This preliminary study examined the effect that five major sources of public science education--schools, science centers, broadcast media, print media, and the Internet--had on adults' science interest "values" and "cognitive predispositions." Over 3,000 adults were sampled in three U.S. metropolitan areas: Los Angeles,…

Electronic media accessibility has come a long way since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 2010, the Communication and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) mandated closed captioning many online videos and called for making video blind accessible through audio descriptions. The Department of Justice (DOJ) ruled Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)…

Old age is a period when the social environment of the elderly person shrinks due to reasons such as loss of social role, health, decline of income and empty nest situation. This research was carried out in order to determine, how elderly people use the social relationship networks and communication with their environment, to satisfy the needs for…

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected K-12 education worldwide, Peru has faced particularly unique challenges. A combination of quarantine requirements and unequal access to remote learning technology led to the creation of a series of multimodal programs by Peru's Ministry of Education under the umbrella title Aprendo en Casa [I…

In the popular television show "Survivor", the winner of a million-dollar prize is determined in a final election, where the votes are read aloud as the winner is announced. We hypothesize that the show's producers purposely alter the order of the ballots in order to build audience suspense. We test our hypothesis using the Poisson binomial…

The importance of understanding and internalizing the scientific method can hardly be exaggerated. Unfortunately, it is all too common for high school--and even university--students to graduate with only a partial or oversimplified understanding of what the scientific method is and how to actually employ it. Help in remedying this situation may…

On 2 February 2014, an advertisement entitled "It's Beautiful" debuted during Super Bowl XLVIII, which was watched by 111.5 million people in the USA. The Coca-Cola advertisement portrayed people of various ethnicities and was accompanied by "America the Beautiful" sung in nine languages. Using critical discourse analysis, I…

Despite the widely-recognized benefits of early childhood experiences in formal settings that enrich the social and cognitive environments of children, many children--particularly infants and toddlers--spend their days in unregulated (or very lightly regulated) "informal" childcare settings. Over half of all one- and two-year-olds are…

This is a study of the perception of teachers on the use of television for concept analysis in the classroom. The population of the study is all the 9,784 Secondary School teachers in Bayelsa State of Nigeria out of which 110 teachers were randomly selected using the proportional sampling method. The instrument is a questionnaire designed by the…

Teaching students about race remains a challenging task for instructors, made even more difficult in the context of a growing "post-racial" discourse. Given this challenge, it is important for instructors to find engaging ways to help students understand the continuing significance of race and racial/ethnic inequality. In this article,…

Popular media influences the ideas about science constructed by the public, affecting outcomes such as scientific knowledge, the pipeline of future scientists, and the public engagement with science. A growing recognition of the impact of entertainment media has resulted in public policy organizations promoting the use of science consultants to…

A growing body of research suggests that a range of "hidden" or "less tangible" aspects of early childhood practice play an important part in early childhood practice. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this existing research literature by identifying some of the complex ways that less tangible aspects…

Humans understand text and film by mentally representing their contents in situation models. These describe situations using dimensions like time, location, protagonist, and action. Changes in 1 or more dimensions (e.g., a new character enters the scene) cause discontinuities in the story line and are often perceived as boundaries between 2…

Video clips are an excellent way to enhance lecture material. Television commercials are a source of video examples that should not be overlooked and they are readily available on the internet. They are familiar, short, self-contained, constantly being created, and often funny. This paper describes several examples of television commercials that…

Poor academic performance has been linked with particular lifestyle behaviors, such as unhealthy diet, short sleep duration, high screen time, and low physical activity. However, little is known about how lifestyle behavior patterns (or combinations of behaviors) contribute to children's academic performance. We aimed to compare academic…