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Sci on the Fly
April 6, 2026
Surviving and Thriving during the AAAS STPF Executive Branch Finalist Week
Congratulations on making it to finalist week! Finalist week can be very busy and hectic, particularly as you request and navigate interviews with host offices you are interested in. My goal with this post is not to overwhelm you, but to offer several strategies for starting finalist week off on the...
Sci on the Fly
June 27, 2018
Breaking The Cycle: Combating The Opioid Crisis Through Global Drug Demand Reduction
Editor's note: This blog was originally published on the U.S. Department of State blogs DipNote and Medium. The consequences of drug use are felt by millions of people in the United States and around the world; some of the most dramatic effects are due to the...
Sci on the Fly
June 19, 2018
Museum Exhibition on Epidemics in a Connected World
Fifty million people died when about a third of the world’s population became victims of an influenza pandemic, dubbed the Spanish flu, that started in 1918 and ended in 1919. The cause of that outbreak, which spread to every continent on the planet, was a...
Sci on the Fly
June 14, 2018
Background Noise and Classroom Design
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily represent the views of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation, or the United States Government. The original version of this post was published at The...
Sci on the Fly
June 1, 2018
Citizen Science: Many hands building a web of powerful data
It’s early on a Saturday as Ann Kelly carefully picks her way down a steep stream bank in her dusty-green rubber boots. On one side of the stream is a residential street, on the other a popular park where children and dogs are already bounding across the grass...
Sci on the Fly
April 30, 2018
How Language about Ability Affects Performance
The original version of this blog was published at The Learning Scientists on November 15, 2017. It is commonly known that telling a child she is stupid is harmful. But what about telling her she is smart? Although the latter case is unlikely to be as bad as...
Sci on the Fly
April 23, 2018
Is 100% Renewable the Best Way to Decarbonize?
Scientists broadly agree that humans must cut greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change. But they definitely do not agree on how to do that. An example of how extreme these disagreements can become is the debate between Professor Mark...
Sci on the Fly
April 9, 2018
The Spice of Life and Death
There’s a new player on the market, and the consequences of using it could be deadly. Sometimes referred to as Spice, Fake Weed, or K2, synthetic cannabinoids bank on consumers equating their “all-natural” products with cannabis-derived products, despite...
Sci on the Fly
April 2, 2018
It’s Time for Data Ethics Conversations at Your Dinner Table
With 2.5 quintillion records of data created every day, people are being defined by how they travel, surf the Internet, eat, and live their lives. We are in the midst of a “data revolution,” where individuals and organizations can store and analyze massive...
Sci on the Fly
March 24, 2018
A Tune-Up for the U.S. Innovation Engine
A common mantra of economists and politicians is that “innovation is the engine of U.S. economic growth,” and one of the best fuels for that engine is investments in research and development (R&D). One study estimated that for every one percent increase in R&D...
Sci on the Fly
March 21, 2018
The BRAIN Initiative and the Need for Animal Research
Leaders from the National Institutes of Health ( NIH) on February 26 presented exciting updates on the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies ® (BRAIN) Initiative in a congressional briefing sponsored by the American Brain Coalition, the...
