Improving communication skills through writing groups
April 30, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Presentations, Writing
Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): Later today and tomorrow, I’ll be talking to ClimateSnack‘s Mathew Reeve about improving communication skills for scientists. This got me thinking more about what ClimateSnack is trying to do. This graphic shows it well. It is about getting scientists to become better communicators with other scientists through short Climate Snack blog posts. […]
Dan Keyser’s Edward Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award Speech: Words of Wisdom for Teachers
Daniel Keyser’s Acceptance Speech for the 2014 Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award I never expected to receive an award for teaching, let alone an award named after Ed Lorenz. I offer my heartfelt thanks to my former and current students who nominated me for the Lorenz Award and to the Selection Committee for conferring […]
A tribute to the teacher without whom Eloquent Science would not have been written
Yesterday I found out that Professor Dan Keyser of the State University of New York at Albany won the 2014 Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award, given by the American Meteorological Society. The citation stipulates: “For meticulous and inspiring lectures, for a demanding yet compassionate demeanor, for his individualized mentoring and unwavering commitment to his […]
Want quick publicity? Send out a press release on your unpublished manuscript!
January 24, 2014 Filed under Blog, Featured, Potpourri, Publishing
As this article from slate.com describes, yet again someone has received a lot of media attention for their unpublished research. This time the study was on the eventual decline of Facebook. The slate article does a fine job of undermining the premises of the paper and showing them not to be valid (particularly the one […]
Tornadoes and the “Clash of the Air Masses”
Ever seen media reports talk about how tornadoes form in the central United States? It always seems to start with warm air from the south meeting cold air from the north. Need some examples? How about these? USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/08/oklahoma-tornadoes-ef5-moore/2401885/ The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tornado-disaster-clash-of-air-masses-in-tornado-alley-1091490.html KTBC Fox News, Austin, Texas: http://www.myfoxaustin.com/story/21871999/weather-facts-tornado-rotation The BBC: National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/biggest-storm/tornado-formation I […]
Interview with Scientia Crastina
I did this great interview with Olle Bergman who runs the web page Scientia Crastina, which bills itself as “communication skills for the scientists of tomorrow”. Thanks, Olle! Readers, I hope you enjoy the interview. I had fun answering the questions that Olle posed for me!
Teaching Quantum Physics to Children: Ellie the Electron
Ellie the Electron is a children’s story about an electron who wants to be the star of the show. It was written by Dr. Yvette Hancock, a lecturer in Physics at the University of York. Yvette has done many outreach activities to promote physics to students (such as her Institute of Physics lecture at the […]
23 Things for Research
This is a list of 23 things that you scientists should be doing to help promote your research. It provides a good list of things to be thinking about as you aim to develop your career.
An example of eloquent science (V. E. Suomi 1979)
The following text was written in 1979 by Verner E. Suomi from the Foreword of the report Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Truly eloquent science! Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Report of an Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate to the Climate Research Board, Assembly of Mathematical and […]
More on using appropriate scientific terminology: “Super moon”
I’ve talked about the importance of choosing appropriate words when you need to introduce new scientific terminology here and here and (loosely) here. With the full moon in its orbit being closer to the Earth than normal, the media has been fixated on the “super moon” being 14% larger and 30% brighter than it normally […]
