science policy

New director of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences of the National Research Council’s DBASSE

In February, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) Executive Director Michael J. Feuer announced the appointment of Barbara A. Wanchisen, as the new director of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences (BBCSS) at the National Research Council of the National Academies. Wanchisen, an experimental psychologist, will begin her work with DBASSE on March 31, 2008. She will replace Christine Hartel who successfully led BBCSS since 1991 and stepped down last year. Wanchisen is currently the Executive Director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, & Cognitive Sciences, a position she has held since 2001. In 2004, she was instrumental in the founding of the Federation’s Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a nonprofit organization that assumed the educational mission of the Federation. Previously, she was Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the collegewide Honors Program at Baldwin-Wallace College, near Cleveland, Ohio. As director of BBCSS, Wanchisen will oversee studies that address a wide range of issues, including how to assess sensory and cognitive abilities and disabilities, improve learning environments, and reduce human error in the workforce and in national security. BBCSS was created to offer the best analysis and judgment of the scientific community to inform decisions on these pressing policy issues, and to assist federal agencies in setting research agendas.

Child poverty is highest in rural counties in U.S.

While many people think of poverty in the United States as primarily an urban problem, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that most of the counties with high child poverty rates are located in rural America. Of the 100 counties with the highest child poverty rates in 2005, 95 are rural. All 100 counties have child poverty rates above 40 percent, more than twice the national rate of 18.5 percent in 2005. Ziebach County, in South Dakota, has the highest rate at 70 percent. There is also a strong racial overlay. Of the 100 counties with the highest child poverty rates, twothirds (66) are “majority minority,” or less than 50 percent non-Hispanic white. And many others have disproportionately high minority populations. On average, minorities make up 70 percent of the population in these 100 counties. This research report was written by sociologist William O’Hare, visiting senior fellow at the Casey Institute, and Mark Mather, deputy director of domestic programs at the Population Reference Bureau. For more information, see www.prb.org/Articles/2008/childpoverty.aspx.

Keep nonscientific approaches out of the classroom

As scientific research continues to document evolution, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) urge schools to keep unsupported approaches out of the science classroom. They released Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom. Recent advances in science and medicine, along with an abundance of observations and experiments over the past 150 years, have reinforced evolution’s role as the central organizing principle of modern biology, said the committee that wrote the book. Biological evolution refers to changes in the traits of populations of organisms, usually over multiple generations. Despite the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution, opponents have repeatedly tried to introduce nonscientific views into public school science classes through the teaching of various forms of creationism or intelligent design. Copies of Science, Evolution, and Creationism are available from the National Academies Press at www.nap.edu/sec, for $12.95; a PDF version is free. The NAS’ evolution resources are available at nationalacademies.org/evolution.

The lows and highs of fertility rates in Europe

Norway has one of the highest fertility rates in Europe, at 1.9 lifetime children per woman in 2006. Within Europe, only Iceland (2.07 children per woman) and France (1.98 children per woman) have higher rates, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The PRB regularly monitors fertility trends in low-fertility countries. National total fertility rates from 1995 to the most recent year available for 53 countries can be found on their website at www.prb.org. In this most recent update, the lowest fertility rates are found in eastern European countries, where the average is 1.3 or fewer children per woman. For more information, see www.prb.org/Articles/2007/newfertilityrates.aspx.

HHS launches childhood overweight and obesity prevention initiative