John Moore’s June 14, 2010, post to this blog described recent changes to the Journal of Chemical Education. The decision was made to discontinue posting items to this blog that were published in JCE, such as the monthly Especially for High School Teachers column, which had previously formed a large part of the content on […]

A report published in Nature last Thursday, August 4, describes the success of the computer game Foldit, which is designed to encourage people to contribute to research on protein folding and at the same time have fun. (The Nature article is restricted to those with subscriptions, but a layman’s description is here.) The success of […]

A recently reported psychological research study by scientists at Indiana University shows that if we think our students cannot do something because they are female or because they belong to a minority group, that alone is enough to reduce their learning significantly. It has been known for some time that negative stereotypes affect adversely performance […]

Recently the New York Times reviewed four books, three recently published and one about to be published, that deal with geoengineering–the purposeful application of engineering techniques to alter planet Earth. A major goal of geoengineering is to offset climate change resulting from global warming. All four books conclude that there are great dangers in experiments […]

Does your school block access to the Web for students (and teachers)? Does this prevent you from using resources such as the NSDL and ChemEd DL as easily and successfully as you might? Take heart! The Racine Wisconsin school district is providing essentially complete access for students and teachers from all schools in the district. […]

The American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is a leading organization in the storage and retrieval of chemical information. As such, CAS is in an excellent position to judge trends in development and commercialization of chemistry-related research. On June 24, 2010, CAS posted a research report titled, “China Takes Lead in the Commercialization of […]

Safety in science laboratories, especially chemistry laboratories, should always be a foremost concern. There is always more that can be done to assure that students in science laboratories, both research and teaching, can carry out experiments without accident. This week Chemical & Engineering News, the magazine that goes to all members of the American Chemical […]

Do any of you readers have experience with whiteboards? If so, I would be interested in your comments on this article from the Washington Post.
http://bit.ly/9kSHRQ

Is the only way children will be able to communicate with their parents going to be through Facebook or Twitter?
I was struck by an item in the New York Times (Thursday, June 10, p. D1; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/garden/10childtech.html?scp=2&sq=Scelfo%20&st=cse) that described a toddler who, after numerous attempts to get his mother to respond to a question, tried to […]

The Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation has established the Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lectureship, which  provides an $18,500 grant for a primarily undergraduate institution to bring in a leading researcher to give a series of lectures in the chemical sciences. In addition to presenting lectures, the Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lecturer is expected to […]