Children's Book on ISSUU
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
LIttle Men and Flying Saucers by Loren Eiseley
- Is there a point to learn about our origins or worry about the future?
- If we all come from different paths, what is the reason for us trying to find out about them?
- Can our past really tell us about our future, and why should we want this?
- I think the problem is that, even though we may be the only species who can "think" it is also possible to think too much, to worry, and have anxiety about the past and the future.
- It would be better to simply accept who we are and where we came from and live life in the present, and then maybe we wouldn't be so lonely.
- We wouldn't be lonely because we would be interacting with others who are also living in the present instead of trying to relate with people who aren't alive anymore or who aren't alive yet.
The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin
- Is life as we know it a result of a mathematical model?
- How is it that we are able to change our futures based on our present actions?
- I do not believe there is simply one concept of reality, reality is however an individual sees the world, which is far from the same for everyone.
- I think there may have been some mathematically explained beginning, but since then we change the world in unmathematical ways.
- You could use faith and religion to describe everything, or you could say that God has given us mathematical models in order to explain this phenomenon. Either way, mathematics alone cannot explain reality, there must be a combination of theories and subjects to explain it.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Technical Review: Fake Bake Flawless Self-Tanning Liquid
Is your skin so pale that you blend in with piles of snow from this winter? Then, Fake Bake Flawless Self-Tanning Liquid is your solution! The spray bottle comes with a professional mitt to ensure minimal streaking. You won’t have to worry about anyone will telling you to try out for the next Jersey Shore season since your tan will will look as natural as if you Spring Breaked in Florida or some other sunny location. You can also decide how dark you would like your tan to be by applying more solution. You can go from Olaf to Cinderella, to even Princess Jasmine if you desire.
Medium version
Medium version
Thursday, March 5, 2015
3/6/15 Writing for Science
Scientific Journals
- social and collaborative nature
- peer reviewed
- to ensure that other scientists can "follow, assess, and replicate" presented findings
- professional standard of validity
- types of journals/research articles
- empirical/experimental
- methodological
- theoretical
- review
- case study
- IMRAD
- Introduction
- framework for research
- background, significance
- specific purpose
- primary results and conclusions
- Methods/Materials
- straightforward
- complete/precise/detailed
- design, instruments, techniques, procedures, measurement
- Results
- most important part, but shortest part
- can permit use of visuals
- graphs, photos, tables
- "hourglass or egg timer"
- broader beginning and end funneling toward specific data in middle
- and
- Discussion
- freer hand than previous sections
- brief reminder of important findings
- move toward progressively more generalized statements, relationships and connections
- major patterns
- compare to other previous or current work
- unresolved issues, discrepancies
- predictions, future research
- solution to posed problem
- implications
- abstract also follows IMRAD model but with summarizing paper
- Ethics
- authorship credit
- originality of research
- multiple publication
- treatment of sources
- intentionally misrepresented data
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Pop vs. Pro: The science behind the “munchies”
Two people tell a
story about the same event to two different people. One is telling their friend
this story, and another is telling the story to an interviewer. Although they
are talking about the same event, each person is going to have their own spin
on the story, and depending on who they are talking about, details might be
explained differently or even left out. When telling my friend about my college
experience I most likely am going to be a lot more explicit with my word
choice, use some slang or inside jokes, and tell stories that I think my friend
would think are interesting or funny. When telling an interviewer about my
college experience I might focus more on what I learned, who I met, and how I
have changed and leave out details about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I am
still talking about one topic, my college experience, and yet these two stories
are going to be much different. The same goes for scientific topics. Depending
on who the author is, who the audience is, and what the context is, the story
is going to be portrayed differently.
Nature is an
international weekly journal of science and one of the most notable and
distinguished journals. According to their website mission statement, one of
the goals of the journal is “to rapidly disseminate results of science to the
public throughout the world in a fashion that conveys their significance for
knowledge, culture and daily life”. The website is categorized into Chemistry,
Life Sciences, Clinical Practice, Earth & Environment and Physical Sciences.
Since all of these articles are peer reviewed, many of the readers of this
journal are other scientists, doctors and professors who may even be published
themselves. Like in my experience, students read these articles too, but mainly
from the science and tech fields of study, and many of my science classes have
assigned case studies that come from this journal because of its reliability in
the science world.
The article uses
an exorbitant amount of acronyms although mentioned briefly at the beginning,
became confusing when every other word was an acronym. The article also requires
the reader to be highly involved as it references many figures and tables and
has about nine pages of extended data tables and graphs. If the reader is
unfamiliar with reading these types of graphs then they would have a hard time
understanding much of the article. I thought that the article was very
distracting because the figure captions were extremely long, although necessary
to include the appropriate data. The article was full of scientific jargon and
probably unreadable for most lay people. Even the title, including the word “cannabinoid-induced
feeling” probably would not turn a light on in the most pot smoking familiar
person until the last paragraph of the discussion mentions that “the phenomenon
of cannabis-triggered feeding in a state of satiety is a hallmark of marijuana
use in humans” (Koch 4).
In contrast, The
Guardian is a British national daily newspaper that now also has US and Australia
editions. It is one of the top read newspapers in the world. The audience of
this newspaper is people of all ages and levels of education. A majority of the
people reading this article were probably intrigued by the title of this article
since a “recreational activity” such as smoking pot was in a research science
article.
The article uses
the slang word “munchies’ to describe the increased appetite while under the
influence of marijuana. The article is much more readable, clear, and relatable,
using terms known by younger populations. This article only uses acronyms three
times and the scientific word is in parenthesis directly after the acronym. This article “dumbs down” the science behind
the mechanism in the brain that is responsible for appetite and cravings. The
article still falls under the science section and uses terms such as “neurons”
and “organelles” which are basic science vocabulary that is learned in middle
school. The article also uses specific imagery such as a “desire for a packet
of Doritos or a bowl of Coco Pops” to relate to the audience’s behaviors (Devlin).
Although smoking
marijuana is a relatively well-known practice, most people do not know the specific
science behind the physical changes it causes. They might be able to describe
behaviors and thoughts that arise as a result of smoking or ingesting
marijuana, but probably rely more on basic news articles like The Guardian’s
rather than scientific research articles from journals such as Nature. I would also
relate the difference in the writing and readability of these two different
types of articles to the full ingredient list on the back of a package versus
the ingredients promoted on the front. On the front are familiar words and
ingredients such as “high fiber” and “protein”, while the back might contain unpronounceable
sources for those nutrients, but each is technically describing the same thing,
the front simply chooses more eye catching words and phrases, than the back,
which is more comprehensive.
Works
Cited
Devlin, Hannah. "Reefer research: cannabis 'munchies' explained by new
study ." The Guardian
[New York, NY]. Guardian News and Media Limited, 18
Feb. 2015. Web. 24 Feb. 2015.
Koch, Marco, et al. "Hypothalamic POMC neurons promote
cannabinoid-induced feeding."
Nature (2015): Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
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