Check out this zoomable graphic showing the comparative sizes of tiny biological things, from the University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center.

[Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.]

November 16th, 2009 | Tags: biology, cool stuff, Science | Category: Science | Leave a comment

CHANGSHA, HUNAN — While I wait for my lunch companions to show up, I will try to dash off a quick movie review.

Of course, it’s not very current. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra opened in the USA weeks ago, but I saw it for the first time here just last week. In Chinese. With Chinese subtitles.

I didn’t miss a thing.

Some B-movies have redeeming virtues, despite poor acting, bad direction, cheesy scripts, or lousy camera work. Really bad movies (grade Z’s), though, combine all four to make a US Grade A turkey.

And being a science-fictiony kind of film, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, brought really bad to a whole new level with really awful science concepts.

Here’s a few glaring mistakes.

The Bad Guy (TBG) has a huge underwater lair that puts Stargate Atlantis’ digs to shame. Yet, this underwater metropolis is supposedly a secret. How? Its heat signature alone would be as bright as lighthouse beacon to a spy satellite in orbit.

For argument’s sake, let’s suppose the US government knew about The Bad Guy’s secret underwater lair. Wouldn’t the Defense Department be just a teensy bit interested in why TBG has all of that expensive hardware hidden away, especially since TBG is supplying high-tech stuff to the DoD?

(Then again, maybe not. Consider the DoD’s careful monitoring of Blackwater and Halliburton operations in Iraq.)

And he also has a secret weapons facility in the Arctic! Apparently, he hasn’t read up on global warming.

August 22nd, 2009 | Tags: China, movie, Physics, review, Science | Category: China, Commentary, Media, Physics | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Dr. Isis at Scienceblogs.com has published a few more letters from women scientists, as part of her “Letters to Our Daughters Project.”

The daughters are not necessarily the scientists’ biological daughters, by the way. Isis wants young female scientists-in-training to stay the course, get their degrees and begin science careers. As a former high school science teacher, I’m blogging about these letters because they contain sound advice for teenaged science students, too. Girls can be scientists, without giving up romance, motherhood, or … shopping.

The third letter in the series is by Wendee Holtcamp, a free-lance science journalist who blogs at Animal Planet and has written for Scientific American and other big time publications. She reminisces about the doubts of others around her whether she could or should pursue a doctoral degree.

It seems that the higher I climb up the totem pole of success, the more resistance I encounter. Whatever happened to those feel-good messages from kindergarten: You can be anything you want to be! Girls can do anything boys can! Go make your dreams come true!

What I’m discovering as I journey toward my doctorate is that while women may cheer our abundant opportunities in the 21st century, equal opportunity does not always mean equal treatment. The little voices of doubt rattle around at the back of my mind.

Dr. Janet Stemwedel (aka Dr. Free-Ride), who also blogs at Scienceblogs.com, holds two doctoral degrees in chemistry and philosophy. She is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Not surprisingly, her letter is more, well, philosophical.

May 29th, 2009 | Tags: Dr. Isis, female, letters to our daughters, math, Science, scienceblogs, scientists, women | Category: Astronomy, China, Commentary, Science, Teaching | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — One of my favorite Internet hangouts is ScienceBlogs.com, which has a veritable pantheon of engaging and intelligent bloggers commenting on everything from creationist malarkey and real science to … shoes. One of the goddesses there is Dr. Isis (her mortal form is depicted below), who recently started a project to encourage more young women to enter the sciences.

Dr. Isis and I share the same concern. I spent more than two decades teaching physics to sometimes reluctant teenagers, and because our school basically required everyone to take physics to graduate, I managed to teach nearly everyone who passed through those hallowed halls.

Roughly half my students were girls. I don’t have any hard statistics, but I think about as many women as men among my students entered medical, scientific or technical fields. The numbers for both genders are comparatively small, given the arts-and-humanities bent of the school, but it’s the parity of the numbers that I am proud of.

For a student to love math and science is hard enough in the United States — such students are labeled nerds, geeks, and weirdos, because math and science are supposed to be (a) really hard and (b) really boring. To love something simultaneously hard and boring makes you a bit of a social outcast. [Cross-cultural aside: This kind of ostracism does not happen in China, or in Asia as a whole. Here, math and science students are virtually worshiped, which might help explain why Asian students kick American students' asses on international math and science exams.]

May 8th, 2009 | Tags: Dr. Isis, female, letters to our daughters, math, Science, scienceblogs, scientists, women | Category: Commentary, Random rants, Science, Skepticism, Teaching | Comments (4)

The Panda’s Thumb has been keeping a close tab on Ohio science teacher/religious fanatic John Freshwater even since he got into trouble last year, allegedly burning a cross on a student’s arm with a Tesla coil.

Freshwater and school officials have been making their cases in adiministrative hearings since then. There have been six days of testimony so far, spread over several months. So far, the testimony suggests Freshwater was an insubordinate teacher who resisted his superiors’ efforts to bring him in line, perhaps because he believed God’s authority trumped theirs.

Members of the science department were supposed to bring their Tesla coils to the front office; Freshwater kept his. He was supposed to remove his Bible from plain sight of students; he put additional religious materials in his classroom instead. Ohio’s scope and sequence of science instruction places the teaching of evolution in the 8th grade and later, and forbids the teaching of creationism; Freshwater was telling his seventh graders that evolution was bunk, that the world was only 6,000 years old, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed for a time.

Freshwater, who apparently is a very popular teacher and has won teaching awards in the past, is associated with rightwing Christian organizations, particularly the kind that just can’t seem to accept that old “separation of church and state” idea enshrined in the Constitution. They try to weasel their church teachings into the public schools in defiance of federal (and state) law anyway.

November 9th, 2008 | Tags: insubordination, john freshwater, religion, Science | Category: Commentary, Science, Teaching, evolution, religion | Comments (2)

JISHOU, HUNAN — Most of my posts lately have been about China, for obvious reasons, but it’s hard to abandon being a physics teacher. So, here’s a science post.

While humans have been flitting around in low-earth orbit, NASA-JPL’s Martian probes have been busy on the red planet. The arctic explorer, Phoenix, has discovered water ice in the soil and in the sky, detected snow falling from the clouds, and photographed the sun creeping up above the horizon as the martian winter approaches.

This sequence just fascinates me in particular. It shows clouds scooting through the sky, much as they would here in Earth. These are water-ice clouds, like the high-altitude cirrus clouds here.

Aside from practical issues like not having any oxygen to breath and sub-sub-zero temperatures, you could almost imagine yourself standing there watching the clouds go by.

Phoenix has been operating for more than four months, but the approaching martian winter solstice may kill the little fellow off. Temperatures are dropping to -120C (-184F), which is bad for its electronics and especially its solar panels. Carbon dioxide frost is forming on the solar panels, cutting down sunlight reaching the solar cells. And the sun itself, as it does in Earth’s arctic region, will soon dip below the horizon, not to return for three months.

So NASA-JPL scientists are trying to keep Phoenix busy every waking hour before it’s lights out for the probe. For details, visit the website.

October 1st, 2008 | Tags: discoveries, MArs, NASA, probes, Science | Category: Astronomy, Commentary, Science | Leave a comment