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Intel ISEF Discussion Panel
Nobelists to students: Being wrong may be just right.
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Professional Science Master’s is 21st century MBA
One hundred years ago (in 1908), a group of higher educators launched a new professional master’s degree called the MBA. Their aim: to meet the anticipated needs of 20th century business, which would be characterized, they thought, not by product specialty but by bigness. Today, MBA programs graduate about 90,000 students per year and are […]
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Quest for energy efficiency needs public engagement
On April 14, the National Science Board released a draft report called “Building a Sustainable Energy Future,” offering advice on how the United States can transition to renewable and clean sources of energy. Dan Arvizu, the cochairman of the board’s task force on sustainable energy and director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, […]
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Enjoy the indelible experience of emulating Galileo
I was tickled when Rick Fienberg, then editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, stood up at a special session at the August 2006 meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague, grabbed the microphone and proclaimed that every person on Earth should look at the night sky through a telescope in 2009, as Galileo did […]
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At Nobel Conference, scientists and public converse
Physics professor Charles Niederriter of Gustavus Adolphus College directs the Nobel Conference, an annual forum where scientists and the public discuss a contemporary scientific topic. Held every year at Gustavus Adolphus, in Saint Peter, Minn., this year’s Nobel Conference, October 6–7, will examine the current state of water resources. Staff writer Laura Sanders recently talked […]
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Science needs ace communicators and politicians
In February, Alice Huang became president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The renowned virologist began her career at Harvard in 1971, eventually becoming director of the laboratories of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital Boston. After a stint at New York University, she moved to the California Institute of Technology in 1997 […]
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Bracing for global climate change is a local challenge
Weather and climate extremes have been affecting people around the world, from recent droughts in China and Australia to strong storms in Asia to a cold wave in large parts of Europe and the United States — all within a month of the World Meteorological Organization reporting 2008 would likely rank among the 10 warmest […]
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Treaty on antiquities hinders access for museums
Treaty on antiquities hinders access for museums JAMES CUNO Like water on a leaky roof, looted artifacts are finding the path of least resistance to a buyer somewhere. Art Inst. of Chicago James Cuno, a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, has spent years investigating implications of a United Nations treaty: the […]
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U.S. science remains far from ‘its rightful place’
Rush Holt, a plasma physicist by training, represents New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress. From 1989 to 1998, Holt was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, a research institute focused on fusion as an alternate energy source. Holt was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998. Recently, staff writer […]
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Nation needs recovery plan for science faculty jobs
Over the past few months, many graduate students and postdocs have been receiving letters from department chairs apologetically explaining that the faculty job search at Institution X has been canceled. State and private universities are facing declining tax revenues and falling endowments, and are unwilling to raise tuition on newly impoverished families. From Harvard to […]
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Receding glaciers erase records of climate history
For three decades, Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University has been monitoring the health of glaciers atop mountains from Peru to China . Skeptics initially doubted that he could retrieve meaningful data from these remote elevations. But he has, while also discovering that these millennia-old data-storage lockers are rapidly disappearing. Senior Editor Janet Raloff recently […]
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