Science Education & Policy
There are numerous ways to address carbon emissions but are we choosing the right approaches? America and Europe have invested heavily in subsidizing solar and wind generation and solar panels - but critics contend that the same money spent modernizing older buildings would have done far more than funding Chinese corporations or wealthy homeowners has.
Low-carbon energy won't cost more than what is currently spent on today's fossil-dominated energy system, according to new research from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and partners.
To limit climate…
Other than being lauded for its spectacular catering, he 2009 Climate Convention Conference in Copenhagen didn't accomplish much.
One big reason was because developed nations wanted to curb emissions while developing nations wanted to make wealthier countries pay for their historic emissions - their carbon debt.
Is there a real way to calculate the cumulative cost of carbon dioxide emissions? America led the 1990s in CO2 emissions, for example, but the government notes that it was because the international community declared nuclear energy dangerous - American President William Clinton…
The FDA released its long-awaited Draft Guidance on hospital-acquired pneumonia recently. Their guidance has not changed since I wrote a blog about my last meeting with the FDA antibacterial drug development task force back in September of last year.
To reiterate what I stated back then . . .
The FDA position is that they are unable to identify prior data on the clinical response to inadequate therapy or no therapy of HAP or VAP in the literature or in previous antibiotic trials.Therefore, they cannot assign a treatment effect to antibiotics and therefore they have no…
amorca |
Portuguese government shuts down half of the research units in the country
The Portuguese funding agency for science (Fundação para a Ciência e aTecnologia – FCT) has just announced lthat it will stop funding nearly half of the research units in the country (154 units out of 322), which means to destroy the career of about a third of the total number of researchers in the country (5187 out of 15444).
Of these soon to be extinct research units, 1904 researchers in 71 units will be gradually fired in the next 6 years. The remainder 3283 researchers will be award an extremely…
The UK government is in a deficit crisis. Unlike the US, they seem to worry about it.
In order to reduce the deficit, they have taken steps to make welfare less of a chronic lifestyle.
Since 2010 the UK government has introduced a raft of reforms to the welfare system in a bid to reduce the deficit, but a total of 1,056 GPs across the UK who completed a survey (out of 28,602 who were contacted) lead the authors of a recent paper in BMJ to suggest that people receiving welfare support due to illness or disability are struggling to cope with cuts to their benefits and are turning to…
The United States of America has the best medical treatment in the world, but like most things with quality it is not cheap. Advocacy groups like the Commonwealth Fund focus on high average cost in their cultural efforts to nationalize the health care system, but they rarely cover the real reason health care coverage is high - too much is included and hospitals and doctors have a defensive medicine culture due to a hyperactive malpractice system.
If you don't cover every possible test, and something goes wrong, you will get sued. And now, with greater government involvement, even more doctors…
A child's illness and hospitalization is stressful for children and their parents and also clinicians.
20 years ago, the Four Habits Model of Highly Effective Clinicians, a core set of communication skills developed to help physicians communicate with patients, was co-created by Regenstrief Institute sociologist Richard Frankel, Ph.D. A new study reports that the Four Habits Model can successfully prepare inexperienced nurses for emotionally difficult conversations with parents of pediatric patients.
The new paper found that when taught the Four Habits Model, newly…
Residents of England claim their health care is the best in the world - and some in America agree. While America clearly leads the world in medical treatment, everyone with the money from almost every country quickly abandons their health care for US shores, it is only burden-free for the rich and the poor. In between, many might not go to the doctor.
But in England plenty of people want to go to a doctor because it is free. They just can't get an appointment so they go to an emergency room which costs far more, which makes the burden on taxpayers even greater.
A new paper estimated that…
Girls and boys learn to use language differently, according to a new study which found that girls were more likely to remember words while boys were more likely to create words and sentences in ‘real-time’.
Language scholars believe language uses both a mental dictionary and a mental grammar. The mental ‘dictionary’ stores sounds, words and common phrases, while mental ‘grammar’ involves the real-time composition of longer words and sentences. For example, making a longer word ‘walked’ from a smaller one ‘walk’. Most research into understanding how these processes work has been carried out…
American business schools, R.I.P.
Let’s not mince words: Our MBA
graduates marched out and destroyed the world financial system. And if that
were not bad enough, few in academe have stepped up to take responsibility.
Have you heard one professor say, “I taught those people, and I’m sorry?”[i]
I’ve been a professor and administrator
in business schools and engineering schools. I’m glad to be back in engineering
now. MBA curriculum, taught in b-schools, has become a race to the bottom, with
courses getting shorter and easier as MBA programs proliferate and compete for
students.[ii]
I found it…