There are a variety of text messaging applications available that make communicating with friends easy. These applications typically require users to sign up for a username as a form of identification. Friends can add each other on the application by sharing their usernames, and then friends can initiate and respond to chats from each other. These types of platforms are convenient because a message can be sent to virtually anyone, as long as they’re already signed up for that particular platform. In other words, people can send messages to others that they have never met in person before. So, how does someone know that the person that they are messaging is really a person and not a machine?
How climate change impacts fresh water: a SWAT modelist’s perspective
When people ask me what I research as a Ph.D. student in the Indiana University Department of Geography, I respond “I model.” This is typically followed by a head-to-toe, confused glance at my worn running shoes, wrinkly shorts, and faded yellow-and-brown collared shirt. “No,” I say, “I’m not a fashion model. I make computer models. I am working on some really cool research involving the effects of climate change on rivers of the Great Lakes Basin, just north of us.” Now, you may be thinking, “climate change, that’s scary, huh?” Why, yes it is! That’s why it is so important that we learn as much as we can about climate change so that we can prepare our ecosystems and communities for its impacts.
Brain technology in Black Mirror: Technological myths or real possibilities? Part II
In the second part of this blog series, we will look at three episodes where proposed technologies involve human consciousness. We will see if these technologies can become real possibilities in the near future. If you have not seen the episodes, do not worry, spoilers are kept at a minimum! You can also read part 1 here.
In White Christmas, people can create copies of their own consciousness and put them into a small device that is called “cookie.” The copied consciousness inside the cookie will be able to serve as a smart assistant that knows all preferences of the client. Additionally, this technology can be used for copying the consciousness of suspects into a cookie and simulating 1,000 years of solitary confinement in 1 minute for that given consciousness, and use it for punishment/interrogation purposes. In case of the personal assistant, the copied consciousness can be punished by the same method for any insubordination.
Netflix and spill: David Landy speaks about the pros of working in industry
You come home from a long day at work, make yourself some dinner, and turn on the TV. Not to MSNBC or ESPN but, like over 100 million global users, you go directly to Netflix. You might watch a Netflix original that attracted you with its clever trailer; or maybe, you dive right in to your ‘Keep Watching’ queue to finish that episode of Friends for the third (or eleventh) time. Maybe it’s date night, so you and your partner browse for a while, searching for a light new Rom Com or, if you’re me and my partner, a hard-hitting documentary.
What you might not realize is that as you browse, click, pause, rewind, or exit, you’re generating data. A lot of data. To ease your mind, you should know that, unlike your other everyday platforms, Netflix doesn’t share or sell this data. Instead, they use it primarily to make their service better and more user-friendly; for instance, to tailor the user interface specifically for you.
Bridging the gap between sex differences in exercise participation: An interview with Jessica Freemas
More than 50% of women quit sports following puberty, and women leave sports at twice the rate of men. These drop-out rates likely have long-term consequences for women, including fewer exercise benefits, less representation in sports, and weaker exercise performance. Yet, very little is known about why women leave sports at such high rates during puberty.
Enter Jessica Freemas, a graduate student in the Department of Kinesiology-Exercise Physiology at Indiana University. Her research, conducted under Dr. Zac Schlader, focuses on human exercise performance and cardiopulmonary function. While working in the lab, Jessica noticed that nearly all studies of exercise performance used only men and that the findings of these all-male studies were oftentimes generalized to women. This gap in the scientific literature is largely due to a vestige of a historical emphasis on male athletes as well as perceived complications in study design associated with studying women. “There are many physiological reasons why generalizing findings from men to women in this context might be disadvantageous to women in terms of their participation and experiences with exercise,” says Jessica. Determined to highlight the benefits of conducting female-specific studies of exercise performance, Jessica finds herself at the forefront of research on sex differences. (more…)
Strength in Numbers? The Meaning of Scientific Consensus
“Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.” — Michael Crichton
September 20th, 2019, was the beginning of a week-long global climate strike. Millions of people around the world marched in support of policy action on climate change, even in Indiana University’s own quaint college town. The message from contemporary climate scientists and activists: the time for debate is over, the time for action is now. Critical to their argument is that
the issue of climate change has reached scientific consensus, or wide-spread
agreement among scientists.
Scientific consensus is frequently employed to defend the truth of one claim or another. For instance, the often quoted statistic that 97 percent of climate scientists believe in human-caused climate change is intended to persuade people to believe in climate change. In fact, uncertainty over the precise percentage of consensus has led to a proliferation of papers on the climate change consensus, culminating in the magisterial Consensus on Consensus. (more…)
My journey with science – What role do opportunities play in STEM?
As an international woman of color in STEM who didn’t grow up attending science fairs, it was quite a shock to my family (and myself) when I declared science as my field of study. As a teenager in India who was forced to decide my career at the age of 16, it was quite a daunting task. Like every student entering 11th grade in any Indian school, I had to choose between science, commerce (business), or art as my field of study.
While my peers’ parents were (literally) telling them which career to choose; my mom, my role model, had quite an interesting approach to helping me select my career. My mom, who is a cosmetologist by trade, understood the power of discovering one’s strengths and taking the time to explore one’s options. (more…)
Meet the SciComm Symposium Speakers
ScIU ‘s annual Science Communication Symposium is tomorrow, November 8th! We’ve asked some of our panelists to answer some questions to learn about their journey with science communication.
Dr. Janet Carpenter, our keynote speaker, is a Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean of Research for the School of Nursing at IUPUI
What is your current science communication position or initiative?
Menopause, or the end of a woman’s menstrual periods, affects all women worldwide who live into their 50s. The major symptom women experience is hot flashes – unpredictable, sudden rushes of inner heat and outer sweating that last only minutes at a time yet can disrupt a woman’s concentration, mood, and sleep. Like many women’s health issues, hot flashes have been trivialized, misattributed to being fake or “all in a woman’s head,” medicalized, and depicted using overwhelmingly negative imagery. Myths and misinformation about hot flashes are rampant. Women as well as health care professionals report being confused about hot flashes and potential ways to obtain relief when hot flashes are severe. I sketch representations about treatment options as well as other scientifically-based information points about menopausal hot flashes. My sketches were transferred into graphics by a professional artist and form the basis of the concept art for “Hot flashes? Cool!” an interactive exhibit designed to educate the public. (more…)
Creating a Science Communication Collective at IU
As you might know, here at ScIU, we like to publish weekly blog posts about science happening on campus — especially science that might not be reaching other news outlets — because a lot of the work happening here at IU is amazing, and we believe that broader audiences should have access to it. Another thing that’s really important about the blog “behind the scenes” is that it provides professional development experience to our graduate student and postdoc writers and editors. Over the last three years, ScIU bloggers have accumulated tips, tricks, and experiences that we want to share with people, which is why we host an annual Science Communication Symposium, coming up this Friday, November 8th. With science communication specifically on my mind this week, I’m sharing a few of my favorite articles that touch on its value and importance.
Public engagement and science communication: A waste of time?
Science Fest 2019
Falling leaves, pumpkin spice, and football — it’s that time of year again in the Bloomington community: Science Fest is tomorrow!
Grab your goggles and plug your ears, the Science Fest is coming up! Did we mention it’s FREE? https://t.co/saS44RYdMV pic.twitter.com/N9jcx2EsXf
— Indiana University Bloomington (@IUBloomington) October 9, 2019