Science Education: Summer Science Programs in Forensics

It is that time of year again for students and parents - time for signing students up for summer camps!

The South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics (USA) runs its Summer Science Programs (SSP) every summer. SSP is a residential summer camp for rising 8th, 9th and 10th graders. Both in-state and out-of-state students are accepted.

As usual, I'll be teaching two, one-week runnings of my course, Applied Forensic Science (formerly: A Mathematical Tour of Forensic Science), again this year.  In addition, Dr. Sid Parrish will be teaching his ever popular CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) course.  For those who, for some unimaginable reason, might want to take courses in subjects unrelated to forensics, there are a large number of offerings (Lego Robotics, Great Experiments in Classical Physics, and more).  If you are interested, you can find out more on their website. I hope to see you there!

Human Auditory System: Musical training helps students and the elderly alike

Northwestern researchers Alexandra Parbery-Clark, Dana Strait, Samira Anderson, Emily Hittner and Nina Kraus have published a journal article that extends the work being done into advantages that students get from musical training and experience to the elderly.  Their work seems to show that life-long musical training improves memory and the ability to understand speech in noisy environments.  This makes sense, intuitively. After all, the human auditory system, like the human visual system, relies upon extracting and matching patterns to do its job and the more practice it gets the better job it can do!


Enjoy,
Keith