science

As global competition and market pressures continue to intensify, many U.S. business leaders, educators and policymakers are focused on creating a workforce that will foster innovation and maintain the nation’s traditional position as the world leader in the sciences. To that end, the government and private sector alike are interested in measuring the supply and demand of jobs and labor within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

From the Scholars Strategy Network, written by Debra Javeline, University of Notre Dame.

Overfishing is a problem that has become more acute as global populations have increased, technology has improved and the environment has degraded. Until recently most management efforts have focused on limiting fishing days or areas, yet fishing stocks have continued to decline precipitously.

Over the past decade, many U.S. cities have seen a new rise in infestations of the common bed bug — known scientifically as Cimex lectularius — in residences, hotel facilities and elsewhere. The phenomenon has had significant social and health consequences in densely populated cities such as New York, and the topic has seen extensive news coverage.

The issue of gender gap in test scores has long been part of the education-policy debate, and explanations remain highly contested.  While the gaps between men and women in the math and science fields have closed in recent decades, strategies to address the disparities are still evolving and being tested in the classroom.

Organizations habitually shy away from adopting creative ideas, even though creativity is espoused as an essential driver of innovation, scientific breakthroughs, positive change, and even moral goodness. In other words, creativity is celebrated more than it is implemented, though it is not clear why this is the case.

The evolution of the contemporary human species is often portrayed as a slow process over many tens of thousands of years that culminated in our now-fixed modern state and form. But research from the University of Edinburgh (U.K.), Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Sherbrooke in Canada suggests that the genetic mechanisms by which humans evolved continue to operate.

For researchers, it has often been difficult to conduct experimental studies on health care outcomes due to biases introduced by differences between insured and uninsured individuals. To produce unbiased data, the ideal circumstance would require the provision of health care to be randomly assigned across a population.