Academia
scientificactivist | November 22, 2006Back in August, I and several others in the scientific community expressed skepticism over Nature paper (subscription required) describing a new technique billed by the media as generating "ethically sound" stem cells. The technique involved removing a single cell from an eight-cell blastula and using this cell to derive a line of stem cells while allowing the remaining cells to grow and develop normally, without any apparent damage to the embryo. This "watered down" approach to generating stem cells didn't seem to convince other scientists, and it apparently (although not surprisingly)…
clock | November 22, 2006Brian says that College Leaders should blog, commenting on this NYT article.
Sure, there are pros and cons, a steep learning curve and the potentially huge benefits along with the risk. But in the 21st century, it just has to be done. A leader who does not embrace online technology to foster a two-way communication is irrelevant and will go the way of the dinosaurs. A leader who does will evolve wings and learn to fly, adapted to the new environment.
Brian offers to help any University President set up a blog and get started, gratis. Take him up on his offer if you are a Top Dog at your…
evolgen | November 22, 2006I've got another pet-peeve-itch to scratch, so I'm picking up a tall glass of haterade.
I'm walking down the stairwell in my building, and I encounter someone heading upstairs carrying a styrofoam container (I can't tell what's in it, but it's probably filled with ice and something worth keeping cold). We approach the door to the floor we both work on. She gets there first and extends her hand to open the door -- a hand ensconced in a rubber glove.
When doing lab work, we wear gloves for two reasons:
To protect our samples from contamination from ourselves.
To protect ourselves from…
evolgen | November 21, 2006The new issue of Current Biology contains an interview with Drosophila geneticist Michael Ashburner. Here's a quote from the article:
Scientists should realize that if they submit to journals -- like those published by Elsevier, Springer, Kluwer, Wiley and the like -- then their work will be less accessible and not as widely read as it would be if it was published in an Open Access journal.
Current Biology is published by Elsevier (who are also involved in the arms trade), which means that Ashburner is pushing for Open Access publishing in a non-Open Access journal. Good stuff.
Ashburner's…
retrospectacle | November 21, 2006By now, much of academia has heard about the goings-on at MIT. Susumu Tonegawa, head of the prestigious Picowar Institute at MIT and Nobel Laureate, is stepping down from his position following a university review which found he "behaved inappropriately when he tried to discourage a young female scholar from accepting a job offer from MIT." He was accused by 11 other faculty memebers of stating that he would not interact with her if she accepted the position, and that her presence would make for an uncomfortable situation for the neuroscience institute due to perceived academic competition…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2006Just a little more follow-up on the Karpova-Tonegawa dust-up at MIT:
First, the report from the Ad Hoc Committee at MIT was posted on November 2 ... but apparently has been removed:
The ad hoc committee is currently receiving comments on the report that it issued on November 2, 2006 and pending its consideration of the comments it receives, the Committee has asked that the report be taken off the website temporarily.
I have a PDF of the report as originally posted, and am curious about how whatever the committee ends up reposting will differ from what I have. However, I'm not sure if I ought…
retrospectacle | November 20, 2006Today has been an exciting day for me! First of all, although Steven Pinker had to decline my invitation to speak at UM (during the Neuroscience Spring Symposium), he did agree to do an interview here on Retrospectacle. So, similar to the Q's and A's I posted for review for Irene Pepperberg, I will post some for Pinker in the next few days to get feedback.
And speaking of Dr. Pepperberg, guess who WILL be speaking at the Spring Symposium? That's right, my favorite parrot researcher, Irene herself! I can't wait to meet her and (hopefully) Alex.
As for the interview with Dr. Pepperberg, it…
tfk | November 19, 2006Great minds think alike, I guess. Like Razib and Stranger Fruit, my answer to this week's Ask a ScienceBlogger – "Who would you nominate for Scientist Laureate, if such a position existed?" – was going to be E. O. Wilson.
His work on conservation alone would justify that status, if such a thing existed. His work on sociobiology is justifiably famous, and his early work on island biogeography. His work is iconic across the sciences.
But …
In an episode of the West Wing, the incoming poet laureate gives a reading of poets who were never chosen to be a poet laureate because they were too…
clock | November 17, 2006Remember Amanda Doerty, the so-called Hot Abercrombie Chick? Just one of many bloggers to be shown to be a hoax?
Now, do you think that this Rachel Brenc is real? I'd rather believe that this is a man in disguise. I hope no young woman really thinks the way she does. Zuska, Janet and John explain why, so I don't have to. The child of privilege, despising everyone under her, self-assured of her own success because her self-professed attractiveness will help her nab a husband who can step into her father's shoes and continue protecting her white, conservative privilege.
jstemwedel | November 17, 2006There are some days I run into a piece of writing that just floors me. For instance this piece from The Cornell American, whose author, a freshman, proclaims:
I've got it made. As an attractive, professional female chemical engineer attempting to graduate a year early from Cornell, I find it hard to believe I couldn't get a job or professor status before a good majority of males.
The point of her piece was to dismiss a report on the bias faced by female academics. Because, you know, a college freshman is much more in touch with the data than some panel charged with actually studying the…
evolgen | November 17, 2006 . . . and so does the current grant review system. And manuscript review sucks, too. And your argument is based on flawed data.
A couple of months ago I posted on an article in Cell that drew parallels between the NIH grant review process and the TV show American Idol. As someone new to the grant writing game (and who has never seen what happens when they get reviewed), I wasn't sure if the metaphor was appropriate or not. Michele Pagano's article also advocated prescreening proposals, switching to an electronic system, and holding review panels over teleconference. These suggestions are…
catdynamics | November 17, 2006That reminds me...
Rob Weir tells us to mind our manners.
I actually blew a conf proceedings deadline, and the extension, for a review paper for the first time this year. I had a good excuse, but still...
Freedom!
Apparently universities in Pennsylvania don't actually in reality discriminate against students based on their political views. Duh.
Personally I would think they would be glad that the students are actually spending time in the library late at night...
Just in case there is anyone who hasn't seen the UCLA taser video.
jstemwedel | November 15, 2006Like sailors we are, who must rebuild their ship upon the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry dock or to reconstruct it there from the best materials.
Otto Neurath, "Protocol Sentences"
* * * * *
The Neurath quotation above was offered to explain something about scientific theories and scientific knowledge, but today it puts me in mind of scientific communities instead. For surely, if we could bring the ship of science to dry-dock, there are lots of rotten planks that we might replace with strong new lumber, but that's not an option. We have to fix the old tub while it's still at…
catdynamics | November 15, 2006Emily Yoffe at Slate worries she is a Math Moron, as she takes a Kumon course to stay ahead of her daughter in primary school (via Thorsett).
This is a good article that highlights some of the issues and problems with math education.
It is also quite well written.
drorzel | November 12, 2006Some of the discussion in my recent post giving example slides made me realize a problem with the way I posted them-- converting the slides to PDF loses the transition effects, which are a significant part of the lecture.
In an attempt to address this, here's a crude simulation of the effect, done by making incremental copies of two slides, to show how the text is revealed. The slides in question are from the Camp College lecture, if you want to see them in context.
(Somebody else in comments suggested using SlideShare, which I would've tried, if the page had successfully loaded in, say, the…
drorzel | November 11, 2006Via The Little Professor, a poem sure to touch most academics, Tom Wayman's "Did I Miss Anything?":
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Where it will touch them, I'm not sure... (That's a short excerpt-- read the whole thing.)
tfk | November 10, 2006
An IBM 650 found in the basement of Learned Hall is believed to be the University's first computer. It was bought in 1957.
An emeritus professor of computer science was told about the discovery, and has been taking the components to his home, where he plans to restore the computer to its full magnetic drum glory. When it was fully functional, the computer could store a whopping 1,000 ten digit numbers.
The lab director who discovered the computer estimates that the computer science department's 500 2 gigahertz desktop computers have 100 million times the processing power of the 6 foot tall…
drorzel | November 9, 2006Having talked at length about my theories of how to do an effective PowerPoint talk, I probably ought to provide some examples. These are converted to PDF because it's more generally readable than PPT, and because the files are slightly smaller. The conversion is done using CutePDF writer, which does something to the files that occasionally causes Acrobat to choke, but you should be using FoxIt instead, anyway.
Camp College slides. This is a "simulated lecture" that I did for a summer program here. It's a 50-minute talk about laser cooling, and runs to 23 slides, though I usually wind up…
drorzel | November 8, 2006The Female Science Professor reviews an article from <Physics Today on getting a liberal arts college job. Unfortunately, the article itself seems to be subscriber-only. I have a subscription, but I haven't read the article yet, and can't tell you what it says, or whether the advice is good. The stuff that FSP says is all very sensible, though.
In a similar vein, Doug Natelson describes the search process from the faculty side. A few of the things he mentions are specific to large departments-- smaller schools don't generally have enough faculty to form sub-committees of the search…
jstemwedel | November 7, 2006Chad Orzel has an excellent post up about good ways to use PowerPoint for a presentation. In a similar vein, I'd like to offer some reasons for academics in disciplines (like philosophy) in which it is the convention to read papers to each other at professional meetings to consider breaking with tradition and not just reading the papers they are presenting.
First, for those of you in science-y fields puzzling over that last sentence: Yes, a great many philosophers really do go places and read their papers to other philosophers. Yes, when I saw it the first time, coming to philosophy via…