north carolina
clock | February 14, 2009Well deserved:
The Carrboro Citizen won six awards including two first-place awards in the 2008 North Carolina Press Association's News, Editorial and Photojournalism contest. The awards were presented Thursday evening at the press association's banquet in Cary.
Also check their blog. And, they are also now on Twitter.
clock | February 10, 2009This will be on the campus of UNC Wilmington and I'll do my best to be there if possible:
Darwin's Legacy: Evolution's Impact on Science and Culture
March 19-21, 2009
UNCW's Evolution Learning Community will be hosting "Darwin's Legacy: Evolution's Impact on Science and Culture," a multidisciplinary student conference on March 19-21, 2009.
The conference will be a unique opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts who are conducting research or creative endeavors related to evolution to present their research, investigate…
clock | February 10, 2009Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I complained that Triangle is too narrow a term for a Hub at Nature Network, as there is really no humongous city where everything is centered but the science is distributed all around the state of North Carolina, with people collaborating with each other and traveling back and forth between various regions of the state.
Well, now, to reflect that situation, the Triangle group on Nature Network was renamed the North Carolina group. If it grows in size, it may one day become a proper Hub. So, if you are in any way interested in science and live anywhere in…
clock | February 9, 2009
As you may remember, this week we have a special guest here in the Triangle - Carl Zimmer is coming to enjoy NC BBQ and, since he's already here on the 12th, to give the Darwin Day talk at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh (directions):
"Darwin and Beyond: How Evolution Is Evolving"
February 12, 2009
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Please join us for a Darwin Day presentation by Carl Zimmer. Mr. Zimmer is well known for his popular science writing, particularly his work on evolution. He has published several books including Soul Made Flesh, a history of the brain, Evolution: The…
clock | February 5, 2009Gary Mitchell will be playing and singing at La Vita Dolce, in Southern Village (610 Market St, Chapel Hill NC), this Friday at 7pm. Bring 3 friends and get some items free.
clock | February 3, 2009There are 13 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites. The Big One today, I'll cover in a separate post a little later, but here I also want to point out a paper by my good friends Elsa Youngsteadt and Coby Schal, back from my NCSU days (Dr.Youngsteadt now works for…
clock | February 3, 2009From SCONC:
Even if you haven't heard of Bisphenol A (BPA), you've likely been exposed to it. The endocrine disrupting compound is common in plastic infant bottles, water bottles, food cans and lots of other products. Scientists debate its dangers but the National Toxicology Program (based in RTP) acknowledges BPA as a source of "some concern" due to its possible harm to the brains and behavior of fetuses, infants and children.
On Wed. Feb. 18, at noon, come hear NCSU assistant biology professor Heather Patisaul share what she's finding about BPA's potential permanent effects in a talk…
clock | February 2, 2009From the Regulator Bookshop:
Time: Tuesday, February 3, 2009 7:00 p.m.
Location: Regulator Bookshop
Title of Event: Rob Dunn
NCSU ecology professor Rob Dunn will discuss and sign copies of his new book, Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys. Dunn, an engaging science popularizer, tells the exhilarating story of humanity's quest to discover everything about our natural world from the unimaginably small in the most inhospitable of places on earth to the unimaginably far away in the unexplored canals on Mars. For more information see the…
clock | January 29, 2009From SCONC:
Tuesday, Feb. 10
7 p.m.
Science Cafe Durham: Transforming Learning Through Computational Thinking
Bob Panoff of the Shodor Foundation tells Periodic Tables why he left academics to create an organization devoted to hands-on learning projects.
Broad Street Café, 1116 Broad Street, Durham, NC 27705.
More - http://www.ncmls.org/periodictables#transforming
clock | January 28, 2009From SCONC:
Wednesday, Feb. 4
5:30 p.m.
SCONC reception at NISS
National Institute of Statistical Sciences in RTP (click here for directions) has invited the SCONCs over for our usual socializing/networking/eating/drinking and a talk with Dr. Stan Young, Assistant Director for Bioinformatics at NISS. Stan is a one-man army fighting multiple testing/false positive reports that abound in most observational studies. He's on a crusade to save us from bad statistical errors. Please RSVP to NISS Communications Director Jamie Nunnelly (Nunnelly@niss.org) by close of business on Monday, February 2.…
clock | January 28, 2009Stephanie Willen Brown, aka CogSci Librarian is moving to Chapel Hill!
Blogger meetup!
clock | January 27, 2009Brian Russell was on NPR Marketplace this morning, talking about Carrboro Creative Coworking. Worth a listen:
clock | January 27, 2009Hosted by Museum of Natural Sciences:
Supernova: The Violent Death of a Star
Massive stars end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions, visible across the Universe, that blast material into space that contributes to future generations of stars, produces cosmic rays, and stirs up interstellar gases. Many heavy elements, including the calcium in our bones and trace amounts of copper and zinc in our bodies, are formed only in supernovae; we are quite literally made of star stuff. Some supernovae can even be used to gauge distances to remote galaxies; from these we have learned the…
clock | January 24, 2009There is one paragraph in this Forbes article about America's Most Wired Cities that I really did not like:
North Carolina suffered the biggest drop, with Raleigh declining to No. 15 from No. 3 and Charlotte dropping to No. 20 from No. 7.
That is really bad news and we need to do something about it. And while the list only looks at big cities, getting wired is much easier to implement in smaller places, for instance, we can do it in Carrboro if we work on it together.
Then, with the example of small places to look at (and perhaps shamed by them), the big cities will follow.
clock | January 24, 2009In Boone, NC:
Michael Ruse will present "Darwin at Two Hundred Years Old: Does He Still Speak to Us?" Monday, Feb. 2, 2009, at 8 p.m. in Farthing Auditorium. Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University and the foremost philosophical scholar on the relationship between evolution and science. He is the author of "Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?"
On Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009, Jim Costa, director of the Highlands Biological Station at Western Carolina University, will discuss "Charles Darwin and the Origin of the Origin." The talk is…
clock | January 22, 2009
After coffee cupping, still pretty frozen, we went back to Radisson to see who else has arrived for ScienceOnline09 in the meantime. I set up my temporary field Headquarters in the lobby (photo by Lenore):
After a quick lunch, it was time for Lab Tours (check blog posts and pictures for other people's experiences). A bunch of us went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences where Roy Campbell, the Director of Exhibits, gave us a fantastic whirlwind tour through the Museum and the vaults, the secret basement chambers that general public cannot access.
I've been going to the Museum for 17…
clock | January 20, 2009Last year, the only snow day in the Triangle was January 20th. I remember, because a number of locals could not drive to the 2nd Science Blogging Conference. This year we were wiser so we organized it a few days early. And, lo and behold, on January 20th this year, we had snow again:
This was also the first time Juno saw snow. It took her three walks to lose the fear of this strange, white substance:
amillikan | January 17, 2009Today kicks off the first day of events of the third annual ScienceOnline conference in North Carolina. Founded in 2007 by veteran ScienceBlogger, Coturnix from A Blog Around the Clock, ScienceOnline is the first conference devoted to discussing science as its role changes with the expansion of the internet. Several ScienceBloggers have traveled far and wide to attend the conference and participate in the events.
clock | January 15, 2009I get e-mails about such events, so I thought I'd share, so you can attend some of these talks if you want:
NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott will be speaking twice in North Carolina shortly.
First, at 7:00 p.m. on January 27, she will be speaking on "Darwin's Legacy in Science and Society" in the Wright Auditorium on the East Carolina University campus in Greenville. "Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 was an extraordinary milestone for science, but it also had profound effects on theology, philosophy, literature, and society in general. Nowhere is…
clock | January 12, 2009From SCONC:
The next Sigma Xi Pizza Lunch is noon, THURSDAY. Jan. 22. The title: "Dinosaurs under the microscope: New ways to look at old bones."
Come hear NC State University paleontologist Mary Schweitzer explain why she rocked science not long ago with evidence that soft tissue survived in a 68-million-year-old dinosaur fossil. Not all fossil experts accept it, but many do. If Schweitzer is correct, she's found a whole new route to explore the biology and evolutionary lineage of extinct life.
Pizza Lunch is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes.…