Culture | Page 2743 | Science Codex

Soft skills: Students and teachers need to be 'transculturally literate', says education professor

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The current generation of college students and teachers need to be as culturally fluent with people from different cultures as they are with their own, a soft skill that has become an essential part of life in the 21st century, a University of Illinois expert on teacher education says.

According to Mark Dressman, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at Illinois, the current group of college students will inherit a workplace where they will need to be prepared for "significant contact with the rest of the world."

Paper calls for even broader FDA role

WASHINGTON – A new policy paper that calls for broader authority and increased funding for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was released today by the American College of Physicians (ACP). Improving FDA Regulation of Prescription Drugs offers a half-dozen recommendations about how to improve the agency's ability to approve and monitor new drugs.

Vaccination and testing for the human papilloma virus could eradicate cervical cancer

Berlin, Germany: Cervical cancer could be eradicated within the next 50 years if countries implement national screening programmes based on detection of the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes the disease, together with vaccination programmes against the virus, according to a cervical cancer screening expert.

Study uncovers 'de-urbanization' of America

LAWRENCE — More than any other populace on Earth, Americans are on the move. Because of factors such as employment, climate or retirement, 14 percent of the U.S. population bounces from place to place every year.

Now, one researcher at the University of Kansas has made a vital study of how a population in perpetual motion impacts local tax bases and economies around the nation.

The vasculature emerges as a potential therapeutic target in treating ADPKD liver cysts

As part of an effort to develop effective medical therapies that block the progression of liver cyst growth in patients with Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD), researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center have found that the liver cyst walls develop and maintain a vasculature as they grow out from the body of the liver and that factors released by epithelial cells that line the liver cyst wall lumen can drive the proliferation and development of vascular endothelial cells.

Swine flu could wreak more havoc on US economy - economist

The gloomy science just got gloomier. An H1N1 influenza could slow growth in key industries and stall already-weak GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2009, says a health economist in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Business.

"Tourism and travel are vitally important sectors in the economy of many U.S. cities and communities," Bryce Sutton, Ph.D. "Depending upon the severity of the spread of the virus, consumers and businesses may respond by restricting travel and vacation plans, which would dampen an already weak recovery in these areas."

Medical ethics experts disucuss key issues in H1N1 pandemic

The anticipated onset of a second wave of the H1N1 influenza pandemic could present a host of thorny medical ethics issues best considered well in advance, according to the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, which today released nine papers for public discussion.

NYU's Courant part of team to resolve ancient mathematics problem

Mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia, and South America have resolved the first one trillion cases of an ancient mathematics problem on congruent numbers. The advance, which included work by David Harvey, an assistant professor at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, was achieved through a complex technique for multiplying large numbers.

Medicinal products susceptible to 'dose dumping' should be fully tested

Controlled release pills and capsules that show a tendency in the standard laboratory test toward "dose dumping" — releasing their medicine in a faster and potentially unsafe manner in patients who have consumed alcohol — should be withheld from the market until proven safe with testing in people. That's the conclusion of a review of existing studies in the September-October issue of ACS' Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal.

Denver to Barcelona: scientists rank biggest greenhouse gas offenders from best to worst

Denver released the largest amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) and Barcelona the smallest amount in a new study documenting how differences in climate, population density and other factors affect GHG emissions in global cities. The study, which could identify ways in which cities can reduce GHG emissions, is scheduled for October 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Help put a lid on climate change—by turning your roof 'green'?

"Green" roofs, those increasingly popular urban rooftops covered with plants, could help fight global warming, scientists in Michigan are reporting. The scientists found that replacing traditional roofing materials in an urban area the size of Detroit, with a population of about one-million, with green would be equivalent to eliminating a year's worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks. Their study, the first of its kind to examine the ability of green roofs to sequester carbon which may impact climate change, is scheduled for the Oct.

Exploring the commercial failure of inhaled insulin delivery

New Rochelle, NY, September 23, 2009—The commercial failure of Exubera® (Pfizer, New York, NY), the first inhaled insulin product to come to market, led other companies such as Eli Lilly-Alkermes to halt studies of similar drug delivery in development intended to compete for a share of the lucrative diabetes market. Does this signal defeat for efforts to deliver insulin via the lungs?

Should publicly funded research be available to the public?

Washington, DC – The Presidents of 57 liberal arts colleges in the U.S., representing 22 states, have declared their support for the Federal Research Public Access Act (S. 1373) in an Open Letter released today. The letter is the first from higher education administrators to be issued in support of the 2009 bill, and further reinforcement that support for the Act exists at the highest levels of the higher education community. The presidents' letter notes, "Adoption of the Federal Research Public Access Act will democratize access to research information funded by tax dollars.

New study shows simplifying financial aid process improves college access for low-income students

More low-income students would make it to college if changes were made to streamline the complicated financial aid process, according to a groundbreaking study released today by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Stanford University School of Education, the University of Toronto, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Simplified financial aid process improves access to higher education, study shows

For years, studies have shown that young people from low-income households across North America are less likely to apply to college or university than peers from higher-income families. Now, a groundbreaking new study shows the solution may be as simple as helping students with the financial aid process.