Science Education & Policy

The November 2007 Special Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment focuses on paleoecology, which uses fossilized remains and soil and sediment cores to reconstruct past ecosystems. Some scientists argue that the pre-Columbian Amazon was pristine, with indigenous people living in harmony with nature. Others suggest that the Amazon is a “manufactured” landscape, altered by and disturbed by human activities even before the arrival of Europeans. In “Amazonian exploitation revisited: ecological asymmetry and the policy pendulum,” Mark Bush (Florida Institute of Technology) and Miles…

Last night the PBS series NOVA featured a two-hour show on the 2005 Dover, PA Intelligent Design trial. If you missed it, go check out clips and some great evolution resources at the show's website. As a creation/evolution junkie, I had previously read all of the trial transcripts, but reading transcripts was no substitute for seeing and hearing the major participants on camera. And while the big players from the Discovery Institute refused to be interviewed, NOVA managed to get just about everyone else on camera, including one of the defense's expert witnesses and the two ex-school board…

The CO2 emissions of 50,000 power plants worldwide, the globe’s most concentrated source of greenhouse gases, have been compiled into a massive new database, called CARMA — Carbon Monitoring for Action. The on-line database, compiled by the Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent policy and research organization that focuses on how the actions of the rich world shape the lives of poor people in developing countries, lays out exactly where the CO2 emitters are and how much of the greenhouse gas they are casting into the atmosphere. It also shows which companies own the plants. A…

Clinicians from the USC School of Dentistry have made the first epidemiological study of oral cancer in California and detailed a connection between the incidence of oral cancer and race and ethnicity. Dr. Satish Kumar and Dr.Parish Sedghizadeh, clinical professors in the school’s Division of Diagnostic Sciences, went through 20 years of records from the California Cancer Registry (CCR)— the state’s cancer surveillance database — for the incidence rates of invasive squamous cell carcinoma, the most common form of oral cancer. Up to two-thirds of oral cancers are caused by tobacco or alcohol…

The CO2 emissions of 50,000 power plants worldwide, the globe’s most concentrated source of greenhouse gases, have been compiled into a massive new database, called CARMA — Carbon Monitoring for Action. The on-line database, compiled by the Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent policy and research organization that focuses on how the actions of the rich world shape the lives of poor people in developing countries, lays out exactly where the CO2 emitters are and how much of the greenhouse gas they are casting into the atmosphere. It also shows which companies own the plants. A…

Last week, this article, Kidney Transplants From Extended Criteria Non-Beating Heart Donors Double Risk Of Death In Elderly brought the issue of of the risks of extended criteria organs into focus. It sounds like a bad thing that a higher-risk organ would double the risk of death. Not necessarily, says a new report from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Without them, age would be a barrier to getting a transplant at all and it will help alleviate the burgeoning organ shortage among older adults. “In the recent past, chronological age has been a considered a barrier for both…

It defies business sense to let lower supply raise costs and encourage energy alternatives but a study released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that the "Big Five" international oil companies (IOCs) are spending less money on oil exploration in real terms despite a four-fold increase in operating cash flow since the early 1990s. Why would that happen? It may be knowledge that political upheavals in places like Venezuela and Russia could invalidate the investment entirely, making it unattractive for large companies who would be at risk. It may be that…

A UN eport says a ban on human reproductive cloning, coupled with restricted therapeutic research, is the global compromise on this ethical dilemma most likely to succeed. According to authors of a new policy analysis by the United Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies, the world community quickly needs to reach a compromise that outlaws reproductive cloning or prepare to protect the rights of cloned individuals from potential abuse, prejudice and discrimination. A legally-binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly…

People who have a mother with Alzheimer’s disease appear to be at higher risk for getting the disease than those individuals whose fathers are afflicted, according to a new study by NYU School of Medicine researchers. The study is published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is the first to compare brain metabolism among cognitively normal people who have a father, a mother, or no relatives with Alzheimer’s disease, and to show that only individuals with an affected mother have reduced brain metabolism in the same brain regions as…

Is there such a thing as being too safe on the Internet? One University of Illinois education researcher believes there is, at least when teenagers are concerned. Media reports warn of online predators, hate groups and other “digital dangers” lurking in online social spaces, and those dangers are not to be taken lightly, says Brendesha Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and of African American studies at Illinois. “But we may do adolescents a disservice when we curtail their participation in these spaces, because the educational and psychosocial benefits of this type of…