Tetramester, Pentamester

A big question facing colleges and universities in the U.S. is whether in-person classes should commence in the fall, or if another round of remote teaching and learning is in the cards. Some schools have mentioned a “toggle term” – start remotely, then toggle to in-person midway through the term. For schools on the semester system, this spring was a toggle term – it started in-person, then switched to remote classes in a mad scramble.

While mad scrambles are undesirable, having had half a semester’s worth of in-person interactions helped in continuing the previously established classroom norms and relationships after the switch to remote. I think starting off the semester remotely makes this much more difficult; I say this as someone who lacks experience teaching remotely and has always taught only in-person classes. So if there was a toggle, I would prefer in-person first, then a switch to remote, rather than the other way around. Preferably, without a mad scramble. I don’t get to make this judgment call, though.

I wonder what schools on the block system (e.g. Colorado College) are doing for the upcoming fall semester. I’ve discussed some of the pros and cons of “being on the block” after visiting Quest University. The block system would certainly give one more flexibility in a wait-and-see toggle approach. You could rearrange the schedule such that classes largely amenable to remote teaching and learning (i.e., no labs, field trips, studio, on-site skill-learning) are in the first one or two blocks, keeping students away from campus for 3.5 or 7 weeks. Move the science labs to blocks later in the semester! You could even schedule instructors who prefer or are experienced with remote teaching in the earlier blocks. They then get a longer winter break!

As a chemistry instructor, I feel that the 3.5-week block is too compressed. I’ve never taught during my college’s January-term because I would be pooped out and not give my best for the spring semester. But I also think it’s challenging for students to digest major-level material in such a short block. That’s probably why my department only teaches a non-majors class or a field-research special topics class in this block. I think more time is needed to absorb, reflect, and mull over the material, as it (hopefully) sinks in. Chemistry is neither intuitive, nor obvious, and later concepts build on earlier ones. If you don’t let some of the basics sink in, students will have trouble grasping what comes next. Some folks can do it, but I think it’s less than optimal for many.

What if we had longer blocks of 8 weeks each? Instead of a semester system, a college could have tetramesters. Let’s first consider institutions where students typically take four classes per semester (a number of liberal arts institutions do this on a “unit” system where 1 unit = 1 class, and you need 32 units to graduate, so 4 x 8 = 32). On a tetramester, students would take two classes per semester on average. While their attention will still be divided between two classes, they can devote much more time to each (rather than splitting attention among four classes). Also, a student who wanted one tetramester off could attempt an intense load of three classes for two tetramesters.

Faculty could also divide their time differently. Assuming the 3-2 load of a selective liberal arts college, a faculty member could have two busy tetramesters of 2 classes each, one lighter tetramester with 1 class, and have a tetramester available for research. My department has started experimenting with special topic half-classes that run either in the first half or the second half of the semester. Students and faculty both get the equivalent of half-a-class (i.e., it’s not an intensive crammed version). This allows us to offer our students a larger variety of elective classes, and to teach our special topics rotation more often. So far I think both students and faculty like the arrangement.

For the many schools on a credit-hour system where students typically take five 3-credit hour classes per semester (and need 120 credit-hours to graduate, 15 x 8 = 120), there could be pentamesters of 6.5 weeks each. You’d have two pentamesters before Christmas and three after. A typical 3-credit-hour class meets for 42-45 hours over the course of a semester, so this would average 7 hours of class-meeting time per class in a pentamester. While students would average two classes per pentamester, there’s more flexibility overall to structure one’s school year in different ways. Offering half-classes (1.5-credit hours) could also work into the flexibility (G-Chem and O-Chem labs might fit into this category). Many institutions that serve a larger diversity of non-traditional students (i.e., not aged 18-22, usually in the working world) already offer class credits in smaller chunks. Perhaps liberal arts colleges will need to pivot to a similar model.

A faculty member who teaches five classes per year could space them out equally, one per pentamester, or have more intense teaching terms along with clear blocks for research. I think many of us would be happy to have that flexibility. I think I’d enjoy the more focused time with my students in a more intense 6-week pentamester, especially since they are only taking one other class. Although I wonder how much chemistry they would forget if a couple of pentamesters went by before they took their next chemistry class. Conversely, a student could get through G-Chem and O-Chem in a single year if needed, assuming the courses were arranged to allow this. The same class would likely be offered multiple pentamesters to provide flexibility. This also means a faculty member could reduce prep by specializing in teaching the same class pentamester after pentamester. I’d personally opt for more variety, but the point is that the pentamester provides flexibility for different preferences.

Would administration be more complex? Possibly, although possibly not by much. Collecting student fees and figuring out financial aid certainly would be more of a hassle. Class scheduling would be done more often, but less intensely each time – and possibly less complicated per pentamester. (I’ve done registrar-type work before so I know the complex puzzle involved.) Housing may be a bit more complicated if students take a tetramester or pentamester “off”. Providing flexibility can complicate matters, but it also provides the ability to adapt to situations such as Covid-19. And this is not the last global pandemic we’ll be seeing. There will be others, and so the question is whether we can make our institutions more robust to a variety of factors. Maybe it’s time for the pentamester!

Early Life on Mars

Fighting climate change is a challenge for life on Mars. You can try it too, with the solitaire scenario of Bios Megafauna (2^nd edition). Back 3-4 billion years ago when life was germinating on Earth, the same might have happened on Mars. Billions of dollars have been spent on Mars missions, which include cleverly designed instruments to sample the chemistry of Mars for signs of previous or extant life. There are folks who think that Mars may even have seeded life on Earth via panspermia. As someone who studies the chemical origins of life, I try to keep up with the mission findings. (No, we have not yet found life on Mars.)

For an overview of Bios Megafauna, see this previous blog post. Today’s post will assume you’ve seen a basic overview and focus on some of the differences in gameplay.

Instead of four cratons on Earth, there are just two cratons: Tharsis and Arabia. As the solitaire player, you start out as an “animal”. There is a “plant” player (green) partly controlled by you and partly semi-automated by the scenario rules. (There’s a variant where you can be the plant and there’s an animal “parasite”.) In my first game, life started in the north of Mars on Arabia Terra. The green domes represent a swamp plant that has spread out over as much inhabitable space as it can. White discs represent seas in the basins. (Argh, I notice an error! The leftmost green dome is too far away from water and should not be there, nor can it support the black dome.)

On Mars there are three trophic levels, marked by white lines per hex. Plants occupy the lowest level. My herbivores occupy the next level, and there are currently no carnivores. The object of the game is to survive by keeping the seas in place, and thrive by life spreading out both in numbers and diversity. Cosmic events will cause evaporation of the water thereby killing life. I started as a primitive exoskeletal arthropod (black half-domes). A new phyla speciated from their ancestors, a fossorial bulldozing burrowing creature (black worms) that have developed sensory hairs. At this point in the game, the archetypes have developed a lateral line and cannibalism. Both phyla are size 3 (black die) or ~20 kg creatures.

The plants blossomed in size! They started out as tiny oziphyta and eventually developed amniotic eggs and seasonal migration. Traveling plants with eggs! The semi-automated rules can result in the plant becoming a huge horror-beast that turns on the animal creatures or no longer supports them.

The final picture below shows a later stage of the game, shortly before I lost with evaporation of the remaining seas. Although tectonic movement was slow, eventually Arabia joined up with Tharsis creating a mountain separating the two. Some of the plants have evolved into cacti (green snails) with armored casings. Cacti can survive further from the water, but the last seas of Tharsis have dried up and so the cacti there are about to die. Back in Arabia, a group of archetype arthropods evolved a new phyla (black snail) that can eat the cacti. And some of the worm-like burrowers have evolved to become carnivores, that feed on their archetypes, that in turn feed on the oziphyta. But soon Arabia will lose its water and with that life on Mars will be extinguished.

I’ve only played one game of the solitaire scenario, and while it has some interesting features it just doesn’t seem as fun and interesting as the regular game. I’m not sure if I will play a second game, but maybe being Covid cooped-up will encourage me to try. After all, it took me quite a few games of the regular Bios Megafauna to get all the rules correct, and then to develop some interesting strategies. I’ll be posting one of those in the next week or so. There’s also a two-craton Venus solitaire scenario where a runaway greenhouse is more likely to kill life; I haven’t tried it yet.

It’s hard to keep life going and thriving on Mars. At least in the primitive origin-of-life sense scenario. On the other hand, if you wanted to build colonies and exploit riches on Mars, there’s another game for that, Terraforming Mars, where you can be a corporate honcho trying to make money off the red planet; that’s a whole different story to explore some other time.

Faculty Meeting Utility Curve

Liberal arts colleges, priding themselves on faculty governance, regularly meet to do faculty-related business. I’ll pick on selective liberal arts college in the U.S., that likely pride themselves more than usual in this arena. These colleges average 2,000 students, and with a vaunted 1:10 faculty-to-student ratio, this leads to 200 faculty members. If you can’t coerce them to attend, will they show up? You need enough to form a quorum so you can take votes, but as “efficiency deteriorates” with size, inevitably there are those who feel their time is better spent doing something else than showing up to the meeting.

I’ve been thinking about how personal behavior affects larger-scale society issues. With Covid-19, can individuals be trusted to practice physical-social distancing or wearing a mask in public without coercive penalties in place? What proportion of the population should be vaccinated, assuming a vaccine is available, and should this be forced on everyone? These are complex questions. Some people will of their own free-will adopt distancing, or wear a mask, or get vaccinated. Others will not unless forced. Individuals will make their own calculus of whether it’s “worth it” to do any of those things.

How should we think about the relationship between individual choices and its effects on society, given a range of individual preferences and values, versus what a collective group may prefer or value? These are the questions posed in a 1978 classic, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, by Thomas Schelling (awarded the economics Nobel in 2005). It’s a short, engaging, and accessible book, with many interesting examples and not too much math. The last chapter has a number of “utility graphs” based on multi-person prisoner’s dilemma scenarios. I decided to make one up based off a Schelling example. My question is simpler: Should I attend the college-wide faculty meeting?

Well, it depends. On how many other people I think will attend. Let’s see how this works in my fictitious utility graph below.

The vertical axis measures utility, the expected loss or gain of an individual who decides whether to skip or attend the meeting. The reference point A, is that utility is zero, when no one attends the meeting, i.e., the meeting doesn’t happen, and everyone is just getting their own work done.

For those who choose to skip the meeting, I’ve assumed a straight line of increasing utility because as more people attend the meeting, they are getting less of their own work done, while you, the truant, are therefore relatively more productive to the group. (In this I’m following Schelling.) If you skip, your utility increases on the red line as a proportion of how many people attended.

For those who choose to attend the meeting, your utility is measured the blue sigmoidal curve. It hardly anyone attends but you show up, you’ve wasted your time because little business can be done. For example, the dashed line B indicates that if 20% attended, their utility would be below zero. The 80% who played truant are getting ahead in their work relative to you, the sap who showed up.

But then at some point, as more people attend and quorum is reached, the college can do its business and given you (ideally) care about the affairs of the college, participating and voting in the discussion is of high utility to you (and the institution, and thus you gain a boosted benefit when this happens)! For example, if 80% attended (indicated by dashed line C), those of you who attended get more accomplished overall; even more so than the 20% who chose to skip (although they are getting their own stuff done too).

But there are diminishing returns. Once the college has more than enough people to do business, your attendance in that large meeting now provides diminishing returns. It’s not so much a boost and is maybe starting to seem less productive than if you skipped out, as illustrated by point D.

So what do I do? If I think most people aren’t going to attend, I shouldn’t either. And if everyone thinks that way, we will end up at point A – zero net utility to everyone. Schelling would call this a stable equilibrium point. Imagine a Zoom meeting. Let’s say you logged in on the dot when the meeting started, you can see how many other people are logged in, and the attendance was low – in the regime where the blue curve is below the red curve. If there wasn’t social pressure to stay, and you were homo economicus, you’d log out and leave. And others seeing the total number drop, also drop out. That’s how you end up at A.

If however, I think a quorum’s worth will attend such that our meeting will successfully engage and vote in things that benefit us as a group, and I’ll get a boost from being there, then I’ll go. Imagine the same Zoom meeting. I log in on the dot. Quorum is met. The blue curve is above the red curve. I’m staying. My laggardly colleague logs in two seconds later. Sees the benefit (blue curve above red) and adds to the attendance. A few more people do this and you’ve now moved to the other stable equilibrium (according to Schelling), the higher point where the red and blue curves intersect. Once you hit that point, Prof. Slow logs in. Sees that so many people are present, there’s diminishing returns, and thereby drops out. Thus, one doesn’t ever get to 100% attendance.

All this assumes that as individuals, we immediately and correctly calculate the utility at any point in the attendance spread. Reality makes things much fuzzier. But generating the model allows you to see what happens as the curves shift or change shape as you test different conditions. Perhaps a mild coercive penalty should be added to dissuade you from skipping out, or a sweetener to induce you to attend the meeting. Or the meetings could be structured differently.

At my college, I don’t know how proportionate attendance has changed over time. I’m sure someone keeps track. I have a suspicion it’s getting lower every year. That’s because the room’s roughly the same crowded-ness, but the number of faculty has increased as the college has grown. And the blue utility curve may be flattening. At some point, it may no longer intersect the red curve. Maybe it’s already gone below and we just don’t know it or don’t care. Maybe these idealized curves are simply wrong. But as a model, I think it’s valuable to consider, and might be closer to real life than we’re willing to admit.

The Home Work Divide

For most of my career, home and work were two separate spheres. Being married, I was determined not to let work intrude on home life. I don’t bring my work home with me, be it exams to grade, papers to read, or the emotional baggage that might come from a stressful day. When I’m home, I focus on life outside of work. It’s as if I’ve erected a wall between the two, except that there are small holes in the wall. Stuff does get through. Not much, but it’s not airtight. Most professors do not do this, but it works for me.

Not bringing physical materials home, not checking work e-mail in the evening, not connecting to my office desktop computer via VPN; these all help maintain the barrier. But the mind is not so easily tamed. I might still be thinking of a research problem, an exam question, a conversation with a student, what I need to do tomorrow; these are not so easy to block out. I do try to actively think about other things, and I’m successful for the most part – except for the times when I had lots of administrative responsibilities. Sometimes there are emergencies, and sometimes you have to respond quickly enough so that something doesn’t become an emergency (in the mind of someone else). Maybe that’s why I avoid significant administrative roles when I can.

There are advantages to the separation. Better family life, I think, first and foremost. I feel it keeps my life balanced, since living one’s life consists of many aspects, and I’ve avoided having my identity wrapped up in my career – I think this is psychologically helpful in both the long and short-term. It’s also made me much more efficient when I am at work. I don’t browse the internet for non-work-related things – an easy distraction to fall into. I must finish my class prep the day before my 8am class next morning if I don’t want to do a poor job when I’m with my students. I’m a bit drowsy and not always at my best in the early morning. (Why do I teach at 8am? I hate looking for parking.) I think this has built self-discipline and good habits.

Now Covid-19 has changed the calculus.

Thankfully I’m on sabbatical, and I am a computational chemist, so I’ve not had to make large-scale adjustment like many of my colleagues. I can do my research from home. My laptop screen is smaller, and I have to scp (secure-copy) files back and forth because I’m running the GUI (graphical user interface) locally, but I run production jobs on my high-performance computing cluster via VPN. I can also connect to my work Desktop if I need files related to teaching or service. There’s a tiny hassle going back and forth; I don’t have my large white boards in my office and research lab; and there can be different kinds of noise, interruptions, or distractions at home.

I was not very productive the first week working from home. Finding the right space (I don’t have a home office and never needed one) and just getting used to the strange idea of doing work in my home environment took a little getting used to. Things got better the next week and research was chugging away. Meetings are less efficient via videoconference, but not terrible. Again, I’m on sabbatical so I have few meetings. There’s lots more e-mail, chunks of which I can ignore, again because of sabbatical. I am making it a point to stay connected to my academic advisees and have written them a couple of e-mails since campus “closed down” and all of us dispersed. It’s registration time and I’m enjoying interacting with my students a bit more this past week, and there’ll be more next week!

I’ve had the luxury of thinking about how to structure my classes should similar shutdowns take place, while not teaching classes this semester. While I will be making my classes a little more robust to this sort of interruption, I very much hope that we will be back to in-person classes in the Fall. That’s why I chose to be at a liberal arts college, and it’s an important factor of why students chose to come to my institution. I’m also looking forward to dividing my life again between home and work. Maybe it’s because that’s what I’ve been used to for so many years, and change is difficult. My home-work divide might be rather old-school, but I think it has value. Most of my students when they go out into the workforce will not have that luxury. I’m glad I can work from home if needed. Many other jobs do not have that luxury either.

One good thing from all of this: it’s reminded me to be thankful for the choices I have!

Pandemic: The Board Game

You’re stuck at home because of a worldwide pandemic. What to do? Play Pandemic, the board game! I’m an old hand at Pandemic with 70 games under my belt since 2009. I guess I have plenty of experience figuring out how to save the world! Not, that the team always succeeds – it’s a cooperative game – but I’m pretty sure I have more wins than losses under my belt.

Here’s a blurry picture from a game earlier this month. It’s early in the game: Turn #2, with an eerie beginning (from randomly drawn cards during setup): Huge number of cases in East Asia (red cubes) centering in China, and some in Europe (blue cubes) including Milan. Humph. Looks like Covid-19. Well, maybe a mash-up with SARS given the outbreak in Toronto where one of the players has reduced the disease down to one blue cube. Well, there’s also the outbreak in Kinshasa (yellow cubes), not quite in the historical location for Ebola.

In Pandemic, players zip around the world trying to reduce disease outbreaks while racing to find a cure for each of four regional diseases (color-coded). Cards turned over in the top right infection deck cause (disease) cubes to be added to global cities. Player cards (lower right) serve several purposes. They can be used to fly between cities, build research facilities (you start the game with the CDC in Atlanta represented by an ecru house), and to find cures. A player needs to collect five cards of the same color, then get to a research station to find a cure. This is not easy because there’s a hand limit of seven cards; players can pass cards to one another but only under very limited circumstances.

Spread throughout the player card deck are several Epidemic cards. This is the focus of the excitement and game tension that makes Pandemic (in my opinion) a pleasure to play! An Epidemic does the following: First the Infection Marker is moved up one step; this marker determines how many infection cards are drawn each turn. Next the bottom card of the deck is drawn and three cubes added to that city, representing a new nasty proliferation of the disease. Finally, all the cards in the discard are shuffled and placed back on top of the infection draw deck, which means the cities that recently added cubes are going to have more! Why would this make you shudder? Once a city has three cubes, if its card is drawn again, an outbreak happens – a cube is added to each adjacent city! And if an adjacent city already has three cubes, the outbreak cascades!

Clearly this is a race against time. Players win if they can discover all four cures. But they must do it before the player draw deck runs out or eight outbreaks have taken place, in which case the players lose! Disease wins and we are overrun.

A nice feature of Pandemic is that each player has a specific skill. The medic (white pawn) can remove all disease cubes in a single action; normally only one cube is removed per action. The researcher (not in the pic) allows discovering a cure with four cards of the same color rather than five. The construction expert (green pawn) can build a research station in any city he/she is in for one action. The two other roles involve helping move players around the board and passing cards to each other more easily. Pandemic is for 2-4 players with five of these “roles” to choose from.

Regulating the game difficulty is a matter of shuffling the appropriate number of Epidemic cards into the player deck. The game recommends four Epidemics in your introductory game. I’ve found this works well when teaching the game to new players! It’s usually winnable for newbies but nail-biting to the end! With a few games under your belt, you’d want more of a challenge – the standard five Epidemics. And if you want an extra-difficult game, you can include six Epidemics. (The game does not come with a seventh card.)

Interestingly, in my first 70 games, I had not attempted six Epidemics. After getting used to the standard game, I started including the expansion, Pandemic: On the Brink. Besides providing eight more role cards for variation, the expansion ups the ante in three ways. First, you can replace some or all of your standard Epidemic cards with Virulent Strain Epidemic cards that add more difficulty (each card has its own twist). Second, you can have a fifth disease (purple cubes) that show up as a mutation. Third, you can add an antagonist player, the bioterrorist. I’ve played the first two aplenty, but have yet to introduce the bioterrorist. I very much enjoy the expansion; I feel it breathes new life into the standard board game.

Given Covid-19, I needed a challenge: six standard epidemic cards. Lost the first two games. (The picture is game #2.) Won the third! Not sure if it was a fluke. Have yet to get the game to the table again… except my new distraction is revisiting Bios Megafauna.

The Size of Atoms

How large is an atom? It depends on the element, but generally atom sizes are in the Angstrom (10^-10 meter) range. Too small to see with the naked eye, or even a high-powered light microscope. You can see one with an electron microscope, provided you believe the images you’re seeing on the computer screen.

You could calculate (using quantum mechanics) the most probable distance of an electron from its nucleus in a hydrogen atom. We do this in P-Chem and the answer comes out to be 0.53 Angstroms or 0.053 nanometers. But the electron could be much further from the nucleus. How much further? Don’t know. The probability of finding the electron approaches zero asymptotically as a function of distance, so we know there’s little chance of finding it far away. You could pre-determine a cutoff, by arbitrarily defining an electron’s orbital as enclosing a 90% chance of finding it. (That’s what we tell G-Chem students.) While that’s easy to calculate for the hydrogen atom, it’s not so easy for other elements because the Schrodinger equation can no longer be solved exactly. (Despite beautiful pictures you might see!)

Yet in G-Chem, we happily discuss periodic trends, and the first one we tackle is atomic size! We discuss the factors that affect size. There’s inevitably a beautiful table in the textbook along with actual charts and actual numbers. Clearly some scientists must have measured these to two decimal places of precision! Some are simply misleading – a simple Google search yielded the following colorful graphic among many. There’s one very clear glaring error you should notice if you’ve taken G-Chem!

But if you read the fine print (and hopefully your chemistry textbook discusses this), measuring the atomic radius is tricky. That’s because, with the exception of the noble gases, it’s not easy to encounter atoms hanging out by their lonesome selves, for you to “catch” and measure. Most atoms form chemical bonds with other atoms, and how close they get depends on multiple factors. The whole business turns out to be rather complicated!

The latest iteration comes from a 2016 article by Rahm, Hoffmann, and Ashcroft (Chem. Eur. J. 2016, 22, 14625-14632). They provide high-level quantum calculations along with a rational cutoff for the electron density. Here’s the abstract.

After going through the history of previous charts and tables, they make the case for their version, and provide their own chart and table. I’ve re-created a version below. 

The most interesting thing that jumps out is that the largest atoms are (excepting Li) in Group II. In G-Chem students learn that atomic size decreases across a row so they would expect the Group I elements to be the largest. Why the difference in this study? Part of it has to do with the way cutoff density is defined, and part of it has to do with Pauli exchange and repulsion. The Li vs Be exception is likely related to limited shielding from the core 1s electrons.

There are other nice features of the paper. Their cutoff choice fits very well with experimental data for Van der Waals radii of noble gases. We see the expected contraction due to the transition metal block, and thus the small corresponding rise across the row when we get back into the main group p-block. There’s a particularly nice correlation to electron configurations to explain palladium’s smaller-than-expected radius (see figure below) coming from the relative differences in s versus d contraction.

There are several other interesting tidbits including trends and discussion of cations and anions. Overall, the paper is an interesting read and something I could potentially incorporate into a quantum or inorganic chemistry course. It’s also a reminder how much we don’t know, even about seemingly fundamental things, and that the periodic table is full of surprises. Kinky ones!

Far From a Yawn

If there was a book I would give a young student interested in medicine, it would be Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants. Written in a lighthearted conversational manner, it is chock full of interesting factoids illustrated by engaging vignettes. Bryson is a master story-teller.

Reading The Body amidst the Covid-19 pandemic has further heightened my senses towards all things human-health-related. When reading the chapter on the immune system, I found myself looking up more details on the internet. The chapter on bipedalism and exercise reminded me to get up, stand, and walk, more regularly; my sedentary seated in front of a computer lifestyle is a problem. I thought about what I eat as I read the chapter on digestion. And of course, I found anything on chemistry interesting; the chapter on endocrinology is appropriately titled “The Chemistry Department”.

There are many historical anecdotes sprinkled throughout the text. Stories of discovery are interesting in their own right, but what really struck me in these accounts was how difficult it could be for others to accept these discoveries. There’s the oft-told story of Semmelweis, who “discovered” the importance of doctors washing their hands properly before surgery, but was disbelieved by many of his contemporaries who couldn’t imagine that they would be the cause of patient infection. Sometimes science was moved forward even when the initial ideas were wrongheaded; for example Atwater’s caloric measurements leading to his proposal that we should all eat lots of meat since it was a superior fuel source!

Bryson debunks some seemingly “well-known facts”. You’ve probably heard that bacteria cells in our body outnumber our own cells ten-to-one. Apparently, this was from a 1972 paper that was guesswork, and that in 2016, scientists making careful measurements found the ratio to vary between two-to-one and one-to-one. Not only had I believed this for years, I also believed that drinking coffee and other diuretics make me lose water overall. Turns out that while “not the most wholesome of options for liquid refreshment, they do make a net contribution to your personal water balance.”

While Bryson illuminates the reader with history, discovery, and many factoids, he also points out, in most chapters, how much we don’t know. We know a lot about the human body, but it’s amazing how much we don’t know. For example, sleep is still mysterious although we know a lot about it. Rising cases in asthma or Crohn’s disease, while attributed (sometimes speculatively) to a variety of factors, remain a bit of a puzzle. Or consider the uvula. We think it helps with food direction down the throat, maybe aids in producing saliva, or helps with creating certain speech sounds including snoring sounds; but when folks have it removed (due to snoring), it’s unclear what else is impaired.

I’ll end by quoting Bryson as he describes one of those things we don’t know, to illustrate his engaging and whimsical writing.

Finally, we should say a word about that mysterious but universal harbinger of weariness, the yawn. No one understands why we yawn. Babies yawn in the womb. (They hiccup, too.) People in comas yawn. It is a ubiquitous part of life and yet what exactly it does for us is unknown. One suggestion is that it somehow connected with shedding excess carbon dioxide, though no one has ever explained in what way. Another is that it brings a rush of cooler air into the head, thus slightly banishing drowsiness, though I have yet to meet anyone who felt refreshed and energized after yawning. More to the point, no scientific study has ever shown a relationship between yawning and energy levels. Yawning doesn’t even correlate reliably with how tired you are. Indeed, when we yawn the most is often in the first couple of minutes after rising from a good night’s sleep, when we are at our most rested.

I highly recommend The Body. It’s far from a yawn!

Higher Education 2030, Augmented

What might higher education look like in 2030? Since I’ve lately been thinking about forecasting, and in light of Covid, I decided to read Academia Next by Bryan Alexander. The author maintains an interesting blog on future trends in higher education; I’ve been following it for five or so years.

The first part of Academia Next discusses present trends relating to higher education: demographics, technology, economic, cultural. In the second half, seven scenarios are envisioned for 2030.

·      Peak Higher Education

·      Health Care Nation

·      Open Education Triumphant

·      Renaissance

·      Augmented Campus

·      Siri, Tutor Me

·      Retro Campus

While written before the present Covid pandemic, one scenario explores what might happen if health care became the largest sector of the U.S. economy. (The book is primarily about the U.S., since that’s where Alexander is based and he’s been following national trends closely.) Another scenario (Siri, Tutor Me) envisions technological changes related to automation, cloud-based robo-tutor among others.

But the scenario that had most of my attention was Augmented Campus, not because it was the most likely, but because I found it intriguing to ponder. For a glimpse of what immersive and widespread augmented reality might feel like, I highly recommend Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. (It was Alexander’s blog that alerted me to this excellent novel!) In any case, here’s Alexander’s setup to the chapter:

In 2030, American higher education is divided by digital strategy. One stratum is entirely online, with classes offered digitally by either older, bricks-and-mortar institutions or newer and wholly online enterprises. Another type of institution consists of colleges attended largely by commuter students who attend classes but don’t live on campus. The third portion of academia is residential and predicated upon face-to-face learning: for many it is the iconic representation of post-secondary learning. This is the familiar liberal arts college or state university, primarily teaching traditional-age undergraduates. Its engagement with the digital world has expanded, taking advantage of emerging technologies. We can call it the Augmented Campus.

I do think that higher education will continue to divide into at least two categories: the haves and the have-nots. I’m expecting the latter to be all-online as a cost-cutting measure. This is not because online education is always cheaper – my opinion is that online education can be excellent, but it might actually be more expensive to mount a very high-quality program. However, if you’re willing to sacrifice on quality, then there are a variety of ways to slash costs from physical buildings to human personnel. And with diminishing state support, I’m not sure community colleges (Alexander’s second stratum) will be able to survive while maintaining quality without raising fees given the population they are serving. Face-to-face learning may disappear for the have-nots.

For the haves, the Augmented Campus is idealist and idyllic. Limitations you face today can be augmented. Reality is augmented – you might call it super-reality. The description Alexander provides is sci-fi-ish cool with a blend of what’s hot in education lingo: hybrid learning, active learning, creativity, learning through play, leveraging technology… you can read more in his book. The physical space of the classroom and its furniture are no longer strictures. You could even have class outdoors when the weather is nice! As a chemist, I’ve been thinking about labs – especially since Covid has resulted in less-than-desirable alternatives. The augmented lab space could do so much more!

But all this augmentation could be distracting; a sensory overload. I’m not sure I could manage it, but perhaps this is because I had my formative years in an analog old-school environment. For kids used to multiple information streams, with video, textchat, and who-knows-what-else all going on at the same time, augmented reality education could be fully immersive if well-designed. This will further perpetuate the divide between the haves and the have-nots. A have-not student would be truly a fish-out-of-water at the Augmented Campus.

I would personally prefer the Retro Campus. Back to old school, low-tech. I think there’s little chance of that happening, short of an eVirus pandemic that significantly curbs the reach of technology. That might be a worse disaster given how much of our lives (in the first world) are tied to technology. I wonder what’s next.