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Universities Generate Ideas, Support for K-12 Startup Companies

6/1/2012 - Education Week
As technology brings venture capital and startup culture into K-12 education, ideas hatched in academia are making their way into the marketplace.

Texas Engineering Students Building NASA Prototypes

6/1/2012 - THE Journal
Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, TX, and NASA's Johnson Space Center are collaborating to inspire students to go into the fields of science and engineering through the High School Students United With NASA to Create Hardware program.

'Bunkum Awards' for Education Research

6/1/2012 - Inside Higher Ed
The National Education Policy Center, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, evaluates many think tank reports on education policy. The center also issues "Bunkum Awards" for education studies it finds "worthless and mundane," and this year's top "winner" is the Progressive Policy Institute for a study of charter schools.

7 Scientists Share $3-Million in Kavli Prizes

6/1/2012 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The seven winners of the biennial Kavli Prizes will share $3-million in prize money, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced on Thursday.

Took 10 Million Years for Life on Earth to ‘Re-set’ After Mass Extinction

5/30/2012 - Voice of America
More than 250 million years ago, most life on Earth was wiped out by a catastrophic event called the Permian–Triassic extinction. New research suggests it took our planet 10 million years to recover from what is now known as “The Great Dying.”

How Much Will the Common Core Cost?

5/30/2012 - Education Week
States face key spending decisions as they implement the Common Core State Standards, and a new study finds that they could save about $927 million—or spend as much as $8.3 billion—depending on the approaches they choose in three vital areas: curriculum materials, tests, and professional development.

Distant Planets, Protein Folding, and Esoteric Mathematics Net Shaw Prizes

5/30/2012 - ScienceInsider
The discovery of trans-Neptune bodies, breakthroughs in understanding protein folding, and pioneering work in a mathematical technique known as deformation quantization have won this year's Shaw Prizes in, respectively, the categories of astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences. The prizes, which include $1 million cash in each category, were announced yesterday in Hong Kong.

The Enigma 1,800 Miles Below Us

5/29/2012 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
Existing models of the Earth's core, for all their drama, may not be dramatic enough. Reporting recently in the journal Nature, Dario Alfè of University College London and his colleagues presented evidence that iron in the outer layers of the core is frittering away heat through the wasteful process called conduction at two to three times the rate of previous estimates. The theoretical consequences of this discrepancy are far-reaching.

The Right Way to Get It Wrong

5/29/2012 - Scientific American
Most errors are quickly forgotten. Others end up remaking the face of science. Niels Bohr, for example, created a model of the atom that was wrong in nearly every way, yet it inspired the quantum-mechanical revolution.

EcoCar Competition Drives Student Employment, if Not Innovation

5/29/2012 - The Chronicle of Higher Education (requires registration)
Teams from 15 universities are competing in the U.S. Department of Energy's latest Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions, now in their 25th year.

K-12 Scorecard Mixed as State Lawmakers Finish

5/29/2012 - Education Week
Some states hiked education aid in recent legislative sessions, but other K–12 issues also competed for lawmakers' attention.

College Comes to High School

5/29/2012 - The Washington Post (requires free registration)
As AP and IB courses proliferate, some schools are taking the next step: bringing in instructors to teach actual university classes.

Girls and STEM

5/25/2012 - Education Week (requires registration)
The push to promote more "feminine" role models for the science, technology, engineering, and math fields may backfire with middle school girls, says a new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Robotics Awards Celebrate Teen Teamwork

5/25/2012 - THE Journal
Team Antipodes, a three-person robotics team, was awarded first place in robot design during the recent international FIRST Tech Challenge robotics competition, which took place in St. Louis, MO.

What is NCTQ? (and why you should know)

5/25/2012 - The Washington Post (requires free registration)
Several months ago, U.S. News & World Report announced that it planned to rank the nation’s schools of education and that it would do so with the assistance of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

Africa and Australasia to Share Square Kilometre Array

5/25/2012 - BBC News
South Africa, Australia and New Zealand will host the biggest radio telescope ever built.

District Grant Contest Unveiled

5/22/2012 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
School districts will be able to submit proposals for innovative educational programs this year to compete for federal grants of up to $25 million under a new national contest, part of the three-year-old Race to the Top program. Rules for the competition were to be announced Tuesday by the Department of Education.

SpaceX Launches Falcon 9/Dragon On Historic Mission to Deliver Cargo to International Space Station

5/22/2012 - ScienceDaily
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into space and delivered a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit on May 22, 2012. The launch began an ambitious mission to show that the company is ready to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

Digging into Climate Change, U.S. Students Find More Than Science

5/22/2012 - Scientific American
Using field trips, editorial cartoons, and even parental objections, four innovative teachers are bringing global warming out of the science classroom.

American Physics Dreams Deferred

5/22/2012 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
With budgetary constraints on space missions, American physicists are taking the back seat in areas like dark energy in which they have been pioneers.

Standards Would Immerse Arizona Students in Science

5/21/2012 - The Republic
The first draft of the K-12 Next Generation Science Standards was released for public comment earlier this month after vetting by educators and business leaders in Arizona and the other states.

Jelly to the Rescue

5/21/2012 - NSTA Reports—Lynn Petrinjak
Inspired by invertebrates, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech University created Robojelly. The underwater device has a renewable power source.

In Sputnik Moment for STEM, U.S. Must Train More, Better Teachers

5/18/2012 - U.S. News & World Report
Houston, we have a problem. America's well-traveled path of excellence in science, technology, engineering, and math—which put a man on the moon, led the biotechnology revolution, and transformed the way the world connects and communicates—is no longer leading us where we need to go. Education in these fields, known collectively as the STEM subjects, is not adequately preparing today's students to solve our most pressing challenges and extend our rich history of success and global leadership through the 21st century.

NSTA Press: SchoolYard Science, 101 Easy and Inexpensive Activities

5/17/2012 - NSTA Reports
Chapter 6: Schoolyard Gardens and Nature Areas

WV Students Have a Long Way to Go in Science Class

5/17/2012 - West Virginia Radio Network
The latest standardized test results show that West Virginia students are still below average in science. The National Assessment of Educational Progress report card for eighth grade students gave West Virginia a score of 149 out of a possible 300; that’s two points below the national average and lower than all five neighboring states.

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