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.