French teenagers are learning how to work with bacteria in science labs. Sound like a harmless–and even beneficial–thing, right? But because their experiments involve the genetic modification of Escherichia coli (E. coli) to build resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin, some French organizations are raising the alarm.
One such group includes the Committee for Research & Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), which lobbies for tighter genetic engineering laws. CRIIGEN President Gilles-Eric Séralini said that he will implore France’s education ministry to ban the creation of trangenic E. coli by 15- and 16-year-old students.
As Nature News reports:
He warns against trivialization of a sensitive subject, contamination risks and possible violation of European directives on the manipulation of genetically modified organisms in confined spaces. “I am also concerned that practical classes erode the time spent imparting knowledge of biology,” he adds.
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For many people, texting serves as a useful tool. But for British student Caroline Tagg, a study of text-messaging earned her a PhD.
That’s right, Dr. Tagg now has a doctorate of philosophy in texting—the first of its kind.
To earn the degree, Tagg spent nearly four years studying a total of 11,000 text messages containing 190,000 words and sent by 235 people, all of which she compiled and analyzed in a database. The Telegraph reports:
[Tagg] discovered that people text in the same way as if they were talking, using unnecessary words such as ‘oh’, ‘erm’ and often use grammatical abbreviations like ‘dunno’….
And she discovered from her 80,000 word thesis that there is more to texting that just abbreviations—something most people associate with texting.
“Actually, not many people use abbreviations,” she said. “People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive.”
She found that the average text message contains 17.5 words and that (shocker) some texts can be about incredibly mundane matters—”Hi. I know you are at work but I just wanted you to know I found my pen lid” being a prime example. She also called the experience “enlightening.”
So what do you think: Was the research a waste of time, or is Tagg a pioneer in exploring the linguistics of our newest communication method?
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Image: flickr / samantha celera
A polar bear is the Brooks School’s new environmental mascot. A virtual one, anyway.
It uses energy monitoring software created by TellEmotion to educate kids about their energy consumption. But instead of graphs or numbers, the polar bear’s well-being visibly changes with the level of energy use. So the bear is happy when energy consumption is low, like early in the mornings, but as it increases—as more computers and other appliances are switched on—the ice begins to melt from under the bear’s paws. If it really climbs, the bear falls into the water and flails around.
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David DeWitt takes his educational duties seriously. Each year, the biology “professor” and director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University takes his class on a field trip. Their destination is the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, where the students in his Advanced Creation Studies course can bolster their “biblical view of natural history” by viewing a “temple of evolution.” In other words, they’re going to check out the enemy.
Adding to the ludicrous quotient even more, DeWitt’s trips are part of a recent trend: Plenty of adult creationists are reportedly taking these so-called “creation vacations” too. While scientists and science-lovers everywhere were celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday, creationists saw the event as a chance to visit natural history museums, aquariums, geologic sites, and dinosaur parks to challenge evolution.
So what’s a trip to a museum like with a creationist? First, DeWitt’s class went through the fossil exhibit. His only complaint was that one of the films shown failed to discuss DNA, and only talked about amoeba. He bashed the film for being too ’80s, and called it “embarrassing” [ed. note: Oh the rich irony in that word choice].
When the class headed to the dinosaur exhibit, they had no objections—they don’t deny the existence of dinosaurs, they just believe that God created all animals on the sixth day. Never mind the fact that dinos first appeared 215 million years ago, and were wiped out about 65 million years ago. Or the plethora of fossil records proving that birds descended from dinos.
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For the past three decades, the U.K.’s space policy has been in favor of sending robots into space, but not humans. And certainly not bears—of the living variety, that is. Last Thursday, a group of British school children tweaked that policy a bit when they sent teddy bears into space.
The project was part of the Cambridge University Spaceflight program, which worked with 11- and 12-year-olds from nearby schools to encourage science education. Not to get too technical, this is how the teddy bears made it into space. First, the students had to design space suits for the bears, so they could withstand the extreme temperatures and pressure present in near space.
On the day of the launch, the space team gathered at Churchill College with four space-suited teddy bears. The bears were placed in a foam box filled with instruments and cameras. When the conditions were just right, the “teddy-nauts” were launched into space with a helium balloon.
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This just in: Nerdy 16-to-25-year-old male science students are the most likely to be virgins of any of 185 students at the University of Sydney, according to a new study. Australian psychotherapist Stephen Carroll asked students in different departments about their sexual past and their knowledge of Chlamydia. While the male science students had the least amount of sex, female art students reportedly had the most, and also knew the least about the common STD.
What’s going on for all those lonely science majors? They’re spending too much time in the lab, according to Carroll. And given that the majority of science classes are still predominantly male, these deprived men probably aren’t going to find dates in their physics or engineering class. Maybe they should consider enrolling in drawing or painting 101.
Credit: flickr/ motoyzf222
The next time you’re interested in a healthy dose of physics (with a generous splash of literature), resist the temptation of your Wikipedia bookmark, take a step back from the harried, irreverent blogosphere, and dive into the enrapturing prose of pre-Soviet Russia.
In 1913, Yakov Perelman wrote an enchanting book called Physics for Entertainment, and it’s just what Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would have turned out—had they any desire to teach the fundamental laws of the universe. Perelman’s book was only recently translated to English, and seeks (successfully) to “arouse the activity of scientific imagination, to teach the reader to think in the spirit of the science of physics…with all that he normally comes into contact with.”
In chapters like “How to Work Miracles,” “Mathematics and Imagination,” and “Fairy Tale Railway,” Perelman associates the laws of physics with an ample variety of both everyday phenomena (knots, eggshells, fire, jumping from a moving vehicle) and the wildest fantasies of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Cyrano de Bergerac, Gogol, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Pushkin, and Edgar Allan Poe. Blending flowery prose with equations, neither of which are burdensome, he weaves his own delightful narrative with the imaginations of a great writer, producing a highly engaging piece of educational literature.
Some excerpts, illustrating Perelman’s merging of science fiction with physics non-fiction: (more…)
On Sunday at New York’s Javits Center, hundreds of teens gathered to compete in the finals of the FIRST Robotics Competition regionals. The winners will go on to the National Competition in Atlanta—for the rest, this competition was the end of the assembly line.
On the track, the competition was fierce and students eyed each others’ handiwork warily. But behind the scenes in the pit, where goggle-clad kids wielded screwdrivers and tinkered with their machines, the students shared their knowledge with each other, with experienced groups often lending a hand to first-timers. The Capri-Sun flowed freely.
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Over one thousand high school students scurry around 64 robots along about the floor of the Javits Center in New York City. They are here to compete in the NYC regional contest to prove they have what it takes to put together the fittest, most agile, robot to rule them all. In this year’s competition the students, with the help of their teachers and outside engineers, designed robots that will fight—well, let’s say “compete”—to move on to the nationals (and get a shot at scholarship money) in a game of Overdrive.
The goal is simple: two teams of three robots each race around a 1500-square foot track, earning points for successfully completing each lap. On top of this teams can get points for manipulating huge red and blue balls that sit atop a 6-ft-plus scaffold in the middle of the track. The robots get 6 points for bringing the balls down and 8 points if they can hoist them back up.
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