The 2011 Donors Choose Science Bloggers for Students Drive has ended, with over $50,000 raised by my fellow science bloggers to bring supplies to more than 25,000students across the country! Team Ocean & Geoscience placed fourth, which isn’t too bad considering there were only four of us (seriously, no one can […]
The progression through grad school is measured in milestones; some are official (like qualifying exams), others less so, but no less important. This week, I passed such a milestone: I counted the very last pollen grain of my dissertation. For those of you less familiar with the details of paleoecological […]
This is my first Paper of the Week post! One finding of the State of the Geoblogosphere paper that came out earlier this month (in addition to the fact that geobloggers being mostly white male academics, a topic for another day) is that geobloggers are seeking “rigorous analysis of scientific news […]
It’s Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of celebration of women in STEM fields. The Geek Feminism blog made the point in the post “How Not to Do Ada Lovelace Day” that the ideal outcome of ALD would be to end the invisibility of women in science and technology, and […]
Can you imagine studying cells without a microscope? Or not having goggles and aprons to practice safe science in the classroom? It’s no surprise in this economy that, faced with budget cuts, teachers have to pay more and more for basic classroom supplies or students go without. Cue Donors Choose, […]
A few things have gotten me thinking a lot lately about math anxiety among science students. First, I drafted my first teaching statement, which got me thinking seriously about pedagogy, classroom diversity, and the legacies of students taught in No Child Left Behind-era classrooms. Secondly, I’ve guest lectured and graded […]
I spent Tuesday day meeting with colleagues, and thus attended few talks, sadly. I was elected vice-chair of the Paleoecology section during a productive lunchtime business meeting. If you’re not a member of the section, you can join for $5 any time– even at the registration desk at ESA. Chad […]
I’m in Austin for the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting, which officially kicked off yesterday (Monday). Ignoring the fact that it’s Austin in August (which is admittedly less awful than I expected, coming from the much more humid Wisconsin), I’m having a blast. ESA is possibly my favorite meeting– […]
I’m in Bern, Switzerland, attending the International Quaternary Association’s 18th Congress. INQUA convenes every four years, and this will be my first time attending. It’s the largest meeting for those of us who study the Quaternary Period, and includes paleoecologists, archaeologists, paleoclimatologists, geologists, and geomorphologists– I believe there are about […]
Last month, Mark Davis and 18 ecologists argued in a Comment published in the journal Nature that the native-versus-alien dichotomy in conservation is not only increasingly impractical, but potentially counterproductive. The authors acknowledged that while some invasive species (e.g. zebra mussels) have widely-documented negative impacts, the application of the “invasive” […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 