Science Education & Policy

Haptics means “of or relating to the sense of touch”. Haptics Technolofy refers to the technology that connects the user to a computerized system via the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations and/or motions to the user. Perhaps people do not realize it, but haptic technology is already in our lives. Vibrating phones, gaming controllers and force-feedback control knobs in cars, like BMW’s iDrive, are examples of this technology. These days, you can turn your phone ring tone off, put it in your purse and still feel that someone is calling you when you get a vibration. On the other hand…

Icebergs have long gripped the popular imagination, whether as relatively run-of-the-mill floating hazards that cause "unsinkable' ships to founder or, more recently, as enormous breakaway pieces of ice the size of states or small countries. But, according to a paper published in this week's Science magazine, scientists have discovered that these floating ice islands--some as large as a dozen miles across--have a major impact on the ecology of the ocean around them, serving as "hotspots" for ocean life, with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill and fish…

A report from the UN Environment Programme says government subsidies, fears about global warming and high oil prices have led to an investment boom in the green energy and energy efficiency businesses. The report says investment capital flowing into renewable energy climbed from $80 billion in 2005 to a record $100 billion in 2006. As well, the renewable energy sector’s growth “although still volatile ... is showing no sign of abating.” The report offers a host of reasons behind and insights into the world’s newest gold rush, which saw investors pour $71 billion into companies and new sector…

What has the ENOCODE project done, and how do their results change our understanding of the human genome? In Time to Rethink the Gene? I put this project into perspective by briefly outlining some past concepts of the gene and highlighting some of the ENCODE findings. Now it's time to take a closer look at the results of the ENCODE project and their significance for our understanding of the human genome. ENCODE's genome snapshot is unquestionably fascinating, and it suggests that some features of genome regulation that were previously viewed as exceptions to the norm are really quite…

"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that has perplexed physicists for the past 40 years. "It's complicated and very complex," noted Case physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss, regarding both the general problem and their particular approach to try to solve it. The question that the physicists set out…

New study finds the key to understanding the global spread of AIDS is the size of the infected prostitute community around the world. In new academic research published today in the online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal PLoS ONE, male circumcision is found to be much less important as a deterrent to the global AIDS pandemic than previously thought. The author, John R. Talbott, has conducted statistical empirical research across 77 countries of the world and has uncovered some surprising results. The new study finds that the number of infected prostitutes in a country is the…

Children and their teachers are already benefiting from online learning communities such as the Oracle Education Foundation's Think.com, but there is a real opportunity for richer learning with such systems that is yet to be tapped. Elizabeth Hartnell-Young of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham and freelance statistician Karen Corneille of Victoria, Australia describe how they have taken Think.com as a case study and investigated how a free, password-protected online community can support children's learning. "We found that many children engaged readily…

While young people have been going to college in greater numbers over the past 20 years the Scottish higher education rate versus the English has been 'consistently and substantially' greater in Scotland, according to a unique study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The project, led by Dr Linda Croxford with Professor David Raffe of the University of Edinburgh, found that while the Scottish system encouraged young people to study beyond the age of 16, middle class students took most advantage. Using carefully constructed sets of data drawn from ongoing surveys of…

What happens if you deprive a group of 7 and 8 year olds of computers, television and games consoles for two weeks? Psychologist and head of the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, Professor Barrie Gunter, has been working with the BBC Panorama team to find out. Twenty-three 7 and 8-year-old school children from a single year group in a primary school in the Manchester area took part. They included children with a wide cross section of interests, from those who spent their free time in front of a screen to others who led a more active life outside school.…

After the tremendous discoveries in basic biology of the last 100 years, you might think that we would understand by now what a gene is. But the big news in genome biology this week is the publication of the results of the ENCODE project, a large scale experimental (as opposed to just computational) survey of the human genome. The leaders of the ENCODE project suggest that we need to, yet again, rethink just what exactly a gene is. I plan to cover this subject in two posts. Today I'll go over a very brief history of the gene and the basics of what the ENCODE project is doing. In a…