Can a robot be a scientist? Developing students' epistemic insight through a lesson exploring the role of human creativity in astronomy

Artificial intelligence is transforming the practice of science worldwide. Breakthroughs in machine learning are enabling, for example, the discovery of potentially habitable exoplanets beyond our solar system. The growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in science raises questions for scientists, philosophers, computer scientists ... and educators. How will the scholarship and practice of science education respond to the growing role of artificial intelligence in science? Questions like 'Can a robot be a scientist?' can help stimulate students' epistemic curiosity, about the nature of scientific knowledge, including the value and importance of apparently uniquely human attributes such as creativity. In this article we explain the development and delivery of a science lesson using the question 'can a robot be a scientist?' to explore the role of human creativity in scientific observation and classification, using resources and activities created for the citizen scientist project 'Galaxy Zoo'

Aerosol organic nitrogen over the remote Atlantic Ocean

Water soluble organic nitrogen (WSON) has been measured in aerosols collected on three research cruises on the Atlantic Ocean from approximately 55°N to 45°S. Results are interpreted using air mass back trajectories and results for other aerosol components. WSON concentrations range from 1 µm) aerosol. Concentrations of WSON were highest in samples containing Saharan dust, suggesting a locally significant source associated with soil dust. More generally WSON concentrations were highest in air which had recently crossed continental areas. In the whole data set, WSON is well correlated to total soluble nitrogen and represents approximately 25% of total nitrogen. This correlation implies a significant anthropogenic contribution to the organic nitrogen

Field observations of the ocean-atmosphere exchange of ammonia: Fundamental importance of temperature as revealed by a comparison of high and low latitudes

Simultaneous measurements of NH3 in the atmosphere and NH4 + in the ocean are presented from fieldwork spanning 10 years and 110 degrees of latitude, including the first such simultaneous measurements in the remote marine environment at >55°N. At high latitudes, fluxes were almost exclusively from air to sea, in contradiction with previous lower-latitude studies, which have suggested that the open oceans are predominantly sources of ammonia to the atmosphere. Sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the direction and magnitude of the ocean-atmosphere NH3 exchange is highly dependent on water temperature. This temperature effect is sufficiently strong to outweigh the effects of variability in concentrations in seawater and atmosphere in many parts of the (open) ocean. This is highlighted in data from the Atlantic oligotrophic gyres, where fluxes were found to be predominantly out of the ocean despite extremely low dissolved ammonium concentrations in surface waters