education
grrlscientist | June 20, 2010
Great News, everyone! Effective immediately until 30 July, all Royal Society Publishing's online journal content is available for free in celebration of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary -- three and a half centuries of scientific publishing! Everything published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010 is now available to everyone with no restrictions, no daily download limits and no paywalls! Now is the time to download all those Royal Society publications you need to complete your personal library!
Here's a special "Happy Birthday to You" for the Royal Society as played on a…
clock | June 20, 2010Republican candidate for Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction and current State Senator John Huppenthal gets schooled by Tempe's Corona del Sol High School student journalist Keith Wagner during an interview about the state legislature's vote to cut career and technical education funding by 99.9%.
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grrlscientist | June 20, 2010tags: Bristle-thighed Curlew, Numenius tahitiensis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Bristle-thighed Curlew, Numenius tahitiensis, photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge -- one of the most remote coral atolls on earth -- a US territory in the north Pacific Ocean [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joe Fuhrman, 2010. I encourage you to purchase images from this professional photographer. [larger view] I encourage you to purchase images from this professional photographer.
NOTE: Please name at least one field mark that supports your…
grrlscientist | June 19, 2010tags: birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Black Redstart, Phoenicurus ochruros a newly-fledged youngster, photographed at Arberes, Ariege, France. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Adrian White, June 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D40x with 70-300AF.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This is a very challenging mystery bird to identify, but the bird -- a fledgling -- is just so cute (and the picture is so nice) that I just had to share it with you. Any ideas as to what species this is?
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 18, 2010tags: Brant Goose, Brent Goose, Brant, Black Brant, Branta bernicla, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Brant Goose, also known as Brant or Brent Goose, and, on the west coast as the Black Brant, Branta bernicla nigricans, photographed in Moss Landing, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 6 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This lovely bird is found all along the west coast…
drorzel | June 17, 2010Over at the Cocktail Party, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky has a post about the image of scientists that spins off this Nature article on the NSF's "broader impact" requirement (which I think is freely readable, but it's hard to tell with Nature). Leslie-Pelecky's post is well worth reading, and provides a good deal more detail on the anecdote reported in the article.
While Leslie-Pelecky's concern is about whether the outreach programs falling under the "broader impact" section of grants are having the desired effect, I'd like to comment on a different aspect of the article, namely the whole…
grrlscientist | June 17, 2010tags: Eared Grebe, Black-necked Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Eared Grebe, also known as the Black-necked Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis, photographed in Monterey Bay, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 5 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This migratory species, photographed in California, is challenging to distinguish from another, closely-…
drorzel | June 17, 2010There's a paper in the Journal of Political Economy that has sparked a bunch of discussion. The article, bearing the snappy title "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors," looks at the scores of over 10,000 students at the US Air Force Academy over a period of several years, and finds a small negative correlation between the faculty effect on performance in an introductory course and performance in a follow-on course. In other words, as they explain in the Introduction,
[O]ur results indicate that professors who excel at promoting…
jdupuis | June 16, 2010Last week I was at the Canadian Engineering Education Association Inaugural Conference in Kingston. It was a great conference and a very auspicious beginning for this very new organization. I have a summary post in the works which I hope to have up fairly soon.
I presented the above titled paper on Monday afternoon, June 7th. It went pretty well -- I was part of a session with a couple of other librarian presentations so it was mostly just us librarians. However, there were several faculty members present and I did get a couple of nice comments about the presentation later on in the…
drorzel | June 16, 2010Inside Higher Ed featured one of those every-so-often articles about the awesomeness of the demographic subgroup of the moment, this time Athur Levine's panegyric about "digital natives", who "grew up in a world of computers, Internet, cell phones, MP3 players, and social networking," and how they're too cool and tech-savvy for current universities:
They differ from their colleges on matters as fundamental as how they conceive of and utilize physical plant and time. For the most part, universities operate in fixed locales, campuses, and on fixed calendars, semesters and quarters with classes…
grrlscientist | June 16, 2010tags: Pacific Loon, Pacific Diver, Gavia pacifica, Gavia arctica, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Pacific Loon, known in Europe as the Pacific Diver, Gavia pacifica (formerly lumped with Gavia arctica), photographed in Monterey Bay, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/750s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This elegant mystery bird's common and scientific names have a…
drorzel | June 15, 2010Tommaso Dorigo has an interesting post spinning off a description of the Hidden Dimensions program at the World Science Festival (don't bother with the comments to Tommaso's post, though). He quotes a bit in which Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru both admitted that they don't expect to see experimental evidence of extra dimensions in their lifetime, then cites a commenter saying "Why the f*** are you working on it, then?" Tommaso offers a semi-quantitative way to determine whether some long-term project is worth the risk, which is amusing.
I was reminded of this when I looked at the Dennis…
mikethemadbiologist | June 15, 2010By way of Seeing the Forest, we note that at Miller-McCune, Beryl Lieff Benderly has a must-read story about the supposed shortage of scientists in the U.S. A while ago, I described the supposed shortage of scientists as a problem of incentives:
As long as financial 'engineering' is more lucrative than actual engineering (and other disciplines)--both in terms of pre- and post-tax salary--and has better job security, many students, particularly when too many graduate with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, will choose to do something other than science.
And consider defending…
grrlscientist | June 15, 2010tags: Sedge Wren, Short-billed Marsh Wren, Cistothorus platensis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Sedge Wren, formerly known as the Short-billed Marsh Wren, Cistothorus platensis, photographed in in Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 21 April 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, 1/500s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This small bird is a member of a group of New World birds that includes some very complex groups, including this one. Can you identify this species?…
grrlscientist | June 15, 2010tags: Foucault's Pendulum, physics, rotation, Pendulum, Jim LaBelle, Dartmouth University, wow, streaming video
This video features physics and astronomy professor Jim LaBelle, as he discusses the truly fascinating science behind a classic physics experiment, Foucault's pendulum, while seated next to Dartmouth University's pendulum in Fairchild Tower.
While scientists already knew that the Earth had a rotation, they had struggled to come up with a way of definitively proving this was so. In 1851, French scientist Leon Foucault gave a sensational demonstration in the Paris Pantheon proving…
rallain | June 14, 2010Suppose there was an imaginary university. (is that statement redundant?) Let me call this TIU (The Imaginary University). Also, suppose TIU offers summer courses. Further, suppose there is an instructor teaching 2 sections of lab during the summer. Here is a communication that instructor might have received.
Dear Person Teaching a Summer Course:
It appears you are teaching 2 sections of lab. One lab only has 13 students enrolled in it. We have determined that it is not financially appropriate for us to give you a full course pay for this partially full lab. We are going to pay you 13/…
grrlscientist | June 14, 2010tags: Western Gull, Larus occidentalis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Western Gull, Larus occidentalis, photographed in Monterey Bay, California. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 6 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This challenging mystery bird resides on the western coast of the USA -- the individuals in Seattle are much paler in appearance than the ones in California, such…
grrlscientist | June 13, 2010tags: Northern Gannet, Morus bassanus, Sula bassana, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Northern Gannet, also known by a suite of common names, including solan, solan goose and the solant bird, Morus bassanus (formerly; Sula bassana), photographed from the Channel ferry near Calais, France. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Adrian White [larger view].
Nikon D40x with Tamron 70-300AF.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This mystery seabird, photographed in France, has a special character that allows it to make a living in its own…
esiegel | June 12, 2010"If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2010tags: Horned Screamer, Anhima cornuta, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Horned Screamer, Anhima cornuta, photographed in Brazil along the Rio Negro, 3 degrees, 5 min S and 60 degrees, 26 minutes W. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dave Rintoul, 2010 [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Today's Mystery Bird is the only species in its genus and, along with two other species in a "sister" genus, is placed into a peculiar taxonomic family. Can you tell me what family these birds are placed into and tell…