Scientific Literacy

An important short video of astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson discussing the importance of scientific literacy.



Hat tip to Larry Moran of Sandwalk.

Being a Science Celebrity is Tough

(Via XKCD)

NSTA Bought By Big Oil?

I learned today that the National Science Teachers Association, of whom I'm a member, recently turned down 50,000 free copies of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Their reason was simple: they didn't want to risk the millions of dollars they get from Exxon-Mobil or the American Petroleum Institute. Doesn't exactly make me proud to be a member. I wrote them a letter today and if you would like to send them a comment, go here.

Future Science

Curious as to where science will go in the next 50 years? The magazine New Scientists asked 70 of the world's leading scientists what they thought. You can find their answers here.

(Via Cosmic Variance)

Chemistry

The Nobel for Chemistry has gone to Roger Kornberg, of Stanford University, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription." Transcription is the process by which our DNA is copied into a single strand of RNA, later followed by translation. A 5-page PDF file for the lay person can be found here.

Physics

The winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics are two Americans, John Mather and George Smoot. As described on the Nobel website:

This year the Physics Prize is awarded for work that looks back into the infancy of the Universe and attempts to gain some understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars. It is based on measurements made with the help of the COBE satellite launched by NASA in 1989.

The COBE results provided increased support for the Big Bang scenario for the origin of the Universe, as this is the only scenario that predicts the kind of cosmic microwave background radiation measured by COBE. These measurements also marked the inception of cosmology as a precise science. It was not long before it was followed up, for instance by the WMAP satellite, which yielded even clearer images of the background radiation. Very soon the European Planck satellite will be launched in order to study the radiation in even greater detail.

For a more detailed piece on the importance of their work, click here (pdf file).

TV and Academic Performance

From CNN:

Parents now have science to back them up when they say, "Turn off the TV. It's a school night."

Middle school students who watch TV or play video games during the week do worse in school, a new study finds, but weekend viewing and gaming doesn't affect school performance much.

"On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said study co-author Dr. Iman Sharif of Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx. "They could watch a lot on weekends and it didn't seem to correlate with doing worse in school."

Children whose parents allowed them to watch R-rated movies also did worse in class, and for boys, that effect was especially strong. The findings are based on a survey of 4,500 students in 15 New Hampshire and Vermont middle schools. The study appears in the October issue of Pediatrics.

Weekend viewing and gaming slightly hurt school performance, but only when the students spent more than four hours each day at it over the weekend.

The study didn't look at grades or test scores, relying instead on students' own rating of their performance from "excellent" to "below average." Sharif said other studies have shown that students generally inflate their actual school performance when asked. But since both good and bad students overrate their performance, she said, self-reporting is reliable.

Researchers took into account the possible effect of different parenting styles as reported by the students, and they still found weekday TV viewing, video games and R-rated movie-watching harmful.

The researchers did not ask specific questions about homework rules at home, said Sharif, who has three children, ages 7, 11 and 15. Her children watch about an hour of TV after school and then "it goes off and they do homework," she said.

The researchers didn't speculate on why boys might be more affected by R-rated movies than girls.

But Douglas Gentile, who does similar research at Iowa State University, said boys may be watching more violent R-rated movies that make them more aggressive. The aggression may lead to poor school performance, said Gentile, who was not involved in the new study.

"This study should hammer home to parents that this is really serious," Gentile said. "One question all parents are going to be faced with (from their children) is, 'Can I have a TV in my bedroom?' There's a simple two-letter answer for that."

Previous studies have found links between the ability to learn and TV watching, including a study that found that children with TVs in their bedrooms scored about eight points lower on math and language arts tests than children without bedroom TVs.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that older children watch no more than two hours daily of "quality" programming and that televisions be kept out of children's rooms.

I've noticed the difference in performance with my own students who I know are not allowed to watch tv during the week, or at the very least are very limited. These are the kids who read more, spend more time outside, and generally are much more thoughtful regarding their school work. The above study provides some very good advice for parents.

Physiology & Medicine

The winners of this years Nobel Prize in Physiology & Medicine are Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for their work on RNA interference (RNAi). Their discovery was a revolution in cell biology and genetics. For a cool animation click here.

UPDATE: Carl Zimmer has a nice post on their work here.

UPDATE II: Here's another article from the New York Times.

OK, One More From XKCD

http://xkcd.com/c155.html

Playing Devil's Advocate to Win

As seen on XKCD.

Nobel Prize

The announcement of this years Nobel Prizes will begin next week. Keep a look out!

Good Quote

I like this quote from Chet Raymo, professor emeritus at Stonehill college. He says:

The purpose of science -- and indeed all education -- is to arrive at a state of ignorance, but an ignorance that is aware of itself.

I've Been Humbled

I've always thought that I was a bit of a nerd ( my wife assures me that this is not idle speculation). Whatever level of nerdiness I thought I had achieved I am comlpletely and utterly outmatched by the folks at Scienceblogs.