Academia
drorzel | February 23, 2008I had to do a couple of tests yesterday that required me to start something in the lab and then leave it alone for an hour, so I wandered over to a talk sponsored by the History department. Spencer Crew, the former director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, OH was in the area to speak at a conference being held in Albany, and came to campus to tell us that we're all Philistines.
Well, OK, that was just his half-serious opening. His main point was to talk about the Underground Railroad (you can get an outline from Wikipedia, of course), and particularly the…
catdynamics | February 22, 2008The Female Science Professor turns over the rocks and brings the real clash of cultures into the bright light of reason...
are you blinkered and missing the big picture, or a jack-of-all-trades (but master of none)
I know what I am...
Seriously.
The question of whether to focus narrowly on a single topic, possibly becoming The Expert in it; or, to dabble in a range of sub-topics, possibly related, is a major divisor in many academic fields.
Narrow focus definitely enhances short to medium term productivity and can enhance tenure prospects, since a typical question posed is whether the…
drorzel | February 22, 2008Inside Higher Ed reports on this week's candidate for Dumbest Administration Ever: Arkansas Tech:
After the Virginia Tech murders a year ago, Yale University banned the use of stage weapons in a student theatrical production -- infuriating actors and educators who believed audience members could distinguish drama from real life. After a few days of ridicule, Yale backed down.
A year later, after another gun tragedy, college officials are still trying to figure out how to make their campuses safe -- and theater still is a target. A student production of Assassins, the award-winning musical,…
clock | February 21, 2008Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards
March 27-28, 2008
Chapel Hill, NC
Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery -- search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery -- tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools?
Richard…
catdynamics | February 21, 2008we really just spend all our time cleaning up paperwork and shutting down youthful extravaganzas
I don't see how you get through 20 lightswitch flips per day though
no way you are first author on that many switch flips
neurotopia | February 21, 2008Abel broke the news on Scienceblogs, where he's been following the events at UCLA for a while now, and Orac has the details on why it matters. UCLA has taken the initiative to protect its researchers and hopefully kicked off a nationwide-- or maybe even global-- campaign to protect scientists and the public from the idiocy of animal rights extremists. Consider this a legal "counter offensive" on behalf of academia, if you will.
Personally, I'm happy as a pig in it's own feces. It's time somebody stood up to these so-called animal rights activists who can't seem to comprehend that people…
clock | February 21, 2008Are you confused with the new NIH Policy and unsure as to what you need to do? If so, Association of Research Libraries has assembled a very useful website that explains the process step by step. But the easiest thing to do is to publish with a journal that does the depositing for you free of charge and here is the list of such journals. Of course, PLoS automatically does that for you as well.
drorzel | February 21, 2008Janet Stemwedel is blogging, as is her wont, about questions of ethical behavior in science. She had a post Monday giving advice on how to counter unethical behavior, which all seems pretty good to me.
Unfortunately, the people who read and comment on blogs about academic culture tend to start at "corrosively cynical," and get more misanthropic from there, so Janet has been deluged with negative commentary about how nothing she suggests will work. Feeling beleagured, she has issued a call for comments from senior scientists, asking for stories of how they deal with ethical issues:
I keep…
tsmith | February 21, 2008Last fall I wrote about the bizarre case of University of Pittsburgh geneticist Robert Ferrell. Dr. Ferrell, you may recall, had been prosecuted for sharing generally-harmless strains of bacteria with a colleague, SUNY-Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz. Dr. Kurtz then used the bacterial cultures in an art display, which drew the attention of authorities following the death of Dr. Kurtz's wife. Then all hell broke loose (after the jump):
Ferrell violated [the Material Transfer Agreement] by sharing the strains with Kurtz. Normally, this would be an issue handled between Ferrell (and his…
terrasig | February 20, 2008Following the second terrorist action against UCLA's Dr Edie London and her other research colleagues, and the outcries of support that ensued, the institution is taking bold and well-justified action. This just in from Americans for Medical Progress:
UCLA is suing to protect researchers from animal extremists
Legal action follows attempted firebombings and harassment
Phil Hampton, e-mail
(310) 206-1460
UCLA is suing extremists to stop a campaign of terrorism, vandalism and menacing threats directed at faculty and administrators who conduct or support research involving laboratory animals…
greengabbro | February 20, 2008
The buzz in the geoblogosphere this week has been about an article in Nature Geoscience on the status of women in the academic earth sciences. I meant to review it here, but haven't had the oomph. Instead, you should join the discussion at All My Faults are Stress-Related, Ten Million Years of Solitude, and The Dynamic Earth. One point that hasn't been discussed much yet is that graduate school in the earth sciences is actually freakishly egalitarian - unlike other fields, we do not see large-scale gender fractionation between the master's and Ph.D. As a Ph.D. noncompleter I was…
omnibrain | February 18, 2008I'm supposed to be editing a journal article for submission. It's been sitting on my desk for a long time. I've even finished the experiments for the follow up paper! I really need to stop looking at garbage on the internet - Including this comic defining my exact situation.
Via this place
clock | February 18, 2008What is the difference between Free Access Beer and Open Access Beer?
You go to a bar to get your Free Access Beer. You sit down. You show your ID. The barista gives you a bottle. You don't need to pay anything for it - it's free, after all. You take your own bottle-opener from your pocket and open the bottle. You drink the beer from the bottle. You return the empty bottle to the barista. You go home.
You order you Open Access Beer online or by phone. You pick what kind of beer you want. It gets delivered to your door really fast. The delivery man opens the bottle for you. You are…
jstemwedel | February 16, 2008
Allegra Goodman's novel Intuition was published in 2006, and although I heard very good things about it, I was busy enough with other stuff that I didn't chase down a copy to read it. Finally, last November, my department chair lent me her copy, insistent that I had to read it when I got a chance -- not for any academic purpose, but to do something nice for myself. Between semesters, I finally got a chance to read it.
I have a really good department chair.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I think that part of why I enjoyed it so much is that I came to the book without having read…
terrasig | February 15, 2008Apologies that I've been a bit preoccupied to put up my own content last night and today. In the meantime, I must direct you to an excellent ethics discussion by the always insightful Prof Janet Stemwedel on the research program led by Dr Edythe London, the UCLA researcher who has been terrorized personally by the Animal Liberation Front.
Janet's thoughtful analysis of this situation exemplifies why she is one of the leading bioethics commentators on the web today. I share Janet's concern that the public has been unusually silent in response to the attacks on Dr London.
evolgen | February 15, 2008Do you ever sit in a boring departmental seminar and scope out the other folks in the room? You'll pick up some odd behaviors. Like the guy picking his nose -- gross! Or the secret couple that can't be open about their relationship because it breaks some university policy sitting a bit too close to one another. Well, here are a few folks that you'll probably see in every departmental seminar:
The nodder: This guy affirms every part of the talk with a nod. The background information -- he gets it. The data -- he gets it. The conclusions drawn from arm waving and rampant speculation -- he…
drorzel | February 15, 2008There has been another shooting on a college campus, with a gunman opening fire on a geology class at Northern Illinois, before killing himself. Early reports suggest that the safety measures put into place after the Virginia Tech tragedy all worked properly, and the response from police was as quick as could be hoped.
The word "tragedy" is badly overused in modern life, but this is an appropriate place. This is a horrible event, and my heart goes out to the families and friends of those who were killed.
I should note that this is not an appropriate time or place for political grandstanding.…
jstemwedel | February 14, 2008You've probably heard that UCLA scientist Edythe London, whose house was earlier vandalized to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars by animal rights activists, has once again been targeted. This time an incendiary device was left on her front door.
Abel and Mark weighed in on this appalling use of tactics to terrorize a scientist doing work on approved protocols -- protocols that had to meet the stringent standards imposed by federal regulations. But while the NIH and the odd newspaper columnist stands up to make the case for animal use in medical research and against the violent…
clock | February 14, 2008I found two articles interesting to me in today's issue of PLoS Computational Biology - the first one about becoming a good scientist, the other on circadian rhythms:
On the Process of Becoming a Great Scientist:
In the vein of promoting further debate and discussion, I provide here a different and perhaps deeper look at what makes a successful scientist. While I can't claim to have the reputation of Hamming, I grew up in a family of well-known scientists, and have had plenty of chances to observe the trajectories of scientific careers over my lifetime. Based on that experience, I propose the…
terrasig | February 14, 2008It seems that everyone in the sci/med blogosphere is offering Valentine's posts reflecting their areas of professional interest. So, here's mine:
Your humble Pharmboy came of age with glam, punk, and New Wave music but thanks to PharmMom, RN, and her then-college-aged ER co-workers, I have a soft spot for 70s soft-rocking singer-songwriters. Yes, Jim Croce, John Denver, James Taylor, and Dan Fogelberg.
So it was with great interest and nostalgia that I opened this e-mail a few days ago from the Prostate Cancer Foundation:
Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits "Leader of the…