Check this out. The full report, Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education, may be downloaded free of charge at http://www.amacad.org/publications/scienceSLAC.aspx
Chapter 7 features the insights of SciCheer collaborator and friend, Professor James Trefil. He worked with me and the 76ers cheerleaders on the Brain Makeover, our very earliest attempt to help increase adult science literacy. We’re craaaaaazy. Test your own level of science literacy by taking the fun, brief Brain Makeover quiz.

This new report shows promising gains in U.S. adult science literacy. (We’re 2nd only to Sweden.) So why do students rank so low in international comparisons? One theory, according to Professor John Miller (author of the report), “America is the only major country that requires almost all its college and university students to complete a full year of science. So the scientific literacy of U.S. adults is relatively high compared to the general adult populations of other developed nations.”
Still, while approximately 44 percent of American adults can define DNA correctly, “only 20 percent can define the meaning of a stem cell.” How can we weigh in on these matters if we don’t understand what a stem cell is?
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University of Michigan
US public’s knowledge of science: Getting better but a long way to go

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Amid concerns about the lagging math and science performance of American children, American adults are actually scoring higher than they did 20 years ago on a widely used index of civic scientific literacy, according to a University of Michigan researcher.
In 1988, just 10 percent of U.S. adults had sufficient understanding of basic scientific ideas to be able to read the Tuesday Science section of The New York Times, according to Jon Miller, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). By 2008, 28 percent of adults scored high enough to understand scientific ideas at that level.
Despite the improvement, the American public has a long way to go, says Miller, who contributed to the latest publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Science and the Educated American.
“America’s democracy depends on having a larger number of scientifically literate citizens,” said Miller, who directs the ISR International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy and has pioneered methods of assessing comparative levels of scientific understanding over time. “Today’s political agenda includes debates over global climate change, embryonic stem cells, future energy sources, and the possibility of a viral pandemic. And as the twenty-first century progresses, scientific issues are only likely to become more prominent features of the political landscape.”
In fact, America is the only major country that requires almost all its college and university students to complete a full year of science, Miller points out. So the scientific literacy of U.S. adults is relatively high compared to the general adult populations of other developed nations. But given the on-going changes in many fields of science, most adults will learn most of their information about science after they leave formal schooling.
To track changes in scientific literacy over time, Miller developed sets of durable, core questions that assess understanding of basic scientific constructs in several areas. These areas include understanding of simple probability statements, the relationship of atoms, molecules, and electrons, of the universe and solar system, and the life sciences, where public confusion is greatest. With funding from a variety of sources, including the National Science Foundation, he surveyed national samples of the U.S. adult population in 1988, 1999 and 2008 to assess levels of what he calls “civic scientific literacy.”
Only 37 percent of American adults accepted the concept of biological evolution in 2008, Miller reports, and the level of acceptance has declined over the last twenty years. Approximately 44 percent of American adults can define DNA correctly, but only 20 percent can define the meaning of a stem cell.
While 85 percent of adults recognize that all plants and animals have DNA, only 27 percent of Americans think that more than half of human genes are identical to those of mice.
“Looking to the future, we must increase the proportion of scientifically literate adults in our society,” Miller said. “Scientific literacy is not a cure or an antidote in and of itself. It is, however, a prerequisite for preserving a society that values science and is able to sustain its democratic values and traditions.”

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A copy of Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education, may be downloaded free of charge at http://www.amacad.org/publications/scienceSLAC.aspx

Very exciting day here spurred by an article about Science Cheerleader’s efforts to increase adult science literacy in the Chronicle of Higher Education and today’s FOX News “headline news story” about our Brain Makeover! The traffic brought this site to its knees. Might still be slow at times.  Thanks for your patience and persistence. We should have it all fixed soon.
And, welcome, to all of our new subscribers!

Cheers,
Darlene

18. All life is connected.

Ecosystem is a term that refers to all of the living things in a specific area, together with the material surroundings. Plants and animals within as ecosystem often depend on each other in complex ways, so that it is not usually possible to change one part of the system without changing other parts as well. Study of the records of past ecosystems shows that both the kinds of plants and animals associated with it and the kinds of relationships between them change over time, so we should not think of ecosystems as rigid and unchanging, nor assume that any change in an ecosystem must be for the worst.

Lesson #13 of 18 in the Brain Makeover collaboration with Professor James Trefil/GMU, the 76ers Cheerleaders and the Science Cheerleader. See Brain Makeover Series.

The surface of the earth is constantly changing.

The Earth can be thought of as being separated into three layers. The core, at the center, consists of heavy materials like iron and nickel. At the very center the core is solid, but farther out it is liquid. The next layer is the mantle, composed of heavy minerals, and the outermost layer is the crust. The surface of the Earth is separated into tectonic plates, some 30-50 miles thick. These plates move around in response to convection in the Earth’s mantle. The continent are the uppermost layer of the tectonic plates. The constant motion of the plates causes a constant change in the surface features of the planet. Only the Earth among  planets in the solar system has this kind of variability in its surface.

Where plates are moving away from each other, hot magma from the mantle comes to the surface to form mountain chains and deep sea vents. Where plates are moving together, one plate will slip beneath the other, forming mountain chains or deep ocean trenches, depending on whether or not there is a continent on the plate. If plates slide by each, as they do in the San Andreas Fault, their motion will cause frequent earthquakes.

All matter is made from quarks and leptons

The primary parts of the nucleus of the atom are the positively charged proton and the electrically neutral neutron. During the twentieth century it was discovered that there are literally hundreds of other particles—all unstable—that take part in various interaction at the atomic level. These can be divided into two major classes: there are hadrons that exist inside the nucleus and participate in the strong interaction, and leptons that do not. Protons and neutrons are both hadrons, while the electron is an example of a lepton. One way of thinking about atoms, then, is to say that their nuclei are made of hadrons, while leptons (electrons) in orbit complete the structure.

More recently, it was realized that all of the hundreds of hadrons can be understood as different combination of particles more fundamental still—particles called quarks. In this scheme, then, the quarks make up the hadrons that constitute the nucleus, while the leptons in orbit complete the atoms that make up all matter.