All posts by erin

Tales From My Twitter

Grad School, My Personal Life, State of Journalism

I did it. Took the plunge. Succumbed to the peer pressure. I joined twitter. I think I was inspired by the BronxZoosCobra. One of two things will now happen: I will come to regret it, or I will become addicted. Maybe I’ll get more twitter followers than blog followers (not that I don’t love the seven of you immensely.) Here goes my shameless plug: http://twitter.com/ErinPodolak

Fun fact, within 20 minutes of joining twitter, my first follower became Sea World. Nothing against Sea World, I’m just not sure what their interest says about me. Do they follow every person who claims to be a science writer? Or did I just do something special to garner their attention? Fellow science writers, please advise.

***
Update 4/8/11 – Six days on twitter, and I’ve lost Sea World as a follower. Sad day. I guess my tweets weren’t of interest to them after all. But I do have 10 whole followers, putting my twitter prowess ahead of my blogging prowess by three.

Update 4/18/11 – Complete and total obsession has taken hold. Twitter has bested Facebook in the struggle for my two-second attention span, and I am overwhelmed by the wealth of information I didn’t realize was being traded everyday. I have made it to 22 followers, only five of whom I actually happen to know. I have been Re-Tweeted by the Canadian Research Office – much to my amazement. I am both humbled and nervous about what my tweets will say about me. In my worst nightmare my budding career is brought down by using the wrong #hashtag and offending someone I never even knew existed. Perhaps I am taking my life on the internet far too seriously. It may be time to back slowly away from the laptop.

How To: Recycle A Chicken?

Environment, New Research

Once again I’m using Science Decoded for my long form journalism class. Our assignment this week was to do a post that was under 350 words. I put up short posts all the time, but I decided to use the assignment to go back to my blogging style from last Fall and give a short run-down of newly published research.

Did you know that you can recycle a chicken? Well, recycle part of a chicken at least. Research has previously been proposed to use bio-waste (hair, nails, or in this case chicken feathers) to create plastics. But new research presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society shows that a new mixture using 50% chicken feathers (the largest amount used to date) can actually make the material we use for shopping bags, eating utensils, children’s toys and millions of other objects.

Millions of chicken feathers are discarded in the United States each year, which makes finding a use for them highly worthwhile. Feathers are made of the protein keratin. When combined with the chemical methyl acrylate, the feathers form a strong but relatively light weight plastic substance.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Typically making plastics requires petroleum derived products like polyethylene and polypropylene. The feather-methyl acrylate combination could reduce the need for petroleum derived plastic products, which would be environmentally beneficial. Without petroleum the plastics would be more degradable and sustainable.

This research, led by Yiqi Yang of the University of Nebraska was conducted on a small scale. Until the new feather compound is tested on a large scale for ease of production and energy required for production it is unclear if it could realistically be used to manufacture commercial plastic products.

This research is exciting because it is essentially a form of recycling. The chicken feathers are just being discarded anyway, so if they can be used to make plastics that are more environmentally friendly not only will we benefit from finding a use for the feathers, we’ll also benefit from having a more sustainable plastic.

The big BUT in this article is that it needs further testing before it can be implemented. It is important with research like this to remember that a scientific find isn’t a definite. Just because something works on a small scale, doesn’t mean that it will work on a large scale. So even though the finding is exciting, it doesn’t mean that it will actually be implemented.

Bronx Zoo Cobra Found On Twitter

My Personal Life, Public Perceptions, Science Policy

Last friday the Bronx Zoo (that would be in New York for those of you unaware) announced that it was missing an Egyptian Cobra (which is poisonous) from its reptile house. According to the zoo, the 20-inch snake is most likely in the vicinity of the building, which was immediately closed off and is being searched.

An Egyptian Cobra. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The missing snake was fodder for late night comics like David Letterman, and has made a media buzz. However, for the skeptics among us who don’t buy the zoo’s story that the snake didn’t escape into the public, there is now a Twitter account that is assuming to chronicle the snake’s adventures as it roams Manhattan. Proof that the snake’s more than 35,000 followers probably didn’t have a whole lot to do with themselves today…but entertaining nonetheless.

Update 3/30/11 – As of 4pm BronxZoosCobra has more than 150,000 followers on Twitter. Glad to see that people can have a sense of humor about something like this.

Update 3/31/11 – At 4pm today the Bronx Zoo announced that the Cobra, which was missing for seven days, was found in a section of the reptile house which was closed to the public. The snake was found coiled in a dark corner, and will “rest” for a few days before being returned to the exhibit.

Advice from Sheri Fink

Good Writing, Grad School, Guest Lecture, My Personal Life

While this semester of grad school has been somewhat challenging, today I got the opportunity to enjoy one of grad school’s biggest perks: access to amazing writers and resources. Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink spoke at UW today, and while I wasn’t able to attend her talk because I was in class, I was still able to meet her this morning and discuss my work and career thus far. 

Sheri Fink’s article The Deadly Choices at Memorial is a great piece of investigative journalism that takes an in-depth look at how a lack of emergency preparedness led to unnecessary death at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The article won the Pulitzer Prize and had an impact on the establishment of new guidelines for how emergencies should be handled. 
At 13,000 words the article is very long, but very compelling. It raises important questions about what should be done in an emergency, but also makes you question what you would do if you were in the situation the Doctor’s and Nurses at Memorial Medical Center found themselves in. The answers aren’t as clear cut as you might think, even when you are sure of what is right and what is wrong.
The opportunity to meet and talk to a writer of her caliber is something I’m sure I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t back in school. She was wonderful to talk to because she really seemed interested in where I am in my career and what I hope to accomplish. As I was explaining myself she stopped me and told me that I was being too humble. She told me that I was an expert in science communication and I should own it.
I tend not to think of myself as an expert in anything, but with a Bachelor’s in science writing, one year of professional experience, and now half of my Master’s program under my belt I can say that I’m an expert in science communication. I hesitate to make a statement like that because it makes it seem as though I have nothing else to learn. I always feel like there is more that I can learn and ways that I can improve. Working with the sciences, I’ve found a willingness to learn to be a critical component to writing good articles.
Right now I’m more comfortable with “expert in training,” but maybe once I finish grad school I’ll be more comfortable owning the title of expert outright. Regardless I appreciated her encouragement, it was a good pick me up. 

Science For Six-Year-Olds: Animals & Tool Use

My Personal Life, Science For Six Year Olds, Zoology

This is a special Science Decoded post for Mrs. Podolak’s first graders at Lincoln-Hubbard Elementary School (yes that would be my Mom’s class). My viewers in Lincoln-Hubbard’s first grade liked my post Animal Cognition & The Genius Parrot about Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her experiments with Alex the african grey parrot, so I decided to do a post just for them to give them some more information about animal cognition (thinking) by sharing some videos about tool use in animals.

Animal cognition is a fascinating subject because we don’t even know everything about how our human brains work, yet we have been able to observe other species demonstrating the ability to think. The following videos show some interesting examples of animals showing us that they do think about their surroundings by using tools to achieve their goals.
***
Chimpanzees – termites are a source of food for chimpanzees, but they can be extremely difficult to catch because the mounds they build to live in are thick and hard for a chimp to break into. So, chimps have developed a way to infiltrate (sneak into) the mounds. They even modify (change) simple tools (a regular stick) by making them into brushes which capture even more termites.

New Caledonian Crows – birds like to eat nuts, but getting through the hard shell to the tasty part can be very difficult. These crows have devised a special way of cracking the nut, and even found a way to safely collect the edible part of the nut once it has been smashed. (Because this is a BBC video it needs to be watched on YouTube but clicking below will take you to the right link).

Octopus – Researchers have found an example of tool use by the octopus. The organism takes coconut shells and gathers them to use as a shelter which is a startling and significant use of an object external to the animal’s self to achieve a goal among invertebrates (animals that don’t have a spine, the bones in their back.)

There are many other examples of animals using tools, which shows that the ability to manipulate an object and use it to accomplish a task is by no means a uniquely human trait. If there are any questions, leave them for me in the comment section and I’ll be sure to answer them!