US Science Research Articles

Bipartisan support for US science more likely in Senate than House

Bipartisan support for US science more likely in Senate than House

Explanation-Construction in Fourth-Grade Classrooms in Germany and the USA: A cross-national comparative video study

To help explain the differences in students' performance on internationally administered science assessments, cross-national, video-based observational studies have been advocated, but none have yet been conducted at the elementary level for science. The USA and Germany are two countries with large formal education systems whose students underperform those from peers on internationally administered standardized science assessments. However, evidence from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Exam assessment suggests fourth-grade students (9–10 year-olds) in the USA perform higher than those in Germany, despite more instructional time devoted to elementary science in Germany. The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyze fourth-grade classroom science in both countries to learn more about how teachers and students engage in scientific inquiry, particularly explanation-construction. Videorecordings of US and German science instruction (n 1 = 42, n 2 = 42) were sampled from existing datasets and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Despite German science lessons being, on average, twice as long as those in the USA, study findings highlight many similarities between elementary science in terms of scientific practices and features of scientific inquiry. However, they also illustrate crucial differences around the scientific practice of explanation-construction. While students in German classrooms were afforded more substantial opportunities to formulate evidence-based explanations, US classrooms were more strongly characterized by opportunities for students to actively compare and evaluate evidence-based explanations. These factors may begin to help account for observed differences in student achievement and merit further study grounded in international collaboration.

The Superconducting Supercollider and US Science Policy

Reasons for the Superconducting Supercollider’s (SSC’s) termination include significant changes in the attitude of the government towards large scientific projects originating with management reforms introduced decades earlier. In the 1980s, the government insisted on inclusion of elements of these reforms in the SSC’s management contract, including increased demands for accountability, additional liability for contractors, and sanctions for infractions. The SSC’s planners could not have opted out of the reforms, which were by then becoming part of all large publicly funded projects. Once these reforms were in place, management mistakes in the SSC’s planning and construction became highly visible, leading to termination of the machine. This episode contains two key lessons about science policy. One is that the momentum of the government’s management reforms was unstoppable, and its impact on large scientific facilities and projects could not be reversed. The other is that specific measures such as cost and schedule-tracking systems to provide measures of program performance and impact were also inevitable; large scientific projects needed new parameters of accountability and transparency in what can be called the Principle of Assurance.

한국과 미국 초등학교 교과서에 나타난 과학의 본성 비교 분석

The national reform document, Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1990), and the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2012) emphasize the importance of the nature of science in guiding science educators in accurately portraying science to students. Therefore, it is important that textbook materials convey an accurate conception of the nature of science. This study employs content analysis to examine the content of textbooks in US and Korea elementary science textbooks with regard to the four aspects of the nature of science: (a) nature of scientific knowledge; (b) nature of scientific inquiry; (c) nature of scientific thinking; and (d) nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (Chiappetta, Fillman, & Sethna, 2004). Intercoder reliability was determined by calculating Cohen`s kappa (Cohen, 1960). Findings show that while US elementary science textbooks are not balanced in presenting the four aspects of the nature of science regardless of the publishing companies, the presentation of the nature of science in Korean elementary science textbooks have better balanced treatment of the four themes across the grade levels. On the other hand, both US and Korean elementary science textbooks are attempting to convey an idea of what science is by emphasizing scientific knowledge and investigation.

Mapping altruism

A great deal of work has been done to understand how science contributes to technological innovation and medicine. This is no surprise given the amount of money invested annually in R&D. However, what is not well known is that US science (R&D) investment is only one-sixth that of the annual revenue received by non-profit organizations (NPOs) in the US. The large majority of NPO revenues are devoted to the remaining landscape of altruistic causes – those not relying as heavily on scientific inquiry. Given this broader context, one might reasonably expect the non-profit world to have been as well characterized as that of scientific research. The unfortunate truth is that no map of altruistic missions and causes exists; the landscape of altruistic activity is virtually unknown. In this paper, we present the first maps of altruistic mission space. These maps were created using the text from websites of 125,000 non-profit organizations (NPOs) in the US. The maps consist of 357 topics covering areas such as religion, education, sports, culture, human services, public policy and medical care. The role of science in this altruistic landscape is examined. Possible applications are discussed.

Can billionaires rescue US science from sagging funding?

Can billionaires rescue US science from sagging funding?

Taiwan’s science miracle

In the past two decades, a flourishing economy and maturing infrastructure have Taiwanese physicists both staying home more and engaging internationally.

Business incubation mechanisms and new venture support: emerging structures of US science parks and incubators

This article surveys the last several decades of the emergence of business incubation mechanisms in supporting the development of innovative small firms. Focusing on the more established business incubation programmes, the paper presents four representative cases of the US science park and their incubator programmes initiated in the 1980s. A longitudinal review of the last three decades of their emerging organisational structures, management policies, and services provided reveal that these incubation mechanisms are responsive to the client firms changing needs and have evolved into sustainable models of new venture support. The article provides lessons for those interested in benchmarking, managing, and assessing the roles of modern science park and incubator mechanisms.

“Making a square fit into a circle”: Researchers’ experiences reusing qualitative data

ABSTRACTAlthough researchers have shown their skepticism of qualitative data reuse due to the epistemological issues, interest in qualitative data reuse has continuously grown. Discussions regarding qualitative data sharing and reuse have also been very active, especially in Europe and Australia. Compared with efforts in other countries, the discussions do not seem to be as prominent in the United States, in spite of a long history of data‐depositing and ‐curating practices and researchers’ reusing qualitative data in some disciplines. This research aims to explore qualitative researchers’ experiences reusing data in the field of social science in US, which have not been empirically addressed yet. The preliminary results from the in‐depth interviews with qualitative researchers who have used secondary data are presented, along with the barriers or hindrances to reusing qualitative data and the keys to successful data reuse.

Geographic Mobility and Innovative Activity

The geographic mobility of scientists and engineers provides a vibrant channel for knowledge diffusion. Not surprisingly, policy- makers seek ways to retain skilled workers and the firms that employ them and to internalize the localized benefits widely associated with scientific and technological endeavors. The consequences of mobility (or decisions not to move) on the process of innovation nonetheless remain difficult to discern in observational settings and are poorly understood. This presenter symposium assembles three studies that provide new and complementary vantage points for probing the factors that give rise to (or deter) mobility and the corresponding implications for innovative activity. A Managerial Response to Mobility Induced Threats to the Knowledge Creation Process Presenter: Vivek Tandon; National U. of Singapore Presenter: Sampsa Samila; National U. of Singapore Does a Decline in Star Immigration Help or Harm US Science? Presenter: Ajay K. Agrawal; U. of Toronto Presenter: Alexander Oett...

Electron and proton beam testing of pixelated solid state detectors

The biasing of guard rings in pixelated ion implanted silicon solid state detectors is often given little analysis as to the potential detrimental effects associated with capacitive coupling of the response of the pixel element to the guard ring and vise versa. This has been demonstrated and illustrates the importance of using beam testing to measure the angular response of particle instruments. We describe herein the development cycle of the Fixed Sensor Head (FSH) instrument, an imaging electron spectrometer that will be flown on the US Air Force's Demonstration and Science eXperiment (DSX) mission. During its construction, the FSH was tested using particle beams many times and each test yielded an important result that contributed to the design of the instrument before being delivered in August 2010.After several lower energy (<30keV) beam calibration tests at Hanscom Air Force Base demonstrated that the FSH was performing very well, a final, higher energy (150keV<E<1MeV) beam test at the Goddard Space Flight Center was almost skipped due to budget and scheduling constraints. This final test illuminated a major problem with the biasing of a detector guard ring that would have been difficult if not impossible to track down on orbit. The problem was easily fixed, but serves to highlight the importance of biasing of guard rings properly, and the necessity of testing instruments across the entire range of possible stimuli that they may encounter.

Not Just Neoliberalism

Recent scholarship in science, technology, and society has emphasized the neoliberal character of science today. This article draws on the history of US science and technology (S&amp;T) policy to argue against thinking of recent changes in science as fundamentally neoliberal, and for thinking of them instead as reflecting a process of “economization.” The policies that changed the organization of science in the United States included some that intervened in markets and others that expanded their reach, and were promoted by some groups who were skeptical of free markets and others who embraced them. In both cases, however, new policies reflected (1) growing political concern with “the economy” and related abstractions (e.g., growth, productivity, balance of trade) and (2) a new understanding of S&amp;T as inputs into a larger economic system that government could manipulate through policy. Understanding trends in US S&amp;T policy as resulting from economization, not just neoliberalism, has implications for thinking about the present and likely future of science and S&amp;T policy.

The Standard Oil Treatment: Willa Cather, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy , and Early Twentieth Century Collaborative Authorship

The Standard Oil Treatment:Willa Cather, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy, and Early Twentieth Century Collaborative Authorship Ashley Squires (bio) It will be a great historical series, as great, perhaps, as the history of the Standard Oil, and to most people more interesting. It is not an attack on Christian Science, as most magazine articles have been. It is the history of a remarkable woman and a remarkable movement. —“The Life of Mrs. Eddy,” McClure’s advertisement The Willa Cather canon needs to be one book shorter. Two decades ago, it seemed that a century-old debate had been settled about the novelist’s role in the production of the 1907 McClure’s series The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy. So clear was the critical consensus surrounding her ultimate authorship of the text that David Stouck, in his introduction to the 1993 University of Nebraska edition, confidently declared that “Willa Cather is indisputably the principal author of The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science” (xvii). Newly available documentary evidence at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston strongly indicates that it is time to reevaluate that consensus. The work in question—which ran as a series of articles from December 1906 to August 1908—presented the life of one of the most famous women of the day in scintillating, even scandalous detail. Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of the religio-medical sect that claimed that all physical suffering was the product of erroneous beliefs in physical matter. By the time the series appeared, she had attracted an international following, amassed a considerable personal fortune from her writings, and erected a politically and financially influential organization. For those who claimed to be healed by Eddy’s techniques, which were practiced throughout the world by her students, Christian Science represented the very pinnacle of human efforts to conquer physical suffering and disease. For those who regarded her theology and healing practices as [End Page 328] fraudulent, Mrs. Eddy was a public menace who amassed her largesse at the expense of a credulous public and threatened the very stability of American democracy. Ida Tarbell’s 1904 exposure of Standard Oil in another McClure’s biographical series on Rockefeller was frequently invoked by the magazine and its readers when discussing the Eddy project. As one admirer wrote to S. S. McClure after the publication of the first installment, “As the Standard Oil is the worst monopoly in the commercial world, so is ‘Christian Science’ the greatest, most criminal fraud in the religious field” (Adams, 12 Jan. 1907). The editorial team responsible for meeting a complex set of public expectations included the credited author, Georgine Milmine; Ida Tarbell herself before she left the magazine in 1906; Burton J. Hendrick, future Pulitzer Prize winner; and Willa Sibert Cather, who had just taken the job at McClure’s following the success of her early short stories. I argue—as Cather did herself—that rather than being the property of any one writer, the biography was a collaborative work, though critical preoccupation with the question of who deserves to be listed first (or listed at all) on the spine of the book has obscured that central fact of its production. Furthermore, the resultant habit of reading The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy within a single-author framework, mining it for evidence about Cather’s supposed early development as a writer (based on inaccurate assumptions about what she was responsible for), has led to some questionable conclusions based on assumptions about what precisely Cather did. It has also precluded some interesting possibilities for critical inquiry into a rich symptomatic text that tells us much about Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science, and investigative journalism in the early twentieth century US. Documentary Evidence and the Question of Authorship Rumors about Cather’s role in writing The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy circulated throughout the decades following its original publication. Once Willa Cather achieved a national reputation as a novelist—winning a Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours in 1922—admirers began speculating that she was the true author of the McClure’s series that had served as the basis...

Introduction to special section: A retrospective look at US science and technology policy

Introduction to special section: A retrospective look at US science and technology policy

Elementary Teachers' Classroom Practices and Beliefs in Relation to US Science Education Reform: Reflections from within

This study unveils the stories of 3 public school elementary teachers from the USA who reflected on their beliefs about science education reform, and implementation of the reform in their classroom teaching, in response to state recommendations for change in science education. The teachers' stories show how various factors assisted or impeded the implementations of reform in their teaching, the various challenges related to their grade-level teaching, and the teachers' personal struggles to make sense of reform recommendations. Within each case study, we describe 4 common themes from the teachers' interviews. These themes are related to teachers' science teaching strategies, their science teaching efficacy beliefs about adopting reform, the types of science learning outcomes teachers target, and the types of teaching resources available to them. Implications for teacher education and practice are discussed in relationship with study findings.

US science fleet's future is far from ship-shape

US science fleet's future is far from ship-shape

Log-jam in agency confirmations

Political squabbles leave US science agencies without heads.

Longtime observer sees a decadent lack of financial self-awareness in US science

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> Concerning Colin Macilwain's criticism of a "troubling mist of complacency," Nature prints a protest, but no rebuttal. </xhtml:span>

EDITORIAL: Migration and competitiveness: Japan and the United States

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.

Nanomedicine-prospects and challenges.

This special issue of Drug Development and Translational Research is a fall out of the INDO US joint Symposium on Nanomedicine—Prospects and Challenges, organized at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India, jointly with Dr. Labhasetwar, Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA, and supported by the INDO US Science and Technology Forum. The last two decades have seen an explosion in nanotechnology applications in science and technology. One such area is nanomedicine, which has touched the lives of many by enabling efficient therapy and which has helped overcome various impediments in medical science. Nanomedicine has helped medical science grow in leaps and bounds in the areas of treatment, diagnosis, and drug safety. These welcome advances have brought hope to the treatment of many incurable diseases. Nanomedicine, the exploration of medical applications of nanotechnology, is evolving from laboratory research to clinical application, particularly in the areas of drug delivery, imaging, diagnostics, and monitoring. Nanotechnology and nanoparticles are expected to dramatically change the way disease is detected and treated, with implications for personalizing management strategies in clinical practice, patient–physician communication, and outcomes measurement. Over the past few decades, collaborative and multidisciplinary research has matured the field of nanomedicine. Polymer and material scientists, physicists and engineers, biologists and clinicians, and pharmaceutical scientists have all contributed to the progression of nanomedicine. The rapid progress in the field is evident from the wide range of different nanotechnologies that have been designed and investigated, and are now at different stages of preclinical and clinical development. As these applications of nanotechnology are being explored, the critical issue of their safety to the patient is also being debated and investigated. This special issue is a compilation of research papers relating to various aspects of nanomedicine. The issue is a blend of reviews and research manuscripts which cover diverse aspects of nanomedicine. The issue addresses on one hand design and in vivo evaluation of nanocarriers for administration by oral, nasal, and parenteral routes; in vitro evaluation with a special focus on dissolution techniques; and nanomedicine for gene delivery and specific infections like HIV, including multifunctional nanomedicines for varied applications. Toxicity aspects have also been covered in the issue.