I've had a pretty great week.
It started off with the Southeastern Branch meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Greenville, South Carolina. I was there from March 2-5 and heard some great talks and met some very nice people. The University of Arkansas entered a team into The Linnaean Games (it's like Bug Quiz Bowl), and I was the alternate for the team. I cheered them on from the audience, and we made it to the semi-finals before losing in a close round to North Carolina State University. There were no hard feelings though: it was a well-fought contest, and we all went out to dinner afterward. You can see some photos from the meeting on the Entomology Society's Facebook page, and hopefully that album will have some of the candid photos uploaded soon.
I received exciting news while I was in Greenville: my symposium for the national meeting in Portland, Oregon this November was accepted! The symposium is entitled "Reaching Beyond Our Horizon: Social Media & Connecting with the World" and will have speakers from entomology and other disciplines talking about how social media has enhanced their research and their outreach. I had enormous help brainstorming for the symposium from Morgan Jackson, a fellow grad student, and his help was instrumental in getting the symposium accepted. We'll both be moderating the session in November, and we hope to see you there! It will be the best program symposium at the conference!
Yesterday afternoon I received my other piece of good news for the week: I have been awarded a grant from the Ohio Biological Survey's Small Grants Program! This grant will support my millipede field work in Ohio this summer, which I intend to document on this blog and on Twitter, along with other avenues. I'm very excited to have this opportunity and will make OBS proud.
Suffice it to say that this week has been very helpful for my ego. Science communication and millipede research are two of the things I'm most passionate about, and both those interests have been vindicated by professional organizations. I'm going to make sure the symposium and the grant are magnificent investments for both those organizations and sink a lot of hard work into each of them.
I'm excited and honored by both these opportunities, and my passion for science is definitely at an all-time high right now.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
The Nexus of Science & Popular Culture: Part 1 - The Symphony of Science
Something that has become very clear to me is that science and popular culture don't mix as often as they should. There is a large portion of the general public that doesn't understand science, thinks it's boring, and has no interest in pursuing any other information about science.
Yet, maybe that's not a fair nor a correct characterization. According to the National Science Foundation's most recent survey on public attitude's about science and technology, more than 80% of Americans reported that they were very or moderately interested in new scientific discoveries. Public interest in science and technology topics is higher in the US than in many other countries, including European countries, China, and South Korea. 59% of Americans visited an informal science venue (such as a museum or zoo) in 2007. So, maybe the problem isn't a lack of interest. Perhaps the problem is a lack of effective communication by scientists and the lack in the number of opportunities given to explore science.
As one example, when Planet Earth was shown on the Discovery Channel in the United States in 2007, it became cable's most-watched event of all time, reaching over 100 million viewers. Not too shabby, if we're still working under the assumption that people think science is boring. Well, maybe people just really like listening to Sigourney Weaver's voice. Another example can be found on CBS's primetime block. The Big Bang Theory is a show that premiered in 2007 that centers around 4 scientists, and incorporates a surprising amount of (correct) science, while at the same time including an equal amount of humor. By the time it reached its third season in 2009, it was CBS's highest-rated show for its time slot among adults 18-49.
Obviously, when science is presented effectively and accessibly, it's not ignored.
With the advent of the internet, and the recent additions to the internet with Internet 2.0 and social media, there are now vast opportunities for spreading science to a wider audience in a way that's accessible. Online networking can make a video go "viral" in a matter of hours, and it's easier now than it ever has been to share content online.
I'd like to highlight one project in particular that does a marvelous job of spreading science to a wide audience. It's a project by a man named John Boswell, and it's called the Symphony of Science. The concept might sound a little weird, but just go with it: auto-tuned scientists singing. John takes clips from shows and interviews with scientists, auto-tunes their voices, and sets it to music. It's pretty wonderful and the songs are catchy. He uses the voices of scientists such as Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, and more. It's a neat project and one of the best examples I've found of merging science and art (not to mention a bit of philosophy as well) in an accessible way. You don't have to understand all the concepts the videos cover, but you can still easily be inspired by them.
The first video, "A Glorious Dawn," has garnered over 5 million hits, and is embedded below.
My favorite video, "The Poetry of Reality" is also embedded below.
If you want to learn more about the project, check out John's website, which I linked to earlier. Or, you can check out his Youtube channel. He also has a Twitter, if you are Twitter-inclined.
This is the first post of a series I'm planning to do about how Science and Popular Culture mix and complement each other, so if you enjoyed this one, well, super. You're going to get more similar to this.
Yet, maybe that's not a fair nor a correct characterization. According to the National Science Foundation's most recent survey on public attitude's about science and technology, more than 80% of Americans reported that they were very or moderately interested in new scientific discoveries. Public interest in science and technology topics is higher in the US than in many other countries, including European countries, China, and South Korea. 59% of Americans visited an informal science venue (such as a museum or zoo) in 2007. So, maybe the problem isn't a lack of interest. Perhaps the problem is a lack of effective communication by scientists and the lack in the number of opportunities given to explore science.
As one example, when Planet Earth was shown on the Discovery Channel in the United States in 2007, it became cable's most-watched event of all time, reaching over 100 million viewers. Not too shabby, if we're still working under the assumption that people think science is boring. Well, maybe people just really like listening to Sigourney Weaver's voice. Another example can be found on CBS's primetime block. The Big Bang Theory is a show that premiered in 2007 that centers around 4 scientists, and incorporates a surprising amount of (correct) science, while at the same time including an equal amount of humor. By the time it reached its third season in 2009, it was CBS's highest-rated show for its time slot among adults 18-49.
Obviously, when science is presented effectively and accessibly, it's not ignored.
With the advent of the internet, and the recent additions to the internet with Internet 2.0 and social media, there are now vast opportunities for spreading science to a wider audience in a way that's accessible. Online networking can make a video go "viral" in a matter of hours, and it's easier now than it ever has been to share content online.
I'd like to highlight one project in particular that does a marvelous job of spreading science to a wide audience. It's a project by a man named John Boswell, and it's called the Symphony of Science. The concept might sound a little weird, but just go with it: auto-tuned scientists singing. John takes clips from shows and interviews with scientists, auto-tunes their voices, and sets it to music. It's pretty wonderful and the songs are catchy. He uses the voices of scientists such as Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, and more. It's a neat project and one of the best examples I've found of merging science and art (not to mention a bit of philosophy as well) in an accessible way. You don't have to understand all the concepts the videos cover, but you can still easily be inspired by them.
The first video, "A Glorious Dawn," has garnered over 5 million hits, and is embedded below.
My favorite video, "The Poetry of Reality" is also embedded below.
If you want to learn more about the project, check out John's website, which I linked to earlier. Or, you can check out his Youtube channel. He also has a Twitter, if you are Twitter-inclined.
This is the first post of a series I'm planning to do about how Science and Popular Culture mix and complement each other, so if you enjoyed this one, well, super. You're going to get more similar to this.
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