Science 360

Greg Hammer, MD, is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

As a pediatric anesthesiologist and an intensive care physician he cares for children and their families during very stressful times.

Burnout is on the rise. This is a problem we cannot afford to ignore. The rising costs of burnout are staggering. Health care professionals AND teachers, sacrifice their health, happiness, and relationships.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Dr. Greg Hammer created GAIN Without Pain so that health care professionals AND teachers can prevent burnout and reclaim happiness.This proven path toward personal resilience can be implemented by anyone, anywhere, in just a few minutes a day. Increased resilience could save your practice, your students, your marriage - or even your life.

GAIN Without Pain is a four-step process toward happiness. GAIN is an acronym for Gratitude, Acceptance, Intention, and Nonjudgment.

"As physicians (AND teachers), we owe our patients(students) two things…our time and our skill. We do not owe our patients (students) our lives.” - Joseph D. Wassersug, MD, bestselling author

Dr. Hammer frequently speaks around the world to share his expertise and philosophy. Greg's website: www.GregHammerMD.com
Book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/7TFzdPT

This is the thrid time I've had Bill on the podcast and this episode is very practical becasue it will get you outside at night time to find some cool things in the sky. Here is a list of some of the items we talk about:

• Magnification: amount of times you are brought closer to the object
• Objective glass: (the big one at the end) measured in millimetres
• Asterism: A piece of a constellation such as Regulus (a white star) in the constellation Leo.
• Two stars “up” from that is gamma Leo, a golden double star.
• The Big Dipper is high above us and the handle arcs to Arcturus, another golden star.
• The globular star cluster M3, slightly west and then north of Arcturus.
• Alcor and Mizar, a double star in the middle of the handle of the Big Dipper.
• The pointer stars (Dubhe and Merak) in the Big Dipper show up where one is bluish and the other more yellow.
• The Moon: craters, shadows, the “seas”, 600 features visible on the Moon that are named and visible with binoculars.
• Jupiter and the four Galilean moons, identifying them by their position which can be looked up easily on line.
• Andromeda the nearest galaxy. This is being pointed at by the constellation Cassiopeia.
• Mars is kind of red.
• Saturn is kind of yellow. And you won’t see the rings through a pair of binoculars.
• Venus is tricky because it’s so bright that it becomes difficult to notice it’s phases.

Much of this will require some explanation, but that's where Bill comes in and explains it. I suspect you'll be using the pause button a few times as you look for the stars and features of the sky Bill refers to. But have some fun with it and when you feel you're ready, take your students outside and hunt for these stellar objects along with them. It'll be fun!

We held an Environmental Conference at my school on Earth Day this year. This was a conference totally organized by the students, which I attended.

Unbeknownst to me, while they were organizing this conference via video chats every Friday after school for weeks, they also formed an organization called Langley Youth Environment Action Network. They even made an Instagram account (see link below).

During the opening hour, they had ice breaker activties that included a round table discussion on what each person's greatest environmental quest would be. I sat and listened and knew that it had to be recorded.

Their's is a message that globally, the people need to hear. But it is a message that locally, teachers need to hear. This is your audience, these are your students, hear what it is that they are thinking about and what they want to learn more about.

The world is changing faster than ever and it worries me that schools are changing the slowest. So try this simple test...if your classroom and your lessons and strategies were the same ones you used 20 years ago, or were used on you as a student 20 or more years ago...it's time to change it up. Students today are far too aware, far too connected, far too passionate to be treated as if it's 2003 still. To me, that is the greatest message coming out of this episode.

Reach out to me on Twitter: @astrostephenson or email: [email protected] and let me know your thoughts on this theme I'm stating. I'd love to know the thoughts of the greater mass.

And find this student group on Instagram: @lyean.sd35

Lauren MacLean lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada, with her two young toddlers and an energetic puppy. She is a full time elementary school teacher where she takes her learners outdoors to explore, learn, and play each and every day.

She is the author of the best selling children’s picture book, Me and My Sit Spot and the host of the Mentoring Nature Connections podcast. Let’s get outside and get our hands dirty!

Resources:

Soaring Eagle Nature School: https://soaringeaglenatureschool.org/
Kamana Naturalist Course from Wilderness Awareness School: https://wildernessawareness.org/articles/the-sunset-of-kamana/
Me and My Sit Spot: English Version
Me and My Sit Spot: French Version
Me and My Sit Spot for Early Learners: Early Learner Version
Green Teacher
Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network (CBEEN)
Nerdy About Nature

Sanjay Sharma MD (Harvard University), MSc, FRCS, MBA is a retinal specialist who is a professor of ophthalmology at Queen’s University.

He is an internationally renowned eye surgeon, and has treated over 250,000 patients. Dr. Sharma is a clinician-scientist who has published over 300 scientific papers which have been cited over 10,000 time. He's the author of 3 textbooks, and I'm now proud to host him on Science 360!

An innovator at heart, he has launched a series of digital platforms, including MEDSKL – a leading medical education platform that now reaches medical students from over 400 universities. And now he has introduced PREMEDSKL because high school students wanted something to help them prepare for their dream of becoming a doctor.

This is a fascinating story of adaptation, innovation and creative thinking. Dr. Sharma and I have very similar philosophies of education, which is always fascinating, especially when we hold vastly different roles on opposite sides of the country. Except when you really stop to notice, although people are hailing from different backgrounds, at the heart, our differences diminish. And our aim to assist young people in finding success in their aspirations is one and the same.

Tell your students about PREMEDSKL!!
https://www.premedskl.com
Connect with Dr. Sanjay Sharma on LinkedIn
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sanjaysharmamd

I would consider listening to this episode in one of two ways: either at a time when you can take it all in at once, or in junks over a period of time. The reason is because I believe this episode represents the essence of what I consider to be the sort of scientific education needed in high schools today, and I really want you to concentrate and even "read between the lines" on this one.

You see, education will be most effective if it is linked to something that is tangible, meaningful and relevant. It has to have the potential to affect our students' emotions, to draw them into a deeper understanding of the science that we're teaching them.

Between the lines, you'll find that what we teach regularly and routinely on a day to day basis, actually has meaning to the health and well-being of our planet. The oceans are the great regulator of our ecosystem and framing science lessons and tasks within that, will connect our students to something bigger than themselves, that they will want to get to know better.

But further, all of our lessons should have something to tie knowledge to meaning. I've said to my students that if it doesn't have a meaning that I can explain, then I simply won't bring it to class. That's my pledge to my students. But it's also my responsibility as a teacher to find that meaning. And this episode brings meaning, to me, and hopefully to you too.

Check out these links to some of the work of my students but also the work of Ove:

50 Reefs: https://www.50reefs.org
Catlin Seaview Survey: https://youtu.be/wpZKGP9P8v0
Catlin website: https://www.catlinseaviewsurvey.com
My students' ocean research documentary: https://youtu.be/7mKcs_3LHpg

James Maynard publishes The Cosmic Companion, a multimedia news outlet covering astronomy and space exploration from around the globe.

Growing up, science and art were always encouraged in the house, and James quickly fell in love with reading the works of Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and other science writers. Carl Sagan’s masterwork, Cosmos, was a turning point for James, who wore out several copies of the book as he read and re-read the masterpiece.

In January 2018, James Maynard launched The Cosmic Companion, providing unique, in-depth news about space and astronomy to the general public. Today, he lives in Tucson, Arizona, with an adorable and intelligent family, including his lovely wife, Nicole, and Max the Cat.

His writing experience covers newspaper, radio, television, and online news services.

Currently, he is writing The Cosmic Companion, covering astronomy news stories as they happen. These stories are carried on Amazon Alexa, and Medium.com, where he has been named a top writer in the space and science categories.

Connect with James:
https://thecosmiccompanion.net
LinkedIn

I always tell my students that school's greatest purpose is to tell you the questions, NOT the answers. If a student has studied cosmology, they have become an interesting person that can now engage in some brilliant conversations and ask probing questions. I try to demonstrate that in this episode.

I'm not going to tell you that you now know cosmology or understand the Big Bang. But you do know the major players, and the timeline and sequence of events that lead us to this understanding.

Continue to dig deeper, ask more questions and pursue knowledge. What I've provided you here in this series is just scratching the surface. But now you know where to start scratching.

Notice that I left this episode off with a final thought that seems to beg some more information. Let me know if you want to hear the bonus episode that may explain something about the last comment I made here.

As always, you can find me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @astrostephenson

The CMBR discovery was the reason Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize. It truly was that year's greatest scientific discovery. And to think that Robert Dicke was actively looking for it at the same time as their accidental discovery is one of the greatest scientific twists of fate!

I did another episode on the Big Bang. I'll link to it here:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48420126

Have a need to ask about this or discuss it further? Email me at [email protected]
or Twitter me at @astrostephenson

At times I feel that this "intro" to cosmology is almost TOO intro! It's hard to do justice to the complexity of a century of inquiry in just a few minutes. But these episodes are really designed to lead you to the main "players" in the game. And the story of the universe in the 20th century is not told without mentioning Lemaitre and Hoyle.

If you ask your students who the biggest opponent to the theory of the Big Bang was, they likely will say the church. That is actually incorrect. The biggest opponent was the scientific community because the main idea was that the universe was STATIC and unchanging. The person leading that parade was Albert Einstein who told LeMaitre that his math was fine but his physics was atrocious!

Einstein, LeMaitre and Hubble all met together to discuss their repsective ideas of the universe, and eventually Einstein realized that the data was correct and the universe IS expanding. He referred to his cosmological constant as his biggest blunder, because he had formulated it to counteract the possibility that the universe was in motion.

Truly one of the greatest scenes in scientific history would have been that epic conversation between these three great scientists. Maybe have your students act it out and re-enact that pivotal moment in our understanding of the universe.