: About Me

My career has spanned many different fields. I originally graduated as an industrial engineer from Lehigh University in 1981, and went to work as a manufacturing engineer in the tank automotive industry. I gained some intricate knowledge of self-propelled howitzers and recovery vehicles. I specialized in computer aided manufacturing and computer aided design ( CAD/CAM).
I went on to become a computer consultant and did custom software development in the UNIX and C programming environment for a number of different clients.

More recently, my technical interests have turned toward the biotech industry, and I went back to graduate school to study biology and education. After completing background studies in biological science, I recently completed ( Spring 2007 ) a masters degree in education ( curriculum and instruction ) in biological science.

My current interest is not only scientific progress and discovery, but the "nature of science" itself. Science is refered to as an "epistemology" or "way of knowing". As a science educator, I am interested in how educators convey to learners the difference between "scientific knowledge" as it differs from other types of knowledge, or products of other epistemologies.
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For example, in its best practice, journalism can be thought of as an epistemology. When we think back to the, perhaps historic touchstone of Watergate, we recall that the Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee required of Woodward and Bernstein "two independent sources" to back up any information that would be published in the post. Although, as we know, the sources many times remained secret, they were known to Bradlee, and thus contributed to this particular investigative journalism as "an epistemology."

The principles of natural sciences, to be accepted or rejected, must also go through an epistemology that we refer to as scientific method and peer review. Components of the epistemology of science are objectivity, controlled experiment, repeatability, evaluation by independent, perhaps competing members of the scientific community. The nature of this process is what science educators hope to convey to learners.

Sciences > Disease & Illness Inflammatory markers: Pentraxin-3

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Diagnosing heart failure candidates presents a challenge for cardiologists because heart disease may be progressing while the heart is apparently pumping normally. Direct observation of the coronary arteries, those that supply the heart itself, is invasive or requires interpretation of indirect measurements through medical imaging. For this reason, cardiologists seek quick blood tests that may give information about condition and risk to the coronary arteries. Perhaps the most well known is the cholesterol test. The medical community seeks to find ever more accurate and meaningful tests to...

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