Many have asked what I fear is the worst issue confronting these United States; after reflection and tought, I have concluded a rather unique, but I believe ultimately correct, answer: The politicization of science. Yes, science has become a political minefield, and the results are the catastrop[...]
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
To succeed, US must continue to invest in education, research
“America’s current circumstances are certainly serious. But there is a proven path forward, one that the United States has traveled with great success before: the rising path of innovation. After the Civil War and World War II, in particular, America restored its economic momentum with great[...]
March 11th, 2011 - 6:22 am § in Science
Biology: Origins of us.
Ed. for the non biologist … one of the REAL missing links is understanding how single cells come together to form a multicellular organisms … from The Scientist: The results, published this week in Science, add to a growing body of evidence that the genetic toolkit for multicellularity e[...]
Supreme Court: Rights of Stanford vs. Roche to Intellectual Property
Ed: The title above is misleading. As previously discussed on The Ave, Stanford vs. Roche Molecular has evolved into a battle over the patents rights of faculty members. The case esp. important at the UW because, unlike Stanford faculty we do not sign a contract. Instead our working agreem[...]
March 8th, 2011 - 5:41 pm § in Schools & Colleges, Science
Imperial College takes on Elsevier and Wiley Blackwell
Felix Online, the online news of Imperial College in the UK, reports (in an article by Kadhim Shubber) that Deborah Shorley, Director of the Imperial College London Library, is threatening to end the library’s subscriptions to journals published by Elsevier and Wiley Blackwell, two of the major [...]
Religion on Campus.
Religious apologists like Dr. Ecklund fail to understand that the problem is not intolerance of faith. In my experience, even though most of my colleagues are likely atheists, those that are religious … Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Mormon mix perfectly well. The problem on cam[...]
March 5th, 2011 - 10:27 am § in Schools & Colleges, Science
PreMeds: A Different View
The chariot scene in the movie Ben Hur has all the trappings of mindless, driven competition .. just like premed? As an MD and an intellectual, I find the chariot race of pre med stultifying. Too many premeds, too few slots result in competitors who mindlessly do selfless things … whether that[...]
UW Not in Top 15 Post Doc Opportunities in the US
The Hutch and ISB did make the list but the UW did not. This list seems to me to be very worrisome. The ratings of postdocs are likely more realistic than ratings from news papers like US News and World Report. I also note that the issue is not just that fellows are choosing places […][...]
February 24th, 2011 - 8:14 am § in Schools & Colleges, Science
UPDATE:What Happened to the Boycott of NATURE?
Last August, the University of California and Nature Publishing Group, announced “an agreement to work together to address the current licensing challenges as well as the larger issues of sustainability in the scholarly communication process.” I can find nothing on the web about[...]
How am I going to fill out the race forms?
Last Xmas, the genome company, 23andMe had a sale! $100 for a genome. My wife and I ordered our done and the results are in! One reason for doing this was to figure out how to fill in those damned forms that ask me to classify myself by race. Well, now I can and I […][...]