I said on Saturday that I was planning to write a full post about scientific stereotypes. Here it is. Lots of people have written lots of good ground here, and I'm not going to try to recover everything. Here are just a couple of links http://www.labmanager.com/ http://www.sciencebase.com.
I could go into a whole lot of questions about the gender politics of the stereotypes, but that's not where I'm trying to go.
I'm pretty sure everyone has heard a lot of the stories about people in many techincal fields. We're incapable of communicating, we loose interest as soon as anything has to actually deal with people, we can't manage to bathe/attract significant others or friends, etc. I'm sure there are people to whom that applies. You can see current examples on the TV show Big Bang Theory, among others. And there are people who have different opinions about these stereotypes. I have had guys in a bar in grad school say "Ooh, science majors are hot" That wasn't the only reason this particular guy didn't end up as boyfriend, but it was reacting to stereotypes instead of learning the reality-not a good relationship foundation.
I recently got the comment that I'm an "atypical PhD-you are actually functional and can talk to people." I do try for that, and I like(at least some) people. I definitely want to get to decide if I like them, not the other way around. I worry that I'm not as socially polished as I'd like to be, but I'm pretty sure that's more a function of me having high standards for myself. Science majors that I just went to school with include a salsa dancing singer with an amazing voice, a model-got pad, mothers of mulitple children, a sailor, a marathoner, and now I'm starting to feel like I don't do much. All of them very functional people.
There are also many people trying to work on these stereotypes. The University of Minnesota has a program UMN Gemini program site, that is designed to be a couple of lectures every month to help. But why do we need to do that in 2011? Why do I care? Well, I do feel that there is a big anti science bias in my country, and that stereotypes like this play into it. Okay, maybe we will do a little bit of stereotype politics. How many politicians are willing and proud to go on tv and talk about not trusting science? too many. How many make cracks about eggheads? Too many. and so we get people who mistakenly believe that there is legitimate scientific controversy about global warming, evolution, the safety of vaccines. because they don't want to be eggheads, and learn about science for themselves. Now, this is one of many reasons that people have for many different beliefs. It can't explain everything. And doesn't happen in a vacuum. But it's related.
Showing posts with label better living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label better living. Show all posts
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Question about sustainability that touches on chemistry
I got a link to the following that makes me . . . curious.
I find the basic concept, that worrying about only one thing is not actually indicative of overall sustainability or greenness very important. I rant a lot about the concept of food miles as the only ecological value of food(an extreme example of some locavore arguments, but not beyond the realm of possibility) and carbon as the only measure of product waste a lot. Some of that comes because a particular factor is easy to measure and easy to track. There is merit in tracking things that have numbers associated with them, particularly in the green movement. At least, that's my opinion as a scientist. Numbers and data ground observations in reality.
I am, though, not convinced that packaging doesn't matter, though. I feel like waste can be at least moderately prevented by careful buying. Do we really need to buy 2 weeks worth of groceries every time? Call me suspicious
I find the basic concept, that worrying about only one thing is not actually indicative of overall sustainability or greenness very important. I rant a lot about the concept of food miles as the only ecological value of food(an extreme example of some locavore arguments, but not beyond the realm of possibility) and carbon as the only measure of product waste a lot. Some of that comes because a particular factor is easy to measure and easy to track. There is merit in tracking things that have numbers associated with them, particularly in the green movement. At least, that's my opinion as a scientist. Numbers and data ground observations in reality.
I am, though, not convinced that packaging doesn't matter, though. I feel like waste can be at least moderately prevented by careful buying. Do we really need to buy 2 weeks worth of groceries every time? Call me suspicious
Monday, May 31, 2010
Science writing
So, after about three months of employment, I reached the end of my temp contract and am once again looking for work. I'm looking at ways that aren't 100% laboratory work all the time, as much fun as that can be. Trying to branch out for a while. So far, what I have come up with bites on seems to be writing. I'm editing the newsletter for my local section of the ACS, and am supposed to be writing some articles for a magazine specifically focused on green living. More details later as I get more facts to pass on. This isn't a very long post, since I don't currently have a lot to say, or a lot going on. I'm looking into a couple of posts in the future that will be more hard chemistry based, but the thing is, to to those right takes time and effort. Which is being put in.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
environmentalism and chemistry
I named this blog better living. So I ought to post something about trying to live better, right? At the same time, it is supposed to be a professional blog, and I want to keep it that way. So I will. This post is going to combine the two.
Environmental awareness, sutainability, whatever you want to call it, people have lots of opinions on it, and people have lots of different ways of expressing those opinions. Fair enough. I personally am tryign to think about how I can make this world last longer, how I can make my life still work, without sacrificing the life of future generations that I'm giong to depend on once I get older enough to need it. If you don't like that, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not on my blog. Okay so relating this to chemistry-How do we make chemistry more sustainable? There are people doing wonderful chemistry to solve all kinds of environmental problems- I'm not going to list them all here, they'd be too numerous. That's obviously important. But not everyone can be working on cleaning up lakes all the time. People have got to eat, most people like to shower and have soap everyday, we want to wear something, we want to get from point a to point be in a hopefully not that crazy manner. This requires other chemistry. And I personally think that could stand to be responsible as well. So, apart from explicitly "green chemistry" how do I try to green my chemistry? Mostly the things that they always tell you-if you don't need it, don't use it, and if you do need it, see if you can do it with less
1. Making standards-this is admittedly a function of glassware availability. i try hard to only use 50 mL of standards, because that is the smallest volumetrics that we have. I'd do smaller if I could. This is also affected by amount of solution I have to pipette. If that was much smaller, I couldn't do smaller volumetric flasks. so, finding the optimum here. Which means less waste of chemicals. Bonus
2. Trying to use fewer plastic centrifuge tubes. It still makes me nuts how many of them are used in a given day, and how many I throw away. That said, there is a drawback here with regards to contamination. While I try to use fewer of them, the line sometimes down to either use a fresh tube or risk sample contamination. No dice there. This is something I do think most employers should encourage, because frankly at the rate I still end up going through those tubes, it can't be cheap.
3. Air drying glassware rather than acetone drying it. If it's going to be a while before I need to use it, why even bother with adding additional chemicals?
4. Proper cleanup. This might be the one thing that isn't inherently beneficial for the companies bottom line as well, though it doesn't have to be expensive, but is important. I try to minimize how much waste I make to begin with, and try to deal with it appropriately. Don't surprise the custodians. And I feel for any company like the cost of proper disposal will be cheaper than the cost of cleanup later.
5. not using disposable cups. This is admittedly because I live in an area where water isn't an issue, so I can wash the ceramic coffee mug from the kitchen every day. But I really don't want to throw away another piece of Styrofoam every morning. By the same token, using tap water instead of bottled. By now I don't think it's a big secret that most bottled water is just tap water that has been filtered. so why pay the money, why waste the plastic, why bother? I've got a cup, I've got the tap.
There are, however, still environmental issues that I haven't found a way around
1. Use of heavy metals. I'm testing for heavy metals using ICP. That means standard solutions of pretty nasty environmental things, like As, or Cd. Not fun. But, using this technique, there isn't' away around that.
2. Those plastic tubes, as mentioned above. Even trying to minimize, I will still regularly go through a pack of 50 50 mL centrifuge tubes. They work well for what they do, and washing/reusing has limits.
This is something that everyone can do, and companies can encourage. It does save money to reduce waste.
Environmental awareness, sutainability, whatever you want to call it, people have lots of opinions on it, and people have lots of different ways of expressing those opinions. Fair enough. I personally am tryign to think about how I can make this world last longer, how I can make my life still work, without sacrificing the life of future generations that I'm giong to depend on once I get older enough to need it. If you don't like that, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not on my blog. Okay so relating this to chemistry-How do we make chemistry more sustainable? There are people doing wonderful chemistry to solve all kinds of environmental problems- I'm not going to list them all here, they'd be too numerous. That's obviously important. But not everyone can be working on cleaning up lakes all the time. People have got to eat, most people like to shower and have soap everyday, we want to wear something, we want to get from point a to point be in a hopefully not that crazy manner. This requires other chemistry. And I personally think that could stand to be responsible as well. So, apart from explicitly "green chemistry" how do I try to green my chemistry? Mostly the things that they always tell you-if you don't need it, don't use it, and if you do need it, see if you can do it with less
1. Making standards-this is admittedly a function of glassware availability. i try hard to only use 50 mL of standards, because that is the smallest volumetrics that we have. I'd do smaller if I could. This is also affected by amount of solution I have to pipette. If that was much smaller, I couldn't do smaller volumetric flasks. so, finding the optimum here. Which means less waste of chemicals. Bonus
2. Trying to use fewer plastic centrifuge tubes. It still makes me nuts how many of them are used in a given day, and how many I throw away. That said, there is a drawback here with regards to contamination. While I try to use fewer of them, the line sometimes down to either use a fresh tube or risk sample contamination. No dice there. This is something I do think most employers should encourage, because frankly at the rate I still end up going through those tubes, it can't be cheap.
3. Air drying glassware rather than acetone drying it. If it's going to be a while before I need to use it, why even bother with adding additional chemicals?
4. Proper cleanup. This might be the one thing that isn't inherently beneficial for the companies bottom line as well, though it doesn't have to be expensive, but is important. I try to minimize how much waste I make to begin with, and try to deal with it appropriately. Don't surprise the custodians. And I feel for any company like the cost of proper disposal will be cheaper than the cost of cleanup later.
5. not using disposable cups. This is admittedly because I live in an area where water isn't an issue, so I can wash the ceramic coffee mug from the kitchen every day. But I really don't want to throw away another piece of Styrofoam every morning. By the same token, using tap water instead of bottled. By now I don't think it's a big secret that most bottled water is just tap water that has been filtered. so why pay the money, why waste the plastic, why bother? I've got a cup, I've got the tap.
There are, however, still environmental issues that I haven't found a way around
1. Use of heavy metals. I'm testing for heavy metals using ICP. That means standard solutions of pretty nasty environmental things, like As, or Cd. Not fun. But, using this technique, there isn't' away around that.
2. Those plastic tubes, as mentioned above. Even trying to minimize, I will still regularly go through a pack of 50 50 mL centrifuge tubes. They work well for what they do, and washing/reusing has limits.
This is something that everyone can do, and companies can encourage. It does save money to reduce waste.
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