Science Knowledge in America
Policy
April 3, 2019 | Nature
Australians are just weeks from a national election, and the government’s latest budget proposal, released on 2 April, prioritizes tax cuts, roads and small businesses ahead of spending on science. Projects in nuclear medicine, environmental protection and gender equality in science received modest investments. But there was no new money for research grants, and universities would be worse off under the proposal.
March 28, 2019 | Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that many Americans can answer at least some questions about science concepts – most can correctly answer a question about antibiotics overuse or the definition of an “incubation period,” for example. But other concepts are more challenging; fewer Americans can recognize a hypothesis or identify that bases are the main components of antacids.
March 25, 2019 | Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
NIH funding is critical to improving health outcomes and reducing the societal costs of illnesses. Congress should increase the NIH budget and then maintain regular, steady increases. Check out this comprehensive report which covers the structure and role of the NIH, funding trends, why biomedical research matters, and global competition in the life sciences industry.
Science in the News
April 4, 2019 | Science
Read Science’s article on the historical intersections of science and the transatlantic slave trade. James Delbourgo - a historian at Rutgers University who has written extensively about slavery and science states, "We've been so negligent in bringing these histories [of slavery and science] together. We've missed that they are in fact the same history."
April 2, 2019 | Science
A fledgling, small-scale approach to dealing with the state’s opioid crisis paid off big last week for Oklahoma State University (OSU) when it became the surprise beneficiary of a $270 million legal settlement with Purdue Pharma. It’s the first agreement in some 1700 pending cases around the United States against Purdue, which makes the painkiller OxyContin, and other manufacturers of prescription opioids.
April 1, 2019 | Scientific American
A surprisingly large number of people have an impaired sense of smell—23 percent of U.S. adults age 40 and older, according to one national survey, and 62.5 percent of those age 80 and older, according to another. Such a decline can result from injury, chronic sinus problems, genetics or aging, says VCU professor Richard Costanzo, who has studied smell for four decades and is co-leading the initiative to develop a new device.
March 29, 2019 | University of Alabama at Birmingham
Programming computers has never been easier. The real challenge is figuring out how to hack the circuits inside your head. The words “brain-machine interface” may sound like science fiction, but they are approaching reality thanks to the BRAIN Initiative from the National Institutes of Health. At the center of this revolution is neuroengineering.
