Science Education & Policy

In America, religion and politics or science and politics or politics and anything else don't mix well. According to a new University of Missouri-Columbia study, though, religion and health care work together just fine. Research shows that religion and spirituality are linked to positive physical and mental health but most studies have focused on people with life threatening diseases. The new study determines that religion can help individuals with disabilities adjust to their impairments and give new meaning to their lives. Persons facing impending death may use religion to help them accept…

Different cultures have different standards and norms for appropriate body size and shape, which can effect how children perceive their body image. Some cultures celebrate a fuller body shape more than others, but researchers at the Center for Obesity Research and Education (CORE) at Temple University have found that an overweight or obese child can still be unhappy with his or her body, despite acceptance from within their ethnic group. “This unhappiness is yet another consequence of childhood obesity,” said Gary Foster, Ph.D., director of CORE and president-elect of the North American…

A preliminary, exploratory study based on a small sample called “Sexual knowledge and attitudes of men with intellectual disability who sexually offend,” published in Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability in June 2007 did not find that sex education made sexual offenders with an intellectual disability more dangerous. The study is based on a comparison of 43 individuals with an intellectual disability who committed a sexual offence, with 43 individuals also with an intellectual disability who did not commit a sexual offence. The study did not conduct a comparison of…

Are elections decided by looks? A Princeton University study says even a split-second glance at two candidates' faces is often enough to determine which one will win an election. Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. Todorov has taken some of his previous research that showed that people unconsciously judge the competence of an unfamiliar face within a tenth of a second, and he has moved it to the political arena. His lab tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two…

People with medium levels of HIV in their blood are likely to contribute most to the spread of the virus, according to new research published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, looked at several groups of HIV-positive people in Europe, the USA and sub-Saharan Africa. It found that those with a high viral load are the most infectious group, but have only limited time to infect others, because they generally progress to AIDS quite quickly. Viral load - a count of how many viral particles are in a person’…

An ever-changing U.S. consumer who enjoys the convenience of ready-to-eat produce and seasonable fruits during the dead of winter has brought new challenges to food import safety, experts said Oct. 18. With U.S. food imports set to top more than $2 trillion this year and expected to triple by 2015, a panel on food safety commissioned by President Bush met at Texas A&M University to discuss ways to strengthen the national and global import infrastructure. Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said the nation’s consumer is one who “expects to eat strawberries…

The governments of China and Brazil, exempt from Kyoto as developing nations yet still important polluters, commissioned a report from the InterAcademy Council that will be published Monday, October 22nd.  Its intent is to identify and detail the science, technology and policy framework for developing energy resources to drive economic growth in both developed and developing countries while also securing climate protection. "Lighting the way: toward a sustainable energy future" was produced by a study panel of 15 energy experts and its publication was approved by…

This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument, shows the breaking away of a giant iceberg from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Spanning 34 km in length by 20 km in width, the new iceberg covers an area nearly half the size of Greater London. The animation highlights the movement in the area between September 2006 and October 2007. The Pine Island Glacier is visible stretching from the right of the image to the centre. The tongue of Pine Island is shown moving inland between September 2006 and March 2007. Between April…

Research released today reveals the first ever index to pinpoint Britain's biggest energy-saving influencers. With 169 people in their social networks Britons are already acting as advisers to 10 people on energy-related issues. The report shows that just if just 0.59% of the population, i.e. one person in 200 (equivalent to the population of Manchester), tells every single person in their network what they have done to save energy, the entire UK population could be reached. The influencer index splits the public into four types - it shows that women are leading the way, as they make up…

Your height in adult life significantly affects your quality of life, with short people reporting worse physical and mental health than people of normal height. The study shows that adult height is linked to how good a person thinks their health is. Short people judge their state of health to be significantly lower than their normal height peers do. The data for this study came from the 2003 Health Survey for England, carried out by the UK Department of Health(1). In this survey, participants filled out a health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire and a nurse measured their height…