Science Education & Policy

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SunGard Acquires Corporate Payments Division of Payformance

Science Education & Policy Newswire |
NEW YORK, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard (http://www.sungard.com) today announced that it has acquired the corporate payments division of Payformance Corporation (http://www.payformance.com), a Jacksonville, Florida based company that provides payment processing solutions for corporations and health care organizations. The acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, is not expected to have a material impact on SunGard's financial results. The acquired business will become part of SunGard's Banks & Corporations business and will be branded under SunGard's AvantGard brand ( http…
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‘15by2015’ - A Campaign to Strengthen Primary Healthcare Around the World

Science Education & Policy Newswire |
LONDON, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Tanzania, 2007. A male patient is admitted to a hospital with pneumonia and possibly HIV. Due to staffing problems and improper handling, the patient is not seen for a week. Upon finally being seen, he is found to be HIV negative. Because he does not have HIV he has to pay for all expenses, totaling more than his monthly earnings. If he were HIV positive, the entire stay, all medication, and all tests would be free. This experience demonstrates the growing crisis in health and healthcare in developing countries. Basic health services are seriously underfunded…
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Second Life To First: Researchers Create Virtual Character With Reasoning Of A Child

Science Education & Policy News Account |
Video games such as Second Life give users the freedom to create characters in the digital domain that look and seem more human than ever before but while they can have your hair or your hazel eyes, it's still just a pretty face. A group of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is working to change that. They are engineering characters with the capacity to have beliefs and to reason about the beliefs of others. The characters will be able to predict and manipulate the behavior of even human players, with whom they interact in the real world, according to the team. At a…
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Public Bored by Green Talk

Science Education & Policy Newswire |
LONDON, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Green groups tackling climate change and carbon emissions are facing yet another challenge - public apathy. Thirty percent of people feel there is too much coverage in the media about CO2 emissions, and over half of these are 'bored hearing about it,' a YouGov survey conducted on behalf of the by the Environmental Transport Association reveals. The poll also showed that although environmental apathy is a problem equal across social grades and regions, the same is not true for the sexes: Men are twice as likely as women to be bored by messages about CO2…
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Science & Math Education - Is Caring And Cash Enough To Make A Difference?

Science Education & Policy Jim Myres |
I feel like I am going to be preaching-to-the-choir with this blog. The fact that you are reading it puts you in the "choir." I would encourage all of you to read the first two columns of the article "A New Bottom Line For School Science" by Jeffrey Mervis in Science Vol. 319, p. 1030-33, Feb. 22, 08. The quote from this article that has me upset is "I don’t use a textbook or assign written homework because so many of them (the students) wouldn’t be able to read it." If this were a quote from a third grade teacher in a rural school for the children of migrant workers, I would still be upset…
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Bad Science Journalism And The Myth Of The Oppressed Underdog

Science Education & Policy Michael White |
There is a particular narrative about science that science journalists love to write about, and Americans love to hear. I call it the 'oppressed underdog' narrative, and it would be great except for the fact that it's usually wrong. The narrative goes like this: 1. The famous, brilliant scientist So-and-so hypothesized that X was true. 2. X, forever after, became dogma among scientists, simply by virtue of the brilliance and fame of Dr. So-and-so. 3. This dogmatic assent continues unchallenged until an intrepid, underdog scientist comes forward with a dramatic new theory, completely…
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Stop Smoking Start Saving

Science Education & Policy Newswire |
MANCHESTER, England, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- - A Staggering GBP120,000 Spent on Smoking Cigarettes Recent research from leading financial services provider, Co-operative Insurance (CIS) has found that the average British smoker spends just over GBP2,000 a year funding their smoking habit - that's a breathtaking GBP121,000 in a lifetime! Taking into account that on average a single person smokes 436,800 cigarettes from 21,840 packets purchased, CIS is urging consumers to finally kick the habit and save some money this National No Smoking Day (12 March). In addition to the money saved by…
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Science Magazine Discovers Science 2.0, Sort Of

Science Education & Policy News Account |
Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, one of the world’s leading researchers and innovators in human-computer interaction, says it’s time for the laboratory research that has defined science for the last 400 years to make room for a revolutionary new method of scientific discovery. He calls it Science 2.0. We couldn't agree more. Yet he has apparently never read this website. He says Science 2.0 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…
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Platts Survey: US Reactors Produce Record Power Generation in 2007 as World Nuclear Generation Slumps

Science Education & Policy Newswire |
WASHINGTON, March 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Global power generated by nuclear reactors fell about 3.6% in calendar 2007 from the 2.8 billion megawatt-hours (MWh) recorded in 2006, according to data released by Nucleonics Week, a publication of Platts, a leading global provider of energy and commodities information. In the otherwise lackluster 2007, US reactors set a record for nuclear power generation, with output surging to 843 million gross MWh and utilizing an average 91% of reactor capacity. "The 2007 nuclear plant performance means about 20% of US electricity was once again generated without…
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Defending The Accuracy And Credibility Of Public Opinion Polling

Science Education & Policy News Account |
Nancy Mathiowetz is “drowning in data” but so is almost everyone else. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociology professor and president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research says the results of public opinion polls measure nearly every aspect of our lives today, from who we favor for public office to what kinds of cookies we prefer. Mathiowetz views them as necessary and useful tools and, while not perfect, she says polls still are a reliable way for people to have their voices heard by lawmakers. “They are what drive policymaking in a democratic society,” she says…
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