Scientific Genres

So far I've encountered a couple different types of scientific genres through internet research on assignments for class varying in complexity. The most interesting one was the most recent, "Transformational Technologies To Expedite Space Access And Development." by John D. G. Rather. The article was about creating new methods of sending stuff into space, but there was a lack of endless mathematical equations that one would expect from such a topic. The author decided to create the paper as a calling to stimulate space research and development. I don't really know what sort of genre the article would fall under. It was published through the American Institute of Physics so not really readily accessible to the general public and the lack of jargon put the article in a field of its own. The author put a lot of personality in the article and you can tell he's very passionate about the subject, it's unlike any article I've read before.

Another genre of scientific article I've encountered is featured in Louisiana Agriculture a quarterly magazine published by the LSU AgCenter. The article I read featured many tables and graphs of fertilizer contaminants in Louisiana's wetlands. The authors explained the graphs very well and the article was quite comprehensible even though I didn't know much about the subject. The genre of that article is for Louisiana farmers, environmentalists, and water management facilitators. I've stumbled upon the highly-technical scientific paper through online databases and they were pretty brutal. I enjoy looking at advance mathematics and pretending to understand what's going on, but unfortunately could not understand the article enough to use it as a resource.

Since I'm going into mechanical engineering, with dreams of specializing in astronautical engineering I imagine I'm going to be writing a lot of research papers about new technologies and designs for spaceflight. Also relating to what we just read in "Writing for Science" and "Accommodating Science" I imagine I'll be writing lab reports, memos to colleagues, and conveying results to a more general audience. So far I've written one abstract in my scientist career, but I have a feeling I'll get more experience before the semester is over. I've also written a few lab reports in my high school chemistry class, but that was a while ago and the teacher laid out the guidelines very specifically so it was hard to error.

Paper One Reflection

(Sorry this is late)

I feel that I explained one point pretty well, and another two points not so well. I found that I was mixing my information up, and didn't have clear separations in thought. Also neither my paper nor abstract were the required length, so I could have added more content for sure. I'm still having a hard time figuring out when to be concise and when to elaborate and I find myself assuming the reader can fill in the gaps. I do feel that I understood the article well, and knew exactly who my authors intended audiences is, I just failed to communicate that very well. One thing I'm going to do for next assignment is get an earlier start on it. When I had the time to sit there and think about my argument for a couple hours is when i figured out what exactly I was trying to write, but if I had started earlier I would have had more time to revise. Also next time I'm going to try and outline my argument better. During paper one I would come up with new points of argument in the middle of trying to explain something else and got off track and just kinda skimmed a couple different ideas in one paragraph. I have a feeling my grade isn't going to be too wonderful on this paper but hopefully I will be able to improve on my strengths and weaknesses from the first paper.

Paper One Summary and Outline

The paper I chose is:
Rather, John D. G. "Transformational Technologies To Expedite Space Access And Development." AIP Conference Proceedings 1208.1 (2010): 137-146. Academic Search Complete. Web. 31 Jan. 2012.
(Pretend it's MLA formatted).

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Summary:

"Transformational Technologies To Expedite Space Access And Development" by John Rather is a suggestion on how superconducting wires can be used to support an electromagnetic launch tube capable of sending spacecraft and building materials out of the atmosphere without the use of on-board fuel. This would significantly decrease the costs of spaceflight, therefor allowing much easier access into space. The author explains that the tube would function like an upside down suspension bridge (140). The launch tube would gradually slope upwards to a height of roughly 12 miles above sea level at the end. The author explains that although the land usage would be high, there are many suitable locations in the U.S. and other countries (142). Near the end of the paper the author also suggests more "futuristic" ideas such as capturing asteroids for building materials, radiation shielding, and even to deflect other Earth-bound celestial rocks (145), and "power beaming" (143). Power beaming is a concept where an concentrated electron beam sends energy from Earth to facilities on the moon or on Mars or vice-versa.

Paper Outline:
I. Introduction
Thesis: This article is aimed at college students and beginning researchers interested in different ideas for the future of space travel.

II. Body
A) Author's style.
--->Very inspiring
--->Calling for a new wave of technological development
--->Defines terms/limited jargon
B) Elements used.
--->Historical background
--->Pictures
--->Hypothetical situations

Unnecessary science?

I was sitting there watching television with my father and an ad comes on for match.com. Instead of explaining it here's the link to video on youtube, it's only sixteen seconds. The study was conducted by a company called OkCupid, another online dating site. Maybe they're partner companies? I found the original blog post by OkCupid, titled "Don't be ugly by accident", with this study and a handful of other studies to make people more insecure. Here's that link. Fun note: The founder of OkCupid also started SparkNotes.

OkCupid asked 9,785 smart phone users how many sexual partners they had over their lifetime, and here's the nifty graph that came about


I gave away my opinion with the title of the blog, but seriously, why should we be telling people these things? How is it benefiting mankind in anyway? Women age 30 who owned iphones clocked in around 12 sexual partners. Is that supposed to be good? I don't understand...

I believe the media has perpetuated this idea of "fun casual sex" for far too long now. Now more recently the media has turned to sexual violence as a means for entertainment. My mom watches Law and Order pretty much anytime it's on, and one particular branch of that series is "Special Victims Unit", which means every episode is about rape in whatever horrifyingly twisted manner that sadistic bastard Dick Wolf can come up with. It's people like Dick Wolf that are destroying society from the inside out, feeding us fear until we jump at our own shadow then rush to the phone for ADT. Unfortunately it's people like my mom (I still love her though haha) that sit there and buy into that crap. I've asked her why, and the best I've gotten is "we need to know about these things the world isn't safe". I do happen to know that already without watching Law and Order. There's worse going on in Tibet, and let's not forget Mugabe's friendly gang of chaps

Yeah I've mostly ranted about more stuff. I think I'm done for now. Thanks for reading!

Aliens surf on quasars

I found an article on nasa.gov (seems reputable even though they did fake the moon landing) detailing the discovery of a mass of water "equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean" (Clavin 7.22.11) found just a mere 12 Billion light-years away. The article is called "Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water" and is written by Whitney Clavin and Alan Buis. The main attraction of this study is our new friend APM 08279+5255 a quasar powered by a black hole. Here's the link. I'm no astronomer, but how I understand it, a quasar is like a lighthouse being powered by a black hole. The black hole consumes space dust and gasses and releases energy as super-luminous light, x-rays, radiation, all that fun stuff, but in this particular case the black hole is feeding off of water vapor.

I feel the article has been written for a general audience ages seventeen and up. You'll want to have an open-mind and be able to think of very large things, very far away. As I continue to revise this now I'm beginning to think maybe one would have to do some research to really understand what's going on, but the authors do help a bit. The first thing I observed is that the writers compared multiple statistics of this black hole to our sun (ex. "...20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns" (Clavin 7.22.11), instead of stating raw scientific data. Another big indicator was when the writers defined what a quasar is, "A quasar is powered by an enormous black hole that steadily consumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust" (Clavin 7.22.11).

I found this article mind-blowingly interesting; I mean come on, water in space. What else do we know about water? 'You can surf on it?' Indeed so. I imagine instead of traveling to the beach for vacation, aliens fly over to quasars for spring break. Also you might say 'It provides for life as we know it', so there's the potential... Scientists have found quite a bit of water in our own galaxy, but mostly frozen under the surface of extraterrestrial polar caps. I've also always been a fan of space in general, it's fascinating. I would like to think one day mankind will bond together for the pursuit of knowledge and happiness and we will really learn about the universe. If only we spent less time and money thinking of new ways to inflict harm on one-another, but I digress (as if my rhetoric had continuity).

The only problem with the article is it got me thinking too much! I found myself with a dozen or so tabs open explaining subatomic particles, string theory, the theory of everything (that's a fun one), general relativity, dark matter, dark energy, the mass of a black hole, you name it, I had the hardest time even writing the article because my thoughts were so far in the clouds (space clouds mind you, highly toxic).

I also understand how none of what I have written displays characteristics of scientific writing or plain English, and that I mostly ranted about stuff. I enjoy playing with language...coming up with odd ways to phrase things...breaking up my thoughts into small segments with ellipsis...

Thanks for reading!

*Special thanks to Psiopradio.com for the picture of the alien and universetoday.com for the picture of the black hole that I so eloquently combined to give you a completely realistic view of what's going on in space right now. Also a big thank you to SOPA for failing so I can post these pics without getting sued (I might still be able to get sued I don't know...that would be lame)

Goals for class

When I signed up for scientific writing, I had no idea what to expect, it just sounded like an interesting alternative to Composition II. Going into Engineering I figured anything to do with science will help my future career, so I signed up. I'm already happy with that decision. The first piece we read was "106 Science Facts and a Truck Full of Baloney", and it was an eye opener from the beginning. I never really thought about how science is presented to the masses, and sadly the information is quite skewed and at times blatantly silly. So to be informed is one of my main goals in this class. The article showed me that even though I would like to think I wouldn't been fooled by phony science, it can still happen. I always knew that advertisers are the main source of regurgitated scientific claims, but I never really understood how bad it is until now. The one that startled me the most was how companies are allowed to put claims on packaging, that though true, have nothing to do with the product. One example was "gluten-free yeast". What's stopping companies from making claims such as "hormone free spinach" or "polyethylene-free beef"? Those things aren't supposed to be in there anyway! After I'm finished in this English course I hope that I can view scientific claims with professional scrutiny and delve deeper into the "why" and "how" of the claims. Besides that I just hope to do really well in the class. The resources are available, I'll just have to stay focused and get my work done ahead of time so I can get it checked over. So other than doing well in the class, and staying informed, I can't really think of anything. I'm sure I'll get a lot more out of the class once the material starts getting assigned and we're writing papers. I feel that I am already a pretty good writer, so I don't think I'll have to work on too much in that department. I do want to make sure that I keep my writing interesting to the reader. The scientific writing area has always been plagued by stereotypes of being "dry and boring" but science is a lot more than that, it's happening around us at all times, and now more than ever we're seeing new scientific breakthroughs that are going to vastly alter our perception of reality.