Science Education & Policy

Public health officials have long sought to explain the dramatic rise in U.S. obesity rates. They considered the obvious factors like junk food and sedentary lifestyles but apparently forgot to consider your friends. In the July 26 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers stated that obesity spreads through social ties. When an individual gains weight, it dramatically increases the chances that their friends, siblings, and spouses will likewise gain weight. The closer two people are in a social network, the stronger the effect. Interestingly, geographical distance between…

A new study out of Carnegie Mellon University reveals that people who regard themselves as humanitarians are even more likely than others to base donations to the poor on whether they believe poverty is a result of bad luck or bad choices. The study by Christina Fong, a research scientist in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon, supports previous findings that people are more likely to give money to the poor when they believe that poverty is a result of misfortune rather than laziness. What’s surprising is that this effect is largest among people who claim to have…

A quarter of adult New Yorkers have elevated blood mercury levels, according to survey results released today by the Health Department, and the elevations are closely tied to fish consumption. Asian and higher-income New Yorkers eat more fish, and have higher average mercury levels, than others both locally and nationally. These mercury levels pose little if any health risk for most adults, but may increase the risk of cognitive delays for children whose mothers had very high mercury levels during pregnancy. Today’s findings are the latest presented from New York City’s Health and Nutrition…

Obese girls are half as likely to attend college as non-obese girls, according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin. The study also shows obese girls are even less likely to enter college if they attend a high school where obesity is relatively uncommon. The findings appear in the July issue of the journal Sociology of Education. The study tracked nearly 11,000 American adolescents, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. "Obesity has been identified as a serious public health issue, but these results indicate the harmful effects extend far…

  It is important to realize that the way we power our vehicles today is based on the legacy of energy discoveries of the 1800s.  Oil was first taken out of the ground in Pennsylvania in the 1860s.  When the automobile industry came into being some four decades later, petroleum was the first candidate for the energy source.  Even though the quintessential American inventor Thomas Edison did build an electric car, electricity was not as wide spread as it soon would be, so the power of the Rockefeller oil cartel won the day.   Today we are using the energy source…

Simple nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), are single variations affecting only one nucleotide or base of the genomic sequence. Despite humans sharing 99.9% of the genome sequence, there are still 3 million genetic variations –which make us different from one another– 90% of which are due to SNPs. An international collaboration has performed a large-scale study on genetic differences between patients infected by HIV, and is the first study of this kind in the field of infectious disease. Results point to two gene variants related to the immune system. More precisely, these variations are in a…

In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. With broad bipartisan support, the House passed the provision as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill. “The House has affirmed the principle that broad sharing of publicly funded research findings on the Internet is an essential component of our…

Ethanol is 'oversold' a new report says. The future of biofuels is not in corn, says a new report released today by Food & Water Watch. The corn ethanol refinery industry, the beneficiary of new renewable fuel targets in the proposed energy legislation as well as proposed loan guarantee subsidies in the 2007 Farm Bill, will not significantly offset U.S. fossil fuel consumption without unacceptable environmental and economic consequences. "Rural communities won't benefit from the Farm Bill becoming a fuel bill. In the long run, family farmers and the environment will be losers, while…

Students' performance on annual math and science assessments improved in almost every age group when their schools were involved in a program that partners K-12 teachers with their colleagues in higher education. While an earlier study tracked schools that began work in the first year of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Math and Science Partnership program (MSP), the most recent study followed more than 300 schools participating in partnerships that began to be funded during the program's second year. Participating school districts found that a significantly higher proportion of…

It turns out they do.* And it can tell us a lot about learning. In fact, "competitive fandom" is such a growing field that University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professors Erica and Rich Halverson are spending their summer studying something they love - fantasy baseball, and why people play such games. It's an area ripe for analysis. Sixteen million adults played fantasy sports in 2006, spending an average of just under $500 a year and generating an economic impact of more than $1 billion a year, according to the Fantasy Sports Industry Trade Association. The majority of those first began…