Take our 13-question quiz and test your knowledge of scientific concepts and recent scientific findings and events. Then see how you did in comparison with the 1,006 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine.
NEW QUIZ: Do you know more about science and technology than the average American? Take our 13-question quiz and compare yourself with our national sample.
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Wall Street Journal, “Politics Counts: Terror Fears and Polls”
Despite those figures, however, city dwellers seem to feel less dread about terror threats than their suburban and rural counterparts, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Politics Counts examined two pre-Boston survey questions concerning terrorism and found that split.
In urban places, 57% agree that “occasional acts of terrorism” are the new norm, according to a 2012 Pew Research survey. In suburban places that number is 69% and in rural places it is 66%.
…When you slice the Pew numbers by age you see a sharp difference in attitudes between those 18-29 years old and everyone else.
Media mistakes reporting the bombings and become a part of the drama and the importance of social media, and more, in a special Boston Marathon bombing edition of the Daily Briefing.
By TED HESSON
There are roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. that could be directly impacted by immigration reform. But the reality is that millions more will also be affected, the Pew Hispanic Center says.
Today is Earth Day, a celebration that began in the U.S. in 1970 and has since spread around the world. The event had an impact on environmental politics in subsequent years, but by some assessments, has been less prominent than in its early years.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in January asked Americans to name their top priorities for the president and Congress in 2013. Unsurprisingly, strengthening the economy (cited by 86%), improving the job situation (79%) and tackling the deficit (72%) were at the top of the list.
A slight majority (52%) of Americans named protecting the environment as a top priority, putting it a little more than halfway down the list.
Tomorrow is Earth Day. According to our recent poll, 69% say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades. Among those who see evidence of global warming, more say it is caused mostly by human activity (42% of the public) than by natural patterns in the earth’s environment (23%). Nearly three-in-ten Americans (27%) say there is no solid evidence of warming.
Margeaux Wolberg was sitting with the other 12-year-olds in her class when one of the girls turned to her and asked, âIs your mom dead? She never came to school like the other mothers to volunteer in the library or help the teachers. It was always Margeaux’s dad who did that.
In Silicon Valley, fathers come in many forms, from stay-at-home dads to work-obsessed executives to the increasingly common young men who are striving to “have it all”. Today, 47 per cent of men between the ages of 18 and 34 say that being a good parent is one of the most important things in their lives, up from 39 per cent in 1997, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
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Andy Kohut, founding director of the Pew Research Center, on last week’s gun control vote, in which proposals to expand background checks were defeated 54-46. [NYDN]
In our February poll, 83% of Americans supported background checks for private gun sales:
Majority Now Supports Legalizing Marijuana
For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana. A national survey finds that 52% say that the use of marijuana should be made legal while 45% say it should not.
As support for marijuana legalization has grown, there has been a decline in the percentage viewing it as a “gateway drug.” Currently, just 38% agree that “for most people the use of marijuana leads to the use of hard drugs.” In 1977, 60% said its use led to the use of hard drugs.
More recently, there has been a major shift in attitudes on whether it is immoral to smoke marijuana. Currently, 32% say that smoking marijuana is morally wrong, an 18-point decline since 2006 (50%). Over this period, the percentage saying that smoking marijuana is not a moral issue has risen 15 points (from 35% then to 50% today).
Skyword recently sat down with Mark Jurkowitz, Associate Director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, to discuss the current state of the newspaper industry and his views on how newspaper companies are re-inventing themselves to thrive in the digital age.
— Researcher Jeff Passel explains how we tally the number of undocumented immigrants, and what impact the Senate’s path-to-citizenship proposal will potentially make.
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Washington Post: When Muslims Intermarry, Do They Keep the Faith?
“Although estimates of interfaith marriage among small population groups such as Muslims are hard to pin down, a 2011 Pew Research Center study found that about 16 percent of Muslims who are married or living with someone have a non-Muslim spouse or partner.”
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— Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, comments on the crowdsourcing attempts and Twitter reactions that followed the Boston Marathon bombing.
