11 days left for Foldscope – origami microscopes – on Kickstarter

11 days left for Foldscope – origami microscopes – on Kickstarter

When I first heard that Foldscope was launching a Kickstarter to make these amazing origami paper microscopes available to the public, I put 2 different questions up on several of my social media sites: I’m thrilled out of my mind to be writing a post about this new good quality, “disposable”, CHEAP compound (uses microscope slides) microscope. Oh yeah – it’s 140X magnification – you can see bacteria What would you look at if you had such a thing? It’s practically indestructible (can step on it, throw it off a building, run it through the washing machine), it’s about the size of a 3X5 card and fits in your pocket. Runs on watch battery or just held up to a light. If you are a “career-biologist” – How would you use this to teach people about the wonders of science and our everyday (microscopic) world? If you are not a career-biologist – Just wondering what would be interesting to YOU. Is there anything you’d use it for? The feedback was AMAZING! Check out the suggestions and excitement: From the biologists look at: Take my kids on a TARDIGRADE hunt Pond water, leaf litter, whatever is around me Blood and fecal smears with

Put a Microscope in the Hands of Everyone! Foldscope launches Kickstarter!

Put a Microscope in the Hands of Everyone! Foldscope launches Kickstarter!

Who would you educate with a pocket-sized paper microscope that costs ~ $1? Foldscope launches a Kickstarter campaign to “put a microscope in everyone’s hands.” Want to visit another world full of bizarre and beautiful creatures like you’ve never before imagined? Such a hidden world surrounds you wherever you are – the microscopic world. What? Don’t you have a microscope? Foldscope, a new Kickstarter project, aims to change that. Foldscope is a microscope made out of folded paper, a lens the size of a pinhead, and a piece of plastic to serve as a coverslip over a paper “slide”. With these simple materials, my 8-year-old daughter entered the fascinating microscopic world. Foldscope’s goal is to distribute at least a 1 million paper microscopes around the world to share the mystery and beauty of the hidden world around us. Considering their Kickstarter campaign had 1,000 backers and $40,000 of their $50,000 goal within 2 hours of launch, they are easily positioned to do that. However, they need scientists and educators to help convey the wonder of the microscopic world to the public. As one of the inventors, Manu Prakash told me, “This isn’t just a personal tool, but is about bringing

Tiny Earth Initiative – BIG Impact!

Tiny Earth Initiative – BIG Impact!

Tiny Earth (TE) challenges over 10,000 students to solve a “real-life” medical problem – antibiotic resistance – while training for higher-paying STEM jobs. Real research projects like TE increase STEM diversity by better engaging women and minorities with a reason for their training.  The World Health Organization celebrates Antibiotic Awareness Week November 14-20 to raise awareness about the importance of properly using antibiotics. Since antibiotics were first developed in the 1940’s, they have saved countless lives. However, we have overused and misused antibiotics and are now confronted with the idea of an “antibiotic winter”, where bacterial pathogens have evolved resistance to these life-saving drugs rendering them useless. To make matters worse, the big pharmaceutical companies are not investing in research for new antibiotics because rediscovery rate is high. Antibiotics are simply not as profitable as other drugs. Academia and citizen science can fill this gap in novel antibiotic discovery by doing the initial discovery process, while teaching students valuable microbiology techniques. Once potential products are identified, then academic-private partnerships can be formed to get the antibiotic through testing and perhaps to market. Tiny Earth (TE) is one such academic group sifting through hundreds of thousands of soil microbes for new

Putting the Lid on “Culture as Medium”

Putting the Lid on “Culture as Medium”

Art and science exhibit “Culture as Medium” grew and evolved through its stay in Baltimore. “Culture as Medium” colonized Baltimore during April and May, 2106. An art/science exhibit curated by Margaret MacDonald, Culture as Medium brought art work done with or inspired by microbes to Baltimore. Curator MacDonald, partnered with the Baltimore Under Ground Science Space (BUGSS), Project Bridge, and Mostly Microbes to provide the perfect bacterial incubator of art and science. I stumbled onto the exhibit through my now favorite social media outlet – Twitter. Dr. Francois Lapointe, a professor of Biology at University of Montreal, Canada posted an article about his “microbiome selfies”. Reading that he’d be performing next in Baltimore, I contacted him. He quickly put me in touch with the curator of the exhibit, Margaret McDonald. “Culture as Medium” was Margaret’s brain child and thesis project for her Master’s of Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Formally a chemist, Margaret became interested in the intersection of art and science.  She knew that Baltimore with its strong artistic and scientific communities was an ideal setting for an art-science exhibit.

The Game PATHOGENESIS: A Fabulous Way to Teach Immunology

The Game PATHOGENESIS: A Fabulous Way to Teach Immunology

The game PATHOGENESIS is an excellent deck building game for teaching human-pathogen interactions.   Games are such a fun, active-learning way to teach science and science concepts! The game PATHOGENESIS is an incredible new addition to any game closet from community center and classroom to home.  It’s strategic and interesting while being scientifically accurate. I’m so in awe of how much thought and care clearly went into the concept, development, and design of the game PATHOGENESIS to create something fun, but educational. It’s obvious that one of the co-designers teaches immunology at a community college. PATHOGENESIS teaches how our three-tiered immune system works to defeat bacterial pathogens. You are the pathogens trying to invade the human body and defeat one of three different body areas: respiratory, gut, or tissue. You build a hand of pathogens with different abilities and attack the body site(s) each turn. As you attack, you gain damage tokens with the winner being the person who collects the most damage tokens when a body site(s) is defeated.