DC
lborkowski | October 29, 2013I spent much of yesterday at a hearing held by the District of Columbia City Council’s Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs – but I didn’t manage to stay for the entire 11 hours. Nearly 150 witnesses signed up to testify about the two main issues under consideration: raising the city’s minimum wage, and improving its paid-sick-leave law, which denies many workers access to paid sick days. The presence of so many witnesses, and the many hours they and Committee Chair Vincent Orange spent in the hearing room, demonstrate the importance of these issues that affect so many…
carlyo | June 14, 2013ENGINEERING.COM, with its mission to inform, inspire and entertain the world's engineers -- and future engineers -- is returning as a key sponsor of the USA Science & Engineering Festival and Expo in 2014.
Widely known for having its fingers directly on the pulse of the fascinating, ever-evolving realm of engineering innovation, ENGINEERING.COM will help expand the scope and reach of Festival excitement, education and inspiration by serving once again as the event's official videographer, which will include capturing the bevy of high-profile activity taking place during Expo finale…
lborkowski | February 11, 2013Celeste and I have an op-ed in the Washington Post's local opinion section about DC's paid sick leave law, which contains an exception that's especially problematic during flu season: it doesn't cover tipped restaurant workers. Read "Your meal shouldn't come with a side of the flu" at the Washington Post's site.
And if you want to eat at restaurants where workers have paid sick days (and other benefits many of us take for granted), check out the Restaurant Opportunities Center's 2013 Dining Guide, or download the accompanying iPhone or Android app for your city.
lborkowski | July 25, 2012The 19th International AIDS Conference is happening this week here in Washington, DC, and as the Washington Post's David Brown reminds us, it's a very different gathering from one that took place in San Francisco in 1990, when HIV was a mystery and AIDS a death sentence. Today, AIDS is still a terrible disease, but better understanding of it has improved both interventions and attitudes. "The issue is no longer what to do but rather whom to do it for, where, how quickly and at what cost," Brown writes. He offers this global snapshot:
Today, more than 8 million people in low- and middle-income…
carlyo | April 20, 2012Thank you to Blogger Amy from DC Metro Mom for a wonderful post on the USA Science and Engineering Festival!
Read all of DC Metro Mom's Post here.
Spark An Interest in Scientific Discovery at the USA Science & Engineering Festival!
By Amy from DC Metro Mom
The 2nd Annual USA Science & Engineering Festival is a super-charged series of public events and school programs with a mission to "re-invigorate" children's interest in science, technology, engineering and math. The Festival kicked off this week with over 150 FREE events for the public and Greater Washington, DC schools leading…
bioephemera | May 20, 2011
Cell Division IV
Michele Banks
DC area artist Michele Banks has donated one of her cell division watercolors to raise funds for art outreach. Check out the online auction - the painting is matted and framed and currently going for only $52.
Michele is not a biologist, but she's been on a sci-art kick for a while, inspired by the fortuitous resemblance of watercolor patterns to cellular structures. To see more of her work, visit her etsy shop, artologica.
bioephemera | March 11, 2011On Wednesday, I gave a breakout session talk on science policy jobs at MIT. I love talking about science policy, so it's not too hard to get me to do it - it's harder to get me to stop - and we had a great group of Boston-area grad students who asked excellent questions. Very fun.
The talk did force me to reflect on how different things are in my life since I left the bench. I'm certainly working no fewer hours (apparently Scienceblogs has been experiencing a denial of service attack this week, and I did not even notice. Bad sign). I still often have to do things I don't particularly enjoy,…
bioephemera | March 11, 2011
David Clarke, president of the DC chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (a great group that I considered joining once, long ago and several careers away), just passed along an invitation to an event next week. The artists who created the work in the Smithsonian's NMNH Hall of Human Origins will be talking about their process, the science behind it, the equipment they use and the working of their studios. While this is the DC GNSI meeting, they are graciously opening it to the public, so if you are in the DC area, consider attending.
More info about the event below the fold.…
bioephemera | May 22, 2010
From a post by Erin Fitzgerald, a DoD Science Policy Fellow who consulted on the design of Mattel's new "Computer Engineer Barbie:"
It might seem silly to get excited about a new Barbie doll. But, to me, she will help reinforce in math-loving little girls that they, like Barbie, can grow up to be computer engineers. It has been well documented that in recent years far fewer women are pursuing computer science degrees, so such role models are very important. What Computer Engineer Barbie will do, I think, is broaden the realm of not only what is possible, but what feels accessible--being…
bioephemera | April 19, 2010
One of the DC bands I like, Honor By August, has a new cd out- and the cover (the e-cover at least, I haven't seen a hard copy) plays with biomedical imagery.
Sweet - love the little bird! I'd totally take that on a T-shirt and wear it.
bioephemera | April 5, 2010This is kind of cool:
For the second year in a row, AAAS [the American Association for the Advancement of Science] will be arranging hands-on science activities for children attending the White House Easter Egg Roll.AAAS was invited by the Office of Science and Technology Policy to help infuse science into the event on Monday 5 April. In partnership with AAAS, the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, also will be participating in the event.With the theme "The Science of Spring," AAAS staffers have arranged activities, such as bean dissection and viewing of seeds…
bioephemera | March 29, 2010
Good idea: the National Zoo is letting us name its Giant Pacific octopus.
Bad idea: the names. All four are terrible:
Olympus: This octopus arrived at the Zoo just before the 2010 Winter Olympics, and for many zoogoers the octopus gets a gold medal for being a compelling animal.
Ceph: Octopuses belong to the fascinating group of animals called cephalopods (class Cephalopoda), which means "head-foot." The arms or feet (podos in Greek) of these animals are on the front of their head ("cephalo" comes from the Greek kephale, for head).
Octavius: "Octavius the Octopus" is more than just a pretty…
bioephemera | March 28, 2010Doesn't that title sound weird - like an experimental film? It may help to know that House of Sweden is Sweden's embassy in Washington, DC - a lovely glass building on the Potomac. If you're in the DC area, you should get on their mailing list, because they host interesting science-related panel discussions and receptions. Yesterday, they opened a new exhibit - the Virtual Autopsy Table. It's a touch-screen tabletop that lets you slice into, rotate, and magnify an MRI-based 3D representation of the human body, all with a brush of a hand:
The Virtual Autopsy Table from Norrkö…
bioephemera | January 2, 2010Oh noes! Chris Mooney just used the phrase "scientific consensus on global warming" in a WaPo article on Climategate:
While the controversy has receded, it may have done lasting damage to science's reputation: Last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public belief in the science of global warming is in decline.
The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on…
bioephemera | December 30, 2009Many of the commenters on my earlier post about the so-called wisdom of crowds, "Science is not a democracy," have expressed distaste for the phrase "scientific consensus." I don't really share that distaste, and here's why.
To me, it's like being disturbed by the phrase "electoral college." You may detest the way our nation's electoral system works; you may not trust the outcomes it produces; but there is an established system, and the electoral college is part of it. You can object to the existence of the electoral college and criticize its characteristics, and you can try to change the…
bioephemera | December 23, 2009
A year or two ago in Washington, DC, I saw this charming series of windows in the downtown Macy's. It's a technical makeover of the traditional Santa's workshop, complete with pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo like "Through Synchronous Siphonization, Gigglium added in 2:1 ratio to Teeheelium," "Octopusilex arms begin extension/contraction/reaction sequence," and "Once outspoutified, capillary action introduces .43 milligrams per 100 parts of Elation Suspension." I never got around to blogging it, I guess! So here you go. . . Merry Christmas!
bioephemera | December 4, 2009
Voss-Andreae is therefore either brave or foolhardy to try to represent quantum phenomena tangibly. Perhaps his greatest asset as a former physicist is that he realizes how much we don't know. In some of his works, the inverted commas of analogy are explicit to the knowing eye. Quantum Corral (pictured) materializes something that could hardly be less material: the wave-like properties of electrons, first reported in Nature in 1927. Here, they are represented in a block of wood that has been milled to the contours of electron density seen in 1993 around a ring of iron atoms on the surface…
bioephemera | November 4, 2009Since I posted last night, DrugMonkey, Dr. Free-Ride, and the Intersection have also checked in with their POVs on this issue. I particularly liked this comment from Dr. Free-Ride:
We get to foot the bill for the effects of other people's "moral failings" here as it is. Why, then, should it be so objectionable to consider spending some public money to figure out how to help people stop? Is it so important that people be punished for their moral failings that we're willing to sustain large-scale societal collateral damage just to enact that punishment?
DrugMonkey linked to a list of talking…
bioephemera | November 3, 2009My mom, like millions of others in the U.S., has been a smoker for decades. She's tried to quit a few times, but it's been hard for her. The thing that's helped the most so far? The nicotine patch.
While the patch is not a universal cure - see the Mayo Clinic's analysis here - physicians back them because, well, the long-term cost of remaining a smoker is too high (for the smoker, the smoker's family, and society). We all know smokers, and love them, and want to help them quit. Right?
But there's a huge double standard in the media, and in society in general, when it comes to drug abuse…
bioephemera | October 30, 2009One of the coolest, weirdest, worlds-colliding Day of the Dead artworks I've ever seen is this sculpture of a skeletal Teddy Kennedy. He's at a podium, open-jawed (no doubt haranguing other late Senators), accompanied by a skeletal dog.
The paper in his hand says "Health Care: The Cause of My Life." I realize this is a terrible photo, but in person, I actually found it pretty moving.
From the window of Nomad on Mass Ave in Cambridge, MA - they have an extensive Dia de los Muertos folk art collection.
Happy Halloween!