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1346 publications found

Mar 21, 2008 Commentary
Not in front of the children! The controversies of science and science communication for children and youth

by Luisa Massarani

Dialogue in science communication is a necessity - everybody agrees on it - because science and technology issues are involved in so many aspects of the citizens life, and in so many cases can raise suspects, fears, worries or, on the contrary, expectations and hopes. But who are the possible interlocutors for scientists and policy-makers? Everybody, says Luisa Massarani, beginning with children and teenagers. Also in such controversial and sensitive issues like AIDS or GMO.

Volume 7 • Issue 01 • 2008

Mar 21, 2008 Commentary
Dialogue in education

by Lynn Uyen Tran

What is the meaning of “dialogue” in education? Why is dialogue important in learning processes? Tran proposes a short review of the literature, starting with Vygotsky and ending with a new field of research in informal learning - conversations among the public visiting museums as a collaborative environment for learning.

Volume 7 • Issue 01 • 2008

Mar 21, 2008 Article
Overseas internships as a vehicle for developing a meta-level awareness regarding science communication

by Kayoko Nohara, Michael Norton, Miki Saijo and Osamu Kusakabe

The overseas internship programme offered at Tokyo Institute of Technology as part of the science communication curriculum is highly significant, as it prompts graduate students to acquire new skills and awareness levels, including an enhanced meta-level understanding of the importance and complexity of human communications. The capacity to correlate and respond on-site in human interaction can be gradually cultivated during the internship as students experience diverse communication environments. Moreover, the exposure to different organisational, cultural and social environments helps develop a more international outlook. As a result of the initial experience described in this paper, TiTech has adopted internships as an important part of the educational tool-kit to produce scientists and engineers who can play an active role at the global level using their acquired technical knowledge and broad practical capabilities.

Volume 7 • Issue 01 • 2008

Mar 21, 2008 Editorial
A total society of knowledge

by Pietro Greco

The major Lisbon goal is to give Europe back the primacy as a society of knowledge. `Giving back' is a more appropriate term than `giving', as Europe long held that primacy in the past, and virtually as a monopoliser from the 17th century throughout the 19th. Then, Europe shared it with North America for a long portion of the 20th century.

Volume 7 • Issue 01 • 2008

Dec 21, 2007 Commentary
Knowledge, responsibility and culture: food for thought on science communication

by Giancarlo Quaranta

The past few decades have been marked by a rapid scientific and technological development. One of the most paradoxical, and perhaps more disturbing, features of this process is the growing divide between the increased importance science has acquired in economic and social life and a society persistently showing spreading signs of contempt, mistrust and, most of all, disinterest in research.

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

Dec 21, 2007 Commentary
The knowledge society

by Pietro Greco

In 2007, global investments in R&D have increased by 7% on the previous year and have reached an absolute historical peak, exceeding for the first time the threshold of 1,100 billion dollars (calculated in the hypothesis of a purchasing power parity between the currencies). The world invests in scientific research and technological development 2.1% of the wealth it produces. At the same time, there has been an increase in the exchange of high added-knowledge value goods and high tech represents now the most dynamic sector of the world economy.

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

Dec 21, 2007 Editorial
A Nobel prize to public science communication

by Pietro Greco

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has bestowed the 2007 Nobel Peace Price equally upon the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore, former vice-President of the United States of America, with the same motivation: «for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change».

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

Dec 21, 2007 Commentary
Six critical remarks on science and the construction of the knowledge society

by Cristiano Castelfranchi

This article will briefly present a few theses and reflections of mine on some perversions and disruptions under way in knowledge development and in science representation. Nevertheless, I will abstain from exposing thoroughly the obvious and triumphal side of the coin. Namely, I am not going to extol the amazing fortune of science and knowledge, which have become the fundamental resource for development, at economic level in first place. Indeed, having reached a certain age, I can allow myself ­ although to a certain degree of oversimplification ­ less enthusiasm and a few old-fashioned ideas.

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

Dec 21, 2007 Book Review
It's science after all, Homer!

by Daniele Gouthier

Within just a few months, new releases in the world of publishing have seen two books dealing with science and The Simpsons, one published in the US and the other in Italy: last spring, What's science ever done for us? by Paul Halpern (John Wiley & Sons, New York 2007) and, this autumn, La scienza dei Simpson by Marco Malaspina (Sironi Editore, Milano 2007).

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

Dec 21, 2007 Commentary
Mass technologies and ignorance in the society of knowledge

by Luciano Gallino

An advanced expression of culture and of social evolution, contemporary technology, which increasingly incorporates endless quantities of scientific knowledge, has acquired a decisive power on human existence and on the natural system supporting it. It has the ability, now demonstrated, to attain a vast improvement in the quality of life ­ if one can benefit from proper amounts of it ­ and to prolong life for decades. On the other hand, its results may also go in a totally opposite direction, either against ourselves or our descendants, or other populations. A similar theory is true for life-supporting systems.

Volume 6 • Issue 04 • 2007

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