Jon D. Miller

The measurement of civic scientific literacy

Building on two decades of national surveys in the United States and two Eurobarometer studies, the history, rationale, and structure of a measure of civic scientific literacy are described. Estimates of the proportion of adults who are very well informed or moderately well informed on the index of civic scientific literacy appear in the literature more frequently, and this paper provides the first comprehensive description and analysis of the civic scientific literacy measure. It is hoped that this analysis and discussion will encourage the inclusion and replication of the measure in a wider range of studies of the public understanding of and attitudes toward science and technology.

Public Understanding of, and Attitudes toward, Scientific Research: What We Know and What We Need to Know

Over the last four decades, a substantial body of national survey material has been collected in the US concerning the public understanding of science and technology. Using this body of research, this analysis outlines the major trends from 1957 to 1999 and discusses their implications for public understanding of, and attitudes toward, scientific research. The analysis found that although the rate of civic scientific literacy in the US is only now approaching 20 percent, there is a strong and continuing public belief in the value of scientific research for economic prosperity and for the quality of life. Even though there are some continuing reservations about the pace of change engendered by science and technology and the relationship between science and faith, the public consistently reconciles these differing perceptions in favor of science.

Public Attitudes Toward Participation in Cancer Clinical Trials

PURPOSE The objective of this study is to understand the attitudes of American adults toward participation in cancer clinical trials. METHODS A national probability sample of 1,000 adults aged 18 and older living in noninstitutional settings was interviewed by telephone by Harris Interactive during March and April 2000. One participant was selected from each household selected for the study. The resulting data were weighted to reflect the full adult population of the United States as reported in Current Population Reports. An Index of Participation in a Cancer Clinical Trial was computed, using a confirmatory factor analysis and converting the factor scores into a 0-to-100 scale. RESULTS Approximately 32% of American adults (64 million individuals) indicate that they would be very willing to participate in a cancer clinical trial if asked to do so. An additional 38% of adults (76 million individuals) scored in a range that indicates that they are inclined to participate in a cancer clinical trial if asked, but hold some questions or reservations about participation. Projected rates of diagnosis, eligibility, and recruitment indicate that substantially more patients are willing to participate than are actually accrued. CONCLUSION These results indicate that the primary problem with accrual is not the attitudes of patients, but rather that the loss of potential participants is the result of the unavailability of an appropriate clinical trial and the disqualification of large numbers of patients. The pool of willing patients is further reduced by the reluctance of some physicians to engage in accrual.

Parents’ At-Home and At-School Academic Involvement with Young Adolescents

A process-person-context model was used to investigate parental academic involvement with a nationally representative sample of young adolescents. Fathers of young adolescents were less involved at school than were mothers but similarly involved academically at home. Parents of struggling students were involved more in homework assistance and parents of successful students were involved more at school than were other parents. Parent educational level operated as a main effect and as a moderator. High school graduates helped their children with homework more than did parents who were not high school graduates; college-educated parents were involved more at school. Parents’ academic involvement at home was associated negatively with young adolescents’ academic grades and a standardized achievement test score, but associated positively with young adolescents’ school orientation. Parental at-school involvement was associated positively with young adolescents’ academic grades but not with either the standardized achievement test score or school orientation.

The tissue diagnostic instrument

Tissue mechanical properties reflect extracellular matrix composition and organization, and as such, their changes can be a signature of disease. Examples of such diseases include intervertebral disk degeneration, cancer, atherosclerosis, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and tooth decay. Here we introduce the tissue diagnostic instrument (TDI), a device designed to probe the mechanical properties of normal and diseased soft and hard tissues not only in the laboratory but also in patients. The TDI can distinguish between the nucleus and the annulus of spinal disks, between young and degenerated cartilage, and between normal and cancerous mammary glands. It can quantify the elastic modulus and hardness of the wet dentin left in a cavity after excavation. It can perform an indentation test of bone tissue, quantifying the indentation depth increase and other mechanical parameters. With local anesthesia and disposable, sterile, probe assemblies, there has been neither pain nor complications in tests on patients. We anticipate that this unique device will facilitate research on many tissue systems in living organisms, including plants, leading to new insights into disease mechanisms and methods for their early detection.

Far-ultraviolet H2 emission from circumstellar disks

We analyze the far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectra of 33 classical T Tauri stars (CTTS), including 20 new spectra obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys Solar Blind Channel (ACS/SBC) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Of the sources, 28 are in the ~1 Myr old Taurus-Auriga complex or Orion Molecular Cloud, 4 in the 8-10 Myr old Orion OB1a complex, and 1, TW Hya, in the 10 Myr old TW Hydrae Association. We also obtained FUV ACS/SBC spectra of 10 non-accreting sources surrounded by debris disks with ages between 10 and 125 Myr. We use a feature in the FUV spectra due mostly to electron impact excitation of H_2 to study the evolution of the gas in the inner disk. We find that the H_2 feature is absent in non-accreting sources, but is detected in the spectra of CTTS and correlates with accretion luminosity. Since all young stars have active chromospheres which produce strong X-ray and UV emission capable of exciting H_2 in the disk, the fact that the non-accreting sources show no H_2 emission implies that the H_2 gas in the inner disk has dissipated in the non-accreting sources, although dust (and possibly gas) remains at larger radii. Using the flux at 1600 A, we estimate that the column density of H_2 left in the inner regions of the debris disks in our sample is less than ~3 × 10^(–6) g cm^(-2), 9 orders of magnitude below the surface density of the minimum mass solar nebula at 1 AU.

Adult Science Learning from Local Television Newscasts

American adults learn about science and health from numerous sources including television. The Pew studies demonstrate that half of American adults watch a local television news show three times a week or more, making local television news the most widely used news medium. This study examines the impact of a program to increase the use of science and health stories in local newscasts. The results show substantial story recall and information retention. The analysis suggests that science and health stories in local television newscasts may either enhance viewers’ existing science/health schemas or foster the development of new schemas for less well-known constructs.

EVOLUTION OF X-RAY AND FAR-ULTRAVIOLET DISK-DISPERSING RADIATION FIELDS*

We present new X-ray and far-ultraviolet (FUV) observations of T Tauri stars covering the age range 1–10 Myr. Our goals are to observationally constrain the intensity of radiation fields responsible for evaporating gas from the circumstellar disk and to assess the feasibility of current photoevaporation models, focusing on X-ray and UV radiation. We greatly increase the number of 7–10 Myr old T Tauri stars observed in X-rays by including observations of the well-populated 25 Ori aggregate in the Orion OB1a subassociation. With these new 7–10 Myr objects, we confirm that X-ray emission remains constant from 1 to 10 Myr. We also show, for the first time, observational evidence for the evolution of FUV radiation fields with a sample of 56 accreting and non-accreting young stars spanning 1 Myr to 1 Gyr. We find that the FUV emission decreases on timescales consistent with the decline of accretion in classical T Tauri stars until reaching the chromospheric level in weak T Tauri stars and debris disks. Overall, we find that the observed strength of high-energy radiation is consistent with that required by photoevaporation models to dissipate the disks in timescales of approximately 10 Myr. Finally, we find that the high-energy fields that affect gas evolution are not similarly affecting dust evolution; in particular, we find that disks with inner clearings, transitional disks, have similar levels of FUV emission as full disks.

SWIFT J1753.5-0127 : a surprising optical/X-ray cross-correlation function

We have conducted simultaneous optical and X-ray observations of SWIFT J1753.5-0127 with RXTE and ULTRACAM, while the system persisted in its relatively bright low/hard state. In the cross-correlation function, we find that the optical emission, with a broad negative peak, leads the X-ray emission by a few seconds and has a smaller positive peak at positive lags. This is markedly different from what was seen for the similarly interesting system XTE J1118+480, and it is the first time that such a correlation function has been so clearly measured. We suggest a physical scenario for its origin.

Toward a scientific understanding of the public understanding of science and technology

Over the last three decades, the study of the public understanding of science and technology has become a visible and recognized area of scholarship. It is certainly not an academic discipline, and probably not a viable field of study apart from other strong disciplinary roots, but it has produced a cluster of coherent and related research. One might characterize the area as bringing together relevant theoretical constructs from a variety of disciplines to improve our understanding of a contemporary problem. To a large extent, the empirical study of the public understanding of science began with a 1957 national survey of American adults, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) and the Rockefeller Foundation. Stimulated by a need to better understand the size and needs of the audience for science writing, this survey of approximately 1900 US adults examined media consumption patterns generally, media consumption patterns specific to science and technology, attitudes toward scientific and technological issues, and, to a limited extent, citizen participation in the formulation of science and technology policy.’ It included only a few substantive knowledge items and those were sufficiently applied and contemporary (polio vaccine, strontium-90) to be of little use for time series measurements. Interestingly, the interviewing for the 1957 NASW study was completed only a couple of weeks prior to the launch of Sputnik I, thus providing the only available measurements of the public understanding of science and technology prior to the beginning of the era of space exploration. As a major baseline data set, many of the items from the 1957 study have been repeated in subsequent studies and are the basis of our conceptions of the rate and direction of change in the public understanding of science and technology. Fifteen years passed before the resumption of regular data collection in the United States concerning the public understanding of science and technology, and, even then, the focus was primarily on attitudes rather than understanding. Beginning in 1972, the National Science Board initiated a biennial series of reports known as Science Indicators that are transmitted to the Congress by the President as a status report on American science and technology.’ It was decided that one chapter in each of these reports would focus on public attitudes toward science and technology and a limited set of questions were commissioned in an omnibus national survey. The items focused primarily on broad general attitudes toward science and technology and a few more