Science Education & Policy

Men may be more willing than women to sacrifice achievement goals for a romantic relationship, according to a new study by Catherine Mosher of Duke Medical Center and Sharon Danoff-Burg from the University of Albany. Their findings challenge our preconceptions that women are more likely to prioritize people and relationships while men are more focused on themselves and their achievements. Their paper will be published in the next issue of the Springer journal, Gender Issues. The authors looked at whether personality traits influence students’ life goals, and focused on the relative importance…

Following are five myths about girls and science, according to the National Science Foundation. 1. Myth: From the time they start school, most girls are less interested in science than boys are. Reality: In elementary school about as many girls as boys have positive attitudes toward science. A recent study of fourth graders showed that 66 percent of girls and 68 percent of boys reported liking science. But something else starts happening in elementary school. By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. The…

Our second session of SciFoo Lives On took place today on Nature Island in Second Life (SLURL). The topic was Medicine and Web 2.0, as suggested by Bertalan Mesko (Berci) at the last session. We had a very good turnout, with about 30 people. Many returned from last week's session but there were many new faces also. Berci ran the session with me and helped out all week with getting our presenters set up with posters and general navigation. He also had the first poster with lots of great resources for blogs and wikis by and for doctors, medical students and anyone interested in medicine. Other…

There's a war happening in science but you may not know about it, and it's stranger than most because it is pitting some people with HIV and their loved ones against the scientists and medical community trying to cure it. In other words, it's a war that makes even less sense than most wars. Did you know there was even a debate about whether or not HIV causes AIDS? I didn't. You might as well have walked up and told me puppies and free money don't cause happiness - I was that shocked - but a debate there is and I learned about it when I read an editorial in PLoS ( Public Library of Science…

Climate change is big news in regards to the atmosphere, oceans, and Earth’s surface. In many countries, the groundwater reservoirs contribute a large part of the total water supply but little is known about how soil, subsurface waters, and groundwater are responding to climate change. Scientists with CSIRO Australia and USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have addressed the vital need for the prediction of climate change impacts on water below the ground. They report that the only way to make such predictions is with simulated interactions between soils and plants that are essential…

      The steady dirge of diabetes swells all about us, dark and onerous: the condition is now estimated to affect 7 percent of the population, with some putting the figure closer to 10 percent; with new molecular diagnostics, the numbers get even grimmer, with pre-diabetes—a state of risky blood sugar levels and inflammatory agents—edging in on 20 percent of the population. It is no surprise that a UCLA professor this past week called the numbers “the tip of the iceberg.”   Or is it the beak of the finch? When a condition that can lead to disability and premature…

In this fifth installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Martin Hoffert. Martin I. Hoffert is Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Chair of the Department of Applied Science at New York University.  He is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and was elected fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  I met Marty at the Foundation for the Future’s Energy Conference a couple of months…

The first comprehensive, nationally representative survey on the prevalence of sexual activity among older Americans is in - and they are having a lot of sex. Americans ages 57 to 85 are sexually active and view intimacy as an important part of life, despite a high rate of “bothersome” sexual problems, according to a new report in The New England Journal of Medicine. Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., who conducted the study with Linda Waite, Ph.D., and others at the University of Chicago, expects the study to help open a dialogue between older patients and their doctors as older Americans were…

The Internet is serving as a fertile medium for "HIV denialists" to spread false ideas about HIV/AIDS, which could have terrible public health consequences, say scientists in a policy paper in PLoS Medicine. "It may seem remarkable that, 23 years after the identification of HIV, there is still denial that the virus is the cause of AIDS," say Tara Smith (University of Iowa College of Public Health) and Steven Novella (Yale University School of Medicine). But with the arrival of the Internet, HIV denialist organizations such as "Reappraising AIDS" have reignited their campaign to spread…

Non-medicinal interventions are highly effective in preventing the behavioral and academic problems associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), according to a five-year study led by researchers at Lehigh University’s College of Education. The study, titled “Project Achieve” and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), was the largest of its kind focusing on children aged 3 to 5 who have shown significant symptoms of ADHD. It also involved researchers from Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa. The researchers, led by George DuPaul, professor of school…