Science Education & Policy

SAN FRANCISCO, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- - Keynotes from Virgin Group and Germany's Dr. Hermann Scheer The Cleantech Group(TM), LLC, founders of the cleantech investment category, announced today that more than 400 investors, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and policymakers from the rapidly developing cleantech investment marketplace will convene in Brussels, Belgium from 28-30 April 2008 for Cleantech Forum(R) XVII, Europe's leading global investment forum. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080109/AQW116LOGO) Cleantech Group will also honor the winners of its annual Cleantech…

LONDON, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 98 per cent of cyclists may be putting themselves at financial risk because they do not have specialist insurance that offers third party cover, according to the Environmental Transport Association. The recent 83 per cent increase in London cycling reflects a two-wheeled renaissance in urban areas, but most cyclists seem unaware that if they are involved in an accident that causes damage to a person or property, they can find themselves facing a claim for compensation. The Environmental Transport Association is a not-for-profit organisation that has…

There is no better way to fall into an IRS black hole than to try to become a scientist. I'm a postdoctoral fellow - which means that I have my PhD, but no permanent job; I'm spending a few years doing research in a lab run by a more senior scientist. This is a typical part of the career path for most people in the natural sciences who want to direct their own labs at a research university or with a company. While a postdoc position offers valuable training, its also an excuse for institutions to get work from trained scientists without paying them very much. After getting your PhD (…

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dubai School of Government is hosting tomorrow April 14, together with Business Week and in cooperation with DNM Strategies, the third annual "State of the Region" Forum. The theme of this year's Forum was "Leveraging Opportunity, Managing Risk." The Forum, sponsored by the Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), Sama Dubai and Etisalat, connects representatives from both the public and private sectors in the UAE and neighbouring countries. The event provides a unique opportunity to examine and analyze key trends and critical developments…

Discrimination against overweight people is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. The study also says that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight discrimination in the workplace and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity is common. The study documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 25- to 74-years-old. The…

Inter-country adoptions are causing a rise in the number of children in orphanages in EU countries, say psychologists at the University of Liverpool. More adoptions are leading to higher numbers of children in institutions, says the study, because in EU countries such as France and Spain, people are choosing to adopt healthy, white children from abroad rather than children in their own country who are mainly from ethnic minorities. Researchers found that EU countries with high proportions of international adoptions also had the highest rates of children living in institutions. High adoption…

A new study suggests that many children diagnosed with severe language disorders in the 1980s and 1990s would instead be diagnosed as having autism today and so the rise in the number of cases of autism may be related to changes in how it is diagnosed. Professor Dorothy Bishop, a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, led a study which revisited 38 adults, aged between 15-31, who had been diagnosed with having developmental language disorders as children rather than being autistic. Professor Bishop and colleagues looked at whether they now met current…

Israelis and Palestinians may not be able to agree right now on their present or future, but, if a pair of Los Angeles archaeologists have their way, they soon will see eye to eye on their past. Working tirelessly for the past five years, Ran Boytner, a University of California, Los Angeles archaeologist and Lynn Swartz Dodd, an archaeologist at the University of Southern California, have guided a team of prominent Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists to arrive at the first-ever agreement on the disposition of the region's archaeological treasures following the establishment of a future…

An interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels says we still have things to learn about where it's coming from - and where the worst offenders are. The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state. The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis. Researchers say the maps also are more accurate than previous data because they are based on greenhouse gas…

Airborne soot's heating effects have been found to be 60 percent of CO2's, yielding a 40/60 soot/CO2 global atmospheric heating combination. In higher altitudes soot is just as important as CO2 in melting tropical glacial packs like the Himalayas (and perhaps Kilimanjaro) while also devasting Arctic ice by making it more heat-absorbant. INDOEX lead researcher V. Ramanathan has co-authored a paper on his team's findings that airborne soot (aka black carbon, or BC for short) plays a far greater role in atmospheric warming than the UN's IPCC reports have yet indicated. Ramanathan and his team…