Academia
terrasig | June 19, 2009I am bursting with local pride this morning at the summer camp stunt of a NC State University materials scientist and his students.
Ginny Skalski (@30Threads, @GinnySkal, Ginny from the Blog), local media maven and founder of the Research Triangle blog distiller 30Threads, was on the scene yesterday as - well, the title says it.
For the past three years, high school students at N.C. State University's materials camp get to find out what happens when you drop Silly Putty from the roof of the D.H. Hill Library. Last year, the camp dropped 30 pounds. This year they dropped 50 pounds (…
drorzel | June 18, 2009Kevin Drum commented on a charter school study a couple of days ago, which made me go look through the report (available from this ultra-minimalist page-- seriously, you can't even be bothered to cut and paste some of your introductory boilerplate into an HTML file to give people an idea of what's behind those PDF links?).
The summary message is kind of bleak. From Drum's post, quoting the LA Times:
The study of charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia found that, nationally, only 17% of charter schools do better academically than their traditional counterparts, and more than…
terrasig | June 18, 2009My apologies to readers who have been looking for novel content the last few days. I am swamped with all variety of personal and professional issues but when I finally had a moment to write about something of value, I needed a copy of a short review article from a European cancer journal published by Elsevier to which my institution does not subscribe. I patiently went through their process to register for their site, told them who I was, where I worked, what subdiscipline, etc.
So, I logged in clicked on the PDF link for this two-page article and was told it would be $31.50, thank-you-very-…
drorzel | June 17, 2009Whether because I'm a blogger, or because I'm a previous recipient of their money (I suspect the latter), I recently got email from the Research Corporation announcing their new Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion program:
Scialog will focus on funding early career scientists and building research teams to undertake groundbreaking studies in solar energy conversion. This initiative will be entitled Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion.
Scialog 2009 will accept proposals describing fundamental research at the molecular and nanoscale level that show high potential to impact advanced energy…
terrasig | June 17, 2009Seen yesterday in the local AP feed: Looks like a great partnership to access historic images on the iPhone or iTouch to satisfy pretty much any scholar or history enthusiast:
Duke and Apple to join forces
DURHAM -- Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries to view collections of historic images can now do so by clicking on their mobile device instead.
With the launch of DukeMobile 1.1, Duke University Libraries now offer the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for Apple's iPhone or iTouch devices. It includes thousands of…
drorzel | June 17, 2009Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along:
1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations:
# Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009.
# Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date that each article was published.
# Consideration will be given to the articles on the following criteria: intellectual coherence; persuasiveness; wit and relevance; clarity and simplicity; wider impact (as indicated by additional information provided by entrants in the…
jdupuis | June 16, 2009Some highlights from the IEEE's very fine Technology and Society Magazine, v29i2. You'll need a subscription to the magazine to access it on the IEEE's site.
Those in academic settings might want to especially take a look at Communication technology, emergency alerts, and campus safety.
Innovation as energy policy for the world [Policy Perspective] by Andrews, C.J.
Wireless nomad: Pioneer in an urban residential environment by Wong, M.A.
K-Net and Canadian Aboriginal communities by Fiser, A.; Clement, A.
Communication technology, emergency alerts, and campus safety by Gow, G.A.; Mcgee, T.;…
drorzel | June 16, 2009Female Science Professor is revisiting an old topic, namely, the academic novel:
I was thinking about the general topic of academic novels because I was looking for some books to read and was looking through the lists in the links above. And then I wondered: Why do I want to read an academic novel during the summer? Why do I want to read an academic novel at all? What is it that I like about (some of) them?
This seems like a good opportunity to both have a discussion and do some science. There are three steps to the experiment:
Leave a comment here saying what your favorite academic novel…
catdynamics | June 15, 2009The Order Of The Science Scouts Of Exemplary Repute And Above Average Physique has new mo' better badges
since I am a long standing member of ootssoeraaap, I need to update:
I get it all right... ok, some might argue, but you gotta call it as you see it
I need to get to LEVEL III here
define "requires"...
probably...
the fact that I didn't want to admit to this one clinched it
yes, I am LEVEL III and II, but not I
"astrobiology" natch
hm, I wonder if they iron on this time
drorzel | June 15, 2009The main speaker at yesterday's Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama's economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the relevant-to-ScienceBlogs bit is this:
The past couple of decades have been seen as a triumph of finance - new and more complex financial instruments, a huge growth of financial institutions, enormous compensation for traders, speculators, and finance…
drorzel | June 15, 2009Martin Perl, a 1995 Nobel laureate in Physics for the discovery of the tau lepton, was awarded an honorary degree yesterday at commencement. Perl actually has a significant Union connection-- he started his career as a chemical engineer, and was working for GE making vacuum tubes when they sent him to take classes in calculus and atomic physics at Union. His physics professor, Vladimir Rojansky, convinced him that he was more interested in physics than chemical engineering, so he changed careers.
Saturday night, I had dinner with Perl, two other faculty members, and three students. He's just…
drorzel | June 14, 2009As the faculty started down the steps into the area where the families and friends of the Class of 2009 were seated, somebody in the crowd yelled "Thanks for passing most of our kids!" that may be my new favorite audience comment.
Last night, it was looking as though we might need to go to the "Deluge" contingency plan (Kate said "They didn't really use the word "Deluge," did they?" They did.), but really, you couldn't've asked for a nicer day for graduation. It was sunny, but not brutally hot, and there was enough of a breeze that even the student section wasn't as bad as it sometimes gets.…
khannula | June 14, 2009I've got a question for women readers, especially those in the geosciences, environmental sciences, or field sciences: what do you get out of reading blogs? And if you have a blog yourself, what do you get out of writing it?
I'm asking because there's a session at this year's Geological Society of America meeting on "Techniques and Tools for Effective Recruitment, Retention and Promotion of Women and Minorities in the Geosciences" (and that's in the applied geosciences as well as in academia), and I wondered whether blogs (whether geo-blogs or women-in-science blogs or both) help. Although…
jstemwedel | June 13, 2009After the open house at the college radio station, I paid a visit to a now-defunct cafe that used to be downstairs from the radio station studio and found the following calculation written on the wall:
I'm a little uncertain about the first premise (that girlfriends are the product of time and money). But if that premise holds true, it's hard to deny the conclusion that girlfriends are evil.
You've been warned.
terrasig | June 13, 2009
I enjoy this regular feature in the New York Times where editors put together highlights of specific destinations that can be enjoyed in a day-and-a-half. In this weekend's Travel Section, now online, my adopted home gets the treatment.
I've always wondered how locals in each area covered might view the choices. For us, I'd say that J.J. Goode's opening paragraph captures this scientific training and career destination pretty well:
TELL North Carolinians you're heading to the Research Triangle, and they'll probably ask "Which school are you visiting?" Yet the close-knit cities of Raleigh,…
catdynamics | June 12, 2009if research universities moved to a 4 day week, and cut salaries 20%,
would this be acceptable?
IF, faculty were permitted to get an extra 2 months "summer salary" from research grants in compensation?
This would have to be for real: no classes or committee meetings or other service duties on mondays, or fridays, whichever.
Would it be acceptable to faculty?
Would it be acceptable to funding agencies?
It would probably not be acceptable to staff, I wonder if it would be acceptable to administrators?
Students would love it.
BTW: the "trimming" in response to cuts at universities are about to…
catdynamics | June 12, 2009Solving UC's problems: move to 4 day work week...
hey, the student's would like it!
$120 million per 5% furlough
total shortfall right now is about $480 million per year - just under $billion over two years
Hey, they could all go to a 4 day work week!
Brilliant.
jdupuis | June 12, 2009My brain is completely overloaded at the moment after the two absolutely fabulous conferences I've attended in the past week. I'm going to do individual posts about each conference, but I thought I'd give some initial impressions in this post first.
As a reminder, the conferences were BookCamp Toronto and Managing Data for Science.
First of all, BookCamp Toronto, an unconference attended mostly by people from the trade book publishing industry, the Canadian version of which is centred here in Toronto. There were quite a few authors in attendance as well as some publishing people from other…
terrasig | June 11, 2009
The heavy blanket of moisture across the City-That-Tobacco-Built is being broken this morning on the 69th wedding anniversary of the late civil rights scholar, Dr John Hope Franklin, and his late wife, Aurelia Whittington Franklin, with a high-profile memorial and celebration of their lives. Leading the dignitaries in speaking will be former President William Jefferson Clinton and attorney Vernon Jordan, Jr.
The memorial will be held today, 11 am - 1 pm EDT, on the campus of the University-That-Tobacco-Built in the conservatively-named Duke Chapel, more appropriately described as a Gothic…
clock | June 10, 2009As the boundaries between formal and informal scientific communication is blurring - think of pre-print sites, Open Notebook Science and blogs, for starters - the issue of what is citable and how it should be cited is becoming more and more prominent.
There is a very interesting discussion on this topic in the comments section at the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog, discussing the place of science blogs in the new communication ecosystem and if a blog post can be and should be cited. What counts as a "real publication"? Is the use of the phrase "real publication" in itself…