Do you .Astronomy? June 16, 2009
Posted by sarah in: dotastronomy, science . Add a comment
One of the most interesting and fun meetings I attended in 2008 was a workshop in Cardiff called .Astronomy, where I met lots of great people who are all active in internet-based astronomy in some shape or form: education, outreach, robotic observing, virtual observatory software, blogging, podcasting, twittering, citizen science and everything in between. I came away feeling very inspired and a little starry-eyed, and I’ve written a number of posts about the conference itself and more cool projects and ideas I’ve spotted since. (more…)
Of men, women and chimpanzees June 14, 2009
Posted by sarah in: politics, science, women . 1 comment so far
Dr. Smith was ectstatic he'd been shortlisted for a fellowship
Last week I listened to an excellent podcast at Slate.com on how to get more women into science. I can’t find the podcast anymore but the transcript is here, with lots of interesting links. In it, Ray Fisman reports results of a study into academic achievement in maths and science at the US Air Force Academy. The study found that replacing male instructors with a female one has a dramatic impact on the performance of the female students in the class, bringing it level with that of the men. Specifically,
women on average obtain scores that are 0.15 grade points lower (half the difference between an A and an A-) than their male classmates, even after accounting for students’ SAT scores. The gap in performance was widest for women taught by men. When a female instructor was put at the front of the classroom, nearly two-thirds of the grade point gender gap evaporated.
Bottom line: hire more women. (more…)
Big Picture homage to MESSENGER June 12, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics, science, space . Add a comment
The wonderful Big Picture series at the Boston Globe devoted a photo series this week to the MESSENGER probe and the fantastic images it has sent us from the tiny enigmatic planet Mercury.
Hop on over there and take a look!
Image: NASA
Tweeting Arxiv June 9, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, science . Add a comment
Fellow astronomer, blogger and developer Rob (@orbitingfrog) has put together a great new site in recent months that makes the most of two of my favourite places on the web, arxiv and Twitter. Arxiv on Twitter, or Tweprints for short, tracks all tweets about publications listed on arxiv, the online preprint service where many scientists post their new papers in a variety of sciences, including astronomy. Authors often post their work to arxiv before they are officially published by the journals, so it’s an excellent way to disseminate new results to the community more quickly than the time it takes a journal to publish (months sometimes).
Enamorado de Madrid June 6, 2009
Posted by sarah in: me, random . Add a commentThose who follow me on Twitter may know that I’ve spent the past week in Madrid, and that things didn’t go so well at the start: I spent the first 2 1/2 days in my hotel room battling a nasty cold, while outside the sun was shining and my colleagues were getting lots of interesting work done.
Such trips have a habit of redeeming themselves though – there’s nothing that puts me in a better mood than realising that I’m not sick anymore. This one was no different, and I discovered again why Madrid is one of my favourite cities. Although proper Spanish food is not exactly the model of the “healthy Mediterranean diet”, it is delicious, and I happily let my meat and bread consumption increase by 500% for the time that I spend there: cerdo iberico FTW. The big airy boulevards, brilliant museums, efficient public transport and the friendliness of the Madrileños totally make up for what Madrid lacks in grace and mystery compared with, say, Barcelona. (more…)
