Recommended reads #136

I think this ¡Hola Papi! column has the bestest science outreach ever.

Perhaps it’s unwise to ask everybody in your class to for their pronouns.

Sharing your research with the public can actually influence public opinion.

Curve-Fitting https://t.co/X76aDTJXI9 https://t.co/o2eEe11tXR pic.twitter.com/kkdc2Mk9gr

— XKCD Comic (@xkcdComic) September 19, 2018

ASBMB is unimpressed with NIH’s weak and slow response to sexual harassment by NIH-funded scientists.

Advice on choosing a lab for grad school

NSF, on the other hand, is now requiring funded institutions to report any findings of sexual misconduct by a PI or Co-PI:

NSF's new term and condition for awards requiring harassment notifications is now available online, along with FAQs and responses to comments: https://t.co/b9dnwUJ6fm #sciencetoo

— National Science Foundation (@NSF) September 21, 2018

NSF new INTERN funding scheme sounds pretty great, and shows that NSF is listening ad responsive to the job market and to the scientific community. It’s supplemental funding to support graduate students for six months, for things like a non-academic internship, and professional development for multiple employment pathways. So if you’re involved in a lab with NSF funding, and you’re looking for support to explore career routes outside academia, here you go.

This university extension page on how to get a stain out of anything is the tops.

“Field-based data collection provides an extraordinary opportunity for comparative research. However, the demands of pursuing research away from home creates an expectation of unburdened individuals who have the temporal, financial, and social resources to conduct this work. Here we examine whether this myth of the socially unencumbered scholar contributes to the loss of professionals and trainees.”

We knew that the oil industry understood how they were causing global warming long before the public was aware or concerned — but did we know how perfectly spot on they were about their predictions for CO₂ and global temperature increases? This is stunning. And evidence of perhaps the biggest criminal conspiracy in history:

8 years before the first IPCC report, Exxon estimated the evolution of CO2 concentration and global-mean surface temperature in an internal report. Evolution linked to fossil fuel consumption. More information here : https://t.co/OTACSSPxyb by @BenFranta pic.twitter.com/KTo3sAvmwU

— Florent Brient (@FlorentBrient) September 19, 2018

The professor who was found responsible for the death of a student, in his unsafe lab at UCLA, apparently got off with even lighter consequences than planned, and the family members of the victim were robbed of their chance to present at sentencing.

An Ambivalent Milestone; or, How’s the Book Coming?

“The academic hiring season doesn’t have to be the hunger games” although the books do suggest an innovative way to swing a spousal hire when the university hadn’t planned one.

Take a virtual reality rollercoaster ride through a duck’s vagina.

The NAACP chapter near Humboldt State University asked the institution to stop recruiting students from parts of the state that are less white. Because Humboldt State and its community is unsafe.

California SB 100 is a huge deal. Our state is on target 100% carbon neutral energy generation by 2045.

“If you are blind or teaching a blind student, I hope you can use this encyclopedia of tools and techniques that got me through school to the place I am today.”

Here is some solid peer-reviewed research explaining how summer research experiences for students are successful when the students has genuine ownership of the project.

This piece about Junot Diaz and the male self-pardon was from months ago, but it’s can apply to many other men right now too.

You should read these absolutely wild emails about a math paper purporting to model gender-related differences in math. Correspondence between authors, editors, reviewers, other mathematicians…there’s even a Provost and Dean in there. A must read for Editors. https://t.co/AWmiQ7XfYi

— Emilio M. Bruna (@BrunaLab) September 18, 2018

First Gen Grads: Resources, insights and information for first generation graduate students

On the phenomenon of public universities being the most prestigious outside the US, but in the US, the prestige is private.

"New @aaas policy requires a written request seeking the revocation of a Fellow’s status. Such a request should include investigative report findings" #EndHarassment https://t.co/JuZHOHggo9 via @aaas

— Unofficial UCI Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (@notUCIEEB) September 15, 2018

Using The Grand Unified Theory of Potato Chips to teach ternary plots.