Science Education & Policy

Health insurance reform plans that build on a mix of private and public health insurance, where costs are shared among government, employers, and enrollees would have great potential to move the system to high performance and would be the most practical to implement according to a new report released today by The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System. Affordable, comprehensive health insurance coverage for all Americans is essential to achieving a high performance health system, say the report authors, because coverage helps to ensure access to essential…

  Congratulations to Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  Congratulations to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for sharing in that prize. There could be no better recipients for the Peace Prize than the man who, more than anyone else has raised the awareness of global warming, and for the international body of scientists that, finally, lifted the dialogue about global warming out of the world of opinion and into the world of science.    Regular readers know that I have often written about global warming.  Yes, I am an…

Nearly one in three of the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California – including household names Apple, Callaway Golf and Skechers USA – have no women at the top, according to a study reported today by University of California, Davis, researchers. At the other end of the spectrum, five firms, led by the Los Angeles-based Nara Bancorp, have women in 35 percent to 46 percent of their top posts. The third annual UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders found that 122 of the 400 surveyed companies – 30.5 percent – listed no women executives or board members in their…

President George Bush declared October 1, 2007 Child Health Day.  The EPA celebrates Children's Health Month each October by developing publications and activities that highlight the importance of protecting children from environmental risks. You can view an English calendar or download a Korean calendar with a children's environmental health tip for every day in October.    Ten years ago, the EPA established the Office of Children's Health Protection to make the health protection of children a fundamental goal of public health and environmental protection. The…

An Interview with Dr. Feng Hsu In this latest installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Feng Hsu. Perhaps the single greatest solution for eliminating the global dependency on fossil fuels is Space Solar Power.  This has not received nearly the coverage it should in the ever growing discussion about global warming and alternative energy.  This interview with Dr. Hsu is a great introduction to SSP, and from one of the greatest authorities on the subject.  Please plan to set aside…

There's always talk about economic improvements for developing nations; fair trade agreements, living wages and a global economy. Often lost in those discussions is the idea that improving health is also an important part of economic and societal change. The new challenge for the international community, writes Barry R. Bloom, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, in a new subsection of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) called Sustainable Health, “goes beyond how to contribute to pilot programs in health that provide drugs, vaccines and preventive or health…

The majority of non-medical anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) users are not cheating athletes or risk-taking teenagers, according to a recent survey published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. Instead, the typical male user is about 30 years old, well-educated, and earning an above-average income in a white-collar occupation. The majority did not use steroids during adolescence and were not motivated by athletic competition or sports performance. The study, containing the largest sample to date, was coordinated by Jason Cohen, Psy.D. candidate, using a web-…

This essay is all about how society perceives scientist. From many different perspectives. I ask and try to answer the question. Why does science hold interest for so few people?   Do a quick google search of the terms stereotypes of scientist. What you will find is many links about various studies. They speak of the pictures that children draw when they think of a scientist. Consider the following: [1] Children from western industrialized countries tend to draw "a bush-haired man wearing a lab coat, surrounded by test tubes, precariously connected items of equipment and…

An estimated 6.6 million people in Europe suffer from schizophrenia:(1) a serious mental illness characterized by disturbances in the thoughts, perceptions, emotions and behavior of a person. A large majority of families who care for someone with schizophrenia are confident that many people with the disease can lead independent, fulfilling lives with the ability to have a part-time job when having optimal control over their symptoms. These results announced today on World Mental Health Day, are findings from a European survey of over 320 families and carers of people with schizophrenia…

A diet low in fat could reduce the risk of ovarian cancer in healthy postmenopausal women, according to new results from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification Trial. Researchers found that after four years, women who decreased the amount of dietary fat they consumed were 40 percent less likely to develop ovarian cancer than women who followed normal dietary patterns. As expected, no effect was found during the first four years because preventive benefits on cancer often take many years to develop. Ovarian cancer affects about 1 in 60 U.S. women in their lifetimes and has…