Discover | Eight-year-old children publish bee study in Royal Society journal

Their paper, based on fieldwork carried out in a local churchyard, describes how bumblebees can learn which flowers to forage from with more flexibility than anyone had thought. It’s the culmination of a project called ‘i, scientist’, designed to get students to actually carry out scientific research themselves. The kids received some support from Beau Lotto, a neuroscientist at UCL, and David Strudwick, Blackawton’s head teacher. But the work is all their own.

The class (including Lotto’s son, Misha) came up with their own questions, devised hypotheses, designed experiments, and analysed data. They wrote the paper themselves (except for the abstract), and they drew all the figures with colouring pencils.

It’s a refreshing approach to science education, in that it actually involves doing science. The practical sessions in modern classrooms are a poor substitute; they might allow students to get their hands dirty, but they are a long way from true experiments. Their answers are already known and they do nothing to simulate the process of curiosity and discovery that lie at the heart of science. That’s not the case here. As the children write, “This experiment is important, because no one in history (including adults) has done this experiment before.”

© Universal Press Syndicate

How To Write A Science Article:

Wired Science | DIY Biotech Hacker Space Opens in NYC

“If you work in a university lab, you have to do what your adviser tells you to do,” said Genspace co-founder Dan Gruskhkin, a freelance journalist and self-described science enthusiast. “Here, you work under mentors and can do things you’re interested in immediately.”

How Not To Write A Science Article:

Seattle Times | Turning Geek Into Chic In DIY Labs

The group was hanging out at GenSpace, a new do-it-yourself biology lab carved out of an old office building in downtown Brooklyn. Its members, who call themselves “garage biologists” or “biohackers,” are trying to do for modern biology what hackers did for computers: turning geek into chic.

I replied that I still couldn’t really help, but the experts I’d recommended way back when were ideal. Hadn’t they included them?

During our conversation it emerged that those experts I’d recommended (and other contributors to the show had also endorsed) couldn’t be used because:
- one didn’t live or work in London (so the TV company would have to travel to film them)
- two weren’t considered ‘televisual’ (for that read young or attractive)
- and all of them had ‘complex knowledge’ (which I gathered meant they wouldn’t just answer the questions presented to them by the TV company).

I was once in the running to host a science-based television program. The odd thing is that the producers could not divulge the show’s actual content because, according to them, the show was as yet non-existent. Glamour head shots, resumes, voice samples – all had to be turned in and pored over prior to selection and pitching to production houses. Then would come the NDAs and contract signing.

Other than the occasional insight into the Treme process, I know nothing of the world of cinematic production. Also my face and voice may work onscreen, but the rest of me sure will not (let’s just say my pirate ways have not helped shed that Freshman 15). Even so, it made me queasy that they would pick the most visually appealing and accessible personality without telling that person what they would be hosting, participating in, etc.

Wouldn’t it make sense to put the horse before the cart? Figure out what you want from the show and then pick the right candidate for it? Again, I am woefully ignorant of the process, so feel free to enlighten me.

Science Class at UIS, shared by jeremy.wilburn

Please support my efforts in the Science Bloggers for Students challenge, a friendly month-long competition (10/10/10 through 11/9/10) between science blogs to see which can do the most to help low-income classrooms on DonorsChoose.org. Pick a Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) classroom project from MY PAGE to support. And let’s beat the other bloggers!

For now, I’m teamed up with the Ocean and Geo Bloggers group within Science Bloggers, and hope that this leaderboard grows!

Thanks to Janet Stemwedel (of Adventures in Ethics and Science) and Anne Jefferson (of Highly Allochthonous) who let me know about this event. Remember: The drive will be running October 10 through November 9, which means it will include Earth Science Week (October 10-16, 2010) and National Chemistry Week (October 17-23, 2010).

Yarrrr, I'm a woman. Deal with it.

Angelina Jolie and science have little to do with one another, unless you want to stretch and include her in the Nerd Pantheon for Hackers. If one of the aims of Science 3.0 is the advancement of research, however, it is imperative that we discuss and support the advancement of those who conduct research, including and especially women and mothers.

Someone who goes by HollyBaby wrote an article in which she refers to Angelina Jolie as an irresponsible parent for leaving her brood behind to travel to Dangerous Pakistan and help millions of little children left homeless and orphaned by the horrible recent floods. Apparently, it’s Jolie’s “obsession with thrill” that makes her commit such a reprehensible act. Go read Athenae’s response. It’s good.

I am proud of my mother who worked hard, rose high in her medical profession, traveled abroad for work and came home to us full of love and concern every single day. And knew all of our teachers and other goings-on.

The twit who condemns Jolie sounds like those who think working mothers like my own, and eventually me, should not ask to be upheld to the same standards of promotion and raises that working folks without kids, or men with kids whose wives “take care of all that,” enjoy. Basically, you have to be a mother or a worker, and if you choose to do both, you’re somehow diluting both experiences and ought not to demand the rewards of either.

As scientists, we push the limits of our chosen fields and I believe this attitude can carry over into how we conduct our daily lives. It is possible for women to budget our time properly and make ample room for research and mothering. In 2010, this cannot be an either-or proposition.

To be a scientist today, then, is not just to be online and share our research, but also not to be afraid to challenge long-held notions that hold us and/or fellow scientists back. It is only Open to do so.

From ReadWriteWeb:

Why is Slashdot [now] almost irrelevant to the social media community? It used to be the biggest driver of traffic to tech web sites, but now it hardly delivers any traffic at all to them. We explore some of the reasons, including input from our own community.

One obvious answer is that most folks who use the web now, especially in a social media capacity, are not primarily tech-oriented and rising usage stats for StumbleUpon and Digg may reflect a changing readership, not necessarily quality of information. RWW picks up on this almost immediately:

Slashdot is targeted to engineers and programmers – and makes no apologies for it. However this relatively narrow focus means that Slashdot has not grown to have broader appeal, like StumbleUpon and Digg. However, why then is Hacker News – which is also targeted to programmers – doing so well in Woopra’s statistics?

I’ve never used StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit or any of these sites mainly because I don’t like a) creating more and more user accounts to get to the damned news and b) news by democracy. Information validation and promotion/demotion by Like and Dislike buttons? No thanks. The format of Slashdot appeals to me because the news is just there and the comments, albeit increasingly insular and snarky, offer immediate evidence, opposing viewpoints and/or bullshit filters for the topic at hand. But, I have to agree with Adena Schutzberg of All Points Blog on this one:

Now I find the things I read on Slashdot (at noon EST) I heard on NPR that morning while lying in bed! … And I have even more eyes looking at technology. So, bye-bye Slashdot. I’ll probably keep a feed for you for a while, just in case.

She’s right. Folks IM me links to tech stories all day long and my response is “Yeah, already caught that. Thanks.” My eyes looking at technology are colleagues, Google Reader (which has Slashdot in it, but I don’t get to it until later) and the omniscient, omnipresent Twitter feed.

The comments to Adena’s post recommend Techmeme, which I’ve added to my Google feedreader. The experiment over the next few weeks is as follows: How much more timely and informative is Techmeme over Slashdot et al.?

What is your experience with tech news aggregators? What are your favorites and why? How would you increase the quality and timeliness of tech news dissemination?

Update 1: Slashdot also provides the latest in Science, Privacy, Gaming, etc. In other words, it’s News For Nerds, not just Technologists. I also like their overall attitude towards the world, apparent in the icons they use to tag news items. Slashdot is a great news supplement then, eh?

Update 2: Techmeme aren’t very choosy, are they? Turn down the firehose, you’re ginna blow a man down! Also, their posts are limited to excerpts for feedreaders. Blargh.

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

Kindergarten students who learn more don’t necessarily come from more teachers. They emerge from the classrooms of good teachers, who treat kindergarten in as respectful a manner as they would teaching at the high school or college level. Too often have I witnessed the (unfortunately female) rejects of college degree programs relegated by their advisors to the given university’s school of education. “Cs and Ds in science. You can’t continue here, how about science education or just education in general?” How horrible.

I am also reminded of elementary school music and art programs that are invariably dropped at the first whiff of budget cuts. What does a school board do with the sudden teacher surplus? Send them to teach reading comprehension at the kindergarten and pre-K levels, of course.

What can parents do at home to overcome the government-mandated babysitting that is the average kindergarten program? How do they impart the success factors mentioned here, i.e. “patience, discipline, manners, perseverance” while working three jobs to keep food on the plate and in the absence of a supportive kindergarten atmosphere? Can these values and attendant lessons be imparted at home in the absence of social peers?

***

Side note: It’s interesting what society uses as indicators of success (versus true achievement and happiness). I know several successful, self-disciplined people who never attended college, have kids out of wedlock and live paycheck to substantial paycheck. Not that college, married parents and making enough money to save for retirement are bad things; they do indicate a sense of self-assuredness and stability. And this was research conducted by economists, after all.

Along came Science 3.0 with its promise of “combin[ing] the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today’s digital connectivity.” Yarrr!

So I mentioned my thoughts to Mark The Admin along with, ”Matey! This place has great potential for increasing interdisciplinary sharing and intradisciplinary depth. Hope this can grow from an online portal into live, physical spaces! A band of roving scientists!”

And thus Pirate Scientist was born.

Hello, I am Maitri. I am a geologist, technologist, blogger, world traveler (well, what sort of pirate isn’t?) and a lot of other things. Read more aboot me here.

Basically, I love reading, science and sharing knowledge. The more we know, the better the quality of our public discourse, the more rational our policy creation process and the less I want to jacktar a hornswaggler and threaten to throw him into Davy Jones’s locker. In coming posts, I hope to discuss topics that range all the way from the value of higher education, the history of science, socio-cultural norms and educational policy to science reporting (during, oh for instance, the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill), news of the geek and chasing the Kraken.

But, most of all, my aim here is to encourage DIY science and open access to results. I’m not kidding when I say I want to establish Maker Science Labs or “Tinker Zones” all over the country, especially in small towns that don’t have access to universities and all that comes with urban areas such as multiple libraries, bookstores, museums and sci-tech firms. I’d love to hear from you if you have similar interests and ideas. Chemistry sets, rock hammers and a bottle of rum for all!

Welcome aboard.