Environmental science teachers honor Warren educator
GURNEE — Year No. 3 turned out to be the charm for a local environmental science teacher. This was the third consecutive year Mike Mieszala was in the running for Teacher of the Year Award from the Network of Environmental Science Teachers. This year, he won.“Mike has been in the running for a while. I knew it was just a matter of time,” said Jeff Hoyer, Deerfield High School environmental …
Read more on Lake County News-Sun

Science museum offers Segway tours
Boston’s Museum of Science has bought a fleet of 30 Segways as the institution plans on four tours of six people each per day.
Read more on News 24 South Africa

Popular Science Magazine and InnoCentive Announce Partnership to Advance Innovation in Technology, Science and …
Popular Science magazine and InnoCentive, the global leader in Challenge Driven Innovation, have announced a partnership to facilitate open innovation and greater collaboration in solving Challenges in technology, science and engineering.
Read more on PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance

“Science has an agenda! Science is unreliable!” If you’ve ever heard a religious person say these words, you’ll love this video
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Check out these Science images:

Hispaniola Panorama (NASA, International Space Station Science, 08/19/08)


Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
A panoramic view of the island of Hispaniola in the foreground and Cuba extending to over the horizon. The sunglint is illuminating Haiti and the Dominican Republic while the thunderstorms persist in the late afternoon of the summertime day. Taken by the Expedition 17 crew onboard the ISS on Aug. 19, 2008 with a 28 mm lens.

Image/caption credit: NASA

Read full caption:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-17/html/…

More about the Crew Earth Observation experiment aboard the International Space Station:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/CE…

More about space station science:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/index.html

There’s a Flickr group about Space Station Science. Please feel welcome to join!

www.flickr.com/groups/stationscience/

Crescent Moon (NASA, International Space Station Science, 11/03/07)


Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
A crescent moon is visible in this view of Earth’s horizon and atmosphere, photographed by an Expedition 16 crewmember on the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-120) was docked with the station.

Image credit: NASA

Read full caption:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-16/html/…

More about the Crew Earth Observation experiment aboard the International Space Station:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/CE…

More about space station science:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/index.html

There’s a new Flickr group about Space Station Science. Please feel welcome to join! www.flickr.com/groups/stationscience/

You can also get Twitter updates whenever there’s a new image:
www.twitter.com/nasa1fan

By www.weebls-stuff.com Everything you ever need to know about science.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Movie: Equilibrium Artist: System Of A Down Song: Science
Video Rating: 4 / 5

This video is a Neal Adams animation about his theory that the Earth is growing. This collides with the Pangea theory. Watch it, you will be amazed. www.youtube.com
Video Rating: 3 / 5

Science Olympiad tourneys on tap
The Tulare County Office of Education’s annual Science Olympiad tournaments will take place in the coming weeks. The Olympiad is divided into three divisions: Division A (grades 3-6), Division B (grades 6-9) and Division C (grades 9-12). The…
Read more on The Porterville Recorder

Science fair winners are named
The gymnasium of Williston State College was overflowing with junior and senior high scientists. The Northwest Regional Science Fair was held Tuesday afternoon with many students from Trenton, Trinity Christian and Tioga advancing on to the state competition in April.
Read more on Williston Herald

Share of Black Science and Engineering Degrees from Historically Black Colleges and Universities Declines
National Science Foundation report charts participation of women, minorities and persons with disabilities in science and engineerings
Read more on Kansas City InfoZine

WWU gets science grant of 0,000
A National Science Foundation grant worth $ 590,000 has been awarded to two Western Washington University professors to help encourage more female students to major in computer science and mathematics.
Read more on Seattle Times

Science teacher appeals firing in cross case
An Ohio science teacher accused of burning students’ arms with the image of a cross is appealing his firing. The Mount Vernon school board fired John Freshwater, formerly of Dover, last month, following a state hearing officer’s recommendation.
Read more on The Times-Reporter

Ohio science teacher appeals firing in cross case
An Ohio science teacher accused of burning students’ arms with the image of a cross is appealing his firing.
Read more on AP via Yahoo! News

Science department notes ‘healthy’ machining industry
THE Department of Science and Technology (Dost) said the machining industry “is in good shape” as per a survey conducted by the department’s Metals Industry Research and Development Center (MIRDC). read more
Read more on Sun Star

As science-fair fever dwindles, federal education policy blamed
As science-fair season kicks into high gear, participation among high-school students appears to be declining. And many science teachers say the problem is the Obama administration’s education policy.
Read more on Seattle Times

Music Video Of She Blinded Me With Science

Some cool Science images:

Science Project 1974


Image by The Rocketeer
In 8th Grade, I invented a safety feature for electrical outlets. It uses an attachable magnet that goes on the male plug (and stays on the plug when you unplug the appliance) and a magnetic reed switch inside the electrical outlet. The current doesn’t turn on inside the outlet until a magnetic field is present. That keeps kids with forks or knives poking into the outlet from being electrocuted.

I won 1st place in Physical Science at the school and the Regional Science Fair that year. I didn’t get to go to State because I was only in 8th Grade. If I had been a Freshman, I would have been invited to go to State competition.

My Dad commissioned a law firm in 1975 to do a patent search. They found in Argentina (U S Patent 3,868,160), someone had a similar invention that used a magnet and two others (No. 3,846,598 and No. 3,699,285) that used the ground prong to push the circuit into a closed state and one other (No. 3,596,019) that was just like my idea except it used a pin attachment on the plug to turn on the circuit in the outlet. Another similar invention was a power cable coupler (Patent 3,496,500) intended to be used in marine environments that had a sliding collar with a magnet in it that matched a reed switch inside the coupler housing and actuated it after the cable was plugged in and locked. I never saw those items on the market. The lawyer said otherwise it was a perfectly patentable idea.

Other ideas I’ve had but other people patented first:

Legos with batteries, wires, lights and motors inside and put together to form a circuit. I have a rejection letter from Samsonite (the owner of Lego products at the time). Now Lego is selling my idea.

Dental Floss Picks (I came up with this idea in the mid ’70′s too, but didn’t do anything with it)

GPS Enabled Polaroid Cameras (now Ricoh has announced a GPS Enabled Digital Camera)

Urinal Toy (pee on a sensor and get a high score)

I have a couple more ideas that I haven’t seen patented yet… but can’t afford the process of getting the patent! It is frustrating waiting too long and seeing your ideas make someone else money.

Are there any other frustrated inventors out there?

Eye on Science


Image by jurvetson
I just love this. My Hawk Eye macro got published in Science, thanks to Creative Commons licensing.

Prof. Fernald from Stanford wrote a fascinating article on a topic that has intrigued scientists for many years – how did divergent species converge in their evolution of eyes – what Darwin called an “organ of extreme perfection.” The physics of light have constrained solutions to collecting and focusing light to eight basic types of optics, seen in this chart (with imaging based on shadows on the left, refraction in the middle, and reflection on the right). Eyes have evolved independently at least 40 times.

Looking back, eyes matter. Image-forming eyes appeared in 6 of the 33 extant metazoan phyla, and these 6 now account for 96% of the known species.

It reminded me of my earlier flickr ramblings on the complexity of birds’ eyes, – with their wider color spectrum and multidimensional color space. Photographers should give a shout out of respect to dem birdies.

And how about the tadpoles rewiring their visual pathways when they become frogs and move from prey to predator.

While on the topic of being awestruck by biology, check out this video for a modern example… a graphic simulation of a white blood cell… starting in the bloodstream, then through the double layer cell wall, to uncover a “cirque du cell” of lipid transport proteins, DNA synthesis, and ribosomes assembling proteins from RNA code strings.