Science & Society

If you want a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, you have probably been cautioned that academia, awash in Federal money promoting STEM careers, can maybe employ 15 percent of the PhDs in science they graduate. The private sector still accounts for most of the basic research, almost all of the applied research, and certainly all of the technology, and they want you. But just because it is a digital world does not mean you get to live where you are and wait for offers to roll in. Computer programming is a deliverable, people work from a spec, so that works fine remotely, but…

One was about 17 Westerners being killed and one was about 2,000 Africans. Guess which got most of the media attention? Kano, Nigeria Stringer/Reuters. By Ethan Zuckerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Consider two tragic events that took place last week. A small cell of Islamic terrorists attacked cartoonists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and shoppers in a Paris supermarket, killing 17 people and sparking international outcry, solidarity and support. The hashtag #JeSuisCharlie trended globally, and world leaders took to the streets to march in support of Parisian resilience…

Prices of gas are approaching $2 a gallon. Does that make it a good time to raise the gas tax? Kevin Lamarque/Reuters By Wallace Tyner, Purdue University It is well known that the US has a major infrastructure problem with our national highway system. Many of our bridges are in a very poor state of repair and highway maintenance is not keeping up with needs. The American Society of Civil Engineers in 2013 gave the US road system the grade of a D and estimated that US$190 billion would be needed annually to significantly improve conditions. The main source of funding for highway and bridge…

AirAsia 8501 - Both Black Boxes With NTSC Data Analysis Begins SoonIt has now been confirmed officially that the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) has been recovered.  It was delivered to the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) in a case containing water. (Photo: Elza Astari Retaduari/detikcom) The Flight Data Recorder was delivered to the NTSC previously, also in a case containing water.  Chairman of the AirAsia QZ8501 Investigation, Marjono Siswosuwarno in the NTSC office, Gambir, Central Jakarta, explained the need to keep the recorders wet.  He said that long…

US states as different as California, West Virginia and Hawaii share one thing in common - half of automobile fatalities involving young drivers, ages 16 to 25 years, involved pot or alcohol. And those results were from years before the cultural push to make marijuana legal. The scholars from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health used data from California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington State and West Virginia because those nine states all routinely perform toxicological tests on the blood or urine specimens of drivers…

How can a product which can be made for free be profitable? It happens all of the time. Words are free, for example, yet the Wall Street Journal sells good ones to its customers. Science 2.0 was built on open source tools but lots of consulting companies do the work for people less skilled in programming. So it goes with genetically modified organisms - GMOs - like vitamin-A enriched "Golden Rice", which provides health benefits yet is not owned by a corporation. Yet 15 years after the development of 'Golden Rice',  environmental activists are still paying lobbyists to block transgenic…

Why do discussions of creative genius so often happen about white male writers such as Jonathan Franzen? AAP Image/Harper Collins By Natalie Kon-yu, Victoria University I recently watched Salinger (2013), the documentary about the late American writer J.D. Salinger, famous recluse and author of The Catcher in the Rye. In it, the word “genius” was bandied about often and with adulation. Yet, it’s a term applied most emphatically to male authors and not female ones. A claim on greatness? Don’t believe me? Try a quick google search of the terms “literary genius”. The same names keep appearing:…

AirAsia QZ8501 - No Explosion Air Asia flight 8501 did not explode: it burst open on impact with the water. Many English language news outlets are reporting that the plane "exploded".  It appears that there has been a gross failure in translation.  The Indonesian word 'meledak' is ambiguous: it can mean 'explode', but it can also mean 'burst'. Meledak sama pecah - 'explode' can mean 'rupture. It appears that BASARNAS operations director Supriyadi has been misunderstood.  I do not wish to put words in his mouth, and will apologise if I have done so, but it appears from the…

Solidarity with France and Charlie Hebdo in Taipei Pichi Chuang/Reuters By Lucas Hollister, Dartmouth College In his 1998 novel, The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq argued that Charlie Hebdo played a pivotal role in the redefinition of social values in post-1968 France. For self-appointed troublemaker Houellebecq, Charlie Hebdo was more than a weekly newspaper devoted to the “contestation of capitalism.” It was also instrumental in importing the “North American hedonist-libidinal option,” which would lead to the “destruction of Judeo-Christian morals.” It is not unlikely that the…

The political football of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America is well-known but a new study has found that even immigrants with job offers are less likely to have those immigration requests granted - if they are from Latin America, Over a recent three year period, the U.S. federal government approved about 91 percent of labor certification applications from Asian immigrants and 90 percent from Canadian immigrants, but just 67 percent of applications from Latin American immigrants. The authors believe they properly controlled for variations in the offered salaries and job titles…