Month: July 2019

Audio

Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, by Margaret Jacob


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Context with Brad Harris
Episode: Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West, by Margaret Jacob
Episode pub date: 2018-07-10

Margaret Jacob’s book helps us understand how scientific knowledge became integrated into the culture of Europe through the 1600s and 1700s, and how the different social and political conditions of different European countries influenced the application of science to material prosperity. Jacob enhances our understanding of the role of science in the Industrial Revolution, and provides insight on why Britain’s distinctive approach to the utility of science enabled it to industrialize generations earlier than any other country.

You can support Context on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/context, or through https://bradharris.com.

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brad Harris, Historian, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Cracks in the Ivory Tower

Podcast: Free Thoughts
Episode: Cracks in the Ivory Tower
Episode pub date: 2019-07-05

Universities aim to be centers of learning that find the best and brightest students, treat them fairly, and equip them with the knowledge they need to lead better lives. But Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness join us today to show how American universities fall far short of this ideal.

What is the purpose of college? What are academics getting out of university life? What do students want from their university experience? What is a wage premium? Are students actually learning skills they need? Do employers think that college graduates are lacking writing skills? What is wrong with student evaluations? What would it take to actually measure teacher effectiveness? How is tenure a barrier to entry to the academic field?

Audio

#131 – Jeremy Rossmann


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Y Combinator
Episode: #131 – Jeremy Rossmann
Episode pub date: 2019-06-19

Jeremy Rossmann is the cofounder of Make School. Make School is a college for computer science headquartered in San Francisco. Make School students don’t pay until they have a job after graduation. They were part of YC’s Winter 2012 batch.

You can find MakeScool on Twitter @MakeSchool.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

***

Topics

00:00 – Intro

00:32 – What is Make School?

01:12 – How is their intensive track different than a traditional college course load?

2:22 – How are their students differentiated from students educated in a traditional CS program?

3:12 – Interacting with the parents of Make School students

8:12 – William Triska asks – What are some ways to encourage greater independence and autodidactic behavior in students pursuing technical skills and knowledge?

10:02 – The autodidact myth

15:57 – Two stakeholders making purchasing decisions: potential students and parents

20:07 – The education landscape 20 years from now

23:57 – Education stacking

25:02 – Vikram Malhotra asks – When are we going to do away with degrees?

32:42 – Evan Ward asks – Should liberal arts colleges consider adopting ISA’s?

35:17 – Are there instances of predatory ISAs?

37:27 – Make School students who want to be entrepreneurs

40:27 – Advice for people in YC

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Y Combinator, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Katherine Joy on moon rock


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: The Life Scientific
Episode: Katherine Joy on moon rock
Episode pub date: 2019-07-16


Katherine Joy studies moon rock. She has studied lunar samples that were brought to earth by the Apollo missions (382kg in total) and hunted for lunar meteorites in Antarctica, camping on ice for weeks on end and travelling around on a skidoo. Working at the forefront of the second wave of lunar exploration, she studied remote sensing data from Europe’s first mission to the moon, Smart 1 which launched in 2003 and data from many subsequent missions. She tells Jim Al-Khalili why she believes the moon is the most exciting destination in our solar system and explains what it can tell us about the long history of planet earth.
Beneath the magnificent desolation of the moon’s surface, multicoloured rocks contain vital clues about the history of our solar system. Every crater on the moon is evidence of a collision and the chemistry of these rocks tells us when these collisions took place. Katherine’s research supports the idea that a period known as the late heavy bombardment was a particularly turbulent time. Could the late heavy bombardment explain the origin of life on earth?
Producer: Anna Buckley

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC Radio 4, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Innovator Stories – Episode 3


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Science: Disrupt
Episode: Innovator Stories – Episode 3
Episode pub date: 2019-06-01

What makes an innovator in the world of disrupting science? What sort of experiences, behaviours and mindsets prompt people to make change, and guard them against the challenges that changing the status quo inevitably brings?

Those were the questions on our mind for this first episode of our ‘Innovator Stories’ mini-series on the Science: Disrupt podcast.

Over the next 5 episodes of Science: Disrupt, you’ll hear from those at the coal face, enacting change within science – whether that’s building new products, changing behaviour in the lab or simply being more vocal in the scientific community, we wanted to bring to the fore some of the ‘behind the scenes’ insights into what makes innovation happen.

This episode features:

  • Cindy Wu, Co-Founder of Experiment. Experiment is a crowdfunding platform that allows anyone to participate on the scientific process by backing their chosen research project. In exchange not only do funders get to see research flourish but get to share in the scientific content produced through lab notes produced for that funding community.
  • Monica Grenados, a policy analyst and food web ecologist. Monica is active in the open science community through her work on the leadership team at PREreview and as a mentor for the Mozilla Open Leaders. PREreview is a platform that hosts preprint reviews and shares them openly with everyone, they also are great advocates of getting preprints into the traditional academic journal club.
  • Naomi Penfold, associate director of ASAPbio a non-profit that promotes transparency and innovation in life science communication. Naomi is involved in engaging the scientific community promoting the use of preprints to ensure the science actually gets outs of the lab in a reasonable time frame and is available to all.

The series is supported by the awesome team at Digital Science’s Catalyst Grant – they’re constantly searching for the next big thing in scientific research software. To help nurture original, early stage ideas they created the Catalyst Grant where they offer up to £25,000 to help get your idea from concept to prototype. So, if you’ve got an idea to help further scientific research, then they’ve got the funding and resources to bring it to life. The next deadline for submission is June 30th, so get to it!

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Science: Disrupt, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Productive Travel


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Teaching in Higher Ed
Episode: Productive Travel
Episode pub date: 2019-06-13

Dave Stachowiak and I share about productive travel on episode 261 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Productive TravelEvery time you have somebody on I just feel like there’s something that I’m using in my own work.
—Dave Stachowiak

There’s the tendency for a lot of us in this community to take on too much.
—Dave Stachowiak

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Can science explain everything? – Michael Blastland


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Science Focus Podcast
Episode: Can science explain everything? – Michael Blastland
Episode pub date: 2019-05-15

We know a lot. In scientific studies, we can count data, observe trends, infer links and calculate risks. But we also spend a lot of time ignoring noise – the unexplained variations in our results that we can’t account for. Take smoking for example. We all know that smoking kills, but it doesn’t kill everyone, and we can’t predict which lifelong smokers will be struck down by lung cancer, and which won’t.

In his new book The Hidden Half (£14.99, Atlantic Books), Michael Blastland discusses how, even in the most tightly controllable situations, we often still see variations in outcomes. He argues that our unwillingness to admit uncertainty can affect science, economics, politics and business, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

But it’s not all bad news. New research that shows that admitting the extent to which we’re not sure could make us seem more trustworthy. And he explains that even though we don’t know everything, experts and the scientific method are still the most important places for us to turn to for guidance.

He talks to Helen Glenny, editorial assistant at BBC Science Focus Magazine, in this week’s episode of the Science Focus Podcast.

If you like what you hear, then please rate, review, and share with anybody you think might enjoy our podcast.

You can also subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast apps. Also, if there is anybody you’d like us to speak to, or a topic you want us to cover, then let us know on Twitter at @sciencefocus.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

Follow Science Focus on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flipboard

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Immediate media, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes
Audio

Machine learning in materials science, and sand’s sustainability


Save to Listen Later

Podcast: Nature Podcast
Episode: 04 July 2019: Machine learning in materials science, and sand’s sustainability
Episode pub date: 2019-07-03

This week, using an algorithm to find properties in materials science, and the global consequences of sand-mining.

In this episode:

00:47 Predicting properties

A word-association algorithm is reading millions of abstracts to discover new properties of materials. 

Research article: Tshitoyan et al.; News and Views: Text mining facilitates materials discovery

08:28 Research Highlights

Tiny robot-jellyfish, and genome mutation hot-spots. 

Research Article:Multi-functional soft-bodied jellyfish-like swimming; Research Highlight:How DNA ‘hotspots’ snarl the search for cancer genes

10:48 Sand under strain

Researchers warn that the mining of sand is unsustainable. 

Comment:Time is running out for sand

15:44 News Chat

The results of a bullying survey, and the spread of microbial disease through opioid use. 

News: Germany’s prestigious Max Planck Society conducts huge bullying survey; News: The US opioid epidemic is driving a spike in infectious diseases

For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Springer Nature Limited, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Powered by: ListenNotes