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What are the challenges to creating a resilient and confident educational community capable of addressing natural hazards and climate change in a scientifically accurate and pedagogically appropriate manner? That was the question that NCSE’s Minda Berbeco and Mark McCaffrey addressed in their "Fostering Educator Resilience: Engaging the Educational Community to Address the Natural Hazards of Climate Change."

Two bills introduced in the Florida legislature — House Bill 899 and Senate Bill 1018 — are ostensibly aimed at empowering taxpayers to object to the use of specific instructional materials in the public schools, for example on the grounds that they fail to provide "a noninflammatory, objective, and balanced viewpoint on issues." There is reason to believe that evolution and climate change are among the targets.

Alfred G. Gilman, via University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

The eminent pharmacologist and biochemist Alfred G. Gilman — a member of NCSE's Advisory Council — died on December 23, 2015, at the age of 74, according to The New York Times (December 24, 2015). Gilman and Martin Rodbell were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1994 for "their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells." The Times explains that their "research helped scientists understand how the body receives signals and transmits outside stimuli like light and odor, and from a variety of hormones in the body" and also increased understanding of certain types of cancer and hereditary glandular disorders.

A milestone: there are now over 140,000 fans of NCSE's Facebook page. Why not join them, by visiting the page and becoming a fan by clicking on the "Like" box by NCSE's name?