Science Education & Policy

US Army scientists analyze unknown samples to determine whether hazardous. That's typical of research trying to understand the unknowns and expand on our knowledge. Credit: Flickr/US Army RDECOM, CC BY By Tim Dean UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? We begin today by looking at the origins of research. It is comforting to feel like we understand the world around us and reassuring to have an explanation for everything. But where does our understanding come from and how reliable is it? Certainty is seductive, so…

Enhancing the marketability of the graduates and improving curricular programs are two of the main concerns of any academic department in a university. In line to this, the Department of Chemistry where I belong wanted to know the status of its graduates, hoping that it will reveal information relevant to enhancing the marketability of the graduates and on improving its B.Sc. in Chemistry curriculum. Because the university adopts the “no work no pay” policy, it provides a privilege as an assurance to its permanent faculty members of having work in case there is not enough teaching loads…

Is protest pointless or productive? Credit: EPA By Olaf Corry, The Open University It is set to be one of the largest ever coordinated protests. The People’s Climate March is due to take place in cities all over the world this weekend to try and influence the UN climate summit that follows on September 23. The marches promise to be a major global event, billed by organizers as an “unprecedented mobilization”. No doubt it will be enjoyable to take part in – but that’s no guarantee it will work. The anti-war protests in 2003 mobilized somewhere between 6 million and 10 million people across 60…

The wage gap between government employees and the private sector is already large and growing. Now there will be a gap in benefits due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) also. Employees working for Fortune 500 companies can expect to pay higher employee contributions for their health insurance, according to a survey of chief human resource officer. Patrick Wright, a professor in strategic human resource management at the University of South Carolina, directs the annual the HR@Moore Survey of Chief HR Officers. The survey is distributed to more than 560 CHROs of…

The United States is one of few wealthy nations without national or socialized health care and, as a result, the Hippocratic Oath has always been paramount. Even when it hasn't been efficient, doctors have tried to save and extend lives. As a result, the US health care system is not culturally prepared to deal with patients nearing the end of life and their families. A 21-member Institute of Medicine committee says in a report that major changes in thinking are needed. Their approach to end-of-life care integrates traditional medical care and social services with more "advance care…

Australia's coast is famous around the world - but rising sea levels are poised to make things a lot less fun. Credit: Adam J.W.C./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA By Martin Rice; John Hunter, University of Tasmania; Lesley Hughes, and Will Steffen, Australian National University “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside” holds true for many Australians who live on or near the coast. On top of the many lifestyle amenities coastal living offers, much of the country’s crucial infrastructure (such as road and rail networks, hospitals, water treatment works and waste disposal facilities) is located along…

America leads the world in adult science literacy, science output and social media. That means broad social networks. And it means, unless some field of science is your particular hot-button issue, the US is doing better in science acceptance than every other country, and spending time and money doing awareness is not really helping much. Yet in other countries, literacy is not on the same levels and social networks can help. How to get science discoveries to people is the struggle. In India, for example, the neonatal mortality rate is 10 times higher than in the developed world. While…

Is this really necessary? Credit: EPA By John Weeks, SOAS, University of London The Obama administration has proposed several ad hoc multi-country economic agreements, and in doing so has abandoned de facto the World Trade Organization (WTO) as insufficiently malleable to its interests. The two most important of these are the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the more recent Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Even as the latter was being negotiated by US and EU officials, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the increase in greenhouse gases is more…

The use of unnecessary medical tests and procedures driven by a fear of malpractice lawsuits, commonly known as 'defensive medicine', has been estimated to cost up to $46 billion annually in the U.S.  It used to be that we didn't want medical decisions being made by insurance companies, and instead they became dictated by lawyers.  For a recent paper, the authors estimated the cost of defensive medicine on three services – tests, procedures or hospitalizations – by asking physicians to estimate the defensiveness of their own orders. The authors invited 42 hospital physicians to…

If bloggers are journalists, should they all benefit from the same legal protections? Credit: Jonathan Ah Kit/Flickr By Jane Johnston A New Zealand High Court judgment handed down on Friday will have far-reaching implications for journalists and bloggers, as courts around the world consider the rapidly changing definitions of journalism. At the center of the judgment was the question: how do New Zealand laws define who is a journalist and what is the news media? In this case, the judge found that under Section 68 of the Evidence Act, a blogger can be classed as a journalist, and a website or…