Science Knowledge Quiz

pew research science quiz results

Pew Research Center’s new study of science and its impact on society includes a science knowledge quiz. You can test yourself on the quiz. Thankfully I was able to get all 12 answers correct, which 10% of those taking the test have done. The median score was 8 out of 12.

I find some of the results surprising. The question most often answered correctly is “Which over-the-counter drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent heart attacks?”. The least often “Electrons are smaller than atoms,” a true or false question fewer than 50% of people got right.

Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media

Americans like science. Overwhelming majorities say that science has had a positive effect on society and that science has made life easier for most people. Most also say that government investments in science, as well as engineering and technology, pay off in the long run. And scientists are very highly rated compared with members of other professions: Only members of the military and teachers are more likely to be viewed as contributing a lot to society’s well-being.
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Just 17% of the public thinks that U.S. scientific achievements rate as the best in the world. A survey of more than 2,500 scientists, conducted in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), finds that nearly half (49%) rate U.S. scientific achievements as the best in the world.
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large percentages think that government investments in basic scientific research (73%) and engineering and technology (74%) pay off in the long run. Notably, the partisan differences in these views are fairly modest, with 80% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans saying that government investments in basic science pay off in the long run. Comparable percentages of Democrats and Republicans say the same about government investments in engineering and technology.

In this regard, public views about whether funding for scientific research should be increased, decreased or kept the same have changed little since the start of the decade. Currently, more than twice as many people say that, if given the task of making up the budget for the federal government, they would increase (39%) rather than decrease (14%) funding for scientific research; 40% say they would keep spending as it is. That is largely unchanged from 2001, when 41% said they would increase funding for scientific research.

Invasive Species: Camels

Wild camels overrun resources in Outback

It’s being described as a plague. More than 1 million wild camels are wreaking havoc in huge parts of Australia, eating the vegetation, destroying property, fouling and consuming water sources, desecrating indigenous sites and causing road accidents.

About 170 years after being introduced to the continent as a pack animal to open its arid interior, Australia’s feral camel population is the biggest in the world. The camels double their numbers every nine years and continually expand their domain.
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There are proposals to build a halal abattoir in Australia and send packaged camel meat to Muslim countries. Another proposal is to turn camel meat into pet food. Although most people who have tried the meat pronounce it as tasty, similar to beef but leaner, attempts to get the Aussies to add camel to their precious “barbie” have gone nowhere.

“Australians are pretty conservative in their choice of meat,” Mr. Edwards said. “Kangaroo meat hasn’t penetrated the market; camel meat is in the same basket.” Everyone agrees that the solution should be as humane as possible.

“In their natural habitat they are wonderful,” Mr. Burrows said. “But they don’t belong here and they are causing great damage. We want to reduce their number, not eradicate them.”

The problems caused by invasive species are often much less obvious (and the species much smaller) but invasive species are a serious problem worldwide.

Home Engineering: Building a Hovercraft

Botball 2009 Finals

Webcast of the double elimination rounds of the Botball 2009 competition of the winning Alcott Middle School Botball team. Norman teens win robotics contest:

The challenge of building the robot and seeing it do what it’s programmed to do is very exciting, said Goree, 14. “I like figuring out what’s wrong with the robots, fixing them and then seeing them work after you fix them,” he said.

The team was shocked, excited and proud of their first-place finish, they said. “Almost all the teams we played against were high school teams, so that was pretty exciting for us, beating high schoolers,” Goree said.

Paper Towels vs Electric Dryer

Sustainability Showdown: Paper Towels vs Electric Dryer

First off, let’s address one common misconception: for the most part, nobody’s cutting down trees just for paper towels. Most paper towels you find in public bathrooms are made from recycled paper, and even those that aren’t are made from industrial waste created in the manufacturing of regular paper.
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The reason hand dryers came out ahead ended up having surprisingly little to do with the actual act of drying your hands. Most of the emissions and contributions to greenhouse gases come from decomposition of the towels in a landfill.
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Like all life-cycle analyses, this one’s a bit messy, but no studies appear to support the use of paper towels over a hand dryer. Even in the best paper cases, hand dryers come out ahead. To top it off, if a business uses 100% clean energy, the impact and emissions from a hand dryer become a orders of magnitude better than those for paper towels.

So the next time you’re standing with drippy hands and a dilemma on the wall, you can choose the hand dryer, and let the green part of your brain breathe freely.

Getting Kids to Rediscover the Great Outdoors

photo of lantern tree

Back to nature: Getting kids to rediscover the great outdoors

Childhood is supposed to look like this, according to many children’s health experts and an increasing number of landscape architects and urban planners. Wading in puddles or streams, building hideouts, climbing trees or exploring a “secret” outdoor spot develops the senses, stimulates the imagination and releases pent-up energy. Studies show that “a dose of nature” can be more effective than a dose of medication in reducing the symptoms of attention deficit disorder (see sidebar). Obesity and depression are alleviated, too.

“Nature stimulates that sense of wonder,” says UW Health psychologist Katie Watermolen. “When kids are outside, they are less anxious, more creative, more relaxed. All that leads to improved mental health.”
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A 2007 report released by the American Academy of Pediatrics says free and unstructured play is healthy and, in fact, essential for helping children reach important social, emotional and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient.

Great stuff. I agree. See photos of my hikes in national parks. The 2007 report doesn’t believe in free and open science though – outdated closed science journal rules apply. When will people lean – both that science should be open and nature is good for kids? Progress isn’t helped when the scientists working for public schools restrict their research by allowing journals to hide their research from the public.

Photo by John Hunter at Forest Glen Preserve, Illinois – Creative Commons Attribution.

Pigeon Solves Box and Banana Problem

Laboratory footage showing a pigeon solving Wolfgang Kohler’s famous box-and-banana problem, which he studied with chimpanzees in the early 1900s. Depending on their previous experience, pigeons could solve this problem in a human-like fashion in as little as a minute. This pigeon has learned to push boxes and to climb, and it has been rewarded with grain for pecking at a small toy banana.

In this situation, the banana is out of reach and the box is not beneath it. At first the pigeon looks confused, then it begins pushing the box – sighting the toy banana as it pushes – and then stops pushing when the box is beneath the banana, then climbs and pecks. This and related studies were summarized in Dr. Epstein‘s 1996 book, Cognition, Creativity, & Behavior.

This is another example of interesting thoughtful bird behavior.

Robert Brooks on Robots

Rodney Brooks on advancing the use of robots in the world (speech from the Makir Fair).

Ant mega-colony

Ant mega-colony takes over world

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
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In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the ‘Californian large’, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.
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While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct. But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
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The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn’t get on with those from the Iberian colony.
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But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair

Toyota has developed a thought-controlled wheelchair (along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute). Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Both companies continue to invest in innovation and science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. The story of why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now is their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.

The BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds (one millisecond, or ms, is equal to 1/1000 seconds.

Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.