Academia
drorzel | May 8, 2009It's a nice demonstration of the oddity of the blogosphere that a libertarian political blog has become my go-to-source for thoughtful blogging about physics education. Thoreau had two good posts yesterday at Unqualified Offerings, one on the problems created by breaking down incorrect intuition, and another on the lack of calculus in calculus-based physics texts:
The ostensibly calculus-based introductory physics book by Knight is not really a calculus-based book. Sure, integrals and derivatives pop up here and there, but the vast majority of the problems can be solved without them, and…
terrasig | May 7, 2009The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has long had programs to make available to researchers any variety of compounds, natural and synthetic. These offerings are administered by the Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD).
So, I was very happy to see this e-mail last evening:
Dear Colleague,
I am pleased to announce that the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis can now bring a new, important resource to drug discovery efforts. Oncology drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration are being offered…
terrasig | May 6, 2009The other day I wrote about a really nice post someone wrote about a cardiologist with whom I have had a relationship since postdoc years.
I also have several physician friends and colleagues IRL and on these interblogs who must constantly be questioned about their motives, their pharma connections, etc.
Let me state from this place and time: t
There are far more physicians who uphold our idealistic Rockwellian view of them than not.
Two years ago, I shared a cab with a doc on his way to a basic and clinical cancer research meeting focused on an organ we both study. Good guy. I might have…
catdynamics | May 5, 2009by folding down the Ideal to embrace the Earth and sealing it with our kiss, we symbolize how we dedicate our ideals to overcoming our animal nature, even as we enclose it, for without the complement of our animalism, the yin to our yang, our ideals would be dysfunctional and empty
from Prof Schombert via The Beast
jstemwedel | May 4, 2009One of the interesting developments within the tribe of science is the way that blogs, email lists, and things of that ilk have made public (or at least, more public) conversations within a field that used to happen only in private.
The discussions of Aetogate on the VRTPALEO list are just one notable example, but email lists and blogs also host discussions in the wake of retractions of journal papers, investigations of allegations of scientific misconduct, and other sorts of professional shenanigans. While some of the people in these conversations cloak their identities in pseudonyms,…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Word around town and just tweeted by local hero, Ayse, is that the great Ernie Barnes passed away yesterday at the age of 70.
From the biography at Mr Barnes' website:
Born Ernest Barnes, Jr. on July 15, 1938 to Ernest Sr. and Fannie Mae Geer Barnes during the Jim Crow era in Durham, North Carolina, his mother worked as a domestic for a prominent attorney. As a child, young Ernest would accompany her to work and was allowed to peruse the extensive collection of art books. One day in junior high school, a teacher found the self-admitted fat, introverted young Barnes drawing in a notebook while…
scientificactivist | April 29, 2009Yesterday, the Institute of Medicine released a report entitled "Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice". As far as I can tell, the full report is only available for a fairly substantial charge, but these are some of the main recommendations summed up in the report's press release:
All academic medical centers, journals, professional societies, and other entities engaged in health research, education, clinical care, and development of practice guidelines should establish or strengthen conflict-of-interest policies, the report says. Disclosure by physicians and…
terrasig | April 28, 2009Several of my blogging colleagues have been discussing over the last few days whether there is value in cultivating fellow scientists as readers of science blogs. While some find this a waste of time, others recognize that blogs provide a useful, real-time platform for disseminating information and discussing current issues and career development challenges that cannot be done well in print format. The informality of the blog also allows for frank discussion to be had between senior scientists, trainees, and the general public that do not often (if at all) occur at one's home institution.…
drorzel | April 28, 2009My major "service" activity at work is involvement with the Minerva program, which attempts to blur the line between academic and residential life. I enjoy this because it gives me the opportunity to work closely with students outside a narrow academic context, and I've been very impressed with the creativity and responsibility of the students involved.
Part of the program is also to get faculty involved, and this runs into more problems. The biggest of which is probably a mismatch between the time scales on which students and faculty operate. If you try to get faculty to do something in the…
drorzel | April 27, 2009Back in the stone ages, when I was a student and walked uphill through the snow to class, if you wanted assistance on a homework assignment, you needed to track the instructor of the class down in person, either by going to their posted office hours, or calling them on the phone to set up an appointment. With the introduction of modern communications technology, it is now possible to interact with your instructor electronically, and get help on your homework at times when you couldn't hope to meet them in person.
While this is a tremendous improvement over the old way of doing things, here…
scientificactivist | April 25, 2009About a week ago, the NIH announced its draft guidelines covering the funding of human embryonic stem cell research. You can read the draft guidelines here and my post on the topic here. As these are draft guidelines, they are open to a month-long period of public comment before the final guidelines are released, and an online system for accepting comments has just been opened up. Comments must be received by 11:00 pm EST on May 26, 2009, and you can enter your comments here.
Below, I have pasted the comments I submitted:
To Whom It May Concern:
These comments are in response to the Draft…
khannula | April 25, 2009It's that time of year again. The plotter is out of paper and the students have new haircuts and clothes I've never seen. It must be time for senior thesis presentations. In about an hour and a half, the senior geology students will be giving 15-minute talks (the same length as at professional geology meetings) to a room full of friends, professors, parents, recent alums, and curious local geologists. They're probably nervous now, but when they come out, they will have accomplished something.
Their senior thesis work really started back in January of 2008, when they started scrambling for…
scientificactivist | April 23, 2009By all accounts, yesterday's UCLA Pro-Test rally in support of animal research was a great success. Up to 800 people showed up for the Pro-Test rally, but only 30-40 people showed up for a concurrent anti-research rally
These numbers are particularly notable for two reasons. Firstly, the number of supporters of animal researchers greatly dwarfed the number of detractors, an excellent illustration of how large this hitherto silent majority is compared to the fringe but vocal animal rights activists. Secondly, the number of participants at the UCLA rally was similar to the number that showed…
drorzel | April 22, 2009No, I'm not talking about students bribing faculty for good grades, but the reverse: faculty bribing students to attend events outside of class. For example, I offered the students in my class five bonus points on tomorrow's mid-term exam if they attended last night's Alan Lightman lecture. I'm fairly certain that 12 of the 16 took me up on it.
My feeling is that this has an almost negligible effect on the final grades, but can make a big difference in the audience for an evening talk. And it's often beneficial for students to attend these events and get some sense of the larger intellectual…
drorzel | April 22, 2009We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein's Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts.
One of the differences he mentioned was the way the different disciplines handle names. He claimed that science is deeply concerned with naming things, because naming a thing in some sense defines it-- the word "electron" carries with it a whole host of properties that are shared by all electrons in the universe. In the arts, on…
clock | April 21, 2009The UCLA Pro-Test is tomorrow. If you live there - go. If not, prepare yourself for inevitable discussions - online and offline - by getting informed. And my fellow science bloggers have certainly provided plenty of food for thought on the issue of use of animals in research.
First, you have to read Janet Stemwedel's ongoing series (5 parts so far, but more are coming) about the potential for dialogue between the two (or more) sides:
Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 1).:
Now, maybe it's the case that everyone who cares at all has staked out a position on the use of animals…
terrasig | April 21, 2009Never pass up an opportunity to get face-to-face time with grants officials from any research funding agency. This from the Department of Defense for those of you in Denver tomorrow:
To all individuals attending the 100th Annual Meeting of the AACR in Denver, Colorado:
The Department of Defense's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) will be presenting a series of short talks on CDMRP and its cancer research funding programs on Wednesday, April 22, from 8:30-10:30 a.m., in Room 607 of the Colorado Convention Center.
Scheduled to speak from the CDMRP are the Director, a…
terrasig | April 20, 2009While I was all caught up today with thinking about the 95th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre and the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings, I was reminded of some lighthearted goings-on in Colorado today that take away some of the gloom on this Monday. (The Ludlow post is getting great traffic, by the way, but my historical posts on tragedies fail to generate much commenting for some odd reason.).
My good friends at Denver's Westword independent weekly paper tweeted me last week with this headline on from their blog, The Latest Word:
CU Chancellor, obviously high, sends…
clock | April 19, 2009
I know it's been a couple of months now since the ScienceOnline'09 and I have reviewed only a couple of sessions I myself attended and did not do the others. I don't know if I will ever make it to reviewing them one by one, but other people's reviews on them are under the fold here. For my previous reviews of individual sessions, see this, this, this, this and this.
What I'd like to do today is pick up on a vibe I felt throughout the meeting. And that is the question of Power. The word has a number of dictionary meanings, but they are all related. I'll try to relate them here and hope you…
revere | April 18, 2009Scottish linguist Geoffrey Pullum's take-down in the Chronicle of Higher Education of the venerable Strunk and White Elements of Style has received some notoriety. It's Elements' 50th anniversary this month, but Pullum isn't celebrating in "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice." I have a copy of Elements and like many others thought its advice was the last word(s), but like many others have never managed to follow it because its advice, as Pullum neatly demonstrates, was unfollowable and shouldn't have been followed anyway. Pullum's piece is behind a subscription paywall (here), but since I…