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A few days ago, Minnesota Public Radio’s Gary Eichten shared a clip of Duke’s Vivek Wadhwa, speaking about his research on the effects of globalization in the United States:

After researching the impact of globalization on U.S. competitiveness in the tech industry, Vivek Wadhwa was surprised to see his findings contradict commonly-held ideas. He recently discussed his research at the City Club of Cleveland and the policies he says are taking the U.S. in the wrong direction.

He states that we need not worry about a shortage of scientists and engineers in the U.S., despite alarms sounding off to the contrary by public policy leaders. If we provide incentives for U.S.-educated foreign nationals to remain in the country rather than requiring them to leave after they complete university studies, we can build and maintain the human capital required to remain competitive in the 21st century. For more, listen to his talk at the MPR website…

(Thanks to Carole Gupton for forwarding this item.)

Phil Plait says it better:

The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted false memories into every single living creature on Earth to make it seem like they’ve been around longer.

That’s right. There’s a bill in Oklahoma that will allow religious beliefs to trump education –especially science education. So you think people lived with dinosaurs? No problem! And you think the sun revolves around the Earth? No problem! According to Phil, the legislation states that “a student cannot be graded down if they say that what they are being taught interferes with their religious beliefs.”

This bill still has to pass Oklahoma’s state Senate before it becomes a law. If that happens, Oklahoma will have taken a long stride back into the Dark Ages. I’ll be honest: if I were an employer, or a University recruiter, and the bill becomes law, I would look very skeptically at any application that came to my desk from a student who graduated in Oklahoma. That makes me sad, but that is the reality Oklahoma is aiming toward

Again, Phil really sums this whole thing up better. Go read about it at Bad Astronomy Blog.

A collaborative work by Kevin Boyack, Dick Klavans and W. Bradford Paley maps the relationships among scientific paradigms through an analysis of published works in 2003. Seed Magazine has a link to a much larger JPEG (5.3MB) as well as a description of how the image was constructed.

Prints of the image are also being “given away.” See Information Esthetics for more details…