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Showing posts from 2013

Science in the Streets

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Science in the Streets: A free public engagement event from the History of Science Society Thursday, Nov 21, 3-6 pm, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center [I have asked  Conevery Bolton Valencius , who teaches at UMass Boston, to write a guest post about an event she is helping to organize at this year's HSS.  Many readers of this blog are interested in popular science & science popularization, and I urge everyone to join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion!] Current newspaper headlines make clear how anti-science and science-illiterate many Americans are, at least about some political issues.  But there are effective and interesting efforts going on all around to engage people in the workings and the wonderings of science.  Further, historians of science are doing a lot of that work – and sometimes have particular insight about what is new or very old about rhythms of scientific skepticism or scientific enthusiasm.  At next week’s annual conference of the H

Remembering Sandy: Stewardship, Memory, History

A year ago I wrote a series of blog posts on Hurricane Sandy here at American Science. In them, I reported on experiences in Hoboken, New Jersey, a city that was hammered by the storm, a city in which I then lived and in which I still work at the Stevens Institute of Technology. A few months ago, I was asked to put together an event marking the Superstorm's one year anniversary. That event took place on October 29th, a year to the day that Sandy struck, and today, Stevens has posted a video of the multimedia event, which mixed videos of interviews with live presentations. At their best, history and other forms of inquiry can include acts of stewardship, service to some community whether it is near or far. When I set about organizing this event, I approached it with the eye of a public historian and sought to create oral history videos and other records that would mark our memories of the event. (I would like to see some philosopher of history explore the relationship between writin

STEM....rocket ships!

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To the moon Alice!  Our fourth graders have begun their first engineering project of the year.  They are designing rockets (paper) that will travel to the moon.  To hook the students I showed them the video To Moon, Mars and Beyond by NASA. It's an excellent video that shows what NASA is working on for the next stage of moon exploration. Using the Engineering process, students first asked the question:  How can I create (build, design, make) a rocket that will fly? Our next step was to plan....what type of rocket will we create that will fit onto our rocket launcher (oh yes, we have a rocket launcher!) and successfully fly? Students imagined what it would look like and planned the design alone or with a partner.  Our Engineering lab has cushy seats for planning that we love!!! On to the create phase....the only restraint that we gave them was that the rocket should fit onto the tube of the launcher.  They had recycled paper, markers, glue guns, bottle caps, index cards, duct tap

Science, Merit, and the Internet (Part 1 of 2)

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In the past six weeks, online science journalism has been rocked by two controversies: in late September, the nearly 150 year old magazine, Popular Science , decided to turn off the comment function on its website because, as its editors claimed, "Comments can be bad for science." And a few weeks later, Bora Zivkovic, the blogs editor for Scientific American , resigned over charges that he sexually harassed female science writers. Both of these issues have important implications for the future of science communication on the Internet, and these controversies also have deep connections to issues that historians and other members of the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) have been examining for a long time. In the next two blog posts, I'll be examining the controversies in turn and trying to say something about they mean for science writing when they are viewed together. In these posts, I hope to build on Hank's brilliant four part analysis

Science and Literacy...a Natural Connection

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Where have I been? Busy teaching in my classroom!  Between the start of the new school year and the duties of parenting a teenager and a ten year old (sports, band, etc..) I haven't had time to sit down and work on my blog.  It is something I miss terribly...especially with all the amazing connections we have made this year in science.  I'd like to share a few things we have been working on. First, all of my science lessons start with a hands-on activity.  Our first unit was Environments - a FOSS third edition unit that explores environmental factors and how they influence organisms.  We have looked at conditions such a light with isopods, salt with brine shrimp, and temperature with mealworms. The kids have observed these organisms thrive and die.  We have watched the mealworms go through their life cycle already in the span of six weeks! Many of you know that I have fought for science instruction in the elementary school and have made a case for at least 45 minutes of instr

Wednesday, October 23, 8PM @ the Bell House, FREE! Secret Science Club & the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation present the 2013 Lasker Public Lecture with Biologist Jeffrey Friedman

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It’s time you started loving your love handles . Your body fat isn't just sitting there jiggling . It’s actually producing essential hormones . No one suspected such a thing until biologist Jeffrey Friedman co-discovered the hormone leptin, and the surprising fact that it regulates food intake and body weight . So, if you thought it was sheer willpower keeping you from eating those cupcakes , think again. In fact, Friedman’s research shows that without the leptin produced in our fat cells—which tells our brains, “You’re full for now!” —all of us would be chowing down non-stop. Jeffrey Friedman’s seminal discovery completely transformed how “fat” is viewed—and set off a tidal wave of new research on body weight and what governs it. Dr. Friedman discusses: --The average American eats over  800,000 calories each year. Yet, most of us maintain our body weight within a fairly narrow range. How? --How does leptin relate to weight loss, dieting, and the obesity epidemic ? Are there bi

Methodising by Accounts and Other Dreams of Enlightenment – or, A Life in an Early Age of Big Data

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“We have taken the liberty to add to this manual, a kind of classic legislative tablet, or memorandum. It will serve for private use, by methodising the most interesting points of the legislature. You may help your memory and do good, if you can thereby shew the necessity of filling the blanks in the assembly with a due portion of the classic information and assistance requisite for the business of the day: sometimes you will find you have too few commercial men, or too few agriculturalists, and often too few LIBERAL AMERICANS , who may embrace correct views for the interest of the whole of the union…” [ More ] With that introduction, Samuel Blodget Jr. introduced his readers (in 1806) to the first Congressional scorecard: Source: Samuel Blodget Jr., Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America  (Washington, D.C., 1806) from hathitrust.org Although, really, it’s more an account book than a scorecard. Blodget hoped to rationalize his nation’s government by teac