From the category archives:

Bloggy-blogging

Which came first, the Nano or the NNI?

September 5, 2010

A news article in this week’s Nature discusses the origin of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, but the story sets some of the causality in reverse. The story outlines how science advocacy at the Federal level in 1999 led to presidential and congressional support in 2000, and says that afterward…
…a certain amount of hype [...]

Read the full article →

Metacognition, then and now
(a crisp example)

September 2, 2010

As a follow-on to recent posts here and here, I’d like to offer a crisp example of the standards of cognitive reflection that were taught in the once-upon-a-time United States: a sample from Studies in Civics (1897), a high school textbook.
TO STUDENTS.
You will notice in chapter one that at the close of nearly every paragraph [...]

Read the full article →

High-school civics and minds,
1890 and now

September 2, 2010

A comment on my recent post, “The problem: a metacognition deficit,” reminded me of a striking illustration of cultural change, the level of the language and content of a book used in the 1890s to teach high school civics (available in plain text, a big pdf and simulated in-browser book ). It reeks of a [...]

Read the full article →

The problem: a metacognition deficit

August 27, 2010

…there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate…
Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.
David Brooks, (“A Case of Mental Courage”, New York Times)
Brooks begins with the story of how [...]

Read the full article →

How to Learn about Everything in Belorussian

August 25, 2010

“How to Learn about Everything”, now in Belorussian translation:

(With thanks to Patricia Clausnitzer!)

Read the full article →

Factory in a box

August 17, 2010

Mobile factories that fit in a standard shipping container make replacement parts on-site, on-demand. Better and smaller systems in your neighborhood someday; military systems in Afghanistan today. John Robb sees them as part of a trend toward hyperlocal manufacturing.

Read the full article →

Between conferences

August 5, 2010

Last weekend: the O’Reilly Media / Nature Publishing Group “Science Foo Camp” at Google. An amazing event, as always. I spoke at a session led by Michael Nielsen — he asked four of us to speak on Three Rules (for something); I outlined rules for broad learning about science. Later in the day I led [...]

Read the full article →

Autophagy:
Why you should eat yourself

July 24, 2010

I’d like to say a few words about one of the hottest and, in my view, most important areas in biomedicine: autophagy, a process crucial to health, disease, and aging. Autophagy research is expanding rapidly.
In autophagy (“self eating”), cells engulf and digest their own macromolecules and organelles. Autophagy serves two functions: providing critical nutrients in [...]

Read the full article →

Super Battery!!!

July 14, 2010

A benchmark for judging hype:
WSU Researchers Use Super-high Pressures to Create Super Battery
The researchers created the material on the Pullman campus…The cell contained xenon difluoride (XeF2), a white crystal used to etch silicon conductors, squeezed between two small diamond anvils….The researchers eventually increased the pressure to more than a million atmospheres, comparable to what would [...]

Read the full article →

“The China Study” Considered Harmful

July 11, 2010

An influential study of diet and health has been exploded here. The data and the conclusions don’t just disagree, they aren’t even on speaking terms.

Meanwhile, randomized intervention trials indicate that advice on the perils of saturated fat has been wrong. I suggest some reforms.

Read the full article →

Next up: Asteroids

July 4, 2010

Soon after Earth’s life first touched the Moon, NASA promised to make spaceflight routine and inexpensive, and I began studying the prospects for space as a genuine frontier.
Geologists had analyzed the new, hard-won lunar samples, and I read up on the results in the local college library. Not nice: almost no carbon, nitrogen, or hydrogen, [...]

Read the full article →