Academia
evolgen | August 21, 2007Nautilus, Nature's blog for authors, has a guest post by Robin Rose on long author lists, entitled "What's an author?". The post is representative of a certain brand of curmudgeonliness mixed with a dash of either ignorance or naivete. Rose has seen author list with more than 20 authors, and he's confused. Did each author contribute equally? How could the manuscript possibly have gotten written? How do you evaluate each author's contribution? Should we cite these long author publications differently? These are all questions running through Dr. Rose's mind, and he has bothered to share them…
voltagegate | August 21, 2007One of our geography profs, who is teaching a storm chasing class over the summer, was featured on Good Morning America this past Sunday:
"I think it's important the general public begins to understand the concept of inquiry-based science education, which is what this course is all about, and that Frostburg State University is one of those higher education institutions that is leading the way in this area," Arnold said. "I am thrilled that we have the opportunity to communicate these messages through the national media, and am very happy that 'Good Morning America' chose to broadcast a…
jstemwedel | August 15, 2007As I mentioned in my last post, I was sucked out of the blogosphere for much of last week by the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) 2007 Summer Symposium .
I did not live-blog the conference. I did use overheads. Why, other than being a tremendous Luddite, would I use overheads?
One big issue that has me using overheads rather than PowerPoint presentations is time. As many conferences are, this one was scheduled within an inch of its life. Each speaker had 20 minutes to talk and 5 minutes at the end for questions and answers. Indeed, if the previous speaker…
evolgen | August 15, 2007Finally, using a series of related MMEJ substrates, we investigated the inhibitory effect of Pku70 on fission yeast MMEJ unraveled in this study and the impact of both length and position of the microhomologous region on MMEJ efficiency.
That quote comes at the end of the introduction of this paper entitled "Microhomology-Mediated End Joining in Fission Yeast Is Repressed by Pku70 and Relies on Genes Involved in Homologous Recombination" by Anabelle Decottignies. It's unremarkable as far as passages from scientific papers go, but I chose it for a reason. The paper from which the quote is…
drorzel | August 15, 2007Michael Nielsen, who's so smart it's like he's posting from tomorrow, offers a couple of provocative questions about the perception of a crisis in funding for basic science:
First, how much funding is enough for fundamental research? What criterion should be used to decide how much money is the right amount to spend on fundamental research?
Second, the human race spent a lot lot more on fundamental research in the second half of the twentieth century than it did in the first. It's hard to get a good handle on exactly how much, in part because it depends on what you mean by fundamental…
clock | August 14, 2007So, you look around to see if there is anything edible!
Of course, it's easy if you work with tasty animals....(just ask the guys in the next door lab who work on lobsters, crayfish and oysters...or wait until you get some brains out of quails and notice the plump breastmeat....just joking).
evolgen | August 14, 2007Peter Lawrence has an opinion piece in Current Biology on the problems with evaluating scientists, amongst other things. He hits upon a few important points, including journal impact factors, the cost of high risk research, hyping up publications, and networking with the right people to improve your publications. One passage was quite salient given a private discussion I've been having with some folks:
Fourth, there is the way that science is done and papers are authored. These measures are pushing people into having larger groups. It is a simple matter of arithmetic. Since the group leader…
catdynamics | August 10, 2007in a more innocent time, at the beginning of the week, the Female Science Professor pondered the implications of Ignatieff's assertions of political science
In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with.
She left her train of thought unfinished, but made the point that most physical scientists really can not and do not think this way, well except when some cosmologists stray off the reservation, and even then there is always some hard nosed astrophysicist ready to rein them in. In public.
Not always saying they succeed...
But, deLong knows which…
drorzel | August 10, 2007The National Science Board has released a draft report for public comment titled "A National Action Plan for Addressing the Critical Needs of the U.S. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education System." You can dowload the PDF of the report from that page, and email any comments to: NSB_STEMaction@nsf.gov.
I've only skimmed the report, so I won't be sending comments in any time soon, but if I were to make a snap suggestion, it would be that they re-order their suggestions to reflect the usefulness of the recommendations.
They have a helpful one-sentence summary of their two "…
omnibrain | August 10, 2007Is there any surprise that I'd post something like this? hehe.. yup probably not.
Via Everyday Scientist
drorzel | August 10, 2007Via Inside Higher Ed, the Center for Responsive Politics has a new report on political contributions by academics
So far in the '08 election cycle, people who work for institutions of higher education have given more than $7 million to federal candidates, parties and committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly 60 percent of that money has gone to presidential candidates. The industry's favorite, Barack Obama, has raked in nearly $1.5 million in the campaign's first six months, followed by Hillary Clinton with almost $940,000.
Seventy-six percent of the…
catdynamics | August 9, 2007University Diaries rambles on life in academia and points us to a little known fact:
Being a College Professor is the second best job in America, narrowly beating out financial advisor...
strangely, they rank software engineer number one, despite worse average pay and lower grade (BBAC vs BAAC for profs).
'course they put "real estate appraiser" at number eight, so what do they know.
The strange thing is the title of the entry on UD is "Bitch PhD", after the eponymous academic blogger, who, may I say, lost her edge when she quit her mid-america academic post and moved to SoCal... she should…
catdynamics | August 9, 2007Oh yeah, it is the season and PhD Comics delivers
Turf Wars Pt 1
and
Turf Wars Pt 2
h/t Steve
clock | August 8, 2007I am not sure if blogging about it is enough - in this case a very strong Resume may be more important - but if you think you have sufficient experience and expertise to be a Managing Editor of a major biology journal, PLoS Biology (and are not too intimidated to be stepping into Hemai's shoes), check the job ad and apply:
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) seeks an experienced editor and manager to lead its flagship life science journal - PLoS Biology. Since its launch in 2003, PLoS Biology has rapidly become established as both a high impact journal and a leader in the open-access…
drorzel | August 8, 2007South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier is hopping mad over the decision to deny admission to two recruits who were above the NCAA minimum standard for eligibility, but did not meet the University's requirements. Said Spurrier:
"As long as I'm the coach here, we're going to take guys that qualify. If not, then I'm going to have to go somewhere else because I can't tell a young man to come to school here, he qualifies, and not do that. And we did that this year."
In a sane world, the response to this ought to be "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out," but, of course,…
drorzel | August 8, 2007While I was out of town, there was a nice article in the New York Times Education section about the Minerva House system that Union has set up recently.in an attempt to (among other things) reduce the dominance of fraternities over the campus social scene:
"You'd see that these were very prominent places, and a lot of social activity was concentrated around them, day or night," says Thomas D. McEvoy, Union's dean of residential and campus life. Today, the houses convey a decidedly different message. The fraternity brothers have moved, and their former homes, together with several other newly…
catdynamics | August 7, 2007Doug N. got a memo on faculty recruiting
Apparently post-boomer faculty are completely unreasonable in their expectations, and the silverbacks in academia are trying to analyse the new demands.
Doug goes straight to the point, the young 'uns want:
Not to be treated poorly where they work
Have a life, and not be given shit about having a life
Not to be told stupid things by clueless senior people
Not to be stuck with stupid, obscure or byzantine policies
We also want ponies.
Freedom, liberty and justice for all.
Peace in our times and love and harmony.
Really, we do. We learned this…
jstemwedel | August 3, 2007Today the BBC reports that Queen guitarist Brian May has submitted his doctoral dissertation in astronomy (titled "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud") at Imperial College, London.
Some theses take longer to write than others. May completed his after a 36 year gap.
Granted, during that gap he was kind of busy pursuing rock and roll.
But, as May notes, handing in the thesis is not the last step in his journey to complete his Ph.D. He still needs to defend that thesis:
The guitarist is scheduled to discuss his thesis with the examining board on 23 August, his spokesman said. The…
jstemwedel | August 1, 2007The Des Moines Register reports a bit of a to-do at the University of Iowa about whether the College of Public Health will be accepting a "naming gift" from Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Some objections have been raised on the basis that a giant of the health insurance industry might have (or be seen to have) significantly different values and goals than a college of public health:
Several faculty members whose e-mails became public Monday opposed linking the college's name with Wellmark.
"While it's good to get support, selling the name of the cph to a commercial interest and all…
catdynamics | August 1, 2007that was a rough committee meeting...
those climates scientists sure don't take criticism lightly...
never argue about money with a physicist
shouldn't blog snarky things about NASA...
now you know how Colbert broke his wrist...
er, I mean, you should have seen that other guy tree.
it is firewood, now, I'm telling you
Interestingly, Mac photobooth is better than a mirror for putting bandages on oneself