starting 'em early

(via Metafilter)

A team of researchers publishing in Biology Letters have concluded "We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before."

The authors are 25 students at Blackawton Public School, aged 8-10, which I'm going go out on a limb and guess is the youngest age to be published in a peer reviewed journal ever.

The organizer and lead scientist is Beau Lotto, whose son Misha is in the class. I nominate Lotto for the title of DorkiestBest Dad Ever. Lotto has previously given a TEDglobal talk.

The study itself was on bees, concluding "bees use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from."

Biological Letters is an RSC journal with a 2009 impact factor of 3.52. The authors tried to submit to Nature, Science, Current Biology and PLoS ONE, who were enthusiastic but declined to publish due to lack of referencing and simplistic writing style. Which, coincidentally, is a rejection that I've heard many a time. Maybe I should have gotten started in research a bit younger...

live from the CSC!

Hi there internet,

I've been running around this week like a headless chicken[1] trying to absorb as much of the science as possible at this year's CSC, albeit unfortunately missing some probably amazing talks. My body can only take so much, you know. I'm actually supposed to run off to a mixer right now, with the enticement of free drinks and food. Hmmm. maybe that's part of why I have been able to go to as many talks as I wanted?

Apart from the colossal disappointment that has been the conference food[2], I have seen a really great time, and actually enjoyed some amazing talks. So, brief recap:

-Daniel Nocera from MIT gave a BADASS talk on global energy needs and solar conversion. That man has guts, probably because he has the science to back it up. The climax of his talk was results that he didn't even present- he just told everyone to watch Science. Nonetheless, he still had some wicked stats on energy; well worth the read:

• “Powering the Planet: Chemical Challenges in Solar Energy Utilization”; Nathan S. Lewis and Daniel G. Nocera, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2006, 103, 15729-15735.
  
  
• “The Global Energy Future: The Challenge for Science in the 21st Century”; Daniel G. Nocera, Daedalus 2006, 135, 112-5.

-Right after that, Greg Scholes gave a pretty sweet talk, though I was distracted by his amazingly hip wardrobe and accent. I swear, I thought I saw him playing bass last year when Interpol played. I've never seen a cardigan/tight pants combo so fashionable with so much quantum to back it up.

• Gregory D. Scholes, "Controlling the Optical Properties of Nanoscale Systems” Adv. Funct. Mater. 18, 115–1172 (2008).
  
• Gregory D. Scholes, “Insights into Excitons Confined to Nanoscale Systems: Electron–hole Interaction, Binding Energy and Photodissociation” ACS Nano 2, 523–537 (2008).
• Gregory D. Scholes & Garry Rumbles, “Excitons in Nanoscale Systems” Nature Materials 5, 683–696 (2006).

- Being from the U of A, I helped with the organization of a symposium, though it was a little out of my subject area. While I respect and admire Chemical Education research, especially as a new TA, I have to admit my expectations were kind of lowish as I missed some other presentations that looked nifty. However, and I should disclose that one of my favourite talks was from my first-year chemistry prof, I was blown away by the session. Teaching is equal parts public speaking, thoughtful communication, personality and some really innovative visualization techniques. It was genuinely exciting to be there as a chemistry major who knows just how much non-chemists dislike the discipline, and the people who are working to fix that. I feel a little guilty for being such a nob in first year. If you happen to be a teaching prof, please please please go check out this links that will definitely merit some further blogging:

• The King's Center for Visualization in Science: free visualization applets and course material for teachers (disclosure: these are my peeps)!
  
• Scivee.tv: very web 2.0 way to publish, if you're into that sort of thing. who knows, maybe it'll be the next Nature!
  

Anyway, I'll try to post some more with cool things I encountered. Infiniflux, forever!

From your chemistry pal,
Joel


[1]. I kid you not, I typed that phrase into the google with no knowledge of the random weirdness that resulted.


[2]. Not including the free food at this mixer, but the general lack of food at coffee breaks and poster sessions has made me grumpy. I won't name any names (I guess apart from linking to the conference page, whoops), but if you are ever going to a major conference here in Edmonton, make sure to pack a lunch.