Science & Society
Obesity has increased dramatically in the last two decades, yet so have awareness campaigns saying appearance does not matter. The cultural miasma is hardest on its youngest members and even kids aged 10 and 11 are concerned about their image, according to new research.
A study of 4254 Canadian schoolchildren has shown a direct association between Body Mass Index (BMI) and satisfaction with their body shape. The research in BMC Public Health, says girls are happiest when thinnest but boys have it even worse - they are unhappy when they are too skinny or too fat.
Bryn…
If you listened to the media, a bailout of GM was good for investors. A few months later, the stock was wiped out. But if you paid attention to Ford Motor Company while the media ignored them, who said a bailout was a terrific idea for its competitors and then refused government money, you may have made 300% on that stock in the last 5 months.
The media being bad arbiters of quality economic advice is nothing new - they have never claimed to be otherwise because they report what they are told. Yet the tone of advocacy the media often takes today, especially in its more…
I assume so, given that you're on Scientific Blogging. But if you have any lingering doubts, take the Pew Research Center's Science Knowledge quiz. It's a quick 12-question quiz about basic scientific ideas, kicking off with the great colorful "mad scientist" art below.
"Americans are knowledgeable about basic scientific facts that affect their health and their daily lives. But the public is less able to answer questions about more complex science topics," the report notes.
I'm not going to tell you the results - they break it down by demographic and by question - because the percentages of…
Hank |
Last night we attended the "Science of Fine Wines" event in support of the Sacramento Discovery Science&Space Museum.
This was, as you can imagine, not a hard science event. The Museum itself is devoted primarily to helping kids understand science and the attendees were primarily there to drink wine. But when we talked to them about it a 'science of cheese' portion made sense because it lent itself to a hands-on lab.
So we made up a flashy one-page graphic and Kristina got a local dairy to donate some cheese and off we went. There were two of us plus Dr. Maynard…
The Pacific Region of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, "the world's largest general scientific society") includes some of the best universities in the world, located on the Pacific coast of the US. So it was with great excitement that I flew out to San Francisco to attend the 90th Pacific Regional Meeting of the AAAS at San Francisco State University (SFSU), where I was slated to give a talk on science blogging.
I landed Sunday afternoon and stepped out of the airport into the bright, balmy 70-degree weather (a welcome change from the sultry Mississippi Valley…
Bernie Madoff recently got a jail sentence for promising a huge return on investment in defiance of common sense.
New research published by scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) in the Bulletin for the American Meteorological Society shows they apparently don't follow the American press because they say that investments made now can lead to as much as 10-20% improvement in climate predictions for the UK and Europe in the coming decades - and up to 20% across the rest of the globe.
"Our work suggests that investments in ocean observations, for example,…
A few days ago a local skeptic group here in Brooklyn organized a roundtable discussion on the concept of the paranormal. We thought this was going to be a chat about what people mean by that term, how one goes about investigating alleged cases of paranormal happenings, and so on.
We were in for a surprise. Turns out that a couple of real believers in the ghosts and the afterlife showed up, a somewhat rare opportunity to sit down with “the other side” and have a probing conversation to find out about what brings people to believe weird things.
“The psychic told me things nobody could have…
Last week we revealed the Top 10 Schools for Science based on the results of a 3-year study performed by US News&World Report. The study ranked the nation’s best science graduate programs, based upon the results of surveys sent to academics in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Science, Mathematics, and Physics.
So who came out on top? Several universities had a strong showing in one particular science specialty, but the top schools demonstrated high performance in multiple disciplines. Which schools scored the highest across all specialties? Here are the Top 10:
1…
The UK Government, in its Digital Britain report in June, made a commitment that every home in the UK should have broadband access by 2012. A range of technologies, including wireless, will be used to deliver the basic broadband.
But the same government and its laws aimed at tackling illegal use of wireless internet connections are making broadband access impossible, according to research published today.
Daithí Mac Síthigh, a lecturer in IT and internet law at the University of East Anglia (UEA), says legislation may not be the most appropriate way to regulate 'wi-fi' sharing, where a…
antunes |
I'm in the midst of 2 proposals right now (one satellite, one book), so I decided to take a break to share two web cartoons about science. One is from Cowbirds in Love, the other from Abstruse Goose. At one point I had a clever essay to go with the latter, but then someone forwarded the link to all our friends so it's already 'broken embargo' and removed the novelty. Instead of adding comments, then, I'll just give you the pretty pictures.
Science: If you ain't pissing people off, you ain't doin' it right.
Most Mad Scientists are really just Mad Engineers
See you…