Science Education & Policy

If there are fewer than 50% females in physics, that is a call to action, argues virtually ... everyone in academia. We need greater outreach for girls, we need to change classes to appeal to them, we need to fund campaigns to convince women who are inclined to be doctors and help people to instead work in a lab, we are told. Why, argue others? We need doctors too. Science is hard, so is medicine. If a young woman wants to be a doctor instead of a physicist, so be it. If the social sciences are overwhelmingly female and the hard sciences are less overwhelmingly male, it is a tough argument to…

A study using adults who listened to short Hungarian phrases and then sang them back found that singing in a foreign language can significantly improve learning how to speak it.   Three randomly assigned groups of twenty adults took part in a series of five tests as part of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Reid School of Music. The singing group performed the best in four of the five tests.  In one test, participants who learned through singing performed twice as well as participants who learned by speaking the phrases. Those who learned by…

Scientists and policy makers need all the evidence to make informed decisions about medicines but drug research is an area where privacy concerns and transparency are in conflict. Like all areas of research, trials with positive results are likely to be published but even then half of all trials for the treatments being used today have gone unpublished. Government officials have seen the studies but not the wide community, with some exceptions.  GlaxoSmithKline, the world's fourth largest drug company, has committed to share all Clinical Study Reports going back to the foundation of the…

Because the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan focuses on cutting carbon emissions by more fuel mileage regulations for American vehicles and are too narrowly focused on "tailpipe emissions", it is unlikely to help, according to a steel trade group.   Mandating more cuts in carbon emissions for America by implementing stricter fuel economy regulations is one of the three pillars of the Obama Administration's Climate Action Plan but Lawrence W. Kavanagh, president of the Steel Market Development Institute (SMDI), said "while this is a sound objective, the Administration'…

In the 2012 presidential election, seven out of 10 Latino immigrants voted for President Obama. News pundits declared the Latino vote as unattainable for the Republican Party. Yet Latinos voted for President George W. Bush - and as governor too. While African-Americans are regarded as solidly one-sided, Latinos are courted by both parties because their votes are 'in play', they are not voting for one party despite what news media claims. They are socially conservative and religious, which are Republican strengths, yet want immigration reform, which Democrats champion. Recent electoral…

This is a draft article I wrote for wikipedia. about the legal issues and requirements for public debate for return of a sample to a Mars Sample Return Receiving Facility. It is background material for Need For Caution For An Early Mars Sample Return - Opinion Piece. I found out that some wikipedian editors have a heart felt belief that this material should not be included in the encyclopedia, and their views currently prevail in the relevant topic areas. So I've posted it here instead. This is permitted under the wikipedia CC By SA license. As required, this modified version is also…

Background material for How Valuable is Pristine Mars for Humanity - Opinion Piece? for those who want to research into the official studies on back contamination issues and design of the Mars Sample Receiving Facility. This is an article I wrote for wikipedia. It summarizes material from the United States National Research Council, the European Science Foundation, the Office of Planetary Protection and other mainstream studies on sample return missions and also covers some minority views. The Wikipedia article was merged away. Copying it to this blog post is permitted under the wikipedia CC…

I love the movies.  I love science.  I spent many formative years watching Joe Bob Briggs, Commander USA, the goofballs at Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and similar people who introduced and commented on the movies they were showing. Consequently, I now can't watch a movie without making similar ratings comments as I watch the good, the bad, and the ugly of science in the movies. That background means that I am in a perfect place to help people who are uncertain about why they need to know science or at least the science I'm trying to teach (usually chemistry, physics, and general…

How much money would you be willing to spend to find out if supersymmetry - SUSY - is real or not? It was always known that discoveries made by the Large Hadron Collider would require the International Linear Collider to interpret whatever the LHC finds. With the Higgs boson discovered, physicists want to look ahead to the development of the ILC, an electron-positron collider designed to measure in detail all the properties of the newly discovered Higgs particle. But it's not just about the Higgs, argue others. Howard Baer, professor in the University of Oklahoma Department of Physics and…

The American FDA allows ingredients that are banned in other countries. Like in stories about bat boys living in caves, it's always best to use foreign lands few people visit (like West Virginia) in stories about being somewhere smarter and/or prone to mutants. If West Virginia is too alien, Europe will do.  In the case of chemicals banned in Europe that America lets slide, ABC took a list from Buzzfeed that took a list from the book “Rich Food, Poor Food: The Ultimate Grocery Purchasing System” by nutritionist Mira Calton and engaged in a little scare journalism. I mean, if these things…