Science & Society

Many of you who involve yourself in citizen science projects, or personal amateur research might dream of designing dedicated laboratory spaces in ones' own home or garage. Sort of like the "man cave" (or, "woman cave"!) for the science geek. This luxury might not always be possible due to space requirements, zoning conflicts, or just having too many kid toys to stash in the only non-inhabited room in the house. Steven Roberts Computing and Biking Across America Steven K. Roberts of ... somewhere in the United States ... had his own related complications with personal lab space, and…

Science has a long history of being multinational and has long been a way to bridge cultures and balance the public good with private gain.    Science, being about excellence, has zero interest in race, creed or religion.  Maybe it has too much concern with politics and policies in some corners but even that is a minor blemish.  The fact is, cooperation works. Cooperation comes naturally to science, as the big problems science is being called upon to address, like the future of energy, climate change and new pandemics, respect no boundaries. The days of science as a…

Alec Baldwin never actually left the United States, even though he said he would if George W. Bush won in 2004.   So people make silly threats about politics but do political outcomes have any effect on more serious issues, like suicide? Suicide risk factors are something sociologists love to think about and a new longitudinal study published in Social Science Quarterly says it analyzed suicide rates at a state level from 1981-2005 and determined that presidential election outcomes directly influence suicide rates among voters.  Previous research focused on whether the election…

A new article concludes that early intervention for young people with delinquency problems may help prevent the development of crime, alcoholism and risky sex behaviors, especially among those with low incomes.  The study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry set out to examine the influence of delinquency behavior in late childhood development.   The adolescent and young adults (800 people, ages 10 to 24, from low- and middle-income backgrounds) completed self-report assessments - so calibrate that accordingly - which included questions on delinquent involvement,…

A long-standing argument for public schools over home-schooling and more kids versus one is the social aspect.  Honestly, sending kids to school so they can learn to feel bad about their clothing is not that great, despite well-funded union public relations campaigns to that effect.    And being an only child is not so bad either, new research suggests.  A study of more than 13,000 middle and high school students across the country found that 'only children' were selected as friends by their schoolmates just as often as were peers who grew up with brothers and sisters…

An argument in the business world is how happy you can make employees while still maintaining a job standard.    JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater cursed out a passenger, grabbed two beers and exited through the plane's emergency exit earlier this week, and a new report in Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests his attitude may be a sign of trouble for JetBlue and other large companies.  It may also be a sign of trouble just for airlines, where flight attendants seem to think passengers exist to give them a reason to collect a paycheck.  Or it may mean nothing…

The difficult thing about popularizing movements is that, in the beginning, you want recognition but as time goes on the interests of the movement may be divergent from the people involved in it.   So it goes with the singularity.  In 1993, Vernor Vinge said "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."   But 17 years into that, only the most optimistic thinkers think substantial progress has been made.  Ray Kurzweil thinks so, but he said so in 2005 also, including a whole book…

Zombies - A Public Policy StudyFound last night during a Google search for latest news about something entirely unrelated to this search result: Night of the Living WonksToward an international relations theory of zombies. There are many sources of fear in world politics -- terrorist attacks, natural disasters, climate change, financial panic, nuclear proliferation, ethnic conflict, and so forth. Surveying the cultural zeitgeist, however, it is striking how an unnatural problem has become one of the fastest-growing concerns in international relations. I speak, of course, of zombies. http://…

This week a computer science researcher named Vinay Deolalikar claimed to have a proof that P is not equal to NP. Let’s set aside what this means for another day, lest I get distracted.  The important thing now is that this is big. Huge, even! If, that is, he’s correct. But correct or not, that’s the kind of thing one expects to see in academia. Tenure gives professors job security and research freedom, exactly the conditions needed to enable them to make the non-incremental breakthroughs that fundamentally alter the intellectual landscape. (And in the case of P not equal to NP, to…

Over at the NASW.org archives, their cybrarian did a summary of science blog sites.  And in case "Science2.0" isn't hot enough, we find science3point0.com (yes, that's their moniker): Another social networking site with appended blogs is Science 3.0, which "combines the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today's digital connectivity." There's also some good coverage of Hank Campbell at Science 2.0 (aka here), though, alas, no mention of the "SciencePrevious+1"…