ScienceDebate2008 and blog carnivals

The move­ment to have US pres­i­den­tial candidates dis­cuss Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in a devot­ed debate has been pick­ing up steam. Date and place are sched­uled: April 18th at the Franklin Insti­tute in Philadel­phia. — cospon­sored by the AAAS, the Coun­cil on Com­pet­i­tive­ness, the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing, and the Insti­tute of…

Read More

Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed?

Giv­en the recent James Wat­son “race and IQ” con­tro­ver­sy, I took on to read Stephan Jay Gould’s clas­sic book The Mis­mea­sure of Man, in which he debunks IQ (and the under­ly­ing “g”) as mea­sure of defined, innate, “intel­li­gence”. Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing overall, very tech­ni­cal in some areas. The key take-away? In the last chap­ter, A Pos­i­tive Con­clu­sion, he…

Read More

Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning — Learning & The Brain Conference

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing.… Some top­ics were meant to be applied imme­di­ate­ly, but many were food for thought — dis­cus­sions on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed.Using dra­mat­ic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies. Dis­cov­er how new adven­tures could change edu­ca­tion, learn­ing dis­or­der inter­ven­tions, and even soci­ety itself in the future.

Read More

Dana Alliance’s Brain Awareness Week for Brain Health

The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives is keep­ing up its great out­reach ini­tia­tives: 1‑ Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: “Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new cir­cum­stance” (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health).  You can read our The Dana…

Read More