Science & Society

Lord Toast. Credit: Catarina Mota, CC BY-NC-SA By Akshat Rathi, The Conversation and Flora Lisica, The Conversation The 24th Ig Nobel prizes were announced on September 18th. The prizes annually award scientific research that “first makes people laugh and then makes them think." The ceremony was food-themed including competitions such as Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest. The awards for individual categories were presented at Harvard University by “a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates.” And the winners are: Physics The prize went to Kiyoshi Mabuchi of Kitasato…

Could novels help us fight climate change? Credit: Asian Development Bank/flickr By Stephanie LeMenager, University of Oregon A frail risk analyst rediscovers his inner frontiersman in a devastating flood that hits Manhattan; an insightful rural woman glimpses the grace of god in the revelations of biological science; genetically engineered hominids who purr themselves to wellness inherit a devastated Earth. All of these plots belong to the genre of “cli-fi”. Which is to say that climate fiction is anything but predictable – which makes sense, given the unprecedented changes it attempts to…

A new review of literature suggests that while domestic violence rates are higher for homosexual couples, they aren't as high as previous studies have found, and the authors of the paper say the minority stress model may explain the high prevalence rates. Previous studies indicate that domestic violence affects up to 75 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. A lack of representative data and underreporting of abuse paints an incomplete picture of the true landscape, suggesting even higher rates. By comparison, 25 percent of heterosexual women report domestic abuse while…

We've all been driving and come upon signs warning us that construction is happening and we have to slow down for the safety of workers and that penalties are going to be doubled. We see billboards with children imploring us to reduce speed because their parents are highway construction employees. Then it turns out that there is no construction. Speed limit credibility is put to the test by those instances and as a result, people have been routinely ignoring speed limits, according to Dr. Ross Blackman, a scholar at Queensland University of Technology Centre for Accident…

Five years ago, it was good luck finding a hotel anywhere near the rural areas where natural gas extraction - fracking - was taking place. The boom in natural gas meant a boom in employment and a boom in hotel rooms to keep workers. The wealth boosted Pennsylvania and other energy-dense states while most of the country remains mired in economic malaise. But over time people buy homes rather than rent hotel rooms and now there may be too many, says hospitality management scholars at Penn State. "Demand is still high in many of the counties in the Marcellus Shale region, but the occupancy rate…

It seems that CERN and the American Physical Society APS have struck a deal to make every article published by CERN in certain APS journals  open access.  The announcement I saw read this.  Message to members of the APS Division of Particles&Fields Authorized by Ian Shipsey, DPF Chair Dear Colleagues, A press release issued jointly by CERN and APS at 9 a.m. EDT (3:00 p.m. CERN time) September 18 announcing a partnership to make all CERN-authored articles published in the APS journal collection Open Access is here: http…

In the modern era, a great deal of policy decisions are made by people who do not report to the public. If the EPA agrees to settle a lawsuit with canoers by calling water a pollutant, they can just do it, and stick local government with a $500 million liability.  From the post office to the agencies that fund science, a new examination has found what most people know; that unelected officials have little understanding of the people they indirectly rule. Johns Hopkins University political scientists - ironically, humanities academics did a study to find out if another group was out of…

Under siege. Parents in confusion by Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock By Dennis Hayes, University of Derby Parents could soon face fines for parking too near to a school, according to a new Manifesto Club report on new Public Spaces Protection Orders. This comes after a record number of 63,837 fines were imposed on parents in 2012 to 2013 for their children’s “truancy”. More often than not that meant just taking them on holiday in term time. Teacher unions have often blamed bad pupil behavior on the lack of parental support. This summer, Michael Wilshaw, the head of schools inspectorate Ofsted…

Students at the City Colleges of Chicago may have to do without textbooks until as late as mid October.  While the students are as bright as any they need their books, for reference, and a sense of security.  They need reassurance that what they are about to write on their homework is right.   My lectures, OneNote notes, PowerPoints, and websites can only make up for so much.  This is the case across many courses, at all campuses, in our for college credit curriculum. Not just my courses but many others as well. Books are important to a scholar.  When I write of…

When you read something in a book, do you believe it? You might say, “Of course not if it’s fiction,” but well-researched historical or science fiction can offer plenty of accurate information, entertainingly packaged. Nonfiction, on the other hand, might seem true by definition—but what about memoirs? Polemics? Even textbooks tend to be outdated at best, if not outright biased. “We can never be privy to the elusive ‘whole story,’ as it’s ever usurped by legend,” writes Matthew Gavin Frank in Preparing the Ghost, a book which is kind of about giant squid and kind of about the nature of…