Research Library

As his term progresses, President Trump will be faced with a large number of policy challenges, some of them requiring immediate science & technology expertise. In this Science Magazine article, the authors urge the president to consider the Office of Science & Technology Policy, the science advisor and the presidential S&T councils as vital resources that should be used early in the term to drive his policy agenda.

The authors rely on 40 in-depth interviews with male and female physicists at universities in China to determine why the country has so few women in physics — a discipline of science where there is extensive gender segregation.

Drawing on interviews with male scientists working at prestigious universities, the authors report on ways these men negotiate the tensions between cultural expectations for devotion to work and breadwinning, either compromising work commitments for more time with family or time at home in exchange for increased academic prestige.

Using national survey data the authors examine how the presence of religion in the workplace affects an individual’s perception of religious discrimination and how this effect varies by the religious tradition of the individual. Published by Review of Religious Research

The article analyzes the spread of neglected tropical diseases in Somolia due to severe poverty, and civil strife, and discusses the need for reforms to the country’s health systems and infrastructure.

Previous studies of tobacco policies aimed at reducing hospitalizations may have overestimated the benefits of bans on public smoking and underestimated the benefits of cigarette taxes, according to new research by the Baker Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Yale University, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Public-place smoking bans play a critical role in improving public health, and we are not arguing that smoking bans be lifted in restaurants, bars and workplaces,” said research co-author Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at the Baker Institute and director of the institute’s Center for Health and Biosciences. “However, policy makers and public health workers must be realistic in understanding the benefits of alternative policy interventions like taxes and bans. We found that raising cigarette taxes can have an immediate beneficial effect in terms of reducing costly hospitalizations. As for smoking bans, while these may eventually lower hospitalizations, our research found no immediate benefit in terms of reduced hospitalizations.”

In this first-ever survey of biologists and physicists in eight regions around the world, the authors analyze the religiosity of scientists or their perceptions of the science-faith interface. The study is published in the Aug. 31, 2016, issue of Socius: Sociologic Research for a Dynamic World.

This study examines the correlation between visceral leishmaniasis and civil unrest in East African nations.

The authors examine how two science popularizers, Francis Collins and Richard Dawkins, influence perceptions regarding the boundaries between religion and science. Published by Public Understanding of Science.

As Zika virus infection spreads across the Latin American and Caribbean region and into the southern United States, we can expect to see thousands of additional children born with microcephaly and more newborns or older infants with signs of more subtle but significant neurologic defects and developmental delays.