New Discovery at Smithsonian

The Space Shuttle Discovery flew into the DC Metro area this week for its retirement at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.  The 747 on which Discovery was piggybacked made several passes over the capital reminding me of watching the first several space shuttle launches as a grade school student, seeing the Challenger explosion, and participating in the McNair Scholars Program as an undergraduate which drew it's name from Ronald E. McNair (a physicist aboard the Challenger).  Looking forward to visiting the Discovery now housed here in Virginia at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center.   (photo snapped from Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts along the Potomac River)

A Mobile App. for Green Goods Goodness

The Good Guide's mobile app. allows you to scan in a bar code from a product and see ratings in terms of its health, social, and environmental impact.  http://www.goodguide.com/  Although the website only links to the iPhone app it is also available in the Android store.  The app. is free for both platforms.  How does sweetened fizzy clear water weigh in on Good Guide (I can hear the "take back the tappers" cringing but it was the only thing with a bar code in arms reach)?  Pretty bad on health but above avg. on environment and society.  Submenus allow you to see fine level breakdowns.  

It does take a looooong while to install all the product data and I haven't tried it out at the grocery store yet but if you are looking to justify that purchase (or justify not purchasing!) have a look at the Good Guide rating first.  

Linus Pauling Memorial Lectures (Science, Technology and Society)

Although it was sold out I got a ticket at the last minute for Brian Green's lecture on "Hidden Realities" at the Schnitzer Concert Hall here in Portland.  He created a great narrative for understanding three leading theories of "everything".  Kudos to the Institute for Science, Engineering, & Public Policy for hosting the LPM lectures.

I started thinking about Agent Based Simulation, which I usually think of in 2D space when he showed a clip from his string theory series which aired on PBS several years ago.  The bit where he talks about extra dimensions and how we might be able to imagine more than 3 dimensions.  The example of a hidden dimension is a cable across the street where we are told that from far away we could just see two dimensions with a left or right movement.  then they zoom in and say but if we were an ant we might also be able to walk all the way around the cable providing an extra dimension.  He goes on to say how we might imagine a space time continuum with little strings at very fine scale allowing access to extra dimensions.  Netlogo has a 3D version but I wonder if anyone is tinkering with adding extra dimension and what use this might possibly have for ABS?

Getting My Foot in the Door at the National Academies: A Student Perspective

Every time you volunteer, submit an internship application or apply for a scholarship you are getting your foot inside the door of the workplace. In 2007, my first year at PSU, I took a couple of minutes to follow up on a list-serve e-mail announcing a summer internship in government. As a result, I ended up interning in Salem, Ore., for what turned out to be two summers with government agencies, and met public policy students from all over the nation serving as Oregon Policy Fellows (www.pdx.edu/eli/oregon/fellowships/program).

While at the League of Oregon Cities in 2007, I updated a study on fiscal conditions in Oregon's cities. The report informed city managers about the constraining effects of recent property tax measures and the changing fiscal conditions across Oregon's 242 cities. I presented the study findings at the Pacific Northwest Regional Economics Conference that year in Tacoma, Wash., and met officials from all over the northwest.

While working for the State of Oregon's e-Government program in 2008, I worked on a performance assessment study. The findings from my study were presented to the division director and staff to provide perspective on possible ways of equitably funding and administering the program. E-Government is the group that makes it possible for Oregonians to, among other things, navigate government documents, pay taxes, get fishing licenses and reserve campgrounds online.

I am currently in Washington D.C. for a 12 week Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Academies (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/policyfellows/index.htm). As part of my fellowship experience I am, among other things, participating in a Transportation Research Board (TRB) project that will examine the effectiveness of using transportation infrastructure investments (such as Obama's infrastructure stimulus) as a counter-cyclical economic strategy.

The TRB is a division of the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC is the operational arm of the National Academies and serves as the nation's advisor on science and technology-related policy issues ranging from stem cells to the deepwater horizon explosion, which has a committee meeting with representatives from British Petroleum and Haliburton downstairs today as I write this. In short, if you receive a Nobel Prize someday, you will likely end up a member of the National Academies (along with Einstein) and when policy makers need to assemble the world's experts, the NRC is a likely choice.

As part of my fellowship experience, I have toured institutes, met with agency personnel involved in science and technology policy, have met a few Oregonians, and have found that many of the nation's leading experts are Purple Vikings living in Portland, Ore.! As a Viking, take a few minutes to follow up on that opportunity that catches your eye from your favorite PDX list-serve, keep in touch with a few people along the way so that they might speak on your behalf, and relax and realize that getting your foot in the door is a long process that you likely started long ago.