Science Education & Policy
When is diversity a bad thing? When it comes to environmental action, according to a new paper from the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Scandinavian countries, low in ethnic and religious diversity, take more collective action than more diverse nations, like the UK, China and the United States. But the UEA paper frames diversity using the more negative term 'fragmentation'.
Americans may love separation of church and state and the mix of multiple religions in the USA but Dr. Elissaios Papyrakis, a senior lecturer in UEA's School of International Development and a senior…
Two new studies explore the development of reasoning and perspective-taking in young children.
How to Pass the False-Belief Task Before Your Fourth Birthday
As social creatures, humans must constantly monitor each other's intentions, beliefs, desires, and other mental states and a particularly important social skill is the ability to take another person's perspective and understand what the person knows, even when that knowledge may ultimately be false.
Previous research has found that before the age of 4, children fail to pass standard tasks designed to measure false belief but new tests…
miles |
Accountability
plays a very important role in the realization of educational aims,
goals, and objectives. Thus recognizing the “Who is/are” in
its formation and/or its implementation is important. They are the
local and international educational agencies, the school
administrators, the teachers, support staff, and the learners. They
are the key players responsible and accountable in carrying out each
of the components in the teaching and learning processes,
specifically, in the formulation of the general and specific
outcomes; in providing the right learning situation and learning
experiences…
In a little less than three weeks, a federal budget
sequestration, which would have severe consequences for agencies that fund scientific
research, will take effect unless a deal can be made between Republicans and
Democrats. That’s a pretty discomforting sentence to write.
Discussions on the effect of sequestration on
science research tend to focus on academia, and rightly so, since it will be the
academics that are most directly impacted. But that is just the beginning—a
very bad beginning—to the ripple effect that sequestration would have. Private
companies that depend on the research…
It's a good idea to know a second language for lots of reasons but English has long been the business standard.
How do cities ranks? A new list of 25 global cities has the answer.
"English proficiency is a key factor that determines where multinationals in high-growth, knowledge-based sectors choose to locate their regional hubs around the world," says Michael Lu, EF Education First Senior Vice President. "The Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai place only 19th and 21st in the survey. The language skills gap could make it harder for them to compete with Tokyo and Singapore, the…
Hank |
For decades, solar power has been touted as a way to partly solve the energy problem. Solar energy offers opportunities for use in developing countries and solar cells can sometimes conveniently be installed on surfaces with no other useful purpose.
Within ten to fifteen years the price of electricity generated by solar cells is expected to be comparable to that of ‘conventional’ electricity from fossil fuels.
Where do they get that number?
The efficiency improvement is achieved by the use of an ultra-thin aluminum oxide layer at the front of the cell, and it brings a breakthrough in the…
We can read words and phrases and even solve multi-step mathematical problems without conscious awareness, say a team of psychologists at the Hebrew University.
They conducted experiments which they say constitutes a challenge to existing ideas of unconscious processes; namely that reading and solving math problems, complex, rule-based operations, require consciousness.
To present sentences and equations unconsciously, the researchers used Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). In CFS, one eye is exposed to a series of rapidly changing images, while the other is simultaneously exposed to a…
Hank |
A few years ago, my wife had a milestone birthday and decided she wanted to run a marathon. Now, I don't even like to drive 26 miles much less run that far - that Greek guy is famous because he died doing it and there are some experiments I don't need to replicate in order for them to have my full acceptance.
But my wife wanted to do it. I had never seen her so much as walk fast but she signed up with a group called Team In Training and off she went (1) - they have various morale-building events, including dinners, and at one of those I met a fellow marathon husband and he said, "You…
Hank |
What can Kung Fu Nuns teach CERN scientists about cosmic energy?
To start with, they would have to convince CERN scientists that 'cosmic energy' actually exists, and they recently got a chance to do that when the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) hosted Drukpa Buddhist's Spiritual Head, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa.
In western academic culture, we always see people call Buddhist leaders 'His Holiness' because that is the title but referring to a Catholic Pope as Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the…
"[...] Given the fact that the nil hypothesis is always false, the rate of Type-I errors is 0%, not 5%, and [...] only Type-II errors can be made, which run typically at about 50% [...] [T]ypically, the sample effect size necessary for significance is notably larger than the actual population effect size and [...] the average of the statistically significant effects is much larger than the actual effect size. The result is that people who do focus on effect sizes end up with a substantial positive bias in their effect size estimation. Furthermore, there is the irony that the "sophisticates"…