Monthly Archive for August, 2011

Mad Scientist of the Month: Who’s Afraid of Taylor Wilson?

Published on August 30, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Photo of Taylor Wilson

By Judy Dutton from Mental Floss

At 10, he built his first bomb. At 14, he made a nuclear reactor. Now he’s 17…

Taylor Wilson makes people nervous. While his beanpole frame and Justin Bieber–esque haircut suggest he’s just a harmless kid, his after-school activities paint a far more ominous picture. At age 10, he built his first bomb out of a pill bottle and household chemicals. At 11, he started mining for uranium and buying vials of plutonium on the Internet. At 14, he became the youngest person in the world to build a nuclear fusion reactor. “I’m obsessed with radioactivity. I don’t know why,” says Wilson in his laid-back drawl. “Possibly because there’s power in atoms that you can’t see, an unlocked power.”

Shouldn’t teams in hazmat suits descend on Wilson and shut down his operations before someone gets hurt? On the contrary, there are people in the government who think that Wilson is key to keeping this country safe. “The Cold War is really when nuclear physicists got their shot, and those people are all retiring,” points out one of Wilson’s mentors, Ron Phaneuf, a professor of physics at the University of Nevada in Reno. “I think the U.S. Department of Energy is a little concerned that the motivation of young people to get interested in that kind of science has waned. I think that’s one of the reasons doors have been opened to Taylor. He’s a phenomenon, probably the most brilliant person I’ve met in my life, and I’ve met Nobel laureates.”

Finalists for the International Award for Excellence

Published on August 30, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Congratulations to all of the Award finalists:

Call for Journal Editor

Published on August 30, 2011 in Headline, Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

science_frontThe International Journal of Science in Society seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe will become one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

  • write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
  • collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
  • actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
  • assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
  • promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
  • maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

  • They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
  • They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

  1. a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
  2. a curriculum vitae
  3. a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@science-society.com

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.


Latest issue of Science and Society Journal

Published on August 24, 2011 in Journal. 0 Comments

The latest issue of  The International Journal of Science in Society includes:

Animal’s Genetic Code Redesigned

Published on August 20, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Photo by Jason Chin and Sebastian Greiss

By Roland Pease from BBC Radio Science

Researchers say they have created the first ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code. The technique, they say, could give biologists “atom-by-atom control” over the molecules in living organisms. One expert the BBC spoke to agrees, saying the technique would be seized upon by “the entire biology community”. The work by a Cambridge team, which used nematode worms, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The worms – from the species Caenorhabditis elegans – are 1mm long, with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies. What makes the newly created animals different is that their genetic code has been extended to create biological molecules not known in the natural world. Genes are the DNA blueprints that enable living organisms to construct their biological machinery, protein molecules, out of strings of simpler building blocks called amino acids. Just 20 amino acids are used in natural living organisms, assembled in different combinations to make the tens of thousands of different proteins needed to sustain life.

To Read More…

On Being a Woman and a Non-physicist at CERN

Published on August 12, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Linda Henneberg from Science is Awesome

Before I came to CERN, I did not really consider myself a feminist. Of course, I believed in equal rights for men and women, but I believed that we were already most of the way towards the goal of equality and living in harmony. Having worked at CERN for several months, I no longer feel quite so optimistic.

I want to say right away that I have never really felt overtly sexually harassed while at CERN. I have not noticed any displays of blatant sexism. But I have noticed displays of subtle sexism and male privilege. There have been a lot of really awkward, uncomfortable, and sometimes creepy attempts at flirting. In social settings, I’ve never felt more constantly objectified, hit on, and creeped on than while at CERN. In the two and a half months I’ve been here, there has been only one incident that made me extraordinarily uncomfortable and angry.

To Read More…

Science in Society Journal, Volume 2, Number 3

Published on August 11, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The third issue of  Volume 2 of The International Journal of Science in Society has now been published.

Volume 2, Number 3 contains:

Continue reading ‘Science in Society Journal, Volume 2, Number 3′

Two Separate Quests, One to Discover Habitable Worlds, the Other to Synthesize Artificial Organisms, Now Unite to Redefine “Life” and its Place in the Universe

Published on August 5, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

By Dimitar Sasselov from Seedmagazine

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has begun refining our understanding of the fabric of space and time, and NASA’s Kepler mission is sharpening our estimates of how common Earth-like planets are in our galaxy. Yet as these cosmic-scale projects open the second decade of the new millennium they are returning science to a frontier that seems oddly 19th century. Science is going back to the scale of life—that middle ground of minute energies and high complexities that lies between the immense galaxies and the infinitesimal particles.

My statement that life is science’s new focus sounds naive and out-of-touch—after all, just open the newspapers or see the research budgets for biology and medicine, and you’ll notice an overwhelming amount of interest and funding for the life sciences. But that all has to do with us humans: first and foremost, with our health and bodies, and second, with our environment, the ecosystems of planet Earth. There is an aspect of life sciences that has been largely absent: the confrontation of fundamental questions of biology much as particle accelerators grapple with fundamental questions of physics. The roll call of early pioneers and prospectors is notable, but short. Fortunately, increasing numbers of researchers are now re-entering this fertile frontier.

To Read More…

Arab Spring and Scientific Revival

Published on August 1, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

Photo courtsey of Evgeni Dinev

By Pervez Hoodbhoy from World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research

The upheaval in multiple Arab countries, known as the “Arab Spring”, is certain to lead to new political structures in a part of the world hitherto dominated by monarchies and dictatorships. But this revolution against autocratic stability and despotism, which are largely responsible for keeping the Arab world in darkness, does not by itself guarantee that a scientific revival is around the corner. An Arab renaissance will happen only if appropriate cultural and attitudinal changes follow the political changes. How fast, or slow, these countries move into the 21st century will depend on how Arabs choose to reinvent their way of life.

To Read More…