Heather Logan
@helogan.bsky.social
420 followers 200 following 520 posts
Theoretical particle physicist, university professor, nature enthusiast, Wiccan HPS (dual Lexi/Gard), autistic person. She/her. https://people.physics.carleton.ca/~logan/
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helogan.bsky.social
My concise and heavily-referenced guide for #HigherEd #faculty on creating more #autistic -friendly #research groups is available here: arxiv.org/abs/2410.17929

Includes a downloadable printable poster.
#ActuallyAutistic #AutisticInSTEM #DisabledInSTEM #ScienceIsForEveryone #EDI
Photo of a dark-blue-and-white poster with lots of text tacked to a white wall.  The poster title reads "HOW TO MAKE YOUR RESEARCH GROUP MORE INCLUSIVE FOR AUTISTIC TRAINEES", and its five sections are titled "Dispel your misconceptions", "Communicate clearly", "Check the sensory environment", "Be aware of different cognitive profiles", and "Model inclusivity to your group".  At the bottom is a QR code leading to the link in the main post, where the full text of the poster can also be found.
helogan.bsky.social
It's midterm season, and the most valuable thing #HigherEd staff can do right now is to reduce the stress load on students. They have enough stress studying their course material; they don't need more from being put the wrong exam room or having proctors whispering loudly while they're writing.
helogan.bsky.social
Does this mean that Shakespeare was One Of Us? 😃
helogan.bsky.social
MathVeg!

I still think these are super cool.
Photograph of a pale green Romanesco broccoli (culinarily more like a cauliflower).
Reposted by Heather Logan
astrokatie.com
As a theoretical cosmologist, I'm frequently asked "what is the benefit of the work you're doing for people's lives?" Nothing I work on makes money or cures disease.

There are a few different answers one can give, at various levels of "convincing" / "actually relevant to why the work is done."

1/🧵
helogan.bsky.social
I gave my talk today, on the "(In)consistency of the Real two-Higgs-doublet model", for the Scalars 2025 conference! 🎉 I had to give it remotely, because I still can't travel due to chronic fatigue. 😢

3 other speakers were in similar situations; kind of glad I wasn't the only 'weird' one. 😬
helogan.bsky.social
These days, I'm almost inclined to assume that if there's no named author, it means the article was barfed out by a chatbot.
helogan.bsky.social
I've gotten emails with exactly that wording. (Just fill in the journal name with whatever random thing totally unrelated to what I do.)

I've even been personally invited to a dentistry conference based on a paper about composite Higgs.
helogan.bsky.social
Fantastic news! Congratulations!
helogan.bsky.social
And yes, these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies are some of the most dark matter-dominated systems we know of.
helogan.bsky.social
It's only a galaxy if it's dark matter-dominated; everything else is just a sparkling star cluster. 😉
helogan.bsky.social
I also learned that some of these ultra-faint dwarf galaxies have so few stars that astronomers had to come up with a new definition for a galaxy -- it only counts if the stars' velocity distribution is non-Newtonian (based on visible matter only).
helogan.bsky.social
Amazing colloquium today by @burcinmp.bsky.social on "The Smallest and Faintest Galaxies: Clues to the Nature of Dark Matter and Galaxy Formation"!

#CarletonU ⚛️🧪
helogan.bsky.social
Update: I think it's a dance studio. 🤷‍♀️
helogan.bsky.social
Age verification? I write code in FORTRAN.
koppenburg.ch
Age verification? A lot of what I know about how computers work comes from a book about DOS 3.2.
cosmicrami.com
age verification
I still remember putting the Encarta disc into the CD-ROM drive to learn about things
helogan.bsky.social
I thought that this post was about French politics and started wondering who Dekhele was. 😂
helogan.bsky.social
Ahaha holy shit
nbcnews.com
It's full steam ahead for NASA, according to Sean Duffy, the agency's acting administrator. During an internal employee town hall, Duffy warned of "letting safety be the enemy of progress" when it comes to winning the space race, according to a recording obtained by NBC News.
Interim NASA head tells agency that it will beat China back to the moon
Acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy also told agency employees not to let "safety be the enemy of progress."
nbcnews.to
helogan.bsky.social
I was also surprised to see students moving in to that new dorm building that I thought was still under construction!
helogan.bsky.social
Survived the first (half-)week of fall semester! 💪
- Met my two new graduate students;
- Taught the first class in my 3rd-year course;
- Wrote a recommendation letter for my former grad student who's applying to a faculty job;
- Did a PhD committee meeting for my other student.
#CarletonU
Reposted by Heather Logan
tukohbin.bsky.social
Heard from someone that a student from my stat mech class last year were gushing “I never thought the rice cooker is so amazing until I took Eugene’s class!”

I feel that a brag is warranted. The rice cooker is amazing: 2 phase transitions working together to make a simple tool that every Asian own.
helogan.bsky.social
The most important principle governing talk-writing is Know Your Audience. I don't need to tell the SCALARS crowd why we all love the two-Higgs-doublet model. 😅
helogan.bsky.social
As a FORTRAN user and a woman in STEM, I love this! 🥰
hiddenherstory.bsky.social
🗓️ 25 Aug 1900: Dorothy Vaughan is born. Taught herself FORTRAN (a new programming language in the 1950s) without formal training so she could retrain her entire team of Black women mathematicians ensuring they remained essential as NASA transitioned from manual calculations to computers #WomenInSTEM
helogan.bsky.social
Transformative work on improving inclusion for #autistic students -- focus is on kid-school, but relevant to #HigherEd as well!
helogan.bsky.social
My alma mater! 🥰
ucsantacruz.bsky.social
Big news from UC Santa Cruz! Together with The Conservation Fund, UCSC is protecting 200+ acres of sensitive habitat next to our residential campus. This land will serve as a living laboratory for research and conservation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=txwq...
A collaboration to conserve habitat and pursue organic farm expansion
YouTube video by UC Santa Cruz
www.youtube.com