NSTA WebNews Digest

Science News: History of Science

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the Sequel

3/25/2013 - The New York Times
After its contributions to science, the HeLa cells may help create laws to protect the privacy of the family of Henrietta Lacks—and yours.

All-Star STEM Students Meet the President!

3/15/2013 - Whitehouse.gov
President Barack Obama greeted and talked with the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search finalists in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House, March 12, 2013.

A Laboratory Grows Young Scientists

3/11/2013 - The New York Times
The annual Intel Science Talent Search, with 40 finalists from more than 1,700 applicants this year, encourages young students to enter a life of science.

Podcast Interview: North Korea's Nuclear Test

2/25/2013 - American Association for the Advancement of Science
Is that legal? Richard Stone and Lassina Zerbo discuss North Korea's latest nuclear test.

How the Internet Changed Science Research and Academic Publishing, Creating the New Research Economy

1/4/2013 - The Huffington Post
The Internet has impacted all industries in ways we could not have imagined three decades ago. But nowhere has that impact been felt more so than in science research and academic publishing, especially during last 15 years of transition from hard copy to electronic files and the more recent emergence of networked science.

Hawking and CERN Teams Win Prizes From Russian Billionaire

12/11/2012 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
Yuri Milner, the Russian entrepreneur who startled the scientific world last summer when he handed out $3 million apiece to nine theoretical physicists and mathematicians, set to announce another round of multimillion-dollar prizes to physicists. Headlining the list are a pair of “special” prizes of $3 million each, one to the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking for his work on black holes, and the other to be shared by seven scientists here at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, for the discovery in July of what is probably the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that endows others with mass.

Stereotypes Deter Women From Becoming Scientists

11/21/2012 - Voice of America
Across the globe, fewer women are enrolling in college science programs or working in the science and technology sectors and education experts are blaming the problem on stereotypes about what a scientist looks like.

Anthropology Group Approves Overhaul of Its Ethics Code

11/8/2012 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The American Anthropological Association on Tuesday announced that its members had approved a new ethics code after a five-year review.

Dance Your Ph.D.: And The Winner Is...

10/15/2012 - ScienceNow
Peter Liddicoat, a materials scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, admits to being a shy researcher, "more comfortable hiding behind the computer monitor." So when his labmates urged him to take part in the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, he was reluctant. But he finally caved in to the pressure. "A turning point was my boss’s enthusiastic laughter when encouraging me to do it," Liddicoat says, "and the realization that this would tackle head-on the ominous question, 'So what is your Ph.D. about?' "

Misconduct Is the Main Cause of Retractions in Life-Sciences Journals

10/1/2012 - Scientific American
Opaque retraction notices in journals can hide fraud while saving face or avoiding libel charges.

Quantum Teleportation Tipped for Nobel Prize: Thomson Reuters

9/20/2012 - Reuters
Researchers who wrote the rulebook for quantum teleportation, described as "spooky" by an exasperated Einstein, are among the 2012 Thomson Reuters tips to win Nobel prizes for science.

A Redoubt of Learning Holds Firm

9/3/2012 - The New York Times (requires free registration)
The Royal Society in Great Britain, the world’s oldest continuous scientific society, is striving to stay relevant in the modern world.

Math and Science Fields Battle Persistent Gender Gap

8/7/2012 - USA Today
Some colleges that specialize in math- and science-related fields have taken steps to increase female enrollment and are seeing results.

Women’s Strength in Technology Is Greater Than It Seems

8/1/2012 - CIO Journal
CIO Journal's Guest Contributor Vineet Nayar offers the optimistic view that "While the number of women in the technical fields may be low, the impact that they are making is markedly higher."

NSTA Expresses Sorrow Over the Passing of Dr. Sally Ride

7/23/2012 - Jodi Peterson
The National Science Teachers Association expresses its sorrow over the passing of Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly into space. Ride died earlier today after battling pancreatic cancer.

The Science Life

7/14/2012 - ScienceNews
As a senior staff scientist at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, Paul Doherty has taught kids, high school teachers and the audience of the Late Show with David Letterman about physics. But when he visited India last year, he had a different set of students: monks and nuns.

SpaceX Founder Talks Mars with Caltech Grads

6/19/2012 - U.S. News & World Report
Fresh off SpaceX's historic return from the International Space Station, company founder Elon Musk said Friday that he would like to see humans settle Mars and become a "multi-planet species."

News in Brief: American Astronomical Society Annual Meeting

6/18/2012 - ScienceNews
Highlights from the 220th AAAS meeting held June 10-14 in Anchorage, Alaska.

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.

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 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.

Guggenheim Foundation Announces 181 New Fellows in the U.S. and Canada

4/16/2012 - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced its new fellows for 2012 in the United States and Canada on Thursday. The 181 recipients represent a diverse mix of scientific, scholarly, and artistic fields, and many of them are affiliated with colleges or universities.

"Speed of Light" Experiment Professor Resigns

4/2/2012 - Reuters
The Italian professor who led an experiment which initially appeared to challenge one of the fundaments of modern physics by showing particles moving faster than the speed of light, has resigned after the finding was overturned earlier this month.

"Titanic" Director Makes First Solo Dive to Earth's Deepest Point

3/26/2012 - Reuters
"Titanic" film director James Cameron has completed the world's first solo dive to the deepest-known point on Earth, reaching the bottom of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench southwest of Guam in a specially designed submarine.

Einstein the Scientist, Dreamer, Lover: Online

3/22/2012 - Reuters
At speeds even he could barely imagine, Albert Einstein's private papers and innermost thoughts will soon be available online, from a rare scribble of "E=mc2" in his own hand, to political pipe-dreams and secret love letters to his mistress.

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