science outreach
sa smith | July 21, 2011I suck! Desiree Schelle has been trying to get me on Skeptically Speaking since, like, last December, and I keep getting busy and putting it off and then I was like "GHA I SUCK NAME A DATE!"
So Im going to be on her show this Sunday to talk about HIV-1!
We record live with Abbie Smith on Sunday, July 24 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, July 29.
And theeeen, after some scheduling rearrangements, Im actually going to get to speak July 30th at the inaugural conference for Oklahoma skeptics and freethinkers, FreeOK! Its $10 for a day of speakers:
AND…
sa smith | May 16, 2011Tuesday, May 17th, at noon (Central Time), Trine Tsouderos is hosting a live-chat with one of the people who literally wrote the book on viruses, Vincent Racaniello.
LINKY!!
I know you all have *ME* to chat with :P But I do encourage you all to submit questions to Vince and Trine, partly because this is a really neat opportunity, and really my expertise is retroviruses, while Vinces is more broad, but mostly because I dont want them to get flooded with more idiotic 'questions' from Dr. Cuckoo Bananas, MD and her troupe of stupid ass anti-vaxers. :)
Hey, AoA. Hey. Its not a cover-up. ITS…
sa smith | May 2, 2011Imagine a book I would write. On viruses (what else?).
Now, instead of it sounding like it was written by a chimpanzee who learned English from watching 'Waynes World' and 'Waynes World 2' on a loop + 4chan, imagine it was written by an articulate, science-literate human.
That is 'A Planet of Viruses', Carl Zimmers latest book. For a 'review', the only thing I need to say to this crowd is that the writing is just as fantastic as everything Carl writes, plus its on a topic that I love (and you all are probably interested in, if you read ERV).
There is another bonus for the Internet-Induced-…
sa smith | April 18, 2011NatGeo had a pretty sweet program on the other night on viruses! I guess they made it like a couple years ago, but I somehow totally missed it!! If you read ERV, there was probably nothing new there for you, but its neat to *see* the scientists I talk about portrayed as creepy guys talking to themselves in deserted diners, surrounded by 3-inch-tall dancing chimpanzees.
ROFL!!!
National Geographic Explorer: The Virus Hunters
Few things I want to say--
Scientists do not all work in poorly lit rooms surrounded by tubes of bubbling colored liquids. Sometimes there are lasers and radioactive…
vlicata | March 24, 2011The chair of the Theatre Dept. here at LSU and I have begun co-producing a new "SciArt Conversation Series" here at LSU -- where we get scientists and artists on stage together at the same time for informal presentations of their work. We are trying to pick combinations that have some sort of real or semantic overlap. Our first one, which we just called "Silk", had an entomologist talking about the evolution of spiders and spider silk along with a choreographer and two dancers demonstrating and explaining dance moves on hanging silks.
This first one had a small but very vocal and…
sa smith | March 7, 2011As a scientist and a blogger and a science communicator, I luvs me some open access publishing! I can link to a paper everyone can read, people can leave questions or comments or ideas in my comment section-- its interactive and educational and a lot more fun for everyone (I end up learning a lot answering peoples Qs, or by others answers myself).
I also love the idea of open comments on papers. I dont have to hunt down an email and hope an author responds to a technical question or point-- post your question/comment, and either someone on the paper or someone else can answer it for you!…
sa smith | December 17, 2010Dr. Oz.
Rockstar of Science.
Major, massive, epic moron.
Homeboy invites our Dr. Pam Ronald on his show to talk about GMOs. Great public science outreach opportunity. I was excited for her and for the field and for the public.
But you know 'crank magnetism'? Its never surprising when an anti-vaxer turns out to be a Holocaust Denier or (and) a 9/11 Truther, etc etc etc? I guess I shouldnt have been surprised at all that all the cranks get their moves from the same play-book.
See, Oz invited Pam on his show to talk about GMOs. But he didnt 'really' want to talk to her (or anyone) about…
sa smith | November 29, 2010Looooooooook what Ive gooooooooooot!
'Songs From the Science Frontier', a pro-science CD you readers helped happen, is finally out!
Its SUPER CUTE!
The OKGazette is astonished that Monty Harper & Cos music 'doesnt induce nausea' like most kids music, LOL!!!
You can hear more from Monty in this podcast he did for OKC Atheists last week!
sa smith | November 26, 2010Id like to take a minute to expand upon my post from yesterday--
What I find odd about 'Science Rock Stars' is the way scientists and rock stars were awkwardly mashed together. Like mixing peanut butter and Twizzlers. They are both good independently, but unless youve got a real, obvious reason to mush them together, its weird.
I think it would make more sense, if one was deeply concerned about coolness, to utilize innate 'cool' aspects of scientists lives. As many pointed out in the comments, it would make more sense to interview scientists who were actual rock stars. Or if music was…
sa smith | November 25, 2010It was 75 degrees yesterday.
It got down to 24 today.
And pretty much everyone else in the country is under a layer of ice/snow.
But Im not gonna write about cold scientists. Im talkin about cool scientists.
Chris Mooney, the expert on facades, appearances, and stabbing people in the back with a smile (you see, if youre smiling, its civil! we are all about civility, here!) is worried, for some reason, that scientists arent cool.
This is not necessarily scientists fault, per se, as very few professions are actually cool. Being a teacher isnt 'cool'. Being a nurse isnt 'cool'. Working at…
sa smith | November 16, 2010Long time readers of ERV know that I have a soft-spot for animated depictions of cellular processes. Yes, they are beautiful (to a fault). Yes they are a neat way to explain complex topics to people. But I love them due to the sheer volume of lulz they provide when Creationists try to do them.
See, scientists use animations for educational purposes.
Creationists use them for misinformation. They present the animations as if they are for realsies video recordings of things going on in cells-- "OOOH! Look how PERFECT it all works! Look how PRETTY it all is! IT MUST BE DESIGNED!", when…
sporte | November 8, 2010Wired Campus shared an interesting story this morning about a career site for female science / engineering professionals. The site is called ASU CareerWISE and its mission is to help women with problem solving.
I like the idea and I like that they built the site in Drupal, since I've become a big Drupal fan over the past year, but I think they've missed the point in a big way.
You see, every link on the front page leads me to this:
Now, I could be wrong, and I do understand the need for password protection in sensitive matters, but if I were looking for help with problem solving, and I…
sa smith | October 28, 2010Im going to be doing a live show for This Week in Science tonight!
Dr. Kiki's Science Hour
Gonna talk about endogenous retroviruses and how to bring them back to life (just in time for Halloween!!) and all sorts of fun stuff (HIV-1, epigenetics, etc)!
They uploaded the video if you couldnt catch it live-- listen to me blither here!
sporte | October 3, 2010Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) shared this wonderful Lady Gaga lab spoof on Twitter the other day. It rocks.
And, it makes me wonder if my pals who've been thinking about getting students interested in careers by having scientists talk on camera might be going at this the wrong way. Sure, videos of scientists talking are totally fascinating (yawn..) and...
Oh right, where was I?
Well, here's the thing. If you want to get kids interested in something, you have to use something that interests them. Your strategy isn't going to work unless the kids find it intriguing enough to go watch…
sa smith | September 7, 2010In about a month Im going to be speaking at the Texas Freethought Convention.
I can talk about anything.
Which means I dont know what to talk about.
I mean, I have lots of things I want to talk about, but I dont wanna be all "YEAHHHH!!!!", and the audience not give a rats ass about what I pick.
Im leaning towards connecting immunology with evilution-- they have so much in common, but I rarely see the science of immunology and vaccination discussed in skeptic circles (EXAMPLE: Penn & Tellers Vaccination episode). The logic is fine, but the science is superficial. But if you understand…
sa smith | August 21, 2010Montys project was officially funded, so he is spending today on Ustream, thanking his supporters with videos and songs and getting a chocolate cake smashed in his face at 7 pm Central:
Online TV Shows by Ustream
Thank you all so much for spreading the word and donating, guys!
EDIT 4.55 pm-- One of my readers made A Very Large Donation O.o
This person (I dunno who! Tell meeeee!) lives overseas, so they cant collect on their personal concert prize, so they are giving it to me! WHOOO! Maybe we could have it down at the Sam Noble Natural History Museum next to the huge HIV-1!
ALSO! We are…
sa smith | August 18, 2010We only have until midnight Saturday-- August 21st-- to get another $1,860 for an amazing project.
Songs From the Science Frontier
A different way to get kids excited about science. A way YOU can help reach kids everywhere, from East LA to rural Georgia-- anywhere kids might not be getting the best science education.
Monty put on a concert this Sunday for OKC Atheists (you know how lots of freethinker groups around the country are trying to get more women? more friendly to families? homosexuals? hehehe, OKC Atheists kinda rock at that :P we go to the bars one night and have a kids party…
vlicata | July 31, 2010There is one month to go to submit to the 2010 "Dance Your Ph.D" Contest! Entries are due by September 1st. My lab previously won in the Professor category, so I get to be one of the judges for the 2010 contest. This is our dance from the 2009 contest:
And what we won was: a real dance! Jenn Liang Chaboud, a real choreographer in Chicago, created a dance based on one of our lab's publications in JBC, here is the dance she created:
This is Science: Jenn Liang Chaboud from Red Velvet Swing on Vimeo.
The two muscular guys are Klenow and Klentaq DNA polymerases, the women are all DNA.
THIS…
sa smith | July 23, 2010WARBLEGARBLETHISISSOCOOLYALL!
Where to start?
You all are aware of the fact we have 'science education issues' here in Oklahoma? Well not everyone here is sitting on their hands, shaking their heads, bemoaning what a shame it is. A fellow who lives in Stillwater, Monty Harper, is actually trying to do something about it in a really cool way (weve praised him on SciBlogs before)!
Monty is a childrens song writer and self-professed science geek, so once a month he and a local scientist put on a show for local elementary school kids (3-5th grades)-- he writes a song about that scientist, and…
sporte | July 12, 2010If you're a high school or college student with an interest in biomedical sciences, or healthcare careers, the NIH has set up an electronic mentoring program to help you find a guide.
The mentoring happens via email and students must be 16 yrs or older.
The site claims the mentors are carefully screened. I'm not sure what screening means to the NIH. At our local high school, they used to require that mentors get fingerprinted and have a background check. Maybe NIH screening means you have to have gotten a grant funded or be registered in the NIH commons.
Please note: the program is…