Starting today, Twitter has a new resident: the Cool Science of the Day twitter feed (@CoolScienceOTD).  This feed is a joint production of the Huffines Institute and a group of highly motivated, really smart doctoral students at Texas A&M University.  This twitter feed aims to highlight the really exciting, adventuresome, and impactful science that is being done in today’s world.  Too many times, science in today’s media and social settings is characterized as boring, overly complex, and not applicable.  Granted, sometimes these characterizations are true, but more often than not, the science that is published today is conceived and carried out by the smartest people in our world with unrelenting passion and dedication.  Just sorting through all the good science out there and understanding the myriad ways it can affect us is a job in and of itself (and why there are so many really good science-journalists/translators out there).  But our mission at the Huffines Institute is to let the scientists – where possible – speak for themselves and thus, we thought it would be a fun, ongoing mission to let you all in on what we think is really ‘cool’ and impactful science.  And don’t be surprised if you find a wide-range of interesting science presented; more and more, the science that makes the most impact is that found where several differing scientific disciplines intersect (or collide).

There’s a bunch of ways we hope this feed is used.  First, true to our aim, we hope that you develop a healthy awe and respect for the scientific endeavor that is taking place all over our globe.  Secondly, hopefully you’ll recommend this feed to your friends (hey, even tweet about us!) – we would hope that our efforts find their way into lesson plans and efforts by our heroic public school science teachers.  Thirdly, we hope that this feed helps fend off the notion that scientists are boring and out-of-touch with reality.  So take a few minutes every day, follow @CoolScienceOTD on Twitter, be prepared to be amazed by the science that is being done, and help us achieve our goals.

One last point: Having and maintaining a daily Twitter feed like this is not an easy task – it takes dedicated folks to commit to an effort like this.  Thus, you should know that our recommended #CSOTD (short for “Cool Science Of The Day”) all arise from the investigative efforts of Nick Barringer, Jessica Cardin, Blaise Collins, Amanda Davis, Michelle Dawes, Will Deaver, Peter Jung, Yang Lee, Corinne Metzger, Emily Schmitt, John Seawright, and Heather Vellers (all brilliant doctoral students at A&M), from our Chief Aggregator Sheril Marek, and from our Twitter Liasion Kelli Selman.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, we think that @CoolScienceOTD is one of the best uses of a service like Twitter.  So sign up and follow us! 

Also, keep an eye out for more blogs from the Huffines (yes, we have been remiss in that category).  We're working to start putting up new blogs every week....

Until next week - stay active and healthy,