Greetings Dear Readers,
If you live anywhere within continental United States, you are no doubt informed of the rippling snowstorm spreading across the country. Some citizens even experiencing snow for the first time, like many Texas residents who had the pleasure of receiving a whole foot of the stuff dumped on to their unsuspecting roads and houses. In Washington, DC, where I live the majority of the year, we experienced the worst snowstorm in 200 years. A storm powerful enough to shut down the roads, metro, schools and even the United …

No one likes taking tests. Unless you are really well prepared and know the answers to all of the questions. And then it can be fun as an affirmation of your hard work, perseverance, and mastery of the material.
My first big, important, life-changing test occurred in the 8th grade. The DATs—tests to help you figure out what career you might be good at. Don’t remember what the “D” stood for. On this 6 part test, I scored in the 99th percentile in spatial relationships, mechanical thinking, …

This blog, Like Mother, Like Doctor, was created in response to questions asked by Talking Science’s 2009 summer intern, Rosie Washington. Her project: to search for answers to her dreams. She contacted me after reading my blog and with help from executive producer, Ann Marie Cunningham, and the essential input of my daughter Dana Greenfield, this blog was born!
So while Dana is off with younger sister Becca exploring the beauty of Big Sur, CA, during their winter break, I will tackle the first of the many great questions …

The first series of posts contained one argument for the existence of dark matter. The response from my mother among others was tentatively positive, although most comments seemed to agree that I was perhaps going a bit too fast with the math and trying to pack too much in (my beloved sister has weighed in with a somewhat more negative opinion for which I thank her with all the fraternal feeling I can muster). I take the point that this blog may need more romance and less dry insistence, and …

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. …

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 …

Science Face to Face is a series of one on one interviews between Science Friday® radio host Ira Flatow and renowned scientists from across the United States. These events are free and held on college campuses in the New York area. A webcast will also be available to watch live TODAY. At 7:30pm join Ira Flatow in a discussion with neurobiologist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Eric Kandel at the New School, at 65 West 11th Street. Visit the webcast website for more information.

After acquiring the book almost a year ago, I (again) started reading Gary Taubes’ book entitled Good Calories, Bad Calories. Based on what I’ve read so far, and knowing Gary Taubes’ background, I believe it’s a very scholarly work, and very thoroughly researched. From the title, it’s obvious that this book considers the scientific evidence for specific types of diets and how they affect body weight regulation.
In the first part of the book, in order to draw parallels with current scientific evidence for the “epidemics of obesity and diabetes,” he …

Welcome to the new TalkingScience! TalkingScience.org has been completely redesigned and reorganized in order to bring you the world of science in a cleaner and more concise way. The new website uses the excellent Arthemia theme for Wordpress to tighten our integration with social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, while making it easier for you, the reader, to access our content. The new theme provides a visual sampling of the website and previews five featured blogs to delve into on the main page.
But the new TalkingScience is more than …