Sony robot dog Aibo performs in a lecture on artificial intelligence held by Science Squirrels in Beijing on June 27. More than 200 people attended.
By Peng Yining
For a new graduate with a doctorate in neurobiology, Ji Shisan explains, there are basically two options:
1. find a good laboratory and monkey around with mouse brains; or,
2. find a good school and monkey around with mouse brains.
Ji instead found a third option. After graduating in 2007 from Fudan University with his PhD in neurobiology, he became a freelance science writer. A year later, he hatched perhaps his greatest invention: the Science Squirrels club.
Today he and 96 more "squirrels" run the surprisingly popular songshuhui.net, a blog that is expanding into more than the sum of its parts: a whole community of popular science writing, lectures and parties. They compare their popularization efforts to a squirrel cracking open the nut and tasting the yummy kernel, by which they mean converting obscure technical jargon and theories into funny and conspicuous layman's Chinese.
"We make science popular in China," Ji says.
It's a late fall afternoon and the squirrels are squeaking in a makeshift office. A click-clacking of keyboards and clinker of office phones occupies the 80-square-meter rented Beijing apartment.
"34 days countdown to Science Carnival" reads a whiteboard leaning against a window by the desk of a male squirrel with black rimmed glasses.
"How's everything?" the arboreal rodent asks a colleague.
"Fifty-two people have applied," replies Huang Min, a bushy-tailed female member of the Sciurus genus.
"Good," says the bright-eyed scurry leader, whose more accurate nomenclature is Ji Shisan.
Ji glances at a list in his hand and laughs, "There'll be more."
The carnival on October 31 at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics is a two-day package of movie shows, parties and popular science lectures by more than 20 scientists, Ji says.
"The party is about making friends," Ji says. "It gives all those ratty-haired bookworms a chance to meet girls and let people get to know each other.
"There are no academic reports, no esoteric knowledge or cramming. Just science and fun."
Sixty percent of the squirrels are male, according to Ji. But once at a popular science writing lecture audience of 52 people, more than half were women.
"I have never seen so many girls in one room at one time," Ji says a male participant from the Beijing Institute of Genomics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told him.
"Can I apply to be a squirrel?" Ji was asked.
Applications accelerated after Ji placed information about the carnival on the blog. With 50,000 hits a day and several hundred thousand readers of its website, the Science Squirrel club has more than 100 members, mostly with PhDs in science education. They research, write and edit entertaining essays for the blog, such as using fluid mechanics to explain why earphone wires always get twisted or why people choke when they snort water up through their nasal passage but are still able to sniff away.
Branching out
Science Squirrels was registered in Beijing at the beginning of this year by Ji as a culture communication company. He rented an apartment as an office at 3,000 yuan ($440) a month. Seven work full-time with Ji, but the club needs volunteers to help organize a successful carnival.
"We have a colorful office, an icebox with fruits and popsicles and a nice lunch box … Your work is about science and fun, and you will meet many interesting people," Ji wrote in the recruitment posting.
When the idea first popped into his mind in 2007, Ji envisioned Science Squirrels as a place for people who love popular science writing to chat online. It still is, but as more and more people joined in the fun, communication has begun to break out of the virtual environment and into reality.
"It used to be such a small circle," Ji says, pointing to the fingers of one hand.
"But an appeal brought together a collection of people with unique talents," Ji wrote in the postscript of When Colorful Sound Tastes Sweet, the first book published by Science Squirrels. It's a light-hearted collection of essays on cell biology, polymer chemistry and mathematics.
"In China, science and scientists seem remote from everyday life. Both the scientific community and the public are too serious to communicate," says Li Daguang, a professor at the Science Communication Research Center of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
A "squirrel" displays a science toy at a public lecture in Shanghai on March 14. Photos: Courtesy of the Science Squirrels club
Training
"Most scientists only talk to the government which controls the research funds," Li said at he opening forum of a popular science writing training held by Science Squirrels on September 12, "but never realize they have responsibility to explain what they are doing to the public, in an acceptable way."
"An acceptable way" is what Huang Min is also searching for. She just got a neuroscience doctorate from the University of Gottingen in Germany, but the professors there were confused by her oral defense. One even advised her to learn how to explain her work to people without the same academic background.
"I was thinking for a long time how to make people understand what I was doing," she says. "I want to explain to my kids."
She recently took the popular science training course and brought her 3-year-old daughter to class. The girl sat on a chair with her feet off the ground, watching a group of adults employing cartoons, fairy tales or poetry to explain nanometer materials or the impact of wind powder turbines on bird migration. Sometimes she slept in her mother's arms, waking up when laughter occasionally broke in the classroom.
Huang is pondering joining Science Squirrels, but says she might not have time for an essay. "I have to rack my brains to squeeze out an essay," she says.
The first group of "squirrels" meet in a Beijng bookstore for the founding of Science Squirrels on April 23 last year. A year later, they have 96 members and several hundred thousand readers.
Publishing
Her friend Chen Zheng, a former journalist for Science News, encourages her.
"Why not?" he says. "It's fun and important that you can talk in a happy mood with each other about your work."
Now a researcher in the Research Center for Eco-Environment Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Chen says people must send a popular science essay to Science Squirrels as an application.
After being examined by two content editors, the would-be squirrel's article can be published on the group's blog, with the obligation to hand in new articles every couple of months.
Every article is strictly examined by the editors and an expert in a similar field of expertise. Science Squirrels also has an internal Bulletin Board Service to discuss members' articles before they are published online.
"Once I wrote about a nanometer and an expert pointed out some parts of my article were weak and gave me some suggestions," Chen says.
"Science Squirrels is the same as other groups of young people: We chat, hold parties, but to some extent, we are different. We talk about science.
"It's a serious topic. We represent it in an interesting way with a no-nonsense attitude. That's even harder than talking about science in regular way."
By writing about transgenic rice, Chen joined the group last year and soon became one of the senior squirrels by being published in the book. The group now plans two other books: one about food safety, another about plants and animals.
"We thought food safety was closer to readers' lives and they will be interested in wildlife," says Xiao Zhuang, another senior squirrel. She quit her job as editor of a science magazine to join Ji's team.
Science Squirrels is basically a non-profit organization, she says. Sometimes it gets sponsorship or payment for articles and books, but they partly depend on the devotion of squirrels themselves. "If these books became bestsellers, we would have spare money," she laughs.
"Squirrels make science popular and funny, but it's not all fun," Ji says. "We want to make Chinese understand science is a part of their life."
Science squirrels like Ig Nobel Prize
As a parody of the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in early October each year in the United States and is one of the hottest topics discussed by Science Squirrels every year.
The Prize's slogan, "First make people laugh, and then make them think," is also one of the squirrels' core principles.
Organized by scientific humor magazine the Annals of Improbable Research, the prizes are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theater.
Two winners in 2008 - Dorian M Raymer and Douglas E Smith - released the paper Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String, published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Science in 2007. This phenomenon was also discussed on the Science Squirrels' blog last year, with one squirrel employing fluid mechanics to explain why earphone wires always get twisted.
The squirrels held a popular science writing training course this year and encouraged trainees to practice. One trainee found her assignment was writing a story about the Ig Nobel Prize.
The 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on October 1, at the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
The new winners explained their work at the Ig Informal Lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston on Saturday afternoon, October 3:
Veterinary medicine prize: Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless.
Peter Rowlinson and Catherine Douglas were unable to travel as she had recently given birth. She sent a photo of herself, her new daughter dressed in a cow suit. And a cow.
Peace: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining - by experiment - whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
Economics: The directors, executives and auditors of four Icelandic banks - Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank and Central Bank of Iceland - for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice-versa - and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.
Chemistry: Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M Castao of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid - specifically from tequila.
Medicine: Donald L Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis in the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand - but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand - every day for more than 60 years.
Physics: Katherine K Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over.
Literature: Ireland's police service (An Garda Siochana), for writing and presenting more than 50 traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country - Prawo Jazdy - whose name in Polish means "driving license".
Public health: Elena N Bodnar, Raphael C Lee and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander.
Mathematics: Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's reserve bank, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers - from very small to very big - by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).
Biology: Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90 percent in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas.
Source: improbable.com
