Science Education & Policy

It's taken weeks to get here but we've covered 13.7 billion years of cosmic quirks. We've gone from The Big Bang and the Birth of Culture through Supersynchrony And The Evolution Of Mass Culture to The Big Burp And The Evolution of Elements. We've seen the beginning of mass behavior among quarks, the proto-memory of atoms, and a strange preview of culture long before life arose. We've run a background check on Evolution (aka Mother Nature) and have discovered her track record of violence and destruction. Destruction from which she's pulled enormous leaps of creativity. We've sifted…

LONDON, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pumped an average 32.33 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil in February, an 80,000 b/d increase on January levels, according to a Platts (http://www.platts.com/) survey of OPEC and oil industry officials just released. However, production from the 12 countries, excluding Iraq, bound by output allocations fell to 29.93 million b/d in February from 29.96 million b/d in January, the survey showed. "It used to be that when prices would soar, OPEC discipline would gradually break…

North American buildings release more than 2,200 megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere - 35 percent of the continent’s total - according to a new report issued by the trinational Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The report says rapid market uptake of energy-saving technologies could result in over 1,700 fewer megatons of CO2 emissions by 2030 - a cut nearly equal to the CO2 emitted by the entire US transportation sector in 2000. Promoting the green design, construction, renovation and operation of advanced energy-saving buildings could cut North American greenhouse gas emissions…

DALLAS, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- - Entrust IdentityGuard OTP tokens secure access to corporate resources for remote workforce Germany-based Universa, the country's oldest private health insurance organization, sought a trusted method to enable secure enterprise access and communication via a multifactor authentication solution. In the end, Universa selected Entrust, Inc. (Nasdaq: ENTU) and the Entrust IdentityGuard versatile authentication platform to foster efficiency and productivity between internal assets, workstations, applications and their remote workforce. "Universa required the…

NEW YORK, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- - By Taking Advantage of Weak Dollar, Travelers Book Quality Hotels As the value of the U.S. dollar weakens, Quikbook.com, an online hotel booking Website (www.quikbook.com) provides travelers throughout the United Kingdom access to upscale independent and boutique hotels at a better bargain when visiting the United States for shopping, sightseeing and soaking in the American culture. With the increased competition of travel booking Websites, Quikbook.com has helped thousands of independent travelers save on hotel accommodations since the New York-based…

BRUSSELS and ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 246 million people live with diabetes across the world and 4.4 million of those people live in Egypt. Poor diabetes control can lead to devastating complications, like blood vessel problems and an increased risk for foot ulcers, which cause 85% of all amputations. The Faculty of Medicine in Alexandria, Egypt and the Alexandria Western Club of Rotary International has just received a grant for a two year study from the International Diabetes Federation's BRIDGES grant programme to create a diabetes foot care centre to provide care…

LONDON, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Two-thirds of veterinary professionals believe that pet obesity is the single biggest health issue facing domestic animals throughout Europe, with 96 per cent of those questioned identifying early death as the most serious consequence of the condition.(1) These are just some of the shocking results from research carried out by pet food manufacturer, Hill's Pet Nutrition, which also revealed that the problem mirrored the spiralling human obesity epidemic. Indeed, 78 per cent of those questioned thought that obese pets tended to have obese owners with 80 per…

Grammar is a complex human ability yet by the age of three most children can make grammatically correct sentences. Kids with a specific language impairment(SLI), however, continue to make grammatical errors, sometimes even into adulthood. As teenagers they might make errors that other children rarely make after age five; for example, when asking a question they might say “Who Joe see someone?” rather than “Who did Joe see?”. SLI affects about seven percent of children and is a major cause of children not reaching their educational potential but it's never been clear if these children…

WASHINGTON, March 12 /PRNewswire/ -- - This World Water Day - March 22 - Innovative 'Clean Water' Non-Profit, PlayPumps International Recognizes 5 'Heroes' Including Coke Africa, Save the Children & One Water In recognition of World Water Day - a day designated by the United Nations as a reminder of the escalating global water crisis - PlayPumps International honors five individuals and organizations that have been instrumental 'heroes' in the effort to bring clean drinking water to some of the more than 1.1 billion people who lack it. "The Hero Award recognizes the countless efforts and…

WASHINGTON, March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The chairman of the US House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee told a Platts Energy Podium event in Washington on Tuesday that he supports a greenhouse gases (GHG) cap-and-trade system that would provide nearly all emission credits for free to electric utilities, oil refineries and other industrial operations. Representative Rick Boucher, Democrat-Virginia, said he believes the US should model its GHG control law on the country's successful acid rain program that is designed to cut national sulfur dioxide emissions from electric utilities through a cap-…