I'm a postdoc that works mostly with biochemist-ey types, and I'd highly recommend adding a math package to whats available to your students. With something like mathematica, you can do:
what I also like about the math packages is the ability to synthesize "test" data to illustrate what can't be done simply in lab (or not at all, depending). And I think its also a great way to start learning a bit of programming/scripting without requiring too much CS (for those not interested in CS), but at the same time getting enough exposure to it so that they won't be completely lost when they see a conditional loop. And, I can personally tell you that science types use them quite widely.
I'm a little surprised you seem more concerned about the OS the programs run on. As long as the students can run the stuff you've listed along with some sort of math package to learn about handling data, just go with what the IT guys are most comfortable with.
But to answer your question: most science labs run whatever they want, but some hardware and/or proprietary analysis software for some equipment can dictate the OS.
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The converse is also true -- I use the journal's screening to figure out what to read because I don't have time to read every single thing, even preliminarily.
I have an idea for this. I sometimes hang out on this website where lots of people are submitting things to be published. I don't feel like reading all of the submissions, but the great part is that other users can score up some of the submitted content so I can filter through the chaff and just look at the stuff that is most likely interesting or worthwhile. And I can just go to subsections of content that I'm primarily interested in. Then - and this is the cool part - every submission is debated in a moderated, open forum - where again, I can filter through the comments using a number of criteria and read only the "top rated" information, if I so choose.
I think the website is called slashdot. Have you ever checked out how it works?
Without name-brand journals, name-recognition will become even more important, which will lead to even more of the sort of "superstar" science in which funding and interest is ever more concentrated in a few research groups.
I would argue that without name-brand journals, name recognition will rely on more realistic metrics (like the quality of the work, not necessarily where stuff gets published) and therefore may be a better measure than the current system.
I'm surprised no one has suggested forensics yet. If you're not able to get the students into an actual lab, its a great way to keep them interested in a physics problem:
- given a ballistic pattern of a bullet OR
- given a blood splatter pattern OR
- a fall OR
- from a position of a body:
determine trajectories, velocities, etc. and likelihood a death is suicide or homicide.
- use momentum to analyze a car crash, or any force-related accident, and reconstruct it.
CSI is popular partly because of physics.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.