The World's Fair

O.K. For what it's worth - I'm finally on twitter. Send on some suggestions for science scout badges...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:19:24 -0500

... because I have tuesday afternoon cleared for updating the science scout site a bit. Plus, although I'm a bit apprehensive jumping into this media (more from a time suck perspective), I am keen to see if it has any utility in general for some of the programs I run.

Anyway, say hello @dnghub

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Wendell Berry in Charlottesville

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:32:28 -0500

Let's call this a public service announcement:

Wendell Berry will be visiting the University of Virginia in early December. He is the first in a series of four speakers for U.Va.'s Brown College Visiting Environmental Writer and Scholars (ViEWS) Lecture Series, 2009-2010. (As it happens, Rebecca Solnit, the subject here, is the third speaker in the series, next February; not to mention poet and philosopher Gary Snyder, next Spring.)

Berry will be giving a public reading at 5:30 PM on Thursday, December 3rd in the Small/Harrison Special Collections Library on campus. I'm told a reception will follow. Here is a map. The library is #19 on it.

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H1N1: fastest freaking science ever (plus a bit about sequencing all the poo in the world)

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:48:39 -0500

I actually mentioned this video earlier, but you know, I don't think I did the pitch justice.

So...

Basically a TEDx talk by Jennifer Gardy, who outlines just how freaking fast that H1N1 information has been obtained. And all because of the open source and open access nature of the research work.

For example, when SARS hit the fan in 2003, it took 19 days for its genome to be sequenced. This year with the H1N1 swine flu, in that same 19 day timeframe, over 100 viral genomes had been sequenced, analysis had been done (and published) that worked out the origin and timeframe of the virus, and already a vaccine seed strain had been worked out. And all because of things like data sharing on wikis.

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Saying hello to Carl Zimmer

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:42:33 -0500

Carl is currently in Vancouver, and he was gracious enough to come out for drinks with us last night. This was after a great talk he gave on the how scientists have been following the evolutionary tracks of the H1N1 flu, so that folks can get a sense of (1) what it is, (2) how it's been moving, and (3) where exactly it may have come from in the first place.

The talk was apparently filmed, so I'll try and remember to pass on the link when it's up, but I thought it was worth reshowing a great little video from NPR that he highlighted.

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Sabbatical home exchange - tricks of the trade?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:02:16 -0500

So I'm based in Vancouver, Canada, and will be heading off to London, UK in July 2010, and I'm curious to hear any advice on how to best increase your chances for that low maintenance sabbatical house swap.

I've done the sabbaticalhome.com thing (link), posted on craigslist, will put stuff up on websites I have access to, have found a notice board at my own institution, but I have to admit it still all seems very much like a "shot in the dark" thing.

So, I'm wondering if the comment thread can be used to highlight any other tricks of the trade, or general advice about figuring out that whole sabbatical accommodation thing.

Plus - gratuitous plug warning - any of you from London and interested in a 6 month jaunt in beautiful Vancouver (consistently in the top 4 "best places to live" lists)? O.K. I'll stop now...

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A daily log of concerns by a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:48:45 -0500

A humour piece by David Grimes which wonders what you'd hear if you could listen in on the thoughts of such a scientist on a minute by minute basis. Here is the start but it's worth a read all the way through at this link.

Why does my hair keep falling out? Why would it skip going gray and go straight to falling out?
What if my lab coat has a stain on it and I just can't see it? Will people be able to tell this is the same lab coat I wore yesterday?

Is it going to rain? What if it rains? Do I have an umbrella in the car?

If I leave too late, am I gonna get caught in traffic and be late to work? If I leave too early, am I going to get to the lab and no one will be there and I'll feel weird and alone for a half hour?

I've seen like three TV shows in the last year that featured a water heater bursting while the man of the house was away at work. What if that happens to me? Do I have things I need that can't get wet too close to the floor?

Has the large-scale restructuring of university science programs in the past 25 years from a model based on non-proprietary science for the 'public good' to the 'academic capitalism' model based on the 'knowledge economy' led to the failure of the science community to oversee the transition of transgenic crop technology from the research stage to commercialization?

To read the rest go here.

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A bit of insight about transgender and gender dysphoria

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:50 -0500

Alex does a great job here on this topic. This would also, I suspect, take a lot of guts to do which is both inspiring and commendable.

(If you want to leave a comment about the talk, please do so here). - - -

Topic: Alex discusses the influence of gender in his own life in this TEDx talk, describing both medical and social perspectives of gender in our daily lives and the impact and consequences these perspectives bring to every individual.

Links:
Transgender Health Program, VCH, TEDxTt09

Filmed by Craig Ross at TEDx Terry talks 2009 (October 3rd, 2009). Video edited by David Ng. See more TEDx Terry talks videos here.

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The Challenge of Eating Sustainably: College Edition

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:15:00 -0500

Is It Possible to Eat Sustainably at the University of Virginia?

Eating sustainably requires (a) that you come to some resolution about what "sustainable" means, (b) that you have the opportunity to choose so-defined sustainable foods, and (c) that the constraints of your lifestyle, geography, and socioeconomic context make it possible for you to pursue such an endeavor. Threading the needle between all of that is tricky business. Thus many have chosen to run experiments about it, or related to the larger theme, defined in various ways: the "week without" processed food; the "week without" plastic; the "year" living on a local diet; the adventures of "No Impact Man." Elizabeth Kolbert reviewed books on that theme in a New Yorker essay at the end of the summer. Some students in a class I teach called "Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Agriculture" (here is the website the class made last semester) are trying it right now.

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If scientists were to write the music reviews (Vampire Weekend case study)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:30:24 -0500

Science Scout Twitter Feed
Well, actually, mathematicians - but it would probably go like this:

CD Title: Inverse: (Special limited edition release) (2009) Artist: VAMPIRE WEEKEND Rating: 2.718 stars (out of 5) - - -
The rating stands. (Spoiler alert: We rounded.) Actually, we took our cue here from Leonard Euler. Our rating is actually "e," as in the sound of the squeals that will inevitably emanate from the ladies of Cambridge after they all get a hold of Inverse come two months. Yes, M.I.T.'s finest are back with a shtick to shake up the innumerate masses for whom any further mention of the band's album sales sends us critics to sleep, and more than a few of the recent graduates of that other school up the river into jealous fits.

Anyway, you can read the rest here at the SCQ.

p.s. Horchata rocks! And this review is entirely fictional.

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Arithmetic saves the day: Solar cells still an option.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:44:06 -0500

Realclimate.org has a great post today called "An Open Letter to Steven Levitt." In case, you haven't heard, this is the economist, and one of the noted authors of the Freakonomics, who recently published Superfreakonomics, a book that is fast gaining notoriety as being fraught with many errors on the issue of Global Warming.

Essentially, the post does a great job in showing how some simple arithmetic could have easily demonstrated problems in one of the claims provided in the new book (on why utilizing Solar Energy would effectively be worse for Global Warming).

It's a wonderful piece, starting off as below, and definitely worth reading all the way through.

Dear Mr. Levitt,
The problem of global warming is so big that solving it will require creative thinking from many disciplines. Economists have much to contribute to this effort, particularly with regard to the question of how various means of putting a price on carbon emissions may alter human behavior. Some of the lines of thinking in your first book, Freakonomics, could well have had a bearing on this issue, if brought to bear on the carbon emissions problem. I have very much enjoyed and benefited from the growing collaborations between Geosciences and the Economics department here at the University of Chicago, and had hoped someday to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. It is more in disappointment than anger that I am writing to you now.

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I've lost my brain (no seriously, I dropped it somewhere at the University of British Columbia). Can you help me find it?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:35:18 -0500

(I'm guessing that at least one of my five readers are from UBC, so here goes).

Of course, this happens just before Halloween...

The other night, I moved a human anatomy torso model from my lab to my car. This was in preparation for an elementary school visit the following morning. It's basically this model shown here:

Anyway, the organs can be removed for closer examination, and essentially I dropped the brain somewhere in the transport. I'm even pretty sure where it likely fell (somewhere between the Michael Smith Labs which is next to the Bookstore, and the main parkade by the hospital, along East Mall).

Actually, here's a map of roughly where it was probably dropped:

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Master Skeleton Articulator: How cool would that be on a business card?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:33:33 -0500

I've just had a piece published in the Walrus, and it's also available to read at their website. Basically, the piece is about how this 85ft Blue Whale skeleton was discovered and prepped for a new museum at the University of British Columbia.

It was really quite amazing to chat with Mike deRoos, the aforementioned Master Skeleton Articulator, and it's worth mentioning that he was not the one who came up with the job title. He was as humble and nice as humble and nice can be.

Anyway, whilst finding out stuff for the piece, I had a chance to take a few photos, which you can see below. It was awesome to see these bones, but it must be something else to see the whale itself in the wild.

Anyway, the article starts with a recipe:

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Art and Science: It's awkward sometimes.

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:30:00 -0500

Today, seedmagazine.com has a piece about Luke Jerram, the artist that I wrote about earlier (he of the incredible glass microbe structures). Anyway, I was asked to write something to go along with the piece, and have done so here.

It's funny, but I even felt a bit awkward writing this response (being asked to do a piece on Art and Science). I know I do this sort of thing in my lab, but having to comment intelligently about it feels weird to me.

Still, I do believe that precisely because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," there's not one best way to talk science to the non-scientist, and I guess that's why I'm fond of all of those projects that do thrive upon (what some might call) unconventional partnerships.

Anyway what do you think?

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What Philip Graham Knows: An American in Portugal

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0500

Philip Graham is a writer and professor at the University of Illinois. Friend of the World's Fair Oronte Churm recently interviewed him. (Mr. Churm, aka John Griswold, also teaches at Illinois and is also a writer -- check out his beautiful new novel Democracy of Ghosts.) It's a good interview, right here at this link.

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How a conference managed to get over 250 attendees make Chewbacca sounds at once (plus a Chewbacca cognition poll)

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:16:20 -0500

Let me explain...

First take a peek at this:

I actually posted this earlier, but basically, what you're seeing here is the promotional video for a student conference, called TEDx Terry talks. This, we just finished up the other day (it was amazing and you can see the synopsis here).

Anyway, we actually launched the video way back in early September - the first day of school to be exact. We even had a booth and stuff where the video was playing, and had quite a few spritely 1st year university students walk by, look at it curiously, watch it, chuckle at it, etc. You'll note that Chewbacca makes a brief appearance in the video.

What was amazing to me was that during that day, not just one, but indeed, two, separate groups of 1st year students uttered something to the effect of:

"What is a Chewbacca?"

Seriously?

Is it possible that there are people in the world who do not "nod knowingly" when they see a picture of this iconic figure?

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