A quest to get more discussion about science and scientific issues in the run-up to this year’s presidential election in the U.S, is starting to get noticed. Scientific American has joined this endeavor to get the U.S. presidential candidates to talk about substantive issues related to science and will be grading the candidates on their…
Innovation researcher Maria Clara Couto Soares calls for a new debate on expanding the reach of grassroots social innovations.
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is
European science cooperation with Africa needs redefining, as it is failing to address wide-ranging needs and challenges experienced by African countries — and often ignores those countries most in need of support, a conference has heard. Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 (ESOF), in Ireland, Ismail Serageldin, director of the New Library of Alexandria,…
President Obama has proposed spending $1 billion to fund a “Master Teacher Corps” initiative, which would reward top-performing educators with $20,000 annually. In a statement, Obama said the master-teacher program would shine a light on the best STEM educators, and allow them to “mentor and model” for their less-experienced colleagues. The program would start with…
International talks to address human-caused global warming began 20 years ago in Rio de Janeiro. But despite attempts to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases responsible, they have continued to pour into the atmosphere since then. Last year was no exception. In 2011, the burning of fossil fuels, as well as other activities such as…
Are conservative intellectuals anti-intellectual? The short answer must be no. Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Harvey Mansfield, Wilfred M. McClay—conservative thinkers have championed scholarship, learning, and history. The long answer, however, is more ambiguous. Confronted by social upheavals, conservative intellectuals tend to blame other intellectuals—socialist, liberal, secular—as the cause. They perceive political unrest as…
Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, may be getting ready to support legislation to grant green cards to holders of advanced degrees in the so-called STEM fields. The Texas republican, the gatekeeper on immigration bills in the House, is being urged to take action by a broad coalition of groups, including…
The headline on the press release about a new report warns of “R&D trends posing a threat” to the U.S. economy. Scary words, to be sure, especially coming from the presidentially appointed National Science Board, the policy-setting body for the $7 billion a year National Science Foundation. But the data upon which the board bases…
In his most recent column in The New York Times, David Brooks laments the results of a study led by Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, which demonstrate an “inequality of opportunity” between rich and poor children in America. The children of the rich and poor, we’re told, are raised “in starkly different ways and…