I was skimming through the new Science and Engineering Indicators 2012 from the National Science Foundation when I came across this very interesting table. Whenever I see reports about science literacy in the United States, the reports are very parochial, with no comparison to other counties. Here is a table of scores on similar tests given around the world. We Americans do relatively well on a lot of the questions (although that sometimes means we’re about as bad as most other countries). The one big exception is when Americans are asked about the origin of the universe and of our species.

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Originally published June 11, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

I’ve brought together some of my favorite pieces about the brain in two ebooks, Brain Cuttings: Fifteen Journeys Through the Mind, and More Brain Cuttings: Further Explorations of the Mind. Earlier this year, the distributor for the ebooks, IPG, got into an ugly fight with Amazon, which led to Amazon yanking IPG’s 5,000 ebooks. Which was a bummer. Just recently, though, the two sides came to an agreement. (The details are here.)

And that means my ebooks are back. Click here for the Kindle edition of Brain Cuttings, and here for More Brain Cuttings.

Of course, you can also order both ebooks elsewhere if you’re so inclined:

Brain Cuttings: iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Scott & Nix (my publisher)

More Brain Cuttings: iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Scott & Nix

Originally published June 8, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.