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A quarter of Americans didn't know the Earth revolves around the Sun, but apparently one third of Europeans didn't know that either.

Source: American's Love Science, but Don't Know Much About It [PDF]

United States
Scientifically Literate: 12%
Partial: 25%
Not: 63%

European Union
Scientifically Literate: 5%
Partial: 22%
Not: 73%

"In previous estimates of civic scientific literacy, Miller has used a threshold level of 67 or more, reflecting the ability of a respondent to get two-thirds of the possible points on the construct vocabulary index. When this standard is applied to the 1995 U.S. data, 27.2 percent of Americans score at or above the 67 point level, compared to 20.2 percent of Europeans. This result suggests that approximately three of four adults in Europe and the United States would be unable to read and understand news or other information that utilized basic scientific constructs such as DNA, molecule, or radiation."

Source: Miller, Jon D. 1998. The measurement of civic scientific literacy. Public Understanding of Science 7 (3):203-223. See here.

When it comes to Scientific literacy, the United States is actually in the lead.

Isn't it fun to see how people can manipulate selective statistics to prove a point? The fact is, for the past decade or so, evolution has had roughly 45% support (give or take depending on the study--also please learn about margins of error before chiming in). There haven't been any studies showing any significant increase, so to conclude that it's becoming MORE hostile is ludicrous. In fact, if you had polls from 50 years ago, I'd be you'd reveal that support back then for evolution would probably be a very small minority. Republicans/conservatives have always been pro-life, so how is that an "increase"? The fact that we have Roe v. Wade now, compared to abortion being illegal the hundred of years before only shows an increase in udnerstand of science. The congressional measures for Terri Schiavo had VERY LITTLE public support, why is that even used as an arguing point? They're just pulling random examples out of their ass that refute their own point.

Sure, the current administration tries to limit it, but that is a temporary slump. So, where are the polls on stem cell research? Did the author even bother looking those up? Of course not, because then they'd realize that the majority (60%) of Americans support stem cell research and that their sensationalist peice of claptrap is completely bogus!

Sensationalism aside, to those who exercise critical thought and do research, this conclusion is completely UNSCIENTIFIC and wrong. CONCLUSION: The journalist who wrote this article is an anti-scientific thinker and all who agree with him aren't capable of critical thought and are thusly hypocrites that should be lumped in with the anti-scientific thinkers they criticize.

yeah, and you can also use a laser.

"Three-dimensional volume holographic data storage is used in photopolymer media to potentially achieve storage densities of 1 Tb/in^2 with transfer rates greater than 200 MB/s. Such densities are enabled by a novel two photopolymer chemistry approach, in addition to special techniques for making exceptionally flat (lambda/10) surfaces that provide high storage densities in cubic pho6tololymer media with volumes of tens of mm^3."

"Three-dimensional volume holographic data storage is used in photopolymer media to potentially achieve storage densities of 1 Tb/in^2 with transfer rates greater than 200 MB/s. Such densities are enabled by a novel two photopolymer chemistry approach, in addition to special techniques for making exceptionally flat (lambda/10) surfaces that provide high storage densities in cubic pho6tololymer media with volumes of tens of mm^3."

...just not mass produced or affordable.

I'm really hoping there is a push to market for these things. Sony has exclusive rights to the technology, developed by Silicon Light Machines. I've read anecdotal accounts from people who've seen the technology demoed that the images were amazingly crisp and vivid.

This link for a little blurb & small picture

This link for an abstract & link to a semi-technical pdf

Kodak just introduced a similar, competing system, as you can read here. Maybe that will drive the pricepoint down...if the demand exists.

I know I want one.

hmm interesting. I think the future here is going to ultimately be custom wavefront corrections using fully intrastromal ablations without the use of a flap. Where ultrashort laser pulses are used to "photodisrupt" tissue at controlled distances below the corneal surface so there won't be any opening of the cornea at all. That said, it will obviously be a long time before this is a reality and in the meantime there are still huge improvments being made in traditional LASIK with wavefront modelling and such, there are actually people who specialise in modelling the dynamics of the vapor plume created by the individual pulses of the laser spot!