Reachout.com

The lack of updating this blog has been due to moving more over to twitter, Facebook, and just having less time to potter around on the internet.  Anyway, what IS taking up alot of my time nowadays is Reachout.com.

It’s a pretty great service (this coming from a completely unbiased, independent POV!).  In a nutshell, it’s a youth mental health and wellbeing website that has information on anything that can make your day, week, or year tough  That means everything from drinking too much coffee and exam stress, to depression and self-harm.  And in addition to the no-nonsense angle of all the fact sheets, there are loads of videos and stories written by young people about how they dealt with their tough time, whether it was anger issues, the death of a family member, or problems with drugs and alcohol.

The home page of http://ie.reachout.com in its beta phase

I’ve been thinking about the ramifications of having such a broad focus (that’s a silly phrase, like ‘jumbo shirmp’) and how we can avoid the pitfalls that can come when you have something that tries to be all things to all people.  But first, I don’t think we’re trying to do that, and also– alot of people have seen this as a strength once they visit the site.  We’ve gotten loads of remarks that people are amazed and impressed by the variety of issues covered, and they feel confident that anyone visiting will find something that’s relevant to their situation.

Plus I think that makes it very easy to nudge people to go to reachout.com, if you’re not sure exactly what tough time a friend is having.  If it’s just stress from sleeping troubles, or maybe someone is homesick, then there’s a fact sheet and probably a story on that.  But if they’re going through something more serious– and perhaps not talking about it– you can be pretty confident that there’s info and stories on that too.

We’re still going through loads of debugging issues like getting Google to crawl the whole site, making sure the right image thumbnails are showing up in the correct spots, and ensuring that everything’s functioning normally. The blog has just kicked off and we’ll be looking to see what feedback we get to help determine what direction to take it.  Of, and there’s a Reach Out facebook site and twitter feed if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear any feedback on the site, and if you want to get involved in anything from bug-checking, testing, or writing, please let me know. AND, if you really wanna help, join the site, and make a few comments on some blog posts and/or fact sheets.

Lastly, here’s a 1-min video that I think sums up the site nicely:

 

This is How Science Journalism Ends: Not with a Bang but a Twitter.

(As usual, you can also read this over at the Science Gallery)

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum have written nothing short of a Science Communication “State of the Union” in the American magazine The Nation this month.

They talk about Sabin Russel, the award-winning, but now-redundant Science Journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who last week tweeted: “This is the way my career ends. Not with a bang, but a Twitter.” He had 14 followers at the time.

Video, broadcast conglomertion, atomisation of media, and nearly everything else since the 70’s has slowly but surely eroded scince journalism to the point we’re at.  How bad is it?  The article’s authors cite a few tidbits:

• From 1989 to 2005, the number of US papers featuring weekly science-related sections shrank from ninety-five to thirty-four.
• Just one minute out of every 300 on cable news is devoted to science and technology, or one-third of 1 percent.
  But this issue is far more complicated than a few factoids that make us scratch our heads and remmeber the good old days of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

And remember, blogs have played a role in this decline too.  As internet grazers, we read niche blogs (ahem), with very small audiences, ususally produced by individuals or with little or no regulation.  The authors’ see the benefits of blogs, but say “the Internet is not unifying our culture around a comprehensive or even reliable diet of scientific information, and it isn’t replacing what’s being lost in the old media.”

So don’t read about it here! Go read the article!

(Photo from Flickr by Martin Deutch)

 

Science Friday: Boats With No Sailors, Worlds Without Men

AS Always, you can also read this on the Science Gallery Blogs page.

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Are scientists really trying to get rid of men?

No, but it makes good media headlines!  The announcement of lab-created sperm cells on that other island is getting spun in many ways, but remember this post about the Daily Mail’s page three-esque “world without men”?  Seriously,  it’s pretty likely that we’ll have babies produced from same-sex couples within a decade or two, but what’s with the whole “extinction of men angle?  It’s preposterous.

Even the BBC (image above) gets on board, though while the Daily mail fanyasizes about a pillowfight-filled future populated by Rosy the riviter clones, the women of the Beeb just want to escape the tooth-gnashing nightmare of their scary white t-shirt boyfriends!  Go  Science!

Planes, Trains and Submersimobiles…

There’s a critical mass of cool marine-tech projects going on in Ireland at the moment, from Wavebob and Ocean Energy’s wave-generators, to Strangford Lough’s “What if we put a wind turbine upside down” tidal generator.  But if you’re into submersibles and autonomous boats, The Mobile & Marine Robotics Research Centre (MMRC) at UL is testing a robotic submarine for deep water research off the west coast.   Not to be outdone by mariners from outside the pale, UCD have their own autonomous sailboat that is set to be tested this week.  Check out this video of it in action:

Of course, perhaps the cake-taker will be the autonomous boat “Avalon” from ETH Zurich, which is set to sail, on it’s own, across the Atlantic. Oh, and only using only solar cells for power.  It launches from the west coast of Ireland in September as part of the Microtransat Transatlantic challenge.

Infectious is Infectious

Lastly, as part of the “Make Science Viral” project, some ScienceGallery members, and all-around guerrilla videographers have their own take on the ideas brought up at Infectious.   Check out “Kiss Me, Don’t Shake Me” and more of their videos below.  And don’t forget the member’s only Infectious closing party next Friday, so get your tix ASAP.

Your Science Your Say

PS- Your Science Your Say (or YSYS to those in the know) is running now till the end of June in the science Gallery and online here.  Watch four min-docs, and tell the EPA which topics you think pose the most risk, and which have the most potential benefits.  Teaser-trailer below:

 

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Science Friday: Big atoms, big discoveries, big plans for Ireland

Innovation guru and under 25…

Patrick Collisson (Of Auctomatic and BTYS fame and the older brother to the prolific @TrustTommy) has an article about innovation, startups, and how to make Ireland more like Silicon Valley in this week’s Irish Times Innovation.

Darwin, meet Degas. 

There’s an exhibit on how Darwin influenced 19th Century art, and vice-versa.  The o will be at both the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the UK’s Fitzwilliam Museum.  For details, check out the article in SEED magazine.

Get all ‘Gattaca’ with only $48,000

Want your own genome sequenced? Well, now you can have it for only 48 thousand USD.  Start saving your pennies.

Wasn’t 111 a nice (atomic) number?

A team of 21 scientists have manged to make 4 atoms of a yet-unnamed element with 112 Protons.

OMG IT’S HUGE!

Hanny Van Arkel, a Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer will be talking in Dublin on June 15^th about discovering the Biggest thing in the universe:  Hanny’s  Voorwerp, Dutch for “Hanny’s Object.  A mysterious object measuring a million million million miles across. She’ll be giving a talk ‘Galactic Anomalies’ on Monday, 15 June at 8pm in Trinity College Dublin and Wednesday, June 17 in Letterkenny IT. v Book your tickets online at www.astronomy.ie or by calling (01) 847 0777.

 

Science Gallery Science Friday: Spooky Movies, Spooky Quantum Mechanics, and more

“Spooky” Physics: Scientists entangle the mechanical vibrations of particles.  If you don’t know what that means, or want to know more, check out the article in NATURE.

Spooky Movie: Spanish mathematicians, a weekend away, and a murder?  Fermat’s Room opens at the IFI in temple bar tonight and plays until 18 June.

In a cinematic mood? check out Problems.  It’s one of a series of mini-docs about the LHC.

The guardian gave it a mention last month, along with the Daily Show’s “unforgettable” visit to CERN.

Science@Culture: In case you don’t already read Mary Mulvihill’s bulletin of all things scientific, cultural, and Irish, check it out. There are copious event listings, news articles, and general interstingness in each one.  The Summer edition is out now.

Lastly, Hands-free controller makes BEEB goes XBox crazy:  The BBC went a little gonzo over Micrsoft’s new no-contact XBox Controller.  Check out this image below of their Technology section where only one main story isn’t about the ’soft’s game system.  And that story’s headline is abut the Beeb’s own iPlayer!

 

Science Friday: Man evolves from IDA, Man creates Google Wave, Man goes extinct (see Daily Mail for details)

As always, you can read this over at the Science Gallery website.

It’s all about IDA.

Seed has a great article on the media savvy scientists behind the  blitz that may be the missing link of our primate ancestry. But if you really want to read about the stranger-than-fiction way that IDA got named (and almost un-named) read this article.

On the other hand, maybe it’s all “unbridled hooplah.”

In other news, talent supply is good in Ireland, says the Financial Times.

I wonder if this figure is true for science and tech jobs.  Can anyone weigh in and confirm?

“The countries where the talent shortage appears to be least problematic are Ireland (5 per cent) and Spain (8 per cent).”

Someone call Ben Goldacre…The RCSI says Men are dying out. (Er, maybe… and in 5 million years….)

Perhaps this was a clever ‘hook’ to get people and papers interested in a science lecture, but it sounds pretty trivial/hypothetical/pointless to me.  I’m just sayin…

That picture of “the world without men” is SO the Daily Mail’s fantasy.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they sponsor an annual RCSI talk on this subject.

Faster than the speed of Tweet

I saw a tweet by @aquigley on Twitter about  holding a TEDx event in Dublin earlier in the week. I tweeted him back (I sometimes tweet as @sciencegallery) and said that the SG would love to be involved. A few tweets, emails, and phone calls later, plus some the star people of the SG moving at the speed of light, and TEDxDublin was born and sold out in 50 minutes. I don’t know which was quicker– the speed with which the event was brought together, or Marie Boran’s (@pixieVonDust) article on the whole process over at Silicon Republic.

Lastly, on the topic of all things coputery…

The Google I/O Keynote is worth watching. Papers this week have been waving Google’s new banner, saying The browser is the computer. Speaking of waves… You might be interested in trialling Google Wave.

Ok, for real lastly– Why Chaucer Research Matters.

From the Science Gallery forums– A great little series of letters to the Guardian about why humanities research matters (Get a pen– there’s some good ‘Two Cultures’ debate fodder…)

 

Science Friday: @Astro_Mike, Einstein’s Eclipse, and Nanopolitics

It’s Science Friday: @Astro_Mike, Einstein’s Eclipse, and Nanopolitics.

(As always, you can read this over at the Science Gallery )

Eintsein’s eclipse, revisited.

As part of IYOA 2009, there’s an amazing expedition happening.  Two astronomers and one anthropologist are retracing the steps of a trip that confirmed Einstein’s greatest theory.  From the BBC:

In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to observe a total solar eclipse from Principe, to prove or disprove Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This week, we are going back.

Astronomer Richard Massey, from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh is keeping a fascinating blog during his trip to Principe to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the original expedition. They’re bringing a commemorative plaque and there’s more info on the expedition at the IYOA 2009 site.

Don’t you wish all your Tweets could start with “From orbit”?

Mike Massimino, the American astronaut, is tweeting from space.  That’s right, he’s in orbit, typing 140 characters of his thoughts to his 329,246 followers as he circumnavigates the globe every 90 minutes.  For example:

From orbit: Flying over the Pacific Ocean at night there were some thunder storms, it is so cool to see lightning go off below the clouds.

I’m not jealous.  No sir.  Not at all.

And in other news…

Nanotechnology… the new political satire?

It reads like any other press release on electron microscopes to the uninformed reader (like me)…

At Trinity College, Dublin, scientists have developed ‘major improvements’ to The TEAM Project (TEAM stands for Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope)  led by Berkeley Lab in a collaboration with DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories…

But this post is the first fusion of nanotech and Irish political humour I’ve seen on d’internet.  Read on and you’ll get the punchline, but in fairness, the logos on the current Fiana Fáil posters were asking for a nontechnology joke.