Ten students, ten weeks, 100 posts – thank you!

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It’s hard to believe, but the ten weeks of Mind The Science Gap posts are over for this semester!  The ten students did an incredible job, and demonstrated an enviable degree of skill in translating complex science to a broad audience – as well as learning a lot on the way.  Over the past ten weeks we have had nearly 50,000 pageviews and 1,600 comments – not bad for a student public health blog!

I would encourage you to go back and browse the past ten weeks of posts – they are easily worth your time and effort to read, as are the comments on each of them.  If you don’t know where to start, just point your browser to http://mtsg.org/?random – you will be directed to a random post on the site.

And I would especially encourage you to read about what a number of the students thought about and learned from the experience – you can pull up the reflections posts here.

I also wanted to give a huge thank you to our mentors, and everyone else who took the time to comment on posts and to spread the word.  Your help and dedication were invaluable, and highly appreciated!

Mind The Science Gap will be back later in the year with a new batch of students – please subscribe to our mailing list (to the right of this page) so that you don’t miss any thing.

And again, thank you!

(Updated 4/4/12)

Troubles with titles… and other musings

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For anyone who has heard me talk about this course over the last few months, you’ve likely heard me talk about how much I loathed coming up with a title for my posts.   It’s just a few words, but how can they cause so much stress?  How do you sum up a post and find a catchy (but truthful) way to grab someone’s attention?  Without a good title, aren’t the rest of your words meaningless?  While the last 10 weeks have been a good learning process for me, I still have a great deal of disdain for selecting a title.  So, in full disclosure, if any of the titles to my posts caught your eye and made you stop and read, it’s likely because of fellow MTSG blogger, Candace Rowell (thanks!) :)

Aside from my struggle with coming up with punchy one liners, perhaps one my biggest challenges throughout this semester was deciding when (and how) to offer my opinions in my posts. Continue reading →

So Long, Farewell

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Wow.  I honestly can’t believe that my time writing for MTSG is over!  These 10 weeks flew by—although I must admit, there were definitely times when I thought it might last forever.  Not to sound like it wasn’t a great experience because it was definitely rewarding.  The rewards just came with challenges!

Like many of my fellow MTSG bloggers, I have been an academic writer for many years and dabble in creative writing on the side.  The blogosphere, however, was an unknown world. Continue reading →

All Good Things Come to an End…

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When we began posting in January I did not know what I was going to write about, had written nothing but formal papers since 8th grade, and the thought of putting my work out there for public comment was petrifying. While overall, the experience proved to be a fantastic, there certainly were weeks where I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

As I was reflecting on this project and course, I realized how far I have come in both a literary and literal sense. With this in mind, I have developed my MTSG TOP 10: Continue reading →

Closing the Science Gap

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Thank you so much for reading my posts this semester!  I didn’t really know what to expect from this class.  I’ve always loved writing, but I’m more of a creative writer, and I wanted to jump into the realm of scientific technical writing.  Crafting a blog post each week certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone and threw me into the learning curve.  Here are the top three things I’m taking away from my experience at Mind the Science Gap: Continue reading →

There are no rules.

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The only rule is that there are no rules. There may be guidelines. But there are no rules.

I like rules, even if it’s just for the principle of breaking them. I enjoy rules. Communication, especially through social media, is not bound by rules. It’s an art not an exact science. It’s subjective and dynamic. It’s challenging. The last 10 weeks have been very challenging.

Reflecting back over my last 10 posts, I finally see what my biggest challenges really were. Continue reading →

Dirt and You: The Hygiene Hypothesis

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Pictured: Me, fighting the development of allergies. All Credit to my exceedingly excellent mother.

From what I have garnered from generations before mine, things used to be different. Not just different, but better. (Or worse, when it meant the grizzled old man telling the story was manlier than I, and had to put up with more. Don’t you know we used to have to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways? And we had no shoes so we wrapped barbed wire around our feet for traction?). But when it comes to health, it appears that this might a little true. Some diseases appear to be on the rise, such as autism. And while there is ample discussion on why we as a society are experiencing higher rates of this disease, (or if we in fact are experiencing higher rates, as opposed to simply diagnosing it more often), there is no debate on whether allergy rates are on the rise.

The Hygiene Hypothesis is one answer that has been proposed to explain the rise in allergy rates. Continue reading →

Research bites

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Like many of my fellow Michiganders, due to the unseasonably warm weather*, I got to dust off my sandals and let my feet peak into the life of sunshine and warmth . . . and mosquito bites!  Ever since I was little, I was prone to getting bit (my sibling used to tell me it was because I smelled, my parents said it was because I had “sweet blood.”  Either way, I was always putting on aloe or dotting myself with calamine lotion to soothe those bites).  Thankfully, due to our temperate climate, I don’t have to be concerned about malaria, or Dengue Fever, (although maybe I should pay attention to West Nile) but as I’ve been holding back on itching my bites, mosquitoes have certainly been on my mind.

When I think about why a mosquito decides to bite me (or rather, suck my blood) over the next person (maybe I shouldn’t take it so personally but I can’t help it), there are a number of factors that come into play.  Heat, moisture, odors (fragrant perfumes, lotions), dark colored clothing, and carbon dioxide can all attract a female mosquito (the males don’t bite) to a human host.  But what are some of the factors that impact where a mosquito decides to bite you? Continue reading →

Relieving Stress with the Help of a Four-Legged Friend

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Meet Moose, my giant pup!

Anyone who knows me knows that my Newfoundland dog, Moose, plays a leading role in my life.  I’m sure some people think I’m crazy for letting him do things like sleep in bed with me, but Moose is just as much a family member, if not more so, than some of my human relatives.  Not only is Moose a great listener and a superb cuddler, but our bond may also have benefits for my health—particularly in helping to fight off the negative consequences of stress. Continue reading →

The Schoolyard Bully: A Menace to Public Health?

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Bullying came up as a topic on the radio the other day as I drove to daycare. A new documentary is coming out called Bully. The subject is unsettling for a relatively new parent like me. I’ve had glimpses into the potential future when I catch sight of my daughter getting pushed over by one of the other kids in the playground or at daycare.  (Not that she is innocent herself when it comes to pushing and shoving as my son would point out if he were old enough to talk).

stopbullying.gov

Bullying is a topic that certainly weighs on the minds of a lot of parents. But is it a public health issue? When it comes to public health, I usually think of infectious disease problems first – like monitoring flu cases or investigating outbreaks of food poisoning. After that I think of chronic disease surveillance – like tracking cancer and obesity rates. I was surprised to learn that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects data on bullying as part of their work in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

The CDC fact sheet on bullying highlights the public health implications of this problem, describing the potential for “physical injury, social and emotional distress, and even death” that can result from bullying behavior.  Studies like this one from England have found higher rates of headaches, abdominal pain and sleep problems in kids who were bullied. A new study from the Canadian Journal of Public Health explored the relationship between bullying and another important health outcome – depression. Continue reading →