A Useful, Extensive website: Our World in Data

 Our World in Data is a really interesting, and never-ending, website where you can find legitimate data on just about anything imaginable - not necessarily science data, like for physics, but governmental, societal, global, health, and so many other areas and fields that are out there! All the sources of information are vetted and provided on everything this group does. This could be really useful for those who are doing historical and social science type research. 

For those looking for science data, a good starting point is on the CABS site: online datasets. 

"Writing is Thinking" - editorial about the importance of humans doing their own writing, NOT AIs

 Nature, one of the premier peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, had an editorial in June that specifically calls for and encourages scientists to do the writing of their papers that are submitted for publication, rather than have AI engines do the bulk of the writing. 

When we write, numerous sections of our brain are active, meaning there is a deeper level of thinking, analysis, reflection, creativity, and synthesis happening than when we do other activities. Very little of these processes happen when we ask an AI to do this for us. The editors argue that science will take a step backwards should this become the common, accepted practice, because the level of real human thinking will step backwards. 

Students, this is an early wake-up call to you, and do not fall into the trap of allowing ChatGPT or any other AI platform do the bulk of your work for you...engage your brain, think deeply about things, be creative and innovate new ideas and products! We need to exercise our brains just like muscles, if we don't want to see diminishment of what our amazing brains are capable  of doing! 

Study about teen screen time addiction, and its effects on mental health

  A huge concern many of us have had regarding the amount of time teens are on screens (primarily cell phones), is the effect on things like attention and motivation and engagement in school, but also the effect on one's mental health in general. This article summarizes a recently published study of America's teens. 

For those interested in this from a research perspective, if you dig into the actual study and the surveys used, perhaps you can do your own study(ies) regarding screen time more locally, and work with math teachers to do a statistical analysis - is your own school consistent with national results or not? What steps can your school do to help students with screen addiction, both for the short- and long-term? How do results vary with age and grade level? By gender and race, or socioeconomic status? Be thinking about how you can take research that has been done by others and in other contexts, and then build on it to make it a little different and original...then experience the real scientific process as you dig into it! 

Interested in Computational Research work? The Wolfram HS Research Program is a wonderful resource!

 The Wolfram High School Science Research page, of course totally in the realm of computational science research, is magnificent for getting ideas from just about any field of STEM. Each project, listed since 2018, has code (Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha) and write-ups on the work. It is a wonderful inspiration for any high school student who is into coding and computational work! Well done! 

Two new animated resources for Elementary Teachers: A Science story and...EELS?!?!

 I am breaking out two new animated resources that are most useful for elementary teachers. 

The first is a STEM story I wrote some years ago, but just had the text. It is titled Little Sue and the Rock, and is a story for children in grades 1-3. The goal is to introduce to younger children the concept of atoms, and what atoms are made of. It goes through electrons, and a nucleus, and then that a nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. But then it introduces the fact that protons and neutrons are made of still smaller pieces called up and down quarks! Quarks are typically unknown even to high school science classes, and therefore high school students, which seems silly to me since I think it is fundamentally we present the most basic ideas of what the world is made of in simple, and accurate, terms. 

The second resource has to do with Social-Emotional Learning, or SEL. Most schools in the country have made it a goal, at some level, to bring in more SEL to deal with some of the issues we've been dealing with with children and teenagers since the Covid pandemic, specifically mental health issues. But SEL has become politicized and is under attack in many regions of the country, and has begun to be frowned upon by many educators. The trouble is, the skills described and contained in traditional CASEL SEL are actually essential life skills any parent would want their children to be strong in, in order to have a healthy and successful life! I am proposing and pushing for a re-branding of SEL to EELS - Everyday Essential Life Skills needed for success! This is a short booklet with animated pages that introduce and define what the EELS are, and I ask all who are parents to decide if the skills shown are part of "left wing indoctrination", or if they are skills you yourself use every day of your life, and are skills any parent would want their kids to know and be strong in. I have yet to find anyone who does not want kids to be strong in the listed skills! 

Using E. coli to manufacture acetaminophin

 In this Science News article, check out how E. coli bacteria, with a change in several genetic instructions, were recently used to produce the chemical reactions within the bacteria to change bits of plastic bottles into acetaminophen, which is the active ingredient in things like Tylenol. With plastic being an environmental nightmare of a problem over the long-run, if we likely can find more natural ways (with the assist from genetic engineering) help alleviate human-made problems in our environment. 

This is a good article for those with interests in biology, biochemistry, genetics, bioengineering, genetic engineering, environmental science, and other related disciplines.

Want a Healthier Diet? Likely you need to ADD foods instead of reducing

 This is a good Science News article that summarizes new nutrition guidelines, that are updated every five years. There's nothing really new about them from what you may have heard or read in the past, but including more beans, peas, lentils, mushrooms, and other natural foods to any dishes, while reducing the amount of red meat and processed meats (processed foods in general), you are adding nutrients that we all are meant to have to optimize the performance of your body's machinery. 

It boils down to the more natural stuff you put in the body, and the less processed stuff, it will be beneficial. For me, one way to guide yourself is the more color in a meal (such as with mixes of red, yellow, orange, and green peppers, different colored beans and mushrooms, and red, yellow, and white onion, different colored tomatoes, etc.), likely that meal will be pretty healthy, and really tasty with the different natural flavors, along with some fresh herbs and seasonings for more flavor. 

A Student-made and run Math Website - Help for MV Calc and Linear Algebra!

 For future generations of students when they get to Multivariable (MV) Calculus and Linear Algebra, taught in semester courses at ETHS, make use of this website designed by former students Micah Cherkasky, Danny O'Connor, Cameron Eaton-Strong, and Emil Frommer. It should be beneficial and useful for students new to these topics!! 

Below are Maxwell's equations written MV style!

May the fourth be with you...always!!

 

                                             From Disney

Always new things to find in all areas of research

 An article in Science News the other day made me think again about how there have been times when scientists thought a whole field of study may be 'dead', because they knew everything about it! The article was about a massive gas cloud in space that was just discovered and identified - while this sort of thing happens frequently in astronomy, what stands out is it is just 300 light-years from earth. This is like a few doors down the street when it comes to astronomy because this is really close. 

This cloud was hiding right in front of our faces, it appears! It has a mass of about 5500 Suns, and its chemical composition just happens to be one that was difficult to detect. Astronomers have peered through that patch of space countless times over the past few centuries, and still there is something right there! 

In every field of STEM, this is a reminder we will never discover and understand everything, and there will always be a need for the curious and determined minds of youth to come up and keep the quest for knowledge and understanding and curiosity alive!