• USAF nuclear-missile officers alleged to have regularly cheated on readiness tests

    Three former U.S. Air Force officers have alleged that USAF officers responsible for operating nuclear-armed missiles at Malmstrom Air Base in Montana have, for many years, been cheating on monthly readiness tests, and were never punished for it. The former officers claim that cheating is the norm and that officers who did otherwise are the exception.The officers who made the allegations added, though, that misconduct on tests did not impair the safety of the nuclear weapons or the Air Force’s ability to launch missiles if ordered.

  • New York mulling first U.S. college dedicated to homeland security studies

    Political, educational, and law enforcement leaders in New York are actively exploring the idea of creating pro the U.S. first college focused on emergency management and homeland security on the Syracuse University (SU) campus. “Believe it or not, there is no such college,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said during his fourth State of the State address two weeks ago. “I believe this is a field that is only going to grow. Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse. And we want this college right here in the state of New York, training our people and training others from around the country.”

  • Old twin primes conjecture puzzle soon to be resolved

    Several centuries ago, the twin primes conjecture was formulated. As its name indicates, this hypothesis, which many science historians have attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid, deals with prime numbers, those divisible only by themselves and by one (2, 3, 5, 7, 11, etc.). Under this assumption, there exists an infinite number of pairs of prime numbers whose difference is two, called twin primes (for example, 3 and 5), but nobody has been able to confirm this so far. In April 2013, the University of New Hampshire mathematician showing that you will never stop finding pairs of primes separated by at most 70 million. Now, a postdoctoral student at Université de Montréal’s Center for Mathematical Research went even further, reducing the gap to 600. This represents a huge step forward in the quest to establish the twin primes conjecture and revives a long-standing question that has not progressed in years.

  • Spreading STEM learning opportunities in the San Diego area

    UC San Diego and the San Diego region more broadly are well known for strength in STEM— or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — education. There are numerous STEM pipeline outreach efforts already underway. What has been missing and needed, however, is coordinated and systematic action to spread learning opportunities and to plug “leaks” in the K-20 pipeline to STEM skills, degrees, and careers. The STEM Success Initiative aims to gather community and university resources to lift the region’s K-20 STEM education. The STEM Success Initiative has been launched by the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at UCSD.

  • Thinking outside the box: Free public education that pays for itself

    A U.K. researcher proposes an innovative way to pay for college and graduate education: students would not pay for their education while at school. Rather, they will commit to paying a fixed percentage of their income (say, 6 percent) during their prime earning years (35-54, for example) to the university that awarded their degree. These student promises for a given university cohort will be bundled and sold to investors as “education securities.” Investors would receive a share of the average income for the cohort. Because average income moves with inflation, investors would be assured of getting their initial investment back plus whatever amount is necessary to cover changes in the value of their money. The securities could even be designed to include a real return (over inflation) of as much as 3 percent.

  • U.S. educational system does not help gifted children reach their full potential

    Gifted children are likely to be the next generation’s innovators and leaders — yet the exceptionally smart are often invisible in the classroom, lacking the curricula, teacher input, and external motivation to reach full potential. This conclusion comes as the result of the largest scientific study of the profoundly gifted to date, a 30-year study conducted by Vanderbilt University researchers. The researchers tracked 300 gifted children from age 13 until age 38, logging their accomplishments in academia, business, culture, health care, science, and technology.

  • Who learns in math classes depends on how math is taught

    As debates rage about education and equity in primary and secondary schools, are we ignoring the potential inequities in higher education math classrooms? Most students in university math classes will not become mathematicians and are not intrinsically interested in math. Experts say that a strong case can be made for moving away from passive “sage on the stage” lecturing approaches, in favor of actively engaging students in doing math in class. This “inquiry based learning” approach sees students actively engaging in problem-solving and discussion with peers.

  • DHS announces expansion of cyber student volunteer initiative

    DHS the other day announced the launch of the 2014 Secretary’s Honors Program (SHP) Cyber Student Volunteer Initiative for college students. Through the program, more than 100 unpaid student volunteer assignments will be available to support DHS’ cyber mission at local DHS field offices in over sixty locations across the country.

  • Motivating pupils to maintain interest in math, science

    The lack of interest in math or natural sciences is one of the most frequently voiced causes for concern in the debate surrounding education, at least in Germany. It has been seen time and again that pupils lose their enthusiasm for physics, chemistry, and math once they reach eighth or ninth grade. Is this inevitable, however? If not, how can teachers steer a different course? Researchers create professional development program to promote open dialog in the classroom – an alternative to the rigid style of communication most science teachers use to get their subjects across.

  • Cyber Gym in Israel trains cyber-defenders

    A group of IT and infrastructure companies in Israel have teamed up to launch Cyber Gym.The facility, inaugurated this month by Israel Electric Corp. (IEC), will train participants to defend against cyber attacks.When Sivan Shalom,  Israel’s Infrastructure and Energy Minister, was asked whether Israel was more concerned about a physical or a virtual attack, he said: “I think the future battle will be in cyberspace.”

  • Virginia Tech to get $2.6 million to test unmanned aircraft systems

    The Commonwealth of Virginia announced it will award more than $2.6 million over three years in Federal Action Contingency Trust (FACT) funds to Virginia Tech to operate an unmanned aircraft systems test site in the state, officials from the governor’s office said. The test range is operated by the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, which is led by Virginia Tech and Rutgers University and represents an effort safely to develop unmanned aircraft systems. The University of Maryland has also agreed to partner with Virginia Tech and Rutgers on unmanned aircraft system integration.

  • FY 2012 sees first constant-dollar decline in higher education R&D since FY 1974

    The National Science Foundation (NSF) says that university spending on R&D in all fields totaled $65.8 billion in FY 2012. After adjusting for inflation, higher education R&D declined by 1 percent in FY 2012. This represents the first constant-dollar decline since FY 1974 and ends a period of modest growth in higher education R&D during FYs 2009-11, when R&D expenditures increased an average of 5 percent each year.

  • Physics can lead the U.K. economic recovery: IOP president

    Physics research in the United Kingdom has had a great year and physics can lead the U.K. economic recovery, but ongoing success depends on a healthy “educational pipeline,” Institute of Physics (IOP) president Frances Saunders told. For the success of physics research and application to continue, however, there had to be enough young people choosing to study physics post-16 and at university, she said. Numbers studying physics A-level had increased from a low point of 27,000 in 2006 to almost 36,000 this year, and applications to undergraduate physics courses had increased by 8 percent in 2013, she said.

  • Purdue selects students for the 2014 future science leaders class

    Emerging Leaders in Science and Society (ELISS) is a program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “ELISS prepares graduate and professional students to collaborate within a diverse team to understand the key drivers of complex problems and to plan and implement a team project,” said ELISS director Melanie Roberts. “ELISS graduates will be better able to integrate expertise across disciplines and coordinate action across boundaries to tackle our most complex issues.”

  • Research funding and reward structure contributes to formation “science bubbles”

    Fashions in research funding, reward structures in universities, and streamlining of scientific agendas undermine traditional academic norms and may result in science bubbles. New research shows how the mechanisms that set off the financial crisis might be replicating in the field of science. The prevailing scientific reward structure thus amplifies social phenomena like “pluralistic ignorance” and “lemming effects,” which have been shown to have significant impact on information processing and assessment in populations of interacting persons — including in one of the most rational enterprises of modern social life.