We’re looking for someone to take on a once-in-a-lifetime assignment: spend a Month at the Museum, to live and breathe science 24/7 for 30 days. From October 20 to November 18, 2010, this person’s mission will be to experience all the fun and education that fits in this historic 14-acre building, living here and reporting your experience to the outside world. There will be plenty of time to explore the Museum and its exhibits after hours, with access to rarely seen nooks and crannies of this 77-year-old institution.

If the contestant is successful in staying inside for one month, he or she will win $10,000 and a bunch of tech gadgets. Plus, you get to explore as much as you want! The museum has a lot of very cool things, like the only German U-Boat in the U.S., a coal mine, and the Silver Streak passenger train.

The contest information page is here. But hurry–submissions are due by August 11th.

Until now!! The nation’s inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival is coming to Washington, DC, this fall. Picture this: on October 23 and 24, the National Mall will be covered with booths sponsored by over 500 science and engineering corporations, and each will feature a fun, hands-on, science activity for kids.

(I’m such a nerd, this sounds so freaking awesome to me!)

I’m posting about this now to give you plenty of time to plan your vacations. If a trip to DC isn’t in the cards for you, they are planning to have many satellite events. Perhaps one will occur near you, or better yet, you could host one!

I’m really hoping my family can swing a quick trip to DC that weekend, since I am so crazy for science education. Besides, my musician friend Monty Harper is hosting a booth focusing on science music for kids, and we don’t want to miss it!

Another reason to go? They call themselves the “Woodstock of Science”!

If 90% of US families could comply with medical recommendations to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months, the United States would save $13 billion per year and prevent an excess 911 deaths, nearly all of which would be in infants ($10.5 billion and 741 deaths at 80% compliance).

I admit I haven’t read the full paper, just the abstract. Since my graduate school library proxy privileges have expired, it’s not so easy to get full texts of studies anymore. I learned of the study from Harriet Hall’s post at Science Based Medicine. She is skeptical of the study, so full disclosure, I am learning of this particular study from a source that already has pointed out its flaws. She draws attention to this questionable aspect of the paper:

This new study did not provide any new evidence. It simply took risk ratios from a three year old government report, extrapolated, and estimated the costs.

The three year old study actually did not show a clear relationship between breastfeeding and mortality. So how can the new study, using the same evidence, reinterpret the data to find that breastfeeding could save over 900 lives a year? Harriet says:

They used statistical skullduggery. They went to other statistical sources to find the rates of breastfeeding and the overall death rates from diseases like asthma. Then they used their imagination to estimate how many of these deaths involved non-breastfed children. Then they combined those estimated death rates together with the odds ratios from the AHRQ study to do their calculations. That’s not kosher.

Naturally, like almost any post on breastfeeding will do, Harriet Hall’s has generated tons of comments–152 as of this writing. People get emotional about this subject. One comment was very, very interesting:

I have participated in a lot of these surveys and studies over the past 10 months, including ones from the NIH/CDC looking at breastfeeding rates in US women overall, and while I have no expertise in statistics or surveying, I think these surveys are DEEPLY flawed and are seeking to present very one-sided data.

Generally, when I take these surveys, they ask if I:
*Breastfeed exclusively
*Breastfeed and supplement with formula EVEN ONE TIME
*Formula feed

If you supplement with formula EVEN ONE TIME, you are put into the formula feeding category and all the rest of the questions are about why you “failed” at breastfeeding and what kinds of supports were lacking and so forth. (Some of the more quacky surveys have a series of questions about how sick your baby is if you’ve used formula EVEN ONE TIME, because apparently formula is evil magic, and they don’t ASK those questions if you put that you breastfeed exclusively.)

So even though I have been breastfeeding now for 22 months, I would be put into the formula feeding category. We supplemented on day two in the hospital, since my son lost almost 10% of his body weight while we were waiting for my milk to come in. This was a doctor’s stern recommendation, and seeing my baby well fed was like a miracle, after watching him cry all night long. We supplemented a handful of times after that, mostly because of logistical issues when I was working, and the baby was at daycare and had finished all my expressed milk. I was a successful breastfeeder and pumper without supply or latch issues. Still, after almost two years and nearly exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, I would be put in the formula feeding category, according to this commenter! That doesn’t make sense.

When I first wrote about formula feeding on this blog, I had actually posed the question to Harriet Hall while researching: okay, so breastfeeding is better, sure. How how much better? Are we talking a few colds a year? One ear infection? What are the real numbers?

This study purports to answer that question, but according to Harriet, it doesn’t do a very good job:

This new study confirms what we already knew: that breastfeeding is better for a baby than bottle-feeding. The question is how much better, and this study really can’t answer that question. It consists of estimates based on estimates based on mixed data of varying quality. Considering the quality of the data and the pitfalls of epidemiological studies, it is likely that this new study overestimates the value of breastfeeding and the number of preventable deaths.

My big question now is this: how many deaths does formula prevent? Considering all the women who cannot get enough supply, whose kids can’t get the latch right, or who just cannot breastfeed because of work or convenience issues, how many lives per year is formula feeding enhancing? I think formula gets a pretty bad rap, and it’s not fair. Sure, breastfeeding is great. I love it, and I’m glad I was able to do it. I’m happy my workplace supported it (although I did pump in a supply closet and not a “lactation lounge” as required by California law, but whatever). My son can’t seem to get over breast milk, so it must be absolutely fantastic and delightful for babies. And yes, we should support better laws for breastfeeding women all over the country.

But without breastmilk, isn’t it just awesome and wonderful that we also have formula? Why is it so hard for people to accept that this is a great invention that has probably saved many, many infant lives?

On our winter vacation, we drove from New York to Boston, and we stopped to quell some car seat antsy-ness Mystic, Connecticut. My son had this conversation with a beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium. The beluga whales were definitely a highlight of the aquarium.

Astronomers have been making an effort to rebuild the connection — especially for kids — that these gorgeous astronomy pictures you see on the Internet are just more detailed images of things that you can see yourself with your own eyes. During the “100 Hours of Astronomy” (which I wrote about here), my kids and I got to see Saturn through a telescope for the first time! And, let me tell you, it’s an exciting experience to look at a dot of light in the sky, learn that it’s actually Saturn, and then see with your own eyes (through a telescope) that it really has rings, just like the pictures! Ditto for seeing the details of the moon (which we also saw that day), and seeing the moons and surface stripes of Jupiter (which we saw at a recent public observing at Princeton University)!!

But what about kids and parents who aren’t aware of such opportunities? Who might be inspired by seeing the planets through a telescope, but just haven’t thought of it? Well, that’s where Halloween comes in!!

Richard Wade of Friendly Atheist had a great idea!

He happens to have some fairly serious telescopes, and realized that Halloween was the perfect opportunity to share them with the neighborhood! It’s autumn (when the weather’s still warm, but it gets dark early), and kids teens and parents are out in a celebratory mood, ready to socialize with all the neighbors! It couldn’t be more perfect!

His wizard costume is part of his effort to make this telescope-viewing blend into the rest of the holiday celebration, but really I think it’s just because it’s fun to have an excuse to dress up as a wizard. And he reports that the kids, parents, and even teens really enjoy the opportunity! And don’t worry — he also passes out treats. The view of Jupiter is in addition to Halloween treats, not instead of (unlike the anti-Halloweeners who pass out Bible tracts).

What a fun idea! It makes me wish I had a telescope (well, and a yard…) so I could do the same! I hope the idea catches on, and other serious Astronomy hobbyists who have real telescopes will start doing this too!!

During our little weekend visit to Boston, my kids were thrilled to discover that — starting at the science museum — there’s a scale model of the solar system! In the photo above, Leo is posing with “Venus” of a model that is billed as “the largest scale model of the solar system east of Peoria, Illinois.” Of course we’ve already visited the one in Peoria. Not to mention the one in Zürich. Maybe we’ll eventually visit them all!

Coincidence?

No, it’s They Might Be Giants!!!

Leo watching TMBG live — There’s John Linnell at the keyboard.

I absolutely love their new album Here Comes Science — I’ve written an additional post about it here counting the ways. So, when my husband noticed that TMBG were playing at a free music festival here in New Jersey, we knew we had to be there!!

Nico was a little hesitant about the heat and crowds, but Leo really got into it and had a fabulous time!!!

I had to hold Leo up so he could see and dance!

I asked Leo what his favorite song they played was, and he responded: “Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed.” (That’s from the album “No!” — I sometimes sing it for my kids at bedtime.) But, he explained, his favorite part was the part with the broom:

Before singing “I Am Not Your Broom,” we sang Happy Birthday to the broom.

I loved They Might Be Giants in college and grad school for their (more or less) grown up music, and I love the way they’ve moved on to this next life stage (parenting) with great educational songs that are fun for kids and their parents!

The sun is so big that the wall of the building can’t even contain it!

They love dirty space snowballs! (see here)

We walked from the sun to Mercury (a few blocks), but for the other planets we had to get back in the car.

We found Earth at a gas station.

We only got around to visiting the inner planets since we had to continue on our way (from Minnesota to New Jersey), but Nico insists we stop by to see the rest on our return trip!

Friday night I got to see the rings of Saturn with my own eyes for the first time. OK, so the light was bent a little by some mirrors and lenses, but it’s still cool that your can see a speck of light in the sky, and if someone points a big enough telescope at it, you can see that it really does have rings, just like in all the pictures! And that’s not all.

In addition to setting up telescopes in town (and letting people look through them!), the local polytechnic institute (ETH) has set up an exhibit (like a temporary astronomy museum) explaining astronomy and astrophysics. You can learn about how stars and nebulas are formed, about the composition of the universe (how dark matter and dark energy compares to the stuff we can see), and about the instruments people use to study the cosmos.

This is especially fun for my son Nico, who has gotten really interested in astronomy through books and the Internet. The funny thing is that he can tell you the relative sizes of Rigel and Sirius, but we hadn’t taken the time to take him outside at night and show him that you can look up in the sky and see those very stars with your own eyes. Now we’re changing that.

This “100 hours of astronomy” is such a cool effort since — with all of the ubiquitious outdoor lighting these days — people today don’t see the stars as much as earlier generations did, and most of us don’t really understand what we’re missing. I keep thinking of the description by a friend of mine of the sky in Mongolia, far from cities and buildings:

Those nights were extraordinary. Hundreds of kilometers from the nearest population center, our galaxy came alive each night. It was impossible to walk around camp without the Milky Way catching my eye and drawing my gaze upward. This was mid-August, and the Perseid meteor showers were adorning the sky with their own celestial fireworks. It was heady stuff.

I wish I could see that. But if you don’t have the opportunity to travel across Mongolia, at least you can go out tonight and an astonomer will show you the craters on the moon!