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Inspiring Science

~ Casting light on great ideas

Inspiring Science

Tag Archives: Science in Society

Fight back against junk food marketing

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by sedeer in Disease, Humans, Science communication

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Children, crowd funding, diet, Education, food, games, Health, Human, junk food, People, science and society, Science in Society

Frugivoro: a board game about health foodMost people realize that our food is loaded with sugar and that our eating habits are unhealthy, but it’s very hard to change them. Rather than simply accepting the situtation or complaining about it, my sister-in-law and her mother decided to change it. Over the past several years, they’ve designed, tested, and refined a new board game, Frugivoro, that gets kids excited about healthy foods (and sneaks in some education, too!). Many of our eating habits form in childhood, so this is a create way to counter the deluge of junk food marketing kids are exposed to. Continue reading →

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Book Review: Born Anxious

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by sedeer in Books, Development, Disease, Genetics, Humans

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Behavior, biology, Developmental biology, Gene expression, Health, Popular science, science, science and society, Science in Society

I enjoyed Born Anxious more than I expected to but less than I hoped. Written by Daniel Keating, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, it synthesizes over a decade of research on how stress affects the course of our lives. Keating presents an interesting and convincing case that experiences early in life — or even in previous generations — can set biological switches that have wide-ranging consequences, affecting health, social well-being, and professional success. Continue reading →

The Social Evolution Forum

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by sedeer in Blog, Science communication

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Education, evolution, science and society, Science communication, Science in Society

I’m very pleased to be part of the Evolution Institute‘s new group blog, The Social Evolution Forum. SEF brings together a range of writers concerned with evolution in a broad sense, from ecology to cultural evolution. To get an idea of what SEF is about, have a look at DS Wilson’s announcement post.

My first post is on a pernicious and persistent misunderstanding of evolution: the myth of progress.

Evolutionary theory is extremely powerful and pervasively misunderstood. Stripped to its core, it describes an interplay between replication, variation, and selection which can generate complexity, diversity, and novelty. Its elegance lies in its simplicity and power, a combination which unfortunately also makes it readily misunderstood.

The idea of evolutionary progress is the most common – and probably the most damaging – misunderstanding of evolution. It lingers behind the phrase “higher animals” and the claim that humans evolved from apes (we are apes). It lurches into full view in the famous March of Progress illustration which has, unfortunately, become iconic of evolution.

You can read the whole thing on the SEF site. While you’re there, have a look at the other inaugural posts by Arun Sethuraman, Lee Alan Dugatkin, Jennifer Raff, Anthony Biglan, Jeremy Yoder, Madhusudan Katti, and Peter Turchin to get an idea of the voices and approaches you’ll find on the Social Evolution Forum.

The Ten-legged Spider

18 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by sedeer in Arthropods

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

animals, arthropod, biology, camel spider, naturalist, Popular science, science, Science in Society

Every word in the title is a lie. The creature I’d like to introduce isn’t a spider and it doesn’t have ten legs, but that was exactly what I thought when I got a good look at it, which wasn’t the first time I saw it. The first time I saw it, I thought it might have been a plant’s root or some kind of stolon. I had just jumped in for a swim on Saturday afternoon when I saw something brown at the bottom of the pool. It wasn’t moving, and it seemed to be about the size of my thumb. Grabbing the sieve, I dived down and fished it out, then called my partner over. “Can you have a better look at this and see what it is? I think it’s some kind of root, but I can’t really see it properly.” My long, wet hair was obscuring my vision and I was trying to keep the sieve above water.

“It’s a spider,” she said. “A gigantic spider!” (It was gigantic — around 8-9cm across!) I’m lucky enough to be married to someone with a fascination for creepy-crawlies; with a smile, she deposited the dead spider in a jar for later examination and then joined me in the pool. Continue reading →

Found while foraging (March 18, 2014)

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by sedeer in Foraging

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

biology, epigenetics, gender, links, plants, Popular science, science, science and society, Science communication, Science in Society, sexuality

It’s been a few months since my last linkfest, so it seems like high time for a fresh collection. The transition to a new continent and  new career has taken up a lot of my time and energy over the last few months, and unfortunately that’s meant I’ve given Inspiring Science less attention than I’d like to. Hopefully I’ll settle into a new rhythm soon and start posting more frequently again. In the meantime you can also find my writing at Accumulating Glitches or my Beacon project if you’re hankering for more.  As always, feel free to add more links in the comments!
Continue reading →

Help support my writing through crowdfunding!

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by sedeer in Blog

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

biology, communicating science, crowd funding, internet, journalism, publishing, science, science and society, Science communication, Science in Society, Science journalism, society, writing

I’m really excited to announce that I’ve been invited to write at Beacon, an innovative website which crowd-sources funding to support reporting by freelance writers (like me!). The idea is simple. Readers pay $5 a month to fund a writer on Beacon; in exchange, you get access to the writer’s work and every other story by every other writer on Beacon. It’s like Netflix, but for writing. I think it’s a great idea, and I’m really excited to be a part of it, but I need your help to make it happen. Continue reading →

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All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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