Science Education
jlynch | October 1, 2007Regular readers will remember that last year we here at Scienceblogs undertook a bloggers challenge for DonorsChoose.org, an organization that helps K-12 teachers. In two weeks we raised over $34,000 for deserving teachers and their students. This blog alone raised $1,000. This year, we’re aiming to be bigger and better, and given the extra time (and my increased readership), I’m setting our goal at $4000.
So, go here and donate. Choose a project if you want, or just donate to the general fund ... it’s all good.
Oh, and keep the email that you will receive from DonorsChoose - there will…
evolgen | October 1, 2007This is a repost (with some edits) of an introduction to publishing original research on blogs -- a series I am reintroducing. The original entry can be found here.
Previous entries:
Part 1 - Introduction
This post is part of a series exploring the evolution of a duplicated gene in the genus Drosophila. Links to the previous posts are above. Part 2 of this series (The Backstory) can be found below.
The Backstory
The reason you and I and all other animals (and most other forms of life) can do things (like live) is because we combine oxygen with sugars to make energy. Eventually, the oxygen…
scientificactivist | October 1, 2007This announcement is related to another bigger one that's coming in just a few hours.
Six Apart (who runs MovableType, the blogging platform we use at ScienceBlogs) is giving away $30 philanthropic gift certificates for use on DonorsChoose. The only catch is that you have to contact Six Apart by noon today (Monday, October 1st)!
At DonorsChoose, teachers submit short proposals for classroom projects that need funding, giving potential donors a wide array of worthy causes to contribute to. Today is also the beginning of the 2007 DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge, but there will be more on that…
evolgen | September 28, 2007This is a repost (with some edits) of an introduction to publishing original research on blogs -- a series I am reintroducing. The original entry can be found here.
In April of last year, Bora pushed the idea of publishing original research (hypotheses, data, etc) on science blogs. As a responsible researcher, I would need to obtain permission from any collaborators (including my advisor) before publishing anything we have been working on together. But what about small side projects or minor findings that I don't expect to publish elsewhere? As it turns out, such a project has been laying…
sporte | September 26, 2007For the record: Chlamydia is NOT a virus.
I am bummed. I like the little MicrobeWorld radio broadcasts, and the video podcasts are even more fun.
But I was perusing the archives and I found this:
I could ignore this if it came from a different source, but MicrobeWorld is produced with funding from the American Society for Microbiology!
Microbiologists are supposed to know the difference between bacteria and viruses. It's part of our training and big part of what we do.
I know, as scientists we're always supposed to follow the mantra of "buyer beware" and "be skeptical of…
evolgen | September 26, 2007Over a year ago I threatened to perform some original research and publish it on my blog. I got as far as writing an introduction to the project, but I never actually posted any data. I know, I suck.I had hoped to make the project simple enough that people could follow along. The problem was the available data were not in a form that would be accessible for most readers. So, I've held off until now. But the appropriate data have now been deposited in Genbank, so I can continue the series.
Over the next couple of days I'll post the previously published entries, and they will be followed by the…
sporte | September 25, 2007Biology as a second-language: the immersion method
Language teachers say the best way to learn a language is by total immersion and even better, spending time in the country where it's spoken conversing with native speakers.
See it, hear it, speak it, use it!
Put yourself in a position where you must do these four things to survive (or at least find the restroom) and you will learn more rapidly than by any other method.
Graduate school serves a similar purpose for scientists. You go from an environment where your fellow students and co-workers spend time chatting about TV shows and…
clock | September 17, 2007There have been a couple of recent posts about textbooks lately. Jim Fiore started it all with a look at the textbook business from the perspective of the authors and students, looking primarily at the problem of money. One sentence really hit me, though:
The problem with a large, institutionalized used book market is that it completely cuts out the publisher and the author.
In a larger economy, it is called 'stock market'. When you buy stocks, most often you will be buying them from a broker, not directly from the company. In other words, you are entering the used-stocks market. You…
clock | September 14, 2007A few days ago I wrote about the Zoo School in Asheboro, NC. It is even better than I thought - I got in touch with their lead teacher and she told me that all of their students have laptops in the classroom with wireless access. Their classrooms also have Smartboards and other cool technology. And they are very interested in their students utilizing the Web in a variety of ways, including blogging.
And obviously, some of them already are, as one of the students discovered the post on her own and posted this comment that I want to promote to the front page:
I am a Senior at the North…
clock | September 14, 2007A few days ago PZ Myers announced he will have some special guest bloggers on Pharyngula soon. While the first commenters were guessing Big Names, like Dawkins, my comment was: "I am hoping for your students....". A little later, PZ Myers updated his post to announce that yes, indeed, it will be his Neuroscience students who will be guest-blogging this semester.
And today, they started. They were thrown into a lions' den, but they are doing great, holding their own against the famously ruthless Pharynguloids who call them 'kids' and then slam them anyway in many, many comments (they are…
clock | September 14, 2007In the news today, I received a link to this press release:
Open education resource site HippoCampus launches:
The Monterey Institute for Technology and Education has launched an interactive homework help Web site funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Monterey-based institution said late Thursday that open education resource site HippoCampus provides comprehensive high school, advanced placement, and college general education course content.
You can now go to the HippoCampus site and test it out and start using it.
clock | September 14, 2007Unfortunately, due to the Murphy's Law of conference dates, I will have to miss this fantastic meeting, because I will at the time be at another fantastic meeting, but if you can come, please do - registration will be open online in a few days.
Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity
The conference theme is about bringing scientists and humanities scholars to talk about ways that science is changing human life.
November 8th, 9th, and 10th, the National Humanities Center will host the second ASC conference.
And the program features a Who's Who list:
Thursday, November 8th
Frans de Waal
Martha…
tsmith | September 14, 2007Just a quick post to note that fellow ScienceBlogger Nick Anthis has up a post on HIV denial in South Africa. Though this is a topic I've touched on, he goes into a deeper history of it, including more about the cultural reasons for denial (whereas I typically focus more on the science).
In other news, I have an editorial today in the The Times Higher Education Supplement in London. You can find it here (registration required).
scientificactivist | September 12, 2007Earlier this year, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article for The New Yorker called "Open Secrets" in which he discussed the distinction between two types of problems: what he called "puzzles", which are simpler, and "mysteries", which are more complex. Building on the work of national security expert Gregory Treverton, he wrote:
"Osama bin Laden's whereabouts are a puzzle. We can't find him because we don't have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large."
"The problem of what…
sporte | September 11, 2007Two protein structures from an avian influenza virus are shown below. One form of the protein makes influenza virus resistant to Oseltamivir (Tamiflu®)
Don't worry, these proteins aren't from H5N1, but they do come from a related influenza virus that also infects birds.
technorati tags: molecular models, protein structures, influenza, bioinformatics, Cn3D
One protein structure is from a strain that is sensitive to an anti-viral drug called "Tamiflu®". The other structure is from the same virus, except there's a slight difference. A single base change in the viral RNA changed the codon that…
sporte | September 10, 2007One of the places that I've always wanted to visit in Portland, OR, is Powell's City of Books. Powell's is the kind of bookstore that people in Seattle discuss in the same reverent tones that they use when they're describing Cody's in Berkeley or City Light in San Francisco.
It's not just a bookstore. It's a destination.
I guess that's why I was soooo disappointed.
From the outside Powell's looks pretty low key and you're really relieved to have escaped the overpowering smell of patchouli and the feeling that maybe Jerry didn't die, he just moved to Portland and hangs out at the…
clock | September 8, 2007If you were here last June, you'll remember the scienceblogs.com-wide action to fund science and math teaching projects in underfunded schools through DonorsChoose.
This year, we'll do it again. There is twice as much of us, and we will also challenge bloggers outside of scienceblogs.com to join us in this. And we'll try to do even more than that, but you will have to wait a few days and keep monitoring Janet's blog and other blogs for more information. Stay tuned.
clock | September 8, 2007I rarely wish to be 14 again, but I certainly did when I read this news today, that N.C. Zoo and the Asheboro City Schools have just started something called AHS Zoo School. As Russ Williams explains:
"Students have unprecedented access to a 1500-acre, world-class facility ideal for environmental and biological exploration. Beyond routine science, the zoo offers relevant experiences in zoology, horticulture, marketing, retail, hospitality and art as well as wildlife and plant conservation and research. The AHS program is only the fourth zoo school in the country with similar schools located…
sporte | September 8, 2007Bertalan Meskó shares his strategies for keeping up and gives instructions so you can do the same.
He shows how you can save your favorite PubMed searches and have NCBI send you e-mails about new papers. He describes some third party PubMed tools that make pretty graphs. Last, he discusses RSS readers, Connotea, and BioWizard. It's all very helpful and nicely described.
sporte | September 7, 2007During the past few Fridays (or least here and here), we've been looking at a paper that was published from China with some Β-lactamase sequences that were supposedly from Streptococcus pneumoniae. The amazing thing about these particular sequences is that Β-lactamase has never been seen in S. pneumoniae before, making this a rather significant (and possibly scary) discovery.
If it's correct.
tags: DNA sequence analysis, antiobiotic resistance , microbiology, blastn
The way this sequence was identified as Β-lactamase was through a blastn search at the NCBI. And in fact, it was correct to…