I came away with a lot of things from ScienceOnline2012. A list of people to follow, more blogs to read, more articles to look up, but what I'm most looking forward to tackling are some of the book recommendations that popped up in discussion sessions, as well as the ones from the book lottery.
Here they are, in chronological order from when they were written down in my notebook. (Titles link out to Amazon, authors are in parentheses.)
Descartes' Error. Recommended (I think) from David Ropiek's session on risk taking. It explores the intersection of emotion and rationality. (Antonio Demasio)
Thinking Fast and Slow. A psychologist who wins the Nobel for Economics? You/I should probably read this book. Luckily for me, Boyfriend got it for Christmas, but he is a slow reader. I should just take this from him. (Daniel Kahneman)
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. The Jazz Age? Murder? Forensic Medicine? I can't wait to read this. (Deborah Blum)
Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America. Backyard science grows as Jefferson sets to prove America is just as good as France. And I heard a rumor there are weasel penises, too. One can never be too sure. (Lee Alan Dugatkin)
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. Erik Larson was recommended a few times. I'm going to try to start with this one. (Erik Larson)
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. @drskyskull said that the only way this book could have been more exciting would have been if Newton was killing zombies. Would you want to imagine being tracked down by the dude that invented gravity? (Tom Levenson)
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the world from the Periodic Table of the Elements. (Side note, jeez--these science writers really love the subtitle, don't they?) A history of chemistry. (Sam Kean)
Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys. A portrait of scientists. (Rob Dunn)
The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science. (Richard Holmes)
Of course all the books that were included in the book lottery can be found here. They all look amazing, the ones on the top of my to read list are...
The Calculus Diaries
Geek Dad
The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics
Hopefully I'll get to read some of these soon, and when I do, I'll try to post more in depth reviews!
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednesday Slinks--#scio12 edition
Phew. It's been a whirlwind of a week. Last week I attended the conference ScienceOnline2012, and I'm still sorting through contacts I've made and mulling over posts that I want to write.
Suffice it to say (or not) it was an amazing, life-changing experience, which I promise to write more about soon.
Until then, here are some of my favorite links that have come up from the conference.
Mapping of tweets from #scio12. A visualization of the most prolific tweeters and all of their connections. You should follow all of these people for smart, science related commentary. (Knowtex)
ScienceScribe. This is the session I most regret not attending, but was really excited to see the results from. Harnessing doodles as note-taking? You can bet I'll be bringing markers to lab meeting from now on. (Alpha Chimp Studio)
I sketched #scio12. More in sketch-news, from the wonderful KatiePhD, who I regretfully only met at the end of the conference, but do yourself a favor and check out her blog. (KatiePhD)
ScienceOnline2012: A touching moment. A great read from Emily Willingham about the power that this un-conference has. (the biology files)
More to come later on this conference. For now, off to biostats class, where my attempts to sketch were severely hindered by the fact that we are doing programming.
Suffice it to say (or not) it was an amazing, life-changing experience, which I promise to write more about soon.
Until then, here are some of my favorite links that have come up from the conference.
Mapping of tweets from #scio12. A visualization of the most prolific tweeters and all of their connections. You should follow all of these people for smart, science related commentary. (Knowtex)
ScienceScribe. This is the session I most regret not attending, but was really excited to see the results from. Harnessing doodles as note-taking? You can bet I'll be bringing markers to lab meeting from now on. (Alpha Chimp Studio)
I sketched #scio12. More in sketch-news, from the wonderful KatiePhD, who I regretfully only met at the end of the conference, but do yourself a favor and check out her blog. (KatiePhD)
ScienceOnline2012: A touching moment. A great read from Emily Willingham about the power that this un-conference has. (the biology files)
More to come later on this conference. For now, off to biostats class, where my attempts to sketch were severely hindered by the fact that we are doing programming.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wednesday Slinks
How a cup of coffee a day may help to keep type 2 diabetes at bay. Sometimes research turns out to be useful. Especially when it justifies my coffee habit. (Scientific American)
Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don't understand journalism. Scientists, meet journalists. Journalists, meet scientists. (The Guardian)
Cracking Open the Scientific Process. Science, meet the internet. Internet, this is science. Also, the conference I'm going to tomorrow is mentioned! (NY Times)
Nine ways scientists demonstrate they don't understand journalism. Scientists, meet journalists. Journalists, meet scientists. (The Guardian)
Cracking Open the Scientific Process. Science, meet the internet. Internet, this is science. Also, the conference I'm going to tomorrow is mentioned! (NY Times)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Wednesday Slinks
I'm going to try a new feature, and I'm calling it "Slinks" like Science-links (see what I did there?) as a way to show little science things that I've found on the web the past week.
Slinks!
Learn to program in a year. This looks cool, and I'm already hooked. Folks at CodeAcademy have created a super easy/fun/interactive way to teach javascript. They promise that you'll be building websites and apps in months. We shall see...(GOOD)
10 Stunning Science Visualizations. A compilation of computer-rendered drawings of very small things. Special shout out to my dad, who's model of the yeast mitotic spindle is featured. (Wired Science)
On being conspicuously invisible. "Promoting diversity is all fine and good, but it means nothing if there isn’t a genuine effort to include those ‘new’ people into the fold and make them feel welcomed and apart of the department." An important piece on minority students in science, and how institutions treat diversity. (Scientific American)
Google. Today's Google doodle salutes the 374th anniversary of Nicolas Steno's birth, the geologist who came up with the "principle of original horizonality", which basically says that rock layers form horizontally. If you don't catch it live today, check out the Washington Post's thorough explanation. (Google, Washington Post)
Slinks!
Learn to program in a year. This looks cool, and I'm already hooked. Folks at CodeAcademy have created a super easy/fun/interactive way to teach javascript. They promise that you'll be building websites and apps in months. We shall see...(GOOD)
10 Stunning Science Visualizations. A compilation of computer-rendered drawings of very small things. Special shout out to my dad, who's model of the yeast mitotic spindle is featured. (Wired Science)
On being conspicuously invisible. "Promoting diversity is all fine and good, but it means nothing if there isn’t a genuine effort to include those ‘new’ people into the fold and make them feel welcomed and apart of the department." An important piece on minority students in science, and how institutions treat diversity. (Scientific American)
Google. Today's Google doodle salutes the 374th anniversary of Nicolas Steno's birth, the geologist who came up with the "principle of original horizonality", which basically says that rock layers form horizontally. If you don't catch it live today, check out the Washington Post's thorough explanation. (Google, Washington Post)
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
How to inspire
I read a great article on GOOD yesterday about how the best ways to get girls into STEM (that’s science, technology, engineering, and math) is through after school programs. It’s in reaction to the claim that schools aren’t teaching science, in favor of preparing kids for standardized tests. I get this, and even my most memorable science moments from K-12 was all through extracurricular activities: after-school visits to the science lab in elementary school, science club and Science Olympiad in high school.
This is pretty much the reason I’ve been thinking hard about applying for Teach For America this year. In particular because I want to teach science. I want to inspire kids to think about careers in science. Science tends to get a bad rap in elementary school, and it wasn’t even until college that I realized that science professors could also be cool interesting people. I went through this huge beatnik phase in high school, and I was very impressed that one of my dad’s colleague’s had met Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg! Instant cool.
So this may be totally naive, but I would love to get at least one kid to realize that being nerdy is kind of cool. Reclaim the name, and all that. But I would also love to teach kids what it took me so long to realize, and what I’m learning now every day. That science is this this cool blend of logic and discovery. Communication and introspection. It’s a great subject/field because you really have the power to make it what you want. You can work with your hands, you can work with numbers, you get to write, you get to read. Every day you get to learn something. I want to teach someone that. I want to show someone how creative science can be.
My next question, and this comes as me being, 24 years old, biology major, deciding between TFA or grad school in biology or biostats, is teaching middle school the best place to be? From the original article, despite inspiring girls at the elementary-middle-high school level, fewer than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering, and math jobs are held by women. Anecdotal evidence from my college career: if you were a dude looking for a girlfriend, the best place to be would be any biology class on campus. Women outnumber men in the sciences from undergrad to postdocs, and then it drops. Completely.
It’s not rocket science why. (Ha, more like social science.) It’s actually one of the reasons that I’m thinking about Teach for America, instead of grad school. I have a kid. And I want a career that’s conducive to having a kid. I love science. I love working in lab. I love thinking about things outside of work, reading journals and applying what I’ve learned to my own research. I love presenting, I’ve only been to one conference, but I did a poster and I loved it. But, and this is nothing new, I love making dinner. (I think I like cooking for a lot of the same reasons I like science.) I love hanging out with my kid. I love hanging out with my kid and not thinking about work. As a technician now, it’s nice to leave work at work sometimes. I’m not worried about grants or getting tenure.
I’m thinking of moving out of science. Because right now I don’t have a ton of role models. On the floor I work on, 80% of the PIs are male. (My very scientific study of walking around the labs concluded this. I didn’t include PIs without labs.) So my question is, if I want to inspire young women to pursue science, do I work my butt off to get through grad school, get a post doc, get a faculty position, (ha. ha. ha. notice how I have automatically assumed that I am smart and awesome enough to achieve all these things BRIEF SUSPENSION OF REALITY) and rock all of that toting a daughter and a successful relationship with a partner? Because the women I do know that are doing this are amazingly awesome and talented people. And I wish I knew more of them.
I’m posing the question here. What do we, as women in science, need more of? Is it inspiring young people to think more about science, and where that can take them? Or is it a step after that? And do we rely on the slow policy change of academic institutions to hire more women faculty? Or do we take that burden upon ourselves and become super heroes?
This is pretty much the reason I’ve been thinking hard about applying for Teach For America this year. In particular because I want to teach science. I want to inspire kids to think about careers in science. Science tends to get a bad rap in elementary school, and it wasn’t even until college that I realized that science professors could also be cool interesting people. I went through this huge beatnik phase in high school, and I was very impressed that one of my dad’s colleague’s had met Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg! Instant cool.
So this may be totally naive, but I would love to get at least one kid to realize that being nerdy is kind of cool. Reclaim the name, and all that. But I would also love to teach kids what it took me so long to realize, and what I’m learning now every day. That science is this this cool blend of logic and discovery. Communication and introspection. It’s a great subject/field because you really have the power to make it what you want. You can work with your hands, you can work with numbers, you get to write, you get to read. Every day you get to learn something. I want to teach someone that. I want to show someone how creative science can be.
My next question, and this comes as me being, 24 years old, biology major, deciding between TFA or grad school in biology or biostats, is teaching middle school the best place to be? From the original article, despite inspiring girls at the elementary-middle-high school level, fewer than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering, and math jobs are held by women. Anecdotal evidence from my college career: if you were a dude looking for a girlfriend, the best place to be would be any biology class on campus. Women outnumber men in the sciences from undergrad to postdocs, and then it drops. Completely.
It’s not rocket science why. (Ha, more like social science.) It’s actually one of the reasons that I’m thinking about Teach for America, instead of grad school. I have a kid. And I want a career that’s conducive to having a kid. I love science. I love working in lab. I love thinking about things outside of work, reading journals and applying what I’ve learned to my own research. I love presenting, I’ve only been to one conference, but I did a poster and I loved it. But, and this is nothing new, I love making dinner. (I think I like cooking for a lot of the same reasons I like science.) I love hanging out with my kid. I love hanging out with my kid and not thinking about work. As a technician now, it’s nice to leave work at work sometimes. I’m not worried about grants or getting tenure.
I’m thinking of moving out of science. Because right now I don’t have a ton of role models. On the floor I work on, 80% of the PIs are male. (My very scientific study of walking around the labs concluded this. I didn’t include PIs without labs.) So my question is, if I want to inspire young women to pursue science, do I work my butt off to get through grad school, get a post doc, get a faculty position, (ha. ha. ha. notice how I have automatically assumed that I am smart and awesome enough to achieve all these things BRIEF SUSPENSION OF REALITY) and rock all of that toting a daughter and a successful relationship with a partner? Because the women I do know that are doing this are amazingly awesome and talented people. And I wish I knew more of them.
I’m posing the question here. What do we, as women in science, need more of? Is it inspiring young people to think more about science, and where that can take them? Or is it a step after that? And do we rely on the slow policy change of academic institutions to hire more women faculty? Or do we take that burden upon ourselves and become super heroes?
Friday, January 6, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)