Picture Shanghai

I may be heading to China in a few weeks.  My company does quite a lot of business in China and I'll be heading there for a meeting.  The majority of the trip will take place in Nanjing but I imagine it will include a stop in Shanghai.

I've never been to China, I don't speak Chinese (though I'm taking a Chinese language class this term), and I honestly know very little about it.  Since my company has a very large presence in China, I feel I must learn in order to be competitive in the workplace. 

I saw these the other day (by way of tweet none the less) and thought I'd link to them here as well.  Really incredible pictures of just how much Shanghai has changed in the last twenty years.

Starting off Right

The new semester started on Monday.  I typically make lofty plans about how I'm going to get to the lab early in the morning, eat right, get lots of sleep, exercise, etc.  And it hardly ever happens.


I really hope this term is different.  So far I've done a good job of getting to the lab by 9 AM.  I've gone home for lunch and have not gotten distracted.  I've stayed in the lab well-beyond a typical 8-hour work day.  Well, week one of a sixteen-week period was successful.  Let's see how the rest of the term goes.

Making Math Fun

Was math class your favorite class in grade school?  Mine certainly wasn't.

I think math teachers have hard jobs.  Teaching the material is only one part - you have to make students interested in the topic.  How do you make kids interested in math?  Dressing up as a mole for mol day only gets you so far and that's really more for chemistry anyway.  

I'm bringing this up because I recently came across this article on Vi Hart and recreational mathematics.  I'd never head of her or the subject of recreational mathematics but I find what she's doing very encouraging.  I do hope her videos, such as the one I've linked below and found in the NY Times article, inspire young students to pursue careers in math (or science and engineering for that matter!) - or at least show them that not all math is bad.

Grant Writing 101

Is everyone's first grant writing experience not very fun?  I submitted my first grant just before winter break after two months of working on it.  I didn't know what to expect when I started the process, but it certainly didn't go as I planned.


I was trying to stick to the tips outlined by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the typical be concise, proof-read, have others proof-read, start early, know the grant agency, and so forth.  That didn't really happen.

My team (this ground was written by a group of four-ish) started about two months early, technically, but didn't really spend a lot of time working on it until the few weeks before the deadline.  This lead to a lot of last-minute changes and not a lot of proof-reading.  In fact, aside from the four of us reading it, only two outside people read the grant.

In terms of knowing the agency (the EPA in this case), my team looked through the accepted proposals for this grant from previous years trying to figure out if ours would be a good fit and what the agency was looking for.  In this regard I think we did well.

I think our proposal was concise, but I'm not very objective about it.  However, I'm not sure if the grant flowed together very well, I think you could tell that multiple people worked on it when it should really read as one author.  I'm glad the grant proposal didn't do the items from "How to Fail in Grant Writing," items such use lots of acronyms without defining them, or don't state goals/objectives/hypotheses.  That part of the grant was done correctly. 

I thought this was really interesting though:

63 percent of graduate students who did not receive a grant had only one to three people read their proposals. But 21 percent of the successful graduate students had seven or more people review their grant proposal before submission. Postdocs seemed to have recognized the importance of this strategy, as well, as 32 percent reported that four or more people had reviewed their proposal before submission.

- from Grant-Writing Tips for Graduate Students

Nice statistical evidence on the importance of having people read your grants before you submit.

The last piece of advice from the Chronicle's tip article was "don't take rejection too seriously."  I have yet to receive the official papers saying the proposal was rejected but I don't doubt they're on its way.  I'm lucky that I don't have to worry about funding at all but I wouldn't mind trying to apply for other grants in the future.  I can use all the practice I can get!

To Do List

I have a slew of topics for posts here running through my head.  Unfortunately, the process of getting them from my head to the keyboard has felt like an insurmountable task this January.

On the bright side, classes start next week and I will no doubt procrastinate very effectively with more blog posts.  Until then!

First They Came...

This past Monday ushered in a new wave of politics as the Republicans took over the House of Representatives and "my" state.  With this change, funding for science may be facing a rough time as Republicans aim to cut unnecessary government spending.  I'm not against cutting spending, but I'm against this YouCut Citizen Review project. 

A project called the YouCut Citizen Review wants regular citizens to look at grants awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and select those they find to be wasteful.  The website suggests looking for keywords such as "success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus, etc."

This bothers me in three ways.  

The first is that how can any regular bloke off the street know and understand the significance of some of the grants awarded by the NSF?  For example, I am not an expert, or even remotely knowledgeable about the fields food packaging, or marketing.  How would I know how to tell a good grant that aims to market fruits to kids versus a bad grant that aims to make kids obese?  That might not be a great example but I hope you get the point.  

The second item is that grants awarded by NSF can have portions covered by industry that may not be readily apparent on their website.  The post doctoral student who sits on the other side of the cubicle wall from me receives half his paycheck from NSF and the other half from my company.  I know my company spent a lot of time (and money) working with NSF to get someone with the right expertise who could work on this project - a project that has the ability to generate millions in revenue for my company (plus tax dollars!) but would someone browsing through the NSF's website understand where all the funding money is coming from?  

My third annoyance with YouCut Citizen Review is that it seems to be targeted towards the soft sciences - fields such as social sciences.  The recommended search keywords are ones that would more commonly appear with projects funded through the NSF's Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences as this article published in New Scientist magazine suggests.  I work in the hard sciences, on an almost daily basis I am trying to save the world and provide millions with access to clean, potable drinking water.  Technically I have nothing to fear if this YouCut Citizen Review is going to stop funding for soft science projects.  But this statement, or poem if you will, from Pastor Martin Niemöller about the refusal to act by German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power in Germany keeps running through my mind.

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out - 

because I was not a Communist;

Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - 

because I was not a Socialist;

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Trade Unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me,

and there was no lone left to speak out for me.

In this case:

First the came for the Soft Scientists, and I did not speak out - 

because I was not a Soft Scientist...

Yes, changes need to be made.  Yes, budgets can be cut for certain areas.  But I would much rather have the people doing the cuts be highly informed intellectuals than my now-evicted-for-breaking-their-lease-and-burning-their-apartment-down neighbor.  

How do you feel about the YouCut Citizen Review?  A good idea or one that should be tossed aside?