Science Education & Policy

Research has uncovered alarming evidence that high Arctic ponds, many which have been permanent bodies of water for thousands of years, are completely drying out during the polar summer. These shallow ponds, which dot the Arctic landscape, are important indicators of environment change and are especially susceptible to the effects of climate change because of their low water volume. Marianne Douglas, Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Director of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute at the University of Alberta, and John Smol, Professor of Biology at Queen’s University, studied…

How precise are tests used to diagnose learning disability, progressive brain disease or impairment from head injury? Timothy Salthouse, PhD, a noted cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, has demonstrated that giving a test only once isn’t enough to get a clear picture of someone’s mental functioning. It appears that repeating tests over a short period may give a more accurate range of scores, improving diagnostic workups. Salthouse gave 16 common cognitive and neuropsychological tests to evenly divided participants (90 in the first, 1600 in the second) into groups of ages 18…

There's a problem in all of the climate predictions people have made over the last few years - we just don't know who to trust. Some experts remind us that since we can't predict the weather more than 10 days from now making economy-shattering policy decisions on such incomplete science is a bad idea. One prominent politician says he took a random sample of all the climate studies out there and that 928 out of 12,000 articles agreed with him, so he must be right. How are we to know? Global warming is more politics than science and I don't want to get into whether it is happening or not, or…

Juries across the country make decisions every day on the fate of defendants, ideally leading to prison sentences that fit the crime for the guilty and release for the innocent. Yet a new Northwestern University study shows that juries in criminal cases many times are getting it wrong. In a set of 271 cases from four areas, juries gave wrong verdicts in at least one out of eight cases, according to “Estimating the Accuracy of Jury Verdicts,” a paper by a Northwestern University statistician that is being published in the July issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. “Contrary to popular…

Scientists of the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment of the University of Granada have studied how some psychological variables such as erotophilia (positive attitude towards sexuality), sexual fantasies and anxiety are related to sexual desire in human beings. The researcher Juan Carlos Sierra Freire states that there are very few reliable and valid instruments in Spain to evaluate sexual desire. Due to this vacuum, the researchers have adapted the Sexual Desire Inventory by Spector, Carey and Steinberg. This inventory is a tool that enables the researcher to…

This morning, the University of Arizona’s soft spoken Dean of the College of Science, Joaquin Ruiz, stood outside Biosphere 2, the 3.15-acre miniature world-under-glass just north of Tucson. He announced to a small crowd of well wishers and press that the University is taking over. With a new battle cry ‘Where Science Lives’ emblazoned on signs, a team of roughly 50 hopes to perform world-class science relevant to today’s grand challenges and inspire and educate people about them. “Unique” was the word most uttered by this morning’s speakers when referring to the glass and steel structure…

There aren't many people who will claim that the government is here to help you and they will save you money, but Chris Cooper and Benjamin Sovacool are doing just that. Cooper is Senior Policy Director, Network for New Energy Choices while Sovacool is a Senior Research Fellow and teaches in the Government and International Affairs program at Virginia Tech. They recently completed a study advocating a national energy policy mandating renewable energy. 21 states currently have a renewable energy policy, they state, but this patchwork approach is worse for consumers than having a bureaucracy…

It figures: Dads have a major impact on the degree of interest their daughters develop in math. That's one of the findings of a long-term University of Michigan study that has traced the sources of the continuing gender gap in math and science performance. "We've known for a while now that females do as well as males on tests that measure ability in math and science," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "But women are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math graduate programs and in careers based on those…

Fibromyalgia is a chronic, widespread pain in muscles and soft tissues accompanied by fatigue that does not manifest any structural damage in an organ. It affects approximately 2% of the US population, is an example of a class of maladies called CSS. These diseases are based on neurochemical abnormalities and include irritable bowel syndrome, migraine and restless legs syndrome. Twenty-five years ago, Muhammad B. Yunus, MD, and colleagues published the first controlled study of the clinical characteristics of fibromyalgia syndrome. Now Yunus and his team have done a critical review of over…

From the viewpoint of biology, learning and education can be defined as the processes of forming neuronal connections in response to external environmental stimuli, and of controlling or adding appropriate stimuli, respectively. Computers can't do that but researchers in Japan have shown how they can control electronic devices simply by reading brain activity. The "brain-machine" developed by Hitachi Inc. recently analyzed changes in the Akiko Obata's blood flow and translated those into electric signals which linked to a mapping device that controlled a toy train. Akiko Obata wears the…