Chronicle of Higher Education: Two years ago, the National Academies sounded the alarm in a widely cited report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” that America was slipping behind other countries in science and technology. On Tuesday leaders from academe and business met here to try to refocus Congress’s attention on the report’s many recommendations that require lawmakers’ action. One expected topic of discussion on Tuesday is a lobbying effort already under way to persuade Congress to increase federal spending for physical-sciences research significantly this year. The money could be squeezed into a broader supplemental-appropriations bill that legislators are expected to consider in the coming weeks to finance the Iraq war.
NPR: In West Virginia, science lessons on climate change have the potential to divide teachers from students, and students from their parents. But one teacher, Tiffany Litton, has earned the trust of her students. Her classroom, she says, is a place for honest inquiry, not a forum for anyone — whether the coal industry or environmentalists — to promote an agenda.
Physics Today Online: In a lecture celebrating NASA's 50th anniversary at George Washington University yesterday, theoretical astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking, a journalist and book author, argued that an active human spaceflight program is one of the few opportunities for governments to attract students into the sciences.
 “The low esteem in which science and scientists are held by the public is a significant problem,” said Stephen Hawking. “Never before has science and technology played such a big role in our lives, and yet the children of today are not interested in science.”
Lucy Hawking followed up on her father’s observation by providing examples of the public's poor grasp of scientific knowledge. She said that “72% of UK students couldn’t identify the Moon from a picture. And only 4% of US adults could name a living scientist, although 96% of those surveyed said it was important for the US to invest in science education.” A large number of scientists were inspired to go into science because of an interest in astronomy; “Kids never tire of hearing about human spaceflight,” she added.
 Stephen Hawking pointed out that NASA’s budget forms a small part of the US GNP (gross national product) and that increasing investment in the international space exploration budget by a factor of 20 would still be a small amount (0.25%) of the world’s financial resources. Humanity can afford to battle earthly problems like climate change and still have plenty of resources left over for human spaceflight exploration, he said.
"A goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite the space program and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy's Moon target did in the 1960s," Stephen Hawking said. Humans should return to the Moon because it is "close by and relatively easy to reach," and, assuming there are water deposits at the lunar poles, it could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system.
 Mars would be "the obvious next target", with its abundant supplies of frozen water and minerals brought close to the surface through volcanic eruptions. "There is also tantalizing possibility that life may have been present there in the past." Saturn’s moon Titan sounds like an intriguing place to visit, he said, although it's cold: “I wouldn’t want to live next to a lake of liquid methane.”
Hawking dismissed robotic missions as a way to inspire the next generation of children because although "robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, they don't catch the public imagination in the same way.”
Although attracting children to science education is one of Hawking’s reasons for supporting NASA’s plans to return to the Moon, he said that human space exploration should be a long-term (200-500 years) strategy for the species, including attempting interstellar travel.
“If only 1% of the 1000 or so stars within 30 light-years of Earth has an Earth-size planet at the right distance from its star for liquid water to exist, that would make for 10 such planets in our solar system's neighborhood,” he said. “If we want the human species to survive another million years, then we need to ‘boldly go where no one has gone before.’”
Hawking also theorized about the existence of life elsewhere in the universe, stating that he believed primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. He then joked, "some would say it has yet to occur on Earth."
ORISE: The number of foreign students receiving doctorates in science and engineering from US universities and staying in this country historically has increased. In recent years, however, stay rates peaked and then declined slightly, according to a new report issued by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE).
Stay Rates of Foreign Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities, 2005, documents a study in which tax records were used to estimate the proportion of foreign doctorate recipients from US universities who stayed in the US after graduation for any reason.
"In many fields of science and engineering, foreign students make up the majority of doctorate recipients," says ORISE report author Michael Finn. "Universities, research labs, and other high-tech employers have become dependent on these scientists and engineers."
"However, some of the actions taken to improve security after 9/11 were widely seen as having made it harder for foreign doctorate recipients to obtain visas," Finn said. "Also, there was concern that the increased restrictions made foreign scientists feel less welcome. In addition to security issues, the macroeconomic performance of the US economy may have been a factor as well. There was a weakness from 2000–2002 that may have contributed to the minor decline in the stay rate. This report indicates that the adverse impact on stay rates was quite small—the U.S. is still keeping about two-thirds."
Two-thirds (66 percent) of foreign citizens who received science or engineering doctorates from US universities in 2003 lived in the United States in 2005, the study found. The two-year stay rate had peaked at 71 percent in the early part of this decade; thus, the more recent 66 percent rate represents a slight decline in the stay rate of foreign doctorate recipients.
Among science and engineering disciplines, the highest stay rate was recorded for computer/electrical and electronic engineering. The stay rates in agricultural sciences, economics, and the other social sciences were the lowest, according to the report.
NPR (audio): With the price of oil, gold and other metals at near record levels, these are heady times at the Colorado School of Mines. Employers are falling all over themselves to hire new graduates. Who'd have thought that being a geologist would make you so popular — and bring you $80,000 a year to start?
Science: For the last twelve years it has been clear that girls' interest, participation, and achievement in science decline as they advance through the school education system says Sheryl A. Tucker, Deborah L. Hanuscin and Constance J. Bearnes in this week's Science magazine. For example at age 10, the number of girls and boys who like math and science is about the same, but by age 14, twice as many boys as girls show an interest in these subjects.
Many career decisions are influenced at this early age and this interest deficit among girls may contribute to the continuing gender gap in science, particularly in terms of labor market outcomes say the researchers.
The solution could be informal out-of-school workshop programs adds Tucker and colleagues, such as the "Magic of Chemistry" program sponsored by the University of Missouri and the Girl Scouts-Heart of Missouri Council. On average, 81% (range 66 to 88%) of participants wanted, after the workshops, to learn more about science and science careers.
Related links
Magic of Chemistry
Igniting Girls' Interest in Science (Science)
New York Times: A gunman killed five students and wounded 16 others in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall on Thursday afternoon in DeKalb before killing himself, according to university and police officials.
John G. Peters, the president of Northern Illinois University, reported at a news conference that four of the dead were women and two were men. He said four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at the hospital. All the wounded and the dead were students, including the graduate student leading the ocean sciences class.
The Christian Science Monitor: A Smith College professor's program may provide a pattern for how to attract and keep women engineers.
BBC: Scientists warn that there has been a fall in the proportion of UK students taking science doctorates.
Nova: In preparation for the launch of NPR's new series, absolute zero, Peter Tyson asks a number of physicists if you can't get colder than 0 on the Kelvin scale, is there a corresponding maximum possible temperature?
The New York Times: Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.
MSNBC: High school students sweep competition, winning $100,000 scholarships
Science: A novel program at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to support innovative ways of communicating science faces an uncertain fate. The 4-year-old Discovery Corps Fellowship (DCF) program has attracted few applicants, and in a time of tight funding, a new program solicitation that's about to hit the streets could be its last. Fellows say one big obstacle is that the scientific community, for all its handwringing about a scientifically illiterate public, still views outreach as a dubious activity for those on an academic career path.
Associated Press: Chris Comer, the Texas state’s director of science curriculum said she resigned this month under pressure from officials who said she had given the appearance of criticizing the teaching of intelligent design.
The Texas Education Agency put the director on 30 days’ paid administrative leave in late October, resulting in what Ms. Comer called a forced resignation.
The move came shortly after she forwarded an e-mail message announcing a presentation by Barbara Forrest, an author of “Creationism’s Trojan Horse.” The book argues that creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Ms. Comer sent the message to several people and a few online communities.
“Ms. Comer’s e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that T.E.A. endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,” said a representative of the Texas Education Agency.
Continue reading "TX science curriculum director claims she was ousted after criticizing intelligent design" »
Science: Radical measures from the new president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology are roiling a tradition-bound system.
Science:
A new study concludes that work force data do not support claims of a looming scientific and engineering labor shortage and that test scores indicate U.S. students are doing at least as well in science and math as their international counterparts are.
Economic Principals: Fifty years ago last week, the Soviet satellite known as Sputnik roared into orbit around the Earth, catching the United States completely by surprise. In its way, Sputnik was every bit as galvanizing an event as 9/11.
The real watershed came the next year, however, when Congress passed the National Defense Education Act. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the NDEA into law on September 2, 1958. School reform had been on the table for most of a decade. “Life-adjustment education” was still the fad those days in the nation’s public schools. The professional societies, especially, were poised to act.
What exactly was the $10 billion NDEA? To some, the NDEA was about curriculum reform: the Physical Science Study Committee’s high-school physics course (fifty-six films, a textbook and a slew of novel experiments); various innovative approaches to chemistry; the “new” math (set theory instead of the multiplication tables); the anthropologically-oriented Man: A Course of Study (Bushmen, Eskimos and all that).
In retrospect, however, the real payoff seems to have been the generation of 1958 a cohort of students for whom school became harder immediately, with advanced placement offerings proliferating and much more emphasis on math and science. Their sense of possibility shifted. What the GI bill had been to college education, the NDEA was to graduate study, with an emphasis on science and engineering.....
The Baltimore Examiner: When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.
NPR also looks at the impact of Sputnik on science education in the US.
Science: After U.S. high school students did poorly on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in 1995, the government has decided not to participate in another version to be given next year.
The Washington Post: Nearly 200 students sat in the large lecture hall, staring down at their professor, Edward F. Redish, holding pencils at the ready to take notes in Fundamentals of Physics. It looked like a traditional lecture course, but appearance is where the tradition ended.
Instead of spending 50 minutes putting students to sleep by lecturing about position, velocity and acceleration, Redish, a University of Maryland professor, kept the students awake by getting them actively involved in the lesson -- all 192 of them.
Los Angeles Times: The Hewlett Foundation donation will create 100 endowed faculty chairs, to counter the exodus of faculty to rich private universities.
LA Times: Congress on Friday approved the largest overhaul of education funding in more than 60 years, a $20.9-billion program that would boost financial aid to students and reduce interest payments on their loans.
Students who enter certain public sector jobs would have their debts erased under the plan, the total cost of which would be offset by slashing government subsidies to lenders. It also calls for a $510-million investment in minority colleges.
Science: Two key science agencies have issued policy directives this month that emphasize the role of investigators in helping postdocs grow into independent researchers.
Financial Times: Victoria Kim reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is helping to fund a new initiative to relocate more than 150 Iraqi scholars who are facing persecution. The foundation will provide $5m (£2.5m) for fellowships to Iraqi scholars trying to continue their work at institutions in other countries, notably Jordan, matching funds provided by the US Congress. The money will be administered by the Scholar Rescue Fund, an organisation founded in 2002 by Wall Street investors that helps academics in conflict zones.
Iraq is "the closest thing that any of us have seen to the Holocaust in terms of attacks on science and learning", said Allan Goodman, president and chief executive of the non-profit International Institute of Education, which administers the fund.
"It is not even clear who is doing it," said Dr Jarecki, the fund's chairman.
San Francisco Chronicle: Why he's quitting: Dynes says he wants to spend more time with wife of 5 months
The New York Times: Eric Mazur, a professor at Harvard, wants his students to understand concepts, not regurgitate facts.
The Christian Science Monitor: American high-schoolers will test their physics prowess in Iran against teams from 70-plus nations.
Photonics.com: At the mention of the word "outsourcing," most people probably think of manufacturing, not theoretical physics. But the scientists who develop theoretical predictions for high-energy particle physics experiments say outsourcing in their field has allowed the US to lag behind in high-profile, global science.
"This is the wrong kind of outsourcing," said Ulrich Baur, PhD, a professor of physics at the University at Buffalo (UB) College of Arts and Sciences and a co-founder of the Large Hadron Collider-Theory Initiative (LHC-TI), a consortium of theoretical physicists. Their goal is to train more US graduate students in theoretical high-energy particle physics calculations relevant to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator being built near Geneva, Switzerland.
"We are behind the Europeans, and we believe very strongly that we shouldn't just leave this work to the Europeans," Baur said in a UB statement.
Nature: In the wide-ranging shake-up of government that accompanied Gordon Brown's arrival as Britain's new prime minister, science got both a new home and a new minister in charge. Although the move had not been announced at the time Nature went to press, the new minister will be Ian Pearson, previously Minister of State for Climate Change and Environment.
In a complex game of departmental division and recombination, Pearson will take office not in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which used to be home to the science brief, but in the newly formed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). This department marks a fusion between parts of the old DTI and part of the old Department for Education, and will also contain a new Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser.
Oak Ridger: The number of college students enrolled in undergraduate health physics programs continues to increase, according to a survey of the 30 U.S. universities with health physics programs conducted by Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
Nature: Researchers detained on suspicion of 'espionage'
The Washington Post: Higher starting salaries, more rigorous teacher training programs and additional support for first year teachers are just a few of the incentives needed to deal with a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015, according to a group of business, foundation and higher education leaders.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The number of foreign students entering graduate programs in science and engineering rose in 2005, the first increase since 2001, a new survey from the National Science Foundation has found. Total graduate enrollments by American citizens in science and engineering hit an all-time high.
The Washington Post: Picture it: The abandoned building at 14th and U turned into an art gallery where graduate art students can learn how to sell and market their art.
This idea brought to you by Paul So, physics professor at George Mason University.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Kiyoshi Kurokawa doesn't mince words. As the Japanese government's first handpicked science adviser, he wants to completely overhaul the country's higher-education system. And he believes he has the passion and -- at a sprightly 70 -- the energy to do it.
The Washington Post: During the school year, 58 teams of American students coupled with students from China, India and Japan tackled technological solutions to global warming. They chatted online, divided jobs based on skill, consulted with advisers, and in the final grueling weeks, wrote a professional business plan.
The New York Times: Three months after it cleared him of research misconduct, Purdue University has begun a new inquiry into a professor who claims to have generated nuclear fusion in a desktop experiment, the university acknowledged yesterday.
NPR: As Congress continues to prepare legislation related to the American Competitiveness Initiative, a call to increase the number of graduates with science and engineering skills in the US to compete in the global economy, a report on NPR suggest that the majority of engineering graduates in India and China are so poor in terms of skills, that they cannot get employment. In fact, according to NPR's Vivek Wadhwa a US skills shortage isn't the reason for so many companies are exporting science and technology jobs overseas, cheap labor is.
MSNBC: The Kansas state Board of Education on Tuesday repealed science guidelines questioning evolution that had made the state an object of ridicule.
Guardian Unlimited: Birmingham, Nottingham and Warwick universities today announced the creation of a joint graduate school for physics.
NPR: Half a million dollars in scholarships for high school science geniuses were announced today in New York City at the Siemens Competition, one of the nation's top science fairs. Seventeen top students competed with research on such topics as blinking stars, sick worms and amorous monkeys. But the winning project, on topology and abstract algebra, may be incomprehensible to anyone without a PhD in math.
Science: Many U.S. educators think that a streamlined science curriculum with fewer topics per grade is a necessary first step toward boosting student achievement
Guardian Unlimited: The University of Reading last night confirmed its controversial decision to close the physics department.
Guardian Unlimited: Funding chiefs today announced an extra £75m to help prop up ailing university science departments.
San Francisco Chronicle: UC Berkeley physics Professor Richard A. Muller finds himself suddenly popular in some surprising corners of the world.
It turns out self-starting students in 35 states and 43 countries have been watching the 90-minute "Physics for Future Presidents" talks he gives every Tuesday and Thursday morning to a packed lecture hall of 300 undergrads on campus. And the list is growing.
BBC: A Rhodes scholarship-type scheme will be set up to attract the world's best scientists to the UK, the government is set to announce.
The Australian: Physicist Deb Kane has seen many prospective scientists steered away by parents who want their children to earn big money.
"I have been sitting at Macquarie University information days with a young person and the parent and very often the young person is mad keen on physics and the parent beside them counsels them that they don't think that's a very good idea," Professor Kane said.
A study this year by Macquarie of enrolments in university science, engineering and technology found that many prospective students were being funnelled into finance careers for their promise of riches.
ScienceNow: U.S. universities foster "a culture that fundamentally discriminates against women," says a report on the status of women in academic science and engineering issued today by the National Academies. Their underrepresentation is "deeply troubling and embarrassing," according to the report, which suggests that institutions should create a body to collect data, set standards, and ultimately monitor compliance to increase the number of women in technical fields.
The Register: One of the world's most important historical records will be made available online for the first time today. All the Royal Society's journals are free for two months and include stone-cold scientific classics going back to 1665 and the foundations of modern inquiry.
ScienceNow: The leading organization for U.S. mathematics teachers today spelled out what's important for students to know at each primary grade level. Officials at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) hope their 40-page document, titled Curriculum Focal Points: A Quest for Coherence, will help change the "mile-wide, inch-deep" approach that they say has left most U.S. students without a solid preparation for higher-level mathematics.
The Guardian: The study of physics in UK schools and universities is spiraling into decline as many teenagers believe it is too difficult, says a report from the University of Buckingham. The number of A-level exam entries in the subject has halved since 1982 and one in four universities which had significant numbers studying physics have stopped teaching the subject since 1994. Even in the 26 top universities with the highest ratings for research, the trend has been downwards. A similar article in the independent asks does it really matter if the number of students studying physics is falling? The newspaper points out that physics contributes a vast amount to the UK economy, with physics-based industries employing over 1.79 million people in the UK and contributing over £130bn in export value to the UK economy. Says Sir Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, "It is crucial that we get more specialist physics teachers into our classrooms if we are to inspire more young people to study physics at A-level and beyond. Teachers who are both enthused and knowledgeable about their subjects are key to breaking the cycle of decline that physics is experiencing."
Continue reading "Perception that physics is too hard is causing UK decline" »
The New York Times: In an effort to make Texas a magnet for scientific and medical research, the University of Texas is planning a $2.5 billion program to expand research and teaching in the sciences, including medicine and technology.
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