Academia
jstemwedel | April 12, 2010A reader sends the following query:
I've only recently begun teaching in a big state university, maybe tier C in the field I'm in. I'm in a quandary as to how to manage pressure to pass students who are under performing. The first semester, I had to lower the passing to a basically ridiculous level and the college still inquired why so many failed (10 %). Now, I'm again feeling pressure to pass students who do not deserve to pass. I'm getting very disillusioned by this type of practice. Grade inflation seems to be so common that I even have students who think that a 60 is a B. I'm…
terrasig | April 11, 2010Last Monday marked 17 years since Eric Young led off the first Colorado Rockies baseball game with a home run that triggered a collective, mile-high orgasm for the 80,227 spectators gathered in the old Denver football stadium.
The advent of the expansion Rockies also launched a Pharmboy laboratory birthday celebration week tradition marked by two days off: one for a lab ski day in the high country followed later in the week with a Rockies game and the finest handcrafted ale offered by Denver's Wynkoop Brewery. I was reminded of this by my Twitter buddy, Mike Smith (@M1k303) who taunted me a…
terrasig | April 10, 2010Last July we wrote about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and spoke of Buzz Aldrin's autobiography about his battle with alcoholism in the years following. The post drew a comment from a reader who I've renamed "Anon."
Thank you so much for this post.
I am a recovering drug addict and am in the process of applying to graduate programs. I have a stellar GPA, have assisted as an undergraduate TA, and have been engaged in research for over a year.
I also have felony and was homeless for 3 years.
I don't hide my recovery from people once I know them, but I sometimes, especially…
catdynamics | April 9, 2010Been a while since I done one of these...
The single best predictor of academic success; the most fascinating astronomical object you never knew; and so much more...
"Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment,...
This is a large effect, both absolutely and in comparison with other influences on education,"
"....survey participants (a total of more than 73,000 people) were asked to estimate the number of books in their parents' home when they were 14 years old. The scholars compared that figure with other factors influencing educational achievement, including…
jstemwedel | April 9, 2010This just arrived at the email address associated with my blog (rather than the email address associated with my university appointment):
Dear Sir,
I am [Name Redacted] a student of [Institution Redacted], currently in 3rd year pursuing Integrated M. Tech. in Polymer Science and Technology. I learned about you through your website and I am extremely impressed with your research interests, I think they are an excellent match to my skills. I have an intense urge towards the development and enhancement in the field of polymers and now I want to be associated with a diversified group like yours…
scientificactivist | April 8, 2010Today, the UCLA chapter of Pro-Test held its second rally in support of animal research. With as many as 400 or so supporters in attendance, it looks like it was another great success! Here are a couple of early reports on the event:
Tom Holder of Speaking of Research:
On a beautiful sunny day in Los Angeles, Pro-Test for Science organizers arrived at the junction of Le Conte and Westwood, on the edge of the UCLA campus, with armfuls of placards in support of animal research. Within ten minutes every placard had found a new owner as hundreds of scientists, students and members of the public…
terrasig | April 8, 2010Today at the University of California at Los Angeles, a rally is planned to raise awareness about the value of responsible animal research and to denounce acts of terrorism toward animal researchers and their families. The highlight of the Pro-Test rally will be the presentation to legislators and the media a petition with nearly 12,000 signatures of scientists who support the use of animals in research.
The rally and the petition drive is a joint effort of Americans for Medical Progress, Pro-Test for Science, and Speaking of Research.
I stand together with my colleagues who conduct animal…
drorzel | April 8, 2010Back when I was in grad school, and paper copies of journals were delivered to the lab by a happy mailman riding a brontosaurus, I used to play a little game when the new copy of Physical Review Letters arrived: I would flip through the papers in the high energy and nuclear physics sections, and see if I could find one where the author list included at least one surname for every letter of the alphabet. There wasn't one every week, but it wasn't that hard (particularly with large numbers of physicists from China, where family names beginning with "X" are more common).
Every so often, somebody…
scientificactivist | April 5, 2010The UCLA chapter of the pro-science organization Pro-Test has announced its second major rally to show support for science and to stand up against the ongoing campaign of intimidation being waged by animal rights activists. The organization originated in Oxford in 2006 during a streak of particularly nasty actions by animal extremists, and the UCLA chapter held their first rally about a year ago in response to the escalating threats and destruction of property aimed at animal researchers in the US.
The next rally is scheduled to start at 11:30 am, on Thursday, April 8th. It will convene on…
drorzel | April 5, 2010Not a full Obsessive Update (because not much happened over the weekend, when we took SteelyKid to my parents' place for Easter), but a quick reminder to folks in the Ithaca, NY area: I'll be giving the physics colloquium at Cornell this afternoon at 4pm. If you're in the area, and want to hear me talk about communicating science and the use of blogs, it's at 4pm in the Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall.
It's going to be a long day-- I have a class at 9:15, then I'm driving to Ithaca. SteelyKid stayed with Grandma and Grandpa (day care is closed today and tomorrow), so I'll be going…
jstemwedel | March 31, 2010
Especially in student papers, plagiarism is an issue that it seems just won't go away. However, instructors cannot just give up and permit plagiarism without giving up most of their pedagogical goals and ideals. As tempting a behavior as this may be (at least to some students, if not to all), it is our duty to smack it down.
Is there any effective way to deliver a preemptive smackdown to student plagiarists? That's the question posed by a piece of research, "Is There an Effective Approach to Deterring Students from Plagiarizing?" by Lidija Bilic-Zulle, Josip Azman, Vedran Frkovic, and…
drorzel | March 31, 2010If you scroll way down the list of this year's Goldwater Scholarship winners, you'll find:
Peter John Bonventre
Institution: Union College
Major(s): Physics/Mathematics
Career Goal: Ph.D. in Mathematics or Physics. Conduct research and teach at the university level.
Pete's one of our junior physics majors. He's done summer work on both nuclear physics and condensed matter physics, and is a work-study student in the department. So, we're obviously thrilled to see him win. Congratulations, Pete!
There's a Goldwater Foundation press release here, with more information and statistics about the…
jdupuis | March 30, 2010The second Book Camp TO is coming up in about 6 weeks or so: Saturday, May 15, 2010 from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
Last year's edition was terrific and I'm really looking forward to another great conference.
What's it about?
What: BookCampTO is a free unconference about the future of books, reading, writing and publishing. Ebooks have arrived, and with them great changes are afoot. BoomCampTO 2010 will focus on what happens next, how this big shift to digital is changing different parts of the book business, and how we are adapting. Our focus is not so much on ebooks as everything else.
When:…
catdynamics | March 28, 2010
we had the dynamic kids on a neighbourhood easter egg hunt, with a twist,
it was a math hunt
I wish I could say I had thought of this, but I didn't...
So usual stash of eggs was, er, stashed, but rather than sweeties, the eggs contained small slips of paper - each with a simple arithmetic problem (K-3 crowd).
The kids had to solve all the problems, and when they had done so they got to pick a couple of small easter candies from a bowl.
And they liked it.
catdynamics | March 22, 2010In six words.
Like this:
"Observe extragalactic Cepheids pulsate.
Measure H0."
h/t David Brin with a special thanks to PZ.
No, not that PZ, the real PZ.
clock | March 22, 2010The new issue of Journal of Science Communication is now online (Open Access, so you can download all PDFs for free). Apart from the article on blogging that we already dissected at length, this issue has a number of interesting articles, reviews, perspectives and papers:
Users and peers. From citizen science to P2P science:
This introduction presents the essays belonging to the JCOM special issue on User-led and peer-to-peer science. It also draws a first map of the main problems we need to investigate when we face this new and emerging phenomenon. Web tools are enacting and facilitating new…
jdupuis | March 18, 2010I received an email a couple of weeks ago from Daniel Cromer of the Hrenya Research Group located in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His group was interested in expanding their online presence and had stumbled up the presentation I'd given a couple of years ago on Academic Blogging: Promoting your Research on the Web. He asked me if I could explore those same ideas in a short presentation to the group.
That was Monday. Sadly, I wasn't able to actually go to Colorado for the presentation -- it was all online using the…
jdupuis | March 17, 2010An interesting and provocative article in The Scientist by Steven Wiley iof the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, To Join or Not to Join.
The thrust of the article is that scholarly societies are having trouble offering true value to their members in the Internet age, that their business models and even their raisons d'etre are being disrupted.
In years past, the answer was easy because being a member came with tangible benefits, such as inexpensive journals and the ability to submit abstracts to annual meetings. Nowadays, these perks don't seem very important. Most society…
jstemwedel | March 16, 2010There's a recent paper on blogs as a channel of scientific communication that has been making the rounds. Other bloggers have discussed the paper and its methodology in some detail (including but not limited to Bora and DrugMonkey and Dr. Isis), so I'm not going to do that. Rather, I want to pull back and "get meta" with the blogospheric discussion of the paper, and especially the suggestion that it might be out of bounds for science bloggers (some of whom write the blogs that provided the data for the paper in question) to mount such a vigorous critique of a paper that was, as it turns…
drorzel | March 12, 2010I think I've mentioned before that I'm on the local committee that selects nominees for the Watson Fellowship, which is one of the best committees to be on, because you get to interact with some of our best students doing things that they really love. This year, we're thrilled to have two of our nominees selected as members of the 2010-2011 awardees:
Frederick Franke, Union College
Out of the Kitchen and Into the Fire: Exploring Open-Fire Cooking Methods
South Africa, New Zealand, India, Jamaica, Turkey
People don't generally like to eat alone; food is a necessity, but it also serves to bring…