From the SATs to the MCAT and the Boards exams, I’ve been a career student. Tests have become a way of life, in a way. (Is that sad?) From multiple-choice to essay to true/false to oral exams, tests have been the predictable pacemakers of my career from high school through college, from college to medical school and graduate school.

In honor of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson sailing into New York’s waters, the New York Public Library presents a beautiful selection of maps spanning the 17th through 21st centuries – ranging from maps that Hudson would have used, to a dynamic satellite map supported by Google.  The collection offers an overview of the region’s earliest exploration and how maps of the region have changed through the years.
The NYPL is home to one of the largest and most well used map collections in the world, according to my enthusiastic …

Before continuing with the cosmic microwave background, I want to take a minute to talk about something slightly different, the learning and teaching of science. This week at Yale, we had Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman to visit, and he gave two great talks on research people have done on how students actually learn science. Professor Wieman has been applying scientific methods to scientific learning for some time now, and among other things, he writes a blog about it.
One of the more interesting conclusions is that the standard lecture format of …

Let’s say you’re the parent/mentor/teacher/tutor/friend of a kid super-excited about some aspect of science, technology, engineering or math (STEM). You want to nurture that interest and keep that child engaged, especially during the dull times of school breaks, after-school and perhaps even for school-related projects. Whether you’re an educator or not, sometimes an adult needs reinforcements to help a child or teen find his/her own interest path.
Fostering science, math, and engineering interests in young people is the goal of several organizations, including many of our nation’s publicly funded agencies like …

Merry Christmas, everyone. I know I need to write more on the CMB and thermal equilibrium, and I’ll get to it, but I want to take a slight detour to mention some exciting results announced last week by the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), a dark matter experiment based on a different technology than my own. For the last decade, CDMS has been the leading experiment in the field, and their new result is no different. A week ago, CDMS released the results of their most recent analysis, and lo …

Recently, two of my friends from various stages in graduate school came to visit New Haven. One of my friends is now doing post-doctoral work at UCLA, while another is working for a financial firm outside of New York. One night we spent some time in the early morning hours discussing the economy and the stock market. In that discussion, I came up with a somewhat stilted metaphor that I’m now going to invert to describe the concept of thermal equilibrium, which is where I want to begin the series …

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. …

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 …