Academia
catdynamics | December 19, 2006Part 2 of Ye Olde Blog So You Want To Be an Astrophysicist? series.
Lightly re-edited.
Should you do astronomy as an undergrad? (the following is in part shamelessly cribbed from prof Charlton's freshman seminar for our majors):
Do you like stars and stuff? If not, you probably should look for an alternative, on the general principle that at this stage of life you should at least try to do things you actually like.
If you do, good for you. Now, do you have the aptitude?
Professional astrophysics/astronomy is not about looking at stars (except at occasional star parties, for outreach or as a…
scientificactivist | December 19, 2006The second paper from my undergraduate work at Texas A&M University was recently published in Molecular Cancer. The abstract can be found here, and the pdf of the full paper here. Molecular Cancer is an open access journal, so a subscription is not required to read the paper. It's also an online-only journal that publishes manuscripts immediately upon acceptance, so the version of the paper currently available is not the final (nicely-formatted) version. (Update: this now links to the final version of the paper.)
As with my first paper, which was published in October of this year, I'…
drorzel | December 19, 2006Over at Inside Higher Ed, Edward Palm gets all Swiftian:
The Department of Defense finds itself desperately short of troops with which to sustain what promises to be a long and increasingly unpopular, inconclusive war in Iraq. The Department of Education finds itself suddenly alarmed by the relatively low percentage of Americans pursuing postsecondary education compared to the rate of participation in other countries. American colleges and universities find themselves bucking the current demographic trend such that some of them are lowering standards as they compete for fewer and fewer…
omnibrain | December 18, 2006This is quite an old piece of news...but still pretty ridiculous.
Mangalore University Applied Botany Professor Annaiah Ramesh is all set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as he successfully completed a marathon lecture, running to 96 hours and 40 minutes, here on Sunday.
Dr Ramesh who started his lecture on the subject, "Molecular Logic of Life," on March 22, completed it at 03:45 hrs on Sunday, surpassing the record set by South African Moosawazi (88 hours and 4 seconds).
Dr Ramesh, who delivered the non-stop lecture at the jampacked Old Senate Hall in the varsity without any…
catdynamics | December 18, 2006Lightly edited reruns from Ye Olde Blog.
This is part 0, tentatively aimed at US high school students wanted to end up doing an astrophysics PhD.
(rant on US high school system observed from outside deleted - see link above if you care).
So, what should YOU do, wanting to get into a good university and an astro/physics major?
1) Take all the math that is offered, and do well in it.
2) Take all the science on offer, and do well in that.
3) Get good grades overall; preferably straight A, but B+ will do. It will get you far enough to have a chance to see if you can hack it at the next level.
4…
omnibrain | December 18, 2006
In no particular order...
1) Being a south paw promotes survival from attacks (well at least in crabs). It seems that
The left-handed advantage is realized when snails interact with predators of opposite handedness. Some predatory crabs are "righties" -- and have a specialized tooth on their right claw that acts like a can opener to crack and peel the snail shells. "The 'sinistral advantage,' or advantage to being left-handed, is that it would be like using a can opener backwards for the crab to crack and peel the snail shell,"
Does something like this apply to humans? We're still…
omnibrain | December 16, 2006Since it's just about graduate application time, here are some useful links to help people out during this stressful experience:
Retrospectacle has a post about getting into graduate schools. I think Shelley also has a follow up post to this one - but you'll have to track it down.
Here is another set of advice from Katherine, also good, and also from the University of Michigan.
If you're thinking about going to grad school you should probably read these comics ;)
And good luck if you're applying now!
drorzel | December 16, 2006Colleges and universities working on a semester calaendar are just finishing up classes now, which means that most academics (unlike those of us in Trimester Land, who have been out of session for a few weeks) are currently buried in grading. This leads to some fun blog posts:
Grading as a text adventure (via Making Light)
A step-by-step guide to exam grading (via The Litle Professor).
The best exam doodle ever.
Good luck to those still fighting their way through paper grading. If you need me, I'll be reading application folders for the job search...
jstemwedel | December 15, 2006I'm sure I'm not the only academic who receives final exams with doodles (as well as "thank you for the class" and "please don't fail me!" messages). But I need to share a piece of exam artwork that transcends the bounds of doodling.
Indeed, it is a cartoon illustration that demonstrates good mastery of the concept about which the student was asked on that exam page. (In addition to the drawing, the student presented a perfectly correct and crystal clear written answer to the question. The drawing was an added bonus.)
Let me set up the cartoon with a brief explanation of the question so…
jstemwedel | December 14, 2006I suppose I should have seen this coming. You provide a nice, quite room for the final exam, so why should it be surprising that a student takes this as an invitation to nap? Especially given that this is a student who attended -- slept through -- just about every class meeting of the term?
At least there was no audible snoring.
tsmith | December 14, 2006So, razib relates a recent observation of the apparently rare species hottus chicas scientificas at a local wine bar. Shelley's ticked:
Not sure whether to be more irked that Razib suggests that smart women aren't hot (and vice versa), that hot women don't like sci fi, or than sci fi somehow denotes intelligence. Booooooooo.
While razib tells her to "focus on the science fiction part. not the intelligence," I agree with Shelley's later comment that who cares exactly whether he was talking about SciFi or intelligence--the idea that, because one is female and "hot," one therefore cannot be…
jstemwedel | December 13, 2006On my last post, Kristine commented:
My favorite "finals week activity" was defending to two students why they couldn't take the lab exams three weeks after all of their classmates took it, just because they realized now that they never showed up for class that week. Whew. Ten minutes each, and as emotionally draining as grading 100 exams.
I feel Kristine's pain. And, I think this raises the larger question of what the problem is that keeps these students from understanding that "course requirements" are things that are required for them to do.
Seriously, given all the time we academics…
jstemwedel | December 13, 2006It's finals week here. My brain hurts, and I'm on what is reputed to be the easier side of the student-professor divide, so I have great empathy for my students at the moment. (At least, for the ones who aren't trying to put one over on me.)
In the last week, I have:
Conducted the last class meeting of the term for each of my courses.
Been presented with a pair of foosballs (because the canonical billiard balls are pricy) by my graduate seminar on causation.
Marked a whole mess of research assignments.
Noticed that a non-negligible number of students simply didn't do the research…
drorzel | December 13, 2006The Democrats have decided to punt on the budget, which the outgoing Republican Congress left unfinished in a childish fit of pique. Instead of completing the usual budget process, the incoming Congress plans to pass a "continuing resolution," to fund 2007 operations of Federal agencies at the same level as 2006.
See, people, this is what happens when you put the grown-ups back in charge-- the first thing they do is cancel Christmas.
Inside Higher Ed gives a run-down of the implications for academia, which I know is what you were all dying to hear about. The bottom line isn't particularly…
drorzel | December 12, 2006It's job-hunting season in academia, so we're not the only ones sifting through huge piles of applications looking for the One True Job Candidate. Clifford Johnson has his own pile of mail, and some suggestions for how to fix the process:
Of the order of a decade ago I suggested (to nobody in particular, just during random lunchtime conversations and the like) that we could fix this with a similar setup to the arXiv, in fact. We have a central database where a person in the field can upload their cover letter, curriculum vitae, research statement, and so forth. The system assigns it a unique…
drorzel | December 12, 2006A few weeks ago, Ethan Zuckerman got wistful about collaboration:
Dave Winer's got a poignant thought over at Scripting News today: "Where is the Bronx Science for adults?" He explains that, as a kid, the best thing about attending the famous high school "was being in daily contact with really smart and creative people my own age." It's harder to find this in adulthood, he observes, even as a fellow at the Berkman Center, where Dave and I met four years ago.
I empathize with Dave - the experience of being surrounded by smart people working on the same kinds of problems is one of the most…
retrospectacle | December 11, 2006Scientists love good gossip as much as any 'Us'-magazine reader, and we take the same car-wreck interest in seeing our lofty demagogues topple in disgrace. The 'Huang stem cell scandal's' shame infected not only the fraudulent scientists involved, but also the journal that published his unsubstantiated work. A new scandal of a similar ilk involving a German physicist is underway, with a retraction of a staggering 21 papers from Science, Nature, and Physical Review. Are these journals to blame for the sloppy science they publish, and is it a syndrome of a larger problem: top journals want '…
evolgen | December 9, 2006There are certain scientific disciplines that are well represented in the blogosphere. Bioinformatics comes to mind. As does physics. But these are computer savvy people who probably spend quite a bit of time hooked up to the interwebs. How about scientists that need to get their hands dirty? Like ecologists.
Does anyone know of any good blogs by ecologists about ecology? Not conservation or environmentalism, but ecology. Like population dynamics, landscapes, nutrient cycling, predator-prey interaction. I've got a couple in mind, but I want to hear your suggestions.
And if you're an ecology…
evolgen | December 8, 2006My university has been hosting panel discussions on science, religion, and teaching. I missed the first installment, which consisted of faculty members from science and humanities departments and a local clergyman. The second discussion was led by four students from a course cross listed in Science and Technology Studies and Philosophy. The topic of this discussion was teaching science and religion, but the discussion often strayed to the intersection of science and religion in general. It would have been nice if they stayed on topic. I, however, can't hold much against them, as I once took a…