MADISON, Wisconsin — When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of things. But understanding science plays a negligible role for many people. That’s the surprising finding from a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison communications researchers who have spent the past two years studying public attitudes toward embryonic stem cell research. Reporting in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Public Opinion, the researchers say that scientific knowledge – for many citizens – has an almost negligible effect on how favorably people regard the field. ‘More knowledge is good – everybody is on the same page about that. But will that knowledge necessarily help build support for the science?’ says Dietram Scheufele, a UW-Madison professor of life sciences communication and one of the paper’s three authors. ‘The data show that no, it doesn’t. It does for some groups, but definitely not for others.’ Along with Dominique Brossard, a UW-Madison professor of journalism and mass communication, and graduate student Shirley Ho, Scheufele used national public opinion research to analyze how public attitudes are formed about controversial scientific issues such as nanotechnology and stem cells. What they have found again and […]
More American companies are beginning to look to the sky for their next source of energy. Companies like Apple Inc are already considering the development of solar powered iPods, California’s Ironwood prison installing more than 6,000 solar panels, and even Fenway Park in Boston using the sun to power Red Sox games. The 2007 World Series-winning Red Sox baseball club last month became the first professional sports team to go solar, installing solar hot water panels that will replace a third of the gas used to heat water at Boston’s historic Fenway Park. The resurging interest into solar capabilities in America is being driven by rising fossil fuel prices as well as public concern over climate change. Solar’s high costs have kept the resource out of reach for many residences and businesses, but industry analysts say not for long. Although solar panels are easy to install, it is the building of the panel, which is expensive because of tight supplies of silicon, their costliest element. Most industry analysts expect a constraint on silicon supplies to end within two years. But they are divided on whether this would help or harm the industry. The tipping […]
WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have ‘been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,’ a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday. A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said. The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator. Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces. […]
Among the United Arab Emirate’s seemingly endless construction sites, developers outside of Abu Dhabi have broken ground on perhaps the most ambitious green-city project in the world. With government support, the Masdar Initiative will create a carbon-neutral city capable of housing 50,000 residents. Upon completion, the city will act as a living test site for the latest in sustainable urban innovations. While Masdar has ignited curiosity beyond the nation’s borders, it has elicited limited enthusiasm from a key audience: locals. For many Abu Dhabians, the concerns range from weak air conditioning to limited access to automobiles – car culture is deeply entrenched in the UAE. Though designers hope the final product will dispel concerns, the project has done little to impress green city planners not connected with the venture. A utopia spawned by petro-dollars is not a practical solution to real-world emissions problems, they say. Current cities must address political and social concerns that are irrelevant to the UAE experiment. Masdar designers and scientists argue that the project’s value as an urban model works on several different levels. The Masdar Initiative invites other cities to take lessons from its smaller innovations, like real-time energy calculators that allow […]
Just as Internet video is starting to take off, one of the nation’s largest broadband providers is experimenting with a pricing plan that could make it very expensive. Last week Time Warner Cable started testing a $29.99 a month plan in Beaumont, Texas that gives users only 5 gigabytes of data to download or upload. Users who pay $54.90 a month have their service capped at 40 gigabytes. Trouble is, a single standard definition movie takes up between one and two gigabytes and a high-definition movie could eat up as much as eight gigabytes. That means that users who pay about $30 a month could be restricted to two or three movies a month and those willing to pay about $55 would be limited to just a few high-definition movies such as the ones you can now download to Apple TV. Users who go over their limit will pay $1 for each additional gigabyte which could amount to between $1 and $8 for each movie you watch in addition to whatever you’re paying to rent or buy the movie itself. For my new weekly Tech Talk radio feature Time-Warner Cable spokesperson Alex Dudley told me that ‘the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
