Since its founding in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has occupied a special niche in the complex ecology of advice-giving in the United States. Established as a small, private organization with special responsibilities and obligations vis a vis the American people and government, the Academy has expanded considerably in the past…

This paper reports on an experience carried out with second course students of the School of Aeronautical Engineers at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in the subject class Modern Technical Language. In the previous years the problem in that class had been the scarce participation of the students in the oral practices. They seemed to be lead…

In an experimental study (N = 209), the authors compared the effects of exposure to typical middle-school written science content when presented in the context of the scientific discovery narrative and when presented in a more traditional nonnarrative format on 7th and 8th grade students in the United States. The development of texts was…

The written representation in Chinese can be considered as a pictorial or a symbolic representation which is very different from English where the pronunciation is related to how the word is spelt. Students face challenges of a very different nature when science is learnt in Chinese compared with English. In Hong Kong, students are making…

Life sciences faculty agree that developing scientific literacy is an integral part of undergraduate education and report that they teach these skills. However, few measures of scientific literacy are available to assess students' proficiency in using scientific literacy skills to solve scenarios in and beyond the undergraduate biology classroom.…

The ability to use computer-based technology is an essential skill set for students majoring in chemistry. This exercise details the introduction of appropriate uses for this technology in the organic chemistry series. The incorporation of chemically appropriate online resources (module 1), scientific databases (module 2), and the use of a…

The nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology (collectively, nano) are discussed as important examples of the modern sciences and technologies that are having an increasing impact on all aspects of life. In this Position paper, general proposals are made for the levels of understanding of nano that might be attained by whole populations. The ideas…

Google Scholar's coverage of the engineering literature is analyzed by comparing its contents with those of Compendex, the premier engineering database. Records retrieved from Compendex were searched in Google Scholar, and a decade by decade comparison was done from the 1950s through 2007. The results show that the percentage of records appearing…

Graduate students in the health sciences who hope to become independent researchers must be able to write up their results at a standard suitable for submission to peer-reviewed journals. Bayesian analyses are still rare in the medical literature, and students are often unclear on what should be included in a manuscript. Whilst there are published…

Meaningful use (MU) of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is an important development in the safety and security of health care delivery in the United States. Advancement in the use of EHRs occurred with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which provides incentives for providers to support adoption and use of EHRs.…

An emerging line of research demonstrates a distinction between social and natural sciences; natural sciences devote more page space in journals to data graphics than social sciences. The present survey asked how the subdiscipline of Education, Special Education, compares to other disciplines of science. Also, how do the Individuals with…

Now that the full text of patents as well as patent searching tools are available for free on the Internet, every librarian who is responsible for assisting people with science and technology information should have a basic knowledge of this aspect of intellectual property. Whether a school librarian helping children discover the world of…

Robert Hooke's "Micrographia" (1665) holds an important place in the history of scientific visual rhetoric. Hooke's accomplishment lies not only in a stunning array of engravings, but also in a "pedagogy of sight"--a rhetorical framework that instructs readers how to view images in accordance with an ideological or epistemic program. Hooke not…

Medical and health sciences libraries have incorporated the elements of evidence-based practice (EBP) into their reference services, instruction, and online resource development for years. While EBP focuses on the use of medical and health sciences literature in the clinical environment (i.e., making decisions about how to treat a particular…

One of the core competencies in the IFT Education standards is for students to achieve competency in communications skills (that is, oral and written communication, listening, interviewing, and so on). According to the IFT guidelines, by the time students graduate, they should not only be able to search for and condense information but also be…