Search Results for: science

College Longreads Pick of the Week: 'Code Red: Struggling for Wellness in Computer Science,' from Kyla Cheung at Columbia University

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher will be helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:

While most good journalists are generalists, sometimes a background in the subject you’re covering helps add some perspective to your story. Kyla Cheung studied computer science and creative writing at Columbia, a combination that positions her to tell a particular story well. In “Code Red,” published in The Eye, Cheung looks at the dark side of computer science studies. There is no field hotter than computer science now, and public successes of people like Mark Zuckerberg and David Karp raise expectations for everyone. In this week’s #college #longreads pick, Cheung explores Columbia’s computer science program with a deep understanding of her peers, and a fascination with their unique culture.

Code Red: Struggling for Wellness in Computer Science

Reported and written by Kyla Cheung.

April 18, 2013 | 22 minutes (5,470 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.

College Longreads Pick of the Week: ‘Code Red: Struggling for Wellness in Computer Science,’ from Kyla Cheung at Columbia University

Longreads Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher will be helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick was reported and written by Kyla Cheung at Columbia University for The Eye.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 4, 2013

Reading List: 6 Stories for the Science-Fiction Newbie

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Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She also happens to love science fiction, so she put together a #longreads list for sci-fi newbies.

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Have you heard? Science fiction is “in”—nerds at the movies, nerds everywhere. This is thrilling if you are familiar with the genre, but what if you never got into sci-fi in the first place? Where would you start?

Since its inception (ha), speculative fiction has worked as social commentary, satire, and a creative answer to the question “What if?” Here are my personal picks to get you started.

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1. Nightfall, Isaac Asimov (1941)

No sci-fi list is complete without Asimov, and not only due to his creation of the Laws of Robotics. If you like this story, I would suggest moving straight on to his “robopsychologist” Susan Calvin stories.

2. The Veldt, Ray Bradbury (1950)

Bradbury, of Martian Chronicles fame and beyond, writes here about the danger of integrating technology too far into human developmental psychology.

3. Bloodchild, Octavia Butler (1995)

A look at the symbiotic relationship between aliens and humans. If you’ve seen any horror movie featuring extraterrestrials, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but sci-fi stories like this one explore more “alien” ideas than the simple “monster from space” trope.

4. Robot, by Helena Bell (2012)

Robots! Here’s a short and wicked story from Bell, a contemporary sci-fi writer who touches on slavery, mortality, and the horror of a slow decline in life.

5. The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells (1904)

Wells (War of the Worlds, Time Machine) is the oldest pick on my list, and this story imagines just what its title implies.

6. Understand, by Ted Chiang (1991)

Chiang addresses PTSD, advancements in medical science, and the horror of not trusting your own mind. This story is probably one of the best “straight” sci-fi examples on this list—the clear “What if?” develops steadily, and pushes the reader along to its surprising conclusion. Entire novels have been written in this style—Max Barry’s Machine Man is my personal favorite.

Bonus Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Suggestions

I also recommend this list for more great reading material, and if you want to start with something cyberpunky, look out for Neal Stephenson or William Gibson—they’re mostly novelists, and definitely worth your time.

(cover via umbc.edu)

Reading List: 6 Stories for the Science-Fiction Newbie

Longreads Pick

Hilary Armstrong is a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She also happens to love science fiction, so she put together a #longreads list for sci-fi newbies.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 20, 2013

Why Is Science Behind a Paywall?

Longreads Pick

Why is scientific research still stuck in a model that requires that work be published in a small number of journals owned by a small number of companies?

“Companies like Elsevier developed in the 1960s and 1970s. They bought academic journals from the non-profits and academic societies that ran them, successfully betting that they could raise prices without losing customers. Today just three publishers, Elsevier, Springer and Wiley, account for roughly 42% of all articles published in the $19 billion plus academic publishing market for science, technology, engineering, and medical topics. University libraries account for 80% of their customers. Since every article is published in only one journal and researchers ideally want access to every article in their field, libraries bought subscriptions no matter the price. From 1984 to 2002, for example, the price of science journals increased nearly 600%. One estimate puts Elsevier’s prices at 642% higher than industry-wide averages.”

Source: Priceonomics
Published: May 12, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,246 words)

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Longreads Pick

How snack-food company executives help perfect our addiction to junk food—and whether Americans can reverse course on a dangerous diet of salt, sugar and fat:

“The food technicians stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry’s most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more: the line extension. The classic Lay’s potato chips were joined by Salt & Vinegar, Salt & Pepper and Cheddar & Sour Cream. They put out Chili-Cheese-flavored Fritos, and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year, and the science corps focused intense amounts of resources on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.”

Published: Feb 20, 2013
Length: 38 minutes (9,693 words)

Autism Inc.: The Discredited Science, Shady Treatments and Rising Profits Behind Alternative Autism Treatments

Longreads Pick

Parents of children on the autism spectrum are wading through a considerable amount of information on the Internet purporting effective treatment and “cures” for autism. A majority of the treatments have been discredited:

“Almost by accident, Laidler says he and Ann, discovered the diet they’d put their son on didn’t work. ‘He was gluten-free and we thought it was a miraculous cure for our son because he’d made pretty dramatic strides from the age of 3 to 4. We were starting to see real progress. But on a trip to Disneyland, he grabbed a waffle off the table and ate it before we could stop him. Doctors had told us that one drop [of gluten] would cause a dramatic relapse—we’d been told anecdotal stories that a speck of wheat bread would cause an autistic child to have weeks of bad behavior. And nothing happened.’

“The Laidlers had also tried chelating their son, and as physicians they had helped other families who wanted to try it. ‘Nobody ever told me it did any good. So to regain my sense of mental balance I started asking a lot of pointed questions: Have you tried chelation? What was the result? Ninety percent of people I asked said they saw no improvement.'”

Source: Texas Observer
Published: Jan 30, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,712 words)

When Science Meets Fiction

Longreads Pick

Examining how science is used in science fiction and popular TV shows:

“Of course, there are plenty of groan-worthy gaffes in the Buffyverse, too, as there are in just about any form of popular entertainment that dares to inject a bit of science. That’s why nerd-gassing is such a popular and time-honored pastime among the geekerati. I went to see J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot with five PhD physicists, and the post-movie nerdgassing reached Olympic proportions. Their unanimous conclusion: ‘Red matter’ didn’t have to happen.

“Some people are in favor of this kind of sci-fi handwaving, as detailed in this post by Steven Padnick at Tor.com. I think Padnick is right in principle (science fiction should stretch the imagination and look beyond what is currently possible, and you don’t want to bog down your story with lengthy technical explanations) and wrong in the specific example of red matter, which is so ridiculous that it actually pulls the viewer out of the story — something no self-respecting creator of a fictional world wants to do.”

Published: Jan 27, 2013
Length: 9 minutes (2,481 words)

Tweet Science

Longreads Pick

The intense pressure to convert Twitter into a profitable business, and before a tech bubble pops, is palpable here. And it’s happening as the company struggles with an interlocked set of existential questions, starting with the most basic one possible: What is Twitter? Initially, the idea was of a kind of adrenalized Facebook, with friends communicating with friends in short bursts—and indeed, Facebook rushed to borrow Twitter’s innovations so it wouldn’t be left ­behind. But as Twitter grew, it finally ­became clear to Twitter’s brain trust that the relevant analogy was not a social network but a broadcast system—the birth of a different sort of TV.

Author: Joe Hagan
Published: Oct 3, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,151 words)