SCIENCE YEAR NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 67 Week ending Friday, 17th May 2002 Happy New Friday! This week, we bring you nettles, social psychology and why humans have to wear clothes nowadays… (warmthwise that is, not taste-and-decencywise). • NEXT STEPS - unveiled • National BE NICE TO NETTLES WEEK • New look for SCI-TEACH teachers pages • S.E.N. and Science • SCI-TECH annual festival • Psychological RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK • Psychological MNEMONIC OF THE WEEK • LONG TITLE CHALLENGE • LOSE WEIGHT the easy way • HAIRY HUMANS shed their fluff • PSYCHOLOGICAL joke of the week • A.O.B. NEXT STEPS It's here! After months of backstage activity, we are very proud to present the new Science Year careers information bank, on our website. The aim of NEXT STEPS is open visitors eyes to the huge range of science careers available, and give guidance on what areas might suit you best and how to get where you want to be... One particular highlight is the database of "real-life" working scientists and science communicators who have spilled the beans for us on what they do, where they do it, their 'quality of life' quotient... and even who would play them in the movie of their life... There's also a fun personality quiz, 'Suits You' which will investigate your inner psyche and calculate which aspect of science you were born to work in... And more more more! Have a look - and if you're a science or technology-related professional (including teachers) and would like to be included in the database, please drop an email to katie.walsh@scienceyear.com >top NETTLE, WHERE IS THY STING? Get your long trousers on and get out in the countryside: Sunday is the first day of National Be Nice To Nettles Week. "Whaaaaaaat week?" you may be snorting incredulously. But no, this isn't a wind-up. There is indeed such a week, and according to the organisers there's a huge fieldful of reasons why you should be kind to our yeowchy green friends. Read all about it on their cheery and informative website. And if you're near a nettle patch, why not don your sting-proof gloves and get active with the spikey little fellas as well: try Lady Ridley's Nettle Soup, make an effective plant fertiliser or grow your own caterpillar farm in the garden. At the very least, give their highly compulsive True or False quiz on the website’s 'Fun & Games' section a go. Nettley good stuff. Why all this nettle-related activity? It’s part of an ongoing awareness-raising exercise about the usefulness of even what we term ‘common weeds’, and their crucial role in the bigger eco-picture. To find out more, click to Working With Wildlife. >top THE SCI-TEACH PAGES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN' Obviously, you wouldn’t have been aware. But in our secret underground web development grotto, much midnight oil has been burned lately in a project known as ‘Operation: Sci-Teach Revamp’. The reason for the overhaul was that since the launch of Science Year, bit-by-bit (and thanks in part to many newsletter readers’ contributions) we’ve accumulated reams of teaching resources of various types. And it was all just hanging around in an increasingly long list, very much in need of a good sorting out. Which we have now done, so that online resources, KitPot information, competitions, lecture transcripts, Cool School Inspirational Ideas etc will - we hope – all prove much easier to find your way around. Have a look for yourself by clicking here. >top S.E.N. AND SCIENCE Still on the subject of our the new Sci-Teach pages, we’d particularly like to draw your attention to our new section featuring school science for pupils with special educational needs. Adrian Fenton, the S.E.N. specialist at the Association for Science Education is the main person we have to thank for helping us round up a number of tried-and-tested S.E.N. activities, but there’s room for a whole lot more. So if you’re a teacher and have a successful S.E.N. project or ideas you’d like to share via the website, please let us know. Email katie.walsh@scienceyear.com and Katie will make it all happen! >top SCI-TEC ANNUAL FESTIVAL - DERBY/JUNE Advance notice of the 8th Annual Festival of Science, Engineering, Technology and the Environment which will take place in June, at the University of Derby. Once again the organisers are bringing together a raft of top-quality exhibitors and educators to provide activities and demonstrations for primary and secondary classes - and the whole family. Imaginative events of all sorts and shapes will be sprinkled around the university during the Festival. Here's what they say: "Imagine going on a Star Safari and encountering a hippopotamus, being invited to the Ugly Bug Ball and finding a 'Hungry Crocodile', taking a flight to the 'Island of Energy Bay and visiting the Outernet, the Galaxy's version of the Internet. Look out for a Giant Buzzard, or see the popular return of Exploding Custard, take part in Solar-car Racing, whilst watching a Wizard on a Skateboard. Discover Noah's Ark, see a Dynamic Laser show or encounter Creatures Under the Sea, all in the name of Science." The Festival runs from 17 - 22 June, with the breakdown as follows: Monday 17 June Secondary Schools Tuesday18 - Friday 21 June Primary Schools Saturday 22 June Science on a Saturday (for everyone) Full details can be found at the Sci-Tech website. >top RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK As you are no doubt aware, the BBC Science programme that everyone’s talking about right now is ‘The Experiment’, the 10-day filmed event in which 15 volunteers found themselves living in a simulated prison, 5 as guards, 10 as inmates. If you haven’t seen it yet, we recommend you have a look at the programmes… and at the extensive website too. As well as information about the programme, there’s a full explanation about the original experiment, and links to a range of websites related to group psychology. Talking of which … >top MNEMONIC OF THE WEEK Clearly ‘The Experiment’ was a highly structured group situation information in which individuals were assigned either high or low status – which meant they were either behind bars or not. But in everyday life, when groups of people are brought together, here’s what they tend to do – and it rhymes (almost!) They FORM … STORM … NORM … PERFORM … and MOURN Form – the group comes together Storm – initial conflicts Norm – the group settles into roles, conflict subsides Perform – work functionally together as a group Mourn – when the group is broken up. Group psychology made easy! See it in action during the next series of Big Brother … >top LONG-TITLE CHALLENGE A Thesaurus and a deck chair are up for grabs in our science-paper-longest-title challenge (closing date 31st May, UK residents only – just want to make the latter clear because of the deckchair-post thing). Steven Chapman from our partners, the British Association, emailed in with a plea for his own work to be acknowledged as the literary masterpiece it is. "How could you forget my classic ‘Heavy Quasiparticles in Cerium Copper 6 studied using magnetic quantum oscillations?" he demanded to know, adding, "I have no idea what it's about now as it was over 10 years ago." But never mind the subject, the title was too short anyway. Much more robust competition was received from David Coutts at Oxford University. He unleashed two mega-long titles on us, the more extreme being the 348 character+space length’d: ‘Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor in the prevention of postoperative infectious complications and sub-optimal recovery from operation in patients with colorectal cancer and increased preoperative risk (ASA 3 and 4) – Protocol of a controlled clinical trial developed by consensus of an international study group - Part one: rationale and hypothesis’ from the journal Inflammation Research, March 2001. Is it possible to generalise that biological titles have more scope for long-wordiness? Hmmmmmmm…. Further entries to our competition eagerly awaited! Please send to: anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com >top SUMMER’S COMING …so you may feel you should be losing a bit of weight. But what’s this? You already have! Check out this lovely website: Your Weight on Other Worlds. >top SCIENCE LINE QUESTION OF THE WEEK ‘Why did humans start wearing clothes - our hairy ancestors must have been warm enough?’ Yes but they hadn’t seen the new range at Cecil Gee had they? Nope, wrong answer. The correct one can be found at: Science Line. This question partly by way of reminding you that if you have any scientific queries of your own you'd like answered, Science Line is a brilliant service that will provide you with the information you need. There's no charge for their brainpower, they just want to encourage curiosity about science ... Their phone number is 0808 800 4000 and the lines are open from 1pm - 7pm Monday to Saturday. Alternatively visit their website at http://www.sciencenet.org.uk. >top PSYCHOLOGIST JOKE OF THE WEEK Man: ‘Doctor, you’ve got to help me, I’m really stressed at work and I keep flying off the handle with people…" Psychologist: ‘Well take a seat, and tell me what the problem is…" Man: ‘I JUST ******* DID THAT, YOU STUPID ******* *******!!! >top A.O.B Got to laugh eh. Any more jokes, news, events, long-title entries or any other contributions, please send them to anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com . Have a great week - and may the Force Be With You.