I know in my last post I expounded following one’s own interests, without any particular roadmap. This approach definitely has its positives. But sometimes confusion and uncertainty appear, and choices can be difficult to make. Solution? Mentors as my guideposts: While I may not be sure what might lay ahead, for the immediate future, they have helped me to know that at least I was in the right place.
Times have changed. And so have the kinds of advice and guidance that young people need. …

Earlier this year I received an award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). AIBS is a scientific society of life science educators and researchers, K-12 teachers and college professors, dedicated to sharing biological discovery and knowledge. AIBS recognized and promoted the achievements of underrepresented minorities, including persons with disabilities, in the biological sciences. The students are competitively selected to be part of the AIBS Diversity Scholars program. This year, I was selected as the 2009 Diversity Scholar, the last one it seems.
Though the Diversity Scholars Award has ended, …

It was during the summer of 2008 that Dr. Marina Cords, while researching the social behavior of primates in western Kenya, came across an adult, male Blue Monkey with something red in his hand. He held it like a “macabre cup,” Dr. Cords remembered, chewing on it as other monkeys watched. That “something,” Dr. Cords soon realized, (“Oh my God!” was her initial reaction) was the bottom half of an infant Blue Monkey. In a talk entitled “From Antisocial to Social: Infanticide through a Darwinian Lens,” Dr. Cords, who …

Does anyone remember the scene in the movie Bye, Bye, Birdie, when the MacAfee family learns that Kim is going to be on that really big show, The Ed Sullivan Show? Does anyone remember how, transported to a scene in heaven, likely cloud nine, they sang, in four part harmony, “We’re Gonna Be On Ed Sullivan!”
Not a totally unbelievable scene for a family in the 1960’s. It was exciting to have a TV, much less to be on it. Back then the media consisted of print newspapers, magazines, …

The first mentor ever mentioned is found in Greek mythology. When Odysseus begins his journey, his son, Telemachus, is left in the care of Mentor, for guidance and protection. The story unfolds with the goddess Athena intervening and assuming the form of Mentor in than she could encourage Telemachus to assert himself and take charge of his role in the lives of his mother Penelope and father Odysseus.
Is it an accident that the very first mentor in literature is both a mortal man and a female god? I …

Carnivals are like online Zines, you know, those independent creative publications you created in high school or college. Carnivals are a collection of blog articles about a topic. Like a magazine, there is a publication date – some are published quarterly, monthly, or weekly ; an editor – which usually rotates among interested parties; and a theme.
I participate in a few Carnivals (see my bottom side bar). It helps me share my work with larger audiences. It’s also a great way for non-bloggers to get into blogs and see how …

In the last post, I finally finished the first “thread” about galaxy rotation curves. My dad (who apparently also reads this blog, although not as consistently as my mom) wasn’t quite sure how everything tied together (I believe he missed some entries in the middle). So to briefly recap: I started by explaining the Doppler effect, which was then followed by a series of posts on the wave/particle nature of light. I then discussed the Bohr model of the atom, because it provides a nice framework for understanding the emission …

Ok, so finally I think we can look at rotation curves. We’ll make the simplifying assumption that the objects we are interested in are in a perfectly circular orbit about the center of the galaxy, an assumption which doesn’t really change anything so it’s ok (another larger point about physics: quite often [in fact, almost always], we take a complicated problem and approximate it into something smaller that we can solve [often called the “spherical cow” approach – we would approximate a cow to be a sphere and go from …

“Like Mother, Like Doctor” is a new blog on TalkingScience, written by mother-daughter team Linda and Dana. They will be blogging about the academic world of science – each will be writing posts about their lives and the science surrounding it.
No, I didn’t always want to be a doctor. For a while—I’d say from age 6 to 12–I wanted to be a pop singer or a Broadway star. School was never my strong suit, but singing was. I was pretty convinced that I would very soon be …