Good resources for teaching elementary science content abound, making science more accessible to everyone and helping teachers enhance their presentation of science topics. However, there is one important aspect of science that sometimes proves a bit more difficult to teach: introducing students to the idea of the nature of science. Nature of…

Biochemists and life scientists in general are now encountering a paradox regarding the public image of their work; society demands and encourages pursuit of more knowledge but at the same time is suspicious and fears the novelties it brings. At this historical moment, we are experiencing a delicate balance between the birth of a new era and a…

In this article, the author describes the hiring dilemma confronting liberal-arts colleges and offers advice to job seekers who are interested in working at liberal-arts colleges. One should read the college's mission statements and research its history. If it's serving a minority-students population and one has worked with those students, one…

Research in nanotechnology has advanced rapidly in recent years. Several researchers, however, warn that there is a paucity of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of nanotechnology, and they caution that ethical reflections on nanotechnology lag behind this fast developing science. In this article, the authors question this…

Every time an English professor assigns a novel, poem, or play for a class to analyze, he or she is using the case study method. Why shouldn't scientists do the same? They don't always have to write their own material. After all, there are some pretty good writers out there, and some of them actually slip a lot of science into the nooks and…

Since academic sociology's birth in this country, sociologists have not been shy about publicly praising and ridiculing the discipline. Though sociologists have been the primary participants in the seemingly endless debates about sociology's proper subject matter, methods, and purpose, there is another group that has also struggled over the past…

As we enter our second century, it is an appropriate time for sociologists to take stock of where we have been and where we are going. Although most of this reflection appears to focus on substantive matters, Timothy Patrick Moran is right in arguing that their gaze ought to extend to how they teach graduate statistics. This article presents the…

Nanotechnology deals with machines, materials, and structures and their behaviors at the scale of atoms and molecules, or the nanoscale. By working on this scale, scientists are able to create enhanced materials with desirable properties, such as stain-resistance. The authors developed the activity described in this article to introduce middle…

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax bioterrorism mailings, the science community and others worried that technical articles might inadvertently aid those planning acts of terrorism. Some authors asked the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) for permission to withhold critical information from…

In the 1950s, under the aegis of such leading sociologists as Talcott Parsons, anthropologists like Clyde Kluckhohn of Harvard and Alfred Kroeber of the University of California at Berkeley, as well as political scientists Gabriel Almond and Lucien Pye, of Yale and MIT, respectively, the analysis of societal and political culture came to play a…

This article presents the author's acceptance address for receiving the Peter Shaw award. In this address, the author, an immigrant sociologist, tells how this award helps to resolve questions and uncertainties he has as to the degree to which he can or should consider himself an American--about the extent to which he has become a part, a member…

In investigations of the second-language writing process the aim of interviews and questionnaires has often been to find shared difficulties among them. However, in practice some writers are more successful than others. The aim of this study is to examine how some writers succeed in mastering scientific discourse in English, in a non-English…

The practice of science has been characterized as the systematic application of common sense. This view, frequently held by scientists themselves, holds that the same qualities that allow pre-industrial societies, pioneers, cast-aways, and common folk everywhere to cope with their environment and prosper also make for good scientists. However,…

Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the…

The reduction in the total numbers of scientists in Russia has been accompanied by negative changes in the age structure of science cadres. According to data of the Center for Research and Statistics of Science, in 1995, the ratio of specialists of the older age cohort (above the age of sixty) and the younger age cohort (up to the age of forty)…