(Press-News.org) Alexandria, VA – Community colleges provide a strong foundation for the nation's graduating STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) workforce. In its latest Geoscience Currents, the American Geosciences Institute documents the flow of geoscience students from 2–year to 4-year institutions in Texas, adding to an earlier report on similar data from California released in 2012.
In 2012, 70 percent of geoscience students in Texas public universities had transferred from Community Colleges. In particular, Texas A&M University admitted students from 32 community colleges statewide, followed closely by Texas Tech which admitted students from 25 2-year institutions. However, the majority of 4-year institutions demonstrated direct transfer from five, or fewer, local community colleges.
These findings have implications both federally and at the state-level by helping identify which 2-year institutions may benefit from funding to promote research experiences for community college students and faculty. This can also help 4-year institutions forge stronger relationships with their feeder colleges to ensure smoother transitions for transferring intuitions.
###
For more information and to download a copy of this Geoscience Currents, go to:
http://www.agiweb.org/workforce/currents
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geosciences education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
AGI's latest Geoscience Currents examines the community college to university pathway in Texas
2013-07-03
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Comet ISON brings holiday fireworks
2013-07-03
This July Fourth the solar system is showing off some fireworks of its own. Superficially resembling a skyrocket, comet ISON is hurtling toward the sun presently at a whopping 48,000 mph.
Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds. The ...
OU physicists develop rationale for the next-generation particle collider
2013-07-03
A University of Oklahoma-developed theory provides the rationale for the next-generation particle accelerator—the International Linear Collider. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland this past year prompted particle physicists to look ahead to the development of the ILC, an electron-positron collider designed to measure in detail all the properties of the newly discovered Higgs particle.
Howard Baer, professor in the OU Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, was one of the lead authors of the five-volume ...
Higher education may be protective against MS-associated cognitive deficits
2013-07-03
Amsterdam, NL, July 2, 2013 – Multiple sclerosis (MS) can lead to severe cognitive impairment as the disease progresses. Researchers in Italy have found that patients with high educational levels show less impairment on a neuropsychological evaluation compared with those with low educational levels. Their results are published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.
MS is a progressive immunologic brain disorder with neuropsychological deficits including selective attention, working memory, executive functioning, information processing speed, and long term memory. ...
Moms often talk to children about the results of cancer genetic testing
2013-07-03
WASHINGTON — Mothers commonly talk to their children about genetic test results even if they test positive for a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, which sharply increases a woman's risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. That is among the findings of a new study from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, which also suggests mothers who don't discuss their test results are unsatisfied with that decision.
"We know from women we've counseled at Georgetown that one of their main considerations of genetic testing for cancer risk is what the results will mean for ...
New knowledge about early galaxies
2013-07-03
The early galaxies of the universe were very different from today's galaxies. Using new detailed studies carried out with the ESO Very Large Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have studied an early galaxy in unprecedented detail and determined a number of important properties such as size, mass, content of elements and have determined how quickly the galaxy forms new stars. The results are published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Galaxies are deeply fascinating ...
New Catalyst replaceable platinum for electric-automobiles
2013-07-03
Ulsan, S. Korea, July 2, 2013 – Korean researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), S. Korea, developed a novel bio-inspired composite electrocatalyst outperforming platinum.
This research work was published on June 25, in the journal Nature Communications. (Title: Promotion of Oxygen reduction by a bio-inspired tethered iron phthalocyanine carbon nanotube-based catalyst).
The research team from UNIST, S. Korea, developed an inexpensive and scalable bio-inspired composite electrocatalyst, iron phthalocyanine with an axial ligand anchored ...
Older women who quit smoking can cut heart disease risk regardless of diabetes status
2013-07-03
Postmenopausal women who quit smoking reduced their risk of heart disease, regardless of whether they had diabetes, according to a new study conducted by Juhua Luo, an epidemiologist at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.
Her findings, "Smoking Cessation, Weight Change and Coronary Heart Disease Among Postmenopausal Women With and Without Diabetes," were published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Women who gained more than 5 kilograms or 11 pounds after they quit smoking still saw their risk for cardiovascular disease ...
Single men, smokers at higher risk for oral human papillomavirus infection, Moffitt study shows
2013-07-03
Smokers and single men are more likely to acquire cancer-causing oral human papillomavirus (HPV), according to new results from the HPV Infection in Men (HIM) Study. Researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center, the National Cancer Institute, Mexico and Brazil also report that newly acquired oral HPV infections in healthy men are rare and when present, usually resolve within one year.
The study results appeared in the July issue of The Lancet.
HPV infection is known to cause virtually all cervical cancers, most anal cancers and some genital cancers. It has recently been established ...
Insecticide causes changes in honeybee genes, research finds
2013-07-02
New research by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that exposure to a neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee.
The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, supports the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.
There is growing evidence connecting the decline in the honeybee population that pollinates one-third of the food that we eat, and insecticides, but this is the first comprehensive study to look at changes ...
Scientists help explain visual system's remarkable ability to recognize complex objects
2013-07-02
LA JOLLA, CA--How is it possible for a human eye to figure out letters that are twisted and looped in crazy directions, like those in the little security test internet users are often given on websites?
It seems easy to us--the human brain just does it. But the apparent simplicity of this task is an illusion. The task is actually so complex, no one has been able to write computer code that translates these distorted letters the same way that neural networks can. That's why this test, called a CAPTCHA, is used to distinguish a human response from computer bots that try ...