By DAVID NG
A slide for talking about the scientific method, hypothesis, generation, and testing via experimental design. Oh yeah, and aliens.
The set-up is to provide context with a story about declining stork populations as well as lower fertility rates in a particular country (this actually happened, for instance, in China in the 80s).
Who is Hadi? He’s a colleague at UBC, who does very cool stuff.
(Also, all of these goofy pics are now being archived at a tumblr I just set up – scienceisawesomethatisall.tumblr.com)
O.K. Yesterday was our provincial elections (in British Columbia), and in the end, the Liberal party came out winning. There’s quite a few environmental issues that are in the forefront in my neck of the woods, not the least of which concerns the Northern Gateway pipeline.
The Liberals didn’t actually have the greatest platform on this (at least from an environmental or science policy standpoint), but here’s hoping the public continues to pressure them to do the “best” (re: what scientific expert peer review suggests) thing for the province, and indeed the planet at large.
Last Saturday, my lab opened up the entire ground floor of the Michael Smith Building to the public. This was in conjunction with Science Rendezvous, a cross Canada science festival, and in the case of UBC, organized by the Faculty of Science. In the house (so to speak) were folks from the Beaty Museum, Civil Engineering, Pathology, Physics and Astronomy, as well as the Engineering Physics Robotics lab (who also brought in their 3D printers). We also used the building as ground zero for a number of tours throughout campus.
All in all, a great day (and busy too!). In my space, I actually brought out about a dozen or dissecting scopes and collected a nice jar of pond scum. Kids (and their parents), with some basic instructions, were let loose to find whatever they could find in the pond water. Lots of cooties were found, protozoa and algae abound, but my favourite was this Hydra that I managed to get a decent picture of on my iPhone.
The scientific method – it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty much the best way out there on collecting your thoughts and information to make sound decisions. All the more so, if the decision is high stakes IMHO.
Especially, if you get to play with creations like the below (a giant euglena, giant amoeba, and giant daphnia)
By Hiné Mizushima, via Thinx
“The “Green box” project rises as the renovation of a small disused garage, accessory to a weekend house situated on the slopes of the Raethian Alps. A structure realized with lightweight metal galvanized profiles and steel wires wraps the existent volume and transforms it into a tridimensional support for the climbing vegetation. It is composed mainly by deciduos vegetation: Lonicera periclymenum and Polygonum baldshuanicum for the main texture on which climb up the secondary texture of Humulus lupulus and Clematis tangutica. On the basement there are groups of herbaceous perennials (Centranthus ruber, Gaura Lindheimeri, Geranium sanguineum, Rudbekia triloba) alternate with annual ones (Cosmos bipinnatus,Tagetes tenuifolia, Tropaeolum majus, Zinnia tenuifolia) and bulbous to ensure a light but continuos flowering.”
Project and text by act_romegialli, via Colossal
popperfont.net 