By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Have Spare Time? Try To Discover A Planet
Joe Palca, NPR, 2017/02/21

I spent an hour last night searching for a planet. I did not discover one. I did, however, look at  lot of bad photographs of stars. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. These are the science concepts you need to know to understand political life in 2017
Akshat Rathi, et.al., Quartz, 2017/02/20

These concepts don't all relate to education, and their importance most certainly isn't limited to political life, but it's a good list and educators should be aware of all of them. Here's the one-minute version:

• Scepticism - "a willingness to evenly assess the scientific evidence available."
• Iatrogenesis - illness “brought forth by the healer," like the opioid epidemic
• Social cost of carbon - the damage each ton of CO2 emission costs society
• Clean coal - expensive, but "captures the carbon dioxide and buries it"
• Gene drives - increase a gene's chance of being inherited
• CRISPR - being widely used to manipulate DNA with extraordinary precision
• NgAgo - new tech which might manipulate DNA with even greater precision
• Confrmation bias - the tendency to select information that supports our existing beliefs
• IPFS - makes copies of everything instead of relying on links
• PFOA - unregulated cancer agent turning up in drinking water
• Neonicotinoids - the pesticide that caused widespread bee colony collapse
• SETI - search for extra-terrestrial intelligence using powerful new tools

Now you's caught up. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Choose Science
Government of Canada, 2017/02/16
Choose Science is a website recently created by the Government of Canada to encourage girls to pursue their interests (and may their careers) in science, technology, engineering and mathematics - STEM. It was criticized by the National Post this week for perpetuating stereotypes (featuring fashion, music and kittens) but after a quick retrofit yesterday it is looking much better, though by no means perfect. More...

Loin des préjugés, les jeunes femmes osent les filières scientifiques et la recherche. C’est une réalité pour le Fonds AXA pour la Recherche qui soutient 220 chercheuses dans le monde, toutes engagées dans des projets de recherche fondamentale pour une meilleure compréhension et prévention des grands risques qui impactent nos sociétés. Ainsi, 42% des chercheurs soutenus en mécénat scientifique par AXA sont des chercheuses, alors qu’elles ne représentent que 28% de la communauté mondiale des chercheurs. Voir l'article...

Devant un public essentiellement féminin, cette édition de la journée internationale des femmes et des filles en science, organisée par l'UNESCO, réflechissait sur la place encore trop peu importante de la gent féminine dans les hauts niveaux des métiers scientifiques. Voir l'article...