Tag Archives: critical mass

Stem pipeline problems to aid STEM diversity

Educators and policymakers have spent decades trying to recruit and retain more underrepresented minority students into the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pipeline. A new analysis of disappointing results in the pipeline’s output  leads two Brown University biologists to suggest measures to help the flow overcome an apparent gravity.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Decades of effort to increase the number of minority students entering the metaphorical science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pipeline, haven’t changed this fact: Traditionally underrepresented groups remain underrepresented. In a new paper in the journal BioScience, two Brown University biologists analyze the pipeline’s flawed flow and propose four research-based ideas to ensure that more students emerge from the far end with Ph.D.s and STEM careers. (more…)

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Higgs Boson Discussion Launches UChicago Discovery Series

The long-sought Higgs boson—the particle that endows all elementary particles in the universe with mass—was elusive no longer when scientists at the CERN physics laboratory in Switzerland, discovered it last summer.

The July 4, 2012 announcement of the discovery appealed to both the general public and the media: Fifty-five media organizations and more than one billion television viewers made it an event that couldn’t be missed. Time even dubbed the Higgs boson “Particle of the Year.” (more…)

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Did Obama’s Election Kill the Antiwar Movement?

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Since 2003, the antiwar movement in the United States has had much to protest with Americans fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, but the movement—which has dropped off sharply the past two years—may be more anti-Republican than antiwar, says a University of Michigan researcher.

A new study by U-M’s Michael Heaney and colleague Fabio Rojas of Indiana University shows that the antiwar movement in the United States demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success, first with Congress in 2006 and then with the presidency in 2008. (more…)

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