Try Try Try to Understand

First, let me say that I hate myself for using lyrics from a song by Heart(?) in the title of this post, but it's what came to mind when I was mulling over the topic-of-the-day.

If this blog has any mission or goals, and it may not, one of them might be to demystify some of the experiences of Graduate School, and in particular the often fraught grad-adviser relationship. Some of my student readers seem very bitter about their graduate experiences. I know well that there are situations of extreme unfairness, but perhaps in some cases the anger stems from a lack of understanding of a system that is not always as transparent as it could or should be. In other cases, a bad situation may persist because a student doesn't know what the options are for resolution of the problem.

In saying this, my intention is not to 'blame the victim'. I want to be very clear that I abhor evil advisers, and that I think advisers (evil or not, and myself included) should work harder to explain what we do and why we do it. And I think that students can do more to ask constructive questions to try to get the information they want and need. Grad students vary in more ways than I ever imagined before I became an adviser, and I therefore appreciate it when students take the initiative to ask for the information they want and need.

When I was a student, I was often incredulous at the behavior, decisions, and overall philosophy towards students displayed by my adviser and other professors (though I never asked them about any of this), and was quite sure that I would do things in a very different way if ever I got the chance to advise students.

Well, of course it's not so simple. I provide more feedback and funding to my students than my adviser gave to me, although that is setting the bar rather low for improving adviser-grad interactions. Nevertheless, until you manage a research group yourself, you may not understand the decisions that go into how funding and publications and research responsibilities are prioritized and allocated. Some decisions or policies that seem unfair or inconsistent might actually be the actions of a well-intentioned adviser. And you shouldn't be too critical of how your adviser spends his/her time or research funds until know what it's like to be in a position of managing a research group, teaching, and having many service responsibilities, all at the same time.

That last point is in response to student comments and e-mails along the lines of "I do all the work and my adviser does nothing." I am deeply skeptical of such comments unless a student has an adviser who has no grants and has not provided the student with any research support or ideas, and who does not teach any classes nor do any service work for the institution or profession. Managing a research group is far from "nothing".

You can and should be critical, however, if your adviser doesn't provide you with timely feedback on your research progress, proposals, manuscripts, or other documents, despite specific and reasonable requests. And you certainly should be upset if all you get is criticism, with no suggestions for how to do things "right". These seem to be common complaints.

I think that in some (many?) cases of advisers who don't give timely feedback is that the adviser has so many things to do that it's not possible to do them all in a reasonable time frame, although in some cases it could be that the student's needs are lower in priority than they should be. That is a major problem for some, and it would be a significant improvement to the Grad Experience for many if we could all find a way to solve it. Perhaps we can use the collective wisdom of the FSP reading community to come up with some possible solutions.

As an adviser, I am pretty good about getting comments back to students on manuscripts and other documents, but I certainly have trouble getting co-authors to read, edit, or at least sign-off on manuscripts. These situations are different of course because I can remove a dysfunctional colleague from a project or send them an e-mail saying "If I don't hear from you by DATE, I will assume that you approve of the manuscript in its current form and will submit it with you as co-author." Students don't typically have that option, although I am curious if anyone has tried something like that with an adviser who sat on a manuscript for an unacceptably long period of time.

It is important to be clear about what amount of time is reasonable vs. unacceptable. If someone gives me a long document to edit just before a proposal deadline or conference or some other major time consuming activity, my response time might be slower. It is important to communicate about these things and, if possible, to work out an agreement about what would be a reasonable time frame for all concerned. That advice assumes that all parties involves are semi-reasonable people, perhaps a flawed assumption in some cases.

All of us who have advised students for many years can think of examples in which the adviser-grad interaction was very tense or somehow dysfunctional, not because the adviser was (necessarily) evil, but for a wide range of reasons involving misunderstanding, miscommunication, or widely divergent personalities and priorities. This is normal in any system involving interpersonal relationship, and may be particularly common when you add in the stress and power differential of adviser-student relationships.

Just because it is normal, however, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix problems that can be fixed. My overall message to grad students in apparently dysfunctional adviser-student situations is to first and foremost do whatever you can to try to understand the situation and make things work for yourself. Is your adviser really being evil and unfair? Maybe, maybe not. Be as proactive as is reasonable in your situation, and seek out allies in senior students, postdocs, and/or other faculty.

There are some extreme situations in which nothing you can do will work, and perhaps these situations can only be solved at the departmental or institutional level (if the will and means to do so exists), but my hope is that many misunderstandings can be resolved before they get magnified into major problems, and that advisers and students can develop highly functioning and respectful interactions through enhanced understanding on both sides.

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Spring Cleaning

A reader wrote to me with a truly disgusting tale of the unhealthy and unacceptably low level of personal hygiene of a very smart and motivated graduate student. This raises the interesting but difficult question of how much an adviser can do in these situations. Can we demand a certain level of personal hygiene of our graduate students? Can and should these demands be enforced?

I hasten to note that this reader is dealing with an extreme situation. This is not the case of preferring that someone not sweat, or something of a similar level.

If the unsanitary behavior is so revolting that others in the group (including the adviser) find it nauseating to work with a particular student, it could be that the student has a serious physical or emotional problem that needs attention by the university health center. I have never been in the situation of having to ask a student to seek help for this type of problem, so I don't speak from experience here, but I think I would first inform someone in my department of the situation (e.g., the department chair, the grad adviser), perhaps consult with the campus health center, and then talk to the student about the problem and the need for him/her to get help.

You can't force a student to get medical help, but you can do things to minimize the impact of the situation on those who must work with the student. Note that I focus on students here because that is what the e-mail was about, but of course there are faculty with unfortunate personal hygiene issues as well.

In the specific case in which a student's unsanitary habits are degrading research group equipment or materials, including a computer dedicated to that student's use, I think it is reasonable in such extreme cases to take the computer (or whatever) away and insist that the student use their own personal computer or other items that are possible for an individual to purchase. Part of the terms of use of research equipment is that these items not be degraded any more than is usual for normal wear-and-tear.

It is also reasonable, in extreme cases, to set limits on what the student can and cannot do in terms of access to facilities and interactions with others. These limits should be very clearly stated and discussed with the student, however difficult it is to have that conversation. Someone who is just a slob (as opposed to mentally ill) may then be motivated to clean up, once it is clear that continued revolting personal habits have negative consequences for themselves.

It may be a good idea to have another faculty member or an administrator or even a counselor in the room when you, the adviser, has a conversation with the student about these topics. You don't want to humiliate or appear to gang up on a student who may be having severe problems, but you also want to make sure that conversations that touch on issues of a rather personal nature are dealt with in a professional way by those better equipped to deal with them.

If the student cannot or will not be helped, but does excellent work despite causing widespread revulsion in all who come into contact with him/her, perhaps there is a way for that student to work in near-isolation. That doesn't sound like a such a healthy or even good solution for the student, but the other options seem even worse. It is difficult to imagine what kind of career such a student could have upon obtaining a degree.

Perhaps others who have encountered similar situations as advisers will have better advice than I have been able to muster.

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Plastic Brain

A major component of my research involves interacting with international colleagues and students, an aspect of my work that I enjoy very much. At some point years ago I decided that I should try to become more conversant in a particular language that would be useful to one of my long-running international research collaborations.

As some readers know from previous posts, after years of informal study and practice, I took 3 years of undergraduate classes at my university. The beginning, intermediate, and advanced language courses met 4-5 times/week during each academic year, and, as a result of these classes and the dedication of an excellent instructor, I finally progressed beyond a tourist-speak level of ability in this language. I also had some interesting experiences being an "undergraduate" again (example 1, example 2, example 3; others can be found by searching on the word 'language').

I took all the courses there were to take, so this year I have been meeting one-on-one with a language tutor, a young woman who is a non-science graduate student at my university. We meet twice a week for an hour or so of random conversation about life, the news, movies, books, anything. Although my tutor had no previous experience as a tutor, I was extraordinarily lucky to find such a kind, patient, and interesting person. I enjoy our meetings very much.

When I was taking classes, there were obvious milestones that helped me gauge my progress. We did oral presentations (typically twice in a term), and moved through a textbook series that systematically expanded our vocabulary and knowledge of grammar.

I was reasonably happy with my progress, although quite dissatisfied with my speaking skills. I was also very aware that it was getting more and more difficult for me to learn new words. It was considerably annoying to have to look up the same word over and over and find that it just wasn't sticking in my brain. In my youth, I had an excellent memory, but at some point I no longer did.

Now that my language learning involves mostly conversation, supplemented by some reading (newspapers, novels) and movie watching, I didn't know whether I was progressing or not -- I feared that I was getting stuck in some speaking-ruts, using the same simple words and grammar forms over and over. In my more pessimistic moments, I wondered if my ability to speak this language had plateaued, a victim of my aging brain and lack of time or opportunity to immerse myself in this language.

Recently, however, I had a few experiences that gave me some sense that I had made progress. For example, during a visit to another university to give a talk, I encountered a scientist from a country where this language is spoken, and we talked for more than an hour in this language. I couldn't have done that last year. I could have carried on some form of rudimentary conversation for an hour, but I couldn't really have conversed.

So, now I think that language learning is always going to be slower than I want it to be, but, even given the challenges of my aging brain and limited time, I think I can continue to make progress. I have not plateaued.

This gives me hope in general for my ability to learn new things. As a researcher, I hope that I can still explore new fields of knowledge, learn new techniques, and make connections between ideas. My detectable (albeit) slow progress with language learning is evidence that my brain isn't full (or emptying..) quite yet and that I haven't already learned everything I will ever learn.

I was thinking about this the other day, not only because I finally had a ray of hope about my progress with speaking skills in the language I have been trying to learn, but also because I was wondering what proportion of my time I spend transferring knowledge I already have (i.e., sharing my accumulated wisdom via teaching or advising) vs. having creative new thoughts about Science.

It's hard to calculate because, although I spend a substantial and perhaps steady amount of time on the former (knowledge transfer), the latter (acquisition of new knowledge, ideas) mostly comes in pulses, precipitated in part by a encountering a looming proposal deadline, reaching a particular stage with a paper, or needing to brainstorm with a student or colleague about some aspect of a project.

That's fine with me. As long as there is a not-infrequent component of my job involving creative thought, there will be a good balance between knowledge-out and knowledge-in, and my aging brain and I can continue to learn, discover, and have fun.

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Spotted on Sunday: Spring Fling

Outdoor Afro has initiated a new Sunday Meme - Spotted on Sunday (SOS)!

These posts are a fun way to help make visible people of color outdoors enjoying all types of recreational activities.
Anyone can submit a photo to Outdoor Afro via email, if you first obtain:
consent to take and share the picture
name(s) of the individuals — last names not required
location and brief description of the activity
I’ll select one SOS photo to post each weekend, but all submissions are entered into a monthly drawing to win an Outdoor Afro ceramic travel mug, through July 30, 2010. Winners will be notified via email.
So…join the SOS effort to help make people of color be visible in America’s natural spaces and get a chance to win some cool OA swag!

These are pictures of my niece, enjoying herself at the the Missouri Botanical Garden. She's a burgeoning naturalist, just like her Aunt. (Smile)

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Choices Choices Choices

A reader asks how departments choose which advisers or research groups will get new graduate students. The reader's observation is that factors other than the apparent qualifications of the applicants seem to be involved in some of these decisions.

That's correct, although the allocation system need not be as corrupt as the one described in the e-mail by this reader. In that case, it seems that members of the graduate admissions committee assign themselves students in a preferential way. I would think that other faculty would object to that quite strenuously.

In departments with which I have been associated, decisions about who can accept new students, and how many, involve the following factors:

- quality of the applicants, as evaluated from the applications and/or from interviews;

- how many students an adviser already has;

- how many more students an adviser wants to admit and/or can reasonably take on (explained more below).

- what distribution of students among the various potential advisers will result in a good balance of students in the major subdisciplines.

Regarding the last point, consider that this year a certain research group in my department was described as the primary interest by many applicants, including most of the top applicants in the entire pool. If admissions decisions were based only on merit of the applicants, >50% of those admitted would have been interested in working with <10% of professors in the department. That would not be a good situation for anyone.

I am most familiar with departments that guarantee support for their students. In financially good times, there have been enough TA positions so that even faculty without major grants could advise a student or two and be sure that those students would be supported, at least for their salary, tuition, and benefits. In economic good times, any professor who wants to advise a qualified student can do so.

In times of economic crisis, faculty must demonstrate that they have the financial resources to provide an RA for at least some, if not all, of a student's support. For international students, advisers in some departments have to guarantee 12 months of RA support in the first year. Grad students are therefore preferentially allocated to faculty with resources, and the admissions committee makes decisions, in consultation with these faculty, about which applicants have the best qualifications for admission.

This year, during the admissions process, I had to provide detailed information about my existing funding, pending proposals, and planned near-future proposals. Based on my own estimation of what I could cover in the way of RA support, I proposed a certain number of students to be admitted.

Of course the number admitted does not correspond to the number who accept their offers, so there is a bit of guessing involved in deciding how many to admit.

Admissions committees may also consider factors related to a potential adviser's career stage and/or previous history advising students. For example, some departments want tenure-track faculty to advise graduate students, but the number of students advised by a new professor might be monitored so that it neither zero nor a huge number.

My correspondent described a senior professor who claimed that a certain applicant would be his "last student", although a current student was also supposedly his last student. This made me laugh because I have a colleague who has done this as well. He is either on his 2nd or 3rd "last student". The "last student" argument is compelling for making a case to advise one more student, but eventually an admissions committee should affirm that "last means last" and stop using hypothetical lastness as a factor in admissions decisions.

Furthermore, an adviser with a history of what I will vaguely term "difficult" interactions with graduate students might not be given input into admissions decisions and might not be allocated students.

These allocation decisions are made to provide balance among the disciplines, maximize the amount of RA support that admitted students can be guaranteed, and optimize the chances that a student will have a productive and successful graduate program. For these and other reasons, the decisions have to involve more than academic merit of the applicants. That doesn't mean that unqualified applicants are admitted (although I might not always agree with the some admissions decisions), just that other factors are used to decide among a pool of qualified applicants whose number always exceeds the available admission slots.

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Women Girls

An old post on the topic of referring to college-age or older female people as girls vs. women got a lot of comments back in 2006, and the topic still pops up now and again in comments and conversation. As far as I can tell, these days, girl is the more common term used to denote young(ish) female persons.

Certainly the term girl is also used by some older women, some of whom are related to me, who tend to refer to groups of other older women as girls, but my topic today is the relative use of girls vs. women to refer to young(ish) female persons.

It took me awhile to get used to the term girls when applied to young female adults, and I still tend to use the term women, but I suppose that just shows my age. As long as girls is used in parallel with boys/guys, rather than with "men", however, I no longer think it is offensive to refer to young women as girls, especially if it is used by other young people to refer to themselves and their peers.

I admit that with some reluctance, so I guess I can't say that I am really used to it, even now, because I still find it a bit startling to hear someone in their 20's-30's, or even older, referred to as a girl. The sheer number of adults who don't consider it demeaning to be referred to as a girl, however, suggests that the term has no particular negative connotation about capability or maturity.

At the same time, I think it is too bad if woman is viewed as a technical, formal, stodgy, and perhaps even offensive term. Female children are girls, and at some point when these children become adults, they are women, just as boys become men. When I was 5 years old or 9 years old, I was a girl. I couldn't imagine wanting to use the same term for myself when I was 30.

Nevertheless, girl is a pervasive term these days. For those of us who feel disappointed by this trend, perhaps we can come to an understanding with those who do not share our disappointment: those who prefer the term women can try to realize that girl is not necessarily an offensive way to refer to an adult female (except in the circumstance in which males are men and females of the same age are girls), and those who prefer the term girl can try to realize that woman is not an offensive or inappropriate way to refer to an adult female.

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Lounging Students

Among the many research and data summaries, anecdotes, and recommendations in the recent AAUW report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is this little idea, described in a section on what some physics departments have done to attract and retain female physics majors:

Provide a student lounge.

Although there is also a recommendation for women-only networking events, the recommended student lounge is one that is open to all students and is a "welcoming" place where all students feel comfortable.

Does your department have a designated student lounge for undergraduate majors? If so, is it well used? Do you think it is important to have such a place for students to gather within the department?

Does your department have an undergrad lounge?
	Yes
	No
pollcode.com free polls

I think such places can be very important for all students, promoting a sense of community and creating a more energetic atmosphere in classes, labs, and in the department in general. I don't know what the overall effect is on recruiting or retaining women to STEM fields in which they are underrepresented, but if the lounge atmosphere is a positive one, I can see how it would be a good thing to have.

Most of my observations of Student Lounges have been as an observer, but, speaking as a professor who at times has had an office within earshot of an undergraduate student lounge, I can attest to the following:

1. A surprising number of students will speak in a loud voice in a student lounge with the door to the corridor wide open, unaware (or not caring?) that all the professors in nearby offices can hear their conversations, which are at times of a rather non-academic nature. Maybe it is like when people talk on a cell phone and somehow lose all perspective on how loud they are, but many times I have been amazed at this phenomenon as applied to student lounge behavior. We professors are kind of interested in the fact that some students hate our colleague who is teaching SCI 320, but most of us would rather not know what our students did last weekend with their girl/boyfriend and various mood-altering substances, not all of which remained ingested. TMI.

2. Students have a lot of fun in their student lounge. There is a lot of laughing, and I have seen (and heard) the camaraderie develop during the academic year as cohorts of students progress through their major classes.

#2 is the important point. Although the thought of potentially large numbers of undergraduates congregating in a small enclosed space may be a bit terrifying for some faculty, especially those with offices nearby, clearly these social spaces are important and can greatly enhance the academic experience for many students, with obvious positive impacts on the department and university as well.

This was a small point in the overall AAUW report, but it is part of the general conclusion that academic institutions need to develop a positive climate in which women are respected for their talents, and not penalized for characteristics or actions that have nothing to do with academic performance. Such seemingly small things can help make the STEM world seem less hostile and mysterious and help women feel less isolated.

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Selected readings 3/23/10

Interesting reading and news items.

These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account.

Google’s Computing Power Refines Translation Tool

Google’s efforts to expand beyond searching the Web have met with mixed success. Its digital books project has been hung up in court, and the introduction of its social network, Buzz, raised privacy fears. The pattern suggests that it can sometimes misstep when it tries to challenge business traditions and cultural conventions. But Google’s quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems. [New York Times, 3/8/10]

The Psychology of the Taboo Trade-Off

The critical quality that leads people to treat rookie cards like rosaries is that of the sacred, whereby an object becomes worthy of boundless reverence, commitment, and protection. As diverse as people are in ascribing sacred status to possessions, they are equally varied in which values they consider sacred, a diversity that can breed substantial conflict. [Scientific American, 3/9/10]

Porn: Good for us?

Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down. [The Scientist, 3/1/10]

High-energy physics has a case of the Higgs

One of the things that was abundantly clear in the high energy physics sessions at Physics@FOM is that everyone is very excited. The LHC is ready to roll later this winter, the Tevatron is putting out data like... well, a machine, and there is just so much stuff waiting around the corner. [Nobel Intent, 2/1/10]

MicroRNA: A glimpse into the past

The last ancestor we shared with worms, which roamed the seas around 600 million years ago, may already have had a sophisticated brain that released hormones into the blood and was connected to various sensory organs. The evidence comes not from a newly found fossil but from the study of microRNAs - small RNA molecules that regulate gene expression - in animals alive today. [Physorg.com, 2/1/10]

Free Energy and the Meaning of Life

At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy. Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. [Cosmic Variance, 3/10/10]

Could life exist on Jupiter moon?

Icy moons may be the most common habitats for life in the Universe, so studying Europa will help tell us not just whether life exists elsewhere in our Solar System, but how common life may be throughout the Universe. [BBC News, 2/4/10]

Searching for Network Laws in Slime

Of all science’s model organisms, none is as weird as Dictyostelium discoideum, a single-celled amoeba better known as slime mold. When they run out of food, millions coalesce into a single, slug-like creature that wanders in search of nutrients, then forms a mushroom-like stalk, scatters as spores and starts the cycle again. In the rules governing the behavior of these creatures, researchers hope to find analogues for baffling biological mysteries, from the specialization of cells to how animals become altruistic. [Wired, 2/12/10]

Quantum gravity and space's informational entropy

Gravity is still a force, but it is generated by something more fundamental: entropy. Entropy can be described in the language of quantum mechanics and conformal field theory is one model for this sort of description. In these models, gravity kind of falls out of the equations for free—where "free" is an enormous amount of work done by someone else. [Nobel Intent, 2/14/10]

Rethinking networking

About 10 years ago, electrical engineers suggested that bundles of data could be transmitted over a network more efficiently if, instead of passing unaltered from one end to the other, they were scrambled together along the way and unscrambled at the end. In 2003, MIT electrical engineering professor Muriel Médard and her colleagues proved the counterintuitive result that, in many cases, the best way to scramble data together was to do it randomly. [Physorg.com, 2/12/10]

Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe

Astronomers have compiled evidence that what we’ve always thought of as the actual universe—me, you, this magazine, planets, stars, galaxies, all the matter in space—represents a mere 4 percent of what’s actually out there. The rest they call, for want of a better word, dark: 23 percent is something they call dark matter, and 73 percent is something even more mysterious, which they call dark energy. [Smithsonian Magazine, 3/22/10]

The Big Bang: Solid Theory, But Mysteries Remain

A popular picture of the early universe imagines a single Big Bang, after which space blew up quickly like a giant bubble. But another theory posits that we live in a universe of 11 dimensions, where all particles are actually made of tiny vibrating strings. This could create a universe stuck in a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, due to repeat on loop. Which scenario is closer to the truth remains to be seen, but scientists say new experiments underway could provide more answers soon. [Space.com, 3/19/10]

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My Grandmother Was Right

Not long ago, a colleague of mine spilled an acid mixture on his clothes.

He knew what to do: He immediately removed his lab coat, pants, socks, and shoes. He washed off his legs and feet, even though he didn't think the acids got to his skin. He called the appropriate emergency number and closed the lab.

The accident occurred at a time when few people were around (think weekend, holiday, night), but my colleague knew I was working in my office in another building on campus, so he called me. I ran over to his lab, arriving after the campus police but before the paramedics.

Fortunately there were spare clothes in the lab, so he was dressed, albeit strangely, and sitting in a small office near the lab. I talked to the police and one of the paramedics in the corridor, giving them some of the information they needed for their forms.

I know that accidents can happen, even to experienced researchers like my colleague. Most of the safety training I have experienced, either from in-person workshops or via online modules, has seemed like a waste of time, but I think that the training serves the general (and important) purpose of reminding us that accidents can (and probably will) happen. Everyone in the lab needs to know what to do, and the right safety equipment must be accessible and available. Information, equipment, and awareness need to be updated on a regular basis.

The fact of the accident was not remarkable, and fortunately no one was hurt, but there are few aspects of the incident that were notable for me:

- The campus police were great. I had a bad experience with a rude and patronizing campus police officer a few years ago, so it was very nice to meet these very professional, polite, and competent police officers.

- The paramedics were not great. They were completely unprepared to deal with a situation like this. I am sure that they know well what to do when they encounter someone bleeding or broken, but they had no idea what to do in this case of a possible exposure to a dangerous chemical. My colleague was 90% sure that no acid got to his skin, but he wasn't 100% sure, as he explained to the paramedics. The paramedics didn't even seem to realize that time was important. My colleague didn't look injured, and they wasted valuable time making phone calls to other people who also had no idea what to do. They asked questions of my colleague and me, then relayed something completely different into the phone. One of them even started to tell an anecdote about something that happened to his father years ago. My colleague angrily cut him off, the paramedic told him to "calm down", and the campus police in the hall heard those words and became alert to a possible "situation". They thought that my colleague was refusing medical care, and the incident spiraled into an absurd series of misunderstandings. That was bizarre, but the most disturbing thing was that paramedics working within the call range of a major research university festooned with labs containing dangerous materials not only had no idea what to do, but didn't even seem to know how to get the information quickly. When told the best course of action by my colleague and me, they ignored us and made more phone calls.

What I learned:

- Be as self-sufficient as possible for emergency procedures. In recent years it has seemed to me that my university has been emphasizing a "just call 911" message in safety training rather than providing specific information and materials necessary to deal with an emergency on-site. Certainly it is important to call 911, but you can't rely on paramedics to know how to deal with all situations.

- Store colleagues' phone numbers in your phone. Even if they aren't people you would call to chat or text a cute picture of your cat, you may need to contact a colleague outside of working hours in an emergency situation. The phone numbers of colleagues who tend to work unusual hours and/or colleagues who would be able to help you in particular types of emergency situations could be useful some day. This doesn't just apply to lab accidents. If you work on campus outside of normal weekday working hours, you might want to have some colleagues' contact numbers stored in your phone.

- Keep spare clothes in the lab in case you have to get undressed unexpectedly in a semi-public setting -- advice that is related to the title of this post. My grandmother was thinking more of car accidents and events of that nature when she relayed the classic maternal advice about always wearing nice underwear, but, if you care about such things, it could also apply to working in a lab.

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Go Ahead - Reject Me

An e-mail question from a reader:

What's the best (most diplomatic?) way to reject an admission offer from a school?

For most places, you don't have to do anything except click on the decline option on a webpage, but if you feel that you should send a personalized e-mail to various people at the rejected institution, including faculty who were your potential advisers, here are my preferences:

I prefer a rapid rejection. As soon as you know you will not be accepting a particular offer, inform that institution so they can make additional offers to applicants on the waiting list. If you delay because you don't know what to say or you feel bad about rejecting an offer (for whatever reason), please get over this and give an opportunity to someone else. There are typically many highly qualified applicants on waiting lists, and the only reason some of them are there is because there are limited admission slots and they weren't as lucky as you to get a first-round offer.

If you interacted with particular people, including some who devoted time to discussing research opportunities with you, write to them and just say that you have decided that Other University is a better fit for your interests, thank them for their time, and that's that. Don't ramble on about how great the people at the declined institution are and how you wish them luck with their future research and hope to see them at meetings in the future. See also this old post for a cautionary tale.

I always find it strange when a student is vague about what university's offer they have accepted. If a student spends a day or two in my department, talking to me and people in my research group, and then they decide to go somewhere else, I am fine with that, but what is the point of being mysterious about where they do decide to attend graduate school? The webpage on which offers are declined or accepted may ask for this information, although of course it is optional to provide it. Similarly, you don't have to tell faculty at the declined institution if you prefer not to, but again, why not?

If you are feeling anxious about sending a rejection letter, perhaps this will help: I have never felt annoyed or angry at a student who was potentially going to work with me but who declined an offer from my university. Every individual makes the best decision they can about what the fit is for their interests and other factors in their lives. Most faculty respect and understand that.

The only exception to the declaration above is that I do get extremely annoyed with the occasional applicant who already knew they were going to accept another offer before they visited and wasted a lot of people's time and my department's money.

In a recent example of this, I found out via someone who is an applicant's friend on Facebook that the applicant had decided to accept an offer from another university before even visiting My University. That applicant was not a potential student of mine, but would normally be on my schedule for an individual meeting. Knowing what I know, why should I take the time to meet with him/her? On the off chance that the FB information was wrong? Just in case this person is so blown away by the visit to My University that he/she will change plans? Because I should take every opportunity to chat with bright young students? My delicate professorial ego is not bruised by a student's decision to go elsewhere, especially if they weren't going to work with me even if they came here, but I can think of better uses of my time than to meet with an applicant who has already accepted another offer.

But I digress. Regarding writing a diplomatic rejection letter: Keep in mind that, for students, the decision about where to attend graduate school is momentous, but for most faculty with established research programs, the loss of an opportunity to work with any particular student is routine (some students accept their offers, some don't, life goes on), so don't sweat the rejection letter. Just be sincere and professional, and then focus on the exciting things to come in the future.

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Right under my nose: Dr. Rubye Torrey, Sister in Science

I met Dr. Rubye Torrey (yes, with an e) as an undergraduate student at Tennessee Technological University. I had seen in the University Center, walking along the Quad, in the Administration building and at football games. She was the Assistant Vice-President of Research at the University, but that meant nothing to me, although I was studying science and doing research with live animals. At the time I had absolutely no appreciation of research administration, research protocols, policies, animal care (IACUC), review boards ( IRB), or the role of administrators like Dr. Torrey – that would eventually occupy my days and nights as a graduate student. No, I officially met her for the first time on a blustery winter’s evening in 1994. I was attending an interest tea and she was the sorority advisor. She struck me as a very formal woman. She had a sweet face, but I immediately sensed she was no nonsense. I was quite right.

My three years under her tutelage and supervision in Xi Alpha Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., were perhaps like anyone else’s who belonged to one of the Divine 9 organizations. With little exception, undergraduate sorority and fraternity members are adolescents: cocky, self-absorbed, indestructible, know-it-all-kids full of energy and excitement about belonging to a grand sister/brotherhood. We want to conquer it all. The job of these selfless, giving (and no nonsense) advisors is keep droves of crazed, impetuous, souls from running amuck, unintentionally despoiling our sister/brotherhood, and simultaneously prepare us to be responsible citizens who serve mankind – all for free. I cannot say I was better behaved (or appreciated how much a labor of love it is to be a graduate advisor), though my brand of cockiness was a more passive arrogance. I was brat, but I didn’t know it then. But that wasn’t the only thing I didn’t know.

I graduated from college, with a degree in Animal Science. I continue my studies and obtained a Master’s degree in Biology and I later went on to study at the doctorate level. Fast forward to March 2007. I’m sitting in a workshop at the National Science Teachers Association National meeting. I’m sitting next to a lovely woman, who favors my maternal grandmother. We strike up a conversation and I learn she is a Biology professor at Howard University -- Dr. Geraldine Twitty. I am beaming and excited. Never before had I had the opportunity to meet an African-American Woman who was scientist. She asked me about my educational background and schools I have attended. She then asks if I know Dr. Rubye Torrey. I immediately sit up, surprised that anyone else other than my sorority sisters know who DT is (as we called her). Dr. Twitty tells me that she and Dr. Torrey are long time friends, from Sigma Xi conferences of years past.

It hits me. Dr. Torrey is a scientist! It’s not like I didn’t know she wasn’t a PhD in Chemistry. Once she shared a story of her carrying a sulfate chemical on the bus in Nashville – where she was studying for her Master’s. But it just didn’t hit me, until this very moment. I had only known Dr. Torrey as my sorority advisor and not once did I give pause to ask what brought her to us or what academic and professional hurdles did she jump to be in a position to advise us. Not only did I never realize that she was the very first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Syracuse University (in 1963), but she was an upper-level university administrator. As the top science administrator on our campus she had to sign off on my undergraduate research project. Right under my nose, I had access to an African-American Woman Scientist and I never knew. It’s probably because at the time, I didn’t know I’d be where I am today – preparing for an academic career in science, following in the footsteps of Dr. Torrey. Now that I’m on this side of the path, I appreciate her more. She was thorough, effective, and sharp. My sorority sisters and I couldn’t get away with a thing. Nothing. But that’s precisely what makes one a great scientist and a great research administrator. If only I had known then what I now know: science is an endeavor of accuracy and precision. If one is thorough in one facet of life, it’s likely to carry over into others. Dr. Torrey was a consummate professional. It’s a real shame my adolescent stubbornness didn’t allow me to recognize her as the mentor she could have been and how much of an amazing scientists she is. I missed out. I missed out big time.

I learned more about Dr. Torrey, Dr. Twitty, and other women scientists from this amazing book:

Sisters in Science: Converstations with Black Women Scientists on Race, Gender, and Their Passion for Science

by Diann Jordan

Purdue University Press

ISBN 978-1-55753-386-9

It's a perfect book to learn more about the contributions of women to science and engineering

Additional online references to Dr. Torrey:
The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science, AAAS Report 1976.
Her engagement announcement from the Washington Afro-American, July 16, 1957

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Changing the Rules and Raising the Bar

When a university revises its tenure and promotion code, faculty hired before the revisions should be evaluated according to the policy in place at the time they were hired. I have been indirectly involved in two such modification efforts. When the tenure code changed, the old code was used for faculty hired when it was in place, and the new code applied only to new hires, at least for the tenure evaluation.

Official tenure and promotion codes, however, don't contain much useful information about what the actual standards are for tenure and promotion in a particular department or academic discipline. You may learn some useful information from the official code -- for example, do you have to develop an international reputation for one or both promotion stages, or is a national reputation considered sufficient? -- but for the actual standards in terms of research, teaching, and service "metrics", you should consult the department chair, a mentor, or other senior faculty. In fact, in the changed tenure codes I just mentioned, the differences were so subtle, most of us had to be shown the changes (by an administratively savvy colleague) to detect the difference.

The criteria for tenure might seem mysterious to some, but there is a specific time by which the tenure evaluation must occur. Promotion from associate professor to professor, however, is more murky in terms of time and possibly also in terms of criteria of evaluation.

Last year I wrote about why some professors may spend their post-tenure careers as so-called terminal associates (associate professors who are never promoted to professor). When I wrote about terminal associates last year, I was surprised that some people prefer to be terminal associates, believing that they will do less service work at this level than as full professors, so I should add "by choice" to my list of reasons for terminal associateness.

One of the reasons I mused about involved syn-career changes in standards for promotion. I have no idea how many terminal associates remain unpromoted for this reason. That is, how many cases involve raised standards for promotion and:

1. an increase (but an insufficient one) over time in research productivity (however that is measured);
2. a plateau in research productivity compared to at the time of tenure (no increase or decrease); or
3. a decrease in research productivity compared to at the time of tenure?

There is surely no way to tell, but it is the first two cases that are relevant to this discussion.

At least with associate professors, there is (in theory) time to ramp up a research program to meet raised standards, without fear of losing your job entirely.

That's not easy, of course. If there is a gap in your funding record or a lull in graduate student recruitment, it can be exceedingly difficult, and maybe even impossible, to get a research program back on track, much less take it to a more active level. And if you are already active in research but are somehow expected to bring in more grants, that may not be humanly possible in some fields.

I don't think it is in a department's interest to have terminal associates. At different universities, I have seen a number of cases in which there was a concerted effort on the part of a department chair to jump-start an associate professor's lagging research program. These efforts have included providing time off from teaching and/or even some research funds or commitment of cost-shares for proposals or research assistants.

Of course there are also situations in which a department chair is so disappointed with an apparently terminal associate that there is no effort to help them, and instead the associate professor is assigned additional teaching or service responsibilities. I think that is quite fair, but ideally would only be resorted to after an attempt to help someone who wants assistance revising or revving up research activities.

Promotion to full professor at a research university should be a natural progression for someone who builds their research program over time, successfully advises students in research, and participates in teaching (and does it reasonably well) and service (institutional and professional). It should not be a step reserved only for those who work 80 hours/week for a decade or more and who are insanely productive in terms of papers, grants, or whatever else is valued in their field. Nevertheless, it should (and, I think in most cases, does) recognize a fairly high level of research, teaching, and service; the very things we are hired to do, and that, in some ways, become easier to do at the mid-career stage.

I experienced a raised tenure bar because I moved to a different university, not because standards changed at a particular university. Also, my assistant professor to full professor transition years occurred in the mid-90's to early-2000's, a time at which there were not dramatic changes in standards, at least not in my field or university.

Does anyone want to put dates on the most likely time for an associate professor to remain stalled owing to changes in standards rather to a decrease in research activity by the individual? To the extent that I believe this might be a factor, and in part for the sake of discussion, I propose that those hired as faculty at research universities pre-1985(ish) have experienced the most dramatic changes in tenure and promotion standards. Discuss?!

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Either/Or Proposition

The case of a disgruntled Michigan Tech professor who mailed his teaching awards back to the university (along with angry letters) raises anew questions about how universities value teaching relative to research, and whether it is reasonable to expect someone to be good at both for their entire career.

In the Michigan Tech case, the professor is an associate professor who has not advanced beyond that rank, apparently owing to his low level of research activity.

The professor in question says it is an "either-or proposition" for him -- teaching or research.

I don't want to dwell on the specifics of the Michigan Tech case, in part because I don't know the expectations of that institution regarding research and teaching. Instead, I want to discuss the more general question:

Should a tenured professor who focuses primarily on teaching at a research university be 'valued' the same as those who remain active in research?

(by 'valued', I refer to promotion to full professor, salary, etc.)

Teaching is valued by universities, and there are serious efforts to improve the teaching abilities of professors via workshops and mentoring. Our teaching is constantly evaluated, and teaching (as measured in large part by teaching and peer evaluations) is part of the equation for promotions and raises.

Nevertheless, teaching is, of course, just one component of the job. At a research university, most tenured faculty are expected to teach and maintain an active research program. Those who do not advise graduate and/or undergraduate students in research, work with postdocs, write grant proposals and papers, and give presentations at conferences are, technically, only doing part of their job, no matter how much additional effort they put into their undergraduate teaching.

The question raised by the Michigan Tech case seems to be what to do after a professor gets tenure and decides to choose between teaching and research. Should this individual be promoted and be given the same salary increases as colleagues who maintain active research programs but who are, perhaps, not as great at teaching as the not-as-active researcher?

I have no idea what the answer is for Michigan Tech, but at a major research university, I think that an outstanding teacher who has tenure and a decent salary and recognition for teaching excellence is doing pretty well already. I'm not saying they should never be promoted to full professor, especially if there is some level of research activity, but perhaps it will take longer for promotion. And the salary of such a person should certainly not dwell at the lower limits for their rank, but perhaps it won't be as high as those who are active in both research and teaching.

Being active in research and advising requires a lot of time and effort, and therefore faculty who are active and reasonably successful in both research and teaching should advance in their careers with respect to promotion and pay.

Of course universities also like the grant $ that active research faculty bring in, but I hope that the 'value' of research is calculated in a broader sense, encompassing the tangible and intangible benefits of discoveries and ideas, the synergy between research and teaching, and the excitement and visibility that research contributes to a university's overall mission, not to mention the time and efforts of faculty, students, and other researchers.

It's difficult to ignore the role of money in these discussions, though. According to the Chronicle article on the Michigan Tech case:

[Students] have a nagging sense that their tuition money is subsidizing the salaries and stipends of professors and graduate students who spend little time in classrooms.

I hope that students will therefore be happy to know that if their tuition money is supporting a graduate student, that graduate student is teaching. If the graduate student is not teaching, she or he is not being supported by undergraduate tuition money. And professors who are not often in the classroom may be bringing in grant money; these faculty are therefore not sucking up tuition dollars whilst pursuing arcane research in secret labs.

All universities need outstanding teachers, and I respect and admire my colleagues who excel at teaching. I suppose, though, that I have an active-researcher's bias and therefore think that a mid-career professor who views teaching vs. research as an either/or proposition should realize that they are making a choice with consequences, but that those consequences do not directly translate into the value (or lack thereof) that an institution places on teaching relative to research.

Perhaps the denied promotion and raises in the Michigan Tech case were too severe (I don't know), but in general I think it reasonable that low research activity be a factor in decisions about promotion and pay at a university.

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Understanding push-pull market forces and promoting science to under-served audiences

Whenever a news source or blog community claims to be a go-to source of information for African-American audiences, I take a quick look at the tabs or regular feature titles and I always find one major subject area lacking: Science.

To be fair, science coverage across all media outlets has been severely cut back. However, long before the threat of extinction of print media, Black Newspapers and Magazines didn't have much to offer in the area of science coverage. And when online media became more popular, the trend didn't change. Where's the science? Other than the occasional Black health update and the annual Black History Month profile articles, Black periodicals do not feature science news. The lone exception is if the article has a Black angle, in other words, if the article can be tied directly to issues that identify with the African-American community, such as disparity statistics or African-American firsts.

Acknowledging some past confrontations with research communities, there is a general uncertainty when it comes to science and science research within the African-American community. However, I don't understand how or why this has translated to an overwhelming lack of coverage of science-related topics altogether.

My time teaching science to inner-city high school students as a NSF GK-12 Fellow really opened my eyes to something every science communicator should understand: I needed to relate the information to them in a way they would understand and in a medium they would readily consume. As my efforts to share science with under-served audiences grew, I realized that I needed to carry my message to them, not wait for them to come to me.

A year ago I published two articles in the St. Louis American, a local Black weekly paper. These articles were well-received by the editor and the public. I was invited to submit more articles. I did. I saw writing for this news outlet as a chance to share interesting and relevant science with a general audience. I was carrying the message - science news - to them - a demographic that was probably not subscribed to other popular science media, but might be modestly interested in some general science topics. However, none of my other submissions were as eagerly accepted as my first two articles. I concluded that these latter articles may not have been as attractive because they lacked an obvious 'why it matters to Black people' angle. I never received any formal feedback for my submissions, so I'm not sure.

Although, I write about science issues in a way that (attempts to) directly engage (s) the African-American community, I felt dismayed by the perceived pressure to always 'African-American-ize' the stories. Race or politics or socio-economics factors aren't always the hook for Black audiences. Or is it? Perhaps it was my lack of skill in writing science-related articles for general audiences. I twice applied for the AAAS Mass Media Fellows Program and was twice turned down. I figured I needed to learn 'how' to write for general audiences in a professional manner. Again, I received to no feedback on my denial, so I concluded my interest in learning how to communicate science to target audiences was too narrow for AAAS, but I don't know.

So, I was left with my expertise in science and my passion for science outreach, yet no vehicle to deliver the message directly to my target audience. Then I read blog post by Bora that articulated all of deepest thoughts and feelings about this matter, emphasis mine.

The problem is with the "push" versus "pull" models of communication. Many scientists communicate well, but are only allowed by the mainstream media to use the "pull" model which attracts only those who are already interested in science. The examples of "pull" media for science are popular science magazines, news sections of scientific journals, science sections of newspapers, science blogs, science-related radio shows, science-related shows on cable TV, i.e., all those places where people have a choice to seek this information or bypass it.

It is the mainstream media that controls all the "push" venues - the most popular print, radio and TV venues that are seen by everyone and where science could, potentially, be mixed in with the news coverage of other areas of life, thus delivering science stories to people who otherwise would never seek them. And it is there that the scientists have no access, certainly no access on their own terms, and thus it is there where the science communication is blocked. Scientists communicate all the time, and do it well, but only to the already receptive audience which actively seeks them - in special sections, or self-made media, carefully quarantined away from the mainstream news. The corporate media actively prevents the scientists from access to the non-receptive yet potentially interested audience.

Image credit: Everystockphoto.com

This so true. Looking specifically at this issue via an African-American or urban community lens, the pull forces are relatively weak compared to coverage about economics, politics, and celebrity gossip. However, outlets such as weekly Black Newspapers, Ebony/Jet, AOL BlackVoices or even BET TV and Radio One have amazing push power on their readership/listenership/viewership. Very large numbers people loyally tune into these media outlets and if they dared to include more science-related coverage people would consume it (and use it to inform their lives). Plus, it would make huge inroads to closing the science literacy gap (and eliminating anti-intellectualism) within some parts of the African-American community.

Just my thoughts,
DNLee

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Academic Vampires

Yesterday I mentioned the recent novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein (and some of its reviews) as an example of a recent contribution to the academic satire genre. In fact, with its long discourses on faith and religious principles, the book attempts to be more than a satire. Although I enjoyed many aspects of the book, ultimately I found it annoying because of its heavy-handed caricatures and self-conscious cleverness.

Also, although it is a novel containing many strange and unlikable characters, the intelligent female characters in the book are particularly unpleasant. There is a beautiful and brilliant female superstar professor character who excels at "fanging" her intellectual opponents, but she is widely loathed, loses her faculty position at Princeton because she gets an outside offer at an inferior institution (an entirely unbelievable scenario), and ultimately reveals herself to be insecure and petty, leaving the man who loves her (coincidentally, the "boyish" hero of the novel) because he gets an offer from Harvard. Explaining why she is leaving, she says:

..the fact that you have acquired more prestige than I have, when my work is so much more important, is not something I can tolerate. I can't degrade myself by being regarded as your female companion, the pretty young woman at the inferior institution who will be patronized by the Harvard elite. To be with you is to have everything that is wrong with academia constantly rubbed in my face.

And off she goes. Is it refreshing that a woman refuses to be the 'trailing' spouse (or significant other) or disturbing that she is so insecure she can't be in a relationship with someone at a "better" university? In fact, the smart female characters (all ex-wives or ex-girlfriends of the boyishly charming main character who, as it turns out, finds fame and success without even trying) are all deeply unlikeable, self-absorbed, and eccentric. The ultra-thin French poetess doesn't fare much better than the insecure vampire professor (i.e., the one who "fangs" people), and the self-absorbed anthropologist, albeit a bit more likable, is extremely bizarre (after retiring from Berkeley -- code for weird, I suppose -- her new research goal is to achieve immortality).

I concluded that a main theme of the book is that if we try too hard to be successful as intellectuals, we will lose, and we will deserve to lose because we will have destroyed other people to further our own success. Furthermore, those who try too hard to be successful in academia may do so by being aggressive back-stabbers and/or control freaks. It's better to drift along, feeling confused much of the time, because then somehow, without really trying, we may end up with fame, money, and a faculty position at Harvard! What a strange book: an anti-intellectual novel that shows off the intellect of the author.

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Orion in a New Light

Orion in a New Light (2/10/10)

The Orion Nebula is a vast stellar nursery lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. Although the nebula is spectacular when seen through an ordinary telescope, what can be seen using visible light is only a small part of a cloud of gas in which stars are forming. Most of the action is deeply embedded in dust clouds and to see what is really happening astronomers need to use telescopes with detectors sensitive to the longer wavelength radiation that can penetrate the dust. VISTA has imaged the Orion Nebula at wavelengths about twice as long as can be detected by the human eye.

As in the many visible light pictures of this object, the new wide field VISTA image shows the familiar bat-like form of the nebula in the centre of the picture as well as the fascinating surrounding area. At the very heart of this region lie the four bright stars forming the Trapezium, a group of very hot young stars pumping out fierce ultraviolet radiation that is clearing the surrounding region and making the gas glow. However, observing in the infrared allows VISTA to reveal many other young stars in this central region that cannot be seen in visible light.

Orion Nebula – click for 1280×1574 image


More: here, here, here

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Absurdity of Current Academic Thinking?

Longtime FSP readers know that I am interested in how academia is depicted in literature and other artistic venues, and that I have a particular interest in academic satire in novels. Although I generally disapprove of attempts to make academia and academics seem like bizarre, megalomaniacal control freaks who are entirely disconnected from the "real" world, I am not incapable of enjoying a good academic satire (hence my fondness of the novel Straight Man, by Richard Russo).

I even like the Indigo Girls' song, "Closer to Fine", despite this horrific set of anti-academic lyrics:

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee.
He never did marry, or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance
He said he could see through me.
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper And I was free.

Give me a break.

Anyway, I was curious to read the recent novel "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" (Rebecca Goldstein), described in some reviews as a brilliant new example in the academic satire genre.

Washington Post (Ron Charles): The field of academic satire is crowded with such classics as "Lucky Jim" and "Straight Man," but "36 Arguments" sports so many spot-on episodes of cerebral pomposity that you've got to place this novel among the very funniest ever written.

New York Times (Janet Maslin): When Cass witnesses a PowerPoint presentation featuring “brain scans of sophomores, neuroimaged in the throes of moral deliberation over whether they should, in theory, toss a hapless fat man onto the tracks in order to use his bulk to save five other men from an oncoming trolley,” this book occupies its ideal vantage point: close to the absurdity of current academic thinking yet just far enough away to laugh.

Cerebral pomposity? The absurdity of current academic thinking? Did these reviewers also spend their college years prostrate to bearded, Rasputin-loving higher minds?

Certainly there are pompous intellectuals in academia, and some research topics and methods seem quite absurd, but these are not the kinds of things I enjoy seeing parodied in novels and pilloried in reviews.

For me, the most clever and entertaining academic novels are the ones that show the absurdity of the weird-but-mundane rituals of academic life (professor-student interactions, faculty meetings, budgets, tenure) and that are a bit more subtle in their portrayal of classic personalities in academe.

Therefore, I am not particularly impressed by bizarre and disturbing characters such as the "Extreme Distinguished Professor" in 36 Arguments, and am much more entertained by a depiction of strangely recognizable people embroiled in the bizarre and disturbing rituals of a faculty search (as in Straight Man).

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Diversity Help Wanted

Said FSP's daughter's middle school Science teacher to FSP when he saw her in the corridor of the school:

Hey, it's the famous woman scientist.

I was taken aback at first, wondering why he used adjectives, one of which was strange and the other implied that scientist = man unless you specify otherwise (hence the somewhat cynical name for this blog). But then I figured out why he greeted me that way.

Later, this same science teacher asked me if I would come talk to his class in a month or two.

Great! I replied. But I thought you were done with the unit on My Science.

Oh.. ah.. yes. Actually, we are doing a unit on Diversity and so we need a .. a .. a..

Woman scientist?

Yes, exactly. The state expects us to do something on Diversity and I uh.. uh..

have no clue what to do and don't even know enough to ask this favor in a non-offensive way?

I didn't say that, but, actually, I don't have a clue either.

I have never talked about Diversity to a group of middle school kids before. I assume that I should talk about all types of diversity, not just gender. I would like to keep my overall message positive and talk about Science as a rewarding career, but perhaps we could also discuss stereotypes of scientists (strange white males). I'm going to have to give this a lot more thought.

Has anyone else given a talk on Diversity to middle schoolers? I could use some advice.

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The Stars behind the Curtain

The Stars behind the Curtain (2/3/10)

ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way, which therefore serves as an excellent “local” analogue of very active star-forming regions in other galaxies. The cluster also hosts the most massive star to be “weighed” so far.

NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their great distance from us.

NGC 3603 – click for 1280×1291 image

More: here

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Galaxies are slowly running out of gas

Galaxies are made of stars, and stars are made of... gas. So a large part of understanding how galaxies evolve and grow is understanding how much "gas" (literally, not "gasoline") is present in galaxies – but has not yet been incorporated in stars – at different periods in the history of the universe.

What periods of the universe are most interesting in this regard? The answer is: periods somewhat less than the first half of the universe's existence since the time of the big bang, roughly the first 5.5 billion years, 40% of the total. That's because astronomers have good reason to believe that is the time when star formation, and hence galaxy growth, occurred most vigorously.

Assuming the best current estimate, that is has been about 13.7 billion years since the big bang, this means we're interested in observing the universe as it was more than 8.2 billion years ago. That's quite a long time ago, and until fairly recently observation of objects that far back in time has been infeasible. Technology is only now becoming available to study the details of such a remote time.

Astronomers find it convenient to represent distance (in either space or time) in terms of redshift. Because it takes light a finite amount of time to travel, any observable object is seen not as it looks "today", 13.7 billion years after the big bang, but instead as it looked a some time T<13.7, and so we see the object as it looked 13.7-T billion years ago. The light from such an object has taken 13.7-T billion years to reach us.

Due to the expansion of the universe, the wavelength of any photon of light has been increased by a factor of (z+1), where z is the observed redshift – z=0 corresponding to nearby objects for which the shift is negligible. z increases as a complicated function of the distance of the object, but it increases in a regular way as the distance increases. For objects at an age T=5.5 billion years, corresponding to a distance of 8.2 billion light years, the redshift would be about 1.1.

Astronomers have now done surveys of galaxies around z≈1.1. It's not easy, but there is plenty of data, even though only very large, bright galaxies can be observed in detail at that distance. It's even more difficult, though still feasible, to survey galaxies that are even more remote, say at z≈2.3, which corresponds to T≈2.9 billion years.

For the research under discussion here, the investigators relied on existing surveys to sample from, because of the difficulty of doing new surveys from scratch. There was a trade-off to be made. In order to be able to study a selected sample of galaxies in sufficient detail, it's desirable to pick the largest, brightest galaxies. On the other hand, it's also important to study galaxies that are representative of "typical" mature galaxies today, such as our Milky Way. Unfortunately, the most luminous objects at large z tend to be atypical things like quasars and merging galaxies. Those are "freaks", quite unlike typical nearby galaxies, and whatever we might learn about them might not tell us much about the typical case.

So the investigators had to select galaxies for study that were as large and bright as possible, but still "normal". In this case, they included only galaxies of estimated stellar mass (excluding dark matter) of ≥ 3×10¹⁰ M_⊙. (1 M_⊙ is our Sun's mass.) Since we are inside the Milky Way and can't see all of it (because of thick dusty regions), it's hard to be sure of our galaxy's total stellar mass, but it's estimated to be about 5×10¹⁰ M_⊙. (Ref: here.)

An important objective of the research was to get a better understanding of galaxies in which new stars are actively being formed – unlike the Milky Way and other nearby large spirals, which are currently forming stars at the rate of about 5 M_⊙ per year. Star formation rate is something else that's easier to determine from outside the galaxy, by measuring light flux in various parts of the spectrum (especially infrared and ultraviolet). For the present research, only galaxies with a star formation rate ≥ 40 M_⊙ per year were selected.

For reasons we're coming to, the required observations are difficult and time-consuming, so for this kind of preliminary study it was necessary to work with small numbers. The net result is that the study was done with 11 galaxies selected from one survey, with z≈1.2, and 12 galaxies selected from another survey with z≈2.3.

Remember that the ultimate objective of the research is to determine how much gas is available for star formation in typical galaxies at the given values of z. That's what is so difficult that it had not been done before (for such distant galaxies).

It's relatively straightforward to determine how much of a galaxy's mass is in the form of stars. This "stellar mass" is proportional to the intrinsic luminosity of the galaxy (which is known since the galaxy distance is known), because most galaxies consist of stars with a predictable distribution of stars of given mass and luminosity ("initial mass function").

However, the total mass of a galaxy also includes non-baryonic dark matter, whose mass in the universe as a whole is known to be about 5 times as large as the mass of "ordinary" baryonic matter. The total mass of a galaxy can sometimes be inferred from measuring galaxy rotation curves. The baryonic matter of a galaxy consists of stars, gas, and (perhaps) massive nonluminous objects such as black holes. Even if one knew reliably the total mass of a galaxy, including dark matter, and one could neglect the contribution of nonluminous objects, one still could not estimate the mass of gas as the difference between the mass of a galaxy's stars and the roughly 17% of total mass that baryonic matter represents in the universe as a whole.

That's because there's no a priori reason to expect that a 1:5 ratio of baryonic matter to non-baryonic matter is present in any particular galaxy – it might well be either more or less. So there needs to be some way to measure fairly directly the amount of matter a galaxy contains in the form of gas that could form stars.

It is known that stars form only out of gas that's rather cold – with temperature less than 100 K. This is simply because hotter gas has a higher internal pressure that prevents the gravitational collapse that's necessary to form a star. Gas that cold is very hard to detect. Black body radiation at 100 K peaks at 29 μm, in the far infrared, and cooler gas emits at even longer wavelengths. Redshift stretches the wavelengths even more (by factors of 2 or 3 for z=1 or 2). Most of the radiation at such wavelengths is blocked by our atmosphere, so is observable only from space – and the necessary instruments don't exist yet.

Fortunately, black body radiation is not the only type of electromagnetic emission from cold gas. Vibrations and rotations of gas molecules also radiate at certain frequencies. Now, most of a galaxy's cold gas is in the form of atomic helium and molecular hydrogen. It would be convenient if hydrogen molecules, especially, had emissions at convenient wavelengths for ground-based observation, but no such luck. It turns out, however, that there is one molecule present in small amounts in interstellar gas which does have a convenient emission: CO (carbon monoxide). CO has a rotational emission at 870 μm (346 GHz). At the values of z of interest here (1.2 and 2.3) these fall into the 2 mm and 3 mm bands – which can be observed.

In a nutshell, then, what the research under discussion did was to measure the total flux from the selected galaxies at the appropriate wavelengths. This indicates that amount of cold CO gas present in the galaxies. Studies of nearby galaxies show that this accurately indicates the total amount of cold gas present. From this, and the estimated mass in the form of stars, one has fraction of total mass (stars + gas) represented by the cold gas available to form stars.

For the galaxies in the sample, this fraction was found to be 34% at z≈1.2 and 44% at z≈2.3. By contrast, contemporary large spiral galaxies have fractions in the 3% to 12% range – quite a difference.

For a summary of the results, here's the abstract:

High molecular gas fractions in normal massive star-forming galaxies in the young Universe

Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. As this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of magnitude more rapidly. Unless star formation was significantly more efficient, this difference suggests that young galaxies were much more molecular-gas rich. Molecular gas observations in the distant Universe have so far largely been restricted to very luminous, rare objects, including mergers and quasars, and accordingly we do not yet have a clear idea about the gas content of more normal (albeit massive) galaxies. Here we report the results of a survey of molecular gas in samples of typical massive-star-forming galaxies at mean redshifts of about 1.2 and 2.3, when the Universe was respectively 40% and 24% of its current age. Our measurements reveal that distant star forming galaxies were indeed gas rich, and that the star formation efficiency is not strongly dependent on cosmic epoch. The average fraction of cold gas relative to total galaxy baryonic mass at z = 2.3 and z = 1.2 is respectively about 44% and 34%, three to ten times higher than in today’s massive spiral galaxies. The slow decrease between z ≈ 2 and z ≈ 1 probably requires a mechanism of semi-continuous replenishment of fresh gas to the young galaxies.

The results from this research about star formation rates (SFR) are especially interesting. From other research involving much larger samples, it's known that when SFR is plotted against galaxy stellar mass, the distribution can be fit by a power law:

SFR (M_⊙/year) = 150 (M_*/10¹¹M_⊙)^0.8×([1+z]/3.2)^2.7

In this equation, M_* is the galactic stellar mass. Thus SFR depends on total stellar mass of a galaxy, which makes sense, because the larger the galaxy, the more cold molecular gas is available to make stars. Further, because of the factor involving 1+z (where z is redshift), the SFR curve is shifted upwards at larger z – the rate of star formation is greater, in a regular way, at earlier times in the universe.

This equation is pretty close even in the nearby universe, where z=0. For a galaxy the size of the Milky Way (which is not among the largest of spirals), M_* is estimated as 5×10¹⁰ M_⊙, predicting SFR of about 3.7 M_⊙/year – which is surprisingly accurate. So SFR has continued to decline in a fairly regular way.

Interestingly enough, however, in the galaxies sampled in the present research, the percentage of cold gas in a galaxy does not appear to have any clear relationship to either the SFR or the total stellar mass of a galaxy. So almost all of the variation in SFR is related to the total stellar mass. This is what it means to say that the "efficiency" of star formation is not very dependent on percentage of cold gas or cosmic epoch. Instead, SFR is probably largely dependent on total available cold gas, which is proportional (at a given z) to a galaxy's stellar mass.

One additional interesting conclusion can be drawn from the research. Namely, given the SFR in sampled galaxies at z≈2.3, there ought to be much less cold gas in equivalent galaxies at the later time (about 2.3 billion years later) corresponding to z≈1.2 than is actually observed. Much of that cold gas should have been incorporated into stars. Yet the amount of cold gas actually observed at the later time is more than the original amount less what was converted to stars. And so there is apparently more cold gas added over time, even though, as a whole, galaxies really are "runnng out of gas".

Tacconi, L., Genzel, R., Neri, R., Cox, P., Cooper, M., Shapiro, K., Bolatto, A., Bouché, N., Bournaud, F., Burkert, A., Combes, F., Comerford, J., Davis, M., Schreiber, N., Garcia-Burillo, S., Gracia-Carpio, J., Lutz, D., Naab, T., Omont, A., Shapley, A., Sternberg, A., & Weiner, B. (2010). High molecular gas fractions in normal massive star-forming galaxies in the young Universe Nature, 463 (7282), 781-784 DOI: 10.1038/nature08773

Further reading:

Young galaxies gorge on gas (2/10/10)

Why Today's Galaxies Don't Make As Many Stars As They Once Did (2/11/10)

Early Galaxies Formed Stars Fast Because They Had More Gas (2/10/10)

Stellar Baby Boom of Early Universe Explained (2/11/10)

Ancient Galaxies Packed More Raw Material for Stellar Formation (2/10/10)

In the News this month: the molecular content of early galaxies (3/4/10)

Astrophysics: Less greedy galaxies gulp gas (2/11/10)

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