Thoughts from #scio13

As usual, ScienceOnline was a terrific conference. It neatly combines so many of my interests: science, reading (because there are so many writers in attendance), social media, and good food.  Here are some of the sessions I enjoyed, along with links to a blog or Storify page (Storifies?) for more information.

These are roughly in conference order, and any omissions are inadvertent.

My first session was a pre-conference workshop "Monitoring and analyzing one's effectiveness on social media" (Storify) taught by Nature Communities staffers Lou Woodley and Laura Wheeler. Lou and Laura talked about some great tools for monitoring social media use. Two that I want to check out in more detail are

• Topsy (which lets you search tweets back to 2010, among other things
• Twiangulate (which lets you compare 2-3 twitter accounts for followers

Lou & Laura also prepared some amazing handouts, which will be available on the Nature website soon. I'll share them in the comments below when they are publicly available.

My next memorable session was "Narrative: What is it? How science writers use it?", facilitated by T. Delene Beeland and David Dobbs. This was the geekiest session for me, in which I got to see how science writing is made -- getting a behind-the-scenes look into how writers do their interviews and capture the little details which make all the difference. The best part was listening to Carl Zimmer talk about the research he had done for his recent piece in Wired ... which I had read days before (How Scientists Stalked a Lethal Superbug—With the Killer's Own DNA). 

The session I facilitated with Lali DeRosier, "#Hashtags in the Academy: Engaging Students with Social Media," was a great success. I've blogged about it and Storified it.

The converge sessions were all terrific, but I really enjoyed Baba Brinkman's evolution rap session. He demonstrated how to talk science in a wholly unexpected medium: rap. Check out his video Artificial Selection from his CD The Rap Guide to Evolution (which my library now owns)

There was more - so much more! but I'll stop now and blog more later.

"#Hashtags in the Academy" at #scio13 on Storify

@Lalsox and my session called #Hashtags in the academy: Engaging students with social media was a great success! We had lots of great conversation which generated some (unanswered) questions as well as some terrific ideas about using social media in the classroom.

Several attendees talked about using social media with their college / graduate students. Ideas like:

• @Cotesia1 / Marianne Alleyne has her Insect Physiology students create a "twitter lecture" in 25 tweets. Here's her Storify of those lectures. 
• @WhySharksMatter / David Shiffman has done a similar assignment with his marine biology students. Next time he teaches it, he promises to Storify them. 
• @2footgiraffe / Adam Taylor set up #scistuchat to encourage his high school students to chat with scientists via Twitter.
• @MelanieTbaum / Melanie Tannenbaum has just started using Twitter with her social psychology class: : @UIUCPsych201 Hashtag: #PSYC201.

There was additional discussion about students' digital footprint now and in the future and some unanswered questions. 

Take a peek at the Storify and feel free to comment on here or Twitter (using #tagacad). I'll add useful tweets to the Storify.

#NewToCogSci: Resources for the Curious

Interested in cognitive science? Lots of us are, and I get questions from readers (thanks!!) asking for resources to this interdisciplinary field, which comprises the "...study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

I'm including three sets of resources, and omitting two. This is due to my own professional and learning biases. I'm a text-based learner and like to read my cognitive science in short bursts (reference material, Twitter, or blogs) or listen to interviews with cognitive scientists. So these biases give me great familiarity with:

• Twitter & Blogs
• Podcasts
• Books & Magazines

I'm not including popular or scholarly non-fiction, partly because there is so much out there and partly because I don't typically read non-fiction (shhh, that's a secret!), so I can't list my favorite cognitive science books here. I'm also not including videos, because I don't have the patience to sit through a video.

Twitter & Blogs
These are in addition to the Twitter feeds mentioned elsewhere in this post (like @SciAmMind and @AllintheMind).

• @mocost (Mo Costandi) writes the Neurophilosophy blog for the Guardian and describes himself as a "Neuroscientist turned writer."
• @neuroconscience (Micah Allen) is a PhD in cognitive neuroscience; meta/social cognition, neural plasticity, connectivity, & mental training. Solid news about all of the above.
• @TheNeuroScience (Stanford) tweets lots of news about neuro- and cognitive science.
• @PsychScience (Association for Psychological Science) tweets news and scholarly articles about all aspects of psychology.
• @TheSocialBrain (Dr. SunWolf) tweets about "neuroscience, social behaviors, and the science of happiness."
• @VaughanBell tweets news & articles about all aspects of cognitive science and science more broadly. He also blogs at MindHacks (which is also on Twitter @mindhacksblog).

Podcasts (oh my!) 

• All in the Mind is a weekly 30-minute radio show from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National. Host Lynne Malcolm covers one brain / cognitive science / mind issue per show. Recent episodes have covered The Science of Compassion, The Psychology of Cults, and How language shapes thought.
  
  They say that it's "a program about the mind, brain and behaviour, and the endlessly fascinating interactions between them;" I say it's a must-listen. See also @AllintheMind on Twitter.
  
• Brain Science Podcast is a monthly hour-long interview with leading scientists in all areas of brain science from independent podcaster and emergency physician Ginger Campell.  This year's shows have featured, among others, neurophilospher Patricia Churchland, Christof Koch, and a detailed review of Antonio Damasio's Self Comes To Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain.
  
  Check out all 92 episodes, which include detailed show notes and the podcast. If you're new to cognitive science, the first few episodes are a great introduction to various concepts.
  
• On Being. American Public Media's weekly hour-long show features Krista Tippett talking about a variety of spiritual and scientific topics. The most recent episode is about language (Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life); other episodes include Opening to Our Lives: Jon Kabat-Zinn's Science of Mindfulness, The Science of Healing Places with Esther Sternberg, and Investigating Healthy Minds with Richard Davidson.

Books & Magazines

As a librarian, I'm very familiar with reference resources such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, and there are some wonderful reference sources for cognitive science -- and if you're new to cognitive science as a whole,

Books are linked to WorldCat, so you can see if a nearby library owns the title. You can also easily get from WorldCat to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to order the title for your collection.

• Scientific American Mind is a wonderful magazine with articles written for a scientifically knowledgeable lay audience; topics cover all areas of cognitive science and neuroscience. Recent articles include "How Video Games Change the Brain", "Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control," and Christof Koch usually has a column on Consciousness in each issue.
  
  The website offers a few paragraphs of each article for free, but to read the full article, you need a subscription (through your library or on your own). Each major article offers citations for more reading on the article's topic. Check out @SciAmMind on Twitter, too.
  
  They have a section of Reviews and Recommendations (2012; 2013) which is a good way to find popular non-fiction in cognitive science.
  
• The open access Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes several entries containing the word "cognitive" which include cognitive science, embodied cognition, and evolutionary psychology. They also cover topics like emotion and consciousness as well as biographical entries on folks ranging from Socrates to Descartes to Sartre.
  
  The SEP's goal is to provide "the philosophical profession and the general public alike with high-quality scholarship on a variety of topics relevant to the human condition," writes Edward Zalta ("The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A university/library partnership in support of scholarly communication and open access," College & Research Library News, Sept. 2006 (pdf))
  
• A great dictionary for understanding psychology terms is Raymond Corsini's 1999 Dictionary of Psychology. The images are terrific (my favorite is the one for pilomotor response) and the definitions are clear and concise. Citation: Corsini, R. J. (1999). The dictionary of psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel.

• A great encyclopedia is Michael Gazzaniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences, the fourth edition of which came out in 2009. The academic library review magazine Choice calls it a "benchmark resource for the cognitive neurosciences" (May 2010); sections include Development and Evolution; Plasticity; Attention; Sensation and Perception; Memory; Language; The Emotional and Social Brain; Consciousness and several more. Citation: Gazzaniga, M. S. (2009). The cognitive neurosciences. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

all icons from Iconfinder (from the 'Nuvola' icon set)

What's your favorite Cognitive Science resource? Feel free to add yours in the comments!

Engaging Students with Social Media, #TagAcad preso at #scio13

I'm so excited to be facilitating a conversation at ScienceOnline 13 called #Hashtags in the Academy: Engaging Students with Social Media with Lali DeRosier.

We want to talk with attendees -- as well as others around the interwebs -- about the role of social media in the high school and undergraduate classroom. 

Is it possible to engage students with Web 2.0 tools in ways that meaningfully support learning?  We will moderate a conversation about what’s worked and what hasn’t with social media in the classroom. 

Because it's ScienceOnline, we want the session to be reflective of the audience's interest / experiences, so Lali and I are going to be tweeting some questions to get the conversation started.

The questions are below ... Lali will tweet & Storify the first few questions, and I'll tweet & Storify the last few. Feel free to comment here or to reply to one of the upcoming tweets.

Librarians, I'm also interested in how y'all use social media to engage with your students, whether in a specific class or your discipline or your library as a whole. Comments from other non-teaching academics also welcome!

If you do comment, please use the hashtags #scio13 #TagAcad so Lali and I can track your comments.

Questions

• Do you use social media to engage with your students?
• What was your biggest social media success in the classroom? Failure?
• To what extent should social media be embedded in curriculum? Or used to supplement the curriculum?
• Are some social media tools more academic than others?
• How can we help students navigate their personal vs. academic / professional personas?
• How important is social media to our students’ future? As they consider jobs and/or graduate school?
• How does social media advance the content of the courses?
• Does social media improve the efficiency of communication?

• If you aren’t using social media to teach, what would make you start? 

Thanks for your feedback!

Librarians at ScienceOnline #scio13

Librarians like to organize information, such as our books (WorldCat is a prime example -- it's a catalog of over 10,000 U.S. and international libraries' holdings), photographs (see the Library of Congress' Tissandier Collection of 1,000 items documenting the early history of aeronautics), articles (medicine's PubMed database; education's ERIC database)... including ourselves.

We also like to go to conferences outside our own discipline, including the science / communicator conference ScienceOnline. See my post from last January "Non-Librarian Conferences, #Scio12, and #AEJMC." Fellow librarian and conference-goer John Dupuis prompted my post with his post Science Online 2012: Library and librarian sessions. He's been an amazing collector of librarians at past ScienceOnline conferences ... and this year, I'm going to try to collect #scio13 librarians in this post. I'm sad that this year's list doesn't include John (or Joe or Christina or Bonnie), but I am glad to see so many of my librarian fellows will be represented!

From this list of amazing people going to #scio13, I've picked out librarians & library-types (in alphabetical order by last name, starting with me):

• Stephanie Brown, the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Librarian. Twitter: @CogSciLibrarian; Web: http://parklibrary.jomc.unc.edu/
• Hilary Davis, North Carolina State University Libraries, Associate Head, Collection Management. Web: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/hmdavis4/
• Kiyomi Deards, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Assistant Professor. Twitter: @KiyomiD; Web: http://libraryadventures.com
• Barrie Hayes, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Bioinformatics and Translational Science Librarian
• Stephanie Holmgren, NIEHS, Library  & Information Services
• Trevor Owens, The Library of Congress, Digital Archivist. Twitter: @tjowens; Web: http://trevorowens.org
• Rene Tanner, Arizona State University, Life Science Librarian. Twitter: @renetanner1; Web: http://lib.asu.edu
• K.T. Vaughan, the University of North Carolina Health Sciences Library, Librarian. Web: 

  http://guides.lib.unc.edu/ktlv

The list includes a lot of scientists, writers, communicators, and even a science comedian. 

'Tis the season ... to be excited about ScienceOnline! 

Stephanie's Favorite Songs, 2012

As always, it was a good year for music! I've completed my favorite song list of 2012 and posted it on Spotify.

The full list, in song order, is below, with a few annotations here & there. 

• When I Was 12 – Explicit Content This Stephanie-friendly, lite-pop album Dear Eskimo came out in 2009. How did I miss it then?! Fortunately, Amy came to the rescue & shared it with me in 2012 ... and three of their songs made the cut.
• Stars – The North (Breakglass Version)
• Lana Del Rey – Diet Mountain Dew So many great songs on her two-volume set Born to Die, the Paradise Edition, but I limited myself to this one.
• Chairlift – Cool As A Fire Haunting lyrics: "now that I found you, I don't have a choice ... with or without you, I don't have a choice." There are a lot of great songs on their album Something. 
• Carolina Chocolate Drops – Country Girl
• Norah Jones – If the Law Don't Want You ... neither do I. This is one of two songs I selected from KIN: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell. They're all a little country (or Americana), and they're all just like a Mary Karr novel. 
• The Little Willies – Jolene I heard -- and loved! -- this version before I heard Coach Beiste sing it on Glee. Coach's version makes the song even more heartbreaking, tho' I prefer listening to the Little Willies. 
• Lisa Marie Presley – Heartless Storm & Grace is my favorite Lisa Marie Presley (daughter of Elvis) album ... and this is the best song. 
• Lee Ann Womack – Momma's On a Roll The second of two songs from KIN: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell.
• Steve Forbert – Can't We Get Together? This is second of Steve's songs that mentions being in another time zone from his girlfriend; it also mentions the Raleigh airport.
• Josh Ritter – Love Is Making Its Way Back Home This whole album is amazing, even tho' it's an EP. Josh Ritter could make a great song out of a phone book.
• Citizen Cope – One Lovely Day 
• Leonard Cohen – Come Healing The entire album Old Ideas is terrific, but this song, with Dana Glover is especially haunting. 
• Josh Ritter – Why 
• Glen Hansard – Talking With the Wolves
• Sea Wolf – Old Friend
• The Mavericks – Back In Your Arms Again Not nearly enough Mavericks on the Suited Up & Ready EP, but what's there is great fun.
• When I Was 12 – Kitten I'm Smitten Really, who doesn't like a song with that title?  Of course, mittens are also mentioned. 
• Calexico – Puerto
• Allen Stone – Sleep This turned into a huge earworm for me ... mostly when I can't sleep, and this song comes to mind when I "feel it [sleep] on the ends of my fingers / Taste it on the tips of my teeth" ... You've been warned about the earworm!

Christmas Soup

This recipe for Pasta e Fagioli (Pasta and Bean Soup) from ChefMD looks like Christmas! The look is entirely coincidental, but I'm glad for a holiday-looking soup all the same. 

Yesterday, I listened to a People's Pharmacy® interview with ChefMD, aka Dr. John La Puma called Healthy Holiday Feasts. I'd heard them talk to him before, but this time I was inspired to check out the recipes on ChefMD.com. Many look quite tasty!

Substitutions
This recipe calls for fennel, which wasn't available at the store yesterday, so I substituted an onion instead. I used Bionaturae's whole wheat macaroni, as that was the smallest pasta I had. On the show, Dr. La Puma talked about using "reduced sodium spicy vegetable juice" which I also didn't have; I used a double can of fire-roasted tomatoes with their juice. I also didn't have peas, so I used string beans.

Tomatoes + string beans + navy beans = Christmas soup!

Musical Accompaniment
Pink Martini's Joy to The World.

Favorite Books read in 2012

Goodreads has been a good way to keep track of books I've read, which was my goal. It's made listing my favorite fiction reads of 2012 very easy! The list is online, and I can even  embed it in this post.

Stephanie's favorite novels read in 2012

American Dervish

by Ayad Akhtar

This was a fascinating book. Interesting insight into the life of Muslims in 1970s Milwaukee, and a horrible betrayal by the narrator. None of the characters was especially positive, but the book was compelling. One tic that bothered me:...

The Sandcastle Girls

by Chris Bohjalian

The Newlyweds

by Nell Freudenberger

Delightful story about a Bangladeshi woman who marries an American man and moves to Rochester. The early story is good, but has been done before. However, the second half - when she returns to "Desh" - is fresh and interesting.

The Cranes Dance

by Meg Howrey

This was a great book for anyone who likes reading about ballet, NYC, or mental illness. The two I know best were handled authentically, and the third was entertaining. It started out a bit lite-n-snarky, but I'd read a good review of ...

The Snow Child

by Eowyn Ivey

This was quite a lovely story -- the "Child" herself was lovely, as were the other characters. Alaska in 1920, too, was a character in the story -- and a very interesting character at that.

Let the Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

This was a lovely novel, though it started out as a series of disconnected short stories. I wasn't sure I'd stick with it - but I'm glad I did. The stories deepened and got very interconnected. I remember when the Twin Towers were being ...

The Night Bookmobile

by Audrey Niffenegger

I loved this book -- all librarians & good readers should read it. I borrowed my copy from the library (most of my reads are library books), but this is one I will purchase, as I could imagine wanting to revisit this one again.

When it Happens to You

by Molly Ringwald

The Wife

by Meg Wolitzer

Clearly I could have added more annotations, but at least I have a good list of books read & loved in 2012!

Chocolate Mooncakes (Gluten-free). Or, Recipes on the Blog!

I've been cooking & posting photos / recipes to my Facebook page for a while now. That turns out to be satisfying because my friends post comments ... but ultimately is unsatisfying because I can't easily refer people to my baked kale recipe or my spicy Thai slaw recipe.

I got a suggestion (or two) to start a blog ... but hey, I already have a blog, and it's not being used. So ... I'm planning to post some recipes here, in addition to the occasional post about teaching or librarianing or cognitive sciencing.

Chocolate Mooncakes

First up: Chocolate Mooncakes (Gluten Free). or, Black bean, gluten-free brownies. I wanted a relatively healthy and wheat-free baked good to take to various holiday events -- but it had to taste good first. So I scoured the interwebs for black bean brownie recipes & settled on Eat Good 4 Life: Dark chocolate and black bean brownies.

The recipe calls for many of the usual brownie ingredients, such as eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

Variations: I am not a big brownie baker, so I was less familiar with the chocolate aspect. The recipe calls for dark cocoa powder, but since I didn't know if I was going to like these (and thus make them again), I didn't want to buy a lot of cocoa powder. So I bought a single-serving packet of sipping cocoa. I used Whole Foods semi-sweet chocolate chips for the toppings. I also substituted (and toasted) pecans instead of chopped walnuts, just because I'm in the south.

I was flummoxed at the notion of buying instant coffee -- all I could think of was Sanka, and I didn't know where I might big a jar of Sanka these days. While I didn't look hard, I still didn't find any instant coffee, and so I thought I would do without. Then I remembered that Starbucks is making instant coffee, so I bought a three-pack of their coffee-flavored instant coffee.  (I didn't buy their flavored mochas, nor their Christmas blend.)

The cool thing about this recipe, and this is not a variation, but is, imho, A Good Thing, is the use of a can of black beans instead of flour. The texture is not quite brownie-like, but as my friend Tomasa said, is more like a Chinese mooncake. Actually, according to Wikipedia, this is nothing like a typical Chinese mooncake, but it's more like a mooncake than a brownie, so I'm sticking with the name.

If you're gluten-free, or just want to try a brownie variation, I recommend these.

Free TV News Online!

The Internet Archive has Launched "TV News Search & Borrow" with 375,000 Broadcasts, which they blogged about back in September.

From the blog post: "375,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C.  The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired.  Older materials are also being added."  

A search for "librarians" on TV News on 11/02/12.

My review of the site indicates that all the major U.S. networks are included, as are several Spanish networks (Telemundo and Univision). CSPAN and Comedy Central are there too. (you can see Jon Stewart from 2009-yesterday!)

Access it directly at archive.org or from the Park Library's TV News page.