Over the next five decades, the U.S. Office of Defense’s Organic Menace Reduction System (BTRP) need to really encourage and be between co-leaders in the federal government’s development of an enduring interagency mechanism to tackle an array of organic threats – such as pure disease outbreaks, accidental releases, and intentional […]
Year: 2020
Molecular & isotopic evidence of milk, meat & plants in prehistoric food systems
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, with colleagues from the University of Florida, provide the first evidence for diet and subsistence practices of ancient East African pastoralists. The development of pastoralism is known to have transformed human diets and societies in grasslands worldwide. Cattle-herding has been […]
Online education platforms could scale high-quality STEM education for universities
Average instructor compensation per 1000 students with in-person, blended and online instruction for EM and CMT courses at 129 Russian higher education institutions. Credit: Chirikov, et. al., Online and blended (online and in-person) STEM instruction can produce the same learning outcomes for students as traditional, in-person classes at a fraction […]
Katie Collins, Vaishnavi Phadnis, and Vaibhavi Shah named 2020-21 Goldwater Scholars
MIT students Katie Collins, Vaishnavi Phadnis, and Vaibhavi Shah have been selected to receive a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for the 2020-21 academic year. Over 5,000 college students from across the United States were nominated for the scholarships, from which only 396 recipients were selected based on academic merit. The Goldwater […]
Apollo 13 at 50 Years: Looking Back at the Mission’s Lost Lunar Science
Had everything gone to plan, NASA’s third mission to land astronauts on the moon would have deployed a pallet of science instruments and brought back samples from humanity’s first visit to the lunar uplands. Instead, 50 years ago this month, Apollo 13 “had a problem.” An oxygen tank that had […]
The pandemic’s impact on education
Credit: Rubén Rodriguez/Unsplash As former secretary of education for Massachusetts, Paul Reville is keenly aware of the financial and resource disparities between districts, schools, and individual students. The school closings due to coronavirus concerns have turned a spotlight on those problems and how they contribute to educational and income inequality […]
Government policies push schools to prioritize creating better test-takers over better people
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Personal growth and job skills have taken a backseat to an increased focus on standardized test scores in schools across the nation, according to new University at Buffalo-led research. The study, which analyzed the educational goals of principals at thousands of public, private and charter schools […]
Are people with learning disabilities being supported during coronavirus pandemic?
Leading learning disability and palliative care expert at Kingston University and St George’s, University of London Professor Irene Tuffrey-Wijne has produced illustrative materials to support those most vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Kingston University, London Leading learning disability and palliative care expert at Kingston University and St George’s, University […]
In Good News, Scientists Built a Device That Generates Electricity ‘Out of Thin Air’
They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange “sediment organism” that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria. This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the […]
Bristol leads archaeologists on 5,000-year-old egg hunt
IMAGE: This is a figure showing areas of study. view more Credit: © Tamar Hodos, University of Bristol An international team of specialists, led by the University of Bristol, is closer to cracking a 5,000-year-old mystery surrounding the ancient trade and production of decorated ostrich eggs. Long before Fabergé, ornate ostrich […]
New fossil from Brazil hints at the origins of the mysterious tanystropheid reptiles
A new species of Triassic reptile from Brazil is a close cousin of a mysterious group called tanystropheids, according to a study published April 8, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tiane De-Oliviera of the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil and colleagues. After the Permian mass extinction, […]