No result found
2015-04-14
Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
This report provides a number of tangible examples of under-exploited areas of science and likely consequences in the form of an innovation deficit, including:
opportunities with high potential for big payoffs in health, energy, and high-tech industries;fields where we risk falling behind in critical strategic capabilities such as supercomputing, secure information systems, and national defense technologies;areas where national prestige is at stake, such as space exploration, or where a lack of specialized U.S research facilities is driving key scientific talent to work overseas.This introduction also cites examples of the benefits from basic research that have helped to shape and maintain U.S. economic power, as well as highlighting industry trends that have made university basic research even more critical to future national economic competitiveness.
2014-04-17
Pew Research Center;
This report emerges from the Pew Research Center's efforts to understand public attitudes about a variety of scientific and technological changes being discussed today. The time horizons of these technological advances span from today's realities -- for instance, the growing prevalence of drones -- to more speculative matters such as the possibility of human control of the weather.
Part of the motive for doing this work is to explore Americans' comfort levels -- their excitement, interest or wariness -- in the face of a raft of scientific innovations that are emerging or being considered. Since much of the funding for scientific research comes from the government, these attitudes can give key signals to policy makers and the scientific community about where the public stands on crucial funding decisions.
Another motive for doing this work is to test the state of the public's mood about the long-term future. Their relative optimism -- or pessimism -- says something about the current state of American culture. It also says something about the state of the American dream.
2012-01-01
Rockefeller Archive Center;
My project seeks to reconstruct and explain to what extent and how U.S. foundations strove to further democratic values and practices in West German academia. It also assesses the impact of these American initiatives on the consolidation of West German democracy beyond its institutional framework and its constitutional foundation, the Basic Law. In particular, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations attempted to ingrain values that were amenable to a vibrant, pluralist civil society into West Germany's community of scholars. Beyond exploring the relationship between philanthropy and democracy, the project seeks to reassess concepts of "Americanization." This process is to be conceived of as an ensemble of non-linear, multilateral, selective and thus limited appropriations according to the needs of the receiving society. This complex relationship has been underestimated in research, not least by advocates of diffusion theory that highlight the preconditions of transfers, but underestimate "the autonomy of the receiving subject as well as the bilateral character of transatlantic communication."
2008-08-31
Program for Education and Resiliency (PEAR);
Analyzes the tools used in assessments of afterschool and summer science programs, explores the need for comprehensive tools for comparisons across programs, and discusses the most effective structure and format for such a tool. Includes recommendations.
2009-04-08
Project Exploration;
Summarizes discussions and recommendations from a September 2008 conference on integrating science and technology education into afterschool, weekend, and summer programs. Includes papers on strategies, funding, collaborations, and evaluation.
2007-09-27
International Longevity Center-USA;
We are all programmed to age and die, but maybe it doesn't have to be that way. If cells weren't programmed to age, if the telomeres, which govern the number of times a cell may divide, didn't shorten with each division, if our bodies could repair damage due to disease and aging from within, we would certainly live much longer and healthier lives. From all over the world, research is being reported, which, if it comes to fruition, would not only constitute major contributions to the treatment of disease but could in principle lead to the indefinite extension of life, to the extent perhaps that we would begin to think of people who had received such life- extending treatment as immortals.
2012-04-30
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation;
Outlines factors that prevent quality data reporting on healthcare providers -- too few patient surveys, information not reported by the provider, or measure not applicable to the provider -- and effective ways to explain to consumers.
2012-01-31
Thomas B. Fordham Institute;
American science performance is lagging as the economy becomes increasingly high tech, but our current science standards are doing little to solve the problem. Reviewers evaluated science standards for every state for this report and their findings were deeply troubling: The majority of states earned Ds or Fs for their standards in this crucial subject, with only six jurisdictions receiving As. Explore all the state report cards and see how your state performed.
2012-11-01
TrueChild;
Science, technology, engineering and math: for many students, especially young women, achievement in the "STEM" subjects will be the key to high growth rates, higher paying jobs and career advancement in the knowledge economy.
Yet for years girls have under-performed at these subjects: dropping out early, expressing low interest, opting out of STEM degrees in college and out of STEM careers as college grads. There's even a name for this: the "leaky pipeline."
It's not that girls can't achieve. In fact, girls not only score as well as boys in elementary school, but in societies abroad where math and science achievement is valued equally in both sexes, they continue to do well throughout their educational careers.
Nor is it just the result of patriarchal school systems. Millions have been invested in improving a host of external education variables of this nature that may be holding girls back: hostility in the computer room, lack of female role models, masculine pedagogical models, etc. In some cases, high schools have even refused to let girls drop STEM classes, which has only succeeded in delaying the problem until they matriculate.
What could be causing elementary school girls who excel at math and who love science, to suddenly lose all interest or develop low grades in these subjects in late adolescence and early teens?
One important and under-explored answers is feminine gender norms. As girls age, they internalize gender norms that force them to make a choice between excelling at STEM or being feminine. And STEM loses.
This report documents the existing literature and surveys the problem in depth, including new results of new focus group studies with young women of color.
2013-02-01
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity;
This Kirwan Institute report reviews the science on the connection between unconscious racial association and human decision-making, examining the impact of implicit racial biases in the education, criminal justice, and health care systems.
2013-05-03
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation;
University research laboratories are important sources of the inventions and discoveries that become significant innovations with broad economic and societal impact. Invention alone is not innovation; innovation is the long, hard work of taking new technologies and bringing them to commercialization.
There are many pathways for the dissemination of new knowledge that arises from basic research at universities, ranging from traditional methods such as publication and training students to licensing technology to established firms or new ventures.
One way to transform new knowledge into valuable innovations is for university researchers to undertake the creation of new firms based on their discoveries through academic entrepreneurship. The problem is that university scientists and inventors with a discovery made at a laboratory bench face challenges beyond those experienced by traditional high-technology venture founders: they must finish creating the technology before they can begin using it.
Academics typically start with inventions so immature that their commercial success cannot be predicted Academic entrepreneurship is an emerging and developing phenomenon, and there is a growing body of literature about new ventures based on university academic. However, limited research has been directed toward nascent academic entrepreneurs (NAEs) to understand the key challenges of bringing innovations to market. The majority of this work has focused on the institutional experience rather than the academic entrepreneurs and their individual experiences . Within the broader fields of entrepreneurship and innovation, it has been argued that high-potential startups such as academic ventures should receive particular attention from scholars
The following research addressed this gap.Nascent academic entrepreneurship involves more than transforming an invention into a commercialized innovation. It is about the genesis of ideas and the emergence of opportunities, the birth of new organizations, their evolution into new companies, and the transformation of scientists into leaders. It also is about providing the foundation for future innovation by others. Though nascent academic entrepreneurship is increasing in frequency, it is not well understood. The dissertation examines this important topic.
