At some point in the unspecified past, some colleagues and I were profiled in a University publication. This has happened at various times my academic career; I suspect that most us professors show up at some point in some University propaganda magazine,...
Too Cool For Me
Although the word textbook tends to conjure images of heavy, overpriced, boring paper bricks filled with too many facts for any one person to learn in a reasonable amount of time, textbooks are actually quite varied in their style, tone, content, and...
Read All About It
Today in Scientopia, I ask the burning questions:Do you read your campus newspaper?andIs it any go...
AWOL TAs
Several times in recent months, academic persons at different institutions have described completely unrelated problems with different graduate students who failed to secure a substitute to teach their labs/recitations/discussion sections/etc. when they...
Different Worlds
By chance, one of my cousins and I have ended up living in the same general area, although we have no other relatives (other than our spouses and kids) within about a million miles. Her husband and I work at the same university.He has a low-level tech...
An Open Letter to the Math Guy
Following on a recent post about annoying ancillary things we wouldn't miss while on sabbatical, I propose that today we each think about the most trivial annoying thing that routinely afflicts our working lives. Something so small that we might not...
Let Me Down
At this time of year, some of my colleagues and I like to show each other our favorite "rejection letters" from the recent crop of grad applicants -- that is, the letters that we get from prospective graduate students who decide to accept an offer other...
Dollar Thrills
We interrupt our regularly scheduled post to exult in what I hope is only a mildly obnoxious way about a new grant.It's not as if I have grants raining from the sky all the time, but, in the course of my career, I have been fortunate to have had pretty...
Flocculent spiral NGC 2841
Flocculent spiral NGC 2841Star formation is one of the most important processes in shaping the Universe; it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear.Yet...
Insecurity as Motivator
Today in Scientopia, I consider an ethical dilemma involving a PI and a research scientist who hates to wri...
2011 Black Weblog Awards Nominations are open
It's that time of year, a little ealy this time, but it's award season - the 2011 Black Weblog Awards Nominations season is open. Time to nominate your favorite blogs about any and every topic. Of course, I'm throwing my hat into the race, in several...
D-Day
April 15* is the traditional deadline for paying the previous year's taxes in the US, and is also the deadline by which applicants to graduate schools typically need to give their response (accept or decline) to offers of admission. There is a Council...
Mrs. Me
Earlier this year, during a session of an international conference, the convener of the session introduced all the male speakers by their names (Firstname-Lastname or just Lastname) but a female speaker was introduced as "Mrs. X".She had a PhD just like...
Written Off
A colleague in another department was recently talking about what they liked most about a sabbatical, other than the obvious things. In this case, a favorite sabbatical benefit was: not having to write letters of recommendation. I was surprised by that...
Wordless Wednesday: Crab apple flowers
I've had this on-going relationship with crab apple trees since my childhood. In the front yard of my paternal grandparent's house was a crab apple tree. It was tall and thin and I would often wrap my arms around it when I was a little girl...
Mismatch
At some universities, undergraduates are involved in research, are included in research group activities, and interact closely with graduate students; i.e., not just in labs or classes with graduate TAs, but in a research context. At these universities,...
Yuri Night - Celebrating 50 years of human space flight
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the very first human space flight, April 12, 2011. On this night, 50 years ago, Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit around the earth. He became an instant international celebrity and a heor...
To Author or not to Author?
Today in Scientopia, I discuss the question of what to do if you provide information (e.g., data) to a colleague for a publication but you don't agree with the colleague's interpretations and conclusio...
From Proposal To Grant
In the good old days, this was a typical scenario for NSF grants, indicated by time (t) in months:t = 0: proposal submitted on or before the proposal deadline. (I was just trying to remember if I have ever submitted a proposal before a deadline, and...
Citizen Science Spring & Summer Field Season opens
The warmer weather calls us outside to run, jump and play. And if you take a close look or listen, you'll notice that the nature is all-abuzz, too. All of that new life sprouting and peeping around is waiting on someone...
Token Help?
Today in Scientopia, I discuss a comment on yesterday's FSP post about tokenism: What can male colleagues do in situations like the one I describ...
In Memorium: Jenni M. Higashiguchi
ObituaryJenni Malie Higashiguchi, a doctoral student in biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, was born in Hawaii on March 24, 1981, and passed away on April 4 after a brief but catastrophic illness. Jenni received her undergraduate degree...
Kick Me
What a week.This week, I participated in a meeting of a working group with which I have been associated for the past 6 years or so. I have devoted a lot of time to this particular service activity, and overall I have enjoyed the work. It can be frustrating...
Wordless Wednesday: Red buds bloom
Red buds are by far my most favorite flowering tree. I think I've dedicated more blog posts to blooming red buds than to any other species. Here are photos I took recently, in St. Louis between the bouts of cold. Our spring is starting...
Overheard in Science
It seems that I have been eavesdropping a lot lately, but here is something I heard today:"All the speakers were male, so there was no possibility of anyone having been included just for diversity reasons."That's so good to know. I hate it when there...
Urban Environmentalism in Action: St. Louis North City residents sue city over recycling
We’ve only got one planet and the resources we need are limited. April is such an optimistic time for environmentalist and conservationists. Thanks to some great social marketing and patience, most people are now on board to Save the Earth and use our...
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