I was a math major from undergrad to doctorate, so obviously I think math is fun. Equally obvious to me (especially after teaching a variety of mathematical topics to college students), not everyone shares that opinion, which is too bad. Recently, though, I came across an organization devoted to making math fun for small children, …
This episode of Spencer Writes in the Library took place Thursday, January 29th around 3:00pm. The Spot Where am I working today? I’m on the south-ish side of the second floor of the west wing of the library. There are a few rooms back here that I’ve never really noticed before — I’m sitting at a row of desks …
Remember that Python usage survey that went around the interwebs late last year? Well, the results are finally out and I’ve visualized them below for your perusal. This survey has been running for two years now (2013-2014), so where we have data for both years, I’ve charted the results so we can see the changes …
Earlier this year, I wrote about the student at Duke University who reported she was paying for college by acting in pornographic movies. Her story received a lot of publicity, including much that decried the need for this woman to resort to a career in pornography to pay her tuition bills. As I asked at …
This is part 2, I guess, of my response to Jeremy Fox from his questions about the LTEE over at the Dynamic Ecology blog. It’s not an answer to his 2nd question, but it’s a partial answer to the first part of his 3rd question? (Have I got you confused already? Me, too.) Well anyhow, …
Photos from two meetings I attended last week. Some general comments on crypto-currencies: 1. Bitcoin doesn’t really solve any payment problems, unless of course you are a paranoid libertarian who hates “fiat” currencies. But why should you trust the Bitcoin Foundation any more than you trust a central bank? (See Bitcoin dynamics.) 2. Most potential users …
Every year, January 1st also marks works from around the world that would be entering the public domain thanks to the copyright laws in theirs respective countries. Public Domain Reviews put a list of creators whose work that are entering the public domain. http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/class-of-2015/ (Kandinsky! Whooh!) Center of Study for the Public Domain put a …
Over at the Dynamic Ecology blog, Jeremy Fox asked me some interesting questions about the history, philosophy, and science of the E. coli long-term evolution experiment. Perhaps mistakenly—in terms of time management, not my interest!—I agreed to try to answer them … though over what time frame, I’m not sure. Anyhow, here is Jeremy’s first question followed …
Ten years ago I posted this to my blog: Well 29 year old Leigh, the past 10 years have been very eventful. I have: finished a PhD become an aunt to 5 amazing human beings traveled to places I never imagined I would go: UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Poland, China, India, …
It violates the spirit of the World Trade Organization agreements. It turns its back on the single-market principle of the European Community. It upends the status of science as the neutral arbiter. Nonetheless, I am optimistic about the new legislation in the European Union that will give member states the power to ban gene-engineered crops …
With the cold weather and ice descending upon the Midwest, I’ve found myself spending more time watching HGTV than I normally do. My favorite shows are the fixer upper ones, like Property Brothers and Flea Market Flip. I really like the concept of upcycling and reusing older materials to create new uses, rather than buying …
When I found GradHacker, I was living in Chicago, away from my home campus, frantically preparing for my last comprehensive exam, conducting pre-dissertation research, and only sleeping about four hours a night—or day—or whenever I finally collapsed. The honesty of GradHacker authors was refreshing: other people had faced difficult circumstances too! (And lived to write …
This semester Kate Frederick, the Campus Archaeologist, and I are working on a joint paper that explores how pre-historic Indigenous people used the landscape we currently know as campus. This project was inspired by Kate’s interest and knowledge about the 5000 year old prehistoric site on campus and my interest in incorporating multiple voices in …
Ashton Carter won’t be the first physicist to lead the Department of Defense. Harold Brown was President of Caltech and Secretary of Defense under Carter. Caltech Oral History interview: BROWN: You asked me first for a brief review of my career before coming to Caltech. I grew up in New York [City] and went to Columbia University for …
The manifestation of dark energy on cosmological scales is well known: gravitational repulsion which leads to the accelerating expansion of the universe. Perhaps surprisingly, there are potentially observable effects on galactic length scales as well. The Dark Force: Astrophysical Repulsion from Dark Energy (http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.05952) Chiu Man Ho, Stephen D. H. Hsu Dark energy (i.e., a cosmological …
This semester is very exciting for me. It’s the first time that I get to create and teach a full course as the instructor. I’ve had opportunities to lecture as a teaching assistant, but for the most part I haven’t really had the chance to critically think about my pedagogical skills and style. This meant …
We’ll finish up “food ethics icons” month with the evil genius of the food/population debates. Everyone I know who ever met Garrett Hardin (1915-2003) spoke well of him. He was by all accounts a generous and open-minded man who welcomed philosophical inquiry and intellectual engagement. So don’t get me wrong when I call him “the …
This year’s Africa Cup of Nations is underway in Equatorial Guinea. RFI talks about African football and media coverage with Peter Alegi, an authority on the game in Africa and Professor of History at Michigan State University in the United States. [full text here.] Click below to listen to the interview. (iOS users click here.) …
This was originally written for Michigan Radio’s “The Next Idea” which included an interview with Zoe Clark that aired yesterday on their program “Stateside” and that can be listened to here. (scroll to the bottom of the page to see the audio link) =============================================== The Next Idea In the recent elections last November, …
This episode of Spencer Writes in the Library took place Thursday, January 22nd around 9:30am. The Spot Where am I working today? I’m on the north side of the second floor of the west wing of the library. I found myself a nice little table near the copy center and have set up shop with …
We’ve begun another semester, and it never fails to see how interested students can be in the behavioral dynamics of sex. To start this semester, we’re looking at a few case studies from primary literature on mate guarding. In short, my students might say that mate guarding is ‘stalking’ or ‘blocking’ other mates from screwing …
As the Open Access movement began in the 1990s, many established publishers have gradually adopted this publishing model, disseminating high-quality research to as wide of an audience as possible. Scientific publishing has been one of drivers in the field of open access. While there are continuing debates on the best practice of open access research, …
Two papers appeared in the latest issue of Nature—one from Farren Isaacs’ group and the other from George Church and colleagues—that presented, developed, and demonstrated a strategy for limiting the spread of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, in the event that they are accidentally released or deliberately applied to the environment. My Involvement with GMO Discussions in …
Who knew a grassy field in Maine would have so much to offer? Scientists have discovered a brand-new antibiotic called Teixobactin from the soil there, which could be great news because bacteria have so far shown no resistance to it in mice. Soil is actually a rich source for our antibiotics – scientists isolate and …
Harvard graduates explain why we have seasons. If only their understanding matched their confidence. See also Why is it dark at night? , Inside HBS: “kill, f^^k or marry” , Frauds! and High V, Low M: … high verbal ability is useful for appearing to be smart, or for winning arguments and impressing other people, …
One of the most senior figures in the UK’s environmental movement of recent decades, Jonathon Porritt, recently made the statement that it is now impossible for the large fossil fuel companies of today to adapt in “a timely and intelligent way to the imperative of radical decarbonization.” So begins a recent article in Clean …
Earlier this month, President Obama began releasing previews of some important proposals he will be making in his State of the Union speech tonight. Included is the idea of providing the first two years of community college for free for all students in the country. While this may sound like an intriguing idea, in an …
In the Princess Bride, the deceased body of Westley is brought to Miracle Max in order to bring him back to life. Famously, May says ‘There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive’ (Goldman 2007 from Arnold 2014). In the new issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, there is a focus on …
Bar-headed geese migrate annually between Mongolia and Tibet or India, which means they have to cross the high-elevation Himalayas. Scientists used to believe they flew at a constant, high altitude before coming down to land. However, after implanting tracking devices in migrating geese, scientists found out that they fly up and down to follow mountains’ …
Via Dominic Cummings (@odysseanproject), this long discussion of the history of venture capital, which emphasizes the now largely forgotten 1980s. VC in most parts of the developed world, even large parts of the US, resembles the distant past of the above chart. There is a big gap between Silicon Valley and the rest. Heat Death: …
On Wednesday I asked the students in my class to describe what they’d been doing earlier in the day, before our afternoon session began. While they scribbled I wrote alongside them, producing a dull summary of actions and toil—until I came to waiting … There is always waiting. It begins in the still-dark morning when …
All fields in the humanities have been transformed by digital technology, but none more so than oral history. The new book, Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement, published by Palgrave Macmillan, explores the impact that new technologies have had on the field. Edited by Doug Boyd and Mary Larson, the essays in the …
Today in the lab – a cuneiform tablet from circa 1800 B.C. It’s getting a special box with foam padding. This may be the oldest thing I’ve ever held in my hands. It’s kind of amazing. You can see it for yourself in the MSU Libraries’ Special Collections. Find it here. – Bexx Tweet
90% of all types of plastic, including styrofoam, can now be recycled using half the energy formerly required and not using any water! Traditionally, plastic was recycled by washing plastic, grinding it, heating it and cooling it with water, which wasted a lot of water and energy. The new technology makes higher-quality plastic pellets, the …
The New York Times covered the NCAA convention this past week discussing some of the turbulence around the organization and the big business of college sports. In Friday’s article by Ben Strauss, one of the suggestions thrown out by Prof. Andrew Zimbalist, economics professor at Smith College, was “to cap head coaches’ salaries at $500,000… …
Pressure is growing for outcomes testing in higher education. Already hundreds of schools allow graduating seniors to take the CLA+ (Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus) as evidence of important job skills. I doubt that the CLA+ adds much information concerning an applicant’s abilities beyond what can be obtained from existing cognitive tests such as SAT, ACT, …
The theme for ‘food ethics icons’ month is the world hunger/population growth tangle. Our thinking has been bracketed by two opposing nostrums: On the one hand, agriculture is in a race with population growth, on the other hand, the problem is not agriculture but the distribution of food we already have. Both of these are …
I have gotten busy enough with the start of a new semester that I haven’t posted all the science news I have saved in over a week. For now, I will do some briefer entries just so I can get through some of them. The California Condor used to be so close to extinction that …
Over the past two years, I’ve been commuting from my home to my university. It’s about an hour drive each way (unless it’s snowing, and then it could be two hours each way), and honestly- it has gotten to be quite boring. Over the last semester, I’ve changed from listening to books on tape, or …
Over the last few months, I’ve worked with the Michigan State University Extension office to publish two outreach articles on my research and the importance of natural shorelines. The first article discusses the importance of microhabitats for Largemouth and points out the benefits of a successful lakeshore restoration project that has created these habitats. The …
For those of us who have been involved in Campus Archaeology for a while, it is hard to believe that it has already been almost a decade since the first MSU excavation occurred. In honor of this, we are beginning the 2015 year by looking back at some of the major finds and events for the …
This is an advance copy of my January 19 and January 22 presentations at the Shenzhen International Innovation Auditorium Conference (hosted by the Shenzhen Municipal Government) and to the Chinese National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA, Beijing). I will be using the same presentation for both groups. For the CFSA I will review …
Many thanks to Natalie Baur for the request to talk about DH and Librarianship for Infotecarios. Hoping that some of what is said will be useful to folks seeking to get more involved in DH and librarianship more generally! Tell us a little bit about your academic background, your experience, and your professional interests that …
Michael Tietelbaum’s new book on STEM labor markets and human capital is reviewed by John McGowan. John and I attended Caltech together many years ago. Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent by Michael S. Teitelbaum Princeton University Press March 30, 2014 Introduction Falling Behind? is a recent (March 2014) book …
Science is sometimes frustrating. The work is often repetitive and even tedious. It can be hard to explain to our friends and families—and sometimes even to peers—what we’re doing and why we think it’s important and interesting. The current state of the academic job market is terrible. But science is also often fun. There’s the joy …
As reported by Stan Ulam in Adventures of a Mathematician: “A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories. One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between …
Interpreting cemeteries in order to understand the living population is a dangerous and difficult task. On the one hand, cemeteries are really our only form of information about the actual people who lived and died in prehistoric populations. On the other hand, we don’t know if the population buried at the cemetery is truly representative …
The paper below will appear in Int.J.Mod.Phys.A. We went through a strange series of referees during the last year, with reactions ranging from this result is correct but trivial to this result is highly nontrivial but possibly correct to, finally, this is a nice result and should be published. I would like to lock the first …
Every 4 years, Americans are tasked to elect the leader of one of the largest democratic nations in the world. Eager to have their voices heard, U.S. citizens from every state stand in line to cast their ballot for their favorite candidate. Yet, according to a research project spanning over a decade, many states have …
This episode of Spencer Writes in the Library took place Monday, January 12th around 9:30am. The Spot Where am I working today? I am in Grand Rapids, Michigan for a doctor’s appointment and thought that I might as well take advantage of a local library for this week’s post. There’s a little nook full of …