Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
Science Consulting for the Movies David Kriby's new book on science advising for movies and television is a great analysis of this unique form of science outreach.
Meet the Next 5 of the Kavli Science Video Contest Top 20 Finalists - Now Who will Win the "People's Choice" Vote? The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped up with over 260 entries! Now it's time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. People's Choice Voting begins April 2 and closes April 13. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites. Click here to view the videos.
Impostors, Underdogs, and the Status of Science Over in Scientopia, SciCurious has a nice post about suffering from Impostor Syndrome, the feeling that everyone else is smarter than you are, and you will soon be exposed as a total fraud. Which is nonsense, of course, but something...
Two Women-in-Science Notes Two things I was forwarded or pointed toward this week, that interact a little oddly. First chronologically is from the New York Times, which has a story about how Harvey Mudd College has boosted the number of female computer science...
Poll: Most Important Part of Physics? Over in Twitterland, we have a question from WillyB: If you had to pick one topic to cover in Physics, which do you think is the most important for the gen. public? This sounds like a job for the Internet!...
The Festival Expo Map is Ready to View! Start Planning for Your Festival Weekend Today! We are excited to share the news that the 2012 USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo Map is out! The Festival will run from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturday, April 28th and from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Sunday, April 29th. We will also host free evening shows including the Stargazing Party and our Featured Author Panel Discussion both on Saturday night. The "Largest Celebration of Science" will take place this year in Washington, DC at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Kavli Science Video Contest Top 20 Finalists Have Been Selected- Now Who will Win the "People's Choice" Vote? The Kavli Science Video Contest has wrapped with over 260 entries! Now its time for the People's Choice Vote, in advance of the awards ceremony on April 29, in Washington, DC, as part of the USA Science & Engineering festival. People's Choice Voting begins April 2 and closes April 13. Voting is easy, just view the videos on YouTube and click 'like" for your favorites
HB1551 is dead Why do Oklahoma scientists and educators hate freedom so much?!?!?!
Science and Math With an 'Edge' -- Learning Is Best When It's Messy and Unpredictable The world runs on science and math, but let's face it, to get this across effectively to young students we sometimes have to get a little, well... messy.
One Man's Retirement Plan Maybe it is not a complete surprise that Vidne's idea of the perfect retirement plan is to pursue full-time Ph.D. research in a molecular genetics lab, performing surgery on fruit fly hearts rather than human ones.
Best Science Books 2011: The top books of the year!!!!! Every year for the last several years I've collated and extracted the science books from all the various "best books of the year" lists in different media media outlets. I've done the same this year for books published in 2011!...
Rick Santorum on Creationism Laws This just in: Baton Rouge, LA -- (March 27, 2012) -- At Senator Santorum's March 23rd rally in Pineville Louisiana, student activist, Zack Kopplin, had the chance to question the Senator about creationism laws. Kopplin, who has led the effort to repeal Louisiana's creationism law,...
Help stop Creationism and Anti-Global Warming in Oklahoma schools A poll crash that really matters.
Popping Off about Gluten-Free Rice Krispies The malt flavouring is gone! Celiac sufferers are no longer limited to listening to the snap, crackle and pop of Rice Krispies! They can actually eat the cereal that has been music to the ears of legions since 1928 but has been verboten for anyone with a sensitivity to gluten, the mixture of proteins found in wheat, barley and rye. Rice contains no gluten and is in general a staple for celiac sufferers. But malt flavouring, a standard ingredient in Rice Krispies, can harbour a trace of gluten, enough to cause misery.
Query for Non-Physicists: Initial Reactions I was thinking about attitudes toward physics the other day, and realized that whenever I meet somebody (not a physicist) for the first time and tell them that I'm a physicist, their initial responses most frequently fall into one of...
The Uneasy Balance of Residential Academia I mentioned this in the Links Dump this morning, but Timothy Burke's post on the inherent tensions in the residential part of small college life is really excellent stuff, and deserves more than the 1000 characters I can quote in...
"Monkey Bill" Passes Tennessee "monkey bill" passes legislature House Bill 368 passed the Tennessee House of Representatives on a 72-23 vote on March 26, 2012, the Chattanooga Times Free Press (March 26, 2012) reports. The bill would encourage teachers to present the "scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of...
Tennessee, the Laughing Stock State becomes ... A Laughing Stock Tennessee is where the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 played out, and more recently two state level state bills (one house and one senate) are in play in a move by legislatures to further enhance Tennessee's reputation as a place where people don't value education...
Scientific Commuting: Some Answers to "How Much Faster?" So, the previous post poses a physics question based on some previous fooling around with modeling my commute: A car starts from rest at the beginning of a straight 1km course, accelerates up to some speed, cruises at constant speed...
Scientific Commuting: How Much Faster? Back in the summer, I did a post mathematically comparing two routes to campus, one with a small number of traffic lights, the other with a larger number of stop signs, and looked at which would be faster. Later on,...
Earth Day 2012 Finds Kids Ready to Do Their Part, Says Author Seymour Simon Planet Earth -- that fragile blue marble in space that we call home -- deserves better from all of us, I think we would agree.
What is the Creationism du Jour? A talk by Genie Scott of the NCSE:...
Max Kurzweil Describes the Science Behind the Potato Chips When we're at a baseball game or on a picnic we call 'em chips. But when we're cooking up experiments at the Chip Science Institute we maintain in our basement, or at the Science and Engineering Festival in Washington D.C., we call the world's most beloved munchie "research material."
Academic Freedom and Aids Denialism There is an interesting development in the area of Aids Denialism (and by extention climate change denialism and the rest of it) in Italy: The University of Florence has launched an inquiry into the teaching activities of an academic who assisted on a course that...
"Monkey bill" passes Tennessee Senate It's the Scopes Trial all over again! "The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories," the Knoxville News-Sentinel (March 19, 2012) reported, adding, "Critics call it a 'monkey bill' that promotes creationism in classrooms." The bill...
“I LOVE it when my students show up with forms and tell me where to sign, or when they give me several weeks' notice for recommendation letters, with nice neat lists of addresses and deadlines. I wish they would bug me more often about stuff, as I tend to forget what I've agreed to do and let things get buried in my inbox.” Asphericity on Ask Dr. Isis - Can I Be Bossy With My Boss?
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006