This is an excellent brief overview of the crucial problems in American education by Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Washington who also served on an advisory committee under GW Bush. From his first hand view, he does not seem kindly disposed towards Republican policies in science.
Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle is up for scholarship for bloggers, and she needs your vote. You must vote for Shelley. She once gave me a special cookie in her bed. None of the others have ever given me or you a cookie of any kind, and we aren’t going to get anywhere near their beds, so the choice is clear.
Vote Shelley Batts. The one with the cookies. And the parrot. And the nice blog about neuroscience.
Jonah unkindly mentions that California will spend three times as much operating its prisons than running the UC system. Doesn’t that reassure you so much about America’s priorities?
Hello again! It’s been a little while since my last post and I need to post for this week or I’ll be docked points from Dr. Myers. I’ve been a little bit behind on things as I’ve been preparing for my upcoming senior seminar, but I did have time to check out at least one cool article I found on different energy systems used while running.
I had a race today and I noticed that every time I do an 8k (5 miles), about three miles in I hit a wall of fatigue. I get dizzy, it’s hard to focus on the guy in front of me, driving my knee up feels next to impossible, and the only thing I care about is eventually getting to the finish line. I know that much of this is probably because I’ve depleted a good portion of my glycogen stores and have worn out my muscles fairly well. But how does this tie in with my nervous system?
According to the article, a good portion of my glycogen stores are found in my liver. If too much of the glycogen is used hypoglycaemia can occur resulting in brain damage. Other bodily harm such as myocardial ischaemia, heat stroke, and severe ATP depletion from my muscles can occur too if my body is allowed to be pushed far enough.
Luckily for me, my muscles have a built in negative feedback to stop me from killing myself out there. My muscles somehow know to send a signal up to the brain for a release of serotonin and inhibition of dopamine secretion, which results in a further lack of ability to move, which results in a slower time, which puts Morris on the backburner in terms of our men’s cross country team. I’m still wondering though, how do my muscles know when to signal my brain to cut back on the neurotransmitters? And how much does mentality (a positive attitude towards the race, or the expectation of a good run) play a role in the regulation of my muscles (do I release more ACh and endorphins by simply having a good attitude, or is the causality the other way around?)? Either way, if you haven’t moved in a while, get out and enjoy this great October weather while it lasts. Or you can check out this pretty funny link of a band I found on youtube.
Josh talks about the difference between teaching about ID and teaching ID. There is a huge difference that the Discovery Institute does not seem to understand.
I am opposed to teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. It’s an absurd idea that is unsupported by any evidence — it has not earned a place in the curriculum as a legitimate scientific hypothesis. The propaganda novels that the DI has tried to peddle in the past, Of Pandas and People and their new one, Explore Evolution, do not belong in the classroom. They are badly written, and incompetently push completely false ideas as valid. They should be rejected on their low merit.
On the other hand, I do teach about ID … in fact, this next week is the week I’ve set aside to specifically address creationism in my introductory biology course. I’ve prepared them with some of the history of evolution, and maybe a little bit more of the evidence for the idea than was easily digestible, and now I’m going to cover the fallacies of interpretation of the theory, which will include social Darwinism as well as creationism. Students are bombarded with these bad ideas, and I don’t think we can afford to pretend they don’t exist — we have to confront them head-on.
The strategy I’m using is to ask the students themselves what arguments they’ve heard against evolution. They wrote some lists down this week, and this weekend I’m putting together a lecture where I specifically take these misconceptions and answer them. It was rather fun reading their lists: the arguments are very familiar, everything from “if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?” to “there are no transitional fossils” to “organisms are too complex to have evolved.”
I also encouraged the students to go to our local creationist tent revival meeting, which was very conveniently timed. We’ll also be discussing how to refute his arguments in class next week.
That’s teaching about creationism. I’m all for it. It’s how we prepare students to criticize lies after they leave the classroom.
Adult neurogenesis
The creation of new neurons, known as neurogenesis, is an important process. It is by this process that the brain forms, and most of it occurs during pre-natal development. An early theory proposed by neuroanatomists that has recently been refuted by experimental evidence is that adult neurogenesis does not occur. In adult neurogenesis, it has been observed that most of the new neurons die shortly after their formation, while only a few become integrated into the functioning structure of the brain. So what is the significance of adult neurogenesis?
While the functioning of this process is not known, it has been speculated that it is important for memory and learning processes, and is linked to stress. Stress causes a lot of people a lot of harm, and has been linked to many disorders, such as depression. Depression is a condition that is regulated by antidepressants. Know what other activity is regulated by the activity of antidepressants? You guessed it, NEUROGENESIS! A recent study showed that the brain responds to stress-relieving situations, such as those that build learning and memory, with increased neurogenesis. Stressful situations, such as those that induce physiological or psychological stress, are marked by decreased neurogenesis. A decrease in neurogenesis has been indicated to be a key factor in the progression of depression.
Are you trained in vertebrate systematics or natural history? Would you like to work at a liberal arts college with undergraduates? We have the perfect opportunity for you.
Tenure-Track Position in Biology
University of Minnesota, MorrisThe University of Minnesota, Morris seeks an individual committed to excellence in undergraduate education, to fill a tenure-track position in vertebrate biology beginning August 18, 2008. Responsibilities include: teaching a two-year rotation of undergraduate biology courses including upper level electives in vertebrate systematics or natural history and sophomore level human physiology; contributing to the university’s general education program; curating and maintaining the discipline’s vertebrate collection; advising undergraduates; pursuing a research program that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program as well as the campus at-large.
Candidates must hold or expect to receive a Ph.D. in zoology or a closely related field by August 18, 2008. Two years experience teaching undergraduate biology is required. (Graduate TA experience is acceptable.)
The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) is a nationally-recognized, small, selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts campus of the University of Minnesota. It has an enrollment of about 1700 students with over 120 faculty members. The campus is located in west-central Minnesota, 160 miles from Minneapolis, in a rural community of 5000 people. The college is organized into four academic divisions, of which Science and Mathematics is one. Disciplines represented in the division are Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics. The college attracts excellent students many of whom go on to graduate or professional studies. Visit www.morris.umn.edu/positions/ to learn about other open positions at UMM.
This tenure-track position carries all of the privileges and responsibilities of University of Minnesota faculty appointments. A sound retirement plan, excellent fringe benefits and a collegial atmosphere are among the benefits that accompany the position. Appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level for those having the Ph.D. in hand and at the Instructor level for others. The standard teaching load is twenty credit hours per year.
Applications must include a letter of application, resume, transcripts, a teaching statement (in which teaching goals and methods are discussed), a research statement (proposing a research program that is viable at a small liberal arts college and accessible to undergraduates), and three letters of reference. Send applications to:
Biology Search Committee Chair
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota, Morris
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267-2128Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins January 7, 2008. Inquiries can be made to Tracey Anderson, Search Committee Chair, at (320) 589-6324 or anderstm@@morris.umn.edu.
The University of Minnesota is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, or sexual orientation.
Attila takes a tour of Nature headquarters — it looks like they’re doing some cool, progressive, net-friendly innovation there. I was jealous of one thing: they’re using an internal corporate blog instead of email. It’s an easy and obvious solution, and I wish there were a way to implement that kind of thing at my university — we use godawful mailing lists for everything, which means notices about campus assembly meetings and student issues get all clogged up in my inbox with staff putting lawn furniture up for sale or disposable nonsense about football games.
We really should have a discussion about the future of intra-campus communication here sometime…or maybe about the ten-years ago of communication.
I mentioned before that Mark Mathis is prowling Baylor, looking for new footage for his paean to creationist paranoia, Expelled. I have a suggestion for Mark.
Go north.
Prompted by the skewed gender representation of a recent survey of science blogs, Zuska asks why there are no great women science bloggers. That’s an ironic question, of course: there are great women science bloggers, but there is a strange blindness to their contributions, just as they are neglected in the greater blogosphere, and in science, and in politics, and in everything other than raising babies and making attractive centerpieces for the family dinner table, etc. It’s a curious phenomenon that we have to try consciously to rise above, an effort hampered by the fact that there seem to be a lot of people who want to argue that you aren’t allowed to make a special effort to avoid gender bias — it’s apparently “unfair” to try to overcome a history of unfairness.
