We need to talk about sexism in science

The events that culminated in the resignation of Bora Zivkovic from Scientific American last week demonstrate that women in science face a long struggle to root out sexis

Stellar Polarimetry: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

On the final day of the Stellar Polarimetry conference, participants split up into three "breakout sessions" to discuss the future of the field in the areas of instrumentation, upcoming opportunities, and community priorities. This contribution compiles the major recommendations arising from each breakout session. We hope that the polarimetric community will find these ideas useful as we consider how to maintain the vitality of polarimetry in the coming years.Comment: 7 pages, published in proceedings of "Stellar Polarimetry: From Birth to Death" (Madison, WI, June 2011

Measurements of near-surface turbulence and mixing from autonomous ocean gliders

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 30, no. 2 (2017): 116–125, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2017.231.As autonomous sampling technologies have matured, ocean sensing concepts with long histories have migrated from their traditional ship-based roots to new platforms. Here, we discuss the case of ocean microstructure sensing, which provides the basis for direct measurement of small-scale turbulence processes that lead to mixing and buoyancy flux. Due to their hydrodynamic design, gliders are an optimal platform for microstructure sensing. A buoyancy-driven glider can profile through the ocean with minimal vibrational noise, a common limitation of turbulence measurements from other platforms. Moreover, gliders collect uncontaminated data during both descents and ascents, permitting collection of near-surface measurements unattainable from ship-based sensing. Persistence and the capability to sample in sea states not feasible for deck-based operations make glider-based microstructure sampling a profoundly valuable innovation. Data from two recent studies illustrate the novel aspects of glider-based turbulence sensing. Surface stable layers, characteristic of conditions with incoming solar radiation and weak winds, exemplify a phenomenon not easily sampled with ship-based methods. In the North Atlantic, dissipation rate measurements in these layers revealed unexpected turbulent mixing during times of peak warming, when enhanced stratification in a thin layer led to an internal wave mode that received energy from the deeper internal wave field of the thermocline. Hundreds of profiles were obtained in the Bay of Bengal through a barrier layer that separates a strongly turbulent surface layer from a surprisingly quiescent interior just 20 m below. These studies demonstrate the utility of buoyancy-driven gliders for collecting oceanic turbulence measurements.We thank the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) for supporting the development of autonomous glider systems and the integration effort to incorporate microstructure sensing. The National Science Foundation supported the SPURS microstructure glider effort. ONR supported for the glider program in the Bay of Bengal

Turbulence observations in a buoyant hydrothermal plume on the East Pacific Rise

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 25, no. 1 (2012): 180–181, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2012.15.Hot vent fluid enters the ocean at high-temperature hydrothermal vents, also known as black smokers. Because of the large temperature difference between the vent fluid and oceanic near-bottom waters, the hydrothermal effluent initially rises as a buoyant plume through the water column. During its rise, the plume engulfs and mixes with background ocean water. This process, called entrainment, gradually reduces the density of the rising plume until it reaches its level of neutral buoyancy, where the plume density equals that of the background water, and it begins to spread along a surface of constant density.The data presented here were collected in the context of National Science Foundation grants OCE-0425361 and OCE-0728766

Twitter Informatics: Tracking and Understanding Public Reaction during the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic

Much attention has been focused on Twitter because it serves as a central hub for the publishing, dissemination, and discovery of online media. This is true for both traditional news outlets and user generated content, both of which can vary widely in their journalistic and scientific quality. The recent Swine Flu pandemic of 2009 highlighted this aspect perfectly, global events that created a large online buzz, with some dubious medical facts leaking into public opinion. This paper presents an investigation into how online resources relating to Swine Flu were discussed on Twitter, with a focus on identifying and analyzing the popularity of trusted information sources (e.g. from quality news outlets and official health agencies). Our findings indicate that reputable sources are more popular than untrusted ones, but that information with poor scientific merit can still leak into to the network and potentially cause harm