Clear all

246 results found

reorder grid_view

K–12 Science Education in the United States: A Landscape Study for Improving the Field

May 16, 2023

This report assesses progress toward the vision of science instruction provided a decade ago by the National Research Council with support from the Corporation. In order to elevate the status of science education in the U.S. and to broaden the involvement of underrepresented groups in ongoing reform efforts, a field-level agenda for change is necessary. To that end, the report includes recommendations to inform improvements over the next 10 years in service of making science education a priority for all.

Planned or by Accident? The Inception of the Chinese Materia Medica Research Program at the Peking Union Medical College

April 17, 2023

This report chronicles the events that led to the inception of the Chinese materia medica (CMM) research program at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC). Dozens of herbal drugs were investigated during the decade after the program was conceived in 1921, including ma-huang, from which ephedrine, an anti-asthmatic drug of global impact, was isolated in 1924.  The program was primarily born out of a serendipitous intersection of two independent pursuits by Dr. Ralph G. Mills and Mr. Bernard E. Read, two PUMC faculty members, of their interests in CMM, instead of a preconceived grander aim or strategy by the institution or by any visionary. The establishment of the program, however, was the result of pragmatic handling of personnel and administrative issues by the China Medical Board (CMB)'s key decisionmakers, who accepted the seemingly plausible scientific value and various utilitarian promise of CMM and were open to its research at the PUMC.The discovery of ephedrine is the most celebrated scientific achievement from the CMM research program, and one of the few highlights of Chinese science during the entire Republican Era. Reconstructing the origin of the program will hopefully place this highly acclaimed scientific event in an accurate historical context and enable the construction of a non-whiggish historiographical narrative.

Research Ethics and Professionalism on the Line: A Critical Analysis of Rockefeller Foundation Support of Neurosciences in Nazi Europe, 1933-1945

January 5, 2023

The Nazi movement, heavily rooted in eugenics, caused the persecution and exile of hundreds of neuroscientists. Additionally, eugenic research took place in Nazi Germany with the motivation of improving the so-called "German race" through elimination of hereditary neurological diseases. With the advent of illegal killing of neuropsychiatric patients after World War II started, those patients could be used unethically as research subjects. Thus, neuroscience was at the heart of immoral and unethical activities in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) supported at least twenty exiled academic neuroscientists who either had prior RF support, or who showed "merit" to justify their being awarded limited funds to restart their careers abroad. The RF also supported eugenic neuroscientific research in Nazi Germany (and Denmark) despite escalating racial persecution in pre-war Germany. Some RF funds went to an institute which was also funded by the elite Nazi paramilitary group, the SS. And, an initially RF-funded project, a monkey farm in Würzburg, was used in unethical experiments to prove the cause of multiple sclerosis (MS) with subjects targeted for killing. Overall, the RF walked a fine line between supporting some victims of Nazi persecution, while ironically continuing to fund some neuroscientific research that could be linked to their persecution in the first place, or to destruction of neuropsychiatric patients. While supporting academic refugees was laudable, there was an undercurrent of supporting "best science" without regard for the ethical implications, from which current neuroscientists and others can learn valuable lessons.

From Understanding to Impact: 2022 Annual Report

December 16, 2022

The mission of the Allen Institute is to unlock the complexities of bioscience and advance our knowledge to improve human health. Using an open science, multi-scale, team-oriented approach, the Allen Institute focuses on accelerating foundational research, developing standards and models, and cultivating new ideas to make a broad, transformational impact on science. 

Raising Aspirations in Science Education (RAiSE) Programme Report (2021/22)

December 13, 2022

Raising Aspirations in Science Education (RAiSE) is a programme of The Wood Foundation, Scottish Government, Education Scotland, and participating local authorities which empowers primary practitioners with the skills, confidence, and networks to develop and deliver motivating and exciting STEM experiences.The RAiSE programme was established in 2016. Following a successful pilot with eight local authorities, RAiSE has now grown to engage with twenty local authorities.This report will profile how the RAiSE investment has acted as a catalyst for high-quality STEM education regionally and nationally, evidenced by three local authorities who have undertaken a full evaluation cycle - West Lothian, North Lanarkshire, and Clackmannanshire. This process was completed in June 2022.The qualitative and quantitative data within this report further proves the effectiveness of the model, as evidenced in the external analysis of the pilot and the legacy report.It should be noted that RAiSE continued to be delivered and have a positive impact for the local authorities in the period covered by this report, despite much of their engagement being delivered against the backdrop of the Covid19 pandemic.

Opportunity Brief | Beyond Original Intent: Environmental Data Stewardship for Diverse Uses

December 7, 2022

Environmental data is collected and used by researchers, regulatory agencies, communities, and businesses for a variety of purposes, though much of it only in single projects or to check regulatory boxes. While more data is being shared than ever before, spurred on by recent open data policies, increased availability does not guarantee that those who might use it can find, access, understand, or apply it in new contexts, nor that such data will be governed ethically.Open Environmental Data Project convened stakeholders from government, academia, environmental nonprofits, journalism, community organizations, and the private sector to discuss the challenges and promising solutions they've faced in sharing, using, and reusing environmental data. Four major needs emerged: findability and accessibility, data formats and infrastructure that enable interoperability, high quality or detailed enough data to answer different questions, and user capacity to understand and analyze the data. This brief offers nine opportunities to address these needs, each building on or leveraging existing efforts.

“American Patrick Manson” Goes to China: Ernest Faust’s Career Path to Peking Union Medical College

November 21, 2022

Based on primary sources from the Rockefeller Archive Center, this research report examines the leading American tropical medicine specialist Ernest Carroll Faust's initial career choice to go to Rockefeller-sponsored Peking Union Medical College in the early 20th century. It argues that Faust accepted the position and introduced a medical-zoological-based tropical medicine to China mainly because of his own career ambitions and his mentor Henry Ward's ardent promotion of this new field, within the Rockefeller Foundation's expanding global network. With this case study, my report also challenges the current dominant model which treats tropical medicine as colonial medicine.

“If Human Ears Were Tuned to Bat Frequencies": Inaudible Sound and the Sciences of Bat Echolocation

October 27, 2022

This report provides draft excerpts from my PhD dissertation titled "The Inaudible Sounds of Science and Medicine: Animals and Media from the Galton Whistle to Bat Echolocation," a chapter of which explores the laboratory work of Donald R. Griffin – and especially the emergence of the concept of bat echolocation – as it contributed to a sonic history of "ultrasound" and other typologies of liminal sound vibrations. Such "inaudible sounds" repeatedly defied amplification (efforts to make them louder); their frequencies were too high or too low to vibrate the human eardrum. But humans have long suspected that insects, bats, dogs, and other animals could hear them and communicate through them. The following research on bat echolocation in the Griffin laboratory is one aspect of a much more comprehensive historical project, which platforms nonhuman listeners in 19th- and 20th-century experimental contexts as they repeatedly pushed the limitations of human hearing. Broadly speaking, the dissertation suggests that animal figures are useful vectors for exploring an expanded history of sounds, including high-pitched frequencies, in science and medicine. My objective is to better understand how scientists designed media and choreographed animal listeners in order to make meaning from the sounds they could not hear on their own. I am most invested in understanding how humans exploited, collaborated with, and coexisted with animals to make sense of the insensible – or, to understand the unheard bestial worlds of communication.  In this report, I draw on material from the Donald R. Griffin Papers, held at the Rockefeller Archive Center, which includes a vast array of Griffin's laboratory notebooks, correspondences, sound films, newspaper clippings, and publications. The analysis spans the years between Donald Griffin's first experiment on bat navigation in the dark (1938) – conducted during his early graduate training years – and his postwar research on the physical principles of bat pulses into the 1960s.  More specifically, I characterize the ways in which various forms of media were deployed in experimental settings to study bats and the inaudible sounds emitted by them for orienting their bodies in flight. Scientists and collaborators of the Griffin lab relied on an array of mixed media, from the sound transposing devices of Harvard physicist George W. Pierce, to mechanical-visual apparatuses such as cathode-ray oscillograms and sound spectrographs, through to hand-written laboratory notes and printed correspondences and – ultimately – the bats themselves, to answer their questions. Furthermore, I explore the epistemic techniques of listening for sound and silence in the Griffin laboratory, in which the ears and eyes of scientists interfaced with special acoustic media to produce certain knowledges about bats and their patterns of flight. This project also engages with the highly militarized scientific contexts that constituted Griffin's work on bat echolocation.

Social Science Research in the Arab World and Beyond

October 12, 2022

This book presents and discusses the logic and method of social science research adapted mainly for instruction at Arab universities and for research in Arab countries, but with applicability beyond the region. It illustrates major concepts and methods pertaining to research with examples of previous studies carried out in the Arab world and with exercises using Arab Barometer and other datasets. The book situates itself between a regular methods textbook and an annotated list of major concepts and methods, and includes an introduction, three chapters, and four appendices.

Charles Darwin Foundation Impact Report 2021

October 4, 2022

During 2021 we led 18 marine and terrestrial projects. In this document we present the most salient results of the year. We invite you to discover the report's new format which represents a slight departure from what we have previously called our Annual Report.

The State of Research on Philanthropy in Europe in 2022 : Paper prepared for the International Philanthropy Research Conference 22 and 23 September, Turin, IT

September 22, 2022

A conference paper by Rene Bekkers, which provides an agenda for research on philanthropy in Europe; describes areas of interest to members of the European Research Network on Philanthropy (ERNOP); and offers opportunities for collaboration between academics and philanthropy practice. A list of bibliographical references is included.

Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: A review of the latest scientific research

September 1, 2022

This review—intended for curious readers, reporters, researchers, and teachers—is a road map to navigate rapidly moving terrain. To understand the direction of emerging research today, we need to ask: What happened to evolutionary biology during the 20th century and what did it leave out? Why is the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis seeking a more inclusive approach to evolutionary theorizing? And finally, what does a comprehensive evolutionary theory look like?The review proceeds in three parts: examining the genetic turn of evolutionary theory since Darwin (Part 1); sampling multiple, independent calls for an alternative outlook (Part 2); and finally, taking a close look at the emerging structure and outcomes of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis research program (Part 3).