Science Education & Policy

Lesson 1. Doing something is better than doing nothing. "You should go to the studio everyday," a University of Michigan art professor named Richard Sears told his students. "There's no guarantee that you'll make something good -- but if you don't go, you're guaranteed to make nothing." The same is true of science. Every research plan has flaws, often big, obvious ones -- but if you don't do anything, you won't learn anything. I have been asked to write six columns for the journal Nutrition about common scientific mistakes. The mistakes I see are mostly mistakes of omission. A few years…

The long-held belief that plant-eating insects in tropical forests are picky eaters that stay “close to home” – dining only on locale-specific vegetation – is being challenged by new research findings that suggest these insects feast on a broader menu of foliage and can be consistently found across hundreds of miles of tropical forestland. These findings have significant implications related to the sustainability and conservation of these globally-important areas. Michigan State University scientist Anthony Cognato and graduate student Jiri Hulcr were part of an international team that…

Extinctions happened in periodic cycles in Earth's history but approximately 250 million years ago vast numbers of species disappeared from Earth and life changed from simple to complex. According to Jonathan Payne, assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford, a massive, rapid release of carbon may have triggered that extinction and it may tell us something about current global carbon cycle changes. Payne studies the Permian-Triassic extinction and the following 4 million years of instability in the global carbon cycle. "People point to the fossil record as a…

Following World War II, the U.S. began increasing its commitment to publicly-funded science. The responsibility of the scientist was thought to be a straightforward process: if the scientists asked the “right” questions, their answers would help policy makers to make the “right” decisions. However, the questions asked by researchers do not always translate easily into policy. Clark Miller (Arizona State University) will discuss ways to bridge the gap between research and decision-making in the talk, “Changing the model of science and society: the need to design science to address societal…

Is something better than nothing while society adjusts to the impact of pollution and climate change? Or is a "band-aid" approach just making people feel better and wasting time? It depends on which environmental group you ask. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds issued a withering attack on the British government, calling its policy on tackling climate change too myopic to be effective after the publication of another Westminster report detailing additional restrictions that should be in place. The report, by the Joint Scrutiny Committee, said aviation must be included in climate…

Corals in the central and western Pacific ocean are dying faster than previously thought, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have found. Nearly 600 square miles of reef have disappeared per year since the late 1960s, twice the rate of rainforest loss. The reefs are disappearing at a rate of one percent per year, a decline that began decades earlier than expected, the researchers discovered. Historically, coral cover, a measure of reef health, hovered around 50 percent. Today, only about 2 percent of reefs in the Indo-Pacific have coral cover close to the historical…

Despite marketing claims, parents who want to give their infants a boost in learning language probably should limit the amount of time they expose their children to DVDs and videos such as “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby.” Rather than helping babies, the over-use of such productions actually may slow down infants eight to 16 months of age when it comes to acquiring vocabulary, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute. The scientists found that for every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants…

Caffeine may help older women protect their thinking skills, according to a new study. The study found that women age 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee (or the equivalent in tea) per day had less decline over time on tests of memory than women who drank one cup or less of coffee or tea per day. The results held up even after researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect memory abilities, such as age, education, disability, depression, high blood pressure, medications, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses. “Caffeine is a psychostimulant which…

The causes of depression have not been fully identified but scientists acknowledge that genetic and environmental factors play a role in the onset of the disorder. One of the environmental risk factors more often related to depression is exposure to threatening life events. From a genetic point of view, the serotonin transporter gene, with its crucial role in communication between neurons, could also predispose people to depression. An international group of scientists, headed by professors Jorge Cervilla Ballesteros and Blanca Gutiérrez Martínez, from University of Granada, has recently…

MIT neuroscientists exploring how memory formation differs between children and adults have found that although the two groups have much in common, maturity brings richer memories. The MIT team reports that children rival adults in forming basic memories, but adults do better at remembering the rich, contextual details of that information. The MIT study provides new insights into how children learn that are not only theoretically important, but could also inform practical learning in everyday settings. The ability to remember factual information - who, what, where, when - emerges gradually…