Monthly Archives: August 2012

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Matthew Francis

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Every year I ask some of the attendees of the ScienceOnline conferences to tell me (and my readers) more about themselves, their careers, current projects and their views on the use of the Web in science, science education or science communication. So now we continue with the participants of ScienceOnline2012. See all the interviews in this series here.

Today my guest is Matthew Francis (blog, Twitter).

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself?

”]”]I’m a physicist, freelance science writer, former college professor, ex-planetarium director, and wearer of jaunty hats. (And yes, that’s part of my standard biography.) I hold a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Rutgers University, and my undergraduate degree is from Central College, a small liberal arts college in Iowa. While I majored in physics, my minors were in math and English.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

As you can tell from the “former” and “ex-” in the paragraph above, my career has followed an unpredictable trajectory. I fully expected to retire from teaching at a college, but when my university faced serious financial troubles, they decided to eliminate the physics department. However, I’ve always loved writing, so I decided to see if losing my job could be turned into an opportunity. In my last year of teaching, I began a blog, “Galileo’s Pendulum“, and in the last six months started writing a book. I am also contributing physics editor for “Double X Science“, a blog aimed at providing good science content for and about women.

“Galileo’s Pendulum” covers a variety of topics in physics, astronomy, and related fields, mostly for non-scientists. I try to mix some lessons about how science works in practice into my writing as much as possible, since it’s an area of common misconceptions. In particular, as a theoretical physicist, I try to emphasize the importance of evidence in all aspects of science, since it’s too commonly assumed that coming up with “theories” is a matter of sitting alone in a room and thinking hard. Real science is far messier and more glorious than that – and there’s romance even in the messiness.

A similar theme plays in my book-in-progress, which is tentatively titled Back Roads, Dark Skies: a Cosmological Journey. For this book, I am traveling to various observatories and labs across the United States where the real work of cosmology is done, meeting scientists and viewing the equipment they use. Cosmology is big science: many projects involve hundreds of researchers, and the ways they go about learning about the Universe are as important as their discoveries. After all, the most important question one can ask in science is, “How do we know?”

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I still think of myself as an educator even now, though I’m no longer in the college classroom. I want to share the wonder of physics to those who think of it as something beyond them, or even something to fear. In this era when the very goals of education are being challenged (at least for the children of poor and working-class families), it seems more important than ever to stress the importance of science, not just in daily lives, but in our intellectual structure. Science can be a source of joy and wonder for everyone, whether they are scientists or not.

The Web and social networking allow me to connect with those who are truly interested in finding what I write. My audience isn’t huge, but it’s pretty diverse: I have people from Iran and clergy from Wisconsin, a few kids, and even a handful of professional physicists among my readers. I don’t think that would even be possible without the Web. Twitter is really my community, since I haven’t identified any other professional science writers in Richmond (yet at least). My best professional contacts in the last two years have come through Twitter, including the entire ScienceOnline community.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I started reading Sean Carroll’s “Preposterous Universe” website many years ago, but the first science blog I followed in earnest was Phil Plait’s “Bad Astronomy”, thanks to his earlier website debunking the Moon landing conspiracy nonsense. (For those joining late: a small but vocal group of people deny we ever landed astronauts on the Moon, and have a long list of “evidence” to support this view. Even if you don’t believe the testimonies of the people involved in the projects, the evidence in favor of the Moon landings is really strong, and Plait has done a really good job collecting it and debunking the conspiracy theorists.) Through his site, I discovered Carl Zimmer’s “The Loom”, Ed Yong’s “Not Exactly Rocket Science”, Jennifer Ouellette’s “Cocktail Party Physics”, and Sean Carroll’s later blog, “Cosmic Variance”.

I hesitate to even begin listing the blogs and writers I learned about through ScienceOnline, since there are so many! Suffice to say nearly every science writer I follow on a regular basis is part of that community, and many of the others I learned about through my friends in the ScienceOnline extended family.

What was the best aspect of ScienceOnline2012 for you? Any suggestions for next year? Is there anything that happened at this Conference – a session, something someone said or did or wrote – that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

I loved the chance to meet my online friends in real life, and interact with them in a structured but still informal setting. A lot of the best professional connections were actually out of the sessions: talking with people about what they do, and how. The session that inspired me the most was the “Geometry and Music” session led by Deborah Blum and David Dobbs: using geometry (which I use extensively in research) and music (which I am obsessed with) to recognize shapes within narratives in your own stories.

My first ScienceOnline was 2012, and I had the privilege of leading a session, despite my newbie status. I hope to be leading at least one session in 2013 as well (hint, hint).

Thank you so much – hope to see you soon!

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Posted in More Science, Space, Technology

Tagged scio12, scio12interviews, scio13

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 26th, 2012)

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

The week was too busy to finish this on Friday. Then on Saturday the news broke that Neil Armstrong died – something I wanted to highlight as a special topic – so I decided to wait another day and give people a chance to wrote posts and articles about Neil. So, with a delay, the weekly linkfest is here!

Blog of the Week:

We are all in the gutter is a an astronomy and astrophysics group blog. The title of the blog comes from the quote “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” from Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde. Emma, Niall, Rita and Stuart are astronomers, astrophysicists, star-gazers and space geeks at various career stages, having fun with their blog, exploring the universe from every angle they can possibly think of.

Top 10:

Unless They’re Zombies, Fossils Don’t Live by Brian Switek:

I hate the phrase “living fossil.” The term should be eradicated from the vocabulary of science writers, and anyone who employs it should be promptly encased in Carbonite. “Missing link” is the only slogan that pisses me off more. My acute allergic reaction to the idiom may be a little overwrought, I admit. But, to me, “living fossil” is nonsense that obscures more than it elucidates. Take the coelacanth, for example….

Hyenas Eschew Lent, Chew Donkeys Instead by Anne-Marie Hodge:

Anyone who has ever attended a holiday parade or gone on a summer vacation knows that cultures tend to create their own seasonal patterns. In much of Western culture, December is a time of much celebrating and feasting, while similarly wintry January is relatively dreary and dull (after New Year’s celebrations subside). This raises a question: how do the behaviors and culture of a society affect the animals that depend upon that society’s garbage for their food? The progressive encroachment of human settlements into the habitats of wild animals has opened opportunities for animals to avail themselves of human refuse. A raccoon in North America is likely to find a juicy watermelon rind in July and leftover turkey remains in November. Perhaps equally enticing for a roving dumpster-diver, but by no means nutritionally equivalent….

Why Is the Night Sky Turning Red? by Amy Shira Teitel:

The idea of a red sky at night used to invoke beautiful images of vibrant sunsets, the product of warm sunlight bathing the sky near the horizon. The adage of “red sky at night, sailor’s delight” refers to a calm night ahead; a red sunset suggests a high-pressure system in the west is bringing calm weather. But red skies at night have taken on a new meaning in recent decades. As outdoor lighting become increasingly prominent, our night skies are gradually turning from black to red….

When will we find life in space? by Phil Plait:

One of the reasons I love astronomy is that it doesn’t flinch from the big questions. And one of the biggest is: are we alone? Another reason I love astronomy: it has a good shot at answering this question…

Paleo-politics: The really long view by Will Femia:

…..The other explanation is that the Cretaceous ended when, 65 million years ago, an asteroid (or asteroids) slammed into the earth, right across the future-Gulf of Mexico at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Not only did the impact and resulting fallout from that asteroid kill the dinosaurs, it also wiped out huge quantities of marine life, including many of the “tiny marine plankton with carbonate skeletons” (I’m guessing some version of Coccolithophore? Anyone?) that would become the rich soil that slaves would farm on land their ancestors would inhabit in voting districts that would favor Democratic candidates around the turn of the second millennium of the Common Era……

What the Dark Knight knows about holding our urban lives together by Scott Huler:

There’s a lot not to love about The Dark Knight Rises, the crazyish new chapter in the latest Batman cycle: a series of actions and explosions so unconnected that they make a Rorschach test look like a syllogism by comparison; Marion Cotillard’s death scene, which lacked only her eyes rolling up and her tongue lolling sideways from her mouth to equal those put on by toddlers on playgrounds; and Christian Bale’s Batman growl — close your eyes and you think Cookie Monster is saving Gotham City….One thing the movie got right, though, is its focus on the infrastructure systems that serve as the beating and vulnerable heart of our urban existence. Every major plot point directly relates to the built environment and the networks that make every element of our lives possible….

Science For Princesses by Janet Stemwedel:

I have always known that I loved science, that delicious alliance of imagination and methodical testing that could help you figure out something about how a piece of the world worked. However, being born at the tail-end of the 1960s, I grew up in a culture that wanted me to know that girls were not supposed to like science. In fact, between toy commercials and TV shows, teachers and peers, I got the message pretty quickly that science is not something for girls. Rather, girls should turn their attention to more important matters . . . like being properly feminine. There was a way that girls were supposed to be—neat and tidy and pretty and pink and quiet and well-behaved. I was not any of those things. I didn’t want to be any of those things. I didn’t know how to be any of those things. And, as far as I could tell, trying to be those things was not going to help me get my hands on the science-y stuff that I wanted. So what was the point?….

How to Annoy E.O. Wilson by Michelle Nijhuis:

…….During a panel at the Aspen Environment Forum in Colorado, as she describes here, Emma piqued Wilson with her talk of making more nature — of expanding our definition of the natural world to include places humans have invaded, altered, and restored. Spending billions trying to return coastal areas like the Everglades to pre-Columbian “purity,” she added, is a lost cause. Better to invest in upslope reserves, and perhaps even learn to admire the tenacity of invasive species…..

Father’s age dictates rate of new mutations by Virginia Hughes:

With every passing year, men are increasingly likely to transmit new mutations to their children, according to the largest study yet of the so-called paternal age effect, published yesterday in Nature. The findings could help explain why older men are more likely to have a child with autism or schizophrenia than are younger men, the researchers say….

I Am Science…and a Nerd by Craig McClain:

I am a nerd. I was a nerd. I will be a nerd. Perhaps in kindergarten I wasn’t, where nerdom had difficulty establishing itself among the simple lessons of the alphabet, counting, and colors. In kindergarten, we are more or less the same in deficiencies and achievements. But after that, I am pretty confident my geek flag flew. I cannot remember ever being a bad student. Repeated straight A’s and the honor role defined me….

Special topic 1: Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong’s message to the future by Amy Shira Teitel

Neil Armstrong: Ace Engineer and Hotshot Test Pilot by Amy Shira Teitel

Neil Armstrong’s legacy went to waste but a new space race is on the cards by Alok Jha

Neil Armstrong: 1930 – 2012 by Phil Plait

Pow! ZOOM! To the Moon! by Phil Plait

Debunking myths about Neil Armstrong by James Oberg

Rocks remember, and so do we by Ethan Siegel

What Neil Armstrong Knew Is What We Never Will by Charles P. Pierce

Keep in mind as you put together your Neil Armstrong packages tonight… by Charles Apple

The Man and the Moon by Anthony Lane

As We Say Goodbye to Neil Armstrong, Should We Also Let Go of Our Space Fantasies? by John Horgan

For Neil Armstrong, the First Moon Walker, It Was All about Landing the Eagle by Andrew Chaikin

Neil Armstrong by Babbage

Neil Armstrong Talks About The First Moon Walk by Robert Krulwich

Neil Armstrong by Neil Gaiman

Neil Armstrong’s Last Interview by Jeff Marlow

RIP Neil Armstrong, star of the first big story of my news career by Steve Buttry

The Cold War Push Behind Neil Armstrong’s ‘One Small Step’ by Andrew C. Revkin

Rest in Peace, Neil Armstrong by Matthew Francis

Special topic 2: rape and pregnancy

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) serves on House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology by David Kroll

Here is Some Legitimate Science on Pregnancy and Rape and What Do You Do When There is No Best Dataset? A follow-up on pregnancy and rape statistics by Kate Clancy

The sperm don’t care how they got there, Rep. Akin by Emily Willingham

Sure, women cannot get pregnant from rape. Also, all mean people are ugly and puppies are immortal. by Melanie Tannenbaum

Legitimate rape, seminal priming, and preeclampsia by Jon Wilkins

Unfamiliar sperm, Tibetans, and cheese: Why evolutionary biology doesn’t excuse Todd Akin by Jeremy Yoder

What people who talk about “legitimate rape” really mean by Naomi McAuliffe

Todd Akin and the Anti-Science House Science Committee by Brandon Keim

‘Legitimate rape’ – a medieval medical concept by Vanessa Heggie

Backstory: the reporter who interviewed Akin by Mike Hoyt

A letter to Paul Ryan about forcible rape by Dr. Jen Gunter

Pregnancy Flowchart by Adam Weinstein

Hard words: Do we know what we’re talking about when we talk about rape? by Kathryn Blaze Carlson

The Crackpot Caucus by Timothy Egan

Why Sex Education Helps End Rape by Erica Grigg

Akin breakin’ science by Phil Plait

It’s trigger warning week by Laurie Penny

Rape exceptions aren’t legitimate by Irin Carmon

Where Akin got the idea that rape victims rarely get pregnant by Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard

An Open Letter to Rep. Akin From a Woman Who Got Pregnant From Rape by Shauna Prewitt

Todd Akin’s Abortion Position Reflects GOP Platform by Laura Bassett

Conservative Media Dismiss Akin “Rape” Comments As “Dumb,” But Rhetoric Is Reflected In GOP Policies by MIKE BURNS & SOLANGE UWIMANA

The Problem With Men Explaining Things by Rebecca Solnit

Todd Akin and the Right’s False Fact Machine by Josh Barro

Words and deeds by David Wescott

Rep. Todd Akin’s statements have a familiar ring to them… by Sassquach

Legitimate takedown: Todd Akin meets the women of the Internet by Virginia Heffernan

A Canard That Will Not Die: ‘Legitimate Rape’ Doesn’t Cause Pregnancy by Garance Franke-Ruta

The Official Guide to Legitimate Rape by Katie J.M. Baker

Todd Akin’s “Legitimate Rape” Comment Was Not a Misstatement. It Was a Worldview. by Laura Helmuth

Rep. Todd Akin’s Rape Remark At Odds With Science Of Pregnancy by Jeanna Bryner

What Does Todd Akin Think “Legitimate Rape” Is? by Amy Davidson

Special topic 3: superbug at NIH

The “NIH Superbug”: This Is Happening Every Day by Maryn McKenna

Genome detectives unravel spread of stealthy bacteria in a hospital by Ed Yong

Not a failure, a lesson. The NIH Clinical Center KPC Outbreak by Eli Perencevich

The NIH Superbug Story—a Missing Piece by Judy Stone

Hunting a Superbug by Deborah Blum

‘Superbug’ stalked NIH hospital last year, killing six by Brian Vastag

NIH should have notified it of superbug outbreak, Montgomery County official says by Brian Vastag

Like a Game of Clue, Genomics Tracks Outbreak, Revealing Evolution in Action by Ricki Lewis

Genome Detectives Solve a Hospital’s Deadly Outbreak by Gina Kolata

Govt. Gene Sleuths Stop Superbug That Killed 6 by The Associated Press

Best Images:

Drake equation: How many alien civilizations exist? by IIBStudio

Sunday Morning Anole Cartoon: When Lizard Biologists Compete by Rich Glor

If you were to summarise the world into 100 people, how would the population turn out? by Charlie Hilton

Conventional Wisdom by Randy Yeip

Are those pictures of Mars from the Curiosity rover? by Is Twitter Wrong?

Miss Insomnia Tulip’s Anatomical Macaroons by AnatomyUK

Votive Ear by Jai Virdi

Glow-in-the-dark cockroaches look like Jawas by Jess Zimmerman

London Zoo animal audit – in pictures by The Guardian

Animals in the News by Alan Taylor

Best Videos:

How Did Apollo-era Astronauts Sleep in Space? and Learning to Land on the Moon by Amy Shira Teitel

Amazing Color Differences In Lizard Populations Separated By Little Distance by Jonathan Losos

Can dinosaurs still be badass with feathers? by Charlie Jane Anders

Camera shutter speed synchronized with helicopter blade frequency by whataboutlarry1

Why Insect Wings Don’t Fracture by Sid Perkins

The High-Resolution Life of a Neuron by Brandon Keim

Curiosity Drops in on Mars in High-Res by JPLnews

Doodling in Math Class: Connecting Dots by Vi Hart

Jessica Wise: How fiction can change reality by TEDEducation

Learning By Play by Nadja Popovich

Science:

Three Ways of Looking at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Miriam Goldstein

Thomas Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science by John Naughton

Kuhn the Irrationalist by Peter Coles

A brief history on how I became an Animal Behaviourist… by Kate Mornement

How Domed Dinosaurs Grew Up by Brian Switek

Microbes manipulate your mind by Mo Costandi

Kissing bug – the real vampire of Latin America by Samantha Price

Is solidarity a thing of the past? by Kurt Cobb

No, immunology should get the same scrutiny as psychiatry. And vice versa. by Tim Skellet

So, you’ve dropped a vial or lost a sample box in your liquid nitrogen container…now what? by Brian Krueger

Breeder by Melissa Wilson-Sayres

‘Beam Us Up, Mr. Scott!’: Why Misquotations Catch On by Maria Konnikova

Superbug Summer Books: EXPERIMENT ELEVEN by Maryn McKenna

Chemical Free Dirt (for the Fairytale Garden) and Smoked Out and No, no. Not Nicholas Kristof on Chemicals Again by Deborah Blum

Why are languages so different—and disorderly? by Philip Ball

Aphids, carotenoids and photosynthesis by Ian Le Guillou

Do Be a Dick (sometimes): Emotions and Skeptics by Ashley F. Miller

Tesla’s Revenge: Filmmakers Kickstart Electrifying Docudrama About Cult Genius by Hugh Hart

The neurology of Psalm 137 by Vaughan Bell

Book review: Connectome by Sebastian Seung by Moheb Costandi

TGIPF: Penis in My Head by Christie Aschwanden

First US stem cell trial for autistic children launches today by Kathleen Raven

Stem cell clinical trial for autism: proceed with caution by Emily Willingham

Is a trial of stem cell therapy in autism scientifically and ethically justified? by Orac

Would Rachel Carson Embrace ‘Frankenfoods’? – This Scientist Believes ‘Yes’ by Pamela Ronald

Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout by Herman Pontzer

Morality and Basketball by Sean Carroll

Republican spending plan casts shadow on science by Amy Maxmen

Making Liquor Recommendations by Dr24hours

Richard Dawkins in Playboy by Faye Flam

Amateur Scientists Discover Asian Needle Ant Has Expanded its Range by Thousands of Miles, Unnoticed by Rob Dunn

Dogs Chasing Their Tails Are Akin to Humans With OCD and Celebrating 1,447 Years of the Loch Ness Monster and Go to Sleep, All-Nighter Cram Fests Don’t Work and Want to Avoid a Mid-Life Crisis? Get Friends and Crafty Bonobo Shows Humans Aren’t the Only Stone Tool-Makers by Rachel Nuwer

Asperger’s Doesn’t Make You an Asshole by Heina

Bodies in art, art in bodies by John Hawks

NASA’s Amazing Gliding Gemini Capsules by Amy Shira Teitel

Can Identical Twins Get Away With Murder? by Brian Palmer

What can survive on Mars? by Steven A. Edwards

How to Learn a Language Nobody Speaks and Lance Armstrong Surrenders Against Doping Charges and Will be Banned for Life by Rose Eveleth

Rockstars, Ethograms and Behavior (Problems) by Julie Hecht

Planetary alignment pyramid scheme by Phil Plait

We Can Save the World by Eating Bugs and Drinking Urine by Erin Biba

Clothes Make the Man—Literally and The Neuroscience of Optimism by Jordan Gaines

Wasps Follow Order of Succession When Queen Dies and The Shambulance: Zero-Calorie Noodles? by Elizabeth Preston

Friday Weird Science: This quail has a cloth fetish by Scicurious

Vowel Movement: How Americans near the Great Lakes are radically changing the sound of English. by Rob Mifsud

How to Teach a Horse the Rules of the Road by Miriam Kramer

Remnants of a stellar suicide pact and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Scientific Talk by Matthew Francis

Helium-Breathing Gibbons Sing Like Human Sopranos by Tanya Lewis

Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos by The Siberian Times reporter

The birthplace of English? by Tim De Chant

Anti-Terrorism Campaigns and the Criminalization of Public Non-Conformity by Gwen Sharp

Hormones Explain Why Girls Like Dolls & Boys Like Trucks by Natalie Wolchover

The Nature of Consciousness: How the Internet Could Learn to Feel by Steve Paulson

New Morbid Terminology: Coffin Birth by Katy Meyers

Are You a Hero or a Bystander? by Sue Shellenbarger

Invasive species provide important lessons for surviving climate change and New species of barbet discovered in Peru by GrrlScientist

Just how big were dinosaurs? by Dave Hone

How Plantain Trees Could Become an Energy Source by Rhitu Chatterjee

Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist by Ann Finkbeiner

WWWTP? Time’s Aspirin Structure Causes Headache by See Arr Oh

Candidates clam up on climate by Curtis Brainard

Overlooked and Underfoot: Sidewalk Cleaning in New York City by Ashley Taylor

Spawning coral monitored for effects of climate change by Melissa Gaskill

10 Myths About Space Travel That Make Science Fiction Better by Charlie Jane Anders

Goo-eating snakes and the eggs that evade them by Andrew Durso

Bonobo Stone Tales: The Making Of A Story by Charles Choi

Replacement Parts and Newly discovered rat that can’t gnaw or chew by Ed Yong

Artist Patricia Olynyk inspired by light pollution by Casey Rentz

Scoop: A preview of Romney’s energy plan by Philip Bump

Neuroscience: Solving The Hard-On Problem by Neuroskeptic

Every Step You Take by Wendy Lovelady

Fighting the stereotype that math is only for boys by Patricia Valoy

The Wall Street Journal Does It Again: Another Whopper Of A Lie On Climate Science by Dana Nucitelli

It’s all about objective multiples… by Mia Cobb

Medieval Women as Physicians by Tracy Barrett

Was Vincent van Gogh Color Blind? It Sure Looks Like It by Colin Schultz

Ego v. Efficiency at the U.S. National Science Board by Jeffrey Mervis

The Science of Bad Neuroscience by Neurobonkers

Social Position Drives Gene Regulation of the Immune System by Daniel Lende

Q&A: Alexandra Cousteau by Emily Fisher

The evolutionary history of dragons, illustrated by a scientist by Annalee Newitz

Egg-ceptionally Bad by Cassandra Willyard

The Free Will Confusion (1): On “My Brain Made Me Do It!” by Stephan Schleim

Should we teach algebra? by Paul Raeburn

The Rats of War: Konrad Lorenz and the Anthropic Shift by Liam Heneghan

Why College Binge Drinkers Are Happier, Have High Status by Maia Szalavitz

How many species are there? by Zen Faulkes

Media, Publishing, Technology and Society:

How to Succeed in Journalism when You Can’t Afford an Internship by Alexandra Kimball

Who are the offline-academics? by Katie Wheat

Sick of Impact Factors: Coda by Stephen Curry

Taking the Impact Factor seriously is similar to taking creationism, homeopathy or divining seriously by Bjoern Brembs

There are cons to open acces? Really? by Bjoern Brembs

“You’re not entitled to your own facts” vs. That’s your opinion. Kiss my ad. by Jay Rosen

Twitter rewrites the script for political conventions by Martha T. Moore

Barbara Mack: best media lawyer I ever worked with by Steve Buttry

Ask A Writer: “How Do I Write What The Audience Wants To Read?” by Chuck Wendig

The End of My Writing Career / Author Sharon Potts by Clay Stafford

Research As You Go by Steven Johnson

The ridiculous SVP embargo is back again by Ross Mounce

Intellectual power and responsibility in an age of superstars by Daniel W. Drezner

Coming in the side door: The value of homepages is shifting from traffic-driver to brand by Adrienne LaFrance

Google Hiring Data Reveals Two Things Women Can Do To Get Hired And Promoted More by Nicholas Carlson

A Day In My Life As A Freelance Science Writer by Charles Choi

Turn Off the Phone (and the Tension) by Jenna Wortham

Adulthood, Delayed: What Has the Recession Done to Millennials? by Derek Thompson

Why Are Young People Ditching Cars for Smartphones? by Jordan Weissmann

The Cheapest Generation by Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissmann

How Wikipedia Manages Sources for Breaking News by Heather Ford

Ex-NPR Hill reporter: Lied to daily by Patrick Gavin

Report: Social network demographics in 2012 by Pingdom

6 questions journalists should be able to answer before pitching a story by Tom Huang

Plagiarism, defamation and the power of hyperlinks and The billion-dollar question: What is journalism for? and Why it’s better for fact-checking to be done in public by Mathew Ingram

Rutgers Professor’s Research Shows Social Network Sites Foster Close and Diverse Connections by Lisa Intrabartola

Don’t blame Twitter when journos tweet stupid things; blame stupidity by Steve Buttry

How long-form journalism is getting ‘a new lease of life’ in the digital world by Rachel McAthy

Why fact-checking matters by Emily Willingham

Rotary Dial by Ftrain

The closing of American academia by Sarah Kendzior

Be More Productive. Take Time Off. by Jason Fried

Journalist Of The Day: SciAm’s Bora Zivkovic talks about the evolution of social by Chao Li

Blogs of the Week so far:

May 11, 2012: Academic Panhandling
May 18, 2012: Anole Annals
May 25th, 2012: Better Posters
June 1st, 2012: Vintage Space
June 8th, 2012: Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog
June 15th, 2012: Russlings
June 22nd, 2012: Parasite of the Day
June 29th, 2012: March of the Fossil Penguins
July 6th, 2012: Musings of a Dinosaur
July 13th, 2012: Contagions
July 21th, 2012: Life is short, but snakes are long
July 27th, 2012: Science Decoded
August 11th, 2012: Powered By Osteons
August 18th, 2012: Do you believe in dog?

Comments Off on The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 26th, 2012)

Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Evolution, Health, Mind & Brain, More Science, Space, Technology

Tagged blogging, The Scienceblogging Weekly

Eight is eternity

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

After some years on Usenet newsgroups, commenting on other people’s blogs, writing diaries on campaign blogs and places like DailyKos, I finally started my own first blog on this date in 2004. Compared to a bunch of my friends, eight years of blogging makes me a relative new-comer. But I understand how eight years might seem like eternity to those who just started.

Eight years is sufficient time for a blog (and blogger) to undergo quite a lot of changes. I started out writing about politics. Moved to science later. Now I split my time about halfway between science communication (and other thoughts on the media) and science itself. My blog split into three blogs in early 2005, then re-fused back into a single blog – and got a new name, “A Blog Around The Clock” – in June of 2006, when I joined Scienceblogs.com. After #PepsiGate in summer 2010, I moved the blog to WordPress, and, once we launched here at Scientific American, the blog moved here as well. And while this is still my personal blog for my own musings, I tend to spend much more time managing the network, editing posts for Guest Blog, Expeditions and The SA Incubator, and using other outlets, online and offline, to promote science, science communication, and more.

Blogging did a lot for me – I now have a big online and offline community, lots of friends, invitations to travel, and I got two jobs (including this one) directly due to my blogging. I still do not understand exactly why – I never suffered from Impostor Syndrome during my ten years in research, but have it badly as a writer, blogger and editor. Still bewildered that people take time to read my 40,000-word screeds! But thank you all for doing it, for whatever reason you do. And thank you for supporting me all these years – it’s now time for payback (or is that ‘pay-forward’), welcoming new people to the community, promoting new bloggers and writers, helping other people succeed. I have no intention of ever stopping, so please come by every now and then and say Hello.

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Posted in More Science

It is here!

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

What’s in the box?

Let’s open it, shall we?

It is here! The Open Lab 2012!

Official publication date is September 18th. There will be a lot of interesting promotional events, online and offline, before, on and after that day.You can pre-order right now!

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 18th, 2012)

Posted on August 18, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Blog of the Week:

Do you believe in dog? is a brand new blog. It is written by two dog researchers, one in New York City, the other in Yarra Valley just outside of Melbourne, Australia. Julie Hecht you may already know from her wonderful blog Dog Spies, her writing in The Bark, or her research which we covered here at SciAm. She studies (and teaches about) dog cognition. Mia Cobb, the Australian, did her research in animal behavior on birds and ants, but now works on issues of dog shelters, welfare and performance science of working dogs. What is the coolest thing about the blog is that the two of them write for each other, addressing each other in each post, thus teaching and learning from each other in a dialogue to which we are all invited to participate in and contribute.

Top 10:

Tales from the OR by Summer Ash:

WARNING: This post contains my blood and guts, literally. If you’re squeamish, I recommend skipping this one. What follows is my journey through the operating room at Columbia-Presbyterian on July 18, 2012. Apologies, but I couldn’t help starting off with yet another pop culture reference (this time from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore)….

An example of why it is important to distinguish evolution as fact, theory, and path. by T. Ryan Gregory:

I, and others, have pointed out that there are three aspects of evolution: evolution as fact, evolution as theory, and evolution as path. Evolution as fact refers to the historical reality that species are related through common ancestry. This is supported by a massive amount of evidence from a wide array of independent sources. Evolution as theory refers to the proposed explanations for how “descent with modification” occurs — mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, etc. Evolution as path refers to the actual patterns that have occurred during the history of life, such as when certain events (e.g., branching points, extinctions, etc.) took place, how lineages are related, when and how many times certain traits evolved, and such. The important point is that these three components are largely independent…

The Childhood Aquatic by John Romano:

There is a structurally integral part of my psyche that is the keystone to my existence. I am not sure how it was placed in such a vital position, but it seems this part of me is embedded in my DNA. Something that I can never remember being without. The absolute and total fascination with the natural world….

Abraham Lincoln and The Embalmer by Romeo Vitelli:

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865 shocked a nation still recovering from four years of bloody civil war. Along with the hunt for his killers and the uncovering of the assassination plot against the President and several other members of his administration, there was also the logistic nightmare of his funeral and the need to transport the President’s body by train from Washington D.C. to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Since the funeral train would retrace the route that Lincoln had traveled to Washington following his election, the body would be viewed by millions of mourners along the way during the numerous planned stops. All of which raised the question of how to keep the body preserved long enough to reach its destination. Considering the fact that funeral embalming was a relatively new development at that time, some very special arrangements needed to be made…

Inspiration from bassist Victor Wooten shows me a new way to deal with my “child-as-scientist” frustrations by Marie-Claire Shanahan:

I have a confession to make: I cringe a little every time I see a school science or science outreach program justified by saying something like, “Young children are natural scientists, truly curious about the world” (That particular quote is from the Delaware Museum of Natural History). I feel like a curmudgeon about it because it often comes with really good intentions to get students actively involved in doing science (something I definitely support)….

How a Tick Bite Made Me Allergic to Meat by Helen Chappell:

The last time I ate a hamburger, I spent the night in the emergency room. There wasn’t anything wrong with the hamburger itself—aside from being a bit overdone—but it sent me into anaphylactic shock. It wasn’t always this way…

Are wolves really all that? by DeLene Beeland:

Have conservation scientists become carried away, touting the ecological benefits of wolves where there are perhaps — dare I say it? — not as many as we believe there to be? Perhaps some people in the media, and even some in science, have gotten carried away with the ecological changes that wolves are actually capable of mediating, says globally-renowned wolf biologist L. David Mech in his most recent paper “Is science in danger of sanctifying the wolf?” …

Losing One’s Head: A Frustrating Search for the ‘Truth’ about Decapitation by Lindsey Fitzharris:

If you ever find yourself in a pub with me, chances are that at some point, the conversation will turn to death. Not just death, but the terrifying and horrible ways people have succumbed to it in the past. I have often heard a story retold about a man who attended the execution of his friend during the French Revolution. Seconds after the guillotine fell, the man retrieved the severed head and asked it a series of questions in order to determine whether or not it was possible to retain consciousness after decapitation. Through a system of blinking, the victim allegedly communicated his message back to his friend. The ending to this story changes according to the whims of the narrator… or perhaps the number of drinks he or she has consumed by that time. I wondered: was this the 18th-century equivalent to an urban legend? Or could there, in fact, be a degree of truth in this ghastly tale?….

A Dirty, Deadly Bite by Brian Switek:

Dragons aren’t real. At least, the fire-breathing wyverns and coiling wyrms of medieval lore aren’t. Those reptilian menaces were products of superstition and pre-scientific ideas about prehistoric creatures. They were ugly amalgamations inspired by our fears and actual fossil remains of long-extinct mammals and dinosaurs. But in the early 20th century, reporters excitedly relayed the discovery of what quickly became known as the Komodo dragon – ten foot long lizards that had coexisted with humans on South Pacific islands for thousands of years, but had only just been recognized by western science….

The Itsy Bitsy Drummer by Helen Shen:

Rrrr… RRR… Thack! Thack! Thrusting his front legs skyward, the male jumping spider shakes his rear end to send thumps, scrapes, and buzzes through the ground. He’s playing for a female’s attention, dazzling her eight eyes with semaphore while drumming out seductive seismic signals. A few missteps could turn the spider’s performance into a dinner show—with the star as the main dish. The ferocious female demands precise choreography, set to a groovy beat that UC Berkeley behavioral ecologist Damian Elias is working to decipher….

Best Images:

On Cephalopods and Science Fiction by Jen Richards

Beautiful periodic table from LIFE magazine’s 1949 special on the atom by Frank Swain

Curiosity’s photos (cartoon) by Viktor Poór

A bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod on a frog on a bump on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea!<!–

The Spider Wars by bonybones

UNDERCOVER by Jun Takahashi

The Olympics Are Over and Here Are the Best Infographics by Rose Eveleth

They fell out of the sky! by Bill Harding

Elgar’s Explosion by Eva Amsen

Teaching history by Zach Weinersmith

Old Friends by Beatrice the Biologist

Tasting the rainbow: The ants whose multi-coloured abdomens show exactly what they’ve been eating by Mohamed Babu

Anole Raids A Hummingbird Feeder by Karen Morris

Unicorn Blood Parasite by The-Episiarch

Cures of all Kinds by Jai Virdi

Best Videos:

The GMO Song: “OMG GMOs!” by Andrew Bean, David Holmes, Sharon Shattuck, and Krishnan Vasudevan

Do watch this – probably the best ever debris flow video, from Austria last week by Dave Petley

Tricky Mister! Indirect Sperm Transfer in Primitive Hexapods by The Bug Chicks

Helmet Cam Strapped to Hunting Falcon Captures “Birds-Eye-View” Footage by Michael Zhang

Seat vibration test: oscillate the human by Marc Abrahams

Lice on a Bird: Convergent Evolution in action! by Bug Girl

Science:

Where Fire Meets the Sea by Tanya Lewis

Curiosity Landing: What’s With All the Peanuts? and Apollo’s Youthful Glow and The Soviets’ First Space ‘Rendezvous’ by Amy Shira Teitel

The benefits of seeing a “challenge” where others see a “threat.” and Why do swimmers hate Lane 8? and The psychology of doping accusations: Which athletes raise the most suspicion? by Melanie Tannenbaum

Could you be an Olympic athlete? by Catherine de Lange

Mysterious Tides: Toxic blooms of marine algae are getting worse, and some think we’re to blame. by Marissa Fessenden

Astrobiology: Worth It? by GunnarDW

Olympics Physics: The Long Jump and Linear Regression by Rhett Allain

Diseases That Just Won’t Quit by Tim Wall

Think Like a Doctor: A Peculiar Heartbeat Solved! by Lisa Sanders

The Bullying Culture of Medical School by Pauline Chen

Two Tales of Symbiosis by Elio Schaechter

Where the Minutes Are Longer: The Weird Science of Telling Time on Mars by Rebecca J. Rosen

Stop Calling Sherlock a Sociopath! Thanks, a Psychologist. by Maria Konnikova

Why cocaine users should learn Bayes’ Theorem by Precocity

Science on crack, 2: Walter White & cooking crystal meth by Puff the Mutant Dragon

We live in a geocentric world! by Thony C.

Murder by Physics by Matthew Francis

In Vietnamese community, treating taboos on cancer by Erin Loury

Years After Slash and Burn, Brazil Haunted by ‘Black Carbon’ and Science Takes Fat Out Of Chocolate, Replaces It With Fruit and Defending a Sanctuary With Paint and Song by Rachel Nuwer

Why We Need Ecological Medicine by Rob Dunn

Is PTSD A Product of War, or Of Our Times? by David Dobbs

A very modern trauma by Vaughan Bell

Curious about Curiosity: the Science Lab on Mars (Part I) and Search for Water (Part II) and Life on Mars (Part III) by Claire.W

Popping up trouble with butter and Alzheimer’s by biochembelle

A New Species Discovered … On Flickr by Adam Cole

Cells = drugs = government regulation? by Ada Ao

On the loss of a mentor: Al Malkinson, lung cancer researcher, scholar, gentleman by David Kroll

The Hidden Power of Whale Poop by Brandon Keim

What do you do when you’re sick? by Jai Virdi

Choice of Wood in Cremation Pyres by Katy Meyers

Food and trust of science and Does a Ph.D. train you to head a lab? by Zen Faulkes

Africa Grows Too Hot to Grow Chocolate by Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato

Community health workers help HIV patient change attitude, life by Helen Shen

Hyenas Show It’s Better to Be Creative than Try, Try Again and Close Look at Bison DNA Reveals Our Dirty Fingerprints by Elizabeth Preston

CDC: Pretty Much Everyone Is Fat by Maryn McKenna

Why did people start mummifying their dead in the driest place on Earth? by Ed Yong

Found in translation: where do cures come from? by Jenny Rohn

Mouse Eyes Come With Built-In Bird Detectors by Sophie Bushwick

Atop Everest, two Sherpas and a watchmaker forged a friendship that changed their lives by Samantha Larson

Here’s an Omical Tale: Scientists Discover Spreading Suffix by Robert Lee Hotz

Flavors of Uncertainty: The Difference between Denial and Debate by Wendee Holtcamp

Tracks of an Oak Killer by Erin Loury

What is fair in the Olympics? Is sex a special case? and What is DNA? by Genegeek

That Eternal Question by Nicholas Suntzeff

Choosing the Paths Less Traveled? There’s an App for That by Henry Grabar

“Canopy” Meg Lowman (forest ecologist) – podcast by Samantha Larson

Scientific reproducibility, for fun and profit by John Timmer

Good Scientist! You Get a Badge. by Carl Zimmer

Reproducing Scientific Results – On Purpose by Derek Lowe

Common Lab Dye Found to Interrupt Formation of Huntington’s Disease Proteins by Kathleen Raven

No, that’s not a picture of a double sunset on Mars and An unreal Mars skyline by Phil Plait

How to Patch the PhD Problem by Alison McCook

Lead’s Everlasting Legacy by Meghan D. Rosen

Tweeting my genome #twenome and “Run away!”: a one-size-fits-all solution by Alex Brown

The Rise of the Three-Parent Family by Annalee Newitz

The Political Benefits of Taking a Pro-Climate Stand in 2012 by Connie Roser-Renouf, Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach

The Circadian Advantage: How Sleep Patterns Benefit Certain NFL Teams by David K. Randall

Book Review: Newjack Guarding Sing Sing by Erin Podolak

Dear HigherEd Communicators: John Tesh is Kicking Our Asses by Elizabeth Monier-Williams

When Yellow Fever Came to the Americas by Michelle Ziegler

The Mind of a Flip-Flopper and Cow Week: Angry cows vs. angry mothers by Maggie Koerth-Baker

PhD2.0 and anecdotes from the trenches by Jeanne Garbarino

The Sea Longs for Red Devils by Daniela Hernandez

Cooperating For Selfish Reasons by Miss Behavior

The Mix-Up that Ended the World by Erik Vance

Intimate Life of Mosquitoes by Lowell Goldsmith

What Anti-Trafficking Advocates Can Learn from Sex Workers: The Dynamics of Choice, Circumstance, and Coercion by danah boyd

Confessions of a Fake Scientist by Phil Edwards

Baby, You Light Up My World Like Nobody Else by Rachel Wang

Nothing Says Baby-Makin’ Like Desiccated Bacon and Scientists create a “Dow Jones” for ocean health by Allie Wilkinson

The Evolution of Shark Week, Pop-Culture Leviathan by Ashley Fetters

The Smell of Fear (No Tweets Necessary) by Natalie Angier

Post-Antipsychiatry by The Neurocritic

Where Have All The Cults Gone? and Is Poker A Game of Skill or Luck? by Neuroskeptic

Brain’s Drain: Neuroscientists Discover Cranial Cleansing System by Daisy Yuhas

This Woman Wants You to Buy Her, Piece by Piece by Rose Eveleth

My Brain Made Me Do It: Psychopaths and Free Will and How PTSD and Addiction Can Be Safely Treated Together and Couples Therapy Can Help PTSD and Improve Relationships by Maia Szalavitz

On quack cancer cures, and “alternative medicine” as religion by Xeni Jardin

Scientists can block heroin addiction now? and Offbeat tales: The summer heat takes its toll and Morning wrap-up by Paul Raeburn

How to Put a Curator in a Box: Part 1 and Ask an Exhibitionist #1: What’s the fake water? by Helen Chappell

Sharks and lasers, not just for entertainment! by Craig McClain

Giant cluster phenomenally fertile by Nadia Drake

Emma Marris: In Defense of Everglades Pythons and A Song Tries to Go Beyond the ‘OMG’ Reaction to GMOs by Andrew Revkin

The Emerging Revolution in Game Theory by The Physics arXiv Blog

“A simple feat… only expensive”: The Oatmeal tries saving Tesla’s lab by Casey Johnston

How many colors are really in a rainbow? by Ethan Siegel

Spiders Weave Better on LSD-25 by Clyde

Are Drug Companies Faking an Innovation Crisis? Uh, No. by Derek Lowe

Gorilla Joy Without a Doubt by Marc Bekoff

Turning Trauma Into Story: the Benefits of Journaling by Jordan Gaines

A Lesson in Rocketry by Marie-Claire Shanahan

PhD what is it good for? #leavingacademia by Jerry Nguyen

Contraception, healthcare and the costs women will leave behind by Katie Rogers and Ruth Spencer

The problem with poker by Pete Etchells

Rare Discovery: Hook-Legged Spider Found in Oregon Cave by Douglas Main

Why I’m Working Toward my Ph.D. at a Museum by Alejandro Grajales

How not to criticize psychiatry, part 1 by Tim Skellet

Book Review: The Wolverine Way, by Douglas Chadwick by DeLene Beeland

On Sciences and Humanities: Reflections on Coyne and Konnikova by German Dziebel

Citizen scientists may beat the pros in identifying at-risk species by Kate Shaw

The Long-Lived Legacy of the Cambrian’s “Wonderful Life” by Brian Switek

Bigger and Smaller by Lucy E. Hornstein

Scissor Sisters by Sally Adee

Brain network: social media and the cognitive scientist (pdf) by Tom Stafford and Vaughan Bell

Media, Publishing, Technology and Society:

Sick of Impact Factors by Stephen Curry

A smear campaign against Impact Factors…and the Sheep of Science by Drugmonkey

Deep impact: Our manuscript on the consequences of journal rank by Bjoern Brembs

Chess ratings and Impact Factor and Self archiving science is not the solution by Zen Faulkes

On publishing in PLoS One, and what’s the matter with ecology? by C. Titus Brown

Should supreme court justices use Google? by Paul Raeburn

Geneticists eye the potential of arXiv and Neanderthal sex debate highlights benefits of pre-publication by Ewen Callaway

9 ways to find helpful people and organizations to follow on Twitter by Steve Buttry

Instead of a press release: Options to add to your press release diet by Denise Graveline

Jonah Lehrer and the Problems with “Pithy” Science Writing by Karthika Muthukumaraswamy

Using Links as Citations Helps Gizmodo Defeat a Defamation Claim–Redmond v. Gawker Media by Eric Goldman

Discover magazine moving to Wisconsin and Discover magazine update by Paul Raeburn

New! New! New! (not yet) and If I were making a Twitter clone… and Making a Twitter clone, day II by Dave Winer

Magazines Don’t Have a Digital Problem, They Have a Bundling Problem by Hamish McKenzie

Should journalists specialize? by Kallen Dewey Kentner

Science Outreach in North Carolina by Russ Campbell

Stop Publishing Web Pages by Anil Dash

Author Platform Lessons from #1 New York Times Bestseller Rebecca Skloot by Dan Blank

To Think, To Write, To Publish by Maria Delaney

Do We Need Another Information Sharing Platform? by Jalees Rehman

How The American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps by Debra Leigh Scott

13 ways of looking at Medium, the new blogging/sharing/discovery platform from @ev and Obvious by Joshua Benton

How To Lose Twitter Followers by Neuroskeptic

What to Do With Political Lies by Garance Franke-Ruta

Science Communication in the PhD process by Heather Doran

Science News staffers complain about misappropriation of their copy by UPI and UPI’s second response on misuse of copy by Paul Raeburn

UPI shirks responsibility by Curtis Brainard

News stories that aren’t news by John L. Robinson

Student Paper Editors Quit at University of Georgia by RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Letter from the Editor in Chief by Polina Marinova

Students walk out on University of Georgia newspaper by Andrew Beaujon

UGA Red & Black staff walks out today in protest. Is it now Red & Dead? by Maureen Downey

Witness describes confrontation between Grady NewSource Reporter and Red & Black Publisher by Grady Newsource

Study: Journalists’ lousy understanding of fair use leads to self-censorship by Andrew Beaujon

Five types of problem writer by Ann Friedman

Jonah Lehrer’s Mistake — And Ours by Peter Sims

Making Studies Out of Nothing at All by Taylor Kubota

On being a journalist, getting quotes by Razib Khan

Mendeley Acquires SciLife, a Social Network for Scientists and Researchers by Darrell Etherington

Nikola Tesla museum campaign earns $500,000 online in two days by Adam Gabbatt

Lessons on the Internet for LAMs from The Oatmeal: Or, Crowdfunding and the Long Geeky Tail by Trevor Owens

Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations by Pew

The Update by Matt Thompson

Metrics, metrics everywhere: How do we measure the impact of journalism? by Jonathan Stray

Why we are poles apart on climate change and Doing science is different from communicating it — even when the science is the science of science communication by Dan Kahan

Hey, Twitter — shouldn’t it be about the users? by Mathew Ingram

The first steps towards a modern system of scientific publication by Joe Pickrell

Reflections on science blogging by Puff the Mutant Dragon

Blogs of the Week so far:

Comments Off on The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 18th, 2012)

Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Evolution, Health, Mind & Brain, More Science, Space, Technology

Tagged blogging, The Scienceblogging Weekly

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Helen Chappell

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Today my guest is Helen Chappell (Twitter).

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your background? Any scientific education?

I’m a recovering physicist from North Carolina, and I recently returned to the Old North State after three years’ exile at a Colorado grad school studying nanocrystalline solar materials. Turns out I’m too much of a generalist at heart to be happy doing physics research, so I escaped into science journalism in 2011 via the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship Program (highly recommended for any would-be science journalists out there doing research). I also have a background in informal education — I used to give star talks and develop summer camps, among other things, at a planetarium — so I’ve ended up sort of floating around between research, education, and writing circles. That meant ScienceOnline was right up my alley. I wish I’d heard about it before last year!

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

As of this spring, I’m an exhibit developer at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. My path has been informal education -> astronomy research -> materials science research -> chemical physics research -> science journalism -> informal education. Lots of meandering to end up almost in the same place, I suppose, but exhibit development is an amazing fit for me so far. It has a lot of the variety of journalism with less pressure, and there’s time to really pay attention to your craft. I also get to work closely with scientists, so my research background is a huge help.

I’m also trying to keep my foot wedged in the door of the writing world, by doing a tiny bit of freelance work here and there (I had a recent piece for Discover), blogging for work at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences Exhibits Blog, and blogging for play at B-Scides.

I’m really enjoying building the exhibits blog at the museum. I’m always fascinated by “the making of” pretty much anything. Taking folks behind the scenes of the exhibits is my excuse to geek out about what I do — and since I’m new to exhibit development, I’m also learning a lot along the way. If you have a question for us about how exhibits are made, email me or tweet it with the hashtag #AskAnExhibitionist, and I’ll blog the answers.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

I’m still figuring out long-term goals, though I expect I’ll be happy doing exhibit development for a good long while. I’m investing a lot of energy into figuring out how to get better at what I do, since it’s brand new for me. II’m still enough of a scientist to geek out about literature searches, and the literature about museum visitor behavior and visitor-oriented design strategies is completely new to me, so there’s a lot to geek out about.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Something I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking about recently is how to use the web and mobile technology to expand the museum experience beyond exhibits and programs (or really any experience). We’ve dabbled with QR codes in a few places, but it’s definitely still an experiment, and we’ve yet to figure out what works best. Using mobile technology in the exhibits can be a sticky issue, though, because not everyone can get — or even wants — a smartphone (like me, for instance). Especially as we’re an accredited state museum, universal accessibility (or the closest we can get) is key. I’d love for us to have a modern-day, mobile-driven version of the audioguide tour with video and interactive content, but it’ll be a huge challenge keeping it accessible.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook? Do you find all this online activity to be a net positive (or even a necessity) in what you do?

In the exhibits group at the museum, we use blogging as a way to give folks a behind-the-scenes tour. As a writer, I use blogging mostly as a place to get some practice in, and get my fix for writing about things I think are cool without jumping through all the editorial hoops at a polished publication. Blogging is definitely a net positive for me.

Social networks, though, I’m less active in. I’m on a bunch of them, but I mostly use them as a place for folks to find me if they need to, and as a way to keep my finger on the pulse of the online science world when I’m looking to catch up or get a distraction. They’re probably a slight net positive, or else I wouldn’t be using them, right? I hope that’s true, at least.

The best aspect of ScienceOnline for me was definitely the social one — it’s not often you get to share space with 450 of the most creative, talented, and wacky folks around, all of whom share interests with you. It was the most freely-mixing conference I’ve ever been to, where established top dogs and newbies mingled easily, unlike at so many stratified science meetings. The social aspect outlasts the actual conference, too, and I’ve kept up with lots of folks I met online and even in person (especially since I’m a local).

Perhaps my strongest takeaway, though, was the #iamscience project. Having left research fairly recently, I was struggling with losing my identity as a scientist. The #iamscience project made me feel like I was in excellent company. I’m still a scientist, just not a research scientist, and that’s awesome.

Thank you! See you soon!

Comments Off on ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Helen Chappell

Posted in More Science, Technology

Tagged scio12, scio12interviews

Upcoming events

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Tomorrow is the fifth #TriSciTweetup, this time with a little more structure to it than usual. We’ll meet at NC Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh NC, for the inaugural Lightning Talks with Brian Malow on Thursdays at the Daily Planet Cafe. We’ll start at 6pm. At about 7pm several people (including myself) will get up and say something interesting and scientific for 5 minutes each, perhaps answer a question or two from Brian, or from the audience, then continue having fun until the Cafe closes later in the evening.

Open Laboratory 2012 is getting published on September 18th. There may be a live event in NYC on that day, in which case I will travel to the City and perhaps we can have a #NYCscitweetup associated with the event. More information TBA.

On October 15-20, I’ll be at the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting in Raleigh NC. Kate Wong and I will report to you from there.

Science Writers (NASW/CASW) meeting is on October 26-30, also in Raleigh, NC. Registration just opened today. I’ll be there, as a co-organizer of one of the panels. This is a great opportunity to network with the best of the best science communicators, get the most current “state of the field” updates from top scientists, and to learn and network. Join us if you can.

Registration for ScienceOnline 2013 will open in about a month. More information what to expect – here.

Comments Off on Upcoming events

Posted in More Science, Technology

Tagged OpenLab, ScienceOnline, scio13

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 11th, 2012)

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Blog of the Week:

Kristina Killgrove (Twitter) is a bioarchaeologist. Her blog Powered By Osteons covers a wide spectrum of topics on archaeology, bioanthropology, and the classical world. But what it has the most, and is most exciting, are bones. Lots of bones. Human bones. Skulls and femurs and pelvises and what we can learn about the past from studying them.

Top 10:

Satisfying Curiosity: preparing for the Mars landing by John Rennie:

…All the Mars rovers so far, from the trailblazing Sojourner to the overachieving twins Spirit and Opportunity, have been extraordinary exploratory robots, but Curiosity represents an ambitious new extreme. Most obviously, it’s much bigger: Curiosity weighs almost a ton and is the size of a small car, whereas Spirit and Opportunity were half as long and a fifth as massive and Sojourner was not much bigger than a large cat….

Muscles and the Lactic Acid Myth by Larry Moran:

…It’s all a myth. Lactic acid has nothing to do with acidosis (the buildup of acid in the muscles). In fact, it’s not even clear that acidosis is the problem, but let’s deal with that another time….

Is a PhD required for good science writing? by Emily Willingham:

…..In fact, as someone who has a PhD in science but has been a writer longer than I’ve been a scientist, I’d argue that it might be better not to have specific training in science if you’re reaching for an audience of nonscientists, depending on what your goal as a writer is. If your goal is to tell a great science story that keeps the nonscientist reading and thinking, “wow” or “I get it,” then scientific training might be an anti-requisite. If your target is critique and analysis of science, then scientific training could be quite useful as long as you don’t let your deep background blind you to what your readers might not understand as well as you…..

What Grown-Ups Can Learn From Kids’ Books by Maria Konnikova:

….The little prince isn’t alone in carrying insights that are lost on a child. What of Alice in her wonderland and mirrored adventures? Alice’s story may have been born from a tale told to children one lazy afternoon, but it became much more: a deep philosophical meditation….

Olympic Physics: Air Density and Bob Beamon’s Crazy-Awesome Long Jump by Rhett Allain:

Even now, there are those who claim that the long-jump record of 8.9 meters that Bob Beamon set in 1968 was so crazy awesome because he accomplished it in Mexico City, which is almost 8,000 feet above sea level. The argument is that the air is thinner, and so there is less air resistance, and Mexico City is further from the center of the earth, and so the gravitational forces are smaller. Does any of this have any impact? And if so, does it really matter?…

Is corn the new milk? Evolutionarily speaking, that is. by Jeremy Yoder:

It is a widespread misconception that, as we developed the technology to reshape our environment to our preferences, human beings neutralized the power of natural selection. Quite the opposite is true: some of the best-known examples of recent evolutionary change in humans are attributable to technology. People who colonized high-altitude environments were selected for tolerance of low-oxygen conditions in the high Himalayas and Andes; populations that have historically raised cattle for milk evolved the ability to digest milk sugars as adults….

In the Bronx, Rights Get Fuzzy by Cassie Rodenberg:

I’ve been working with photographer Chris Arnade to document stories in Hunts Point, Bronx and often-ignored areas of New York City. Over the course of the last year, we have noticed the impact the city’s Stop and Frisk policy has on the neighborhood. Recently, we made the decision to start documenting that in action should we see it. This Sunday, we did:…

What do Christian fundamentalists have against set theory? by Maggie Koerth-Baker:

I’ve mentioned here before that I went to fundamentalist Christian schools from grade 8 through grade 11. I learned high school biology from a Bob Jones University textbook, watched videos of Ken Ham talking about cryptozoology as extra credit assignments, and my mental database of American history probably includes way more information about great revival movements than yours does. In my experience, when the schools I went to followed actual facts, they did a good job in education. Small class sizes, lots of hands-on, lots of writing, and lots of time spent teaching to learn rather than teaching to a standardized test. But when they decided that the facts were ungodly, things went to crazytown pretty damn quick….

Stop Calling Sherlock a Sociopath! Thanks, a Psychologist. by Maria Konnikova:

I’d like to get something off my chest. It’s been bugging me for a very, very long time. Sherlock Holmes is not a sociopath. He is not even a “high-functioning sociopath,” as the otherwise truly excellent BBC Sherlock has styled him (I take the words straight from Benedict Cumberbatch’s mouth). There. I’ve said it…

What’s the difference between “transparency” and “invisibility”? by Greg Gbur:

In writing my previous post on The Murderer Invisible, I started thinking again about the relationship between something being “transparent” and something being truly “invisible”. Most of us can appreciate that, under the right circumstances, a transparent object like a glass window can be very hard to see, but most of us also appreciate that glass is not even close to fitting the popular perception of invisibility. In fact, though we encounter plenty of transparent things in nature, we don’t encounter invisible things….

Special topic: Curiosity:

Mars needs rovers! (and it just got a big one) by Matthew Francis

What Curiosity Will and Won’t Teach Us About Martian Life by Jeffrey L. Bada

A lifetime of curiosity: An interview with JPL director Charles Elachi by Nadia Drake

How Did We Get That Incredible Photo of Curiosity’s Descent on Mars? by Alexis Madrigal

Landing Curiosity on Mars was Way Harder and Way Less Expensive than the Olympics by Rose Eveleth

Watching Curiosity’s Mars Landing Live on a 53-Foot Screen in Times Square by Laura Geggel

Me and Curiosity by Taylor Kubota

“Curiosity” Driven Science by Larry Moran

Long day at the office as scientists get in sync with Mars by Bridie Smith

Curiosity’s first color photo of Mars is only its second-most exciting photograph yet by Robert T. Gonzalez

Meanwhile in Mars…. by Shibin Dinesh

Curiosity Rover: Driving Lessons on Mars by Tamara Krinsky

Engineering Life to Survive on Mars and Aid Human Colonization by Tanya Lewis

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/08/158433038/amazingly-earth-like-curiosity-beams-first-full-frame-photo-of-mars by Eyder Peralta

See what it’s like to be a flight controller for Curiosity by Ruth Suehle

SCUBA Diving through the Endless Martian Desert by Thomas Hayden

Poet Laureates of Mars: Meet the NASA Team Behind Curiosity’s Twitter by Benjamin Soloway

Best Images:

Mars orbiter catches Curiosity by the tail by Eric Hand

Mars orbiter catches pic of Curiosity on its way down! and Curiosity landing site: the whole mess by Phil Plait

Curiosity Rover’s Home on Mars: A Powers-of-Ten Visual Explainer by Alexis Madrigal

Classic Scientific Illustrations by Ian Wang

Stickleback by Simone

Best Videos:

The only existing video footage of Mark Twain, as filmed by Thomas Edison by Robert T. Gonzalez

3D-printed exoskeleton gives a little girl use of her arms by Sean Ludwig

Curiosity’s Descent by JPLnews

Fred Guterl by The Daily Show

Forget Wireless Keyboards and Touch Your Plant Instead by Katie Pratt

The Scienceline music video awards by Kelly Slivka

How Math Comes to Mind: Intuition, Visualization, and Teaching by Stanislas Dehaene and Steven Strogatz

High Speed Video of Flipping Cats by destinws2

Mark Achtman on Plague Genetics by Michelle Ziegler

Science:

Superbug Summer Books: THE POWER OF HABIT by Maryn McKenna

Olympic Greatness: Biology or Motivation? by Melanie Tannenbaum

Backpacking Lizards For Science: Radio-Tracking Puerto Rican Anoles by Jonathan Losos

Will Climate Doubt Dry Up with the Drought? by Bob Deans

Undead: The Rabies Virus Remains a Medical Mystery by Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik

In Antarctica, Dreaming of Mars by Alexander Kumar

How to Unstick a Gecko and Mom’s Genes Make Males Die Sooner by Elizabeth Preston

Laboratory dye repurposed against protein clumps found in Huntington’s disease by Kathleen Raven

Stress Is a Real Killer—for Dragonflies by Douglas Main

Only Young Scientists Overthrow Old Concepts? and What Does “pH” Mean? by Larry Moran

Award-winning teacher Michael Lampert: WHY I LOVE SCIENCE by Casey Rentz

Sandpipers forgo sleep for days because there’s too much sex to be had and Prisoners pitch in to save endangered butterfly and A circuit for aggression in the brains of angry birds by Ed Yong

The Largest Waves in the Sea Aren’t at the Beach by Kim Martini

Plants with Personality by Emily Anthes

What’s up with social psychology? by Thom Baguley

The Molecular Olympics by Stuart Cantrill

Free online tool helps identify bat calls by Mark Kinver

New Forensics Tool for Catching Elephant Poachers and Man Wears Artificial Uterus for Science & His Wife and Celebrating 80 Years of LEGO by Rachel Nuwer

Historiography of the Market for Health by Jaipreet Virdi

Sleep research reveals keys to health by Lydialyle Gibson

Olympic Diving Physics by Paige Brown

Apollo 15’s Bizarre Contraband Stamp Debacle and How NASA Engineered the Enduring Apollo Flags by Amy Shira Teitel

Explaining Risk: Know Your Aristotle by Trisha Greenhalgh

Species Traits and Community Assembly by Jacquelyn Gill

First-Ever National Survey on Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Shows Mixed Support by Matt Shipman

A Cult of Quantity by Will

Nope, these birds are not lesbians by Annalee Newitz

The Spruce Street Swamps by David H.

Psychology and Its Discontents by Carol Tavris

The Kangaroo’s Tale: How an errant elevator door ended an odd form of popular entertainment by Jack El-Hai

Ehux: The Little Eukaryote with a Big History by Jaime E. Zlamal

A New Generation of “Digital Ornithologists” by Abby McBride

The story behind “Scaling Metagenome Assembly with Probabilistic de Bruijn Graphs” by C. Titus Brown

What Lurks In Logs by Carl Zimmer

The Sham Ph.D. by Dave G Mumby

In Defense of Algebra by Nicholas Warner

A Mysterious “Alien” Creature Identified by NC Museum Researchers by jasoncryan

Fear of a Black Hole by Matthew Francis

Skeletons in the Closet by Heather Pringle

Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina pledges to revolutionise its “unsatisfactory” science by Mićo Tatalović

TGIPF: Slug Sex Redux by Cassandra Willyard

Anorexia nervosa, neurobiology, and family-based treatment by Harriet Brown

Ten clues to the modern poisoner by Deborah Blum

Cheetah Sets New Land Speed Record, Beats Bolt by 4 Seconds by Tanya Lewis

Science settles some decades-old debates about the best way to swim by Michael Ann Dobbs

Seven climate-change diseases to ruin your day by James West

Anolis sagrei (Cuban Brown Anole) in Valdosta, Georgia! 04 August 2012 by Janson Jones

Stiletto snakes by Andrew Durso

Media, Publishing, Technology and Society:

Judge Posner: Embedding Infringing Videos Is Not Copyright Infringement, And Neither Is Watching Them by Mike Masnick

Everything That’s Wrong with Political Journalism in One Washington Post Item by Jay Rosen

Scientific Communication As Sequential Art by Bret Victor

How to Write a Malcolm Gladwell Book by Zach Weiner

Where peer-review went wrong and Some more of peer-review’s greatest mistakes and What is this peer-review process anyway? by Mike Taylor

Chipping away at “hard” — for the poets and What has podcasting accomplished? by Dave Winer

Oracles, Big Answers, & Pop Sci’s Neglect of Mystery by David Dobbs

Journalism at the speed of bytes – a timely report by Lawrie Zion

Advice and examples on how and what journalists should tweet by Steve Buttry

PeerJ: are we reinventing the wheel? by Eduardo Santos

Blogging about blogging, and tweeting about tweeting: what I have learnt after 100 tweets by Michael McCarthy

Whither Science Publishing? by Bob Grant

Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are ‘Suspicious.’ by Kashmir Hill

Downgrading Facebook. Tech Abandoner? Or Rational Lifestyle Choice? by Haydn Shaughnessy

Security Questions: The Biggest Joke in Online Identity Verification by Rebecca J. Rosen

All in a Single String by Maria Konnikova

Who’s That Woman In The Twitter Bot Profile? by Jason Feifer

Why Cartoons, sex and music are necessary in science communication by Emily Coren

Social Media for the Physiologist – A Modern Utopia or a Brave New World? by Dr. Isis with contributions from Danielle Lee, Pascale Lane, and Kristy Meyer

An Unexpected Ass Kicking and 7 Things I Learned From My Encounter With Russell Kirsch by Joel Runyon

Enter an Elevator with Confidence by Heather R.

Evidence-based, informative and on YouTube? How to communicate science in the Internet age by Dorothy Bishop

The Future of the Internet is…a la Carte by Matt Shipman

If #Google Plus is “Deserted” I Hope It Stays That Way by Tinu Abayomi-Paul

The false-balance trap by Paul Raeburn

Cheating in Online Courses by Dan Ariely

There’s only one truly open platform — the web by Mathew Ingram

The balance trap by Natasha Loder

Knit Together by Mindy Weisberger

Blogs of the Week so far:

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Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Evolution, Health, Mind & Brain, More Science, Space, Technology

Tagged The Scienceblogging Weekly

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Samuel Arbesman

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Today my guest is Samuel Arbesman (Twitter).

I’m an applied mathematician and am currently a Senior Scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, based in Kansas City.

I grew up in Buffalo and went to Brandeis University in the Boston suburbs for my undergraduate degree, where I studied biology and computer science. Continuing this path, I got a PhD at Cornell in computational biology and then went back to Boston for a postdoc at Harvard, where I studied network science and computational sociology.

Alongside all of this, I began writing for popular audiences about science. I just finished my first book, The Half-Life of Facts, which will be published at the end of September.

Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

My career has been rather strange and at the interstitial parts of the sciences.

Soon after I began my PhD at Cornell, I realized that while I enjoyed the mathematical and computational models of biology, I wanted to use these models to understand social systems. I moved more into understanding network science and how people interact and collaborate, especially when it comes to scientific progress.

Happily, my committee was very supportive of this shift and allowed me to do some highly interdisciplinary research, even including some applied mathematical analysis of baseball hitting streaks.

After finishing graduate school, I continued in a postdoc where I had the opportunity to continue doing network science research, as well as applied math work into collaboration and scientific progress more generally.

In parallel, I had been slowly nurturing my writing hobby. I got a first taste of this when I wrote about my baseball research with my grad school adviser Steve Strogatz in the New York Times. After moving to Boston, I began writing for the Ideas section of the Boston Globe. Ideas is one of those amazing sections of the paper that don’t really exist anywhere else, but is enormously important. As lucky as I’ve been in my academic career to be given the freedom to play with lots of different topics, Ideas gave me the freedom to play with a lot of crazy ideas as well (everything from how to name a scientific constant to fantasy geopolitics). Lastly, they gave me the space to write a short essay about the pace at which facts change around us, and coin the term mesofact.

This essay gave way to the book that is being published at the end of September, The Half-Life of Facts, which I am really excited about and is a fun repository of all the disparate knowledge I have lodged in my brain.

Due to my interdisciplinary research and my interest in writing for popular audiences, I knew that I would not fit particularly well in traditional academia. While I conducted the traditional job search at the conclusion of my postdoc, I was extremely excited when the Kauffman Foundation – a private foundation devoted to entrepreneurship, innovation, and education – approached me about joining as a Senior Scholar. At Kauffman I was given the opportunity to pursue my interdisciplinary research unhindered by departmental boundaries, do loads of popular writing, and in general indulge my interests. I jumped at the opportunity and as I start my second year here, I am very happy with my decision.

Since joining the Kauffman Foundation, I have worked on understanding cities and how they are related to innovation and science. I am also involved with trying to understand the future of science, tied in with understanding how knowledge changes more generally.

What is taking up the most of your time and passion these days? What are your goals?

The biggest project right is now my book, which is devoted to the science behind how knowledge changes. But more generally related to how knowledge works, I am focusing on the future of science, and trying to understand the types of institutions that we need in order to foster the types of activities that are truly valuable for science.

In addition, I am continuing my work on cities and innovation, from an applied mathematics perspective.

Blogging is a big portion of my work. My job at Kauffman involves spreading ideas, exploring various concepts and topics, and representing the Kauffman Foundation. Kauffman is very supportive of my blogging at Wired, as well as my use of Twitter and other social media. All of these connect me with a great and varied community, and allow me to maintain a network of colleagues.

When and how did you first discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any cool science blogs by the participants at the Conference?

I’ve been reading science blogs in an inconsistent way for a long time, and I have been blogging at least sporadically since at least 2007. However, one turning point in my understanding of the incredible community inherent in science blogs where I first read Bora’s epic post after PepsiGate.

Since then, I read many different blogs, though I still get my links to articles in an inconsistent way (mainly from Twitter). But if I had to single any blogs out, I would say that Tim de Chant’s Per Square Mile and Dave Ng’s Popperfont are great and well worth reading.

The best aspect was meeting in person everyone I had interacted with online. I think there was only one person at scio12 who I had met in person before; everyone else I knew through Twitter, email, or even just by reputation. So being able to interact face-to-face with all these amazing people was something close to magic.

Thank you! See you in January!

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ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Adrian Down

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Today my guest is Adrian Down.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Where are you coming from (both geographically and philosophically)? What is your background? Tell us a little more about your career trajectory so far: interesting projects past and present?

If you asked me five years ago where I’d be today, my predictions would come nowhere close to the truth. I’m currently a graduate student at Duke University getting a Ph.D. in ecology. Five years ago, I was farming in the jungles of Hawaii. I had just spent four years in California getting bachelors degrees in physics and mathematics from UC Berkeley. All I knew at the time was that my experiences teaching and working with plants provided more fulfillment than a career as a physicist seemed to promise. It was my passion for plants that led me to Hawaii’s Big Island.

With no electricity to power a computer and the nearest approximation of night life 20 miles of rutted gravel road away, I had a lot of time to read and think once the sun went down in the jungle. The longer I spent farming, the more I thought about data. If we knew which plants were performing best in what conditions, we could optimize farm design, create thriving hybrid agricultural and natural ecosystems. The farm was my lab, and I wanted numbers to crunch. It was then that I realized I am a terminal scientist. For some of us, you can take the scientist out of the lab, but you can’t take the scientific method out of the scientist. When I decided to come back to academia, ecology was an obvious choice, given my fascination with the continuum between natural and agricultural ecosystems in Hawaii.

I went back to school to study sustainable agriculture. These days, I study methane. Specifically, I’m developing techniques to “fingerprint” methane sources. If you’ve got high methane concentrations and you want to know where that methane is coming from, I can help you. There are a lot of sources of methane to the atmosphere, including wetlands, cows and other ruminants, landfills, and leaks in natural gas infrastructure. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, so a comparatively small reduction in methane emissions can have a large climate change benefit. Understanding where methane is coming from is an important step in reducing emissions.

My transition from agro-eocology to biogeochemistry wasn’t because of cows’ prodigious methane production. I got involved with methane because my Ph.D. advisor, Rob Jackson, started researching hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, a relatively new technique for extracting natural gas from deep in the Earth. There are a number of things that swayed me to my current course of study. In the course of my current degree, I’m learning a variety of tools and lab techniques that are broadly applicable to a number of systems. I think (or maybe I should say, “I hope” ) there are ways to apply some of these same techniques in a more agricultural context in the future. I also get to do research that can have immediate and positive impact on policy and, ultimately, both climate change and human health. The United States is experiencing a once-in-a-generation transition in our energy source from coal to natural gas, and it’s exciting to be on the cutting edge of research in that area.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Working in the context of a contentious issue like fracking means that communication is an essential part of what we do in my research group. I’ve been interested in scientific communication ever since I started working with high school students in Oakland and San Francisco while at UC Berkeley. Teaching has been a passion of mine ever since I got my feet wet in college, and I used to relish the challenge of communicating complex ideas from physics in a clear and engaging way. Physics needs communicators because its a field many see as intimidatingly complex and frighteningly difficult. Now, I work on a topic that is socially, rather than mathematically, complex and can be frighteningly contentiousness. For some, this would be a nightmare, but for me, I take it as part of my training as a scientist. I don’t know yet what I want to do with my Ph.D., but I hope that my future career is centered around scientific communication in some form or another.

We are in the unique position that we have to do most of our communicating and explaining to the general public, rather than to other scientists. The web is absolutely essential in this regard. Almost all of the discussion of fracking, including our science, takes place online. As with many contentious issues, some people seek out information that supports their point of view and ignore other information. I have seen research from our group be interpreted in diametrically opposed ways by people with different opinions.

Seeing the varying reactions to our research has left me with some lasting lessons in science communication. The first is that simply putting science in the public domain is not enough. Without some knowledgable interpretation, its very easy for scientific conclusions to be misunderstood or taken out of context. The second is that we as scientists can no longer rely solely upon the news media to convey our findings or their meaning to the public. We need to engage more directly with new media, such as blogs and social media, if we want to have any hope of staying relevant to the public. These are the means by which people are increasingly acquiring information and forming opinions.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work?

On a personal level, science blogs are how I keep up with the world of science. As a confirmed science nerd and inveterate triviaphile, I read widely outside my field. A good science blog post, at least for my tastes, explains results and conclusions with added context and without the jargon that can make reading outside my field challenging. I scan a number of science blog feeds and read in the neighborhood of five to ten posts daily.

ScienceOnline 2012 was a valuable experience for me. I got to meet with some of the people behind the blogs I enjoy and whose writing I admire, like Ed Yong. Through the workshops, I learned some of their techniques to their success. It was interesting to me to notice the distinctive culture of science writing, which is different than that of academic science. As a scientist interested in communication with the public, and with science bloggers as one mediator of that conversation, its helpful for me to understand the differences between the professional cultures of these two professions. Understanding one’s audience can lead to better communication, even when the audience isn’t the public directly.

The one thing that I would like to see more of at future conferences is interaction between scientists, science writers, and educators who could make use of science blogs as a part of science education curricula. I think science blogs and social media can bring science to younger students in a way that is more intuitive to how they are used to interacting with news and information. People who realize they can follow scientific discoveries without an advanced science background are potentially more apt to stay engaged with and value science as a form of inquiry. Science literacy and the ability to interpret claims based on scientific data are hugely important to an informed public discourse. Science blogs are one avenue for members of the public to stay informed and thereby be better equipped to evaluate how science is used by non-scientists to promote ideas or make policy decisions. Getting scientists, science writers, and educators together can help improve the process of getting engaging science to the public, especially students, who need scientific literacy now more than ever.

Thank you! I hope to see you again in January.

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Blogging and social media on Rhode Island

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

If you closely follow my updates here and on social media, you may have caught that I gave a lecture and two workshops last week at the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting in Kingston, RI, organized in partnership with Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (RIEPSCoR) and Rhode Island Sea Grant. The event was on July 30 at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

I had a great time – the audience was active, inquisitive and asked great questions. My lecture was losely based on this post, providing more of a historical context for the two workshops (one on blogging, one on social media) which were much more practical (and for which this wiki is probably the best resource to start with, rather than a series of my fractured and over-involved blog posts on the topics which are more suited for people already deeply steeped in blogging and social media).

In the afternoon, John Murphy from Brown University talked about behaving professionally online, especially as a “face” of an organization, about legal aspects of online communication within an organization, and about best practices for balancing professional and personal in social media. The day ended with a panel on blogging during graduate school, with Daniel Blustein, Katie PhD and BiochemBelle, all three veteran active users of blogs and social media.

Unfortunately, the audio of the video recording did not function well, so there will be no video posted online, but there are tweets and blog posts that can help you see what transpired on that day:

#riscweet! How to Effectively Communicate Science on the Web, a Storify of tweets by Viet Le

URI Sci Comms Day with Bora Zivkovic, sketchnotes by Katie PhD.

The art and craft of science blogging, blog post by Daniel Blustein.

Leading Science Blogger Shares Social Media Tools, summary article at URI’s Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting website.

Science Communication in the Digital Age: #riscweet! How to Effectively Communicate Science on the Web, another summary article at URI’s Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting website.

Thank you Sunshine Menezes and Sara MacSorley for inviting me and for excellent organization of the event. I had great fun.

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The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 4th, 2012)

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

Blog of the Week:

Beatrice the Biologist says this about itself: it is “part science blog, part comic, and part incoherent rambling: science edutainment at its finest.” Written – or rather drawn – by Katie McKissick, each post is a visual delight and will make you chuckle…and learn.

Top 10:

Gavin’s Story: Whole Exome Sequencing Finds Mystery Mutation by Ricki Lewis:

In a hotel ballroom on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania on a midsummer Saturday in 2010, an unusual roll call was under way at the Family Conference for the Foundation for Retinal Research. Betsy Brint, co-head of organization, was calling out what sounded like code words – CEP290, GUCY20, LRAT – and for each one, a few people would stand up, excited, then form little groups. After all 18 abbreviations had been called, representing the genes known to cause Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a few sets of parents were left standing. Troy and Jennifer Stevens, of Chino, California, were among those whose childrens’ genes and mutations were still a mystery….

Alain de Botton Tries Hand at Sex, Fails by AV Flox:

…..The next sections jump into “evolutionary-biological interpretation,” which we took to mean science, and which gave us the distinct impression that the author’s research of sex stopped at the work of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson instead of starting there. That’s not surprising, though. ….

Even Deadly Snakes and Monkey Shit Couldn’t Stop Me From Excavating Maya Ruins in the Jungle by Charles Choi:

Snakes. In the ancient Maya ruins where I’m working at with archaeologists, the creatures we fear most are probably the snakes. That fact might sound like the punchline to an Indiana Jones joke, until you hear about the most dreaded serpent here in the jungles of Belize. The fer-de-lance is likely the deadliest snake in Latin America, packing an amputate-if-you’re-lucky bite if it goes untreated. Its long fangs can go right through a boot, and it’s aggressive – unlike many snakes that seem more afraid of us than we are of them, the fer-de-lance won’t hesitate to strike. ….

The importance of being Aquaman, or how to save the Atlantean from his briny fate by Andrew Thaler:

….There’s no way around it. Even with the huge amounts of heat Aquaman would produce as he burned through his daily 48,000 Calories, he is going to get cold. With little body fat and no fur to speak of, his heat retention potential is pitiful. Fortunately, there are plenty of simple solutions to the thermal problem. Unfortunately, almost all of them involve visible changes to his physique….

Moths, Memory, and Motivation by James Hathaway:

….We quickly found out that something that seemed simple – catching a bunch of pretty colored insects and putting them in boxes – was actually demanding and nearly endlessly complex and mysterious. A lot of the butterflies that were the coolest, the rarest, the most beautiful, lived in strange places – treetops, the edges of swamps and streams, sunlit clearings in deep woods – and only flew in certain seasons and specific times of the day – early spring, late afternoon. We learned why – mating rituals, foodplant availability, lifecycle requirements. We didn’t just read, we observed. We learned that the books were not always right – insects are really variable and behave differently in different locales. We developed hypotheses, collected information that supported or contradicted them. We learned, at least concerning a couple dozen species of butterflies in the part of upstate New York where we lived, how nature worked. Nature taught us the science we needed to use, and science taught us what there was to know. (Not that we knew enough to call it “science, “ of course.) It was like the world had opened up. ….

Pain Control by Shara Yurkiewicz:

She had only been in the hospital twice in her life: once when she was nine and now, 60 years later. She had gotten tonsils out then. She was getting tumors out now. Her abdomen hurt when she was awake. Her abdomen would also hurt during exploratory surgery, although she wouldn’t be able to feel it under general anesthesia. Her body would feel it, though, and could respond by dangerously spiking or plunging her vitals. She needed an epidural before surgery to keep the pain under control…..

Bad Chemistry by Deborah Blum:

The start of the story is this: In December 2008, a 23-year-old research assistant named Sheri Sangji accidentally set herself on fire while working in a chemistry laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. She died 18 days later in a hospital burn unit….

Is Childhood Pertussis Vaccine Less Effective Than We Thought? by Maryn McKenna:

Delicately and cautiously, health authorities in the United States and other countries are beginning to open up a difficult topic: Whether the extraordinary ongoing epidemic of whooping cough, the worst in more than 50 years, may be due in part to unexpected poor performance by the vaccine meant to prevent the disease….

Meet the people who keep your lights on and Blackout: What’s wrong with the American grid by Maggie Koerth-Baker:

Power was restored today in India, where more than 600 million people had been living without electricity for two days. That’s good news, but it’s left many Americans wondering whether our own electric grid is vulnerable. Here’s the good news: The North American electric grid is not likely to crash in the kind of catastrophic way we’ve just seen in India. I’m currently interviewing scientists about the weaknesses in our system and what’s being done to fix them and will have more on that for you tomorrow or Friday….

New OCD Symptom: Tail Chasing by Elizabeth Preston:

…Dogs with compulsion may pace, chase imaginary flies, or lick their flanks until they get sores, despite their owners’ best efforts to make them stop. Certain breeds are especially vulnerable. A staple of canine compulsion is tail chasing, which frequently strikes bull terriers and German shepherds. On one forum, user MatrixsDad complains that his German shepherd “is constantly chasing and barking at her tail…She comes up and puts her backside against anyone who’s standing around so she can get a better view of her tail before she starts chasing it.”…

Special topic 1: Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer’s Deceptions by Michael C. Moynihan

Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Dylan Quotes for His Book by JULIE BOSMAN

The deception ratchet by Bradley Voytek

Jonah Lehrer, Bob Dylan, and journalistic unquotations and More unquotations from the New Yorker by Mark Liberman

Neuroscience author resigns from The New Yorker after admitting to fabricating Dylan quotes. by Paul Raeburn

Jonah Lehrer’s Grievous Oraculism by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Jonah Lehrer throws it all away by Roxane Gay

How we decide (to falsify). by Janet D. Stemwedel

Original thoughts? by Eva Amsen

Can cheaters repent? by Christie Aschwanden

Jonah Lehrer debacle lesson: Do your homework by Randy Lewis

‘It’s hard to start at the top,’ says Sharon Waxman of Jonah Lehrer by Steve Myers

What Jonah Lehrer reveals about popular science writing by Daniel Bor

Jonah Lehrer Turned His Back On Science by Khalil A. Cassimally

15 Minutes of Meaning for Jonah Lehrer by Alexis Madrigal

Why I Still Really Like Jonah Lehrer by J.S. Adams

On Bob Dylan And Jonah Lehrer, Two Fabulists by Ann Powers

Jonah Lehrer’s missing compass by Seth Mnookin

Special topic 2: Algebra

Abandoning Algebra Is Not the Answer by Evelyn Lamb

Does mathematics have a place in higher education? by Cathy O’Neil

When Andrew Hacker asks “Is Algebra Necessary?”, why doesn’t he just ask “Is High School Necessary?” by Rob Knop

Yes, algebra is necessary by Daniel Willingham

Why Algebra Matters (and Why Andrew Hacker is Off-Target) by RiShawn Biddle

“Is Algebra Necessary?” Are You High? by Blake Stacey

A modest proposal by PZ Myers

Algebra Is Necessary, But What About How It’s Taught? by Melanie Tannenbaum

It’s Not the Algebra, It’s the Arithmetic by Mike the Mad Biologist

On Algebra, High Expectations, and the Common Core by Dana Goldstein

The end of algebra by Alexandra Petri

Mathematical Illiteracy in the NYT by Mark C. Chu-Carroll

In Defense of Algebra by Evelyn Lamb

Scientific American Math Doc Defends Algebra Ed by Steve Mirsky

Why We Need m(x)+b: A Response to “Is Algebra Necessary?” by Erik Kimel

Best Images:

Macro photographs of snails and insects in the rain by Vadim Trunov

An ant that protects herself with… um… butt foam and More hanging larvae by Alex Wild

URI Sci Comms Day with Bora Zivkovic by Katie, PhD

Teaching Molecular Biology with Watercolors by Rachel Nuwer

Could a Whale-Powered Bus Be the Future of Transportation? by Rachel Nuwer

Hypogean Wildstyle: Dominik Strzelec’s Byzantine Geology by Paul Prudence

Quite Possibly the Cutest (Accurate) Dinosaur Illustration Ever by Annalee Newitz

Best Videos:

Watch 131 Years of Global Warming in 26 Seconds by Climate Central

Women in science … on television?!? Evidently not by Emily Willingham

Is There Life On Mars? by KPCC

Ben Goldacre at TEDMED 2012 by TEDMED

London Plague of 1665 by Michelle Ziegler

Field Biology: setting and baiting traps by DNLee

Twitter Algorithm Predicts When You’ll Get Sick (8 Days In Advance, With 90% Accuracy) [STUDY] by Shea Bennett

Curiosity (the New Mars Rover) Explained by phdcomics

100 Gallons: Reflections From A Nation Powered By Water by Powering A Nation

Best Anole Documentary Ever by Jonathan Losos

Sight by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo

How Did Apollo Astronauts Learn to Land on the Moon? by Amy Shira Teitel

Science:

Antibodies found in Peruvians suggest natural resistance to rabies in local vampire bats and NIH emerges with new emergency medicine research hub by Kathleen Raven

What’s next for scientific teaching? by Zen Faulkes

Deep-sea squid can break off all its arms onto an enemy by Ed Yong

Catching Fraud: Simonsohn Says and Why Don’t Social Scientists Want To Be Read? and Social Science and Language, Again and DSM-5 R.I.P? by Neuroskeptic

If You Compare Yourself With Michael Phelps, Will You Become A Better Swimmer? and We Won. They Lost. by Melanie Tannenbaum

A trustworthy guide to black hole astronomy by Matthew Francis

Velcro Hairs Allow Ants to Hang Their Larvae by Alex Wild

I, For One, Welcome Our New Fishy Overlords by Ian O’Neill

Is this study the bane of crypto-zoologists? by Esther Inglis-Arkell

Vacation Adventure: The La Brea Tar Pits by Erin Podolak

Are climate sceptics more likely to be conspiracy theorists? by Adam Corner

Michael Phelps, Losing the 400IM, and His Taper by Daniel Lende

What Is the Nocebo Effect? by Joseph Stromberg

Why do women leave science? by Zinemin

Muller is still rubbish by William M. Connolley

Breakthrough: The First Complete Computer Model of a Living Organism by George Dvorsky

How The Fukushima Exclusion Zone Shows Us What Comes After The Anthropocene by Colin Schultz

Interdisciplinarity, Heritability, and Public Policy by Kris Hardies

Why Dogs Chase Laser Beams (and Why It Can Drive Them Nuts) by Natalie Wolchover

The Hunter Hunted: Searching for the Body of an Anatomist by Lindsey Fitzharris

The Devil’s Technology by Ross Chapman

Lives of the Deaf by Jaipreet Virdi

Clouding the Olympic issue, China style by Claire

I want to ration your health care by PalMD

Galápagos Redux: When Is It OK to Kill Goats? by Virginia Hughes, Michelle Nijhuis and Jason G. Goldman

Broken heartland: The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains by Wil S. Hylton

Why Experts are Almost Always Wrong by Rose Eveleth

Work-Life Balance for Whom? by Athene Donald

Stiletto snakes by Andrew Durso

New Lights to Help ISS Astronauts Stay Alert by Liat Clark

The Vomit-Inducing Gemini 8 Mission and NASA’s Manned Grand Tour of the Inner Planets by Amy Shira Teitel

Artificial Beginnings: Understanding the Origin of Life by Recreating It by Eric Sawyer

To know a tiger is at least to start tolerating them, study shows and Tigers, people, and finding ways for both to thrive by Sue Nichols

Higgs Discovery: Personal Reflections by Matt Strassler

Did Gymnast Jordyn Wieber Perform Too Soon? In Olympic scoring, the last shall be first. by Karla Starr

Chop Like A Girl by Michelle Nijhuis

Curiosity readies for dramatic entrance and Mission control before the party and Curiosity to look for habitable environs by Nadia Drake

Why is Pluto not a planet? by Tristan Avella

Once upon a time: The possible story of viruses by Audrey Richard

How to pronounce “Muller’s Ratchet” by Jon Wilkins

The evolution of music by James Gaines

Sex testing and the Olympics: myths, rumours and confirmation bias by Vanessa Heggie

Light Pollution’s Potentially Harmful Effects Highlighted In New Film by Lynne Peoples

Taking the scenic route by Kelly Slivka

wesome Harry Potter Fan Decodes Wizarding Genetics: It’s All About Trinucleotide Repeats by Susana Polo

How the Elephant Makes Its Rumble by Veronique Greenwood

Swiss sheep to be outfitted to cry ‘wolf’ by text message by Agence France-Presse

TGIPF: Sex When You Can’t Hang On by Erik Vance

Human cycles: History as science by Laura Spinney

A HOT topic in transit by Taylor Kubota

Stiletto snakes by Andrew Durso

Media, Publishing, Technology and Society:

Imagining a ‘World Without Patents’… by Mark Summerfield

Five years as a science blogger – my experiences and how it began by Stephan Schleim

9 Reasons Why Running A Science Blog Is Good For You by Julio Peironcely

Top ten tips for blogging for scientists by Paul Knoepfler

The art and craft of science blogging by Daniel Blustein

Science Reporting Gone Wrong by Paige Brown

Reddit as a Science Outreach Tool by Brian Kahn

Setting Sail Toward a Science Communications Career by Liz Neeley

Journalists slow the environmental debate by Mari Kildahl

The journalistic method: Making the jump from science to journalism by Jessica Morrison

Does journalistic ‘balance’ hurt America? by Trudy Lieberman

The missing millions of Kibera and Kidnapped at birth and Grandma Obama’s support for domestic violence by Martin Robbins

#riscweet! How to Effectively Communicate Science on the Web by Viet Le

A New Age for Truth by Craig Silverman

Big data is our generation’s civil rights issue, and we don’t know it by Alistair Croll

Blogs of the Week so far:

Comments Off on The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 4th, 2012)

Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Evolution, Health, Mind & Brain, More Science, Space, Technology

Tagged blogging, The Scienceblogging Weekly

Best of July at A Blog Around The Clock

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Bora Zivkovic | Comments Off

I posted 14 times in July. That is, on A Blog Around The Clock only (not counting the posts on The Network Central, The SA Incubator, Video of the Week, Image of the Week, or editing Guest Blog and Expeditions).

Brand new posts:

Science Blogs – definition, and a history
New research center in Madagascar opens today

Updates, News and Announcements:

Who is here around the clock?
Some upcoming events.

ScienceOnline interviews:

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Trevor Owens
ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Emily Buehler
ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Kaitlin Vandemark
ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Michelle Sipics
ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Bug Girl

Best-of-the-Web linkfests:

The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 6th, 2012)
The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 13th, 2012)
The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 21th, 2012)
The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 27th, 2012)

Previously in the “Best of…” series:

2012

June
May
April
March
February
January

2011

December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

2010

December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

2009

December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

Comments Off on Best of July at A Blog Around The Clock

Posted in More Science

Tagged blogging, housekeeping

	Bora Zivkovic on Morning at Triton
	Angie Lindsay Ma on Morning at Triton
	Linda chamblee on Morning at Triton
	Jekyll » Blog… on The Big Announcement, this tim…
	Mike H on The Big Announcement, this tim…

Monthly Archives: August 2012

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Matthew Francis

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 26th, 2012)

Eight is eternity

It is here!

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 18th, 2012)

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Helen Chappell

Upcoming events

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 11th, 2012)

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Samuel Arbesman

ScienceOnline2012 – interview with Adrian Down

Blogging and social media on Rhode Island

The Scienceblogging Weekly (August 4th, 2012)

Best of July at A Blog Around The Clock

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