Science Education
clock | July 26, 2007Tara of Aetiology, after reviewing Danica McKellar's book "Math Doesn't Suck", posted an exclusive blog interview with Danica, which you can (and should) read here.
clock | July 25, 2007SPARC just announced the Mind Mashup: A Video Contest:
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the launch of the first annual SPARC Discovery Awards, a contest to promote the open exchange of information. Mind Mashup, the theme of the 2007 contest, calls on entrants to illustrate in a short video the importance of sharing ideas and information of all kinds. Mashup is an expression referring to a song, video, Web site or software application that combines content from more than one source.
Consistent with SPARC's mission as an international alliance of…
tsmith | July 25, 2007 Yesterday I reviewed Danica McKellar's forthcoming book, Math Doesn't Suck. When I contacted the book's publicist about receiving a review copy, I also inquired about an interview with Danica, and she graciously agreed. Perhaps this will cover some topics brought up in the comments section of my book review as well, as she discusses her motivation for writing the book, and what she hopes girls get out of it (in addition to a number of other topics!) Enjoy, and thanks again to Danica for taking the time to address my questions.
Q: First, I'm curious about your goals in writing the…
sporte | July 25, 2007Not content with his recent exploits in human experimentation and cavorting with Plosites in San Francisco, Professor Steve Steve jetted across the country once again, last week, hitting both both Blacksburg, VA and Seattle, WA, and creating pandemonium wherever he went.
And raising the question - how does he get back and forth across the coast so quickly?
Will you find out below? Will you ever find out? Who knows what you'll find out when you see- oh no! what's he doing? Steve! You'll get sunburned! Noooooooo!
Steve! Not in front of photographers!
Professor Steve Steve bears it…
tsmith | July 24, 2007 It's not a rosy picture for girls in math. As Barbie infamously framed it, girls should think that "math is hard." While Mattel (rightly) received a lot of flack for that comment, the sad fact is that Barbie was reflecting the attitude many girls tend to take toward mathematics education: it's difficult, it's boring, and who needs it anyway? Surveys have shown that, while girls and boys in elementary school show similar attitudes toward mathematics, by junior high girls tend to have a negative attitude toward math, along with lower confidence in their ability to handle math problems. Of…
sporte | July 23, 2007Last week I found a bug in the new NCBI BLAST interface.
Of course, I reported it to the NCBI help desk so it will probably get fixed sometime soon. But it occurred to me, especially after seeing people joke about whether computer science is really a science or not, that it might surprise people to learn how much of the scientific method goes into testing software and doing digital biology.
tags: blast, software testing, scientific method, science education
What happens when the scientific method isn't used?
I wrote earlier in January about applying scientific principles from the wet…
clock | July 21, 2007Duke University, after years of being behind the curve, is now striving mightily to establish itself as a leader in online science communication. As a recent news article shows, the school is activelly encouraging its students to keep blogs and make podcasts.
I have already mentioned Sarah Wallace and her blog about genomics research in Chernobyl.
Nicholas Experience is a blogging/podcasting group working on environmental science (OK, Sheril is their most famous blogger, but she did it herself, without being prompted by the Nicholas Institute).
At the Howard Hughes Precollege Program…
tsmith | July 20, 2007A looong time ago, I mentioned that I spent St. Patrick's Day weekend in Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, at a symposium I helped to plan (but neglected to blog! Oops). Along with other scientists, theologians, philosophers, and generally interested persons, we worked for a bit over a year to put this symposium together. Why?
The principal aim of the conference is to clarify the causes of the conflict between science educators and those who wish to have Intelligent Design taught in public schools. We do not claim to be neutral on this issue. We are convinced that ID is not good science…
clock | July 18, 2007Mindy discovered a cool series of videos on YouTube, done by a physics teacher.
The first one is called The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See:
Then, to respond to questions and comments, he added Patching Holes #1, Patching Holes #2 and Patching Holes #3, also well worth watching. This is certainly no Al Gore!
clock | July 18, 2007I can't stay away (a charming spell?) from the series that Anne-Marie is churning out at a supernatural rate (what kind of magic?). Here are the latest three installments, totally enchanting:
Conservation Biology
The Botany of Wands
Kin selection
tsmith | July 17, 2007By now, regular readers will probably be familiar with The Clergy Letter Project spearheaded by Michael Zimmerman. Formulated in part to respond to the framing of the evolution controversy as a battle between science and religion, the letter now boasts more than 10,700 signatures from clergy, and have sponsored Evolution Sunday events for the past 2 years.
Well, Zimmerman has a new project now:
Our latest initiative is to create a list of scientists around the world who are willing to answer scientific questions posed by clergy who are supportive of modern science in general and evolution…
sporte | July 17, 2007I had an enlightening experience recently, after I wrote some bioinformatics activities, under contract, for a community college. At the end of the project, the person at the college asked me if the activities were anything like the things that a "bioinformatics technician" would do on the job.
tags: biotechnology careers, biotechnology, career+descriptions,
bioinformatics
Well no, I said, and added that I'd never heard of a bioinformatics technician before and I really didn't know what they would do. I thought that the people most likely to use our activities on-the-job would be…
clock | July 16, 2007Russ Williams (Director of NC Zoo Society) reports on his blog that the North Carolina Zoo is experiencing record attendance.
He also notes that San Francisco Zoo is enjoying record numbers as well.
Why do you think zoos are so popular lately?
Finally, he mentions that in the Oakland Zoo, one can bring in the appropriate food and go into the exhibit to feed the elephants.
Sounds like fun! I did not even know there was a zoo in Oakland. I'll have to add it to my growing list of things to see while I am in the area.
sporte | July 16, 2007BLAST is a collection of programs that are used to compare sequences (DNA, RNA, or protein) to larger collections of sequences that are stored in databases. I've used BLAST as a teaching tool for many years, partly because it's become a standard tool for biological work and partly because it's very good at illustrating evolutionary relationships on a molecular level.
A few months ago, the NCBI changed the web interface for doing BLAST searches at their site. I wrote earlier about changes that I made to our animated tutorial in response to the new BLAST. Now, I want to mention some of the…
sporte | July 15, 2007Professor Steve Steve, recently accused of consorting with a certain Washington madam came clean today with an alibi that he claims, proves the allegations are nothing more than malicious lies.
Dr. Steve insists that he was at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center doing experiments with teachers! And he has the photos to prove it!
Professor Steve Steve, the only panda with a Myspace page does seem to hit more locations in a night than our friend Santa Claus.
He also travels more frequently.
Some of you may remember the incidents of last winter, when Dr. Steve "got down" with a few low…
clock | July 14, 2007Yesterday, a few of my friends from PLoS and I went to the Exploratiorium to see the Iron Science Teacher show. Lots of pictures (and a little bit of running commentary) under the fold:
First, the stuff outside:
Then we went inside. The place is huge - I'll have to come again when I have more time to explore (this was lunch-break only). Hands-on, hands-on, hands-on...and kids - gazillions of them - are having great fun. The show is (almost) every Friday during the summer and you can watch the video of each Iron Science Teacher show, including the one we saw yesterday (I have not see…
sporte | July 13, 2007Although, I didn't believe it when I first saw it. With all the years that I've heard (or taught) that all DNA is antiparallel, it was hard to believe my eyes.
Yet here is parallel DNA, with both strands oriented in the same direction, right here on your monitor. And the commenters were correct.
tags: DNA structure, DNA , molecular structure, biochemistry
The image that I posted a couple of days ago was made from part of this same structure. In that image, I hid the rest of the bases to make it easier to see why this structure is so strange.
Here are two images that show the landmarks a…
sporte | July 12, 2007By now, many of you have probably seen the the new BLAST web interface at the NCBI. There are many good things that I can say about it, but there are a few others that caught me by surprise during my last couple of classes.
tags: blast, BLAST tutorial, science education
Because of these changes, and because I'm giving a workshop for teachers on BLAST at the Fralin Biotechnology Conference in Blacksburg, VA, next week, it seemed like a good time to update our animated BLAST tutorial at Geospiza Education and save myself some trouble.
I originally created the BLAST for beginners tutorial to…
clock | July 12, 2007Four excellent, thought-provoking articles all in some way related to the idea of Open Science. One by Bill Hooker:
Competition in science: too much of a good thing
and three by Janet Stemwedel:
Clarity and obfuscation in scientific papers
Does thinking like a scientist lead to bad science writing?
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