Identifying fundamental drivers of science and developing predictive models to capture its evolution are instrumental for the design of policies that can improve the scientific enterprise—for example, through enhanced career paths for scientists, better performance evaluation for organizations hosting research, discovery of novel effective funding vehicles, and even identification of promising regions along the scientific frontier. The science of science uses large-scale data on the production of science to search for universal and domain-specific patterns. Here, we review recent developments in this transdisciplinary field.

Science of science
Santo Fortunato, Carl T. Bergstrom, Katy Börner, James A. Evans, Dirk Helbing, Staša Milojević, Alexander M. Petersen, Filippo Radicchi, Roberta Sinatra, Brian Uzzi, Alessandro Vespignani, Ludo Waltman, Dashun Wang, Albert-László Barabási
Science 02 Mar 2018:
Vol. 359, Issue 6379, eaao0185
DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0185

Source: science.sciencemag.org

Resilience is on many people’s minds these days. Hurricanes and fires regularly wallop communities. The risks of climate change loom large, and the horrors of war and the refugee crises they’ve spawned show no signs of abating. Bitter political divisions have yielded to acrimony and gloom. But although hardship cripples some, others rebound. What can science can teach us about how we might adapt and gird for future challenges? In this series of stories, we examine ways of coping with natural disasters, war and displacement, and climate change—not to mention resilience tactics in nature. One psychologist coined the term ordinary magic to describe the mix of features that brews resilience. From our stories, we learned that no clear-cut recipe exists. And yet despite long odds, scientists are parsing answers to key questions. Some carry policy prescriptions; others require an uncomfortable rethinking of adaptations needed to survive. Perhaps most important, we found that this research cultivates something that’s in short supply these days: It breeds hope.

The roots of resilience
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Science  02 Mar 2018:
Vol. 359, Issue 6379, pp. 970-971
DOI: 10.1126/science.359.6379.970

Source: science.sciencemag.org

Simple-majority democracy is used by many animals. But they don’t have social media.

Source: nautil.us

Gun violence is a leading cause of death in the United States, where over 36,000 people were killed by gunshot in 2015 [including homicide, suicide, and accident (1)]. The gun-murder rate is 25 times as high in the United States as in other high-income nations, and the gun-suicide rate is eight times as high (2). Interpersonal gun violence has deleterious effects on economic development and standard of living in heavily impacted neighborhoods (3). Given this heavy burden, it is greatly concerning that many aspects of the body of research on gun violence have been deemed inadequate and inconclusive by expert panels of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (4–6). Fortunately, the flow of high-quality research has increased in recent years. Although the CDC largely withdrew from funding research on gun violence more than 20 years ago (under intense congressional pressure), there are active research programs in medicine, public health, law, and the social sciences under way in universities and think tanks. This good news, often lost in the well-justified complaints about the lack of federal funding, deserves greater recognition. New findings are providing a sound evidence base for policy-making and, among other contributions, have helped demonstrate efficacy in three important domains of gun policy: add-on sentences for gun use in violent crime, bans on gun possession by those convicted of domestic violence, and restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public.

 

Saving lives by regulating guns: Evidence for policy
Philip J. Cook, John J. Donohue
Science  08 Dec 2017:
Vol. 358, Issue 6368, pp. 1259-1261
DOI: 10.1126/science.aar3067

Source: science.sciencemag.org