Extensive research on students’ understanding of science has documented persistent shortfalls at all ages. One way to account for students’ difficulties is to consider the particular challenges posed by individual science concepts. This article offers an alternative view. We argue that students’ difficulties in large part reflect unfamiliarity with a small number of causal modeling styles chara...

Deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could resume within weeks under a policy by the US government, which has come under increasing criticism from the oil industry and politicians in the region over the impact of the drilling halt and worries from scientists that the full impact has not yet been assessed. Oil and gas exploration in the gulf’s deep waters has been stopped since May, when Ob...