The World at the End of Time

I finished reading the World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl recently. I really enjoyed the story which involves lifeforms that live inside stars and human space travel. One of the star dwellers set in place a plan to send a few stars away. A human settlement was dragged along as their planet was sent along with their sun on a journey away from the rest of the universe. I really enjoyed it.

A few other science fiction books I have enjoyed: Ender’s Game – A Canticle for Leibowitz– Foundation – Calculating God – The Diamond Age – Doomsday Book – American Gods

The Importance of Science Education

The Science Education Myth by Vivek Wadhwa:

The authors of the report, the Urban Institute’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

The study certainly sounds interesting. I can’t find it (update Vivek Wadhwa provided the link – which will work Monday, also see his comment below), but found an article (which wasn’t easy) by the authors of the report: The Real Technology Challenge. The main point of the article, The Real Technology Challenge, seems to be that the USA should focus on globalization (and focus on educating scientists and engineers to work in a global world).

As I have said before I disagree with those that believe the USA is producing more science and engineering graduates than the market demands. Smart leaders know the huge positive impacts of a large, well educated science and engineering workforce.

Countries that succeed in producing more quality graduates while creating the best economic environment to take advantage of technology innovation (follow this link – it is one of the most important posts about what makes silicon valley so powerful a force at doing just that) are going to benefit greatly. My guess is the USA will be one of those countries; not by reducing the focus on science and engineering education but by increasing it. If not, other countries will, and the USA will suffer economically. The USA also needs to continue to push the economic and entrepreneurship advantages – doing that well is very difficult to achieve and the USA maintains a stronger advantage in that realm – but I will be very surprised if other countries don’t continue to make gains in this area. Even so doing so is much more challenging than just improving education (which is difficult itself just not nearly as difficult) and the USA can continue to benefit from this combination with the right policies.

Plumpynut – Food Savior

A Life Saver Called “Plumpynut”

Every year, malnutrition kills five million children — that’s one child every six seconds. But now, the Nobel Prize-winning relief group “Doctors Without Borders” says it finally has something that can save millions of these children. It’s cheap, easy to make and even easier to use. What is this miraculous cure? As CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports, it’s a ready-to-eat, vitamin-enriched concoction called “Plumpynut,” an unusual name for a food that may just be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.

“It’s a revolution in nutritional affairs,” says Dr. Milton Tectonidis, the chief nutritionist for Doctors Without Borders. “Now we have something. It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that is looked like they’re half dead. We can cure them just like an antibiotic. It’s just, boom! It’s a spectacular response,” Dr. Tectonidis says.
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Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it. The formula was developed by a nutritionist. It doesn’t need refrigeration, water, or cooking; mothers simply squeeze out the paste. Many children can even feed themselves. Each serving is the equivalent of a glass of milk and a multivitamin.

Primary Science Education in California

Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley Science Survey:

California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, is home to much US innovation in science and technology. Recent national reports have illuminated the importance of science education in the elementary grades and described concerns for US leadership in science,1 the importance of fostering interest in science early in life,2 and issues with promoting high quality science instruction in the elementary grades,3 nationally,4 and in California.5

At the same time, this region produces inadequate achievement results among its students. Results of the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress 4th grade science test indicate that California ranked 2nd lowest of all states on eighth grade science achievement, only above Mississippi. During spring 2007, results on the 5th grade California Standards Test (CST) in Science indicate that only 37% of California students and approximately 46% of Bay Area students scored proficient or above6. This means that even in the Bay Area, over half the 5th graders are failing to reach proficiency in science.
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Eighty percent (80%) of K–5th grade multiple-subject teachers who are responsible for teaching science in their classrooms reported spending 60 minutes or less per week on science, with 16% of teachers spending no time at all on science.

Scientists Denounce Global Warming Report ‘Edits’

Scientists Denounce Global Warming Report ‘Edits’:

The original, unedited testimony presented to Congress by Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and obtained by ABC News was 14 pages long, but the White House Office of Management and Budget edited the final version down to a mere six pages.

Scientists and public health organizations called the move “frustrating,” “terrible” and “appalling.” The edits essentially deleted all sections that referred to climate change as a public health concern — including the risks of increased food-borne and waterborne diseases, worsening extreme weather events, worsening air pollution and the effect of heat stress on humans.

“Dr. Gerberding is the lead of the premiere public health agency in the U.S.,” said Kim Knowlton, a science fellow on global warming and health at the National Resources Defense Council in New York. “It’s shocking that she was not allowed to say in a public discussion some of these vital details.

Political reasons for modifying testimony are not amazing. But when political edits to science testimony are too large you can really open up some questions about what is driving testimony. And those questions should be asked. Lets not allow science to be hidden and not allow the public to hear what the scientists working for us have to say – let the debate be open and public.

Innovation Academy for High School Students

Innovation Academy students get their feet wet

“They teach us about ocean life and animals — I like that kind of stuff,” she said. “It’s something different.”

Moody High School Innovation Academy students will make three more trips to the field station this semester and another five in the spring. Then they’ll gather up statistics and try to determine environmental trends for the station.

The trips are possible through an agreement made late this summer between the 2-year-old institute and Corpus Christi Independent School District. The Innovation Academy — one of seven academies at Moody — is in its first year and enrolls 75 Moody ninth-grade students and 105 Cunningham Middle School sixth-graders.

“Our kids are becoming very involved in the makeup of Laguna Madre plants and animals, as well as how to document their existence,” said Tina Dellinger, Texas Science Technology Engineering and Math district coordinator. The Innovation Academy is in its second year of a two-year, $750,000 Texas Science Technology Engineering and Math Initiative grant that last year funded academy planning and training and this year is funding its first activities.

Computational Science and Engineering by Gilbert Strang

New book, Computational Science and Engineering by Gilbert Strang, is available. The website includes some sections of the book. Video Lectures of Gilbert Strang on Linear Algebra, Spring 2005.

China Reaches for the Moon

China’s Long March to the Moon

The missions by China and Japan are part of a broader resurgence of interest in the moon by space agencies around the world. The U.S. and India also are planning unmanned lunar-exploration missions next year. It is the biggest burst of such work since the 1970s. The last humans to stand on the moon were American astronauts from the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
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For China, the aim is explicitly political, as well as scientific. “Lunar exploration reflects a country’s comprehensive national power,” said Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist for China’s moon program, in an interview with the official Communist Party newspaper, People’s Daily. It will “raise our international prestige and strengthen the cohesion of our people.”

China aims to have a unmanned mission to the moon in 2012 and a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

More Dinosaurs Fighting Against Open Science

Controversy at the American Chemical Society by John Dupuis

So, what’s my take on this? First of all, I’m not surprised. Unfortunately there are some scholarly societies that operate more like for-profits when it comes to their publishing arms and ACS is certainly one of the most notable for that sort of thing. While it should be shocking that ACS is acting more like Elsevier than Elsevier at times, sadly it isn’t.

Secondly, what should we, as librarians do about it? Mostly we need to advocate. We need to push our vendors towards business models that favour open access, we need to reassure them that we’re interested in a sustainable model for scholarly publishing

I agree. It is sad that so many organizations distort behavior though poor management structures but that is the world we live in. My management improvement blog focused on how to manage better. And I have posted several times about the need to shift our support to open access science and away from those who want continue outdated strategies that restrict the advancement of scientific ideas.

Killing Germs May Be Hazardous to Your Health

Caution: Killing Germs May Be Hazardous to Your Health

Relman is a leader in rethinking our relationship to bacteria, which for most of the last century was dominated by the paradigm of Total Warfare. “It’s awful the way we treat our microbes,” he says, not intending a joke; “people still think the only good microbe is a dead one.” We try to kill them off with antibiotics and hand sanitizers. But bacteria never surrender; if there were one salmonella left in the world, doubling every 30 minutes, it would take less than a week to give everyone alive diarrhea. In the early years of antibiotics, doctors dreamed of eliminating infectious disease. Instead, a new paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association reports on the prevalence of Methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which was responsible for almost 19,000 deaths in the United States in 2005—about twice as many as previously thought, and more than AIDS. Elizabeth Bancroft, a leading epidemiologist, called this finding “astounding.”

As antibiotics lose their effectiveness, researchers are returning to an idea that dates back to Pasteur, that the body’s natural microbial flora aren’t just an incidental fact of our biology, but crucial components of our health, intimate companions on an evolutionary journey that began millions of years ago.