Devin Drown's blog

As far as I know, all of the IPEM fellows are still required to participate in some sort of education outreach project.  I just read an interesting article in PLoS Biology about a Science buddies program.   This is very similar to what previous IPEMers have accomplished.  It certainly is worth checking out to see what is possible with limited time and funding.

Fink RD (2009) It's Elementary: Science Buddies Bring Biology to Life. PLoS Biol 7(8): e1000182. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000182

 It seems odd to be defending the role of web based communication on a blog, but Adam’s last post struck a nerve. He quoted from Reddy’s editorial in Science that stresses the need to communicate beyond the ivory towers of our institutions. I think that is a great goal and a necessary component of doing science especially on a publically funded project. I believe that the greater use of science blogs and wikis is also a vital part of this communication. Making the science we do as public as we can i

Everyone by now has heard of all the crazy perks that employees at Google get.  You may or may not have heard that employees are also requested to work on independent side projects as well.  I'm not sure if this is how Google's newest little lab project came about, but it sure is cool (Flu Trends).  This is part of larger Trends lab project where you can look at patterns of search terms and compare usage of such terms.  The folks down in silicon valley hav

Recently, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about modeling philosophies. This summer, I was at the Complex Systems Summer School at SFI and was fully surrounded by the agent based modeling world. Complex problems often need new methods to help understand them and there appears to be a role of agent based simulations to play. But, an absolute transition to the exclusion of conceptual models seems unwarranted.

Saw a very IPEM appropriate talk today as part of the SBS seminar series by Dr. Cheryl Schultz. She presented work on the dispersal ecology of Fender’s blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi). There was lots of info about actually getting dispersal measurements on these little guys in the wild, but she also presented some brief work on a model comparing different patterns of movement following restoration of fragmented habitat.

On my weekly survey of the table of contents from Science, I found this article which surveyed a single class of incoming science graduate students in a department at Yale and looked to see where they all ended up.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.321.5896.1622
 

Adventures of a biologist: one year in IPEM