“Invisibility. Teleportation. Mind reading. Psychokinesis. Time travel. Star ships. Parallel universes. Normally, these would be dismissed by scientists as being impossible. One hundred years ago, the same was thought about lasers, televisions and visiting outer space.” This is the first sentence of Michio Kaku’s abstract from his presentation to AAPT entitled, “Physics of the […]

If you cross Jeff Bezos’, Amazon CEO, “Two Pizza Team Rule” with what David Flanders, Project Manager, The Bloomsbury Colleges, and organizer of the summer of 2008 “Repository Road Shows,” compares to “Penny Universities” of the 18th century that were often convened in taverns, or to the work life of Shakespeare who more than likely […]

Los Angeles is a town where reality is a reinvented on a daily basis. Even so the exhibits, talks and media presented at SIGGRAPH 2008 pushed the limits of perceived reality with a provocative theme exhorting participants to “Evolve.” However the almost 30,000 graphics and robotics researchers, entertainment industry representatives, educators, programmers, artists and students […]

One strategy for classifying the millions of galaxies mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey was to open the Galaxy Zoo, invite the public to look at the new creatures, and give them tools to record their observations.
When Alex Szalay is not considering improved strategies for managing and sharing big data, and how that […]

View of Pittsburgh from the Duquesne Incline at night. There are five funicular or cliff railways in the United States. Two of these inclined railways are located in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh, PA At a conference where ideas about the theory and practice of information engineering in digital libraries would be presented, it was appropriate to […]

San Francisco, CA According to an IBM study all 1,407,724,920 people who use the internet will double the amount of digital information in the world every 11 hours by 2010. Should we keep it all? And if the answer is yes, how will that work exactly? Should it be accessible or will it land in […]

On April 23, 2008 Cornell University’s 2005-2008 Networks Theme Project capped the three-year teaching and research initiative with a lecture by team members including David Easley (Economics), Jon Kleinberg (Computer Science), Kathleen O’Connor (JGSM), Michael Macy (Sociology), and Dan Huttenlocher (Computer Science & JGSM) entitled “Getting Connected: Social Science in the Age of Networks.”
David Easley […]

Friday at NSTA’s national conference in Boston, MA included two informative literacy sessions.
Scaffolding Inquiry: Research on Writing in Science
Dr. Rick Vanosdall, Director of the Center of Excellence for Learning Sciences at Tennessee State UniverVsity presented an overview of research results from his work with Dr. Mike Klentschy, the Superintendant of Schools of the En Centro School […]

Highlights from Thursday, March 27 at the National Science Teachers’ Association national conference in Boston, MA included a presentation on IPY science projects and the Polar Discovery expedition series.
IPY Science
Louise Huffman, Coordinator of Education and Outreach for the ANDRILL project, presented an informative session, IPY Cool Science: Hot Topics. An overview of the three previous […]

Dr. Judy Willis is a neuroscientist who also happens to be a middle school algebra teacher. After years in the lab, Dr. Willis decided to apply her knowledge on brain research to the classroom. At the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Dr. Willis was a […]