Quick entry: On the hype today, Dec. 13, 2022, about a “breakthrough” in nuclear fusion energy: Please see my analysis here.
Why I’m doing this: I love to share science, and I’ve done science is so many different capacities – researcher, teacher, popularizer, consultant, reviewer, activist, …
So:
As a researcher – in chemistry, physics, chemical engineering, ecology, plant physiology, agronomy, and remote sensing; that’s either scientific joie de vivre or incurable wanderlust; I rank in the top 2% of scientists worldwide
As a classroom teacher, from elementary to graduate levels. I love lots of hands-on stuff for students, developing and embracing the sane to the bracing
Sharing science as fun on weekends with pick-up groups, after-school experiments with students from our small and thriving private school and with homeschoolers
As a science popularizer and public commenter, now particularly in my weekly short podcasts on our NPR station, on several websites, including this one, and in local forums on energy and climate
Founding and running a small scientific consulting company, even if only for a few contracts
As a reviewer of journal submissions and grant proposals for agencies – 23 international journals, ARS, EPA, NASA, NOAA, NSF, and the European Research Council; a year as program officer at NSF
As a grantee and grant manager myself – DOE, USGS, WRRI, NOAA, NSF, NSF-EPSCoR
As an assessor of science and technology, paid or pro bono – at Los Alamos Labs, for our local electrical utility engineering group, for entrepreneurs, for investors, as a critical voice against ill-advised state initiatives
As an activist to put science in the forefront on climate and energy issues – the Citizens Climate Lobby and others
As an international collaborator, working and publishing with colleagues from the US, Australia, China, France, Greece, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the UK; as a visiting scientist in US universities and in Australia, France, and Germany. The world community of scientists is so rewarding!
As an organizer of scientific workshops on physiology and on mathematical biology and modeling,
So rewardingly, as a partner in research and in teaching with my wife, botanist Dr. Lou Ellen Kay, founder of the school we run
I am deeply committed to science for its critical guidance in decisions – personal, industrial, governmental – and equally so for the expanded worldview it offers to everyone
I encourage students and friends to weigh careers in science as rewarding and socially valuable
I love to point out vista-opening work and exceptional presentations by others – the great scientists, past and present, the great popularizers (Derek Muller, Matt Parker, Steve Mould; Yuval Noah Harari, EO Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Neil Shubin…), the great teachers (Feynman, above all)
↓ Catch any of my nearly two hundred 90-secondpodcasts on science(image courtesy of KRWG-FM, Las Cruces, NM) – llamas help us with the flu? Why is there volcanic pumice in Nebraska? Fetal hemoglobin and high-flying birds Photons escaping the Sun Fabled ancient computer … and more
And check out myextensive analysis of the habitability of a planet, our Earth or another one – everything from biology to chemistry to astronomy to geology… Elon, you won’t like this. As part of the analysis, I created slew of sidebars and appendices on many topics; check them out as you wish; click on Show more:
