blogs and communicates on the computer all day, I am a regular hiking enthusiast, visiting trails and mountain tops in and around British Columbia's lower mainland. I also spend time every day walking my two dogs, Rhapsody the Chihuahua and Einstein the French Bulldog.
What…
vhughes | October 1, 20079.24.07 to 9.30.07
Announcements
Welcome New Sciblings
Welcome anonymous ScienceWoman, a first-year assistant professor in "-ology." Her blog's title, On Being a Scientist and a Woman, is sufficiently self-explanatory.
And second, welcome A Few Things Ill Considered, the climate blog of Coby Beck. Coby also writes at Grist.org's blog, The Gristmill, and is the author of the famed document "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic."
Homepage Buzzes
9/25: Ahmadinejad on Science
On Monday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed a packed audience at Columbia University. The president,…
vhughes | September 28, 2007
Our Neanderthal ancestors probably cleaned their teeth, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported recently.
Spanish paleontologists recently uncovered two, 63,400-year-old tooth fossils near Madrid. The molars, found in near-perfect condition, once resided in the jaw of an approximately 30-year-old Neanderthal.
It's been 25 years since another human specimen has been unearthed from that region. But even more exciting, head researcher Juan Luis Asuarga told El Pais, is that the teeth showed grooves that were likely formed by some kind of pointed object—presumably, a small stick used for cleaning…
ksharpe | September 25, 2007Put your hands together and give a warm (ahem) welcome to A Few Things Ill Considered, the climate blog of Coby Beck. Before coming to ScienceBlogs, Coby had been blogging for almost two years here; he also writes as Grist.org's blog, The Gristmill, and is the author of the famed document "How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic." He also blogs weekly digests of global warming news from around the world.
We're excited to have him here. Don't hesistate to stop by, leave a comment, update your blogrolls, and generally welcome Coby to the neighborhood!
vhughes | September 24, 2007So 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…
ksharpe | September 17, 2007Earlier today, a friend sent me a link to this old-ish post from the excellent history/art/cultural curiosity blog Paleo-Future. It's a document written by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., for Ladies' Home Journal in 1900. It is entitled "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years."
I couldn't resist reading the whole thing (see the big version here), and am compelled—as a person of the future—to log a few replies.
The most enjoyable thing about so many of these predictions is the dense mixture of what came true; what didn't; and what sort of came true, only with an ironic twist. Are we taller?…
vhughes | September 14, 2007
A team of astronomers from Cambridge and Caltech recently used a ground-based camera called "Lucky" to take stellar pictures that are much sharper than those taken by the beloved Hubble telescope—and cost 50,000 times less.
The photos above show the famous Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), 3,000 light-years away from us, as taken by a standard 200-inch telescope (left) and with the Lucky Camera attached to the same telescope (right). The Lucky camera can zoom in on the kots, jets and arcs that make up the Nebula's core.
Ground-based telescopes are usually less than ideal for space photos…
ksharpe | September 12, 2007I'm a couple days late on this—PZ, as usual, was quicker on the draw—but the always-prescient Doonesbury name-checked DonorsChoose on September 9.
Long-time ScienceBlogs readers might remember that around this time last year, the bloggers organized a funding drive through DonorsChoose that netted almost $35,000 for under-funded projects in public school science teachers' classrooms.
This year, they're going to be doing it again.
As if a nod from Doonesbury weren't seal of approval enough, DonorsChose recently took second place in the American Express Members Project, in which individuals…
vhughes | September 2, 2007
Attention ScienceBloggers and science bloggers! Registration is now open for the second annual Science Blogging Conference, to be held on January 19, 2008 in the Research Triangle Park in Durham, North Carolina.
The conference was organized by BlogTogether, a network of North Carolina bloggers, "to explore new ways in communicating scientific exploration." Last year, more than 150 scientists, teachers, bloggers and journalists attended.
This year, several ScienceBloggers are scheduled to lead talks at the conference:Janet on ethics; Zuska and Karen on gender and race; and Chris, Sheril, and…
ksharpe | August 30, 2007"The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds," says artist Theo Jansen. For over 14 years, Jansen has been engaged in the production of animari, or beach animals—massive kinetic sculptures constructed of light materials. After a firm push to begin, the wind takes over, and the skeletally beautiful 'animals' walk unaided over the beaches of the Netherlands, where Jansen lives and works.
The next video presents a computer simulation of Jansen's 'mechanism,' set to music by Philip Glass. After the jump, a 20-second spot of "Animaris Rhinocerous Transport" in motion.
vhughes | August 28, 20078.20.07 to 8.26.07
AnnouncementsWelcome Zooillogix!
Please welcome the newest addition to ScienceBlogs, Zooillogix.
Brothers Andrew and Benny Bleiman author Zooillogix, "a hobby and a secret outlet of forbidden passion" that showcases their shared obsession with zoology. Check out the Bleimans' recent Gallery d'Bug Arte post, and their Video of the Week, where a male jumping spider dances for a foxy spider babe.
Homepage Buzzes 8/21: Gender Benders
Are young boys more likely to get rowdy in the classroom? Do girls really prefer pink? Yes, say a couple of recent scientific studies done by…
ksharpe | August 23, 2007Flattering news from elsewhere on the web: The New York Times has just launched a beta version of My Times, a personalizable homepage feature that allows users to mix their favorite Times content with widgetized utilities and news and entertainment items from around the internet.
One of the niftiest features is the Times Journalists' Selections—recommended web content from beloved Times reporters and columnists.
It would be nifty even if the Journalists' Selections didn't include a handful of ScienceBlogs. Times science reporter Kenneth Chang likes Good Math, Bad Math and Pharyngula; science…
vhughes | August 22, 2007Please welcome the newest addition to ScienceBlogs, Zooillogix.
Brothers Andrew and Benny Bleiman author Zooillogix, "a hobby and a secret outlet of forbidden passion" that showcases their shared obsession with zoology.
Check out the Bleimans' recent Gallery d'Bug Arte post, and their Video of the Week, where a male jumping spider dances for a foxy spider babe.
ksharpe | August 21, 2007After Google Mars, perhaps this was inevitable: Google Moon celebrates the anniversary of the first manned moon landing by presenting a swath of the lunar surface, mapped in the familiar Google style, with red flags marking the locations of six Apollo landing sites.
The project, explains Google Moon's about page, is part of Google's Copernicus initiative:
We can confirm that on July 20th, 2069, in honor of the 100th anniversary of mankind's first manned lunar landing, Google will fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find…
ksharpe | August 20, 20078.13.07 to 8.19.07
Homepage Buzzes
8/13: Science Panel on C-SPAN
On Saturday, C-SPAN aired a televised broadcast of the "Science, Politics, and Activism" panel that took place on August 3 at the YearlyKos Convention. The video of the panel, moderated by Tara Smith and featuring science bloggers Sean Carroll, Chris Mooney, and Ed Brayton, is available online.
8/14:Karl Rove Out
Karl Rove, who has been a political adviser to President Bush for over 10 years, has announced his plans to resign as White House deputy chief of staff. He will leave his position on August 31, bringing to an end an…
ksharpe | August 14, 2007The volume is slim, just seventeen pages long--an elegant, tall rectangle of cream-colored paper. Looking at the scanned pages, it seems almost possible to reach out and touch the yellowed crease of the cover, the rusted staples.
"INTRODUCTION TO OUTER SPACE," the booklet reads. "THE WHITE HOUSE; March 26, 1958."
What follows is a primer on space science and space exploration, written by Dwight Eisenhower's Science Advisory Committee, prepared to explain to "the nontechnical reader" the aims of and reasons for the United States space program.
Space Law Probe has a link to the whole document…
vhughes | August 10, 2007
Science is perhaps the academic discipline most dependent on acronyms, from the common NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to the less recognized laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). In fact, Wiley Publishers' dictionary of "Scientific and Technical Acronyms, Symbols, and Abbreviations" includes more than 200,000 entries!
On Thursday, Mind Hacks pointed out some of the cleverest acronyms used in cognitive science, and asked readers to send in any especially "awkward, contrived or borderline inappropriate acronyms…
lbillings | August 3, 2007
Just before 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning, a Delta 7925 rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral carrying an important payload for planetary exploration: the Phoenix, NASA's latest mission to Mars. If all goes well, Phoenix should land in the northern polar region of Mars in May 2008, giving scientists the first close-up views of this relatively unexplored area of the Red Planet.
In many ways Phoenix resembles the Viking landers of the 1970s, the ambitious probes that tried to determine whether or not life existed on Mars. Like the landers in Viking 1 and Viking 2, Phoenix will make a "soft"…