Geoscience Workforce Currents #77

Quantitative skills and core science courses taken by geoscience graduates, Spring 2013

2013-10-09

(Press-News.org) Alexandria, VA – Recent analysis of over 400 responses from the National Geoscience Student Exit Survey from 71 geoscience departments identified distinct trends for bachelor's-, master's- and PhD-level participants on quantitative classes and core science courses. Notably, 70% of all participants had taken Calculus I and II; following those courses, there was a significant drop in bachelor's- and master's-level candidates pursuing further mathematics coursework. Meanwhile, PhD candidates listed multiple courses past Calculus II. Other findings showed that all three groups took at least one chemistry course, and one physics course during their academic careers.

For the complete Geoscience Currents #77 please go to: http://bit.ly/1fdrvzn. For the 2013 Status of Recent Geoscience Graduates report, or for more information about the National Geoscience Student Exit Survey please go to: http://www.agiweb.org/workforce.

INFORMATION:

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.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

HIV vaccines elicit immune response in infants

2013-10-09

DURHAM, N.C. – A new analysis of two HIV vaccine trials that involved pediatric patients shows that the investigational vaccines stimulated a critical immune response in infants born to HIV-infected mothers, researchers at Duke Medicine report. The finding, reported Oct. 8, 2013, at the AIDS Vaccine 2013 meeting in Barcelona, Spain, examined samples from two previously completed pediatric HIV vaccine trials – called PACTG 230 and PACTG 326 - to determine whether they elicited a key immune response that has only recently been associated with reduced HIV infection. Searching ...

Juno slingshots past Earth on its way to Jupiter

2013-10-09

If you've ever whirled a ball attached to a string around your head and then let it go, you know the great speed that can be achieved through a slingshot maneuver. Similarly, NASA's Juno spacecraft will be passing within some 350 miles of Earth's surface at 3:21p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 9, before it slingshots off into space on a historic exploration of Jupiter. It's all part of a scientific investigation that began with an August 2011 launch. The mission will begin in earnest when Juno arrives at Jupiter in July 2016. Bill Kurth, University of Iowa research scientist ...

Study: Women most often suffer urinary tract infections, but men more likely to be hospitalized

2013-10-09

DETROIT – While women are far more likely to suffer urinary tract infections, men are more prone to be hospitalized for treatment, according to a study by Henry Ford Hospital urologists. The first-of-its-kind research for the most common bacterial infection in the U.S. is important in providing predictors of hospital admission at a time when the health care industry is searching for ways to reduce costs. "We found that those patients who were hospitalized for treatment of urinary tract infections were most often older men, as well as those with serious kidney infections," ...

Blood vessel cells can repair, regenerate organs, say Weill Cornell scientists

2013-10-09

NEW YORK (October 8, 2013) -- Damaged or diseased organs may someday be healed with an injection of blood vessel cells, eliminating the need for donated organs and transplants, according to scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College. In studies appearing in recent issues of Stem Cell Journal and Developmental Cell, the researchers show that endothelial cells -- the cells that make up the structure of blood vessels -- are powerful biological machines that drive regeneration in organ tissues by releasing beneficial, organ-specific molecules. They discovered this by ...

From slowdown to shutdown -- US leadership in biomedical research takes a blow, says ASCB

2013-10-09

WASHINGTON, DC—OCTOBER 8, 2013—A senior researcher who can't get an answer from a shutdown NIH about a proposed clinical trial on a neurodegenerative disease, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who fears that a generation of innovators will be lost, and a young investigator wearied at the lab by endless funding cuts and frustrated at home by the halt to promising research into a genetic disorder that affects her daughter—these are the leaders and members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) who today told a press conference at the National Press Club that the "temporary" ...

EARTH Magazine: New subduction zone may close Atlantic Ocean

2013-10-09

Alexandria, VA –Throughout the history of Earth, supercontinents have formed and ocean basins have opened and closed over timescales of 300 million to 500 million years. But scientists haven't found direct evidence of the in-between phase — an ocean basin that was opening, starting instead to close — until now. Thanks to new high-resolution surveys of the seafloor, scientists think they have evidence of that process starting in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. If they are right, this nascent subduction zone could close the Atlantic Ocean — in roughly 200 million ...

Researchers identify screening tool for detecting intimate partner violence among women veterans

2013-10-09

(Boston)-- Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have identified a promising screening tool to detect intimate partner violence (IPV) in females in the VA Boston Healthcare System. The findings, which appear in the current issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine, accurately detected 78 percent of women identified as abused within the past year by a more comprehensive and behaviorally specific scale. IPV is a major public health issue, particularly among women receiving medical care at VA facilities. The researchers cite "lifetime reports of IPV ...

New urine test could diagnose eye disease

2013-10-09

DURHAM, N.C. -- You might not think to look to a urine test to diagnose an eye disease. But a new Duke University study says it can link what is in a patient's urine to gene mutations that cause retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, an inherited, degenerative disease that results in severe vision impairment and often blindness. The findings appear online in the Journal of Lipid Research. "My collaborators, Dr. Rong Wen and Dr. Byron Lam at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Florida first sought my expertise in mass spectrometry to analyze cells cultured from a family in which ...

Diamond 'super-earth' may not be quite as precious, UA graduate student finds

2013-10-09

A planet 40 light years from our solar system, believed to be the first-ever discovered planet to consist largely of diamond, may in fact be of less exquisite nature, according to new research led by University of Arizona astronomy graduate student Johanna Teske. Revisiting public data from previous telescope observations, Teske's team analyzed the available data in more detail and concluded that carbon – the chemical element diamonds are made of – appears to be less abundant in relation to oxygen in the planet's host star – and by extension, perhaps the planet – than ...

Harvard Stem Cell Institute publishes first clinical trial results

2013-10-09

Starting with a discovery in zebrafish in 2007, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have published initial results of a Phase Ib human clinical trial of a therapeutic that has the potential to improve the success of blood stem cell transplantation. This marks the first time, just nine short years after Harvard's major commitment to stem cell biology, that investigators have carried a discovery from the lab bench to the clinic—fulfilling the promise on which HSCI was founded. The Phase 1b safety study, published in the journal Blood, included 12 adult patients ...

AI and the Future of Cancer Research and Cancer Care to headline October 24 gathering of global oncology leaders at the National Press Club: NFCR Global Summit to feature top scientists, entrepreneurs

Geoscience Workforce Currents #77

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: