(AP) — Sally Ride, who blazed trails into orbit as the first American woman in space, died Monday of pancreatic cancer. She was 61. Ride died at her home in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, said Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman for her company, Sally Ride Science. She was...
Category: Education
Study finds campus housing can mirror racial denotations of larger society
A new study from the University of Kansas shows that students' experience in campus housing is often marked by racial denotations of who belongs in campus spaces and that the shifting idea of universities as businesses can push students into racially charged spaces that contradict ideas of inclusion. Zak Foste,...
New machine learning tool diagnoses electron beams in an efficient, non-invasive way
Beams of accelerated electrons power electron microscopes, X-ray lasers, medical accelerators and other devices. To optimize the performance of these applications, operators must be able to analyze the quality of the beams and adjust them as needed. For the past few years, researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National...
Latinos, Blacks less swayed by college-bound friends
Close friends are important drivers of adolescent behavior, including college attendance, according to Steven Alvarado, assistant professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. In new research published March 4 in American Educational Research Journal, Alvarado reports that having college-bound friends increases the likelihood that a student will...
Study finds no link between gender and physics course performance
A new data-driven study from Texas A&M University casts serious doubt on the stereotype that male students perform better than female students in science—specifically, physics. A team of researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy analyzed both the midterm exam scores and final grades of more than 10,000 Texas...
Researchers find evidence of elusive Odderon particle
For 50 years, the research community has been hunting unsuccessfully for the so-called Odderon particle. Now, a Swedish-Hungarian research group has discovered the mythical particle with the help of extensive analysis of experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. In 1973, two French particle physicists found...
Researchers develop first self-cooling laser made with a silica fiber
Researchers have toiled for years, unsuccessfully, in pursuit of a silica optical fiber that would cool itself when excited with infrared laser light. Such a fiber would make it possible to use the most ubiquitous type of laser fiber—silica—without having to cool it externally and, theoretically, produce laser-based devices with...
Scientist discovers a new type of ‘bi-molecule’ with applications for quantum sensors
Dr. Rosario González-Férez, a researcher at the Department of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics and the Carlos I Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics of the University of Granada, has published an article titled "Ultralong-Range Rydberg Bi-molecules" in Physical Review Letters. The results of the study show a new type...
Going forth with standardized tests may cause more problems than it solves
Despite the many ways that COVID-19 has disrupted schools, the U.S. Department of Education will not give states a pass on giving standardized tests to students this year as it did in spring 2020. That's according to new guidance the department issued Feb. 22. The guidance invites states to request...
Physics camp has proven benefits for high school girls
Even a small effort up front can boost the abilities and confidence of girls as they anticipate taking challenging science courses. A long-running summer program at Rice University and elsewhere that trains high school girls in basic physics concepts has proven successful in helping them thrive when they take on...