Science Education
clock | August 14, 2008A very nice column by Olivia Judson:
The third reason to teach evolution is more philosophical. It concerns the development of an attitude toward evidence. In his book, "The Republican War on Science," the journalist Chris Mooney argues persuasively that a contempt for scientific evidence -- or indeed, evidence of any kind -- has permeated the Bush administration's policies, from climate change to sex education, from drilling for oil to the war in Iraq. A dismissal of evolution is an integral part of this general attitude.
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But for me, the most important thing about studying…
clock | August 14, 2008One of the cool perks of being a scienceblogger and going to a meetup this year was the opportunity to go and see the Horse Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and to recieve (as we were not allowed to take pictures in there) a CD with some of the pictures. You can also see a lot more text and pictures, pretty closely following what is on the exhibit itself, on the excellent Horse Exhibit wesbite.
So, on Saturday afternoon, after the Meet-the-Readers event, several of us got on the subway and went up to the Museum. And I was not disappointed. You know I love…
gregladen | August 13, 2008This just in:
A federal judge has ruled the University of California can deny course credit to Christian high school graduates who have been taught with textbooks that reject evolution and declare the Bible infallible, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles ruled Friday that the school's review committees did not discriminate against Christians because of religious viewpoints when it denied credit to those taught with certain religious textbooks, but instead made a legitimate claim that the texts failed to teach critical thinking and omitted…
gregladen | August 11, 2008You will recall a review I wrote some time ago of a book called "Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments" by Robert Bruce Thompson, and published by O'Reilly. I liked the book a lot and strongly recommended it for homeschoolers and hobbyists who were serious about chemistry.
Now, we have a news report of someone who appears to be a chemistry hobbyist (no, not cooking meth or making bombs) in Marlboro Massachusetts, who has had his lab dismantled and confiscated by local authorities.
This event is summarized and criticized by RB Thomson, author of the afore mentioned book.…
sporte | August 11, 2008The first lab mouse I touched had soft white fur and a light pink tail. It looked cute enough to snuggle and take home as a pet and I was smitten. I slipped my hand into the cage, thinking the mouse would respond like my pet gerbils or my brother's pet rat. As my hand closed around its belly, that sweet little mouse sunk its teeth deep in my thumb. I screamed and shook my hand, smashing the mouse on the cement floor and killing it in an instant.
It's been many years now since I've been doing anything with mice or rats. There's much more oversight these days, as DrugMonkey has been…
sporte | August 7, 2008"Did you know," my friend whispered, "that the Humane Society funds terrorists?"
I was stunned. What? That's crazy! I've adopted pets from there. No way! How could those be the same people??
My friend and I were suffering from "brand confusion." In business, this happens when different companies use similar names for their products in order to confuse the marketplace. In the animal rights movement, brand confusion is used to misdirect the funds that would otherwise help groups who do genuine humanitarian work.
As I learned in "The Animal Research War" by P. Micheal Conn and James Parker…
sporte | August 6, 2008When female bloggers get death threats for comparing a Batman movie to a poor business plan, and friends can have their lab fire bombed for doing plant genetics, it's sometimes a little scary to step into the fray and take a stand on controversial issues.
But that's the point. We have to speak out. Scary or not, unless we speak out against the animal rights terrorists who firebomb people's homes and harass researchers, we will lose any chance to save our loved ones from diseases like cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, or many others.
Let's think about just one of these.
According to an article from…
clock | August 6, 2008Not on US television (Channel 4 in the UK only):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
[Via]
sporte | August 6, 2008This the third part of case study where we see what happens when high school students clone and sequence genomic plant DNA. In this last part, we use the results from an automated comparison program to determine if the students cloned any genes at all and, if so, which genes were cloned. (You can also read part I and part II.)
Did they clone or not clone? That is the question.
But first, we have to answer a different question about which parts of their reads are usable and which parts are not. (A read is the sequence of bases obtained from a chromatogram file.)
How does our data get…
sporte | August 5, 2008start all over again.
MDRNA Inc., a Puget Sound area company formerly known as Nastech, announced on Monday that they'd be laying off 23 people including their president and chief business officer. This might not sound like a lot, but according to Joseph Tartakoff, from the Seattle PI, this brings the total number of layoffs up to 145 since November.
These events present a challenge to those of us who teach in biotech programs or biotech-related fields. Nastech, the predecessor to MDRNA had been around for over 20 years. Who would expect a 20+ year company to shed three quarters of it's…
clock | August 5, 2008Last week, most of the attention of the media, Old and New, revolved around the question if it is McCain supporters or Obama supporters who are more likely to think that Britney Spears is teh hawt (dunno what the answer is, but I recall seeing some statistics about the overwhelming lead by the Red States in porn consumption, TV watching, numbers of adult establishments and number of visits to such establishments per capita, and this may or may not correlate with the perception of Britney Spears as attractive to certain subsets of the male population).
But her name has also been mentioned a…
sporte | August 5, 2008This the second part of three part case study where we see what happens when high school students clone and sequence genomic plant DNA. In this part, we do a bit of forensics to see how well their sequencing worked and to see if we can anything that could help them improve their results the next time they sequence.
How well did the sequencing work?
Anyone who sequences DNA needs to be aware of two kinds of problems that afflict their results. We can divide these into two categories: technical and biological.
Technical problems are identified using quality values and the number of bases…
sporte | August 4, 2008What happens when high school students clone and sequence genomic DNA?
Background
DNA sequencing is a wonderful tool for discovery and a great technique for getting students involved in molecular science. This fall, Bio-Rad will officially begin selling their DNA cloning and sequencing kit. Now, students across the country will have the tools in hand to begin their own projects cloning and sequencing plant genes.
Of course, without bioinformatics there's no way to know what's been cloned or sequenced.
This is where we come in. As part of an agreement with Bio-Rad, we adapted a version of…
sporte | August 4, 2008Pfizer has pledged to donate up to $10,000 to the cause of science education, through Donorschoose.org, but only if enough of you, dear readers go to Big Think: Think Science Now and vote for your favorite video.
If you're not familiar with Pfizer, they're a pretty well-known drug company. You probably read about one of their products every time you delete messages from your e-mail in-box.
You don't even have to watch the videos, just vote.
I strongly recommend watching the videos, though. They are all profiles of scientists who work at Pfizer or other research organizations. It's…
clock | August 4, 2008In about a month, we at Scienceblogs will start our own traditional DonorsChoose drive, when we will pick and choose worthy science/math educational projects and ask you to donate your money to fund them.
But, before we do that, you can do a little warm-up exercise! And you don't even have to pay anything - just click. A media website called BigThink is in the middle of a DonorsChoose drive, and we've agreed to help them out:
Basically, they've negotiated a deal with Pfizer where for every person who clicks on the "Vote for this video profile" button on this page (http://www.bigthink.com/…
clock | August 4, 2008My SciBling John Lynch recently published a very interesting paper, on a topic close to my heart: Does Science Education Need the History of Science? by Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky. Isis, 2008, 99:322-330
This is a part of a broader focus issue of Isis on the topic of History of Science. I got the paper two weeks ago, but only now found some time to sit down and read it. And I was not disappointed! Fortunately for all of us, the entire paper is available online for free (yeah!), so you can read it in its entirety.
While using the fight against…
clock | August 4, 2008The new blog carnival, covering the way science is changing (or not changing enough) in the 21st century - Praxis, is about to start. The call for submissions is now open - send them to me at Coturnix AT gmail dot com by August 14th at midnight Eastern.
The business of science - from getting into grad school, succeeding in it, getting a postdoc, getting a job, getting funded, getting published, getting tenure and surviving it all with some semblance of sanity - those are kinds of topics that are appropriate for this carnival, more in analytic way than personal, if possible (i.e., not "I will…
clock | July 30, 2008Science Communicators of North Carolina:
Tuesday, August 19
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Science Cafe: Monster Storms - Hurricanes in North Carolina
Dr. Ryan Boyles, State Climatologist and Director of the State Climate Office at NC State University with Dr. Anantha Aiyyer, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marine, Earth, Atmospheric Sciences at NC State.
Tir Na Nog 218 South Blount Street, Raleigh, (919) 833-7795