Science Under the Influence

-Problems with education

2011-05-06T08:00:00.007-05:00

It is clear to many people that primary and secondary education in the US is not as good as in other developed countries (Finland, Korea, for example). You have probably heard or seen in the news that people in education are trying to implement different changes aimed to improved the system.

Michelle Rhee, in Waiting for Superman argues that the biggest problem is that a lot of teachers are bad and there's no accountability and punishing framework for those teachers who underperform. Wisconsin is going against unions, in order to remove collecting bargaining rights. Others argue that salaries and on-the-job welfare of teachers are under par in the US when compared to countries that in which the schools perform better and that that leads to a high turnover rate and low recruiting standards for new teachers.

If you divide the problem into its four working parts you get: the education administrators, the teachers, students and everything else. Rhee and Wisconsin's governor blame the poor performance on having bad teachers; Eggers and Clements Calegari blame the administrators for not having good work conditions. Maybe the two feedback into one another: bad working conditions lead to good teachers leaving (or never entering the field) which opens the door to bad teachers taking those jobs. The main issue I have with these two camps is the lack of data supporting their statements. You can quote the info presented in Waiting for Superman, but to me, that wasn't hard data. That was an opinion formed by a group of people based on a limited (an biased; will the administration ever blame itself for the low performance? will the teachers?). On the other hand, while it is clear that teachers' salaries are low and benefits might not be great, they have other advantages (e.g. summers off, "tenure", etc). Nobody, as far as I know, had looked at the other two parts and the effects that they have on a kid's education. But that's until now...

Michael Marder, a physicist from the University of Texas at Austin, has done some work in this area too (click here for an interview). I think it's good that someone that's close to the problem but not from within is looking at this stuff, mainly because his approach is based on data and, as a good scientist, he's opened to peer-review and/or rebuttals of his claims:

"There's a flood of data. The schools have been gathering an unprecedented amount of information about what students are doing every single year, particularly in reading and mathematics. [...] Everything I'm showing you can be obtained from the web with downloads. Now, the data sets are typically too large to be put into Excel, and so, my background in nonlinear dynamics helped me because I'm used to processing large data sets from experiments and that meant I had software tools available to me that although free, are not available... easily available to everybody. [...] and I encourage everybody to check the claims that I'm making because it's extremely important that as we go forward in this country we base the decisions on what the data tell us"

So, what does he find?

That poverty levels matter a lot. You can see from the video interviews the graphs that show how the higher the poverty concentration (defined as the percent of students eligible for free and reduced lunch) the lower the test scores. It's also clear that there is a correlation between being a minority student and poverty level.

He also looks at the performance of charter schools and finds, that at best (in most cases), they do about as good (or actually, as bad) as comparable public schools.

Are these results striking?

To me, yes and no. Anyone who thought (or thinks) that poverty levels do not matter in the performance of kids is either completely misinformed or plain dumb. There are plenty of documented examples from different countries in which kids from lower income families perform worse than their middle class counterparts. I am actually surprised that it requires a physicist to put it into a graph for it to gain traction.

The charter school results are somewhat surprising though. You can see that in most cases, charter schools are actually worse than public schools. If you watch Waiting for Superman you'd think that charter schools are the solution to the educational problem, but this goes to show that just because someone in the position of "power" says something is the problem it doesn't mean it is. It may well be that for D.C. schools, charter schools and/or better teacher accountability is the solution, but to go to the federal area and push for policies to that end without having data is ridiculous. On the other hand, you can see that most charter schools have a high poverty level. This argues against the idea that bad teachers alone are the problem, and supports the idea that the learning conditions both inside and outside of the classroom are more important parameters.

Is there anything really surprising?

YES! The fact that a lot of people (including many politicians in office) completely dismiss poverty as a factor. It's much easier for them to blame the teachers, and for teachers to blame the administration, than to admit that social conditions in their cities and states are bad and are affecting education.

How do you fix the problem? Marder says:

"The schools are going down, the schools that serve poor children are not doing well, and I believe, that the fundamental problem just like the cracks in the airplanes, is that poverty introduces flaws into the system of schooling that cause the schools to crash. We have to solve that problem. Now, there are theories for how to do this right now, but I think they are as mistaken as the theories that the British were using as the Comets went down, and I think that the data show it. So, what I urge everybody is, look at the data. If you think that accountability by itself; that improving teacher quality... by itself; and that neglecting the influences of poverty and saying that other reforms will help, then I think the data have a lot of things to tell you that say that you're not right."

I find this extremely courageous. Since he has no stake in it, he can really look at it from other angles and speak out. I guess having tenure at UT Austin, and your job not depending on political appointments, can put you in a position to stand for what you think is true and right. Of course, using hard data and objective analysis to reach your conclusions cannot hurt either.

Now, will the people believe what a physicist have to say? I guess we'll have to wait to know the answer...

-Applied science.. I like this idea

2011-04-23T08:51:00.002-05:00

I stumbled upon this article.

This is a great example of the applicability of science to make lives better. It won't solve the energy problems, especially in underdeveloped countries, but it can certainly help an individual person/family and all you need is kids playing ball for 15 mins.

I have always been a fan of this type of technological developments; I appreciate the cleverness of the ideas, but more importantly, I think it makes the general public appreciate the positive impact of science on our daily lives.

-Why I am not surprised?

2011-04-21T19:46:00.002-05:00

I should've seen this coming. Of course, that's a much better solution than actually passing state laws with climate change in mind.

Oh well...

- Are we doing a disservice to science?

2011-04-07T22:16:00.004-05:00

ZapperZ has a recent post about a comment by a former US Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, about the 4 years of pre-college high school science and math that he took were just a waste of time, waste of the teacher's time and a waste of space. You can check my opinion on taking 4 years of high school science and math on the comment section of ZapperZ's post, and I won't talk about that particular point here. What I want to talk about is a related topic, and that is that everyone in the US, regardless of the major, has to take science classes as part of their undergraduate degree.

The standard answer (tipically from faculty) behind this practice is that everyone must know a little bit of science or otherwise that person is an ignorant. There are already a few science books out there meant for future administrators or politicians (for an example, click here).

Here are the problems with that answer:

1) Why is it that not knowing science makes you an ignorant, but not knowing finance, simple business administration, political science, or being monolingual is something acceptable?. I know plenty of science professors that would benefit a lot from some basic organizational skills that anyone could acquire from a few courses in the business school. And what's up with tons of American professors only knowing English? And don't hit me with the purist's view of science being something fundamental, our current modern lifestyle depends as much on scientific/technological developments than on the ability of politicians and administrators to maintain a healthy economy that allows for science funding. Is it arrogance?

2) The idea that people can learn enough science, from a couple of college classes at most, to make "smart" decisions when they are in positions of power is fucking ridiculous. It isn't like 100% of the people that actually finish an undergraduate degree in a scientific field know enough to make those smart decisions.

3) Even if the syllabus of two or so courses were enough for material for someone to acquire significant knowledge of science, it would require great instructors. Unfortunately, Physics would still suffer because the number of good professors in the physics departments's files is quite low. Chemists and biologists wouldn't necessarily do good either, but I think they generally do better than physicists. I once was the TA for a physics course for liberal arts majors at a top research university. The professor was one of the best in the department, at least based on many years of being top rated when teaching physics or engineering majors. The problem was that he lectured the liberal arts majors the exact same way as he'd lecture the science or engineering majors. By the last month of the course, roughly about 60% of the students in the class REALLY hated physics. You could tell they had had it with it. I could only imagine how they would vote on science-related bills if they were ever elected to some kind of office. It really wasn't like they came into the class with a great passion for physics; they weren't excited about it from the get go, but for them to go from being indifferent to hating it cannot be good for the future of science. And I know this was not an isolated event, it happens quite often. And if it happens at the college level, I don't even want to think how bad it could get at the high school level where you might have an unprepared and unmotivated teacher.

I could agree with you if you believe that any person who obtains a bachelor's degree should be a well-rounded person and as such, non-STEM students have to take science courses, as long as you also believe that courses in non-STEM areas are of equal value to STEM students. But, if we really want to do a service to science by educating everyone on it, we better put our greatest effort into the teaching of those courses. We cannot afford to alienate the ones that can end up with the power of funding more science.

-Excuses, excuses

2011-04-04T08:26:00.003-05:00

This ranks as the most ridiculous thing I've heard in the last few weeks:

A public objection to the Daylight savings time change because losing that one hour of sleep to move the clocks forward will cause health issues and inefficiency at work.

HAHAHA, nice one people! You should be comedians.

- My thoughts on the 2011 APS March meeting

2011-03-29T16:00:00.000-05:00

This was my first APS march meeting and I have to say: Wow! I had never seen so many physicists roaming around and enjoying life! I liked the fact that it is a great opportunity to catch up with your old friends (undergrad, grad school, postdoc, etc), I saw people I hadn't seen in many years! I don't think I have complaints about the social part of the APS meeting, except maybe that there isn't (or at least I couldn't find it in the program) a big party with music and drinks for all attendants. Maybe the women-to-men ratio is just to small to have a good party, but I don't think physicists would notice the difference :)

My comments on the scientific side are different. Not everything was good. For one, I am not sure approving a talk for pretty much everyone who submits an abstract is that good. It leads to too many bad talks, and while each one is only 10 mins long, the chances of having back to back bad talks is high enough. On the other hand, allowing a student present in front of an audience is a great experience for us. I just wished the feedback time was longer than 2 mins. I feel like that's not enough to really learn what you did right and what you did wrong as far as presenting.

In addition, having 10 mins talks means that there is likely no time to give an introduction for the non-expert. Most talks are only valuable to people working in that field, which is good for people in the field, but not so much as an educating tool for people in different areas. Maybe a little background info, or at least a well-stated question or reason for the research could go a long way as far as making me, the non-expert, understand where your field is going.

As far as location, Dallas is a great city, but downtown Dallas kinda sucks. There aren't many places to eat at around the convention center, and at night it can be somewhat scary if you're walking alone and you go a few blocks off in the "wrong" direction. There wasn't any tourist attraction (at least I couldn't find one) in the neighborhood either, typically cities that hold conferences have something "nice" by the convention center but not this time.

Next year it looks like it'll be Boston, I hope I can go. That sounds like a cool place to spend some time!

-When does it become lying?

2011-03-28T07:25:00.004-05:00

One of the things that bother me about scientific progress these days is that survival is so dependent on research grants, and competition for these grants is to fierce, that some scientists are willing to twist around and play with the interpretations of the data to such extents as to state their view as true even when they don't have data that supports that view.

In my particular field, there is one scientific question that has remained unanswered for more than 10 years and which is the purpose of my dissertation. The idea is that when we look at the system of interest, we observe certain features (let's call all of these, X) of it and the general consensus is that there's a mechanism that controls the system and gives rise to those observed features. After many years of research, the field has narrowed it down to 2 possible options (let's say A and B), but no one has conclusive data for either one of them. The problem with figuring it out is simply to state. The two remaining potential mechanisms can explain the observed features, therefore, looking at the features alone cannot tell you which one it is. It's like having different engineering designs for, say, clocks. All of which look the same from outside, but are very different inside and in order to figure out which one it is you kinda have to open the clock and take a look at the components.

Most people in the field believe that the mechanism that controls the system is A, mainly because it would make more sense based on other things we know about the system but because we're scientists we remain open to the other possibility since we have no experimental data to support either one. Recently though, a small group of strong believers of mechanism B have published a series of papers "supporting" their mechanism. I write supporting in quotations because the first paper of that series was a computer simulation that showed that mechanism B could indeed work. Notice the difference, showing that it could explain what we see does not, in any way, imply that it is what's there. From there on, their subsequent papers refer to the first one and usually write something like:

It is thought that features X arise from having mechanism A at work. However, mechanism A has not been identified to be true in this system. On the other hand, features X can arise from mechanism B (refer to our simulation in the first of our papers) and since it's our proposal we will assume it is true.

I don't have a problem with them stating there's no direct data in support of A but that's the same case for B, but why not be equally honest about that? There's gotta be a point where misleading becomes lying. Where's that line? Does not having experimental data for nor against your idea give you the right to state your idea as the real deal? Who is supposed to be watching out for this sort of stuff? I thought journal referees would catch this kind of stuff, looks to me, the system has failed but I am opened to be proven wrong! :)

- A delicate balance...

2010-11-25T09:56:00.002-06:00

In the department I am in, every doctoral student is required to take a number of advanced courses as part of the program. Advanced courses (AC) are defined as graduate level courses that have a broader scope within a certain field as opposed to special topics courses which are too specific to something. Each student is required to take some ACs in his/her field, and some outside of it. The idea being that as a future PhD, each student needs to have a broad knowledge of Physics.

I am taking one AC outside of my specialty this semester and it hasn't been an enjoyable experience. You could argue that part of that is that I am not really interested in the area the class belongs to and that would be true to a certain extent. I am not interested enough to do research in that area but I still find it interesting in a general sense. There are other areas, mmm say, String Theory, that I could go on with my life without ever taking a class on it and be 100% happy. The problem comes, I think, from the fact that the class is taught by an expert in the field, and as such, he tailors the class as an introduction to the students that will end up doing research in that area. In other words, the class got too technical and too specific too soon. We could be learning about the general theory of that field, but instead, we are going over specific problems that are important to those who will work in the field the professor works on. It is similar to a professor who works on graphene teaching condensed matter and mostly focusing on stuff that will make a future condensed matter student able to work on graphene. The stuff might be useful, but the approach is too specific and for those who are taking the class to fulfill the out of specialty requirements it isn't fun. Nevermind the fact that in many cases in order to work on those current research problems you need previous knowledge that you were supposed to get from that class, but that the professor (apparently) assumed everyone already had.

I do think throwing in some current open questions is important, it gives students a better idea of where the field is going and why. But there needs to be a balance.

Really? Is that the best you can do?

2010-01-29T13:07:00.007-06:00

Perhaps the title should more appropriately be "Is this really what you think we want to hear?" but I am afraid the answer might actually be yes.

So, I was watching the state of the Union address, and hoping that something new or productive would be said. I'm not going to get into specific political ideas here, because that involves politicians actually making concrete statements, and the purpose of this post is to address the lack thereof. Whatever your political views, I think we can all agree that we want our politicians to at least have the balls to clearly state what they think our nation's problems are, and what they think will be good ways of dealing with those problems. Then even if we disagree with those ideas, at least we have a clear viewpoint with which to argue, and we also have the opportunity (and for some people, the motivation!) to formulate our own ideas of what we think would be better. If our elected leaders are so afraid of saying anything that might find disagreement from voters and potentially cost them re-election that they only spew out an endless stream of platitudes that no one in their right mind would actually disagree with, then they are essentially NOT SAYING ANYTHING. I am not criticizing the president's speech in this respect anywhere nearly as much as the rebuttal speech of the Republicans. Of course we want our economy to improve. Of course we want a health care system that does not sacrifice the quality of medical practice. Of course we want our people in the armed forces to be treated with respect and support. Is this really how little you think of us? Maybe in some cases you're right, but I would like to believe that most people listening to these speeches can recognize when they are being spoon-fed a bunch of trite, empty words designed to waste our time by trying to convince us that we've actually just heard something meaningful. People already know everything you're saying. No one is arguing that our economy is fine. They want to know what you want to DO about it. If you disagree with something Obama says, fine, but you are not saying anything useful to anyone unless you propose some kind of alternative. I don't see how you can honestly say that you think someone's ideas are wrong or not the best way if you can't present something you think is better. Are you afraid that voters will not like your idea, or that another politician will come up with something better? Good! Isn't your priority supposed to be the welfare of your constituents? Then shouldn't you be happy if anyone comes up with a good idea that might help them? And if you still think your idea will help them more, you can give some concrete reasons why. Otherwise, I have to suspect that your motives are more for selfish gains than for wanting to find the best solution and implement it as quickly as possible. Is it too much to ask that you put aside your personal interests for once, forget about which party should be on which side of an issue, and look at the problems objectively? If you could do that, it would restore a lot of the seriously wavering faith that many Americans have in their own political system. Can we pleeeease just see an honest, open discussion in Washington that consists of solid, clearly-stated viewpoints? This post is equally aimed not only at speeches but at the legislative process in general. Both parties.

Do you, actually disagree with Obama's plans? Do you have a better idea that you can logically back up? Or are you just trying to hold to your party's traditional views and hoping to maintain your die-hard loyalty votes?

Whatever your honest answer to these questions is fine. You are entitled to it. But we as voters deserve to know which is the case. And if you never actually say anything, we can't tell the difference.

Something harder to keep up with than Jackson's EM book?

2010-01-20T20:34:00.004-06:00

Blogging... man, it is hard. Where do people get the time to do it? Granted, I don't know many grad students who blog, so this is possibly one experiment that failed before it started (I am the one with the most posts, Squashed has one and Savage has ZERO!). Hopefully not though, and with the start of this new year and semester lots of things could be topics for posts.

As a preview of what's to come in the future, I am really getting interested in science education. As a TA I have been exposed to many different teaching styles and methodologies and it's becoming clear what works best and what really is a waste of time. I will participate as a judge in a science fair plus I have a project in mind of revamping a science curriculum in collaboration with a high school. Nothing concrete yet but we'll see what comes up.

Anyways, happy new year!!! Good luck this semester.

My new favorite physics book

2009-10-30T21:31:00.002-05:00

I am reading Absorption and Scattering of light by small particles by Craig Bohren and Donald Huffman and in Chapter 2, when they are talking about Maxwell equations and the relevant assumptions they say:

"Now it is well known (to those who know it well) that the response of a mechanical system to a periodic driving force is a sensitive function of the frequency". (Emphasis added)

Haha, now, THAT is freaking awesome. I can't remember how many times I've read books or journal articles that argue that something is well known, just to find out that I am one of those for whom it isn't "well" known.

I am only in chapter 2 so far, but what I've read so far is really well written. I had a feeling at the beginning that this would be a good book, but now after finding the above-mentioned quote it just became one of my favorites.

Do you have any other funny physics book quotes?

Speechless...

2009-10-27T05:41:00.002-05:00

That would be me, but apparently not him.

Of all the things (whatever many or few they are) a former president could do, I never thought he would become a motivational speaker.

Oh well...

Welcome to the jungle!!!

2009-10-26T07:39:00.003-05:00

I hadn't thought of it until today, but I think the intro song for Monk could almost apply to academia.

Don't be fooled, the limited number of grants plus the pressure of continuously publish make academia a really tough place as far as competition goes.

Massimo wrote a very nice post on one of the ways (dirty) competition happens in academia. I bet many non-academics were not aware of this type of shit going on. Ha, welcome to the jungle!!!!

NOTE: I realize I could also give some credit to Guns n' Roses. I can't really remember all the lyrics and thus I am not sure they apply at this time. I will come back and update the post when I have the time to check that song out again.

Is that my job?... are you sure?

2009-10-12T16:58:00.002-05:00

I read PiT's post on the education debate and the comments are, of course, on different sides of the aisle.

The topic is a complicated one because it has many sides and there is also (at least in the US) money involved, and while I am sure it will take a long time to settle the matter, PiT's post comes not so long after I experience a situation related to education in the classroom. I find this time appropriate to tell you about it.

As a grad student I've had to TA for many different courses with many different professors. Some professors were bad, some were good, some were really bad but no one had been really good. I had never taken classes with them, I only had the professor-TA interaction until in my last TA job when I was assigned to a professor with whom I had taken a graduate class. The class I took with him was a special topic class in his area of expertise, and he made it very closely related to his research. I found the class to be very enjoyable, but most importantly useful since I thought I actually learned a lot from him. So, when I got my TA job I was very excited, this could be finally the time where I get to TA for a guy who the students might like (It is awkward to TA for a prof that the students hate and keep making bad comments about).

When the semester started I was a little thrown back because his choice of teaching style was different than the one he used in the class I took with him. I don't particularly like that style but supposedly it has been shown to work better and I wasn't going to tell him to teach it differently. At least not yet.

Everything was going "fine" until the first test came. It was a relatively difficult test and the grades were low. Lower than expected. Something was odd. We talked about it and that's when I said that maybe he should try other teaching styles. It might not be that the style is bad, just that it may not be for him. I knew he was not a bad teacher, I'd had him as one and he was very good. I was "sure" it was the use of a different style. It had to be, right?

Well, the reply was where I got a little disappointed. He wasn't going to change, because 1) when he was a TA that's the way he always did it and 2) changing to the traditional, or any other style, involves work that he didn't want or had no time to put it.

The two points have issues with them in my opinion. Having always done it that way doesn't mean it has always worked. Doesn't even mean that it has worked at all. And changing the style meaning more work, well sure it is a lot of work, but if you want the students to actually learn from you you need to find your style.

When you, as a student, are faced with situations like this, don't you deserve more? I understand that professors have a lot of other things to do that undergrads are usually not aware of, but if you took the job as a professor, with teaching load involved, why not try to be better at it?

You can certainly ask, when do you stop being better? when everyone passes? when you've tried 2 or 3 methods? Those are valid questions, and some for which I don't have an answer. I do think it is unrealistic for 100% of the students to pass a class with perfect grades. It is also unrealistic to try every single teaching method. I just think it is also the professor's responsibility to do his/her best before deciding that some students don't deserve to pass because they didn't work as hard as they should.

I want to make it clear that what I just told you is by no means proof that every professor out there is in that position. But, at least in my case, it did make me wonder how many profs think like that and now don't make an effort.

How science moves forward...

2009-10-05T21:56:00.004-05:00

This is awesome advice!!! He should be awarded a Nobel prize!!!!

It really doesn't get any easier, right?

Sorry about the quality of the video. I couldn't find a better one online.

The flu vs. non-experts!

2009-10-04T07:47:00.004-05:00

I just found out this article online. The story comes down to this: We have a vaccine for H1N1, but many people don't want to get it because it's unsafe, or so they say. Here are a few quotes from the article:

"Experts stressed that the vaccine was made the same way it is every year and there is no reason to think it will pose any greater risk. Serious side effects involving the seasonal vaccines are extremely rare."

Then, a few paragraphs below:

"We are concerned that the H1N1 vaccine is too new and too untested to be given to such a young child," said Jenn Lewis, an attorney who lives in the District and has a 9-month-old daughter. "We would prefer that our child not be a 'guinea pig' for the vaccine."

All that comes to my mind after reading the article is a quote from PiT:

"WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?"

Since when do people know so much about virology and medicine? The article doesn't mention whether or not the people that are against H1N1 vaccine also refuse to get the seasonal flu vaccine every year. If they do get it every year, then they really have some (wrong) preconceptions about the flu vaccine. Every year, a group of knowledgeable people (in the field of course) make a guess as to what strain of the flu will go around and that's what they put in the vaccine. Some years they guess right (or close enough) that the seasonal flu vaccine is a success, and some other years they miss miserably and it maybe would've made little difference not to get it.

Do you know the difference this year? The H1N1 vaccine is 100% dead on the virus strain. That means that, as long as the virus doesn't mutate (at least significantly), if you get the vaccine you will NOT get the "swine flu".

"From what I've read and what I've heard, all it causes is just a mild case of the flu," said Laura Reavis of Buford, Ga., who has no plans to go for shots herself and no inclination to inoculate her 2-year-old daughter, Rebecca, and 6-month-old son, Woodrow. Her husband, Daniel, plans to pass, too. "You get sick for a few days or maybe a week, get over it, and life goes on." (Emphasis added by me)

This response wouldn't be so bad if most people who thought like this and got sick would just stay home and contain the spreading. The problem is they will go to work (who, other than grad students and professors :D, can afford to not work these days, right?) and cough everywhere and really make no effort to stop passing it on to others. That is why vaccines are so important. That's exactly why vaccines are ranked high up in medical advancements.

For those who are against vaccines, really go learn (from unbiased) sources about how vaccines are made and about immunity (in particular herd immunity).

Not bad news at all

2009-09-30T06:14:00.004-05:00

I just found out this news article. Very good news for Texas A&M, but also good news for the whole state. I was usually amazed at the fact that Texas, being the largest state in contiguous US (I had written continental US but Wikipedia told me it included Alaska, :S) would have very few large universities and before the 90s, had only two Nobel prize winners in physics or chemistry. It is not the case anymore and you can see more and more articles being published by places other than Univ. of Texas at Austin, Rice and Texas A&M. A sign that having important people in your department definitely helps.

One good thing about Texas is that it has a lot of money: many texans that made a lot of money and are really proud of their state. Obviously, people like George Mitchell, are really good for science and we need more of them. By the way, this is not the first time it happens for A&M in recent years (Think Dudley Herschbach). The Univ. of Texas at Dallas also got Alan MacDiarmid in 2002. Unfortunately for them, and for science, he died in 2007.

Texas also has its own problems when it comes to science, but so far it has managed to not fall for alternative, non-scientific theories, being put in science curricula. Despite these sour incidents, I think we'll be seeing a lot of investments, like the one by Texas A&M , in the coming years in the state of Texas. I do not own a house anywhere in the US (or the world for that matter) but talking to friends that went to grad school in many different states in the US, the ones that have gone to Texas usually feel they can afford more for the same buck. This will probably help recruit talented young scientists and if donors like Mitchell continue to do their part we'll definitely see a lot of scientific competition coming from Texas.

CORRECTION: Initially I wrote "only one" when referring to the number of Nobel Laureates, in either physics of chemistry,working at a Texas university. I made a mistake and there were actually 2 before the 90s. One is at a medical school and I, wrongly, assumed he won it for medicine. You can see the list of the Nobel laureates currently in the state of Texas. A total of 8.

Bouncing water droplets!!!

2009-09-18T20:43:00.007-05:00

I have always liked table-top experiments. In my opinion, those who can come up with those ideas really, and I mean really, understand what they are doing. Plus, they usually come up with nice videos (it's funny, now that I think about it, it is mostly fluid dynamics people that get nice videos. Here's one for example).

In the newest issue of Nature, Howard Stone from Harvard has a reeeeeeeeeally cool result. First, let me show you the experimental setup. The tank consists of water at the bottom and then oil on top. The oil (a poor electrical conductor) and the water are connected to electrodes of opposite sign that provide a high voltage. Once everything is turned on, they manually put a drop of water at the top using a pipette.

Initially, the water droplet is attracted towards the upper electrode by dielectrophoretic forces but when the drop actually comes in contact with the top electrode it acquires a positive charge and then it is repelled towards the bottom (the drop is very small and gravity doesn't really play a role here). You would think that when the droplet moves low enough to touch the water reservoir at the bottom it will just merge and become part of the reservoir. It should do that normally, but in this case it should be even better because the drop is positively charged and the water at the bottom is negatively charged and, as we all know, opposite sign charges attract. What's the big deal? Sounds easy enough,right? Well not quite, what Stone and friends found was that the behavior of the droplet actually depends on the voltage applied between electrodes.

When the voltage is low enough, what I quickly described above will happen. But when the voltage is high enough the result is different. Initially, the positively charged droplet moves toward the negatively charged water at the bottom but when they come in contact (just a tiny contact as you can see here) the water in the reservoir transfer negative charge to the droplet and now they will repel. This means the droplet moves up, towards the positively charged electrode that now is creating an electrical attraction between the two. Eventually the drop will touch the upper electrode and again a charge transfer happens, charging the drop positively and therefore the whole cycle repeats. You can watch a video of this "bouncing" here.

Pretty cool, uh?

Hours worked vs. taxes paid

2009-09-16T14:49:00.006-05:00

Sean at Cosmic Variance just put up a post on the Laffer Curve. Very interesting concept. But as Sean mentions, who knows whether the assumptions that come into the general Laffer Curve theory or those made by the study referred to in Sean's article are correct.

By reading the comments over at CV, I have a question. If you could keep more of the money you earn i.e. lower taxes, and assuming that you could chose how many hours a day you could work, would you work longer hours to increase your personal income, work the same hours which after all means more income anyways (though not as much as the first option)? or would you work less hours (enough to match your current income)?

Is it good for science?

2009-09-14T21:26:00.004-05:00

As a TA I have taught labs and also some discussion sections for the courses. Most of them have been for engineers or science (including pre-med majors) but in one occasion I had to TA for a class designed for liberal arts majors. This was a whole new experience for me, it's not like engineers or science majors other than physics really enjoy taking a physics course (I'll leave my rant about why they should like and learn physics for a later time), but (these) liberal arts majors really, really came into the course hating physics. It didn't help that the professor that was teaching it taught it the exact same way that he teaches plasma physics to his graduate students: by showing lots of math and little explanations into the concepts.

As the semester moved on, my office hours started getting more and more students who looked for a different style and hopefully a chance at passing the course. I should mentioned here that I completely disagree with non-science/engineering majors having the requirement of taking science courses (at least in the traditional way). Don't get me wrong, as a scientist I definitely think the non-scientists also need to know about science, they play an important role in politics, economics and religion (just a few of the areas that heavily affect the funding and spreading of science) but do they really need to know how to solve boring textbook problems in order to appreciate science? I think not. I actually think by forcing non-science majors to take our courses we are doing science a disfavor: not only are they not learning science but they are hating it even more.

I mentioned that traditional science courses for non-majors do not stand very highly in my eyes, but every time I tried to explain my position to someone I ended up getting into many many details that, while true, were so specific many people didn't think they were as bad as I did. A few days ago I found a two-sentence answer that summarizes my view. It was Shinya Inoue who said it during an interview:

"I continue to worry about science being learned as a collection of facts and theories. One needs to have a certain body of knowledge -- but in addition, one needs to understand how the knowledge is acquired-- that really is at the heart of science."

I agree 100% percent. It is a simple phrase that contains important ideas. Just standing in front of a room reciting every equation or theory we can remember is a horrible way of teaching science. Science majors will (hopefully) eventually pick up the lost knowledge, but non-science majors will go through life thinking that science is just a bunch of non-sense stuff.

Is knowing that when we let go of something it will fall that complicated? Really? Can no one do better than integrating the acceleration twice on the board? I hope science professors and teachers soon catch up with the idea that not everyone is as passionate about science as they are and that science is more than just equations and theorems.

Nice prevention idea... maybe?

2009-09-09T07:30:00.004-05:00

I don't know much (or anything) about regular gatherings of religions except for catholic masses but at least in these ones I see many weak points in terms of disease-spreading prevention. For example, before communion everyone recites Our Father while holding their neighbors' hands. Then they give the peace (shake hands with everyone around them) and a little later the go up for the communion. During communion, the priest puts the Host (sacramental bread) on the parishioners' hands, who then proceed to put it in their mouths. Afterwards, they drink the sacred wine from a common cup that is "cleaned" with a piece of cloth after each person that drinks from it. These are four actions that can spread diseases among the parishioners. With H1N1 flu looking like it is easily transmitted I wonder if churches can still provide the spiritual fulfillment to their people while being proactive as far as infection prevention goes. I am sure it is doable; when the "swine flu" first broke in Mexico, churches there encouraged their attendees not to shake hands and when things got worse they actually closed the churches (or any public gathering for that matter) for some time.

Just this past weekend I was talking to a family member about what churches (specifically in the US) will do to reduce the risk of H1n1 flu spreading among their members and now I find this article. Funny and maybe well intentioned (both because it makes an attempt to stop spreading disease and also because by offering "fortified" wine they might increase the number of people that attend, mmm maybe we should do that in science? ha) but will it actually work? Could they just stop doing that particular thing (drinking the wine from a common cup) for a while? At least while scientists figure out how to best combat H1N1?

I've actually been wanting to post about the real advantage (if any) of alcohol-based hand sanitizers (HS) in preventing getting the flu but I am definitely not an expert in virology or communicable diseases and finding good information on journals/books about this has proven more difficult than I thought so I've put it off. Health agencies, on the other hand, seem to be pretty convinced that using HS on a regular basis (if regular hand-washing is not available) is a good idea. Don't get me wrong, I think Health agencies are really trying their best to prevent any more spreading of diseases but I wonder if their suggestion of using HS is because it actually deactivates the virus or just to people are aware and think before putting their hand in their mouth or nose. You'd be surprised as to how effective not touching your face and covering your sneezes and coughs actually is. I will keep looking and will post about it if I do find out.

In the meantime, we should thank the Swedish for providing us with a great reason (excuse) to drink!

Stop the pain!!!!

2009-09-08T08:37:00.007-05:00

Some time ago, Savage and I had a talk in which the concept of pain came up. I won't go into the details of the conversation but I will say that at the end we both sort of agreed that pain is a very important issue in human life. I don't think there are many people out there who like pain. And once you start thinking about pain, you start thinking about pain killers (e.g. acetaminophen, ibuprofen, acetylsalicylic acid). Many people are also sort of used to having these pills at hand, after all they are sold over the counter (OTC), but I have a feeling that just a very little number of them actually know how they work. This post is about that, about how they stop the pain.

OTC pain killers fall into a category called Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs or NSAIDs. Acetaminophen (better known as Tylenol) is usually (and unofficially) considered in this category even though it is not really an anti-inflammatory drug. The main reason is that although it doesn't prevent inflammation, the mechanism of action is somewhat similar to that of ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), or at least that's the assumption. We'll talk about this later and you'll see how little it's known about acetaminophen.

So what is this mechanism? It is the inhibition of a class of enzymes called cyclooxygenase (COX for short). The COX enzymes are involved in the production of prostaglandin and thromboxane. Prostaglandin is the carrier of the message of damage (and the body's reaction is to let you know by creating pain) while thromboxane is involved in clot formation. So, by blocking the COX enzymes, the pain killers make it difficult for the body to know it's hurt and also prevent blood from clotting (this is why in many cases doctors cannot operate on you if you are taking aspirin until your body is free of it).

You can get into more detail and notice that there are several COX enzymes: COX-1, COX-2 and COX-3 and as you can imagine they have different roles. COX-1 is actually a regulator of many physiological processes and serves as a protector of the stomach lining. COX-2 is the one that raises the levels of prostaglandin when there is inflammation of tissue. This is the one that when blocked, produces the wanted effects of pain killers. COX-3 has just recently been discovered and the role is still unknown. Since NSAIDs block COX-1 too, you can now see why ibuprofen or aspirin can cause stomach ulcers, you are basically left without the protective element when you take those pills. Some attempts have been made at developing an specific COX-2 inhibitor and leaving the other ones unaffected but the results have been at least highly controversial, aside from the fact that lab tests show that although specific to COX-2 inhibition these drugs still cause stomach lining damage, the side effects of these new drugs seem to be very serious (think Celebrex or Vioxx).

Ibuprofen blocks both COX-1 and COX-2, while aspirin seems to have a larger effect on COX-1 than COX-2. That is why aspiring "thins" out the blood more than the others. What about acetaminophen?

Well, remember that at the beginning I said acetaminophen was considered an NSAID even though it didn't prevent inflammation? This in turn would indicate that it doesn't block COX-2 and since it doesn't affect blood clotting much then it should mean that COX-1 is also unaffected to a good extend by acetaminophen. So, why is it thrown together with NSAIDs and what the hell does it do to make pain go away? The reason it is put together with NSAIDs is because it seems that acetaminophen also blocks COX enzymes but the real mechanism of action is still debated. Some people argue it is actually COX-3 that is being blocked but the explanations as to how acetaminophen blocks pain without reducing inflammation are still speculative at best. For example, one idea is that acetaminophen cannot do its job in an environment where there is inflammation. This implies that acetaminophen actually in the central nervous system which seems to fit the observed effects. The bottom line is that very little is known about the most popular OTC pain medication.

Also, remember that while pain is awful and one would like to avoid it, overdosing (even just a single time) on NSAIDs or acetaminophen can cause acute liver damage. The chances of surviving this are rather slim so be conscious when consuming these medicines. Just because they work and are sold without much hassle doesn't mean that we understand them well nor that they come with no side effects.

Sir... you're gonna need to keep the noise down!!!!

2009-08-20T10:37:00.004-05:00

As cities grow, their governments and citizens need to start worrying about their environmental effects. Everyone is familiar with air or water pollution and it is indisputable when it exists. There is however, a different but just as important pollution type, that not many people are aware of: noise pollution.

I started to think about this for two reasons, 1) the research group I work in can be loud, no I mean really loud and 2) I have an infant son who's woken up when the fucking neighbor and his motorcycle arrive or leave. It is amazing the possible negative health effects that noise pollution can have (from Wikipedia: annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances). Not fun at all. And that is only in humans. Animal environments suffer probably even more when noise is introduced into their area.

One big problem when it comes to regulating noise pollution is that a general agreement as to what sounds constitute pollution is not easy to be reached. I suspect my neighbor reeeeeeeeeeally likes his bike when it annoys me big time. Here's an area where scientists can really make an impact on society. By performing all kinds of studies and making those results available we could, maybe, change people's understanding of noise and its detrimental effect.

Thanks to Gabriel Iglesias for the title.

How can no one complain?

2009-08-06T08:36:00.004-05:00

Well, it is because they probably aren't aware of the problem. I don't know about you, but I find a bit funny and at the same time confusing the rules for college grading the US.

First of all, how can anyone guarantee that translating a number into a letter grade will be done uniformly across disciplines and also professors. As much as people claim that Chemistry is harder than History, or that Physics is harder than anything else, :P , an A in one class should mean the same in another: that the student has learned everything (or most, since the A-grade represents a range) that was expected. For all I can tell, getting an A means being in the ~10% of your class, even if the top student only has a max numeric grade of 80-85. I don't think I will ever understand this idea of curving, but if everyone plays by the same rules then I can see not many people complaining and having a more or less fair process. Maybe not representative of the true learning done by the students but at least fair.

There is, however, another issue that only came to my attention after I was on the other side of the line, not as a student but as TA and that really, really troubles me: If my final letter grade will depend on how everyone else does in the class, I better fucking know how everyone else in the class did.

Case in point: One student, who didn't show up for class in a regular basis, gets a final numeric grade of 77. Another student, who religiously attended lecture gets a 74. According to the letter grade breaks, both of them got a B but since the professor knew the 74 student and thought this person put enough effort, he bumped the student's grade up to an A (which given that semester's distribution was a 79 and above).

This, unfair actions in my opinion, will continue to happen because students are not allowed to know the other students grades. The B student might just think he/she was too far away from an A and leave it at that. I know I would be bothered by the idea that someone else who did by the quantifiable standards worse than I did got a better grade because the professor thought better of them than he did of me. I'd like to complain, but if I can't see that someone who did worse than me got a better grade then I have no proof and will always lose the battle.

I really don't know how often this type of situation happens but I have the feeling that it occurs way more often than I think it should. Plus, it just doesn't make sense that in a highly subjective grading scheme showing all the data (in this case grades) is forbidden by law.

I get it that some people might feel bad if their peers find out they got a failing, or barely passing, grade and they need some sort of "protection". But I am sure no one intended having these privacy laws to abuse the system.

Why Science?

2009-08-05T20:57:00.004-05:00

There is no one in my family nor high school friends that has studied any scientific major. Some friends are engineers yes, but not scientists. No one has gone to grad school to pursue a PhD degree either. As such, every time I go back home and meet with them I always get questions about what I do. I try to explain in layman terms my research and I think I do a good job at painting the big picture.

The last time I went home, I was asked a different question: Why do you (as in Charro, not any person) study science? I gave a standard answer: because it is really important for the future of the human race to keep make scientific discoveries and given that my research could have some relevance in the medical field I might (directly or indirectly) save a few lives, who knows. A few hours later I thought about the question again and I couldn't come up with an honest, awesome reason.

I could've say that it is because I can't see myself doing anything else, but that is a lie. Although I like doing science, I actually enjoy other activities to the point were I could've majored on those fields. So, ultimate passion is not the reason. I could say that I do it for the money, but anyone in science can tell you that average science salaries are not that high. You can definitely make more money in some of those other areas that I like. Money is out too. I kept thinking and came up with few other "potential" reasons but at the end they also didn't really make sense to me.

After several days of putting thought into it, I think I found the answer. It is not convincing for many people nor is it a cool answer but it seems to be the truth. I do science because I knew nothing else when I was growing up. No I was/am not a genius and knew science facts since I was a kid, on the contrary my "knowledge" was purely empirical but somehow discovery and experimentation were always present during my childhood. I owe this to my grandpa. As I mentioned already, no one in my family has any science, or engineering, education but my grandfather was a poor farm boy that had to learn how to fix whatever stuff broke at home. This taught him many tricks of course, but I think even more importantly it taught him not to be afraid about a problem, but to get your hands on it as soon as you can and look for the solution.

When I was a kid both of my parents worked and my grandparents took care of me during the day. I had the opportunity to learn from my grandpa how to fix stuff around the house. I am sure many people have opportunities like this, but what (probably) made the difference in my case was that whenever we had a "project" he would show me a way to go about fixing the problem but always ended by saying: This is not the best way to do it, why don't you think about it and try to come up with a better solution.

Thinking about how to fix things better somehow made me think about the factors that mattered the most: use a longer lever to unscrew a stuck screw, use the ground friction to loosen up a tire's screws before lifting it up, unplug the oven before touching the wires (just kidding), etc... you get the point. All of it was empirical, I couldn't explain that the reason why it was better was the torque increases with the lever arm for example. I guess when I had the opportunity to go to college there was only one thing I could do: Physics. It just made sense. Now I can explain all of those tricks I learned when I was a kid. I can even draw fancy diagrams and intimidating (for my family) equations explaining different phenomena.

That is why I do science. Although my grandpa is not with me anymore, I keep trying to come up with better ways to solve problems (I can't let him down, right?). But it doesn't have to be the only reason why someone goes into science. Maybe sometimes I wish I had absolute passion, it might make the journey more enjoyable. Anyways, even though I could have done many things with my life I do not regret the experiences I've had in science. Plus, I save a lot of money fixing everything at home.

So... next time someone asks I'll have an honest answer

Man vs. Ape

2009-07-17T14:39:00.003-05:00

I just found this interview in NPR. It's called "Cooking sets up apart from apes".

Cooking? really? what about the following video setting us apart from apes?

Ha. More seriously, it is a very interesting interview. The main idea is that humans have a difficult time staying healthy by eating only raw foods. Richard Wrangham goes on to explain why it is easier to extract nutrients from food when it is cooked. Go listen to it, it is only 5 minutes long.

Confirm or Deny?

2009-07-15T18:02:00.005-05:00

- Feynman lectures

2009-07-15T06:49:00.004-05:00

When I read the books on the life of Feynman, he became my physics' hero. It might be because there just aren't enough books about the lives of many other physicists (Einstein being the exception of course), but I think it goes even beyond that. His approach to physics and his ability to form mental images that were 1) complete and 2) simple enough to work with is what does it for me.

I found these lectures by Feynman in New Zealand and I've never seen anyone explain physics like him. Also, it seems Microsoft made some Feynman lectures available online.

I hope you all enjoy them!

- Reporting under the influence!

2009-07-06T09:43:00.001-05:00

This guy does journalism under the influence. Must be fun...

- Questions...

2009-07-02T20:34:00.003-05:00

I think I should stop trying to answer all the questions on my own...

- What you learn in grad school....

2009-07-02T10:24:00.003-05:00

This is how it feels right now

- Immigration and science

2009-06-29T15:20:00.005-05:00

Immigration reform is a hugely controversial topic these days. You just need to read the comments to online posts to see how strong and different the feelings are. Most of this discussion centers around illegal immigration and the effects it has on the economy and crime. These are complicated issues and I am not qualified to talk about them nor have the intention of posting my view on them. However, there is a whole other side to immigration reform and it has to do with legal immigration. Legal immigration requires a visa and there are many visa categories depending on the purpose of the foreign person. Many of these visas, for example F (students) and J (exchange visitors) visas, do not allow the person to remain in the US once they finish their program. Work visas (H-1B) do allow for permanent immigration but the number of visas per year is capped and the process is expensive, lengthy and not guaranteed for everyone.

Now you might be wondering why legal immigration is important or relevant to science and the answer is nicely presented by Tom Friedman in his Invent, Invent, Invent article. All you need is to visit a science department at your closest university to find out how many foreigners do science and are willing to stay in the US and be productive both economically and scientifically. There are also plenty of scientists and engineers abroad that would like to come to the US and enjoy the technology and research culture any day. Of course, there are many American citizens in the same departments doing science, but point is that the US needs to have policies that not only keeps in, but also invites the best of the best in the world to come to this country. Friedman makes a great point when he says that these scientists will create more jobs than they take and that will benefit every one.

Getting it done requires an immigration reform too and it seems to be neglected/forgotten with the illegal part. Hopefully soon people will get over their fears and politicians over their stupidity and stubbornness and we'll have a decent proposal approved.

- Stopping cracks!

2009-06-24T11:39:00.022-05:00

This is a post inspired in an article about bone plasticity and fracture toughness published in the most recent issue of Physics Today. No, I will not teach you how to break someone's arm or leg (although if I knew how to it would probably be cool to teach, wouldn't it?). What I want to talk about is the concept of fracture toughness and the mechanisms that increase it in materials.

For a crack to be created you need energy. Everyone is familiar with mechanical energy, you can push, bend or throw a cup and it will break. You could also use thermal energy, heat (or cool) certain objects and they will crack. But it is not at the slightest push that an object will break, there is a minimum of energy that you need to create a crack.

A crack is nothing more than breaking chemical bonds and creating more surfaces (think about it, if you break a plate now you have at least 2!! =P). There is an energy associated with keeping a bond and there is an energy associated with an exposed surface. When it is energetically favorable (that is, breaking the bond has less energy than keeping the bond) the object will crack.

So, that's what a crack is and although learning about how cracks originate is an interesting topic, it is not the most interesting part of fracture theory for me. What I find really cool is how a material deals with a crack once this one is formed. Materials possess a quantity called fracture thoughness, which is a measurement of how hard (or easy) it is for a crack to propagate through. The most critical part of a crack is the tip because here is where the higher stresses (or forces if you prefer) concentrate. Just as you need energy to create a crack, you need energy to grow it. However, just as some materials have mechanisms to prevent cracking (for example, a clothes hanger bends significantly before you can break it) some materials have mechanisms to prevent the cracks from growing (in other words, they increase the fracture toughness). Some of these mechanisms can even be artificially engineered, isn't that cool?

Ok, so what are these mechanisms that increase fracture toughness? One of them is crack deflection. The idea here is to change the direction of crack propagation to eliminate (or at least minimize) the force applied at the crack tip. Crack deflection occurs very often in porous materials and at the interfaces in composite materials. Bone being a porous matrix does exhibit crack deflection.

Another way of increasing fracture toughness is by creating microcracks around the crack tip. In this case the effect is double, first when a force is applied to a material containing both a crack and microcracks, the force is distributed among all of them and therefore can reduce the stress concentrated at the main crack tip and inhibit crack growth. The other way in which microcracks help is by expanding the region around the crack and "closing" its size. Radiographs of damaged bone can show multiple microcracks, although in some cases the microcracks are way too small to be seen by eye.

Lastly, crack bridging can also hinder crack growth. Bridging is, by design, the main fracture toughness mechanism in most fiber-reinforced materials but in monolithic ceramics (i.e. alumina) exhibit grain-bridging. In fiber reinforced materials, the idea is that the matrix cracks easier than the fibers, and thus when force is applied the crack will form but the fiber across the crack will remain intact and support the load. Grain-bridging is a much more subtle idea and it consists of grains in the crack rubbing against each other and carrying the applied force instead of the crack.

Any fracture toughness mechanism will show up in what engineers call an R-curve. If this curve rises with crack extension then you can be certain the material possesses some kind of fracture toughness mechanism. Determining which one, on the other hand, is not always that easy. Now to come back to the Physics Today article, it turns out bone has all three of them:deflection, microcracks and bridging. I am not surprised that bone is really hard to break now.

- Welcome post

2009-06-23T17:44:00.006-05:00

Hello all,

Science under the influence is an experiment where Squashed, The Savage and I will try to regularly write about science-related stuff we know or would like to learn more about and in some cases about general topics that we find interesting too.

Although the three of us do very similar research on a daily basis, we come from very different backgrounds and somehow we hope we can present and discuss topics in a way that is accessible to the average non-science person (at least most of the time) but also with each one's personal touch. Of the three of us, two are males and one is a female.

We'll do our best to tell the science without mistakes, but don't say we didn't tell you that you should read at your own risk. =P

A bit of background on how we decided to start SUI:

The Savage and el Charro were talking about how good of an exercise it would be to write about science and also to have the freedom to write about whatever you want and reach an audience. Somehow the idea of having a blog sounded good and here we are. Squashed, who was in the room at the time, decided to join us in this journey.

We hope you enjoy reading our blog and feel free to comment!!!!