National Science Week is on 10 – 18 August – an annual celebration of science in Australia.
http://www.scienceweek.net.au/
Maybe it’s time to enter the national Sci-ku poetry competition with a short 3 line Haiku-style poem about science – this year with a statistics or mathematics theme: http://riaus.org.au/events/sciku/
We are having a Sci-ku writing competition for Science Week and Book Week at our college – after all Book Week has the universe theme! We are going to be flexible with syllables (usually 5,7,5).
Sci-ku examples: http://blog.mbl.edu/?p=1953
African clawed frogs
have flown on the space shuttle.
That’s one giant leap.
(Greg Early)
Some know the time by
looking at the sun. I can’t
make out the numbers
(A. Shalizi)
Good sites for science news:
Science Daily: Extensive science news http://www.sciencedaily.com/
Scirus: Use this science-specific search engine for science news, information, journal articles etc http://info.scirus.com/
CSIRO: Includes news, blogs, CSIROpedia http://www.csiro.au/en.aspx
ABC Science: News, TV and radio programs http://www.abc.net.au/science/
Royal Institution of Australia: A national science hub bringing science to the people http://riaus.org.au/
Science Direct: Full text database of journal articles and book chapters http://www.sciencedirect.com/
Science, physics, technology: http://phys.org/
Science news and blogs: http://scienceblogs.com/
LiveScience: Science articles and news http://www.livescience.com/
Australian Popular Science: http://www.popsci.com.au/
How stuff works: http://www.howstuffworks.com/
eBizMBA: This site has rankings for many subject areas, based on Alexa Global Traffic Rank + other ranking tools. Intriguing! Find the most popular music sites, gadget sites, health sites, reference sites, most popular blogs etc http://www.ebizmba.com/
15 most popular science websites for Aug. 2013: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/science-websites
Since it’s also the International Year of Statistics, here are some interesting sites with info about world stats that would be useful for social science classes. And without statistics, we would have to search the internet one page at a time! http://www.statistics2013.org/
Gapminder: for a fact-based world view
Stats, graphs, videos. Gapminder World shows the world’s most important trends.
http://www.gapminder.org/
Search for many indicators on the Data page eg. poverty, marriage, democracy, drought, working hours etc Then visualise them in Gapminder World: http://www.gapminder.org/data/
Worldometers
Real time world stats – population, economics, environment, society and media, food, energy etc. Great site!
http://www.worldometers.info/
NationMaster
Compares national statistics in graphical formats, using data from sources such as CIA World Factbook, UN, WHO, UNESCO, OECD etc Some of the data may be a bit dated but could be used as a starting point for more research.
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
IDB: International Database World Statistics
Choose countries and various demographic reports. Compare figures from past years and into the future.
http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php
World stats in many categories: A great list of sites.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/doemoff/govinfo/intl/gov_intlstats.html
State of the climate in 2012
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their report on 6 August – an annual “checking on the pulse of the planet”.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-08-07/climate-report-warns-extreme-weather-events-are-now-the-norm/1172262
The full report: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2012.php