Tag: academia
Poster competition woes
One topic of this blog is the graduate student experience, with the aim of passing on a little advice to prospective graduate students. The lesson for today is: stand up for yourself. Today was the Seventh Annual Norman Borlaug Lectureship Poster Competition For Graduate and Undergraduate Students. I was very excited about the competition this year, because…
Life cycle analysis in animal agriculture
In Reducing the environmental impact of farming, I talked about Nathan Pelliter’s work on Agricultural Life Cycle Analysis as a way to evaluate which farming methods have the least environmental impact. While the ideas apply to any type of farming (or really to the production of anything), his main work is actually on animal agriculture. The…
Reducing the environmental impact of farming
Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses are rising, but reducing them isn’t as simple as taking cars off the road. A significant part of the problem rests is agriculture. What is it about agriculture that is such a problem and how can we develop changes that will have the most benefit? Agricultural Life Cycle Analysis is…
God is ok with evolution, really.
There’s been a bit of controversy lately at Iowa State on the subject of “intellectual suppression” of intelligent design. Some pent-up drama from Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure denial is still around, and Expelled brought the beast back to life. Of course, having Dr. Hector Avalos here helps to keep things interesting. The first ISU Daily…
Brain doping to further science
The 10 April Nature presents the results of a survey that aimed to determine how many scientists are using cognition enhancing drugs. Caffeine is of course the most widely used stimulant, but it seems that quite a few people are using other substances to improve concentration. For those who choose to use, methylphenidate was the…