Science & Society

Science for dummies- now with more poop

What is science? Science is application of the scientific method to problems or questions, and then submitting the story to the scrutiny of others. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It’s self-correcting.It’s LOGIC. BUT. What if your audience was never taught wha ...

Blog Post - Jenny Morber - Nov 13 2010 - 12:15pm

Apocalypse 1955: Growing Up Telepathic

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” The much-revered writers of the Golden Age of science fiction can be quite rough around the edges, even downright embarrassing on occasion. The writing is hurried, the plots of plot-driven books are distu ...

Article - Michael White - Nov 12 2010 - 3:39pm

Lessons from plants for happiness

Metabolism = anabolism-catabolism In plant science metabolism is sum total of anabolic processes i.e. photosynthesis which make complex substances from simple molecules to catabolism i.e. respiration which utilizes complex molecules synthesised during anab ...

Blog Post - Ashwani Kumar - Nov 14 2010 - 11:35am

What Science 2.0 Means to Me

I liken cognition to a hill-climbing search on the landscape of theories/models/maps that explain/predict reality.  It’s easy to get stuck on peaks of  local maximality.  Injecting randomness creates a sort of  Boltzmann machine  of the mind and increases ...

Blog Post - Rafe Furst - Nov 15 2010 - 1:19pm

Geeks, Tweaks And Innovation

There's a neat piece on tweaking versus invention, written by two law professors (Kal Raustiala of UCLA and Chris Sprigman at UVA) over as a Freakonomics guest blog.  Their bit on Geeks, Tweeks and Innovation talks about how Tweaking is good, but the ...

Article - Project Calliope - Nov 16 2010 - 5:16pm

Media Coverage Leads To More Citations- But Be Smart About It

Most researchers regard their work as vital to society, even if that value is only higher order and the chain to societal benefit is tenuous to outsiders.  That's no different than any other job- people at the Department of Motor Vehicles feel like th ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Nov 21 2010 - 11:08am

The Sexing Up Of Science (I'm Coming Out! And So Can You!)

A few weeks ago, The Science Cheerleaders grabbed headlines with their appearance at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, where they cheered for citizen science and science literacy, as well as served to provide a new kind of role model for young girl ...

Article - Andrea Kuszewski - Nov 22 2010 - 4:35am

New Federal Money Pouring into Science Education and Citizen Science

Earlier this month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that $8 million worth of new grant money has been awarded to educational and non-profit institutions across the United States to support programs that connect the publ ...

Blog Post - Matthew T. Dearing - Nov 23 2010 - 12:42am

The Business Of Science

I think there is something deeply wrong with our view of science. The word itself, Science (with a capital "S"), sits alongside other monoliths such as Religion, Art, Music, Literature, Politics and so forth that require constant defining just to ...

Article - Richard Mankiewicz - Nov 23 2010 - 10:36pm

TSA Body Scanner Nonsense

OK, I've had just about enough of the stupid statistics being put out by the FDA regarding full body scanners at airports. I'm not sure why everyone is behaving as if such a scan is a singular event in a year.  One hears about how such a small do ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Nov 23 2010 - 2:59pm