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Free Annotated Science Articles & Accompanying Teaching Materials for High School and University Classrooms

Science Magazine is one of the most premier scientific journals, bringing together a community of top-notch scientists. But now this knowledge can be at your fingertips too. Check out Science in the Classroom to explore diverse topics such as how the pelvis can teach us about evolution, white-nose disease in bats, and regeneration.

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That's Not How You Pipette

Truest blog. Consider it a PSA from the scientific community.

[npr]

Let’s face it: the stereotypical specimen is a young white male with thick glasses, strong opinions about operating systems and a collection of Star Wars figurines. If that’s what we immediately associate with science – whether or not it’s an accurate portrayal of actual scientists – then coolifying nerdiness might be attractive for those who fit the mold, but could inadvertently steer away from science those who don’t.

Might a more inclusive portrayal of science – one that includes a few well-dressed and socially astute women, for example – draw more people to science than a “coolified” depiction of stereotypical nerdiness? It might.  (via npr)

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A Whole New Wheel

Using design from the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory, startup company Superpedestrian is poised to change the way city bikes work. Their product, the Copenhagan Wheel, replaces the rear wheel of a normal bike and transforms it into a "hybrid e-bike" that seamlessly provides an extra boost when going uphill. From the New York Times,

The Copenhagen Wheel replaces the rear wheel of a bicycle. It includes a motor powered by a built-in battery and sensors. When someone pedals with the new wheel in place, the bike uses sensors and an app on a smartphone to measure the amount of effort the rider is putting into each pedal. It then offers an additional boost when necessary.

One of the most interesting components of the new wheel is that the rider doesn’t need to tell the bike when help is necessary, the wheel just figures it out using the sensors and gives the bike a push.

“Riding on a flat surface, or up a hill, will feel exactly the same,” Mr. Biderman said.

The wheel doesn’t need to be charged or plugged in on a nightly basis, either. Instead, the wheel captures the energy from the brakes when a rider goes down hill and then stores that power in a high-capacity lithium battery. The motor also acts like a generator, creating power for later rides when the rider pedals in reverse.

The Copenhagan wheel is the latest in a trend towards smart sensing, sustainable, and economical products. You may see it on a city street near you one day!

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High School Student Finds Trumpet-Headed Dinosaur

On a school trip to Raymond M. Alf Museum of Palaeontology, high schooler Kevin Terris spotted a dinosaur bone jutting out of a boulder. A paleontologist at the museum thought it was originally a rib bone, which is not a very informative fossil find. However, upon further inspection of the boulder, Kevin uncovered the most complete skeleton ever found of Parasaurolophus. This specimen, a juvenile named Joe, will help scientists understand how dinosaurs grew up and developed into full-grown adults. All data on Joe is available freely online--check it out!

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Huge Swarm (Bloom? Group? Wave?) of Moon Jellyfish Forces Swedish Nuclear Reactor to Shut Down

The Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in southeast Sweden was forced to shut down one of its reactors on Sunday due to an inundation of moon jellyfish. This power plant requires flowing water to cool down its turbines, but the huge influx of jellyfish clogged the water pipes.

Sounds crazy right? Turns out this isn't the first time something like this has happened: in 2005, the same thing happened at Oskarshamn, and just last year, the Diablo Canyon facility in California was shut down due to sea salp. Marine biologists say that this sort of thing may happen more and more--moon jellyfish like to bloom in over-fished waters.

(P.S. Does anyone know the proper term for a whole bunch of jellyfish? Gang? Swarm? School?)

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African-American Women Chemists

Jeannette E. Brown

This book profiles the lives of numerous women, ranging from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960’s when the Civil Rights Acts sparked greater career opportunities. Brown examines each woman’s motivation to pursue chemistry, describes their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women, and details their often quite significant accomplishments. The book looks at chemists in academia, industry, and government, as well as chemical engineers, whose career path is very different from that of the tradition chemist, and it concludes with a chapter on the future of African American women chemists, which will be of interest to all women interested in a career in science.

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What has two legs and walks upright?

Scientists at the University of Austin, Texas confirmed the pivotal role that the position of the foramen magnum had in the transition between four-legged and two-legged walking. What is the foramen magnum?

This Latin term meaning "great hole" is the gap in the base of our skulls where our spinal cords run down our vertebrae to the rest of our bodies. If you think of our skulls & vertebral columns as a lollipop on a stick, the foramen magnum is the hole in the candy where the stick goes.

How does this hole differ between four-legged and two-legged animals? From Science Daily, 

The foramen magnum in humans is centrally positioned under the braincase because the head sits atop the upright spine in bipedal postures. In contrast, the foramen magnum is located further toward the back of the skull in chimpanzees and most other mammals, as the spine is positioned more behind the head in four-legged postures.

Other upright species, such as the kangaroo, also have centrally located foramina magna (plural)--perhaps due to convergent evolution. As the picture above shows, we humans are quite upright as compared to other mammals. Thanks foramen magnum, for letting us stand up straight!

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Yosemite National Park Turns 123

Happy birthdays are in order for Yosemite, which was designated as a national park in 1890. The Yosemite Valley has been inhabited by humans for over three millenia. These early indigenous tribes depended heavily on black oaks, and even performed controlled burns to maintain the oak population. Despite being exiled from their home region, the Ahwahnechee still leave a lasting impression in Yosemite: people from all over the world revere Yosemite for its ecological value and beauty. 

[scarboroughartworks]

[itsokaytobesmart]

I love these, best thing since motivational megafauna.

But I also feel like every one of them should be followed by “…but I’m going to eat you anyway.”

via scarboroughartworks:

A series of six little (5” x 7”) Complimentary Fish I made for the shop. The fish are pen-and-ink on scrap intaglio paper (mostly Somerset, I think), shaded in with some ink and watercolour washes. Afterwards, I cut them out and glued them to some scrapbook paper, then popped them into simple frames.

I probably spent a good three weeks drawing miscellaneous deep sea fish—some of them mermaids, which I’ll have to dig up and post later.

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Monday Motivation!

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Popular Science Disables Online Comments

Last Tuesday, online content director Suzanne LaBarre announced that Popular Science would no longer allow site visitors to comment on articles. She asserts that "trolls and spambots" hinder their efforts to communicate science. But that's not the only group that PopSci hopes to silence. "Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story," the article boldly proclaims.

While I sympathize with their situation (trolls and spambots plague many websites), I disagree with the decision to disable new comments. I believe that listening to the "fractious minority" is an essential part of communicating and learning science. In fact, the opinion of this minority, however "incorrect" or "biased", is an important marker of how effectively you are communicating. Or are we, the scientific community, content with just preaching to the choir? 

LaBarre is correct, however, about comments polarizing readers. There has been much research on this matter. But this is where we as consumers of Popular Science and, generally, the Internet, have to take an active stance: we must seek out the truth for ourselves, look at several sources, judge different opinions. This is one of the foundations of the scientific method--we must explore and investigate ourselves. Popular Science may not want to deal with reader comments anymore, but I certainly believe we have the right to be responsible readers.

--y

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View from the ISS at Night

Here's a beautiful tribute to space and science. Happy Friday everyone :)

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The Science in Your Refrigerator!

Last week, the Natural Resources Defense Council published this infographic that demystifies the secret of your refrigerator!  Refrigeration is key to food safety and consumption, but did you know that there are different temperature zones even within the fridge/freezer components? Or that different foods are better kept in different humidity levels? Time to reorganize my fridge!

[brooklynmutt-deactivated2021090]

14 new-born panda cubs were displayed at a press conference at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China’s Sichuan province today.  

AFP

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^^ so cute! And so rare: successful natural matings of pandas in captivity is incredibly low, either because the pandas are uninterested or don't know how. That's way artificial insemination has been successfully deployed in husbandry efforts. 

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DIY Science: Measuring the Invisible

Here's a fun experiment that we piloted at Donoghue Elementary School yesterday: how do you measure something that is invisible? Gases are all around us, but we can't see them. Using our senses though, we can hear wind blowing through leaves, smell coffee brewing in the morning, and feel air conditioning blowing against our skin. These are all gases! 

So how can we measure how much of a gas there is if we can't, say, grab a handful of it? Let's do this fun experiment!

You will need:

Plastic water bottle, filled halfway with water Balloon Effervescent antacid tablet (Alka-seltzer) Experimental Steps:

1. Place the antacid tablet in the balloon and crush it by breaking it apart with your fingers. 2. Secure the mouth of the balloon over the water bottle spout. 3. Tip the balloon to dump our the antacid pieces into the water. 4. What do you observe?

The antacid tablet contains an acid and a base, and they mix together in the water to create gases. We detect these as the bubbles in the water. The gases then inflate the balloon! Some balloons will inflate more than others, depending on the amount of gases created. So using balloons, we can qualitatively 'measure' the amount of gases created, even though they are invisible! You can repeat this experiment with multiple antacid tablets, or try shaking the bottle to create more gases.

(thanks to howtosmile.org for original experiment!)

[wnycradiolab]

From Laughing Squid, 3D-Printed Paintings of Nanomolecular Structures by Shane Hope.

Shane has a pretty interesting website:

Q: Is your work deliberately trying to be opaque, and if so, what are the benefits of hyper-complexity (both conceptual and aesthetic)?

A: Many have been too hypnotized by technocratic solutionism to see that not all clarity is benevolently about accuracy and not all lack thereof should be immediately suspect. Getting obsessive-compulsive about the future can be counterproductive inasmuch as it often precludes a greater gamut of adaptability. Ambiguity, opacity, allusion, metaphor and semantic slippage can all serve as really important tools when making artwork, or realities for that matter. From the butterfly flap you choose, emerges the superstorm you deserve.

Hm.

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3D printing for the win!

[msnnews]

13-year-old Indian girl begins microbiology master’s

Sushma Verma, a 13-year-old girl from a poor family in north India, has enrolled in a master’s degree in microbiology, after her father sold his land to pay for some of his daughter’s tuition.

Read more here.

[women-in-science-blog]

Best of luck!

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"Their only income is her father's daily wage of less than $3.50 for laboring on construction sites. Their most precious possessions include a study table and a second-hand computer."

Incredible story!