Communicating the social sciences

This chapter reviews the sparse and somewhat scattered research literature that has specifically addressed the public communication of the social sciences (PCSS). This literature, in common with much research on the public communication of science and technology (PCST), lacks consistency or indeed clear definitions of what is meant by ‘social science’, ‘natural science’ and indeed, ‘science’. Analyses of social science media coverage indicate that the social sciences are communicated in some quite different patterns from those seen with natural science research. Some authors have suggested that this may be due to the overlap between the subject matter of social science research (people), and experiential, ‘common sense’ knowledge. Other relevant literature, on ‘self-help’ psychology books, public intellectuals, and social scientists as expert witnesses. There is an urgent need for more consistent, systematic research addressing PCSS, in order to understand better the general issues involved in communicating expertise and those faced specifically by the social sciences. Researchers in PCST should reflect on these issues in order to address reflexively how we communicate publicly about our field, just as we seek to advise other researchers on how best to communicate in the public domain

Research on quantities and concentrations of extraterrestrial matter through samplings of ocean bottoms Six-month status report, Mar. - Aug. 1965

Quantitiies and concentration of extraterrestrial matter through ocean bottom sampling

Meteorites and the Antarctic ice sheet

The majority of the meteorite finds were located in the Allan Hills site. All the expected goals involving the recovery of rare or previously unknown types of meteorites, and even the recovery of lunar ejecta, were realized. The relationship between these remarkable concentrations of meteorites and the Antarctic ice sheet itself were less well documented. Ice flow vector studies were made and concentration models were proposed. Earlier estimates of the abundances of meteorite types were based on the number of falls in the world collections. The accumulated data and the future collected data will allow more reliable estimates of the source region of most meteorites

Popular evolutionary psychology in the UK: an unusual case of science in the media?

PublishedHistorical ArticleJournal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tThis paper presents findings from quantitative analyses of UK press and print media coverage of evolutionary psychology during the 1990s. It argues that evolutionary psychology presents an interesting case for studies of science in the media in several different ways. First, press coverage of evolutionary psychology was found to be closely linked with the publications of popular books on the subject. Secondly, when compared to coverage of other subjects, a higher proportion of academics and authors wrote about evolutionary psychology in the press, contributing to the development of a scientific controversy in the public domain. Finally, it was found that evolutionary psychology coverage appeared in different areas of the daily press, and was rarely written about by specialist science journalists. The possible reason for these features are then explored, including the boom in popular science publishing during the 1990s, evolutionary psychology's status as a new subject of study and discussion, and the nature of the subject its as theoretically based and with a human, "everyday" subject matter

Communicating the social sciences: A specific challenge?

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Vermin, Victims and Disease: UK Framings of Badgers In and Beyond the Bovine TB Controversy

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The question of whether to cull wild badgers in order to control the spread of bovine TB (bTB) in UK cattle herds has been deeply contentious for nearly 40 years, and still shows no sign of resolution. This paper will examine the strategic framing of badgers in recent debates over bTB in the UK media, which take two opposing forms: the 'good badger' as epitomised in Kenneth Grahame's children's novel 'The Wind in the Willows'; and the less familiar 'bad badger': carnivore, digger, and carrier of disease. It will then uncover the deeper historical and cultural roots of these representations, to argue that underlying the contemporary 'badger/bTB' controversy is an older 'badger debate' about the proper relationship between these wild animals and humans. Finally, the implications of this finding for current debates over bTB policy will be explored. © 2012 The Author. Sociologia Ruralis © 2012 European Society for Rural Sociology.The research leading to this article was carried out with the support of an Interdisciplinary Early Career Fellowship from the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (grant no. RES-229-27-0007-A). I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Charlotte Kenten to the early stages of this research, and thank the various mentors for the Fellowship for their feedback and support in developing this research. Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to the article referees, whose insightful and helpful comments have contributed greatly to the quality of this piece

Tannakian categories, linear differential algebraic groups, and parameterized linear differential equations

We provide conditions for a category with a fiber functor to be equivalent to the category of representations of a linear differential algebraic group. This generalizes the notion of a neutral Tannakian category used to characterize the category of representations of a linear algebraic group.Comment: 26 pages; corrected misprints; simplified Definition 2; more references adde

Selective Production of Rydberg-Stark States of Positronium

Rydberg positronium (Ps) atoms have been prepared in selected Stark states via two-step (1s→2p→nd/ns) optical excitation. Two methods have been used to achieve Stark-state selection: a field ionization filter that transmits the outermost states with positive Stark shifts, and state-selected photoexcitation in a strong electric field. The former is demonstrated for n=17 and 18 while the latter is performed for n=11 in a homogeneous electric field of 1.9  kV/cm. The observed spectral intensities and their dependence on the polarization of the laser radiation are in agreement with calculations that include the perturbations of the intermediate n=2 manifold. Our results pave the way for the generation of Rydberg Ps atoms with large electric dipole moments that are required for the realization of schemes to control their motion using inhomogeneous electric fields, an essential feature of some proposed Ps free-fall measurements requiring focused beams of long-lived atoms

Make it so! Jean-Luc Picard, Bart Simpson and the design of e-public services

In this paper, we report on a project applying participatory design methods to include people who have experience of social exclusion (in one form or another) in designing possible technologies for e-(local)-government services. The work was part of a project for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the UK, and was concerned with ‘access tokens’ that can provide personal identification for individuals accessing public services, based on technologies such as multi-functional smartcards, flash memory sticks, mobile phone SIMs or similar devices. In particular we report on our experience using the ‘pastiche scenarios’ technique recently developed by Mark Blythe. Our findings indicate that the technique can be effective and engaging in helping people to create realistic scenarios of future technology use and highlight some possible pitfalls to consider when using this technique.</p

Positronium emission from mesoporous silica studied by laser-enhanced time-of-flight spectroscopy

The use of mesoporous silica films for the production and study of positronium (Ps) atoms has become increasingly important in recent years, providing a robust source of free Ps in vacuum that may be used for a wide variety of experiments, including precision spectroscopy and the production of antihydrogen. The ability of mesoporous materials to cool and confine Ps has also been utilized to conduct measurements of Ps–Ps scattering and Ps2 molecule formation, and this approach offers the possibility of making a sufficiently dense and cold Ps ensemble to realize a Ps Bose–Einstein condensate. As a result there is great interest in studying the dynamics of Ps atoms inside such mesoporous structures, and how their morphology affects Ps cooling, diffusion and emission into vacuum. It is now well established that Ps atoms are initially created in the bulk of such materials and are subsequently ejected into the internal voids with energies of the order of 1 eV, whereupon they rapidly cool via hundreds of thousands of wall collisions. This process can lead to thermalisation to the ambient sample temperature, but will be arrested when the Ps deBroglie wavelength approaches the size of the confining mesopores. At this point diffusion through the pore network can only proceed via tunneling, at a much slower rate. An important question then becomes, how long does it take for the Ps atoms to cool and escape into vacuum? In a direct measurement of this process, conducted using laser-enhanced positronium time-of-flight spectroscopy, we show that cooling to the quantum confinement regime in a film with approximately 5 nm diameter pores is nearly complete within 5 ns, and that emission into vacuum takes ~10 ns when the incident positron beam energy is 5 keV. The observed dependence of the Ps emission time on the positron implantation energy supports the idea that quantum confined Ps does not sample all of the available pore volume, but rather is limited to a subset of the mesoporous network