On Neatfreakiness

When I was in college, one of my science professors had very extreme requirements about the organization of the homework we turned in. The problem sets had to be completed on a certain type of graph paper, and all writing had to be in block capital letters written with a particular type/hardness of mechanical pencil. The pieces of paper had to be stapled in the upper left corner. There were restrictions on the amount of visible erasure allowed, and crossed out items were strictly prohibited. Answers had to be surrounded by a rectangle (not a circle). We all thought this professor was a total controlling neat freak and that this might be a sign of derangement.

And then I became a professor and understood how he came to be like that.

Last weekend I spent considerable time grading assignments and exams for two classes. I am requiring e-assignments as much as possible, but some assignments and exams are more practical with a handwritten component. The parts that are submitted as spreadsheets and graphs are mostly fine (though some students create horrendous spreadsheets of unnecessary complexity and with bizarre or no labeling of cells and columns), but the parts that are written by hand and turned in on paper are, in some cases, even more painful and impossible to read.

Some students do not staple the pages and do not write their name on every page. The first thing I have to do when confronted with a pile of homework assignments is to do the stapling for some students or else the pages might get scattered. I am considering requiring a staple (in the upper left corner).

Some students use scrap paper for their assignments; this is environmentally commendable, but it is hard for me to read the real assignment between the lines or in the margins of the non-assignment text. Others tear out pages from a spiral bound notebook, leaving little hanging pieces of paper to get caught in things and scatter around my office and home and cats. I am considering requiring a certain type of graph paper.

Some students use black or red or green permanent marker that runs through the paper and leaves marks on other pages, making everything hard to read. The number of crossed out areas and convoluted arrows and hard-to-find answers is considerable for some students. I am considering requiring neatly printed letter in pencil and prohibiting crossed out answers and hard-to-find answers.

Actually, I'm not really going to do any of those things. The emotional and physical energy required to create and enforce such instructions probably exceeds the emotional and physical energy required to deal with messy homework by students in my small classes this term. Such requirements would make me unhappy and it would make my students unhappy.

Furthermore, we professors expect (hope) that our students will put up with a bit of disorganization in our teaching, so ideally we will all be a bit patient with each other.

But still.. one recent assignment was so difficult to read that I discussed it with the student. I said "You teach labs. You know what it's like to grade a messy assignment. It would have taken you 10 minutes to redo this neatly so that I could read it easily. Why not do that?". The student smiled and shrugged.

My new plan is to attempt to figure out the student's method and answer, but not to try too hard. If I can't figure it out without great time and effort (and guessing), I will take off a lot of points, scribble (semi-legibly) a note saying I can't follow their answer, and let the student come to me and show me what they did.

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H1N1 Vaccination Hysteria Part 3: Alternative remedies vs. Vaccination

This is the third post in a series about the science and societal impacts of the flu and flu vaccination. Specifically, I emphasize the importance of sound scientific literacy in understanding this important topic. Please read the first posts in the series if you missed them.
Part 1: Is the Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?
Part 2: Should I get the shot?

In today’s post, I’ll address some of the responses commonly heard in response to the vaccination recommendations:

"I'll just take vitamins and natural herbs and I'll be protected from the Swine Flu."

One of the greatest benefits in living in an industrialized nation is our access to well-researched medicines and treatment technologies. These advances in science and medicine have saved countless lives. However, we also have a wealth of knowledge about traditional and alternative remedies at our disposal. Alternative remedies can be useful; and they certainly have their place in your health regime. To this end it is important to understand the science behind these alternative remedies and how these remedies work in your body so that you can make well-informed decisions about your and your family's health.

Getting more Vitamin D
Particular to the Swine Flu, some people are recommending Vitamin D as a preventative to the disease. How does this work? Vitamin D is found in dairy and fish foods but our bodies are also able to manufacture Vitamin D if it sufficiently exposed to UV-B sun rays. Vitamin D is key for calcium and phosphorus uptake to keep your bones strong. Now there is some interesting research suggesting that Vitamin D might also be key in your immune response.

Vitamin D seems to be an important modulator in both your Primary and Secondary immune response. (See post 2 in the series where I define the immune response and immune cells) . A variant of the Vitamin D is apart of the molecular structure of some immune cells - like phages and B & T Memory cells. Without Vitamin D in the immune cells don't function to full capacity, have problem recognizing germs and don't attack and kill germs fast enough. The most compelling evidence shows that people who are deficient in Vitamin D are more likely to get sick from the flu, tuberculosis and suffer complications from Multiple sclerosis. This new research provides some very exciting news about how being adequately nourished is so important to maintaining good health.

What about eating organic foods?
Organic foods are delicious, and if you can afford to eat them then do. However, there is no evidence to suggest they are more or less healthy than traditionally raised and harvested foods. Eating fresher fruits, veggies, and whole grains is better for your general health than not eating fruits and veggies at all or eating processed foods. These foods provide vitamins and essential elements used by your immune cells to fight germs.

But I would like to make it clear, there is no evidence that Vitamin D or simply eating healthier foods alone are effective at preventative against any disease, including the Swine Flu. Simply, the results of the Vitamin D study and the benefits of eating organic foods reinforce the importance of a healthy, well-balanced diet. Eating well means getting all the nutrition you need to keep your body and your immune cells in tip-top shape.

Can't I just take care of myself in more natural/less invasive ways to avoid the Swine Flu?
The short answer is yes. Eating healthy, taking vitamins, getting some sunshine, exercise, a good night's sleep are perfect for keeping your body in its best condition to fight off any germ. Plus, nothing beats hand washing (but not with anti-bacterial soap) and sanitizing your home for killing germs and preventing exposure. And if you do get sick, then the routine regiment of rest, fluids, vitamins, seeing the doctor, and taking the prescribed medicine does the job. These are general precautions to any disease.

However, public health officials are adding an extra precaution this season because of the Swine Flu and here is why.
1. The Swine Flu is widespread and pervasive. It's only late October - still 2 months away from the peak flu season - and cases are a popping up everywhere. This is very odd, most seasonal flus don't show up so early and spread so quickly.

2. The Swine Flu doesn't pick on the usual suspects. This strange diseases is dealing its worst hand to teens and young adults. Typically, these are the healthiest people in the population and always the group people worry the least about when every pandemics come around. But the reports all indicate that these people are getting sick more. Most diseases pick on the weak -from an immune system perspective, this means the elderly, the very young, and people who are chronically sick - like cancer, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease . Their immune system is either slow or still too new to respond to serious germ, so swine flu could really do some harm to such people.

That's why the doctors and public health officials recommend vaccination for the most at-risk groups: babies, toddlers, mommies (including pregnant women), the chronically ill, and young people (25 and younger). It seems the elderly have some immunity to swine flu due to previous exposure to the germ in the 1950s. But that still leaves a large number of people in the middle. If you are like me between the ages of 30-55, and in relative good health, you might not need the shot; and if you get the flu the odds are you will come through it just fine. However, you might want to get the vaccination to protect your family, especially if you spend time with anyone from one of the risk-prone groups listed above.

So, yes it is okay to wash your hands religiously, sanitize your home, school, and office space, cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies, and take vitamins. But I still encourage you to seriously consider the Seasonal and Swine Flu vaccination for your family.

References:
Vitamin D, Wikipedia
Swine Flu Hospitalizing Mostly Young People In The US, Medical News Today October 2009
Organic food is no healthier, study finds, Reuters July 2009
AP Photo/The Post and Courier, Alan Hawes
CDC 2009 H1N1 Flu US Situation Update, October 23, 2009

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Bias Bingo!

This is so cool.

Instead of playing Gender Bias Bingo alone on my computer, however, it would be much more fun to have a bingo card and bingo chips to bring with me to faculty and committee meetings, or to carry around with me in the halls to use as the need arises. There are even occasions when it would be useful to have in my office, on airplanes, at conferences, and during visits with my family.

One of the goals of Gender Bias Bingo is to teach women and men how to recognize bias in their own experiences, but a portable GBB might also help bias perpetrators be more self-aware. Perhaps some people need help learning that they shouldn't criticize women for being assertive and admire men for being aggressive, question whether a woman's idea is her own, ask a father who takes care of his kids when his wife is traveling etc. etc. etc. If someone yells BINGO! after an incident, and clicks down a bingo chip onto a portable GBB board, this might inspire a conversation, or even some quiet reflection.

Portable GBB bingo is not my idea. It is something that my friends and I (and, I think, some commenters to this blog) have occasionally expressed a wish to have during particularly fraught meetings or conversations. It would certainly make a useful gift for that special academic in your life, and would be equally appropriate, though perhaps not equally appreciated, by that not-so-special academic in your life.

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Wordless Wednesday: Contrasting Colors

Fall creates such beautiful contrasting color arrangements, especially when the leaves of a tree or bush are in transition.

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Paid for What I Think

As a result of my taking undergrad language classes for several years, I get all sorts of email targeted at students. Many of these are enticing job opportunities, such as:

What would you say if you get PAID for What You Think!!

I would say: I already do!? I am a Professor and I get PAID for What I Think!

Sort of.

In fact, quite a lot of these job opportunities involve getting PAID for What You Think (!!). Isn't that kind of like being paid to be a professor? Somehow I think that is not the type of job that these ads have in mind, especially since the last ad I received promised up to $220 per hour.

I'm not quite in that pay range yet, but perhaps I can forward the ad to my chair to show him that some undergrads are making a lot of money for What They Think, so why shouldn't I? I suppose this isn't the best time to be discussing salary with the department chair.

Mostly I am happy that I have a job right now, and also that I have temporarily defeated the evil administrative demons who were preventing me from giving raises to postdocs even though I have the money in my grants. At least now the postdocs can be paid a little more For What They Think.

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What Not To Say

If you are a program officer for a major funding organization (example: NSF), here's what not to say to a young female scientist who asks you for advice about a particular funding opportunity for which she is considering applying:

I'm not supposed to say this, but.. you're female, you're young.. [smirk/wink].

I wasn't there, but my young colleague told me about this conversation, which offended her. The program officer is inexperienced and (fortunately) in a non-permanent position, but that is little comfort to my young colleague.

Here's what I want to say to the new guy at NSF:

Please leave your paranoid sexism at home when you go to work.

Please start from the assumption that a female scientist might get funding based entirely on intellectual merit. Yes, I know that one aspect of the NSF broader impacts criterion is to "broaden participation of under-represented groups", and to some that statement is synonymous with "unqualified women will get funded at the expense of more deserving men" and "women think they should get funding just for being women", but look at what that particular young female scientist with whom you were conversing has already accomplished. She has done some extraordinary work and published a lot. Don't patronize her.

And please look at the data showing the distribution of NSF funding with respect to PI gender for your program. I've seen it and know that it clearly demonstrates that women do not have a special advantage over men for funding.

And while you're at it, look at the data on proposal success rate as a function of geography. Then ask yourself whether you would ever say to a white male scientist from, say, North Dakota or Idaho:

I'm not supposed to say this, but .. you're from an EPSCoR state.. [smirk/wink].

Well, maybe this particular person would say that, come to think of it.

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A surprisingly compact early galaxy

Astronomers are beginning to learn significant details of the structure of galaxies in the early universe. And what they're learning is rather surprising: at least some early galaxies are almost as massive as otherwise similar galaxies in the present universe, yet they are much smaller in linear size, by a factor of five, thus much more compact.

What time period are we talking about here? It's not actually the time that the earliest galaxies formed, which was less than a billion years after the big bang. Instead, the time in question was around 3 billion years after the big bang.

Although that's roughly 10.7 billion years ago, many galaxies at that time were actually fairly mature, even old. This is because they had been around for more than 2 billion years, which is more than time enough for all their massive, hot, bright stars to have burned out long before. If these galaxies had depleted most of their star-forming material, not many new, hot, young stars could form. The rate of star formation might be as small as it is now in the Milky Way, only two to four solar masses worth per year, compared to thousands per year at the peak.

Young stars include proportionately more massive stars, because it's the massive ones that burn out quickly. Stars that are more than 2 billion years old have to be smaller. Smaller stars are also dimmer, cooler, and redder in color. (Recall the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, which displays the relationship between luminosity and color.) Consequently, older galaxies that are no longer forming many new stars are also redder, and that's how astronomers estimate roughly galaxy age, or at least the length of time since rapid star formation ceased.

Certain events, such as collisions and mergers between galaxies can fire up rapid star formation again. So the correlation between color and age is not at all exact, but it's still there.

Another fact about galactic appearance is that the central part of any galaxy, even a spiral, is much brighter than the outer reaches, like the spiral arms (if any), simply because the central part of a galaxy contains most of the stars. So at the distances we're concerned with here – over 10 billion light-years – all we can really observe with existing optical telescopes is the central part of a galaxy. To a first approximation, then, very distant galaxies look ellipsoidal in shape, even if they're really spirals.

For the time period we're interested in, 3 billion years after the big bang, the redshift of light we see from objects at that time (denoted by z) is about 2.2. (See here for a fuller explanation.) The definition of redshift means that the wavelength of light emitted at z~2.2 is stretched by a factor of z+1~3.2. So visible light, with a wavelength of about 400 to 700 nanometers is shifted to 1.3 to 2.2 microns, in the near infrared. Although this kind of infrared light can be studied by ground-based spectroscopy, the best optical imagery has to be done from space-based instruments, which makes the job a lot harder.

With all that as background, the newly published result we're concerned with is really pretty simple. It has confirmed that a certain galaxy, named 1255-0, at z=2.186 is about a third as massive (~2×10¹¹M_⊙) as the Milky Way and similar galaxies in our neighborhood at the present time, even though its central region is much smaller, with a radius of about 2500 light years. Consequently, stars in the central region of 1255-0 are packed much more closely together.

This observation raises two distinct problems: First, most existing models of galaxy formation do not predict that typical galaxies of that age will be so compact. Second, no galaxies of that sort seem to exist in our general neighborhood, so at least some of them presumably evolved from galaxies like 1255-0 – and it's not clear how that could happen.

Here's the research abstract:

A high stellar velocity dispersion for a compact massive galaxy at redshift z = 2.186

Recent studies have found that the oldest and most luminous galaxies in the early Universe are surprisingly compact, having stellar masses similar to present-day elliptical galaxies but much smaller sizes. This finding has attracted considerable attention, as it suggests that massive galaxies have grown in size by a factor of about five over the past ten billion years (10 Gyr). A key test of these results is a determination of the stellar kinematics of one of the compact galaxies: if the sizes of these objects are as extreme as has been claimed, their stars are expected to have much higher velocities than those in present-day galaxies of the same mass. Here we report a measurement of the stellar velocity dispersion of a massive compact galaxy at redshift z = 2.186, corresponding to a look-back time of 10.7 Gyr.

Note that the research isn't the first to identify very massive but compact galaxies at z~2. Rather, it's new in that it has confirmed the estimate of mass by a new method, and that's what's significant.

You see, there are basically two different ways, at present, to estimate the mass of a very distant galaxy. One method relies on a plausible assumption, that stars less than 2 billion years old, except for the very youngest, have fairly well-known distributions of mass and luminosity. And so, from the total luminosity of the galaxy that we can observe, we can form a good estimate of the total mass of stars. This is sometimes called the "photometric" mass.

This sort of measurement is what has been used to infer that a number of galaxies at z~2 may have been very massive in spite of being small in extent. As suggested above, this observation raises at least two problems, so astronomers would like to measure mass in a different way, just to be sure. Besides, perhaps the assumptions about the mass and luminosity distributions of the stars in such galaxies could be wrong.

Fortunately, there is another type of observation that can lead to good mass estimates, but it is much more difficult to make. This involves measuring the "dispersion" of velocities of stars in the galaxy. That is related to the distribution of stellar velocities. But since we can't distinguish individual stars at that distance we certainly can't measure their velocities (by very slight differences in stellar redshifts from the redshift of the galaxy as a whole).

Even though the measurement is difficult to make in practice, it's simple to describe. One simply looks at the width of a few absorption lines in the galaxy's spectrum. If the lines are wide, it means that individual stars have substantially different velocities, including a certain proportion which are quite large. This is, basically, the meaning of "dispersion".

From the relative number stars with high velocities one can infer the total mass. This yields what is called the "dynamical" mass of the galaxy. What the present research found is simply that the dynamical mass of 1255-0 is pretty close to the known photometric mass.

Why is it that lots of high-velocity stars indicates a substantial mass? Just fairly basic physics, based on two of Newton's laws. (If you're a physicist, you learned this a long time ago, so it's "obvious".) The first is Newton's law of gravitation, which is F=G×M×m/r². This describes the gravitational force (F) between two objects having masses M and m separated by a distance r. G is a certain constant called, of course, the gravitational constant. This can be applied to a galaxy with mass M and one of its stars, with mass m, where r is the distance from the star to the center of mass of the galaxy.

The other law is Newton's second law of motion, which says F=ma. F is, again, the gravitational force of the galaxy, m is the mass of a particular star, and a is the acceleration of the star due to the force. (F and a are actually "vector" quantities, of couse, meaning they have a direction in 3-space.) You can think of the acceleration of an object as a way of measuring the force acting on it.

Putting the two laws together, we find that for any particular star its accleration will satisfy a = G×M/r², so the star's mass doesn't matter at all, only the mass of the galaxy. Just as in our own galaxy, almost all stars are in orbit around the center of mass of the galaxy, so a star's velocity, as seen from far away, varies periodically in a predictable way, deducible from acceleration (which is the rate of change of velocity).

From calculations that are routine (at least for a physicist) one thus obtains a good estimate of the mass of a galaxy from the distribution of velocities of its stars, which in turn is deducible from the dispersion of spectral lines.

There is one additional complication: matter in any form other than what makes up stars, most especially dark matter. But the present research shows that the mass as estimated photometrically (where any nonluminous matter plays no part) and the mass as estimated dynamically (where dark matter could be important) are pretty close.

Consequently, there isn't much nonluminous matter (including nonbaryonic dark matter) in the central part of the galaxy where most of the stars are. This is as expected, since most galaxy models as well as observations have the dark matter distributed over a much larger volume than the central part of the galaxy. (Other elementary physics shows that matter outside the orbit of a star does not affect the star's motion, as long as that matter is evenly distributed.)

The net of all this is that the two problems mentioned above are real and pose questions that need to be answered.

How could massive galaxies as compact as 1255-0 have formed in the first place? It is not the case that massive compact galaxies like 1255-0 are exceptional anomalies at z~2. Instead, they seem to make up as much as 30 to 40% of galaxies whose masses have been estimated (photometrically) at that distance.

Existing models involving cold dark matter mostly do not predict such a thing. But this doesn't mean that the models can't be refined. In particular, the whole theory of cold dark matter as a driver of galaxy formation need not be discarded. It isn't necessary to invoke some exotic new physics or variations of Einstein's general relativity. The most natural approach is to find a suitable refinement of the galaxy formation model. There is research that was reported in January 2009 and offers one sort of model. It involves filaments of dark matter that conduct streams of cold gas into a central region around which a galaxy grows. Research paper: here. Additional stories: here, here, here, here.

The other problem has received less attention. The difficulty is in explaining how a galaxy (or rather, its central region) grows by a linear factor of five or so over a period of ~10 billion years, even though the mass contained in that region doesn't grow much at all. It just seems to "puff up".

Galaxies have long been presumed to grow through mergers of less massive galaxies, the most important of which are of roughly equal mass. One possibility is that few such mergers actually occur, and instead colliding galaxies mostly pass through each other without merging, but with some expansion of linear size each time. Another possibility is that there are many mergers involving mostly low-mass galaxies captured by much larger ones. That would also help explain another major puzzle: why many fewer low-mass galaxies are observed than current models predict.

Questions of this sort are not easy to resolve. They're a lot like questions about the evolution of life. All we can actually observe consists of snapshots from different points of time. Events unfold too slowly to actually see what happens. And moreover, the very small galaxies that might play a role are currently too faint to observe over most of the past 12 billion or so years of cosmic history.

van Dokkum, P., Kriek, M., & Franx, M. (2009). A high stellar velocity dispersion for a compact massive galaxy at redshift z = 2.186 Nature, 460 (7256), 717-719 DOI: 10.1038/nature08220

Further reading:

Astronomers Find Hyperactive Galaxies in the Early Universe (8/5/09) – press release

Speeding Stars Confirm Bizarre Nature of Faraway Galaxies (8/5/09) – article at space.com

Galactic evolution: more data, no more answers (8/12/09) – article at arstechnica.com

Galaxy formation: Too small to ignore (8/6/09) – Nature news article

Puffing up elliptical galaxies (10/3/09) – blog post (SarahAskew)

Tags: astrophysics, galaxy evolution

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Strident, Humorless & Shrill

Women now comprise half the work force and have made impressive gains in some professions. An essay by Joanne Lipman in the NY Times on Saturday notes these data but makes a compelling case that they are misleading. Making up half the work force is not the same as having equality. Women still make less money than men, are not taken as seriously, and are not treated with respect at the same level as professional men.

I liked the essay, but one thing about it surprised me. Near the beginning, Lipman wrote:

My generation of professional women took equality for granted. When I was in college in the 1980s, many of us looked derisively at the women’s liberation movement. That was something that strident, humorless, shrill women had done before us.

I am of her generation of professional women, but my college friends and I never took equality for granted. We were not derisive about the women's liberation movement, and I don't know (well) anyone my age who was.

To my friends and me, the women who came before us and fought for equal rights are heroes.

We believed that people who bought into the stereotype of feminists as strident, humorless, shrill women were ignorant. My Republican uncles thought of feminists that way. And my postdoc supervisor, who used to tell jokes about feminists who were strident, humorless, and shrill, and then when I didn't laugh, he took this as proof of at least the humorless part.

These were older, conservative men. None of my friends felt this way, though I must admit that I don't know anyone who has worked at The Wall Street Journal as did Lipman. My friends and I thought Gloria Steinem was (and is) smart, glamorous, and cool.

It was interesting to read an essay by a successful woman who is similar in age and educational background (I looked up where she went to college) and who has been surprised at not being treated with as much respect for her talents and accomplishments as she would have been as a man. I have not been surprised by similar professional experiences in my own (much more modest) career, but we've ended up with the same opinion, writing about similar topics.

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H1N1 Vaccination Hysteria Part 2: Should I get the shot?

This is the second post in a series about the science and societal impacts of the flu and flu vaccination. Specifically, I emphasize the importance of sound scientific literacy in understanding this important topic. Please read the first post in the series if you missed it.
Is the Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

Vaccines can be really scary and intimidating, so I completely understand if you're nervous; but your doctor, the news, and the public health departments advise you to get vaccinated. Today, I address the question on many people's minds:

Do I really need to get the Swine Flu Shot?

What I'm hearing from many people is "I’ll be fine. I don’t think I need the Swine Flu or Seasonal Flu vaccine." Perhaps. But think about this way: How can your body fight a disease-causing germ it has never come into contact with?

Your Immune System and Immune Response
Your best line of defense is to avoid contact with a germ. Stay away from sick people, wash hands, and keep germs from inside of your body - via mouth, nose, and eyes. If the flu virus does get inside it's going to do its best to get to a warm moist organ like your lungs and wreak havoc.


When germs get into your body, your Primary Immune Response gets to work. It is a non-discriminating attack system on anything foreign. There is an inflammation response or fever to kill the germs with heat. White blood cells attack and kill. Phages swallow germs whole. Neutrophils blow up germs.

(Inflammation Response)

(White Blood Cells)

(Phages)

(Neutrophils)

Next up is the Secondary Immune Response. It is a specific attack system that memorizes, hunts down, and attacks specific germs. Special Memory cells (B-cells and T-cells) are created that memorize signatures of every germ that you've have come into contact with and if it comes back into your body they go after the germ and destroys it. Vaccines are medicines derived from disease-causing germs that are intentionally introduced in your body to activate your immune response to create memory cells. Now, if or when you come into contact with the real live version of the germ, your immune system is ready and can fight it off. For some diseases like the flu and swine flu, catching the full-scale flu may cause you to get so sick that it may take a long time to recover or cause death.

Why certain people are recommended for vaccinations
Babies & Young Children. Your immune system is a little less than perfect when you are young. Your body is a blank slate. Babies have only primary defenders and no secondary defenders - unless they are breast fed. Breast milk provides some of mom's defense cells but they provide only temporary assistance. As kids become exposed to germs - getting sick all of the time - they are actually building their Memory Cell army. Vaccinations help out in the same way, but without getting sick.

Older people. As you age, your defenders aren't as swift and handy as they use to be. Especially if you have health problems, your Memory Cells might need a help remember who the germs are. Vaccinations help maintain your Memory Cell army is its best possible condition.
These two groups are the most vulnerable becoming sick, especially from life-threatening diseases.

Moms and caretakers. As I hinted to above, mom can pass on some immune help to her baby in breast milk. But more importantly when mom gets the vaccine, she's protecting herself from getting the flu, and a healthy mama can't pass the flu onto baby and toddlers. The same thing for other adults who take care of young kids, older people or sick people.

Actually, between the ages of 17 and 22, you are at your peak immune response defense. Things decline after 22, but if you're healthy, eat right, and do all of the preventative things recommended by doctors, you're actually in pretty good shape to fight off non-lethal germs. This doesn't mean you may never get sick, but you should be fine. Typically, young adults and adults are not usually highly recommended for Flu shots - unless they are caretakers.

However, Swine Flu is breaking all of the rules - it's a Young Person's Disease. Otherwise healthy people 25 and younger are getting ill from this disease, being hospitalized at higher rates and dying from it. Frankly, that concerns me about this virus and that's why people 30 and younger are being recommended for vaccination. Moreover, both the seasonal and H1N1 (Swine) flu are already widespread and we are still 2-3 months from the peak Flu season. For these two reasons I think vaccination is worth serious consideration.

Deciding what to do
It's important to assess your risk for catching the flu. Right now, with the flu hitting early, I think it's a good chance many people will come into contact with.
You also need to assess your own and your family's health. Could you handle catching the swine flu? Could you handle the other things that come with it, like pneumonia and dehydration.
Finally, you must weight the side-effects of getting the shot to getting to flu. First and foremost, the vaccine is safe. Second, you will not get the flu from the flu shot, though many people believe they do. What usually happens is a immune response to the
weakened germ or a cold you were harboring to the shot.

But my take home point is that vaccines offer a way for your body to confront a serious disease without actually having to risk dying or becoming seriously ill. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide, but it's important to note that vaccines are only made and manufactured for very risky, life-threatening highly communicable diseases, not the less-threatening ones.


References:
2009 H1N1 Influenza Vaccine Questions & Answers, CDC
Flu Vaccine Fact Sheet, CDC
Experts say H1N1 vaccine is safe and time-tested
Flu Shot reactions
Why did I get sick after I had the flu shot?
Flu Symptoms including a zip-code tracker

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When 2007 Was

At a conference earlier this year and during some talks by visitors to my department in recent weeks, I noticed something. I heard, on multiple occasions, variations on the following two statements, each made by different people:

I published this in my recent paper in 2007.

I published this many years ago in my 2007 paper.

So, was 2007 like yesterday or was it a long time ago?

A reasonable hypothesis is that speakers of a certain age would think of 2007 as recent whereas the youngsters would think of it as a long time ago. There may indeed be some speaker-age effect on the observed phenomenon, but I have not seen a strong correlation between the age of the speaker and the perception of 2007 as being in the recent vs. distant past. Instead, I have seen (= inferred) a correlation between the productivity level of the speaker and the perception of the distance between now and 2007.

My hypothesis:

Those who have published many papers since 2007 think of 2007 as ancient history. Those for whom a 2007 paper was and still is a big deal (because there have not been (m)any other papers since then) think of 2007 as a recent date, not matter what the age of the speaker.

I further posit that these statements are most commonly made about a speaker's own publication(s). Publication years by other authors may be devoid of editorial opinion unless the publication was truly very recent (example: This paper by X just came out in Science); i.e., more a statement of fact than perception.

I do not yet have enough data to be entirely certain of these observations, but after I noticed a tendency for some speakers to editorialize about the distance between now and 2007 (or 2006 or 2005 etc.), I became obsessed with keeping track of these statements about time perception in talks. This post is motivated by the most recent of these incidents.

I have also been keeping track of the oldest publication date for which someone uses the word "recent". The record so far: 2005, though 2007 is by far the most common "recent" date.

And I wonder whether 2007 will be displaced by 2008 next year and fade into the distant publication past.

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H1N1 Vaccination Hysteria Part 1: Is the Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

Over the next few posts I’ll discuss the importance of sound scientific literacy in understanding the science and societal impacts of the flu and flu vaccination. Many people are rightly concerned about their health and the health of their family. Yet, we get so many messages that warn us to beware of vaccines or of the science behind them as if there are battalions of faceless sinister people in lab coats who want to do harm to the general public. It is this latter sentiment, of fear and mistrust, especially among people from minority communities, that I want to address. Though there are accounts from history that have abused helpless and oppressed peoples, it is important to know that today science is a transparent process consisting of many diverse peoples. Everyone is watching – other scientists, the community, independent professional overseers, and government regulators. And everyone is participating – people of color, people of pallor, people from wealthy nations and poor nations, people with children, parents, pets, and concern for the environment. “Scientist” is not a universal term to describe uncaring, reckless persons without regard for others.

In today’s post, I’ll address the concerns most people express:

“The H1N1 (Swine) Flu vaccine was made too fast and it can’t possibly be safe to administer.”

Selecting which flu viruses will go into the vaccine

The flu season coincides with the cold period, for us in the Northern Hemisphere, that’s means November – May, the worst is January-April. We spend more time indoors and in closer proximity to each other – the perfect social situation to share diseases.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO), along with our own Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tracks the worldwide prevalence of every kind of flu all year round. In February, WHO makes recommendations to Public Health Agencies of nations in the Northern Hemisphere. They say

“Hey, virus X, Y, Z are really causing some trouble in the world. Here are some strains of the virus. I suggest y’all get to cracking and making some vaccine.”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gets in on the discussion and they actually decide which strains will be developed and get word (and virus) out to contracted vaccine makers to get the ball rolling. Some manufacturers may already be cooking up early batches, in January, of virus if they have the strain with their fingers crossed that those strains will be selected by the FDA. If so, then they have a jump start.

How long does it take to manufacture seasonal influenza vaccine?

Directly from the CDC website:

“It takes at least six months to produce large quantities of influenza vaccine. For vaccine to be delivered in time for vaccination to begin in October and November (prior to the start of the flu season), manufacturers may begin to grow one or more of the virus strains in January based on their best guess as to what strains are most likely to be included in the vaccine.”

To make the vaccine, the first thing that must be done is to make copies of it – millions of them – which happens in chicken eggs. Next, scientists remove the viruses, purify them – taking away the parts that will make you deathly ill but keeping enough of the virus’ signature elements to mount an immune response in your body. (I’ll discuss the immune system and immune response tomorrow). Stuff the vaccine in syringes or tubes and send them off to the places they are needed.

Companies were well under way making seasonal flu vaccine - to be distributed early August through October - when the first death from the swine flu was confirmed in the US in April 2009. The alarms were raised, and public health officials starting saying out loud, “We might want to be ready for this one. It’s the big, bad virus on the block for the Southern Hemisphere Flu season.” By all accounts, the US acquired the seed stock of the virus this spring, in April/May 2009 and production began immediately. Presumably, they’ve been working overtime to get it done with promises then to supply vaccine in October – which is now, a little shy of the 6 month period reported by CDC.

Vaccine Safety
The Swine Flu Vaccine is made and tested the exact same way our seasonal flu vaccine is made. In fact, had WHO made the recommendation and the FDA had access to a reference strain of the virus, it would have been included in the routine seasonal flu shot. There wouldn’t be a distinction between the varieties. In fact, H1N1 is also the name of the seasonal flu virus in the routine flu shot. They are related viruses, but vaccination against the routine version does not automatically protect you from the swine version. So, in my opinion the Swine Flu Vaccine and the Season Flu vaccine are safe.

Interestingly, many people’s conflict about taking the swine flu vaccine may not materialize. You may come into contact with the virus before vaccine is available. Already, the 2009 H1N1 Virus (Swine flu) is widespread across the US – and this is NOT, repeat, NOT the height of the official flu season for our region. That means people are getting it and dealing with it the old-fashioned way: rest, liquid, volunteer quarantine, and medical intervention ASAP.

The brown means widespread coverage of the Flu. Click on image to enlarge.

Moreover, to address the concerns of people who might think that there are boxes of ill-prepared vaccine out there because of the rush job, you can sit down for a moment. The most recent reports indicate that Swine Flu vaccination production is way behind and falling short of the numbers promised by manufacturers. From a scientific literacy point of view, this means that the process is working. There is no rush or by-passing of the approved methods for getting medicine out to people. Yes, I think it would be great to have more, but this all we have for now.

Isn't the real threat the Flu?

Among the general public there seems to be more concern for the vaccine than the strain of the flu itself. From a historical perspective, the flu has been a very important character shaping world events. The widespread use of vaccines has really quieted the flu in recent times. And like the saying, “those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it”.

I hope not to re-live the lessons of Flu epidemics of the past. Perhaps our society’s less-than-impressed attitude with vaccines is because unlike our grandparents and parents before them, we don’t know what it is like to lose scores of relatives and neighbors from communicable diseases like they did. We don’t know what it’s like for school to be dismissed or factories closed for a disease only to find that when they re-open many of our classmates or work mates are forever gone. People use to drop like flies from the flu other flu-like illnesses e.g., Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, Asian flu, yellow fever, and malaria. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic killed more people than World War I. No, we don’t realize how deadly the flu can be and how so many lives can be affected by a disease we think of as just a bad version of the cold. The fact is the success of vaccination in preventing severe epidemics is also its failure in helping people to remember why vaccinations are so important.

References:
Selecting the Viruses in the Seasonal Influenza (Flu) Vaccine
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated August 1, 2009

More information about Swine Flu and Seasonal Flu vaccination production:
How Fast Could a Swine Flu Vaccine Be Produced? TIME, April 2009
Companies starting work on H1N1 vaccine- CDC Reuters, May 2009
Swine flu: why does it take so long to make a vaccine? Effect Measure Public Health Scienceblog, May 2009
Swine Flu Vaccine production way behind schedule Healthcare Digital October 22, 2009

More information about Influenza and its impact:
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 M. Billings, Stanford University
Swine influenza, seasonality, and the northern hemisphere Virology Blog, April 2009
Influenza Pandemics of the 20th Century E.D. Kilbourne, New York Medical College

In tomorrow’s post I’ll address another concern: “I’ll be fine. I don’t think I need the Swine Flu or Seasonal Flu vaccine.”

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Stop the Clock

A professor friend of mine recently noticed something in her department: all of the tenure-track women (except her) had stopped their tenure clocks for various reasons: e.g., for childbirth or for issues involving school-aged children with disabilities. All of these women used their unclocked years very 'productively', according to my friend, and ended up with more publications and grants listed in their promotion and tenure files than did my (single, childless) friend. My friend was feeling stressed out about her publication and funding record in comparison to the records of these colleagues.

Last summer, I wrote about an issue that is sort of related to this: whether or not someone has a "baby gap" in their CV owing to time away from research, most likely related to having a baby. In the ensuing discussion, it was clear that some of us who are fortunate enough to have a healthy baby and be healthy ourselves may use maternity/paternity leave or stopped-tenure-clock-time to get additional research done. I don't think anyone would deliberately procreate as a way to get ahead in their publication record (a strategy that has so many negative aspects to it, I shall not comment on it further), but if you find yourself able to get some work done at a time when you supposedly are not able to get much done, why not do so?

Ideally, universities and colleges will have the resources to give all tenure-track faculty a pre-tenure research leave of a term or more, or, at the very least, a reduced teaching load for a while. If this is not possible, presumably the expectations for tenure and promotion are adjusted accordingly. When I write a letter for someone's tenure and promotion review, I always look at their teaching load and use that as one element of my determination of whether their research quality and quantity seems reasonable.

I can see why my friend is stressed out about her situation and why she is comparing herself to her colleagues in this way, but I think that any productivity boost that comes from an unclocked year taken for family or medical reasons is unlikely to be so immense that it creates an uneven playing field (<-- sports reference!).

There are many factors that determine how many publications and grants one ends up with when the P&T file is submitted: professional factors and life factors, some of which are under our control and some of which are not. I think it is unwise to feel hostile towards those who stop the tenure clock, as if they have an unfair advantage.

Feeling that clock-stoppers have an unfair advantage is sort of like feeling that women in general have an unfair advantage -- "They had to hire a woman" is similar to "She wouldn't have gotten tenure if she hadn't stopped the tenure clock for a year". Although I chose not to stop my tenure clock, I strongly believe that tenure clock stoppage is something that the academic community as a whole should embrace as a way of making academe more appealing to a more diverse range of young faculty.

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Wordless Wednesday: Beautiful Decay

an artichoke flower
purple coneflowers

unknown flower

These are pictures I had taken while in the Netherlands in August. I was attracted to the crisp brown dying stalks and petals with hints of life and color against the tall strong stalks and green foliage. I was actually quite proud of my little Samsung S760 and my developing eye.

I was inspired to share these pictures of decaying flowers by two of my fellow nature photogbloggers - Lisa's Dead but still lovely pictures of a rose and Ratty's The Sad Part of Nature post about a dead garters snake.

Death and decay are a part of natural cycle. I have a host of pictures of dead wildlfe - plants, bugs, birds, and mammals. In time I will share these pictures with you - but they won't be nearly as beautiful as this. I'm giving you an early warning.

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Remotely There

How much has Skype/teleconferencing etc. reduced the need for professional academic travel? For me, not at all. These things have reduced the number of traditional phone calls to a very low number, but there has been no decrease in conference travel or travel to other universities to give talks, just to mention two common reasons for professional travel.

For some committees involving geographically dispersed people, we can do some or all of our committee business by email instead of meeting in person, but when we used to meet in person, it was before or during a conference. We still go to the conference, we just don't do committee meetings there.

Technology has not affected my need to travel a lot, but it has increased the level and style of participation of geographically remote colleagues in some of my research group's activities. At some research group meetings, we have had the face and voice of a colleague (typically an international colleague) transmitted via a laptop sitting on a table. It is great fun to rotate the laptop around so that the colleague's head can be facing the person who is speaking.

I can't imagine anything reducing the need to be at a conference in person or to travel to another university to give a talk and meet people. I can, however, imagine having less money for these things, thus reducing the opportunities for travel, but the benefits of in-person interactions in different professional settings is much greater than what can be accomplished via technological methods for transmitting voices and images.

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On Not Being There

It can be difficult to balance a typical research university professor teaching load with a typical research university professor research activity level, not just in terms of the time required to do both when physically in one's own department but also (and perhaps especially) when some travel is required. I have already been on two major trips this academic year, and have two more scheduled before the term ends. How is this possible for someone who also teaches?

This is a question asked by one of my non-academic friends on Facebook. She was surprised to read that I was on the road yet again last week and wondered how I could do that and teach.

Answers:

- Very careful scheduling of travel dates, if possible, to minimize classes missed.

- Very careful scheduling so that exams coincide with some missed classes (but only if this doesn't involve strange twisting of the schedule to place exams in times that make no sense with the course schedule).

- Team-teaching (very important for me).

- Selective use of substitutes, possibilities for which include colleagues with whom one trades teaching, postdocs or grad students who want to get some experience teaching a class or two, and postdocs or grad students who are paid to do substitute teaching.

The postdoc/grad substitute option must be done carefully and selectively and not be an oppressive or unfair burden on them or lead to an unpleasant experience for the undergrads in a class because of the challenges of parachuting into someone else's class to teach. Example: Last year a senior grad student wanted to teach a class or two for me; he thought it would help his application for academic jobs to have this experience. I organized the course schedule so that he taught for me while I was at a meeting, he did a terrible job, the students hated him, I had to redo the important parts of the lectures, and I don't think my substitute enjoyed the experience much either. Other substitutes have been great, but it can a bit hard to predict who will do well and who won't.

I have to travel for essential research purposes (it is part of my job) and I have to teach (it is part of my job) and the collision of these two priorities in time and space leads to some complex logistics. I try to work something out that allows both to happen in the best way possible for everyone, but sometimes I succeed in this and sometimes I don't.

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Advanced Retreat

Has anyone been to a good faculty retreat? Has anyone been to a constructive, useful retreat that accomplished something substantial that could not otherwise have been accomplished in one or more non-retreat faculty meetings?

Has anyone left a faculty retreat with warm collegial feelings and no regrets about spending all day or at least part of a weekend with department colleagues?

In the hopes that such things exist or that some people at least believe that such things exist, I searched online for information on how to have a good/effective faculty retreat.

Some of the advice I found makes sense and seems rather obvious, though apparently not to some of the people organizing the retreats in which I have participated. For example: A successful faculty retreat requires advanced planning and organization of the discussion topics and tasks to be accomplished. Yes, yes, yes.

Some of the advice involves retreat activities that would make me run away: Play bonding games! Bring a nerf ball! Watch a movie together! Chew bubblegum! No, no, no.

I suppose one school of thought is that the random behavior that characterizes shorter faculty meetings might eventually converge into constructive action in a longer faculty meeting held at a remote, peaceful location.

My school of thought -- what one might reasonably call the negative, doesn't-play-well-with-others, you-are-so-cranky-you-are-probably-part-of-the-problem school of thought -- is that faculty retreats are a few orders of magnitude more painful and time-wasting than regular faculty meetings, an effect that is magnified by being in a remote, peaceful location with certain colleagues.

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Carnivals: It's a celebration of science!

Carnivals are like online Zines, you know, those independent creative publications you created in high school or college. Carnivals are a collection of blog articles about a topic. Like a magazine, there is a publication date – some are published quarterly, monthly, or weekly ; an editor – which usually rotates among interested parties; and a theme.

I participate in a few Carnivals (see my bottom side bar). It helps me share my work with larger audiences. It’s also a great way for non-bloggers to get into blogs and see how informative and entertaining they could be. So if you new to reading blogs or not sure what it’s all about, that’s fine. Carnivals may be just the right for you. Check out great posts on interesting topics – all in one place for you to read at your leisure.

Here are some great carnivals in which I have submitted posts my Urban Science Adventures! © posts.

Book Review Blog Carnival #26: A collection of book review blog posts. Check out the books bloggers are reading, including the children’s books about nature and animals I recommend.

Scientia Pro Publica 13: Nobel Prize Edition: A collection of blog posts about science, nature, and medicine for the masses. It’s a perfect way to get your dose of science without all of the headaches of heavy language.

Festival of the Trees #40, the benefits of trees:A collection of blog posts all about trees – in words and pictures.

Diversity in Science Carnival #3: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: This carnival is my personal project. Here is my related blog post on George Melendez Wright. It is a collection of blog posts that introduce and discuss issues (the celebrations and the obstacles) of diversifying Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines. It was born out of a similar discussion at the ScienceOnline09 (Science Blogging) Conference.

The upcoming editions of the carnival will discuss Broader Impact programs in STEM in preparation of a follow-up panel on Diversity in Science at ScienceOnline 2010 in Research Triangle, North Carolina. The discussion session is titled “Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM” moderated by me and Anne Jefferson.

This is an official call for submissions for the upcoming carnivals and an initiation to the discussion to be held in January.

November DiS Carnival: STEM Diversity and Broad Impacts I: Highlights of successful, ambitious STEM diversity programs such as REUs, mentoring programs and scholarships for college under-graduates, graduate students, post-doctoral associates and early career scientists and engineers.
Submission Deadline: November 15th
Carnival Post date: November 20th
Hosted by: Yours truly at Urban Science Adventures! ©

December DiS Carnival: STEM Broader Impacts II: Highlights of successful, ambitious and inspiring diversity programs for youth and general audiences such as after-school programs, summer institutes, and citizen science programs sponsored by museums and universities.
Submission Deadline: December 15th
Carnival Post date: December 20th
Hosted by: (insert your blog here)

Stay tuned for more carnival announcements, but we’re already looking forward to February – Black History Month, and March – Women’s History Month and accepting carnival hosts for those editions, too.

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Short Work

[further apologies for sporadic comment moderation during some busy and logistically challenging days]

In a class that I am teaching this term, I spend a lot of time writing, drawing, and equationing on the board at the front of the classroom. In some classrooms, I can, without too much undignified stretching, cover the entire board with exciting scientific words, letters, and glyphs. In my classroom this fall, however, I can only reach the lower half of the board without standing on a chair.

It's not a large board, so I spend a lot of time erasing. If I had more space, I could keep important information on it longer and have it there to refer to during later parts of a discussion. Life would be better.

Lowering the board would be the most sensible way to solve the problem for me, but my taller colleagues (i.e., everyone else in my department) would then be inconvenienced.

Perhaps in less economically dire times the department would get a new, larger board or would acquire some other means by which I could write and derive and sketch to my heart's content, but that's not going to happen this year (or next).

This is not a complaint, just a random musing about having to deal with some technical challenges when teaching in the classic on-the-board style. It is vitally important that I keep my board-writing as organized as possible, especially when in the midst of a long series of sequential etchings, but I am finding this very difficult owing to space/height limitations.

Today, however, I was quite thrilled by the sight of my (taller) co-instructor kneeling on the floor so that he could reach the bottom of the board. So far this term he has been able to fill the entire board without doing this, but the nature of his scribblings today for some reason required that he not reach down too low to write. Hence, he knelt. Somehow, this cheered me up and reduced my feelings of frustration with only being able to reach part of the board.

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NGC 4945: The Milky Way’s not-so-distant Cousin

NGC 4945: The Milky Way’s not-so-distant Cousin (9/2/09)

ESO has released a striking new image of a nearby galaxy that many astronomers think closely resembles our own Milky Way. Though the galaxy is seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region. These resemblances aside, NGC 4945 has a brighter centre that likely harbours a supermassive black hole, which is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. ...

Scientists classify NGC 4945 as a Seyfert galaxy after the American astronomer Carl K. Seyfert, who wrote a study in 1943 describing the odd light signatures emanating from some galactic cores. Since then, astronomers have come to suspect that supermassive black holes cause the turmoil in the centre of Seyfert galaxies. Black holes gravitationally draw gas and dust into them, accelerating and heating this attracted matter until it emits high-energy radiation, including X-rays and ultraviolet light.

NGC 4945 – click for 1280×1280 image

More: here

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Night at the Library

Note: My apologies in advance for sporadic comment moderating for a few days.

For various reasons related to a complicated weekend schedule and other activities the rest of the week, my daughter and I ended up at a university library on a Friday night not long ago so that she could get some books for a school research project. Her teachers require that students extract some information from books (the physical kind or electronic equivalents), in addition to some fact-mining from encyclopedias and assorted websources. On this particular Friday night, we set out in search of physical books.

I do go the library from time to time and I do work some Friday nights (but not in the library). Even so, it had been a while since I went to the library on a Friday night.

I brought my laptop and parked myself in a central area to do a bit of work whilst my daughter foraged in the nearby book-filled aisles.

Before we set out on our library expedition, I had several questions:

1. Would there be anyone else at the library on a Friday night early in the academic year?

2. If so, who?

3. Would there be any books published in the 21st century in the library stacks?

Answers:

1. Yes!

2. There were students at the library that Friday night. There were student study groups, there were individuals poring over texts and taking notes, there were students using computers, and there were students snoozing in comfy chairs. The library was quite well populated given the day and time.

In fact, it was so well populated that I found it difficult to work given the number of distractions, including loud music leaking out of the ear pods of nearby studiers. Memo to me: If you ever work in the library again, bring noise canceling headphones and/or your own music.

3. Re. book vintage: the books my daughter found were all quite ancient. I know there are 21st century books at the library, but these were few and far between in the part of the library we visited that night. All the books my daughter checked out were published between 1950-1992. Her particular research topic can be approached with aged sources, so this was not a problem, but I hate for her to think that books = old information, internet sources = new information.

This term, I happen to be teaching a course that requires my students to go to a campus library and use library resources. I teach this course or one like it every ~2 years or so, and over time there has been greater and greater resistance by students to making a trek to the actual library building and going to the immense effort of reading physical books. You would think that I was asking the students to walk 12 miles in the cold and rain to read stone tablets with barely decipherable etchings.

Although I don't feel too much sympathy about this issue, I do know that students have complex and busy lives, so I have done quite a lot to reduce the number of library trips required. For texts that we use a lot, I lend books to the students (I have been acquiring used copies and the class is small enough for me to provide these books to everyone) and/or I provide photocopies of relevant pages/chapters and/or put pdf files on a secure website. Some books are complete enough on GoogleBooks to allow online reading of the relevant chapters.

At the beginning of this term, I was gearing up for the usual, if not increased, resistance by students to the library visit requirement and found.. none. Absolutely none. All the students have done all the library reading every week without a single complaint.

Do I just happen to be lucky enough to have an amazing class of polite and motivated students or has a trip to the library become a nice change of pace from sitting in front of a computer and reading from the screen? Or both?

My recent Friday night visit to the library showed me that students are spending time in the library as a convenient and quiet place to study or to meet other students for group discussions. This was a very heartwarming revelation for me and made me feel much more positive about the library-visit requirements in my own classes.

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Wordless Wednesday: Me & the Field Mice

Checking my bag. I caught something.

A prairie vole, Microtus ochrogaster (my study animal).

Palpating the vole to see if she is pregnant. Depending on how far along she is, I'll have to release her back in the field.

A Deer Mouse, Peromyscus (not my study animal).

Releasing the mouse back to the field. Click on picture to enlarge.

I caught a Least weasel, Mustela nivalis, too. Definitely NOT my study animal. They prey on other two guys above. After hissing at me, and baring scary teeth, he released himself back into the field. LOL!

Don't let the size or cuteness fool you. This is the world's smallest carnivore, and all Mustelid.

More pictures of my field site here and here.

If only writing the dissertation were as much fun as this part. But I've got 7,766 words for Chapter 2 and I have prelimanary results for Chapters 3 & 4. Writing continues.

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