Thanks to the arduous and tremendous efforts made by supporters and participators for popularizing knowledge about HGP, human genome project (HGP) has made huge social, historical and social impacts. In the paper, HGP provides us with an inspiring reference concerning how to seek a mixture between science and science popularization where new scientific discoveries and development can obtain in-time and enduring support and recognition from the public.

The connotation of “scientific spirit” is defined and understood in different ways among academia both at home and abroad, but scientific rationality and scientific endeavor of seeking truth and being practical are still the core of scientific spirit. It clearly indicates the gradual socialization of science from the traditional to modern historical evolution and becomes a significant factor of the advanced culture and social progress. To epitomize the essence of scientific spirit from a multi-angel and multi-layer view helps to cultivate and promote scientific spirit across the society.

Some international scholars have turned their attention to a discussion of “civil understanding of science”, while more and more scholars in China have been discussing topics under the umbrella of “public understanding of science”. Albeit these two concepts are closely connected, the difference between them provides a new insight into the problems in the field of science communication. In this paper, the concept of “citizen” is analyzed through a discussion of the current state of the public understanding of science at both domestic and global level, and the difference between civic education, public education and common education is discussed as well. By adopting a typical case analysis of “citizens’ understanding of science”, the paper reveals the difference and distinctive meaning of delving into science communication from the citizen’s position or perspective rather than the view under the frame of “public understanding of science”.

In this paper, questionnaire survey, in-depth interview and expert consultation method are used to study the motives, incentives, initiatives and influential factors of Chinese scientific researchers’ participation in science popularization, analyze the current issues and discuss the incentive policy on science popularization. The research shows that the main influential factors of the incentives for scientific researchers to popularize science are “the institution’s valuation and organization of science popularization events” and “the specific incentive policies for scientific researchers on their evaluation criterion and promotion of professional title”. The catchiest problems in existence are: performances of science popularization are not effectively weighed by the individual evaluation criterion; the evaluation mechanism on scientific institutions of their performances and projects of science popularization is deficient. Efforts shall be made to promote the understanding of the responsibilities and functions of science popularization for scientific communities, improve the evaluation system for scientific researchers to popularize science, establish an incentive mechanism for the evaluation of science popularization projects, strengthen the positive incentives for institutions and individuals participating in science popularization, and increase the intensity and scope of science popularization awarding.

This paper conducts an analysis of CGSS (2013) data, revealing that the overall level of public environmental cognition is higher; the overall level of public environmental knowledge and environmental evaluation is lower, and there are remarkable differences between different provinces; the overall level of public environmental action is lower; the public believe that the environmental protection work by central government and local governments is far from satisfactory. This paper discusses the differences between gender, age, level of education, income, political affiliation, and urban and rural areas, which have huge impacts on their environmental awareness, and inductively discovers the lower score group with less awareness towards environmental protection within 5 dimensions. In a nutshell, the paper comes up with a number of suggestions such as applying “agenda-setting” method to enhance the public participation in environmental protection, and giving full play to the government’s public credibility to attract more public involvement.

In order to better understand the status quo of China’s health popularization research, find out problems, put forward good suggestions, and explore the future development direction of the domestic health popularization research, the paper conducts an analysis of literature and documents on health popularization research from 1996 to 2015 and analyzes it from multiple perspectives. The result indicates that the research on health popularization research in China is still in its infant stage, there exist a number of problems such as less practice, later start, and slower development. Health popularization research place more emphasis on community publicity. The development of health popularization by means of new media is going rapid, while traditional media such as periodical and magazines are declining day by day; there remains “three more and three less” phenomenon in the research of health popularization which focuses more on prioritized diseases and less on less prioritized disease, more on chronic diseases and less on acute diseases, and more on the older and less on adults. Therefore, we should attach great importance to the Internet construction of health popularization research, standardize the research of new media, pay attention to the research of social hot issues on health, the aim of such doing is to guide the direction of public opinions; concern about the key diseases, promote the research of “accurate and down-to earth” popularization in the field of health, expand the coverage of health popularization research, and promote the depth of health popularization research.

Today’s museums are much more than repositories for the preservation of ancient artifacts. They are served as centers for learning, community centers, and even places for an exchange of ideas and discussions. We now understand that a museum visit is not simply an encounter for an eager visiting public who soaks up the knowledge articulated by the curatorial team. The museum experience is more about a multi-layered journey which is proprioceptive, sensory, intellectual, aesthetic, and social. In that context, this paper takes the case on fishermen’s daily life multisensory area in the folk exhibition of Taizhou Museum as an example, integrates the qualitative and quantitative research approaches in museum and analyzes the practical effect and relative merits of the multi-senses used in this exhibition through the lens of the cognitive effect and communication evaluation. Accordingly, museums should be more concerned with the combination and complex interaction between “body” and experience, as well as visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, and proprioceptive experiences and focus on the potential impact on museum visitors in cognitive, emotional and other aspects. In a nutshell, the above-mentioned suggestion is serving as an important direction for the future development of museums, and also a key and valued point of this paper.

The study establishes a reasonable, effective, feasible and credible assessment system which can be used on single exhibit in science museum. Multi objective and comprehensive evaluation is used to build the indexes of the assessment system, and then effect function comprehensive evaluation is used to confirm the computing method of each index and their weight in the system. Index, their utility function and weight comprise the whole assessment system. An empirical study is carried out based on this assessment system. The study only focuses on the result of exhibit information communication instead of the content, form, design and management. There are three first-level indexes in the assessment system built in the study: exhibit attraction, information communication effect, and audience satisfaction. There are secondary indexes under the first-level indicators. The last level index is tertiary, and all last level indicators are calculable using their utility functions. The assessment system is easy to understand and is highly feasible. The result of the assessment is simple and comparable. Apart from being used for a single exhibit, the assessment system can be applied to an exhibition which has a single theme.

Sagan Effect refers to the dilemma in which the research achievements made by a scientist is underestimated due to his great influence on public science education. This paper firstly analyzes the causes of Sagan Effect from three perspectives: the image of scientists, jealousy, and evaluation of research achievement. Secondly, by resorting to case studies and literature review, it summarizes the influence of Sagan Effect on public science education. Last but not the least, this paper puts forward the solution to the Sagan Effect dilemma from six aspects: changing the way of evaluating research achievement, changing the research grant system, encouraging citizen science projects, using new social media, reconstructing research achievement index system and nurturing celebrity scientists.

This paper studies the science communication activities by foreign embassies in China from perspectives of the agent, content, purpose, form, audience and duration. by taking six embassies as the main representatives. This research finds that science communication activities by foreign embassies in China tend to focus on their own strong scientific research areas or their citizens with global influence. The activities carried out are mostly one-time activities. Media training program is highly noted by the foreign embassies. The findings show that the purpose of the science communication activities by foreign embassies is to publicize their science strength and to sell their science images rather than enhance the comprehensive scientific literacy of Chinese citizens. The benefits gained from these activities also provide certain countermeasures and suggestions for science communication activities in China.

The paper mainly analyzes the successful cases where Beijing Children’s Publishing House have done a good job in introducing foreign copyright books, including “DK Color Illustration” series, and “Horrible Science” series. More importantly, the paper expounds on a fact that the principle of integrity of science and science history shall be highly respected when it comes to science writing, by doing so, science can be metaphorically regarded as “ berries”, to be loved and enjoyed by the children.

This paper reviews the development process about China’s popular science art based on historical documents, and interviews and investigations; divides popular science art into traditional science art and new media art stages by considering whether new media and technologies are widely used in the field of popular art or not; and specifically investigates popular science art in terms of popular science creative team, popular science works, popular science art activities and popular Science Association development.

The Restless Universe, a classical popular science book about physics written by Max Born, was published in England in 1935. Max Born puts a great deal of efforts in writing the book, including the following aspects such as content selection, narrative method and skills, using literary means, drawing more delicate pictures in the book, and so on, those efforts have left fond and deep impressions on the readers. Thus, it is exemplified as a classical popular science book. Born’s academic thinking, such as attaching great importance to the role of valuing experiment in research work, and placing emphasis on the role of disciplinary history in teaching, were well embodied in that book. The book also illustrates Born’s unique insights into science and science research, and the law of the development of physics due to his meticulously studying and observing history of physics. A popular science writer could get more help, guidance and reference when he holds and reads the book.