Category Archives: Science

Study on Minority Degrees in STEM fields

The American Council on Education has published a study: Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology.

Key Findings:

  • In the 1995-96 academic year, 18.6 percent of African-American students and 22.7 percent of Hispanic students began college interested in majoring in STEM fields compared with 18 percent of white students and 26.4 percent of Asian-American students.
  • By the spring of 2001, 62.5 percent of African Americans and Hispanics majoring in STEM fields attained a bachelor’s degree compared with 94.8 percent of Asian Americans and 86.7 percent of whites.

Students who graduated in STEM fields (by spring 2001) were:

  • better prepared for postsecondary education because a larger percentage took a highly rigorous high school curriculum.
  • nearly all were younger than 19 when they entered college in 1995-96
  • more likely to have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
  • came from families with higher incomes.
  • more likely to work 15 hours or more a week.

Full press release on the study.

Feynman on Discovery

The pleasure of finding things out a video interview with Richard P Feynman (Google Video broke the link so I removed it).

A great mind expands upon our recent post: Science for Kids. He provides some good insight into learning.

Related book: Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 “Los Alamos from Below” lecture.

Solar Eruption

photo of Solar Prominence

A Solar Prominence from SOHO – NASA photo of the day.

How can gas float above the Sun? Twisted magnetic fields arching from the solar surface can trap ionized gas, suspending it in huge looping structures. These majestic plasma arches are seen as prominences above the solar limb. In September 1999, this dramatic and detailed image was recorded by the EIT experiment on board the space-based SOHO observatory in the light emitted by ionized Helium.

It shows hot plasma escaping into space as a fiery prominence breaks free from magnetic confinement a hundred thousand kilometers above the Sun. These awesome events bear watching as they can affect communications and power systems over 100 million kilometers away on Planet Earth.

Previous post on solar storms and the affect on communications and power systems

10 Science Facts You Should Know

Why is the sky blue? Facts you should know (sadly phb’s broke the link so I removed it)

  • What is it that makes diseases caused by viruses and bacteria hard to treat?
  • Why do we put salt on sidewalks when it snows?
  • Why is the sky blue?
  • Did dinosaurs and humans ever exist at the same time?

Read answers to these questions (phb broken link), and others, by leading scientists. For example:

Influenza viruses and others continually change over time, usually by mutation. This change enables the virus to evade the immune system of its host so that people are susceptible to influenza virus infection throughout their lives. Bacteria mutate in the same way and can also become resistant if overtreated with antibiotics.

by Helle Gawrlewski, Johnson & Johnson (and the article author’s mother)

According to a recent National Science Board survey, 90 percent of Americans are interested in science, but only 15 percent consider themselves well-informed. In high schools, only 60 percent of students complete a general biology class, while only 40 percent complete a general chemistry class and a scant 27 percent complete a physics class, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Science for Kids

‘Sciencing’ with kids by Prakash Rao:

Let us understand well that science is better learnt through activities, experiences, experiments and projects.

Children’s experiences need to be real, concrete and [tangible]. We should never get carried away by just contents and facts. Link experiences to children’s life. Then they will feel a desire to know.

Children are naturally inquisitive. Mainly we need to provide opportunities for them to do what they would do naturally. In previous posts we have highlighted many ways to give kids the chance to learn and figure out how things work.

Technology Education: USA and India

US wants to replicate India’s technology education success by Bibhu Ranjan Mishra:

Sources say that over 70,000 Indian students are undergoing higher studies in the US, which is the highest anywhere in the world. In contrast, there are just 780 US students presently undergoing studies in some Indian universities, mainly in IT, agricultural sciences and working with high schools to understand the pattern of higher secondary education in India.
…
Both Spellings and Enzi, who were the part of a delegation comprising some leading US Senators that visited Bangalore recently told Business Standard that the way India was churning out over 200,000 engineering graduates every year, while at the same time maintaining quality, really baffled them.

Science Education in the USA, Japan…

Press release from the US Department of Education: U.S. Science Lessons Focus More on Activities, Less on Content, Study Shows

A video study of 8th-grade science classrooms in the United States and four other countries found U.S. teachers focused on a variety of activities to engage students but not in a consistent way that developed coherent and challenging science content.

In comparison, classrooms in Australia, the Czech Republic, Japan, and the Netherlands exposed 8th graders to science lessons characterized by a core instructional approach that held students to high content standards and expectations for student learning.

The National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences today released these and other findings in a report titled Teaching Science in Five Countries: Results From the TIMSS 1999 Video Study that draws on analysis of 439 randomly selected videotaped classroom lessons in the participating countries.

The results of the newly released science study highlight variations across the countries in how science lessons are organized, how the science content is developed for the students, and how the students participate in actively doing science work.

For example, in Japan, the lessons emphasized identifying patterns in data and making connections among ideas and evidence. Australian lessons developed basic science content ideas through inquiry. Whereas in the Netherlands, independent student learning is given priority. Dutch students often kept track of a long-term set of assignments, checking their work in a class answer book as they proceeded independently.

In the Czech Republic, students were held accountable for mastering challenging and often theoretical science content in front of their peers through class discussions, work at the blackboard, and oral quizzes.

In the United States, lessons kept students busy on a variety of activities such as hands-on work, small group discussions, and other “motivational” activities such as games, role-playing, physical movement, and puzzles. The various activities, however, were not typically connected to the development of science content ideas. More than a quarter of the U.S. lessons were focused almost completely on carrying out the activity as opposed to learning a specific idea.

The science report is the second released by TIMSS 1999 Video Study. The first report, focused on 8th grade mathematics teaching, was released in 2003.

To view the reports and for more information: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study

via: Study suggests U.S. science teaching falls short on content

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs, research money by Paul Elias:

Singapore’s siren song is growing increasingly more irresistible for scientists, especially stem cell researchers who feel stifled by the U.S. government’s restrictions on their field.

Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.

They weren’t the first defections, and Singapore officials at the Biotechnology Organization’s annual convention in Chicago this week promise they won’t be the last.

Other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and even China, are also here touting their burgeoning biotechnology spending to the 20,000 scientists and biotechnology executives attending the conference.
…
In all, the country has managed to recruit about 50 senior scientists — far short of what it needs, but a start for a tiny country of 4.5 million people off the tip of Malaysia.

Another 1,800 younger scientists from all corners of the world staff the Biopolis laboratories, which were built with $290 million in government funding and another $400 million in private investment by the two dozen biotechnology companies based there. Biopolis opened in 2003 and contains seven buildings spread over 10 acres and connected by sky bridges

Nobel Laureate Discusses Protein Power

Nobel Laureate discusses protein power – Podcast

Nobel Laureate Professor Robert Huber visited the The University of Queensland – Brisbane to discuss the future of biomedicine.

He presented the studies that earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 and discussed the future of protein crystallography to reduce several diseases such as influenza and cancer.

Nobel Prize