What's Going On in Science, September 2014

Why student evaluations of teaching are worthless

"The paper compared the student evaluations of a particular professor to another measure of teacher quality: how those students performed in a subsequent course. In other words, if I have Dr. Muccio in Microeconomics I, what's my grade next year in Macroeconomics II?
Here's what he found. The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students."

"This class should start an hour later in the morning. Also, the
teacher shouldn't wear sandals."

This NPR article summarizes a new study that tackles a problem that teachers in academia would love to talk your ear off about: teaching evaluations are horribly broken. If you get high scores from students in teaching evaluations, are you a good teacher? Maybe, but probably not. I've noticed the phenomenon of teaching evaluations (like product reviews on Amazon) consisting of only the most extreme opinions resulting in teachers who just don't care about the feedback.

Wildlife is culture, and culture deserves your tax money

"I mostly write about wildlife. So here is how it typically happens for me: A study comes out indicating that species x, y and z are in imminent danger of extinction, or that some major bioregion of the planet is being sucked down into the abyss. And it’s my job to convince people that they should care, even as they are racing to catch the 7:10 train, or wondering if they’ll be able to pay this month’s (or last month’s) rent."

This lovely New York Times Opinion eloquently states why biologists constantly have a lingering pressure to justify their research in terms of benefits to humans. 

Understanding genetics for the future of medicine

"Various efforts are underway to interpret mutations and compile them in publicly available databases; one of the latest is an online registry to which patients can upload their own data. Eventually, they will be able to see how many other people have the same mutation, and how many get cancer."

Genetic testing is becoming a more and more prominent aspect of individualized medicine. Unfortunately, the pace at which genetic tests are increasingly used is racing ahead of the general understanding of genetic tests and how to interpret them. Until better education about traits, alleles, and heritability can permeate into the public, doctors will continue to be limited by their ability to educate their own patients.

Salamanders: forest vacuum cleaners

"On an average day, a salamander eats 20 ants of all sizes, two fly or beetle larvae, one adult beetle and half of an insect called the springtail. And in doing so, they collectively affect the entire course of life in the forest — and perhaps far beyond."

This article is from back in April of this year, but I can't leave a nice salamander study out in the cold on this blog. You may not see them, but in most woodlands in North America, there are salamanders that make big differences in how ecosystems manage nutrients. While they make look cute and cuddly, salamanders are ultra-efficient, insect-seeking torpedoes:

Chased by a Robot Cheetah

Charismatic animal? Check.
Neat gadgets? Check.
A revealing look into something previously un-observable? Check.

Oh boy, we've got ourselves a Nature paper brewing.

Credit to Martin Heigan (left) and Richard Ashurst (right)

A study published in the journal Nature led by Dr. Alan Wilson shines a light on why the way cheetahs move is so interesting. By using collars with some very fancy devices that measure how the animals change speed and direction, the research team showed that even though cheetahs are the fastest land animal on Earth, their ability to stop is what really catches dinner.

The collared cheetahs displayed some of the highest values for acceleration, deceleration, and centripetal acceleration (commonly explained by G-force) that have been measured in wild animals. Check out more in-depth info from the press stories at NPR and The New York Times. The bottom line is this: cheetahs don't move like dragsters or Usain Bolt, they move like F1 race cars.

As an added bonus, I was exploring Dr. Wilson's webpage and found out that he has collaborated with Boston Dynamics in designing a cheetah robot:

My love for these videos of strange robots is only equaled by my love for how hard the make me laugh. I feel like this will quickly change as we get closer to a robot apocalypse. 

How do you make science interesting? Make it rhyme and drop a beat.

In general, it is very hard to get people to care about science. I don't want to force a history major to change his degree to bioengineering. I don't need a six year old to sign a contract detailing her commitment to being the next Nobel prize winner. I'm talking about just getting someone (anyone!) who isn't already a scientist to recognize that science exists, science matters, and science can be cool.

I watched this incredible video produced by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and one point in particular stuck with me for the last week. Most of the stuff I teach to students is boring. It really is. 

I've been on both receiving ends of this exchange.

However, I find science fascinating. So, like my other teaching colleagues, I have found myself bewildered when students don't agree. Then I think about my mindset when I was taking the same classes. I have never been excited by basic facts. I am always excited to learn about how facts connect to tell stories.

Boring: DNA is a long polymer of nucleotides
Interesting: The composition of human DNA reveals that humans mated with neanderthals thousands of years ago

But if you want to make cool connections and form interesting questions, you have to have a least a working understanding of some facts. And in a time where everyone's attention span (including mine) lasts roughly 1-2 minutes, facts need to be presented more effectively than bulleted points on a PowerPoint presentation.

That leads me to my main point: Can I take a minute to talk about how cool GZA is?

Photo provided by Mika photography

GZA is one of the founding members of the WuTang Clan, one of the most prolific and important hip-hop collectives of all time. You may already know that about him. What you may not know is that he is a science advocate and all-around fascinating guy.

In my dream world, the sciences are intriguing to everyone. I would imagine painters and musicians coming into the field with me to be inspired by the annual explosion of life from vernal wetlands. I would imagine prominent scientists and popular musicians working with Hollywood filmmakers to produce beautiful documentaries about the natural world. I would imagine hip hop artists walking down the halls of M.I.T., researching their next album. 

Of course, these are imaginary for now. Except the last one. That one is true.

GZA is doing just that. He’s writing albums based on physics and biology. His upcoming album “Dark Matter” will no doubt be incredible. In the words of the man himself, "There's no parental advisory, no profanity, no nudity, the only thing that's going to be stripped bare is the planets." I’m sold.

The above links are from last year, but we only have to wait until this summer to listen to GZA's scientific treatise. BUT, my google news alert for "GZA" made sure that I received this video preview:

Writing a hip-hop album about science is cool. But let me show you something even cooler that GZA is involved with. It is called the "Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S." program, a collaboration between Columbia University's Chris Emdin, New York City public Schools, and GZA himself. 

Please watch this great video story about the program from PBS news hour:

While I probably won't be rapping in my classrooms anytime soon, this is a great reminder of why striving to make science education better is a basic component of making science better for everyone.

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NPR and the progress of science crowdfunding

As I was on the way to work this morning, I heard NPR's science reporter Joe Palka doing a story about a very familiar theme: scientific crowdfunding.

The impetus for this blog was my crowdfunding campaign from last year's SciFund challenge, and has been only one example of how crowdfunding has affected my scientific career. I've had much more practice explaining why my research is interesting and important. I've learned how to incorporate principles of marketing and design into the way I present my work to other scientists and the public. The coolest perk of all? It has to be meeting people from around the world who donated to my work and have now become partners for the journey of a research project.

Christmas presents for my SciFund contributors: a photo of their adopted salamander, complete with genetic information.

And what do you know, it looks like crowdfunding might be catching on. The campaign that Joe Palka describes, uBiome, just raised over $250,000. 

That's gonna buy a lot of pipette tips.

I would have told you last year that it would be impossible for a science project to raise that much money. That is big time grant money. So whether a scientist is attempting a massive project like uBiome or a smaller project like mine, there are folks out there who are willing to open their wallets and support the greater scientific good. What's not to love about that?