The school district is the fundamental administrative unit of schooling in the United States and the superintendent the lead official. The nature and the challenges of this position, however, vary across the landscape. Because most superintendents lead rural districts, the challenges facing those districts are the ones that typically bedevil the…

Increased energy efficiency and reduced reliance on fossil fuels are both essential if people are to have any chance of avoiding escalating energy prices and the grim reality of catastrophic climate change. By increasing the diversity of energy sources people can also achieve increased security, reducing their dependence on imports. As…

This article examines approaches to environmental education in Bhopal, India. It is an attempt to understand how much environmental education as a topic has been incorporated into formal curricula. An analysis of state and national syllabi indicates a focus on conventional, natural sciences approaches to the environment, thus neglecting the social…

Poor community-company relations in the Niger Delta have drawn attention to the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the region. Since the 1960s, transnational oil corporations operating in the Niger Delta have adopted various CSR strategies, yet community-company relations remain adversarial. This article examines community…

Consumers are constantly being presented with choices that have economic, environmental, and lifestyle/social dimensions. For example, is an energy-efficient hybrid car (with regenerative braking) a better choice than a regular petroleum-only vehicle when considered from all three dimensions? Surprisingly, although each and all of these dimensions…

In general terms there are only three primary energy sources: fossil fuels, renewable energy, and nuclear fission. For fueling road transportation, there has been much speculation about the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, which would usher in the "hydrogen economy." A parallel situation would use a simple battery to store electricity…

An existing industrial hydrogen generation and distribution infrastructure is described, and a number of large-scale investment projects are outlined. All of these projects have the potential to generate significant volumes of low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen. The technologies concerned range from gasification of coal with carbon capture and storage…

As Australia enters the era of emissions trading schemes, strategies to further curb emissions will grow in importance. At the same time, a national emissions trading scheme is set to be introduced whilst the country is set to increase its dependency and volume of road transport in years to come. This raises a doubly important question for…

Millikan's oil-drop experiment is one of the classic experiments from the history of physics. Due to its content (the determination of the elementary charge) it is also among those experiments that are frequently used and discussed in teaching situations. Disappointingly, a review of the educational literature on this experiment reveals that its…

Chemists continue to work at the forefront of materials science research. Recent advances include application of bioengineering to produce plastics from renewable biomass instead of petroleum, generation of paper-based batteries, and development of phototriggerable microcapsules for chemical delivery. In this article, the author provides summaries…

Contrary to popular opinion, most oil is not discovered by a backwoods hunter shooting at some food when up through the ground comes bubbling crude (you younger people ask your parents what silly TV program the author is referring to). Neither is it discovered simply by drilling holes randomly to see what you can find. There are several methods,…

Microorganisms can be used to produce a variety of chemicals such as drugs, enzymes, and fuels from different sugars. Traditionally, these processes have involved a single feedstock, most often glucose. More recently, significant effort has been devoted towards developing processes that directly use plant-based material as the feedstock. One…

This article reflects on some aspects of a doctoral ethnographic study of young people disaffected from schooling in a post-industrial space of ruin in a former coal-mining community in England. It considers how their experiences of resistance and refusal of schooling can, in the relational ethos of non-school support settings, come to speak back…

Natural catastrophes and engineering failures provide timely, motivating, and conceptually rich backdrops for learning. Engineering educators have long embraced case studies of engineering failures as a sound pedagogical strategy for meeting several learning standards, such as "design within realistic constraints", and teaching failure…

The environmental and social effects of hurricane-related flooding and the recent oil disaster in southeastern Louisiana, and the current global crisis in world fisheries, are case studies that reveal the need for scientific work that is carried out and disseminated with conscious attention paid to the important relationship between scientists,…