Science and Engineering Indicators 2006

Find yourself wondering about the state of the science enterprises in the US or abroad? Well, allow your pondering to be inundated with data from the, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006. This report was prepared by the NSF and contains a ridiculous amount of facts, figures and survey results about K-12 science education, labor forces, industry and academic R&D, public attitudes and world-wide S&E economic trends.

A sample of entertaining, interesting and/or depressing data:

"According to one report, "TV weathercasters are often the most visible representatives of science in U.S. households" (NIST 2002)." 1

According to a survey 1/4 of the US population in 2004 did not know that the earth revolved around the sun. 2

"...doctors and scientists received the highest prestige rankings out of 22 occupations. In fact, these were the only occupations seen by more than half of adults (52%) as having very great prestige." 3

The NK Linked Lecture Series: Nobel Laureate Richard Roberts

Nobel laureate Richard Roberts begins the lecture by advocating open-source publishing, where the content of a journal is made freely available on the internet by a website such as PubMed Central. He then goes to speak about restriction enzymes.

Enjoy.