Never have there been so much science and so much technology on so many sides as now. The expansion of scientific information in the social sphere is frankly impressive. In newspapers and movies, on television and radio, scientific ideas circulate freely every day of the week. Science is in cell phones, shampoo, compact discs, Olympic athletes' clothing, food, perfumes, and in so many places that trying to enumerate them would be insane. After all, why should it be particularly strange to speak of science and technology if scientific thought finally molds our deepest fibers? Today's society
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Carmelo Polino
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In a beautiful Barcelona, bathed in sun, the 8th PCST Congress was celebrated at the beginning of June. Besides the magnificent location of this year, there are several other reasons to commemorate the event. The first reason is that the community of professionals and scholars interested in Public Communication of Science and Technology (science journalists and writers, scientists, sociologists, teachers, historians, science museum curators, etc.) is growing quickly.
The use of photography in the field of psychiatry is an eloquent example of the complex evolution of the relationship between science, communication and society. The research that follows analyses the development of such a relationship in a crucial period of the history of psychiatry: the 1970s. That was the time that witnessed the revolution of a science which admitted the failure of its methods and "instruments", mental hospitals. That was also the time when a profound change took place in the communicative methods of photography related to this uncertain field of knowledge. A group of
In the summer of 2003, a survey was carried out at the At-Bristol Science Centre (UK) to determine the effectiveness of the hands-on activities of "Explore". The section evaluated included 43 interactive experiences divided into two themes. The first, "Get Connected", consisted of examples of the latest digital technologies, such as a television studio, virtual volleyball, and radars. The second, "Curiosity Zone", was dedicated to natural phenomena and subdivided into three additional groups: "Natural Forces" which presented various forces of nature, "Focus on Light", which dealt with the
Halliday has demonstrated that changes in discourse function covary with changes in the grammatical resources a language makes available to construe discourse. Specifically, he outlined the ways in which nominalisation evolved as a resource for construing scientific reality as a world of logical relations among abstract entities. In the present article, Halliday’s theory of the scientific text as process will be outlined. The founding principle of this theory, how grammatical metaphor has introduced changes in scientific English, will be illustrated through analysis of selected lexical items
The problem of accessing data is as old as science itself. Complete popularisation of scientific data (of a theoretical model), and even more so of the methods and materials used during an experimental process and of the empirical data amassed, has always been considered an essential part of the process of authentication, duplication and filing of scientific knowledge. It is also true, however, that this theory has always been a complex riddle with no simple solution. Strangely enough, in today's era of instant communication, the challenge of information access seems to be facing new, daunting
Free information works. In the sense that Open Access Journals, scientific journals which can be accessed at no cost, thereby guaranteeing free access to everyone, are at the same time able to guarantee the same quality as or even better than- that of traditional journals, which can only be read by those willing to pay a price, be it the cover price or a subscription.
At the beginning of the new millennium, science is not only a neutral system or an objective methodology of knowledge, but also the implicit basis of the totality of our culture. Though science and its derivates are omnipresent in daily life, its basic ideologies and functional mechanisms are in most cases not fully visible to the subject. In using the most evolved systematical-critical model of psychoanalysis provided by the French thinker Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), an enlightening analysis of western science can be made, which contributes not only to a better understanding of its own
Analysis of popular science magazines can offer a significant contribution to the study of the history of science popularisation and the relation between the language of science and everyday language in Italy. This paper reconstructs the history of science popularisation through analysis of popular science magazines published in Italy from 1788 to date. The material examined consists of 80 popular science magazines covering various scientific disciplines, reporting current issues and targeted at a non-specialist public. Such material had never been gathered and organised in a systematic way
There is a substantial divergence between the standards of integrity associated with "good science" and the problems imposed by the conflict of interest on research, specially in the biomedical field. There are at least as many ways in which information may be altered and the production of new scientific knowledge may be affected as there are links that can be established between researchers, private companies, and editors and staff of the specialized press. The pressures resulting from this high number of connections can affect all stages of research, from trial design to data analysis, from
On September 15, 2001, a joint editorial simultaneously published in thirteen medical journals, pointed an accusing finger at the increasing pressures coming from the pharmaceutical industry. During past decades, a key role in trial design and conduct was played by independent clinical investigators working in academic medical centres. They were also able to vouchsafe the quality of their research, which might not, however, be the case in the future.
On 16 January 2004, the United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan launched a Global Media Aids Initiative, with the aim of convincing the press, radio, television and Internet to join the fight against what has been called the "forgotten disease of the forgotten continent". Throughout the world, over 40 million people have the Hiv virus. In 2003 there were 5 million new infections and 3 million deaths were caused by Aids.