Thank you to everyone who has read our articles and posts over the years. Please consider following us at our new home on Linkedin. Our Twitter account (@SciPolicyForAll) will remain active, and we will continue to tweet about each of our new articles. If you have subscribed to our mailing list, you will continue to receive fortnightly emails from us, with links to our recent LinkedIn posts.   ..read more

By Jessica Smith, PhD Image by ivabalk from Pixabay, available under the Pixabay License What, exactly, is a dietary supplement? The term may make you think of chewable multivitamins and little else. However, the dietary supplement industry sells a wide range of products, including vitamins, fish oil, probiotics, and plant extracts, among many others. The worldwide dietary supplements market size was estimated to be over 60 billion US dollars in 2020 by Fortune Business Insights, and it is expected to increase even further during this decade. Over half of all US adults use at least one di ..read more

By Surangi Perera, PhD Image by Gerd Altmann, available under the Pixabay License At its foundation, science should be open, accessible, and reproducible. There is also growing awareness that collaborations and the open sharing of information facilitates new scientific discoveries.However, in the current academic culture, career progression is highly dependent on the number of papers you publish, prestige of the journal in which you publish, and your position on the author list, as opposed to the integrity of the science you produce. The emphasis on publishing has decreased the value of t ..read more

By Anika V. Prabhu, PhD Image of peace march in Moscow in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea Available under the Wikipedia Commons license More than 600 Russian scientists sign open letter against war with Ukraine Update: At the time of this post, almost 7000 Russian scientists have signed. An open protest letter condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been posted on TrV-Nauka, an independent science news site. It was published on February 24, a few hours after Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a land, sea and air attack on neighboring Ukraine. Initially penned with ..read more

By Jennifer M. Panlilio, PhD Image by Jennifer M. Panlilio Cyanobacteria are naturally found in freshwater lakes and ponds. With the right conditions – warm temperatures, bright light, abundant nutrients – they proliferate rapidly (bloom), form thick sludge mats, and in some cases, produce potent toxins that pose a threat to human health. Exposure to these cyanotoxins occurs through touching and swallowing water during recreational activities, through breathing in aerosolized toxins, and through drinking contaminated water. Health effects range from skin rashes and nausea to acute liver failur ..read more

By Silvia Preite, PhD Image by Catkin is available under the Pixabay License The urine revolution Shortage in energy, water, and raw materials for agriculture and industry are crucial problems societies face worldwide, underlining the need for alternative, more sustainable resources, and materials. Collection and re-use of human urine can help in this direction. Urine is rich in nutrients helpful to fertilize crops or needed in industrial processes. As an estimate, the nitrogen and phosphorus contained in the urine could support one-quarter of the crop fertilizer worldwide. Additiona ..read more

By Surangi Perera, PhD Image by geralt is available under the Pixabay License House passes sweeping U.S. innovation bill, teeing up talks with Senate Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength (America COMPETES) Act of 2022 on a nearly party-line vote of 222 to 210. This bill is the House’s response to the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), which was passed by the Senate in June 2021. The goal of both bills is to raise the country’s domestic and global co ..read more

By Katie Hudson, PhD Image by Todd Petrie, available under the CC BY 2.0 license There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a devastating toll on K-12 students in the U.S. and in a deeply politically polarized country, there is broad consensus that children have fallen behind, their well-being is suffering, and something needs to be done.  Standardized test results from the 2020-21 school year show that student achievement was lower in all measured subjects and demographics, especially in math and for young, low-income, or minority children. The number of chronic ..read more

By Sharmina Deloer, PhD Image by Mohamed Hassan, available under the Pixabay License Hurdles that disproportionately affect women scientists such as work-life balance, gender bias, salary gap, and many others have been voiced for decades. Women scientists are however still not receiving fair opportunities for career development and advancement. Is the dream of equity for female scientists achievable? Recent data provides clues on the current status of women scientists in different countries around the world. Women in science across the globe: According to a 2016 global census, approximate ..read more

By Katie Hudson, PhD “Read a Banned Book, Banned book display at Wayne Public Library” by ali eminov is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S. A Tennessee school board recently made headlines for their unanimous vote to remove a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Holocaust from their district’s 8th grade language arts curriculum. The book Maus, which portrays Jews as mice (hence the title “Maus”), Nazis as cats, and non-Jewish citizens as pigs, was written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman to portray the horrors that his parents experienced as P ..read more