THE ART OF ASKING THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTIONS

>Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:23:37 -0500
>From: Dawn Wiseman <dawn@encs.concordia.ca>
>THE ART OF ASKING THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTIONS
> IN THE MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM
>
> http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/12574
>
> Carmen Bellido, Uroyoan Walker, and Keith Wayland wrote a
> position paper that is a "How To" guide for developing higher
> conceptual level questions that provoke students to think.
> Several techniques for modifying traditional questions are
> illustrated with examples ranging from elementary to high
> school level topics.
>
> View other articles posted in the MSPnet Library:
>The library contains over 400 articles of interest to leaders engaged in
>K-12 science and mathematics education reform. More information on Library
>Collection below."
>http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/library
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The girl who named a planet
By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter


Venetia Phair isn't a name that immediately springs to mind when you mention astronomy.

But the retired teacher from Epsom in Surrey has left an indelible signature on our map of the Solar System.

Now 87 years of age, Venetia Phair (n&#E9;e Burney) is the only person in the world who can claim to have named a planet.

In 1930, at just 11 years of age, Mrs Phair suggested the title Pluto for the newly discovered ninth planet.

On 17 January, the US space agency (Nasa) will launch the first ever space mission to this distant world from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld, turned out to be a particularly apt title for the enigmatic object, which resides in the outer reaches of the Solar System.

Mythological name

The name proposed by the then Oxford schoolgirl was seized upon at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, where the planet was discovered by young American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh.

"I was quite interested in Greek and Roman myths and legends at the time," Mrs Phair told the BBC News website.

"At school, we used to play games in the university park, putting - I think they were lumps of clay - at the right distance from each other to represent the distances of the planets from the Sun.

"Some of the distances I can still more or less remember, so it was probably a good lesson to have had."

On the morning of 14 March 1930, the young Venetia Burney was sitting down to breakfast in the dining room of the house in north Oxford where she lived with her grandfather Falconer Madan.

Mr Madan, who was retired as librarian at the Bodleian Library, was with her reading The Times newspaper.

When he got to an article on page 14 about the new planet's discovery, he remarked on it to Venetia.

Excellent suggestion

"I can still visualise the table and the room, but I can remember very little about the conversation," Mrs Phair said.

The article mentioned that the planet had not yet been named, prompting Venetia Burney to suggest her own.

Mr Madan was so impressed with the name Pluto, he went straight to his friend Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford, and one of the leaders in the worldwide effort to produce an astrographic chart.

"It was incredibly lucky in a number of ways," Mrs Phair explains. "Firstly, I was lucky in having a grandfather who pursued the matter and knew Professor Turner.

"And it is extremely lucky that the name was there. There were practically no names left from classical mythology. Whether I thought about the dark and gloomy Hades, I'm not sure."

Interestingly, her great uncle Henry Madan had suggested the names Phobos and Deimos for the moons of Mars.

Though retired, Falconer Madan continued to visit the Bodleian library to pursue his interest in Lewis Carroll and see former colleagues.

"He walked down to the Bodleian as usual and on the way he diverged sufficiently to drop a note in at Professor Turner's house," says Mrs Phair.
Five pound reward

Ironically, the professor was out at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London where there was much speculation about the naming of the new ninth planet.

"None of them came up with Pluto. That was another stroke of luck," says Mrs Phair. When Mr Madan eventually caught up with Herbert Hall Turner, the astronomer agreed Pluto was an excellent choice.

Professor Turner promised to send a telegram, forwarding the suggestion, to the Lowell Observatory. Mrs Phair then heard nothing more on the matter for more than a month.

On 1 May 1930, the name Pluto was formally adopted. When the news went public, Mr Madan rewarded his granddaughter with a five pound note.
"This was unheard of then. As a grandfather, he liked to have an excuse for generosity," says Mrs Phair.

Mrs Phair is keen to scotch one rumour that grew up in the years after Pluto's discovery; namely that she had named the planet after Disney's cartoon dog, which also debuted in 1930.

"People were repeatedly saying: 'Ah, she named it after Pluto the dog'. It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the planet, rather than the other way round. So, one is vindicated."

Predicted discovery

The name was apparently adopted for the ninth planet not only because it was one of the few noteworthy names from classical mythology not already taken, but also because the first two letters were the initials of Percival Lowell, the astronomer who gave his name to the observatory where Clyde Tombaugh worked.

With fellow astronomer William Pickering, Lowell had predicted the existence of a Trans-Neptunian planet. Clyde Tombaugh had found Pluto during a systematic search for such an object.

Venetia still has the press cuttings collected by her grandfather on the adoption of the name Pluto, and a kind of fame has followed her ever since.
"The professor who built the planetarium at the Leicester Space Centre was very kind and had spent quite a long time trying to trace us. When we went to visit, we were treated more or less like royalty," she says.

Over the years she has tried to follow developments on the planet she named, which is now the subject of calls from some astronomers for a demotion in status.

Since its discovery in 1930, astronomers have discovered an entire region of distant icy bodies much like Pluto called the Kuiper Belt. As such, some scientists now put Pluto amongst these Kuiper Belt Objects rather than among the planets.

Mrs Phair has been sent an invitation by Nasa to watch the New Horizons launch from Cape Canaveral, but she says she will probably have to decline the offer due to her age.

"It's interesting isn't it, that as they come to demote Pluto, so the interest in it seems to have grown," she says.

"At my age, I've been largely indifferent to [the debate]; though I suppose I would prefer it to remain a planet."

With thanks to Duncan Moore.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4596246.stm

Published: 2006/01/13 10:57:31 GMT

&#A9; BBC MMVI

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome

from The New York Times (Registration Required)

>ROME, Jan. 18 - The official Vatican newspaper published an article this
>week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania
>that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to
>evolution.
>
>"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should
>search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology
>at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper,
>L'Osservatore Romano.
>
>"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the
>field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling
>intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the
>scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."
>http://tinyurl.com/a4f3b

"January 19, 2006
In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome
By IAN FISHER and CORNELIA DEAN

ROME, Jan. 18 - The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.

"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

The article was not presented as an official church position. But in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI.

Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasizing that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him."

But Robert L. Crowther, spokesman for the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle organization where researchers study and advocate intelligent design, dismissed the article and other recent statements from leading Catholics defending evolution. Drawing attention to them was little more than trying "to put words in the Vatican's mouth," he said.

L'Osservatore is the official newspaper of the Vatican and basically represents the Vatican's views. Not all its articles represent official church policy. At the same time, it would not be expected to present an article that dissented deeply from that policy.

In July, Christoph Sch&#F6;nborn, an Austrian cardinal close to Benedict, seemed to call into question what has been official church teaching for years: that Catholicism and evolution are not necessarily at odds.
In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, he played down a 1996 letter in which Pope John Paul II called evolution "more than a hypothesis." He wrote, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source.

At least twice, Pope Benedict has signaled concern about the issue, prompting questions about his views. In April, when he was formally installed as pope, he said human beings "are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." In November, he called the creation of the universe an "intelligent project," wording welcomed by supporters of intelligent design.

Many Roman Catholic scientists have criticized intelligent design, among them the Rev. George Coyne, a Jesuit who is director of the Vatican Observatory. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," he said in November, as quoted by the Italian news service ANSA. "Intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

In October, Cardinal Sch&#F6;nborn sought to clarify his own remarks, saying he meant to question not the science of evolution but what he called evolutionism, an attempt to use the theory to refute the hand of God in creation.

"I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained," he said in a speech.

To Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and a Catholic, "That is my own view as well."

"As long as science does not pretend it can answer spiritual questions, it's O.K.," he said.

Dr. Miller, who testified for the plaintiffs in the recent suit in Dover, Pa., challenging the teaching of intelligent design, said Dr. Facchini, Father Coyne and Cardinal Sch&#F6;nborn (in his later statements) were confirming "traditional Catholic thinking." On Dec. 20, a federal district judge ruled that public schools could not present intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory.

In the Osservatore article, Dr. Facchini wrote that scientists could not rule out a divine "superior design" to creation and the history of mankind. But he said Catholic thought did not preclude a design fashioned through an evolutionary process.

"God's project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events, without having to think of miraculous interventions that point in this or that direction," he wrote.

Neither Dr. Facchini nor the editors of L'Osservatore could be reached for comment.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, said Dr. Facchini's article was important because it made the case that people did not have to abandon religious faith in order to accept the theory of evolution.

"Science does not make that requirement," he said.

Ian Fisher reported from Rome for this article, and Cornelia Dean from New York."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/science/...ml?pagewanted=print

Olympic resources

>Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 16:09:54 -0500
>
>By my count there's just over a month to the gold medal hockey games. If
>you want to get your kids involved before then, here are some sites
>offering lesson plans based on the upcoming Olympic games in Torino, Italy.
>
>Dawn
>-----------------------------
>*
>Canadian Olympic School Program*
>The Canadian Olympic School Program aligns lesson plans with information
>about the Olympic Games and the achievements of Canadian athletes. By
>calculating hockey goaltender Kim St-Pierre's goals-against-average,
>students will learn to handle and manipulate decimals through a
>real-world application. And by reading about freestyle skiing aerialist
>Jeff Bean's flights down the mountainside, students will identify a
>theme in a piece of reading.
>
>The lessons are geared to Grades Four to Six, and cover elements of
>reading, math and physical education that are common to provincial
>requirements across the country.
>http://www.olympicschool.ca/index.php?use_lang=EN
>
>*Vancouver 2010: Olympic Math Trail*
>Help 2 Japanese tourists at the 2010 winter Olympics enjoy theri visit
>to Canada and stay on budget.
>http://www.brocku.ca/cmt/upload/1070004370.8764/index.html
>
>*From the US Olympic Committee
>*http://www.usolympicteam.com/12683.htm
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

A 'snow fort' for the adult in you

The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com
 
from the January 20, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0120/p11s01-lihc.html

A 'snow fort' for the adult in you
By Clayton Collins | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
At certain latitudes, midwinter becomes all about perspective. Snow can be a hazard to driving, a ticket to slide, or one of nature's nicer decorative touches. But the white stuff can also be seen as building material. And you don't have to be 10 years old and thinking "snow fort."

Quinzees - hollowed-out mounds of snow, igloos without the blocks - were once widely used by Chipewyan hunters who had strayed far from their winter lodges in subarctic Canada. Today they're favored by intrepid wilderness campers who like working with natural resources - and who understand the insulating properties of snow.

Scout troops and high schools from Maine to Michigan turn the building of these short-term shelters into learning experiences. Dogs have been known to inhabit the snow huts with glee. Quinzees also have backyard-recreation potential. The experience is something like sand-castle building. Key difference: You get to go inside and hang out.

Gordon Baker once slept in a quinzee in temperatures of 25 degrees F. below zero. He and two friends lounged inside with a candle for light and felt comfortable wearing T-shirts. "If you have a shovel, a couple of friends with shovels, and a few sticks, you can make a big pile of snow and have a house in two hours," says Mr. Baker, a guide with Algonquin Outfitters in Oxtongue Lake, Ontario. Algonquin will host its annual Winter Activities Day - including quinzee-building - next month.

There is science at play in the creation of these dark and dead-quiet domes. Many quinzee-builders "mulch" snow by trampling it before they begin their mounds, packing as they pile. Heat from the pressure changes the snow crystals' structure, Baker says, and has a binding effect. Snow should set - an hour at least - before digging begins. Sticks should be slid in from the outside to help a digger know when a consistent wall thickness of six inches or so is achieved.

Size is a function of a digger's ambition. A team of about 10 students built a "super quinzee" a couple of years ago, says Jason Carter, a biology teacher at Houghton High School in Michigan, which holds an annual Quinzee Day in February to give 10th-graders a taste of winter-survival tactics. "They were able to fit the whole class of 100 in it," says Mr. Carter, still incredulous. "They worked furiously all day, and they all squeezed in."
Carter says the school learned a valuable lesson when the tradition began a decade ago. It held the event one year on the same day as a volleyball game. "The girls that participated were just wiped out," he recalls. "They lost their game. So [since then] we've always moved it to a day when there are no athletics going on."

Veterans recommend tricks to reduce the rigorous work. Piling snow on top of waterproof duffel bags or even garbage cans can speed hollowing - pull them out through a hole in the side of the quinzee and they leave a cavity. That tactic has drawbacks. A Boy Scout troop from Honeoye Falls, N.Y., describes in a 2003 weblog entry having buried backpacks and a big garbage can too deep in a mound, a move that "sounded good in the planning stage" but that led to a long and difficult extraction - made more urgent because several campers had left their lunches in their backpacks.

Left to harden, a good quinzee can last. Baker has seen them hold up for a month or longer before falling to the elements. "You probably wouldn't want to have to depend on one for your shelter, because you're never sure you're going to have enough snow," he says. "[People] build them because it's fun. It warms you up, and it's something to do."
How to build your own snow hut

Go ahead, make a dome of your own. The following advice is distilled from builders and first-hand experience. The Monitor accepts no responsibility for snow down your back - or any other mishaps. It's wet work.

Mulch the snow by stomping out your site.

Circle your growing pile, adding shovels-full, lightly packing.

Leave a five- or six-foot pile (10 feet across) to set for a couple of hours.
Poke several small sticks in the top and sides of the mound, about six- to eight-inches deep.

Dig from the side near the bottom - in and then up, to minimize cold-air flow. Hollow until you hit the stick ends, and have a friend near the entrance keeping it clear. Smooth the interior walls.

Create one or more three-inch ventilation holes in the dome. (In an oversized quinzee, a larger side chimney for a very small and inefficient twig fire is possible but discouraged because of the possibility of smoke buildup.)

Place a tarp on the quinzee floor (optional) and whistle for the dog - or the kids, who are by now inside watching Nickelodeon.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright

>4) Build-A-Bear Workshop to Honor Young People for
> Community Service
>
> Deadline: February 14, 2006
>
> Now in its third year, the Build-A-Bear Workshop's
> ( http://www.buildabear.com/ ) Huggable Heroes program
> seeks to reward kids who demonstrate extraordinary
> service to their local communities.
>
> Build-A-Bear Workshop seeks nominations of young people
> who have made a difference to the life of their communi-
> ties to be named 2006 Huggable Heroes. Nominations will
> be accepted of young people who are 18 years of age or
> younger and are legal residents of the United States,
> District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Canada. Twelve
> young people will be selected and recognized as 2006
> Huggable Heroes. Each of the twelve honorees will be
> rewarded with a $2,500 donation to help further their
> cause along with a trip to Los Angeles, where they will
> be recognized for their achievements.
>
> Nominees may perform their community service as an
> individual working within a group or on an individual
> basis. Self-nominations will be accepted.
>
> Nomination guidelines and forms are available at the
> company's Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000537/huggableheroes
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>
> ------------------------<<>>--------------------------

>Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 15:22:09 -0800
>From: "(Jennifer Wei)" <JWei@CHABOTSPACE.ORG>
>Subject: Encouraging Girls in Technology: Techbridge Summer Training
>
>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>*****************************************************************************
>
>Are you interested in developing an after-school or summer program to engage
>and promote girls' interest in technology and science?
>
>
>
>Chabot Space & Science Center invites you to participate in the Techbridge
>Summer Training Institute in Oakland, CA from August 7-9, 2006. This
>workshop will teach participants all facets of starting and successfully
>running a program in technology, science and engineering for girls.
>
>
>
>Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California developed Techbridge to
>address the severe shortage of females in technology and science. This
>year, Techbridge is serving over 300 girls across 16 after-school programs
>and a summer academy in five school districts. With a proven curriculum and
>program model that has been tested and refined over 9 years, we have
>developed best practices and strategies for success. The Training
>Institute will give participants the tools, framework and content to get
>started. Topics covered will include:
>
>
>
>* Mission and underlying philosophy - why we do it, and how we
>accomplish our mission
>* Structuring the program model - what works well and lessons learned
>* Critical success factors for launching and maintaining a successful
>technology program for girls
>* Recruitment - strategies for recruiting, engaging and retaining
>girls
>* Curriculum - access to our innovative curriculum that has been
>especially developed for girls, field-tested and proven. Each participant
>will receive a year's worth of curriculum, including lesson plans for
>hands-on activities, icebreakers, and other exercises that have been used in
>our classrooms. Training on the curriculum will be provided.
>* Role models and field trips - how to make best use of and engage
>volunteers and corporate partners. Includes suggestions and lessons learned
>on maximizing impact.
>* Budgeting and fundraising -how to budget program expenses and find
>the best deals to minimize costs and maximize effectiveness. We will also
>provide tips and resources for fundraising.
>* Action planning - participants will have a concrete action plan for
>implementation
>
>
>
>To register for the program, please visit
>http://www.techbridgegirls.org/programs_institute.html. We hope you will
>join us in making a difference for the future of girls in technology,
>science and engineering!
>
>
>
>For any inquiries or more information, please contact Jennifer Wei at
>510-336-7339 or jwei@chabotspace.org. To learn more about Techbridge, visit
>www.techbridgegirls.org.
>
>

Bush kids don't always understand the 'lesson'

Published: January 22, 2006
Last Modified: January 22, 2006 at 05:22 AM

KONGIGANAK -- "I'm going to teach him a lesson," the state trooper said to me as we sat in my classroom. The week was over, and after days of 35-degree temperatures and rain, our weather was finally returning to normal. Flurries continued falling, resting for seconds on the newly frozen ice that lay everywhere, then sliding with the wind toward the ocean. He checked his watch, we shook hands and I thanked him again for visiting our village. As I watched this man stride down the hallway toward the office of our school, I couldn't help but hear that line in my head again: I'm going to teach him a lesson.

After five years teaching in Kongiganak, five years trying to teach students lessons, I find that sentence turned around in a way I can't quite come to grips with. The trooper was referring to one of my students who will most likely be arrested in the near future for bootlegging. As my principal enthusiastically told me, the student will be charged with seven felony counts. He will be taught a lesson, that much is sure. What I'm not sure about is what lesson he will learn. One thing I have discovered as a teacher is that the lesson you intend to deliver is not always the one the students learn.

My second semester teaching, I showed up to my reading and writing class with a strange lesson. For months I had put up with the students calling me, and everything I had done in class, boring. I had changed formats, incorporated technology, used visuals, tried to get the students to work in groups, independently, produce art projects -- anything I could think of to engage them in any way. And still they came to school every day with no energy, no emotion and absolutely no effort except to occasionally raise their heads and exclaim how boring I was.

So on this day, I showed up and wrote the definition of "boring" on the board. When my students came in and laid their heads on the desks, I informed them that I had done a lot of thinking the night before and had come to a realization. To be boring, I pointed out, includes being repetitive, doing the same thing over and over again. I pointed out that I didn't do that. I tried lots of things in class. In fact, as I went through each part of the definition, I pointed out that I was quite the opposite in class: lively, energetic, exciting, entertaining. And while I may not have been the Robin Williams of education, I certainly tried.

On the other hand, it was my students who sat -- day in and day out -- with their hoods up and their heads down. Who showed up chronically tired. Who refused to answer questions. Who rarely brought materials to class and never did homework. I indicated that I had a hard time sleeping the night before as I pondered all of this until I realized something. After this realization, I fell into a deep sleep.

A couple of the students stirred, but most pretended to ignore me, though I had a suspicion they were listening through their hoods. I waited a minute or so for the silence to sink in before I hit them with my revelation. I wasn't boring; they were boring.

I figured that if they were challenged, perhaps they would have an easier time writing. I asked them to defend themselves and explain to me in writing why they weren't boring. Explain to me how my definition was inaccurate. Most ignored my challenge and resorted to the indefensible retort, "I'm not boring -- you are." I had to concede that for simplicity's sake their argument was succinct and to the point, though it did lack a certain evidentiary weight.

I released the students for the day and collected their papers and watched them file out the door, most of them completely ignoring my presence by the door. At the last second, one of the young girls swung her hair out of her face and glanced toward me; I caught her profile and the dark eyes staring at me. I flipped through the papers until her name popped up, I sat down and placed her paper on top of the pile and read it. "Why should I care what you think of me?" she wrote, "You'll be gone in a year, and my family loves me."

I had wanted her to learn a lesson. I had wanted her to learn the power of argument and the importance of investing something of yourself, some emotion, into your education. Well, she might have learned some of that, but not in the manner I had intended. What lesson she had learned was that "qass'aq" teachers come and go, they don't care about students' lives and, most important, they don't understand Yup'ik kids.

People in the Bush bootleg alcohol all the time. They bring it in by boat, by snowmachine, smuggled in airline luggage. It happens with such a regularity that it's not even a novelty. And why not? People rarely get caught, and a $20 bottle of Gilby's goes for $250 in the village. With stove oil prices up to $3.59 per gallon, that tiny bottle isn't liquor; it's an entire barrel of diesel that heats a home for a month. And that's exactly where the money went.

"I'm going to teach him a lesson." It sounds so simple. So clear-cut. So black and white: If you break the law, you get in trouble.

Life is never that simple. And the lesson my student will learn is not simple either. What he'll really learn is: If you get caught breaking the law, you get in trouble.

R. Brett Stirling lives and writes in Kongiganak, 70 miles southwest of Bethel."
http://www.adn.com/life/story/7381377p-7293588c.html

>To: "ArcticInfo" <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>Subject: Request for Community Input on Cyberinfrastructure Support for
> Geoscience Education
>
>
>NSF 06-007: Request for Community Input on Cyberinfrastructure Support
>for Geoscience Education
>
>The complete announcement is available at:
>http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06007/nsf06007.jsp
>
>----------------------------------------
>On November 30, 2005, Dr. Margaret Leinen, Assistant Director of the NSF
>Directorate for Geosciences, issued a "Dear Colleague" letter soliciting
>input regarding the future characteristics of cyberinfrastructure in
>support of geoscience education. Cyberinfrastructure in support of
>geoscience education is currently provided by the Digital Library for
>Earth System Education (DLESE). In fiscal year 2006, the NSF Directorate
>for Geosciences intends to entertain new and/or renewal proposals to
>design, maintain, and operate the next generation of geoscience
>education cyberinfrastructure.
>
>The Directorate for Geosciences would like to receive input from the
>community regarding design specifications for the future
>cyberinfrastructure component of the geoscience education portfolio. All
>community input will be carefully considered by the Directorate for
>Geosciences. Please submit no more than three (3) pages, single-spaced,
>of information in response to this Dear Colleague Letter. Input can be
>e-mailed to dlesecomments@nsf.gov by January 31, 2006.
>
>Topics you may wish to address include:
>
>What basic services and architectures should be provided to enable
>inquiry-based learning for users of a geoscience-education website
>(e.g., the ability to search by topic or grade level, discovery and
>delivery of scientific information related to current events, and the
>ability to personalize web interfaces)?
>
>What cyber services should be provided to educators (e.g., relationship
>to National Science Education Standards, information about
>best-practices, teaching guides, educational assessment tools)?
>
>What services should be provided to educators and scientists who wish to
>submit educational materials for publication on a geoscience-education
>website (e.g., assistance with format, keywords, or metadata)?
>
>What are the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining a collection in
>addition to linking to external resources/collections and providing
>metadata resources?
>
>----------------------------------------------------------- --------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
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It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't (sciencing)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/science/24frau.html
January 24, 2006
It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't
By NICHOLAS WADE

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond.

Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.

At The Journal of Cell Biology, the test has revealed extensive
manipulation of photos. Since 2002, when the test was put in place, 25 percent of all accepted manuscripts have had one or more illustrations that were manipulated in ways that violate the journal's guidelines, said Michael Rossner of Rockefeller University, the executive editor. The editor of the journal, Ira Mellman of Yale, said that most cases were resolved when the authors provided originals. "In 1 percent of the cases we find authors have engaged in fraud," he said.

The two editors recognized the likelihood that images were being improperly manipulated when the journal required all illustrations to be submitted in digital form. While reformatting illustrations submitted in the wrong format, Dr. Rossner realized that some authors had yielded to the temptation of Photoshop's image-changing tools to misrepresent the original data.

In some instances, he found, authors would remove bands from a gel, a test for showing what proteins are present in an experiment. Sometimes a row of bands would be duplicated and presented as the controls for a second experiment. Sometimes the background would be cleaned up, with Photoshop's rubber stamp or clone stamp tool, to make it prettier.

Some authors would change the contrast in an image to eliminate traces of a diagnostic stain that showed up in places where there shouldn't be one. Others would take images of cells from different experiments and assemble them as if all were growing on the same plate.

To prohibit such manipulations, Dr. Rossner and Dr. Mellman published guidelines saying, in effect, that nothing should be done to any part of an illustration that did not affect all other parts equally. In other words, it is all right to adjust the brightness or color balance of the whole photo, but not to obscure, move or introduce an element.

They started checking illustrations in accepted manuscripts by running them through Photoshop and adjusting the controls to see if new features appeared. This is the check that has shown a quarter of accepted manuscripts violate the journal's guidelines.

In the 1 percent of cases in which the manipulation is deemed fraudulent - a total of 14 papers so far - the paper is rejected. Revoking an accepted manuscript requires the agreement of four of the journal's officials. "In some cases we will even contact the author's institution and say, 'You should look into this because it was not kosher,' " Dr. Mellman said.
He and Dr. Rossner plan to add software tests being developed by Hani Farid, an applied mathematician at Dartmouth. With a grant from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is interested in ways of authenticating digital images presented in court, Dr. Farid is devising algorithms to detect alterations.

His work has attracted interest from many people, he said, including eBay customers concerned about the authenticity of images, people answering personal ads, paranormal researchers studying ghostly emanations and science editors.

For the latter, Dr. Farid is developing a package of algorithms designed to spot specific types of image manipulation. When researchers seek to remove an object from an image, such as a band from a gel, they often hide it with a patch of nearby background. This involves a duplication of material, which may be invisible to the naked eye but can be detected by mathematical analysis.

If an object is enlarged beyond the proper resolution, Photoshop may generate extra pixels. If the object is rotated, another set of pixels is generated in a characteristic pattern.

An object introduced from another photo may have a different angle of illumination. The human eye is largely indifferent to changes in lighting, Dr. Farid said, but conflicting sources of illumination in a single image can be detected by computer analysis and are a sign of manipulation.
"At the end of the day you need math," Dr. Farid said. He hopes to have a set of tools available soon for beta-testing by Dr. Rossner.

Journals depend heavily on expert reviewers to weed out papers of poor quality. But as the Hwang case showed again, reviewers can do only so much. The defined role of reviewers is not to check for concocted data but to test whether a paper's conclusions follow from the data presented.
The screening test addresses an issue reviewers cannot easily tackle, that of whether the presented data accurately reflect the real data. Because journal editors now have the ability to perform this sort of quality control, "they should do it," Dr. Rossner said.

The scientific community has not yet come to grips with the temptations of image manipulation, Dr. Mellman said, and he would like to see other journals adopt the image-screening system, even though it takes 30 minutes a paper. "We are a poor university press," he said, without the large revenue enjoyed by journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. "If they can't bear this cost, something must be dreadfully wrong with their business models," he said.

Science, in fact, has adopted The Journal of Cell Biology's guidelines and has just started to apply the image-screening test to its own manuscripts. "Something like this is probably inevitable for most journals," said Katrina Kelner, a deputy editor of Science.

She became interested as a quality control measure, not because of the concocted papers of Dr. Hwang, two of which Science published. Dr. Mellman says the system would have caught at least the second of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, since it "popped out like a sore thumb" under the image screening test.

But other editors are less enthusiastic. Emilie Marcus, editor of Cell, said that she was considering the system, but that she believed in principle that the ethics of presenting true data should be enforced in a scientist's training, not by journal editors.

The problem of manipulated images, she said, arises from a generation gap between older scientists who set the ethical standards but don't understand the possibilities of Photoshop and younger scientists who generate a paper's data. Because the whole scientific process is based on trust, Dr. Marcus said: "Why say, 'We trust you, but not in this one domain?' And I don't favor saying, 'We don't trust you in any.' "

Rather than having journal editors acting as enforcers, she said, it may be better to thrust responsibility back to scientists, requiring the senior author to sign off that the images conform to the journal's guidelines.
Those guidelines, in her view, should be framed on behalf of the whole scientific community by a group like the National Academy of Sciences, and not by the fiat of individual editors.

     * Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

>Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:19:25 -0600
>From: Michelle Nichols <mnichols@ADLERPLANETARIUM.ORG>
>Subject: URGENT - Exhibit survey
>
>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>************************************************************* ***************
>
>If you get this message after 2 pm (Central Standard Time) on Thursday,
>January 26, then please delete it. We need survey responses prior to
>then.
>
>The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum (Chicago, IL) is working on a new
>exhibit gallery that we hope will open later in 2006. In order to find
>out what people already know about particular topics, we would like your
>responses to a few questions. We would also appreciate it if you could
>send this message to colleagues at your institution, colleagues at other
>institutions, teachers, students, members - anyone who you think would
>read their email over the next day & wouldn't mind getting this message.
>We want both adult and child responses. Teachers - if you have classes of
>students who would be able to take this survey, then please have as many
>students do it as possible.
>
>(I fully realize that this is not necessarily the best data collection or
>sampling technique...we are severely crunched for time and, hence, have to
>take liberties with our methods.)
>
>Please remember - THIS IS NOT A TEST OR A WEBQUEST!! Do not worry if you
>do not know anything about the topics we are asking about. Not knowing
>about something is as important to us as knowing it. Please do not do any
>research on the internet prior to taking this survey. We want to find out
>what you already know about a few space-related topics. Thank you for
>your help!!
>
>The survey is at:
>
>http://www.quia.com/quiz/718569.html
>
>Thank you!!
>
>Michelle
>
>Michelle Nichols, Master Educator for Informal Programs
>Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
>1300 S. Lake Shore Dr.
>Chicago, IL 60605
>312-322-0520
>312-322-9181 (fax)
>mnichols@adlerplanetarium.org
>http://www.adlerplanetarium.org

other intelligent designs on schools
 
There is an interesting group blog called Sepia Mutiny, that has also discussed this topic (among others). The Sepia Mutiny examines life in the US for South Asians.
Hare Krishnas supporting [Intelligent Design\
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/002867.html
The rise of pseudoscience http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/002100.html
mpb
=====================================================
India history spat hits US

The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com
from the January 24, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0124/p01s03-wosc.html

California educators have unleashed debate with textbook revisions.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI - In the halls of Sacramento, a special commission is rewriting Indian history: debating whether Aryan invaders conquered the subcontinent, whether Brahman priests had more rights than untouchables, and even whether ancient Indians ate beef.

That this seemingly arcane Indian debate has spilled over into California's board of education is a sign of the growing political muscle of Indian immigrants and the rising American interest in Asia.

The foes - who include established historians and Hindu nationalist revisionists - are familiar to each other in India. But America may increasingly become their new battlefield as other US states follow California in rewriting their own textbooks to bone up on Asian history.
At stake, say scholars who include some of the most elite historians on India, may be a truthful picture of one of the world's emerging powers - one arrived at by academic standards of proof rather than assertions of national or religious pride.

"Some of the groups involved here are not qualified to write textbooks, they do not draw lines between myth and history," says Anu Mandavilli, an Indian doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, and activist against the Hindu right. Speaking of one of the groups, the Vedic Foundation in Austin, Texas, she adds, "On their website, they claim that Hindu civilization started 111.5 trillion years ago. That makes Hinduism billions of years older than the Big Bang." (The assertion has since been pulled from the site.)

"It would be ridiculous if it weren't so dangerous."

Revisionist debates hot in many nations

Communities use history to define themselves - their core ideals, achievements, and grudges. Small wonder, then, that history is frequently reevaluated as political pendulums shift, or as long-oppressed minority groups finally get their say. History, and efforts to revise it, have touched off recent controversies between Japan and its neighbors over its World War II past, as well as between France and its former colonies over the portrayal of imperialism.

Here in India, Hindu nationalists have pushed forcefully for revisionism after what they see as centuries of cultural domination by the British Raj and Muslim Mogul Empire.

Instigating the California debate were two US-based Hindu groups with long ties to Hindu nationalist parties in India. One, the Vedic Foundation, is a small Hindu sect that aims at simplifying Hinduism to the worship of one god, Vishnu. The other, the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF), was founded in 2004 by a branch of the right-wing Indian group the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

This year, as California's Board of Education commissioned and put up for review textbooks to be used in its 6th-grade classrooms, these two groups came forward with demands for substantial changes.

Textbooks did have glaring mistakes

Some of the changes were no-brainers. One section said, incorrectly, that the Hindi language is written in Arabic script. One photo caption misidentified a Muslim as a Brahman priest.

But instead of focusing on such errors, the groups took steps to add their own nationalist imprint to Indian history.

In one edit, the HEF asked the textbook publisher to change a sentence describing discrimination against women in ancient society to the following: "Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women."
In another edit, the HEF objected to a sentence that said that Aryan rulers had "created a caste system" in India that kept groups separated according to their jobs. The HEF asked this to be changed to the following: "During Vedic times, people were divided into different social groups (varnas) based on their capacity to undertake a particular profession."

The hottest debate centered on when Indian civilization began, and by whom. For the past 150 years, most historical, linguistic, and archaeological research has dated India's earliest settlements to around 2600 BC. And most established historical research contends that the cornerstone of Indian civilization - the practice of Hindu religion - was codified by people who came from outside India, specifically Aryan language speakers from the steppes of Central Asia.

Many Hindu nationalists are upset by the notion that Hinduism could be yet another religion, like Islam and Christianity, with foreign roots. The HEF and Vedic Foundation both lobbied hard to change the wording of
California's textbooks so that Hinduism would be described as purely home grown.

"Textbooks must mention that none of the [ancient] texts, nor any Indian tradition, has a recollection of any Aryan invasion or migration," writes S. Kalyanaraman, an engineer and prominent pro-Hindu activist, in an e-mail to this reporter. He and other revisionists refer to recent studies that don't support an Aryan migration, including skeletal anthropology research that claims to show a continuity of record from Neolithic times. Such research has not convinced top Indologists to abandon the Aryan theory, however.

The final changes in California's textbooks are expected in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, mainstream academics, both in America and abroad, are setting off alarm bells.

"It was a whitewash," says Michael Witzel, a Harvard University Sanskrit scholar and Indologist, who testified before the commission in Sacramento. "The textbooks before were not very good, but at least they were more or less presentable. Now, it is completely incorrect."

Aryan invasion a British-era theory

Early proponents of the "Aryan Invasion Theory" proposed in 1850 by philologist Max Mueller may have had political agendas to justify the subjugation of the subcontinent, Mr. Witzel says, but the preponderance of evidence shows that Aryans came to India, with their horses, their chariots, and their religious beliefs, from outside.

"Unquestionably, all sides of Indian history must be repeatedly
re-examined," wrote Witzel and comparative historian Steve Farmer, in an influential article in the Indian magazine Frontline in 2000. "But any massive revisions must arise from the discovery of new evidence, not from desires to boost national or sectarian pride at any cost."

On the other side of the debate, the historian Meenakshi Jain, a self-described nationalist, says that history is meant to be rewritten, depending on the perspective and needs of the present time.

"Indic civilization has been a big victim of misrepresentation and belittling of our culture," says Ms. Jain, a historian at Delhi University and author of a high school history textbook accepted by India's previous government, led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party.
Pride has its place in history?

Like many Hindus, Jain is proud of the accomplishments of Indian history, such as the fact that three small Hindu kingdoms - Kabul, Zabul, and Sindh - were able to hold off invading Muslim armies for 400 years. She also thinks that students should learn that some of India's most famous temples were commissioned not by upper caste Hindu kings but by aboriginal tribes, who in modern times have been relegated to "backward status."

"There is no such thing as an objective history," Jain says. "So when we write a textbook, we should make students aware of the status of current research of leading scholars in the field. It should not shut out a love for motherland, a pride in your past. If you teach that your country is backward, that it has no redeeming features in our civilization, it can damage a young perspective."

But no matter which version of Indian history California adopts for its 6th graders, it is bound to aggravate someone. The Board of Education has already heard from South Indians who argued that the HEF and Vedic Foundation represent a North Indian upper-caste perspective.

"We were saying, 'These groups don't speak for us,' " says Anu Mandavilli, herself a South Indian. When groups like the Vedic Foundation try to simplify Hinduism as the worship of a single god, "they have their own agendas."

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0124/p01s03-wosc.htm

MINORITY K-12 INITIATIVE FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS (MKITS)

 > RELEASE DATE: November 13, 2002
 > RFA: HL-02-026 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) > (<http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov>;)
 > LETTER OF INTENT RECEIPT DATE: February 21, 2003
 > APPLICATION RECEIPT DATE: March 19, 2003
 > THIS RFA CONTAINS THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION
 > o Purpose of this RFA o Research Objectives
 > o Mechanism(s) of Support o Funds Available
 > o Eligible Institutions o Individuals Eligible to Become Principal > Investigators o Special Requirements
 > o Where to Send Inquiries o Letter of Intent
 > o Submitting an Application o Peer Review Process
 > o Review Criteria o Receipt and Review Schedule
 > o Award Criteria
 > o Required Federal Citations
 > PURPOSE OF THIS RFA
 > The purpose of this Request for Applications (RFA) is to provide support
 > for the research into and development and evaluation of innovative science
 > training programs that will provide minority students in grades K-12 with
 > the exposure, skills, and knowledge that will encourage them to pursue > advanced studies in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. The goal is to
 > increase the number of underrepresented minorities who choose to enter > scientific research careers in the future. Applications to this NHLBI > MINORITY K-12 INITIATIVE (MKITS) should (1) describe programs that are > designed to provide students with scientific and research experiences > while they are still undecided about their future education and career > choices, (2) enable teachers to improve exposure to scientific and > research experiences in their schools, and (3) demonstrate an
 > organizational infrastructure that supports development,
implementation,
 > and evaluation of exposure to scientific research experiences. > Participants in the program will include NHLBI-supported investigators and
 > K-12 students and teachers. Teacher training activities will enable > teachers to enhance the scientific knowledge and skills and research > experiences of students in their classrooms. Applications that propose > supplementary activities, such as family-based learning, are
encouraged.
 > It has long been a goal of the NHLBI to increase the number of > underrepresented minorities in scientific research. The 2000 National > Science Foundation report on the status of underrepresented minorities in
 > science shows progress since 1982 in increased numbers and percentages of
 > African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans who have completed > bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. > However, African American and Hispanic faculty were less likely than white
 > faculty to be full professors (after adjusting for age), and earned lower
 > salaries than White and Asian scientists within the same age range and > scientific fields [National Science Foundation. Women, Minorities, and > Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2000. Arlington, VA,
 > 2000 (NSF 00-327), <http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf00327/start.htm>;. > Currently, the NHLBI funds undergraduate and postdoctorate training and
 > career development
 > (<http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/funding/training/redbook/trgnprog.htm>;), > however the MKITS would be the first program to promote scientific and > research experiences in grades K through 12. MKITS will fund exposure to
 > scientific and research experiences in heart, lung, blood, and sleep > disorders and health, consistent with the mission of the NHLBI. (See NHLBI
 > Mission Statement <http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/org/mission.htm>;.) > Focusing on these scientific content areas is a means to facilitate > students learning about the scientific process and inquiry, and to > encourage their enthusiasm for science and its importance in their lives.
 > Grant applications will be accepted in response to the RFA from NHLBI- > funded organizations that propose to provide creative and innovative > scientific and research experiences for program participants. This > solicitation requires collaboration among NHLBI-funded institutions, local
 > schools and school districts, the local school community, and other local
 > organizations or educational institutions. Individual schools are eligible
 > to participate in the MKITS program if their K-12 student population is at
 > least fifty percent underrepresented minorities. Underrepresented > minorities are defined as individuals belonging to a particular ethnic or
 > racial group determined by the grantee institution to be
underrepresented
 > in biomedical, behavioral, clinical, or social sciences. African Americans
 > (Blacks), Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and > non-Asian Pacific Islanders are considered to be underrepresented > nationally in biomedical, behavioral, clinical or social sciences. > Scientists and educators who plan to apply for this grant are strongly > encouraged to contact appropriate NHLBI staff (listed under INQUIRIES) > prior to preparing an application to determine whether their
application
 > meets the program priorities of the NHLBI.
 >
 > The entire text can be found at:
 >
 > http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HL-02-026.html >
 > Best regards, JJ
 >
 > =======================================
 > Jared B. Jobe, Ph.D. (Cherokee)
 > Health Scientist Administrator
 > Behavioral Medicine Scientific Research Group
 > Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications
 > National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
 > 6701 Rockledge Drive, Room 8122, MSC 7936
 > Bethesda, Maryland 20892-7936
 > (301) 435-0407 (voice)
 > (301) 480-1773 (facs)
 > JobeJ@nhlbi.nih.gov (email)
 > Overnight mail zip code: 20817
 > =======================================
 >

Science Meets Sports


>http://whyfiles.org/019olympic/
>
>Turin's Winter Olympics inspire a Why Files examination of sports
>medicine, psychology and even a little ancient history.
>[26 Jan 2006]
>There are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 pages in this feature plus a bibliography, and a
>credits page.

> (5) Public Schools Court Private Donors (1/27/06)
>
> Reflecting a growing trend nationwide, a $55 million
> public high school set to open next fall in Philadelphia
> is offering plenty of naming opportunities as it seeks
> private funds to help foot the bill, the New York Times
> reports.
>
> A brochure for the new school, dubbed the School of the
> Future, offers dozens of opportunities for donors to get
> their name or corporate logo on the walls, including $1
> million for the performing arts pavilion, $750,000 for the
> gyms or the main administrative suite, $500,000 for the
> food court and cyber caf&#E9;, $50,000 for the science
> laboratories, and $25,000 for individual classrooms. For
> $5 million, the district will name the school itself named
> after the donor. A school board will review each
> transaction to weed out undesirable donors, such as
> tobacco and liquor companies.
>
> According to school officials, the push for private
> financing stems from several different pressures. In most
> states, tight budgets, new government requirements, and
> rising operating costs have left the pool of state
> education financing too small to keep up with local needs
> and desires. Moreover, public schools have become
> increasingly aware of how colleges, hospitals, and private
> schools use naming rights in fundraising.
>
> But education experts and school officials say private
> financing for public schools carries real risks, such as
> exacerbating the gap between affluent and low-income
> districts, donors asking for a disproportionate role in
> shaping education policy, and legislators shrugging off
> their responsibility to adequately fund public education.
>
> Lewin, Tamar. "In Public Schools, the Name Game as a Donor
> Lure." New York Times 1/26/06.
>
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000629/story

Schools grapple with policing students' online journals

         The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com

from the February 02, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0202/p01s04-stct.html

Schools grapple with policing students' online journals
By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
CHICAGO - This winter, teenagers at a Chicago high school used their Xanga websites to post obscene and threatening comments about a teacher, in one case suggesting her neck be "slit like a ... chicken."

Last spring, a girl at a different Chicago high school outraged students when she posted derogatory comments about gay marriage and blacks on her Web log.

The school district dealt differently with the two situations, defending the girl's freedom of speech in the latter while reportedly disciplining the three teens in the first.

The incidents speak not only to the murky territory of free speech in schools but to the challenges of educating in a cyber age - particularly with the growing presence of Web logs or blogs, those online pages that millions of teens use for journals, photos, dating, or chats.

The worries range from the serious - student safety and cyberbullying - to the mundane, minimizing gossip and protecting students from embarrassment. Some schools are trying to restrict access to the sites, or are holding sessions to educate both parents and students on proper guidelines.
But drawing a line between free speech and misuse can be tricky, and blog proponents caution that there are plenty of positive ways to use the medium.
"We're a little quick to respond in part because this is such a new phenomenon, and it involves the Internet," says Steve Jones, a
communications professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "You can't blame school administrators for being fairly sensitive about these things. What's happening is that in so many domains in our professional and personal lives we're having to reestablish some boundaries in regard to the Internet."

Blogs are still unfamiliar to less computer-savvy adults. But a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that 1 in 5 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 - about 4 million - keeps a blog. About twice that many regularly read them.

"It's replaced the mass e-mail or even the phone chat," says Amanda Lenhart, one of the researchers on the Pew study. "They use them to reinforce the connections they have."

Few teens refer to the pages as blogs, says Ms. Lenhart, calling them by their brand names - Xanga, MySpace, LiveJournal, and Facebook are the most common. And some experts say blogging is a misnomer since, rather than keeping journals, the teens are engaging in social networking.

Go to a site, find a school, and click randomly on a few names - michizzle, PaPi chULO, Swimmer4Ever - and a world clearly not intended for adults emerges. Girls talk about their ideal guy and post provocative photos. Profanity and cyberslang are rampant. Kids discuss parties and alcohol, the teachers and other kids they hate, or engage in inane chats: "How R U? I miss u gurl."

"The key thing is that young people appear to be totally oblivious to the fact that everything they post in these sites is public, permanent, accessible from throughout the world, and easily transmittable to anybody," says Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use in Eugene, Ore. When adults read the sites, "teens argue that you're invading my privacy," Ms. Willard says. "That's just the point. It's not private."

Some kids use blogs for class assignments, thoughtful journals, or outlets for creativity. The worries come when teens post too much personal information - their real names, addresses, e-mail, schools - not realizing it is also available to stalkers or child predators, or when they use the sites to pick on other kids, reaching more people than old-fashioned bullying ever could.

"Kids used to pass notes around in school," says Parry Aftab, director of Wiredsafety.org. "Now they're putting it onto pages with 42 million users."
Deborah Finlay, guidance director at a middle school in Virginia, first tuned into the dangers when a student committed suicide and cyberbullying appeared to be a big factor.

Now, she and other guidance staff conduct regular "netiquette" sessions with every class on safety and bullying and also educate parents. "The parents in many cases are just as naive as the kids," she says.

Bernard Piel, a history teacher and assistant to the dean at Norman Thomas High School in New York, recently talked to a student who posted provocative photos. "I want you to imagine that you're 24 years old, you're trying to get a job somewhere, HR does a background check, and these things come up," he told her.

It's a question few teens think about. Posting publicly "is online attention-getting," Willard says. "They become the stars of their own reality TV show."

But some students say it's more than that.

Sergio Barraza-Valdez, a sophomore at Exeter in New Hampshire, uses his LiveJournal page for a very personal journal.

"It's helpful for people to know what's going on, if you're having a hard time getting through something, and you kind of don't want to tell someone but you kind of do," Sergio explains. "And it's nice when people leave comments being supportive."

Over his winter break, Sergio's stepfather died and a good friend from home committed suicide. Writing about it - and getting support from his scattered friends - was a good outlet, he says. "People understood when I came back what had happened."

Still, Sergio says that learning what to write and what to keep to himself has been a trial-and-error process. "I misused it a lot, last year especially. I wrote really mean things about people," he says. "It's easier to let out your emotions instead of keeping your cool like you would in person."

That blogging could be a positive social outlet was hard to understand until kids explained it to her, says Ms. Aftab, who trains teens and parents to be Internet safety leaders. "One girl told me, 'I'm new to the school, I'm shy, I'm not the prettiest girl, but I go on great vacations... If the other kids find out how interesting I am, maybe they'll be my friend,' " she recounts.

To give them a safer outlet, Aftab has helped develop a new site, YFly.com, which will launch in February - designed solely for teens. "If I find anybody over the age of 18, I have permission to call the cops," says Aftab.
In the meantime, schools are reacting to the blog challenges as best they can. Many outlaw use of the sites on school computers - though kids find ways to get past the filters. Schools have a harder time controlling what gets posted at home, even if it has a tangible effect within school walls.
"If a student is identifying an individual, or making a statement that threatens violence, that's a different kind of speech than something we might consider vulgar or offensive," says Patrick Rocks, general counsel for the Chicago Board of Education. "There's no bright line. It's more of a continuum."

A few private and parochial schools have tried to ban use of some blogs even at home. But experts say schools are on shaky legal ground, and some face lawsuits. One Pittsburgh senior is currently suing his school district on free-speech grounds, with the help of the ACLU, after he was suspended for parodying his principal on his MySpace site.

Aftab suggests establishing a policy at the beginning of the school year, which outlines acceptable Internet use and disciplines students who violate it. "Then it's a contractual issue," she says.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright
Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>Darwin Foes, Fans to Mark Birthday
>from The Boston Globe (Registration Required)
>
>PHILADELPHIA -- Thanks to the "intelligent design" movement, Charles
>Darwin's birthday is evolving into everything from a badminton party to
>church sermons this weekend.
>
>Defenders of Darwin's theory of natural selection are planning hundreds of
>events around the world Sunday, the 197th anniversary of his birth, saying
>recent challenges to the teaching of evolution have re-emphasized the need
>to promote his work.
>
>"The people who believe in evolution .. . really just sort of need to stand
>up and be counted," said Richard Leventhal, director of the University of
>Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Evolution is the
>model that drives science. It's time to recognize that."
>http://tinyurl.com/9khct
Darwin foes, fans to mark birthday
Festivities include singing, sermons, and badminton

By Kathy Matheson, Associated Press | February 10, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- Thanks to the ''intelligent design" movement, Charles Darwin's birthday is evolving into everything from a badminton party to church sermons this weekend.

Defenders of Darwin's theory of natural selection are planning hundreds of events around the world Sunday, the 197th anniversary of his birth, saying recent challenges to the teaching of evolution have re-emphasized the need to promote his work.

''The people who believe in evolution .. . really just sort of need to stand up and be counted," said Richard Leventhal, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. ''Evolution is the model that drives science. It's time to recognize that."
The museum's celebration will include birthday cake, a little badminton (reportedly a favorite game of Darwin's), and a reading of his ''The Origin of Species" by Penn junior Bill Wames, who volunteered to dress up as the 19th-century naturalist. ''Come to my party," Wames bellowed around campus while handing out fliers.

At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, philosophy students will get a jump-start on Darwin Day today by singing Darwin carols they composed.

Darwin, who was born in England on Feb. 12, 1809, and died in 1882, was 50 when he published ''The Origin of Species." His conclusion that species evolve was based in part on zoological and geological discoveries made during a five-year voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle.

The intelligent design movement challenges Darwin's theory, contending that organisms are so complex that they must have been created by a higher being. Critics of intelligent design say it is creationism camouflaged in scientific language.

Intelligent design proponents suffered legal setbacks last year in Pennsylvania and Georgia, but Kansas education officials have approved science standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory.

To show religion and science are not at odds, more than 400 churches of many denominations -- most of them in the United States -- have agreed to participate in ''Evolution Sunday" by giving a sermon, holding classes, or sponsoring discussions.

Organizer Michael Zimmerman, a biology professor and dean at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, said there is ''no reason that people have to choose between religion and science."

The Darwin Day Celebration was formalized six years ago as a
California-based nonprofit organization, but some tributes go back much farther. Salem State College in Massachusetts has had a Darwin festival for 26 years.
&#A9; Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

WFP Foodforce - The Game, The Reality, How to Help

I haven't tried out this video game sponsored by the UN, but it does sound interesting, perhaps along the lines of the SIMS. It might even be more engaging than mindless claptrap.
mpb


============================================
"Delgadillo, who is running for state attorney general, is just piling on. Beyond that, the lawsuit is absurd at its core. Does anyone believe that buyers or retailers of a video game that encourages players to murder, steal and pimp were misled because they weren't told it contained hidden scenes of virtual sex?

Some politicians are interacting with game developers in more fruitful ways, coming up with alternatives to violent or prurient titles. A good illustration is a United Nations-sponsored video game called "Food Force." More than 3 million players registered for the game, comparing their scores a based on conducting air drops of food, designing nutritious meals and planning a 10-year anti-hunger strategy a with real U.N. missions.
That's no match for the heavily marketed "Grand Theft Auto" series. But it's a start."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editor...story?track=tothtml
==============================================
http://www.food-force.com/

WFP Foodforce - The Game, The Reality, How to Help
"Food Force serves as a classroom tool for teaching about hunger.
 From the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world\s largest humanitarian agency, Food Force is an educational video game telling the story of a hunger crisis on the fictitious island of Sheylan.

Comprised of 6 mini-games or ]missions^, the game takes young players from an initial crisis assessment through to delivery and distribution of food aid, with each sequential mission addressing a particular aspect of this challenging process.

The various Food Force missions demonstrate and help explain the following hunger learning themes:

     * What is hunger and who are the hungry?
     * Why are people hungry and malnourished?
     * What can we do to help end hunger?

Together, the missions provide an overview of how food aid is used in both emergencies and long-term development projects. We therefore suggest playing the game straight through from beginning to end, which takes about half an hour.

In case of limited time or lesson focus, individual missions can be accessed directly from the start-up screen by typing the mission number (1,2,3,4,5 or 6):

    1. Air Surveillance: The causes of hunger and malnutrition
    2. Energy Pacs: Nutrition and the cost of feeding the hungry
    3. Airdrop: WFP\s emergency response
    4. Locate and Dispatch: Global food procurement
    5. The Food Run: Land-based logistics
    6. Future Farming: Long-term food aid projects

The game has wide cross-curricular appeal (geography, social studies, health, etc.) and can strengthen strategic thinking and decision-making skills. It is an ideal lesson follow-up or homework activity.

Each hunger learning theme page contains:

     * Introductions and links to complete lesson plans at various learning levels
     * Indications on how to use the game to enrich lessons and reinforce learning
     * Links to relevant pages at the Food Force web site
     * Background summary papers providing facts, definitions and brief explanations

Food Force is designed for children aged 8-13 years. Each mission\s gameplay is unique in order to maximize the game\s appeal to a variety of ages and learning levels.

Teachers are encouraged to download the game and install it on school computers or burn it onto a CD and make as many copies as required. Start your research on hunger around the web with some of these resources. This section also provides links to other great teaching sites.
If you are a teacher and have used the game or the lessons plans presented in this section, please let us know what you think.


Scholastic News
For more ideas on using Food Force in your classroom, see Scholastic News's report "Food Force: Fighting Hunger Around the World."

"
http://www.food-force.com/index.php/teachers/

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was mentioned last year, I think. Their grants are now open.

> 6) Save Our History Invites Applications for Preservation
> Grant Program and Teacher and Student Honors
>
> Deadline: April 7 and June 2, 2006
>
> A program of the History Channel ( http://history.com/ )
> and other partners, Save Our History is a national
> history education and preservation initiative that seeks
> to raise awareness and support for preserving local
> heritage.
>
> As part of this effort, the History Channel awards Save
> Our History grants to history organizations to fund
> partnerships with schools or youth groups on community
> preservation projects. The History Channel also annually
> honors teachers and students who demonstrate an
> exceptional commitment to local history education and
> historic preservation.
>
> Save Our History Grant Program: Historic organizations
> across the United States that are interested in funding
> for preservation projects developed with local schools
> or youth groups are encouraged to apply. History
> organizations, including museums, historical societies,
> preservation organizations, archives, libraries, and
> government agencies, can partner on projects with a school
> district, a coalition of schools, one school, or an
> organization that provides educational programming for
> children. In 2006, the History Channel will award $250,000
> in Save Our History grants. History organizations
> can apply for up to $10,000. (Deadline: June 2, 2006.)
>
> Save Our History National Honors (for teachers and
> students): The History Channel also wishes to honor
> teachers and students across the country who have demon-
> strated an exceptional commitment to local history through
> their preservation or history education efforts. This year,
> twenty-four teachers who creatively integrate local history
> lesson plans, activities, or projects into their classroom
> curriculum, and twenty-four students who participate in
> local history/preservation projects, extracurricular
> history-themed service-learning projects, or independent
> study projects tied to history will win $1,000 cash prizes.
> One teacher and one student will each receive a $5,000
> cash prize and a free trip to Washington, D.C., where they
> will be recognized at the Save Our History National Honors
> Event in May 2006. (Deadline: April 7, 2006.)
>
> For complete information on the Save Our History Grant
> Program or Save Our History National Honors Program, visit
> the Save Our History Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10000786/saveourhistory
>
> For additional RFPs in Education, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_education.jhtml
>

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This seems to add more burden to teachers, and is "brainwashing" scary. mpb

>Their Own Version of a Big Bang
>
>WAYNE, N.J. - Those who believe in creationism - children and
>adults - are being taught to challenge evolution's tenets in an
>in-your-face way. By Stephanie Simon.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eyUR0Mm2NO0G2B0HHov0EC
  February 11, 2006
latimes.com : National News

Their Own Version of a Big Bang
# Those who believe in creationism -- children and adults -- are being taught to challenge evolution's tenets in an in-your-face way.

By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer

WAYNE, N.J. a Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"
The children roared their assent.

"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.
"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.

"God!" the boys and girls shouted.

"Who's the only one who knows everything?"

"God!"

"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"

The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views a aggressively.

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions a and set forth enough persuasive arguments a to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

"We're going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles," Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham's ministry, Answers in Genesis.

To a burst of applause, Ham exhorted: "Get out and change the world!"
Over the last two decades, this type of "creation evangelism" has become a booming industry. Several hundred independent speakers promote biblical creation at churches, colleges, private schools, Rotary clubs. They lead tours to the Grand Canyon or the local museum to study the world through a creationist lens.

They churn out stacks of home-schooling material. A geology text devotes a chapter to Noah's flood; an astronomy book quotes Genesis on the origins of the universe; a science unit for second-graders features daily "evolution stumpers" that teach children to argue against the theory that is a cornerstone of modern science.

Answers in Genesis is the biggest of these ministries. Ham co-founded the nonprofit in his native Australia in 1979. The U.S. branch, funded mostly by donations, has an annual budget of $15 million and 160 employees who produce books and DVDs, maintain a comprehensive website, and arrange more than 500 speeches a year for Ham and four other full-time evangelists.
With pulpit-thumping passion, Ham insists the Bible be taken literally: God created the universe and all its creatures in six 24-hour days, roughly 6,000 years ago.

Hundreds of pastors will preach a different message Sunday, in honor of Charles Darwin's 197th birthday. In a national campaign, they will tell congregations that it's possible to be a Christian and accept evolution.
Ham considers that treason. When pastors dismiss the creation account as a fable, he says, they give their flock license to disregard the Bible's moral teachings as well. He shows his audiences a graphic that places the theory of evolution at the root of all social ills: abortion, divorce, racism, gay marriage, store clerks who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

The science Ham finds so dangerous holds that the first primitive scraps of genetic material appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. From these humble beginnings, a huge diversity of species evolved over the eons, through lucky mutations and natural selection.

The vast majority of scientists find no credible evidence to dispute this account and a tremendous amount to support it. They've identified thousands of transitional fossils, such as a whale that lumbered on land; a bird with reptilian features; and "Lucy," a remote cousin of modern man who walked on two legs but swung from trees like a chimp.

Still, millions of Americans find evolution preposterous. Polls
consistently show that roughly half of Americans believe the biblical account instead.

In the 1970s, Ham taught evolution and creationism side by side in Australian public schools. Raised in a Christian family, Ham trusted God's account over Darwin's; the more he studied Genesis, the more he felt moved to defend it. He quit teaching after five years to take up evangelism full time.

A father of five who bears an uncanny resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, Ham moved his family to the U.S. in 1987. He worked for the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego and in 1994 founded the U.S. branch of Answers in Genesis in northern Kentucky. America sorely needed someone to stand up for the Bible, he reasoned. With a network of Christian radio and TV, the U.S. also offered Ham a launch pad to take his movement global.
The gamble paid off. Ham's daily 90-second broadcasts a on themes such as life in the Garden of Eden a are heard on more than 1,000 radio stations worldwide. He's building a $25 million Creation Museum near the Cincinnati international airport. He has produced dozens of books and videos for all ages, including a top-selling alphabet rhyme that begins: "A is for Adam, God made him from dust / He wasn't a monkey, he looked just like us."
At the heart of this vast ministry are the speaking tours a so popular that many are booked three years in advance. Ham, who earns about $120,000 a year, might address a few dozen men at a small-town service club or a packed family service at a suburban mega-church. His multimedia
presentations swing in tone from revival meeting to college lecture.
About 6,000 adults and children attended at least some of the recent conference in this suburb north of Newark. (Tickets for the weekend cost $25 per family, though several events were free.)

In six hourlong lectures, Ham and his colleague David Menton, an anatomy professor retired from Washington University in St. Louis, laid out their best arguments for creationism. Ham described the fossil record as "billions of dead things U laid down by water" a proof, he said, of Noah's flood. Menton marveled at the mechanics of the human eye, far too intricate, he said, to have evolved by random mutation.

"We often come across to the world as if we have blind faith: 'The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it,' " Ham said. In his view, creationists need more than faith to win over the world. They need answers to the questions skeptics toss their way.

"We're giving you answers," Ham said. "We're like bulldozers, coming in to reclaim the ground."

In two 90-minute workshops for children, Ham adopted a much lighter tone, mocking scientists who think birds evolved from dinosaurs ("if that were true, I'd be worried about my Thanksgiving turkey!").

He showed the children a photo of a fossilized hat found in a mine to prove it doesn't take millions of years to create ancient-looking artifacts. He pointed out cave drawings of a creature resembling a brachiosaur to make the case that man lived alongside dinosaurs after God created all the land animals on Day 6.

In a bit that brought the house down, Ham flashed a picture of a chimpanzee. "Did your grandfather look like this?" he demanded.

"Noooooo!" the children called.

"And did your grandmother look like that?" Ham displayed a photo of the same chimp wearing lipstick. The children erupted in giggles. "Noooooo!"
"We are not just an animal," Ham said. He had the children repeat that, their small voices rising in unison: "We are not just an animal. We are made in the image of God."

As the session ended, Nicole Ableson, 34, rounded up her four young children. "This shows your kids that there are other people who are out there who believe what you believe, and who have done the research," she said. "So they don't think 'This is just my parents believing in fairy tales.' "

Emily Maynard, 12, was also delighted with Ham's presentation.
Home-schooled and voraciously curious, she had recently read an
encyclopedia for fun a and caught herself almost believing the entry on evolution. "They were explaining about apes standing up, evolving to man, and I could kind of see that's how it could happen," she said.

Ham convinced her otherwise. As her mother beamed, Emily repeated Ham's mantra: "The Bible is the history book of the universe."

Ben Watson wasn't quite as confident. His father, a pastor in Staten Island, N.Y., had let him skip a day of second grade to attend. Ben went to public school, the Rev. Dave Watson explained, "and I thought it would be good for him to get a different perspective" for an upcoming project on Tyrannosaurus rex.

"You going to put in your report that dinosaurs are millions of years old?" Watson, 46, asked his son.

"NoU. " Ben said. He hesitated. "But that's what my book saysU. "
"It's a lot to think about," his dad reassured him. "We'll do more research."
Ham encourages people to further their research with the dozens of books and DVDs sold by his ministry. They give answers to every question a critic might ask: How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies. Why didn't a tyrannosaur eat Eve? All creatures were vegetarians until Adam's sin brought death into the world. How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog "kind" a a master blueprint a and let evolution take over from there.
Accountant Paul Ingis, 43, has been studying such material for years, and looks for opportunities to share the answers he's mastered. When clients ask what he's been up to, Ingis responds that he's been studying creation science. If they express interest, he launches into his routine.

"It's fishing. You never know when you might meet the one in 1,000 who will listen," Ingis said.

It's impossible to measure the success of the one-on-one evangelizing inspired by Answers in Genesis. But Glenn Branch, who defends evolution for a living, does not doubt it's having an effect.

Ham and his fellow evangelists "do a lot to promote a climate of ignorance, skepticism and hostility with respect to evolution," said Branch, deputy director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education.

Evolution has scored a few high-profile victories. A federal judge ruled in December that the school board in Dover, Pa., could not require teachers to discuss intelligent design (the concept that some life is so complex, it could not have evolved by random chance). And in Cobb County, Ga., a federal judge ruled that disclaimers pasted onto science textbooks were illegal. (The stickers, removed last year, called evolution "a theory, not a fact.")

Still, those who teach and promote evolution say the challenges are multiplying.

Several Imax theaters in the South a including a few in science museums a have refused to show movies that mention evolution or the Earth's age.
Bills that would allow or require science teachers to mention alternatives to evolution have been introduced in Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah. State boards of education in Kansas and Ohio adopted guidelines that single out evolution for critique. The governor of Kentucky used his State of the Commonwealth address to encourage public schools to teach alternative theories of man's origins.

A national conference for science teachers in the spring will focus on helping them respond to creationists' challenges. In an informal survey, the National Science Teachers Assn. found that nearly a third of its members felt pressured to play down evolution.

Ham's dream is to increase that pressure.

He will evangelize in Rocky Mount, N.C., next weekend and in Bossier City, La., after that. The month of March will take him to Modesto; Avon, Ind.; and a college retreat outside Cincinnati. His colleagues from Answers in Genesis will match his pace, preaching over the next few weeks in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.

At every stop, they will recruit men, women and children to stand up for God as the creator.

Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile

Excerpts were published in a recent Natural History magazine. The style may be a little hard to get into at first, but it is certainly an interesting read. mpb


*Verlyn Klinkenborg
Alfred A. Knopf: 184 pp., $16.95

Reviewed by Josh Kun

Ask a naturalist or nature poet to catalog the differences between city people and country people and most will say something about attentiveness. City people are too immersed in the channel-changing din of urban velocity to be distracted by the little things that people living close to nature notice, like a spring that arrives a week earlier than it did the year before or a change of schedule in a deer family's weekly run to the creek.
Nebraska poet Ted Kooser has written that country people possess "a wolf's attention to change," in that no alteration in landscape, no matter how slight, goes unnoticed. In rural environments, change is not dramatic or big, he says, but minute and singular; the more time you spend among trees and grass, among barns and fields and two-lane highways that lead to one-lane roads, the more the slightest change catches your attention. Like a wolf, any detail will turn your head, because after all, it must. In nature, attention is not a theory or an art but a tool of survival a awareness as a way of life.

Verlyn Klinkenborg is neither naturalist nor nature poet, but he writes about nature with the science of the former and the soul of the latter. In "Making Hay" and his New York Times editorial column, "The Rural Life" (which grew into the book of the same name, a stunning calendar-year almanac centered around four seasons at his upstate New York farm), Klinkenborg explores the interface between people and nature with a wolf-like attention to detail. He is a master of the microscopic. To read him is to wonder: How does he notice all those little things? And how does he make all those little things, seemingly meaningless and mundane, add up to such big ideas about beauty, grace and the mysteries of natural life? How is he so aware?

In an essay that accompanied "Straight West," a book of ranching photographs by his wife, Lindy Smith, Klinkenborg lamented that most urbanites had lost the ability to look into an animal's eye and understand that animals see us as much as we see them. The loss was equal, he wrote, to "an abandoning a of the animal creation and of ourselves."
In "Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile," Klinkenborg's first move away from the American landscape and from strictly nonfiction writing, he doesn't just look into the animal's eye, he tries to see through it a from the perspective of an 18th century tortoise living in Selborne parish, in the garden of English clergyman and famed naturalist Gilbert White.
The real Timothy's shell sits in London's Natural History Museum, and White is best known for his classic 1789 work of nature writing, "The Natural History of Selborne." Instead of writing a conventional book about White, Klinkenborg has chosen to invert the naturalist's craft. This is Selborne through Timothy's eyes; this is White under observation by a tortoise. Which makes "Timothy" a work of both speculative naturalism and speculative biography, with Klinkenborg grounding his fiction in text culled from White's book as well as the clergyman's letters, receipts and sermons, then letting his own imagination a so well-tuned to the particulars of the natural world a do the rest.

When we meet Timothy, the 81-year-old tortoise is headed back to the asparagus, poppies and lettuce of White's parish garden after an escape attempt. The first thing we learn is just how well Timothy understands those odd creatures on two legs who somehow manage never to fall down. ("Pride of the vertical," says the tortoise. "Pomp of warm-bloodedness.") Timothy can escape because he is slow and because human attention, even out in the Southampton countryside, does better with obvious action than incremental torpor. "Quickness draws their eye," the tortoise says. "What they notice they call reality. But reality is a fence with many holes, a net with many tears. I walk through them slowly. My slowness is deceptively fast."

Before we learn that Timothy was snatched from the Turkish coast and that life in Selborne consists mainly of unpleasant annual weigh-ins and autumn-spring hibernations in the warm earth below the parish, Klinkenborg makes it clear that this is more than a book about a sapient tortoise. It is a story of differing realities and competing perspectives that offers a critique of humanist universalism. What if reptiles were humanists just as humans are naturalists? What if what we know of the natural world came not from an 18th century clergyman but from an 18th century tortoise? "Humans believe that the parish of Earth exists solely for their use," Timothy thinks. "But martins brood among the eaves in the street as if the eaves had been hung for them. Coal-mice in the overhang of a thatched house as if thatched for them." To whom does Earth belong?

Klinkenborg explores this question in runs of clipped, often guarded sentences that are closer to free verse than his usual long-form descriptive prose. In "The Rural Life" and "Making Hay," details unfold in pilings and cascades, minuscule specks of light that add up to glaring vision; in "Timothy" they step out and sparkle one at a time, members of an infinite army of the small, restrained and measured, gently hinting at the greater vision they're a part of. This, for example, is how Timothy first describes Selborne: "Willows flower in the coppices. Mistle thrush nests in the garden-traffic to save her brood from magpies." And this, Timothy's first autumn: "Constant alarums. Greenfinch in the polyanths! Blackbird in the cherry tree!"

In this sense, "Timothy" is a small book about a small reptile in a natural world full of bountiful small things. Yet Klinkenborg is also asking larger, sweeping questions about the relationship between humans and animals and what these relationships say about human character. Throughout his account of life in Selborne, Timothy counters White's views of tortoises as "abject" reptiles adrift in stupor and primal instincts, lowly creatures on whom longevity is wasted. Timothy, it turns out, is wildly thoughtful, opinionated and sensitive, driven as much by instinct, as White assumes, as by reason, which White does not.

"Poor embarrassed reptile," says White. "But what have I not survived?" thinks Timothy. What humans boast of as enterprise, the tortoise rejects as misfortune, "a cruel slavery" that always leaves humans wanting more than their already plentiful lot. He even laments that "if a cabbage were human, it would aspire to become a lettuce."

Most of all, Klinkenborg imbues Timothy with a profound sense of apartness, a lonely being at home in the space of a singular shell. It is the author's greatest triumph: He makes us believe we are reading not just the thoughts of a tortoise but those of a Turkish tortoise, uprooted from the craggy coast of the Mediterranean to spend cruel, solitary winters in a British garden. Timothy is useless to this new human community, and Klinkenborg has us empathizing with the depressed and misunderstood reptile: "No song worth hearing. No skin worth tanning. No conversation worth taking down. No capers worth watching. Only the one autumnal trick, going underground, and the spring one, coming up again."

To add to the tortoise's gloom, White cannot even get Timothy's gender right. He, we learn midway through the book, is a she who has been neutered by the freeze of winter. With no eggs to show for herself, Timothy is thought to be a male, proof to the pensive tortoise that even the orderly mind of the most attentive human naturalist can miss the most basic things.
Worse, White gets wrong what is for Timothy perhaps the biggest truth of all: No matter how hard humans work to trump up their distinctiveness, to mark their difference from animals with claims to reason and divine faith, they belong to the same earthly community. Timothy wonders how White could devote his life to natural history and then deliver sermons to his parishioners that promise a human heaven free of swifts and rooks. "Judge the naturalist as narrowly as he judges the rest of creation," Timothy warns. "Man of system. Man of the cloth. But blood, brain, bowels, and bile nonetheless."

When Timothy tries to escape from White's Selborne garden, it is this she wants to escape, to be a tortoise free of human intervention, away from human arrogance, away from the manicured garden and its design of "painstaking paradise."

She wants to go back to the unplanned, rocky ruins of the sea. Or at the very least, back down in the warm earth where she may stay forever, happy enough to face the great mystery of existence a "Why any creature is allotted time on this earth" a with a calm awareness no biped could ever dream of.

Josh Kun, an English professor at UC Riverside, is the author of "Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America."

"
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookrevi...STRIPMIME_JOINLINES

Darwin was right - again
from the February 09, 2006 edition


By Robert C. Cowen
Critics of evolution cite scientific debates to undercut Darwin's credibility. That strategy fails when research clears up some of the issues. Results from two separate research projects announced this week make that point.

They deal with Darwin's controversial suggestion that new species can arise within an ancestral population even when there is no way to separate the diverging groups geographically.

There's plenty of evidence that new species arise when segments of a single population become geographically separated, as Darwin also theorized. His other suggestion has lacked such evidence. It has remained what Axel Meyer and his colleagues at the University of Konstanz in Germany call "one of the most controversial concepts in evolutionary biology."

They present in the journal Nature what they consider "a convincing case" that Darwin was right.

They found their proof in Nicaragua's isolated volcanic crater Lake Apoyo. There, two species of cichlid fish - Midas cichlid and Arrow cichlid - live together. Detailed genetic, morphological, and ecological study confirms their relationship as separate species that evolved from a common ancestor. They live separate lives in the same geographical space. Misas feeds along the bottom. Arrow exploits the open water. The two do not interbreed.
The researchers explain why they are convinced that the two species did not evolve elsewhere and then invade the lake after it formed about 23,000 years ago. Once the ancestral population was established, however, evolution progressed rapidly.

The team estimates that the new species appeared in less than 10,000 years - a blink of the eye in geological time.

Vincent Stavolainen at Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and nine fellow scientists find what they call "clear support" for Darwin's idea in palm trees on Lord Howe Island 600 miles east of Australia.

Two species of the trees live side by side. The scientists find it "highly unlikely" that they evolved while geographically separated. There is strong reason to conclude that they evolved from a common ancestor without geographical separation.

The two species appear to have gone separate ways because they flower at different times. This may originally have been due to differences in local soil conditions. In their report on Nature's online publication site, the researchers say the flowering times of the two species correlate with their soil preferences.

In the case of Lake Apoyo, the differences in the feeding habits of the fish may have provided the opportunity for those two species to diverge.
There's a larger lesson in this scientific nitty-gritty. It's taken more than a century and a half to resolve what, for scientists, was an important controversy. Patient research finally paid off.

Proponents of creationism theories plead that high school science classes should "teach the controversy." They have a point, although it is not the point they think they are making. There is no "evolution versus
creationist" scientific controversy. It's a political and philosophical controversy. Yet evolutionary biology has plenty of genuine scientific controversy.

If schools taught that kind of controversy and how patient research can eventually resolve it, classroom science would be enriched."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p17s01-stss.html?s=hns

Sciencing--How biases can help with decisions

from the February 13, 2006 edition

How biases can help with decisions

By Kate Moser | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

When a judging scandal marred the pairs figure skating competition in the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, economist Eric Zitzewitz saw the perfect research subject. Behind the allegations of vote-trading and ties to the Russian mafia was a case study in how organizations make decisions when some members are clearly biased, says Mr. Zitzewitz, a business professor at Stanford University in California.

Surprisingly, his findings suggest that biases may help with
decisionmaking. Important information is lost when "outlying" opinions are eliminated, he explains in the spring 2006 issue of The Journal of Economics and Management Strategy. Worse, "truncating" opinions makes it easier for an organization, such as a panel of Olympic figure-skating judges, to fall into vote-trading.

"I think people have this intuition that if someone's saying something very different than what other people are saying, they assume they're wrong or just biased," Zitzewitz says by phone from his Stanford office.

Instead, organizations should extract the useful knowledge from biased opinions while correcting for the bias. "You might imagine designing a process where you give people with strong opinions more weight," he says.
Under the old judging system, national skating federations chose the judges who went to the Olympics. The federations appeared to favor judges who gave their compatriots higher scores, Zitzewitz says. He determined this by analyzing scoring data, employing a technique used to analyze forecasts by stock-market analysts.

In his research, Zitzewitz found that figure-skating judges gave competitors from their native countries higher scores than other competitors - an average of 0.7 positions higher. "The data suggest that countries are divided into two blocs, with the United States, Canada, Germany, and Italy on one side and Russia, the Ukraine, France, and Poland on the other," Zitzewitz writes.

Once assembled at the Olympics, these apparently patriotic judges caused problems, the study says, because of the way scores were counted. If the competition came down to two skaters, their rankings would be determined by which one was higher on a majority of the judges' scorecards. So if a majority was created by judges colluding to reinforce each other's biases - as the French and Russian judges allegedly did in 2002 - then the opinions of more objective judges wouldn't count, even if they more accurately reflected how skaters performed.

This Olympics judging scenario can translate to the boardroom, Zitzewitz says. A committee deciding whether to promote an employee shouldn't discount the extreme opinion of a manager who has worked closely with the employee. Not only does excluding the opinion bury useful information, it can also push that manager to engage in vote-trading with regard to other promotions, as in, "If you vote my way on this one, I'll vote your way next time."

If the decision requires a simple majority, deals are easier to make, Zitzewitz says, so eliminating those outlying opinions eventually means you've lost out on who skated best or would be the better person to promote.
This kind of collusion can come into play in political settings, notes Gary Charness, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "The cautionary note here is that while excluding extremes looks good, it may come at a real cost." he writes in an e-mail.

The International Skating Union voted to change the judging system in June 2002, four months after French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne said she had been pressured by her country's skating federation to give a higher score to the Russian pair, bumping the Canadian pair down to silver. In the wake of the scandal, the International Olympic Committee awarded the Canadians a duplicate gold medal.

The lesson for organizations, Zitzewitz writes in his study, is that the decisionmaking process is more efficient when its participants are most interested in fairness. The apparent nationalism of figure-skating judges trumped that desire, Zitzewitz says.

A "strong but disinterested" group leader could have prevented judges from exaggerating their opinions, he adds.

"Without that chairperson who's going to say 'All of your opinions have been too extreme lately, we're going to listen to all of them less,' [it can] degenerate into a place where every opinion is extreme," Zitzewitz says.
At the heart of the study is the individual whose actions instigated the 2002 judging scandal: Ms. Le Gougne. Last month, the former Olympic judge told the Associated Press that her suffering over the scandal was worth the positive changes it's brought for the sport. "The judges came to see me and said, 'Marie-Reine, the new scoring system is so great, thank you Marie-Reine because without you, there would not have been a new scoring system,' " she said at a skating event in Paris.

But not everyone is as optimistic about the new system, in which nine scores are randomly selected out of 12 judges. The high and the low are dropped, and then the score is averaged and posted anonymously. No longer can spectators boo an ungenerous judge from a certain country, because no one knows which score belongs to whom - not even the judges themselves.
"That's potentially a less positive thing," Zitzewitz says of the anonymity. The new scoring system is, however, more objective, Zitzewitz says, and judges are now chosen by the International Skating Union rather than the individual nations' skating federations.

The new scoring system's popularity faced its first test over the weekend, with medals for the pairs skaters being awarded Monday night.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Zitzewitz's study was how many economists have had a former life in competitive figure skating. "I had students and people from industry conferences approach me and want to help me," Zitzewitz says.
"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0213/p13s01-wmgn.html?s=hns

Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA

more scary brainwashing.
mpb

Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: February 8, 2006

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

Related Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him (Jan. 29, 2006)
Lawmaker Condemns NASA Over Scientist's Accusations of Censorship (Jan. 31, 2006)

NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness (Feb. 4, 2006)

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his r&#E9;sum&#E9; on file at the agency asserted.

Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.

"Under NASA policy, it is inappropriate to discuss personnel matters," said Dean Acosta, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs and Mr. Deutsch's boss.

The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming.
"As we have stated in the past, NASA is in the process of revising our public affairs policies across the agency to ensure our commitment to open and full communications," the statement from Mr. Acosta said.

The statement said the resignation of Mr. Deutsch was "a separate matter."
Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his r&#E9;sum&#E9;. No one has disputed those parts of the document.

According to his r&#E9;sum&#E9;, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003."

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case.

"George Carlton Deutsch III did attend Texas A&M University but has not completed the requirements for a degree," said an e-mail message from Rita Presley, assistant to the registrar at the university, responding to a query from The Times.

Repeated calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Deutsch on Tuesday were not answered.
Mr. Deutsch's educational record was first challenged on Monday by Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy,
scientificactivist.blogspot.com.

After Mr. Anthis read about the problems at NASA, he said in an interview: "It seemed like political figures had really overstepped the line. I was just going to write some commentary on this when somebody tipped me off that George Deutsch might not have graduated."

He posted a blog entry asserting this after he checked with the
university's association of former students. He reported that the association said Mr. Deutsch received no degree.

A copy of Mr. Deutsch's r&#E9;sum&#E9; was provided to The Times by someone working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.

Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.

Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.

"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."

"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here.""
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/politics/08nasa.html

>Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:31:43 -0500
>To: nae@nativeaccess.com
>
>Good morning everyone:
>
>Native Access runs on the same reporting year as the federal
>government, April 1 - March 31. Each year, when possible, we like to
>include some comments in our reports from people who use our
>materials and programs so we can show the impact the program has at a
>local level.
>
>We know you are all incredibly busy, but, if you've had occasion to
>use anything we produce with teachers or students, we'd be pleased to
>hear how it went. We welcome all comments - the good, the bad and the
>ugly - the last two are particularly helpful in helping us more
>effectively meet your needs, but the first type is better for
>reporting purposes.
>
>Regards,
>Dawn
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

"February 13, 2006
At Churches Nationwide, Good Words for Evolution
By NEELA BANERJEE and ANNE BERRYMAN

On the 197th birthday of Charles Darwin, ministers at several hundred churches around the country preached yesterday against recent efforts to undermine the theory of evolution, asserting that the opposition many Christians say exists between science and faith is false.

At St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, a small contemporary structure among the pricey homes of north Atlanta, the Rev. Patricia Templeton told the 85 worshipers gathered yesterday, "A faith that requires you to close your mind in order to believe is not much of a faith at all."

In the basement of an apartment building in Evanston, Ill., the Rev. Mitchell Brown said to the 21 people who came to services at the Evanston Mennonite Church that Darwin's theories in fact had compelled people to have faith rather than look for "special effects" to confirm the existence of God.

"He forced religion to grow up, to become, really, faith for the first time," Mr. Brown said. "The life of community, that is where we know God today."

The event, called Evolution Sunday, is an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, started by academics and ministers in Wisconsin in early 2005 as a response to efforts, most notably in Dover, Pa., to discredit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.

"There was a growing need to demonstrate that the loud, shrill voices of fundamentalists claiming that Christians had to choose between modern science and religion were presenting a false dichotomy," said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the major organizer of the letter project.

Mr. Zimmerman said more than 10,000 ministers had signed the letter, which states, in part, that the theory of evolution is "a foundational scientific truth." To reject it, the letter continues, "is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."
"We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator," the letter says.

Most of the signatories to the project and those preaching on Sunday were from the mainline Protestant denominations. Their congregations have shrunk sharply over the last 30 years. At the same time, the number of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians has risen considerably, and many of them, because of their literalist view of the Bible, doubt evolutionary theory.
The Clergy Letter Project said that 441 congregations in 48 states and the District of Columbia were taking part in Evolution Sunday, but that was impossible to verify independently. Around Chicago, two churches that were listed on the project's Web site as participants in the event said they were in fact not planning to deliver sermons on the subject.

Still, those who did attend sermons welcomed what they heard. After the service at St. Dunstan's, Brett Lowe, a 41-year-old computer engineer, sat in a pew as his son Ian, 2, and daughter, Paige, 6, played at his side. "Sermons like this are exactly the reason we came to this church," Mr. Lowe said.

"Observation, hypothesis and testing a that's what science is," he said. "It's not religion. Evolution is a fact. It's not a theory. An example is antibiotics. If we don't use antibiotics appropriately, bacteria become resistant. That's evolution, and evolution is a fact. To not acknowledge that is to not acknowledge the world around you."

Jeanne Taylor, 65, a recently retired registered nurse attending services at St. Dunstan's, said the Bible was based on oral tradition and today "science is a part of our lives."

At the Evanston Mennonite Church, Susan Fisher Miller, 48, an editor and English professor, said, "I completely accept and affirm the view of God as creator, but I accommodate evolution within that."

To Ms. Fisher Miller, alternatives to evolutionary theory proposed by its critics, such as intelligent design, seem an artificial way to use science to explain the holy. "It's arrogant to say that either religion or science can answer all our questions," she said. "I don't see the need either to banish one or the other or to artificially unite them."

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting for this article."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/national...in&pagewanted=print

2.3 How to Print Lots of Documents Easily

Subscriber Steve Duncan recently wrote "Gizmo I work at a school
that has over 700 students that need individual reports
printed. As you can imagine printing 700+ word documents takes
ages. So I found this free program, Print Conductor that allows
you to print large numbers of individual files, without opening
each document. It even allows you to change settings on the
printer before it runs the print job and even better you can
save the list of documents that need printing and later on
import the list back into the program. It prints Adobe PDF,
Microsoft Word DOC, Microsoft Excel XLS, Autodesk AutoCAD DWG,
and Microsoft PowerPoint PPT. It's also great for converting
large numbers of documents to PDF using a virtual printer. Hope
you find this of some use to your subscribers, it has changed a
2 day process for the schools admin down to a couple of hours."
Great find Steve, I'm sure a lot of readers will be able to put
this to good use. Freeware, 548KB.
http://www.print-conductor.com/

  www.techsupportalert.com
                  "Gizmo's top picks of the best
                   Tech resources and utilities"

Summer Courses in Denali National Park and Preserve



>Register Now
>
>Murie Science and Learning Center
>
>For further information, please go to:
>http://www.murieslc.org/
>
>----------------------------------------
>The Murie Science and Learning Center, in cooperation with the National
>Park Service, announces its summer courses exploring the vast ecosystems
>and vibrant cultures of the far north. Classes are small, but the
>classrooms are grand--the mountains, forests, and tundra of Denali
>National Park and Preserve.
>
>Most field seminars and teacher trainings are based out of the Murie
>Science and Learning Center Field Camp, which is located 34 miles inside
>the Park. The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) offers one
>professional development credit for each course.
>
>The 2006 Murie Science and Learning Center field seminars include:
>- Denali Fault and Nenana Canyon: A Geology Exploration
>- High Country Wildflowers
>- High Country Wildflowers: A Closer Look
>- Ecology of Birds
>- The Science of Fly-Fishing
>- Denali's Wildlife Research
>- Art Design in Denali
>- Family Field Seminar
>- Searching for Denali's Dinosaurs
>- Denali Field Journaling
>- Bears of Denali
>- Wilderness Writing
>- Geology of Denali
>- Wolves of Denali
>- Ecology of Denali's Rivers and Streams
>
>The 2006 Murie Science and Learning Center teacher trainings include:
>- Using I-Movie to Capture Interest in Science
>- Science Writing in the Heart of Denali
>- Denali Dinosaurs
>- Connecting Natural History and Test-Taking
>
>For further information or to register, please go to:
>http://www.murieslc.org/
>
>or call toll free:
>888-688-1269
>
>------------------------------------------------------------ -------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

>To: "ArcticInfo" <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>Subject: New Listserve Available - Teacher Research Experiences
>
>
>New Listserve Available
>Teacher Research Experiences
>Office of Marine Programs
>University of Rhode Island
>
>For further information, please go to:
>http://omp.gso.uri.edu/mailman/listinfo/tre
>
>------------------------------------------
>The Teacher Research Experiences Listserve is meant to be a forum for
>exchanging information about teacher research experiences. K-12
>teachers, scientists, program managers, and other interested parties are
>all welcome to join.
>
>To sign up, please go to:
>http://omp.gso.uri.edu/mailman/listinfo/tre
>
>------------------------------------------------------------ -------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

"Saturday, February 18, 2006
Students learn more from teachers who hand-wave
Math teachers who wave their hands while talking in a way that illustrates a point differently from their words impart more information to their students. The UChicago researchers determined that students whose teachers hand-wave learn more, and that when the hand-gestures illustrated a point to one side of the main point, they did even better.

     As part of the experiment students had to complete the equation "7+6+5=?+5". Teachers told the youngsters that they had to make one side of the equation match the other side.

     The gestures simply duplicating these directions involved the instructors pointing to the left-hand and then the right-hand sides of the equation. When using complementary gestures, however, the teachers pointed to each of the numbers on the left and then signalled the subtraction of the five on the right side by scooping their hand away from the number.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/18/students_learn_more_.html

"Hand waving boosts mathematics learning

     * 11:48 18 February 2006
     * NewScientist.com news service
     * Roxanne Khamsi, St Louis

Gestures that complement rather than simply illustrate verbal instructions can boost children's ability to complete problems in mathematics, researchers report.

"The teachers are giving the kids two different approaches to the problem - one by hand and one by mouth - and somehow they seem to complement one another," says Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, US. She adds that early findings also show that students who copy the gestures of their teachers are more likely to learn.

Goldin-Meadow and her colleagues gave 160 children between the ages of eight and 10 a set of mathematical problems to solve. The students were randomly assigned to receive either verbal instructions alone or also with gestures. Those in the latter group either received gestures that copied or complemented the spoken guidance.

As part of the experiment students had to complete the equation
"7+6+5=?+5". Teachers told the youngsters that they had to make one side of the equation match the other side.

The gestures simply duplicating these directions involved the instructors pointing to the left-hand and then the right-hand sides of the equation. When using complementary gestures, however, the teachers pointed to each of the numbers on the left and then signalled the subtraction of the five on the right side by scooping their hand away from the number.
Sign of success

Children who saw the complementary gestures did best, solving three of the four addition problems correctly, on average. By comparison, those children who witnessed simple illustrative gestures typically solved fewer than two of the problems correctly. And students who received only verbal instructions solved only one of the four problems correctly, on average.
Hannes Vilhjalmsson of the University of California, Los Angeles, US, who studies the use of gestures, says that the results are important as one would not expect complementary hand signals to be more helpful than reinforcing signals. "It's counter-intuitive," he says.

The work presented by Goldin-Meadow at the 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in St Louis, Missouri, on Friday also suggests that children also learn better when they use gestures as well. "When we get them to gesture more it turns out that they learn more, so gesture, in general, is good for learning," she says."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=...d=online-news_rss20

We're organising the world's largest ever climate experiment, and we need your help.
We need thousands of people to help

Trying to predict climate change is hard. There are lots of factors involved &#AD; air temperature, sea temperature and cloud cover all play a part &#AD; as do dozens of other variables. Therefore, there are a huge number of calculations involved.

One solution is for scientists to use the largest supercomputer they can find. But even the biggest supercomputers are only so good.

We think you can do better.

Using a technique known as distributed computing, we\re hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, we\ll be faster than the world\s biggest computer. And we\re hoping to be even better than that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/

>10) Teachers Invited to Apply for Toyota International
> Teacher Program
>
> Deadline: April 21, 2006
>
> Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A.
> ( http://www.toyota.com/community/ ) is launching a new
> chapter of its Toyota International Teacher Program with
> a fully funded ten-day study tour for twenty teachers to
> the Galapagos Islands, Oct. 27-Nov. 8, 2006.
>
> The program is administered by the Institute of Inter-
> national Education ( http://www.iie.org/ ) in Washington,
> D.C. Toyota's first international program, a two-week
> cultural and educational study tour in Japan, is being
> offered this year as well.
>
> Applications are currently being accepted from full-time
> secondary classroom teachers (grades 7-12) who work in
> Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois,
> New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Texas, and Washington,
> D.C. Teachers must be American citizens at the time of
> application. The program is open to classroom teachers of
> all subjects.
>
> Toyota will cover all expenses associated with the trip,
> including transportation, meals, lodging, and program
> materials. To help defray the cost of a teacher's absence,
> Toyota will also provide $500 to be used at the discretion
> of the school, either to help pay for a substitute teacher
> or purchase materials.
>
> Full details and application instructions are available
> online at the IIE Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10001071/iie
>
> For additional RFPs in Education, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_education.jhtml

Just as people must share seal meat and oil to maintain physical and social well-being, so, too, must they share knowledge--so that their minds will not rot.
For Your Information, Teachers, et al.
http://www.quicktopic.com/26/H/7sSUC5pTZDRNV
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>Initially posted on the ASCD SmartBrief, February 28, 2006. *
>
>Newsreels, other historic films can be seen online*
>Google has digitized <http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ddwspFAfCXjcipciCM>;
>103 historic films from the National Archives and made them available on
>the Web. The pilot project, which may be expanded, includes such gems as
>newsreels from World Wars I and II, video of the moon landing and
>Depression-era films about the national parks and public works projects.
>
>http://video.google.com/nara.html
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

>
>Eclipses are a great help when you're teaching planetary movement.
>Unfortunately, you can't always count on an eclipse to coincide with
>your content schedule. So, the good people at San Francisco's
>Exploratorium are here to help.
>
>On March 29, 2006, a total solar eclipse will occur when the new moon
>moves directly between the sun and the earth. The moon's shadow will
>fall on the eastern tip of Brazil, speed eastward across the
>Atlantic, through northern Africa, across the Mediterranean, and into
>Turkey. Those of us in the north would normally have no access to
>this event, however the Exploratorium is sending a team to Side,
>Turkey for a live eclipse Webcast, as well as a telescope-only feed.
>
>Weather permitting, they will allow you and your class to witness the
>spectacular moment of totality, when the moon completely blocks the
>sun, and the sun's corona is revealed.
>
>The web cast will take place March 2, 2006 at 10:00-11:15 UT; time
>and date help is available on the event site
>at http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2006/index.html.
>
>Exploratorium Senior Scientist Dr. Paul Doherty and NASA's Dr. Isabel
>Hawkins, will help you figure out what to look for before, during,
>and after totality. They'll also talk with Side Mayor Osman
>Delikkulak, and watch
>Turkish children exploring the eclipse's strange play of light and shadow.
>
>Enjoy,
>Dawn
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

"Infection Is Growing in Scope, Resistance
A virulent staph germ once largely confined to hospitals is emerging in jails, gyms and schools.
By Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer
February 26 2006

It all began with what looked like a spider bite on Eileen Moore's left thigh. Nothing to worry about, she figured.

Within 24 hours, the "bite" became a 6-inch welt with a bubble of pus that eventually ripened into a black wound. Over the next few months, scabs dotted her face. A hangnail caused her middle finger to bloat like a sausage. Her pierced ears oozed pus.

The cause of Moore's ordeal was a bacterium known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which in its most severe form can turn into a fatal flesh-destroying scourge.

For decades, the infections were found only in hospitals, where the constant use of different antibiotics, including the potent methicillin, made it resistant to many of the most powerful antibiotics.

In the last few years, it has emerged in gyms, jails, schools a and just about anywhere bacteria can grow. It has become a simmering problem that is largely unknown by the general population.

"I would characterize it as widespread, and in some areas it is epidemic," said Jeff Hageman, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a coauthor of two studies on staph published last year.
There are few statistics on the disease, because resistant staph infections are not routinely reported to the CDC. But one study published last year in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases estimated there were about 126,000 cases from 1999 to 2000 a twice the number of hepatitis B cases each year.
"The rapidity with which this has emerged over the last two to three years is probably unprecedented," said Donald Low, a microbiologist at the University of Toronto who was one of the key scientists who dealt with Toronto's SARS outbreak in 2003. "When you look at the numbers, this way outstrips other so-called new infectious diseases."

Its victims are legion.

Five football players with the St. Louis Rams developed lesions on their elbows, forearms or knees, where turf burns had opened up their skin in 2003. Players from a competing team also developed sores after playing against the Rams.

San Francisco has seen a surge of this antibiotic-resistant bacteria in intravenous drug users and homeless people.

In 2004, actress Hilary Swank found a blister on her foot while training at a Brooklyn boxing gym for her part in the film "Million Dollar Baby." It turned out to be a staph infection.

Moore, a 38-year-old La Ca&#F1;ada Flintridge software consultant, has no idea where she got her infection. All she knows is that it took four
debilitating months with three increasingly powerful antibiotics to rid herself of the disease.

These days, she views every rash and pimple with suspicion.

"I'm a germophobe now," she said.

A large part of the problem in combating the staph bacterium is that it is ubiquitous.

More than 30% of Americans carry some kind of staph infection in their nose. About 1% have the methicillin-resistant strain, and half of those have an even newer strain that is less resistant, but more damaging. Many carriers never develop a skin infection, either because they have some unknown immunity or because the bacteria never have an opportunity to penetrate their skin through a wound or rash. But carriers can still spread the disease.

Staphylococcus aureus was first identified in the 1880s. It was named aureus, or golden in Latin, because of its distinctive color.

It survived as a relatively undistinguished microbe until the mid-20th century. The introduction of the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1941 set the bacterium on its deadly journey of mutation. It took just two years for reports to trickle in of the bacterium's resistance.

In the early 1960s, doctors deployed a new antibiotic, methicillin, against the disease. The first signs of resistance appeared in less than a year.
The resistant strain became ingrained in hospitals in Europe, Australia and the U.S.

By the early 1990s, methicillin-resistant staph infections became the leading cause of hospital-acquired skin infections in the U.S. Recent studies have shown that this kind of staph bacterium has also colonized hospitals in Egypt, Taiwan and South America.

It was inevitable that the resistant bacterium would emerge elsewhere.
The first smattering of cases of what came to be known as
community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus appeared as early as 1990.

The community strain is genetically different from that found in hospitals. Because it has not been bombarded by as many antibiotics, it is less resistant to drugs, but is more virulent.

To gauge the prevalence of the strain, researchers at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar analyzed skin infections that showed up in their emergency room. In 2002, methicillin-resistant staph caused 29% of those infections. Two years later, the rate was 64%.

A study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated there were about 26 community-acquired cases per 100,000 people in Atlanta and 18 per 100,000 people in Baltimore.

It is a hardy bug. The bacterium likes to grow in warm, moist areas of the human body, such as the nose, armpit or groin. It can linger on the skin without causing infection, waiting to enter through a cut or an abrasion. Unlike many other germs, it can also survive hours, possibly days, on inanimate objects such as towels or catheters.

Once inside the body, the bacteria can bloom into rashes, pimples and boils. But sometimes the bacteria cause invasive infections, such as pneumonia or meningitis. In a few cases, staph infections can turn into a nightmarish necrotizing fasciitis, the so-called flesh-eating disease. In rare cases, an infection can be fatal.

Lancing a wound is sometimes enough to stop a broader infection. But if the bacteria has spread through a person's body, antibiotics are the only effective cure.

There is a hierarchy of antibiotics, starting with older drugs, such as penicillin, and working up to the most aggressive ones, including vancomycin and linezolid, which can cause serious side effects. Using the most aggressive ones first only helps to foster more drug resistance. Thus, infected patients are often initially prescribed antibiotics that have little effect.

When Thomas Lovato's 9-year-old daughter, Cynthia, developed tiny red bumps on her hips and abdomen in August, her pediatrician thought the young girl had flea bites.

The pediatrician prescribed the common antibiotic amoxicillin, but the boils didn't go away, said Lovato, a 38-year-old air conditioner repairman from San Jose. He tried to help his daughter by popping them.

Soon he spotted a pimple on his own neck that looked like an ingrown hair follicle. Within days it grew to the size of a quarter. Then a painful rash 10 inches wide erupted on his groin, he said. Another popped up on his chin.
In about a week, he developed a fever and went to the local emergency room, where doctors cut open the wound on his groin and prescribed amoxicillin, he said.

By the beginning of September, their boils were growing faster than they had before and were three times bigger. Cynthia would scream when anyone touched them. Pus started coming out from beneath Lovato's fingernails. His 3-month-old son, Hayden, developed small bumps on the back of his head, Lovato recalled.

The whole family went back to the emergency room and the doctor prescribed different antibiotics, including rifampin, a drug commonly used to treat tuberculosis and leprosy, but which can cause liver damage.

They went on a mission to try to contain the infection. They wore surgical gloves when they tended their sores. They squirted sanitizer gel on their hands every time they touched anything. They scrubbed walls, doorknobs and surfaces with bleach and washed their bedding in hot water every other day. They skipped work and school for months, sequestered in their bedroom with little contact with the outside world, he said.

For the last month, they think they've been clear. But they fear the infections will return.

"We're trying to be optimistic," said Lovato's wife, Lorraine, the only one to escape infection.

Amid the din of afternoon wrestling practice at Bell High School, 14-year-old Manuel Villegas pushed a microfiber mop infused with a disinfectant across purple gym mats.

"I'm not going to get it," Villegas said. "That's why I take two showers a day, before practice and after practice. I bring my own soap to the boy's locker room."

Rashes started popping up on Coach Eric Klein's wrestlers about two years ago, and Klein quickly invested in the $200 mop. He didn't know exactly what was causing all of the rashes a maybe ringworm, maybe staph a but he was worried.

Last season, he started asking the kids to lather themselves in a special wrestling foam that is supposed to provide a barrier to transmission.
"I spend a lot of money on having the mats cleaned," Klein said. "The last couple or three years, it's been a big stress."

Just as Villegas was scrubbing the mats, teammate Jose Uribe, 16, walked in with a red flush on his arm and a dark crusty scab in the middle of it.
"I think it's a spider bite," he told his teammates. Uribe said he saw a doctor, but he couldn't remember what kind of infection the doctor said it was. He said he was taking penicillin.

Klein barked at Uribe to tape up his arm. "Did the doctor say it was OK?" he asked.

Uribe nodded.

A large part of the problem with the spread of drug-resistant staph is that it is difficult to diagnose. The only way to tell for sure is a test that can take up to three days for results.

Eileen Moore, the La Ca&#F1;ada resident, started on the common antibiotic Keflex and ended with rifampin.

"When I think how I have something that's resistant to all Western medicine, or almost all Western medicine, that's scary to think about," Moore said. "Had I been resistant to those other antibiotics, I could have died."

Dr. Thomas Horowitz, who treated Moore at his office in downtown Los Angeles, said if rifampin didn't work, he was prepared to check her into the hospital and set up an intravenous drip of vancomycin, considered one of the antibiotics of last resort.

"We're seeing resistance to so many of the antibiotics, and so little new antibiotic research is going on," Horowitz said.

Ten years ago, a strain that could partially resist vancomycin surfaced in Japan.

A totally resistant strain emerged a few years later in Michigan. Doctors have recorded six cases worldwide, all in the U.S.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Microscopic menace

*

Within a few years of the introduction of penicillin in 1941,
antibiotic-resistant forms of Staphylococcus aureus began to appear. These bacteria, once found only in hospitals, have now emerged in the general population.

*

Staph infection chronolgy

--

Late 1880s: Scottish surgeon Alexander Ogston identifies a bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus.

1928: British scientist Alexander Fleming discovers the first antibiotic, penicillin.

1941: Penicillin becomes available in the United States and England. The first penicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is reported a short time later.

Late 1940s: one-quarter of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in hospitals are penicillin-resistant.

1958: Vancomycin, still considered an antibiotic of last resort, is introduced.
1959: The antibiotic methicillin is introduced.

1961: Doctors find the first cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

2002: Doctors find vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the United States.

Today: Over 95% of Staphylococcus aureus worldwide is penicillin-resistant and 60% is methicillin-resistant.

*

Sources: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Princeton University, Chemical Heritage Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, ActionBioscience.org" http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci...STRIPMIME_JOINLINES

Exam regulator publishes report to stop coursework cheats

Rebecca Smithers
Friday March 3, 2006

Teachers are strongly urged to ensure that their pupils' coursework is genuinely their own, as part of a fresh crackdown on cheating in the run-up to this year's exam season.

New guidance from the government's exam regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, offers strategies to prevent groups of students from colluding, and tips to help teachers identify changes in spelling and structure that may suggest parts of the work have been copied from elsewhere.
Teaching staff are also advised to familiarise themselves with websites that offer writing services, which will help them to better identify plagiarised work downloaded from the internet. The coursework leaflet, published today, was produced by the QCA coursework taskforce, chaired by headteacher Sue Kirkham, who is currently president of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

The taskforce was set up following the publication of a review of GCE and GCSE coursework arrangements by the QCA last November. The taskforce membership included practising teachers, awarding bodies, schools, colleges, Ofsted, parents and the regulatory authorities together with other stakeholders.

The QCA's review highlighted the huge scale of cheating and plagiarism in the secondary school system. It warned that exam boards appeared to be failing to spot cheating, even though the number of cases of fraud was increasing. In 2004, 3,600 teenagers were caught breaching the rules - a 9% rise on the previous year. The problem has been exacerbated by the growing use of the internet, with more than nine out of 10 teenagers interviewed for the QCA's report saying they had access to the web at home.

The QCA also examined the role of parents in helping with coursework, calling for much clearer advice to ensure parents do not overstep the "thin line" between supervising their children's coursework and helping them to commit "malpractice", which could lead to their work being disqualified. The QCA also found that teachers suffered from "limited guidance" in terms of the acceptable limits of permitted help, triggering today's new guidance for the profession.

Ms Kirkham said: "It is essential that teachers are given advice and guidance to ensure that they are able to mark coursework fairly and be able to detect if the work is not the candidate's own. We hope that teachers will keep and refer to this leaflet when marking coursework this year and in future.

"The list of suggestions included in the leaflet can be used by all teachers as a way to reassure themselves that the work that is submitted is the candidate's own. Equally, it is important that teachers set and supervise coursework in the best possible way, so we have provided suggestions for the future to ensure that teachers minimise the chance of candidate malpractice."

The chief executive of the QCA, Ken Boston, said: "It is important that teachers are rigorous in their marking of coursework. This guidance provides some excellent suggestions to ensure that teachers are able confidently and consistently to confirm the work is the candidate's own. This leaflet is a valuable resource for teachers."

The general secretary of the ASCL, John Dunford, said: "Coursework plagiarism is a major problem for schools, this guide will provide very useful advice to school leaders and teachers."

Read a copy of Authenticating Coursework: a teacher's guide
<http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Educ.../02/QCA.pdf>here.
It is also available on the QCA website.
http://www.qca.org.uk/courseworkleaflet

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1722139,00.html

Stitch by stitch, women sew safety into whaleboats
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7504028p-7415244c.html
SKINS: Seal oil, caribou sinew and great care mark preparations for spring hunt.

By RANDALL HOWELL
The Arctic Sounder

Published: March 5, 2006
Last Modified: March 5, 2006 at 05:30 AM

BARROW -- Elder Priscilla Sage's skilled hands do sacred work.

Hers are among the many skilled seamstress hands that sew the "thread of life" into the waterproof seams of skin boats used by North Slope whaling crews.

Those many hands -- often sore from the twisting and braiding of the sinew -- keep the whaling crews safe from the cold and treacherous waters of the Arctic Ocean.

"My sister's fingers are awesome," said Barrow's Roy Nageak, captain of the Akootchook Whaling Crew.

"Those hands sew the thread of life to keep us away from the water," he said. "My sister's fingers are worn out, but they keep us safe while we hunt the whale."

That hunt for the whale begins about mid-April. But as February fades into March, the skin boats are readied one by one with new sealskin covers that replace older worn or torn ones.

Akootchook Whaling Crew's boat, and those of anywhere from 10 to 15 other crews, now are getting the careful attention of the sealskin seamstresses, who have been working at the Inupiat Culture Center since Feb. 13.
That's when the season's sewing began with the sealskins for the PK13 Whaling Crew's boat. The PK13 crew is co-captained by James Ahgeak and Nate Elavgak.

The cover was finished that day, and the boat has been outside drying while the seamstresses turn to the boat-cover needs of other crews, according to Ahgeak's wife, Mae, who also is a working member of the PK13 Whaling Crew.
To Mae Ahgeak, who is busy now gathering food, protective clothing and other items needed for the spring hunt, the work done by Sage and her seamstresses is arduous and a vital part of the annual preparation for spring whaling season.

"They inspect their work, and if they see even one stitch that's not right, they will tear out all the stitches and redo them so they are right," said Ahgeak.

In addition to Sage, the seamstress crew includes Emma Neakok, Josie Kaleak, Mary Ahkiviana, Isabel Kanayurak, Flora Brower, Doreen Ahgeak and Margaret Leavitt.

The women work nonstop from eight to 20 hours to sew one skin boat cover, according to Sage's daughter-in-law, Mary. Depending on their size, the skins of five to nine bearded seals are use to make a boat cover.
Making the crucial waterproof stitches with seal oil, the skilled seamstresses partner and begin sewing from the middle to the outer edge. As partners, the women check the quality of each other's seams.

The sinew used in stitching the sealskins together is from the tendons of caribou, said Nageak. He explained that the tendons run from the animal's Achilles heel up the rear leg to the thigh, where they fan out.

Cut from the meat and bone of the caribou's rear quarters, the tendons are dried and braided together to become the sinew used in the waterproof stitches so vital to keeping the skin boats afloat, he said.

Sage, a leader of the annual sewing crew, also teaches workshops in Barrow. In those workshops, she shares the Inupiat technique of extracting the tendons during the butchering of the caribou.

She shares and shows in detail her traditional knowledge about drying the meat, pulling the tendon strands from the muscle and braiding the sinew.
The sinew -- the thread of life -- and the bearded seals' skins are the components of the traditional whaling boat cover used for the spring season only.

Play the choking game and you could win serious brain damage

Even in remote Alaska, this is evidently a played. Several students have been found strangled or nearly so. In the 60s, it used to be
hyperventilating was the game.
mpb

=========================
Play the choking game and you could win serious brain damage
OR DEATH: Even doing it once can result in grim consequences.
http://www.adn.com/life/story/7496323p-7406862c.html
By KARRSEN BRANNON-YOUNG
Perfect World

Published: March 3, 2006
Last Modified: March 3, 2006 at 01:48 AM

The morning of April 15, 2005: Hunter Dunn, 13, of Nampa, Idaho, walked up to his twin sister Chelsea's room to see why she hadn't come down to breakfast. He found her hanging from the noose of a belt. Chelsea Dunn -- bright, young, aspiring artist -- had died the night before.

It appeared to be the scene of a suicide. But a note Chelsea had written to a friend, as reported in the Idaho Statesman, refuted that conclusion: "I love doing that pass out thing. You wake up and you forget what happened. It comes back though you're all tingly."

Chelsea's fate is not an isolated one. Nor is the cause: adolescents briefly choking themselves for a quick high. I don't have any official information on how widespread this behavior is in Anchorage; I do know I've attended parties and seen it.

Deaths from this behavior seem to be increasing. Over the past 20 years, only one or two deaths a year were recorded. But in 1997 six kids accidentally killed themselves, three of them Americans. In 2004, 26 deaths were recorded, including 17 Americans; in 2005, 65 died -- and again, Americans contributed the biggest portion: 49 deaths. This information comes from www.deadlygameschildrenplay.com, a Web site that attempts to compile national and international statistics from a variety of sources.
Clearly this is not something that could be called a "safe" activity. It begs the obvious question: Why do kids do it?

"It's fun to do," said Matt, formerly of South High. "You get a quick high, and when you wake up you have no idea where you are."

Adam, a senior at Dimond High, said: "Well, my friends were doing it, so I went along with them. There wasn't any reason not to."

And that is the scary thing. There are plenty of reasons not to, but one will suffice: You're damaging your brain. Of course, I'm speaking to teenagers, and we all know teenagers are made of steel and can't get hurt.
And long-term effects? Psh. Those are too small to notice, right? Don't worry about it, kids! As long as you only do it a few times, nothing bad can happen.

Right?

Anchorage psychologist Debi Wilson begs to differ.

"Anytime you deprive your brain of oxygen, you're killing it. And in the long run, the loss is noticeable. You might not notice the difference, but other people can. And that's the scary thing -- you'll lose intelligence and you won't even know it."

And the mentality that "one time can't hurt" isn't any smarter.

"If someone robs a bank and gets caught, it doesn't help if it was his first time," Wilson said. "I know of two kids who, after (allegedly) doing this one time, sustained permanent damage. One of them lost 30 points in IQ. In time he was able to regain some of his social functioning, but he will never -- never -- be as intelligent as he was before. He was the lucky one. The other child died."

Both kids were just hanging out with friends, looking for something exciting to pass the time. Neither figured anything would happen, especially not with friends around. But unfortunately, friends can't protect against brain damage or death. While most deaths occur when kids are by themselves, friends don't always help.

The word seems to be getting out among Anchorage youths.

"It might seem fun," Matt said, "but I know there are long-term effects that aren't worth it. I don't do it anymore. I realize how dumb it was."
Other local teens have arrived at the same opinion as Matt.

"It wasn't fun at all," Adam said. "My friends didn't catch me, and when I woke up I hurt all over. I started twitching, and they just laughed. They thought it was funny."

Katie, a senior at Service High, said: "When I was in middle school I went through a phase where I did it a lot. But I got over it, and looking back on it, it was really stupid to risk my life for a bunch of 5-second highs."
But the fact is many young adults still think this game is fun. It's even earned many enticing names such as "the choking game" "suffocation roulette" and "flatliner." How delightful.

Experts like Wilson cringe at such reckless ignorance. "I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous this thing is. And I don't care how lightly these kids take it -- it is not a game."

Karrsen Brannon-Young is a senior at Dimond High.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about the risks of the choking game, go to

www.stop-the-choking-game.com

www.deadlygameschildrenplay.com

Bird flu: Are pet cats at risk?
By Henri Astier
BBC News

The discovery of a German cat who died of bird flu - the first mammal found with the H5N1 virus in Central Europe - raises stark questions for pet owners across the world.

How easily can avian flu jump from birds to domestic animals? If a pet gets sick, should the owners be worried about their own health?

Scientists have known for at least two years that felines could catch the deadly bird flu virus.

It was found in 2004 in Thailand in two domestic cats. Big cats who had been fed infected chicken carcasses in a Thai zoo were also killed by H5N1.
And last year, wild civet cats died after contracting the virus.

So the discovery of the dead German cat in an area where dozens of birds had died from H5N1 does not come as a big surprise.

Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia in the UK, points out that like all predators, felines hunt weaker animals.

"Cats tend to go for sick birds, so it is not unexpected if cats catch and kill infected birds," he told the BBC news website.

No alarm

The risk of cats getting the H5N1 virus is real. But according Dr Hunter, it is "not huge".

He notes that in affected areas in Asia, where people live in close proximity with poultry, hundreds of thousands of humans have handled infected birds - and yet less than 200 are known to have contracted the virus.
The H5N1 strain does not jump easily to other species - and this applies to cats as well.

"Do not expect large-scale mortality," Dr Hunter says.

How about humans being at risk? Dr Hunter argues that there is little cause for alarm on that count as well.

"The risk of your cat getting bird flu from a bird is small, the risk of your getting it from your cat is equally small. A small risk within a small risk is a very small risk," he says.

But the issue - both for pets and humans - is whether the H5N1 virus mutates within the host population, making it easy to spread among individuals.
This has not happened yet - but if a mutated H5N1 made infection from cat to cat easier, this could be bad news for humans too.

According to a 2004 paper by Dutch virologist Thijs Kuiken, cat-to-cat transmission is possible and could provide an "opportunity for this avian flu to adapt to mammals".

But for the time being experts are telling people not to panic.

"The thought to hang on to at the moment is the current strains of the violence appear to be really inefficient at infecting non-bird species," says the head of the British Veterinary Association, Frieda Scott-Park.
"And indeed the virus has been circulating throughout large swathes of the world already, and there haven't been numerous deaths from the disease in domestic mammals."

Poultry risk

So there is no need for owners to keep their cats indoors.

But according to Diana Bell, a biologist at the University of East Anglia who has studied the civet infections in Vietnam, there are things humans can do help protect domestic animals.

Many of the carnivores who have contracted bird flu so far, she says, have done so by eating poultry rather than wild birds.

The danger is that pets, particularly cats, ferret out scraps of infected meat.
"The infected poultry must be disposed of quickly so there is no possibility of carnivores having success in digging them up," she told the BBC News website.

The lesson for pet owners is: Don't worry too much - but if you live near an infected poultry farm, make sure the bird carcasses are well out of your pet's reach.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4761024.stm

Published: 2006/02/28 23:43:16 GMT

&#A9; BBC MMVI
"
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools.../europe/4761024.stm

>Toddlers Eager to Assist Clumsy Scientist
>from Associated Press
>
>WASHINGTON - Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin. Not to worry; a
>wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back.
>
>The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges as early as 18
>months of age, the scientist says.
>
>Toddlers' desire to help out signals fairly sophisticated brain development
>and is a trait of interest to anthropologists trying to tease out the
>evolutionary roots of altruism and cooperation.
>
>Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in
>front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking
>books. Sometimes he "struggled" with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately
>messed up.
>http://tinyurl.com/qtj6x
Toddlers eager to assist clumsy scientist

By Lauran Neergaard

The Associated Press

Related
Why can we see color? It's cause for blushing

WASHINGTON a Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin. Not to worry; a wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back.

The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges as early as 18 months of age, the scientist says.

Toddlers' desire to help out signals fairly sophisticated brain development and is a trait of interest to anthropologists trying to tease out the evolutionary roots of altruism and cooperation.

Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he "struggled" with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up.

Quick to respond

Repeatedly, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds, but only if he appeared to need it. Video shows how one overall-clad baby glanced between Warneken's face and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over, grabbing the object, pushing up to his feet and handing back the pin.

Warneken, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, never asked for help and didn't say "thank you," so as not to taint the research by training youngsters to expect praise if they helped. After all, altruism means helping with no expectation of anything in return.
And a this is key a the toddlers didn't bother to offer help when he deliberately pulled a book off the stack or threw a pin to the floor, Warneken reported in the current issue of the journal Science.

To be altruistic, babies must have the cognitive ability to understand other people's goals and possess what Warneken calls "pro-social motivation": a desire to be part of their community.

"When those two things come together a they obviously do so at 18 months of age and maybe earlier a they are able to help," Warneken said.


But babies aren't the whole story.

Chimps less helpful

No other animal is as altruistic as humans. We donate to charity, recycle for the environment and perform other tasks that seldom bring a tangible return beyond a sense of gratification.

Other animals are skilled at cooperating, but most often do so for a goal, such as banding together to chase down food or protect against predators. But primate specialists offer numerous examples of apes, in particular, displaying more humanlike helpfulness, such as the gorilla that rescued a 3-year-old boy who fell into her zoo enclosure.

But observations don't explain what motivated the animals. So Warneken put a few of our closest relatives through a similar helpfulness study.
Would 3- and 4-year-old chimpanzees find and hand over objects that a familiar human "lost"?

The chimps frequently did help if all that was required was reaching for a dropped object, but not nearly as readily as the toddlers had helped.
It's a creative study that shows chimps may display humanlike helpfulness when they can grasp the person's goal, University of California, Los Angeles, anthropologist Joan Silk wrote in an accompanying review.
Just don't assume they help for the reasons of empathy that motivated the babies, she said.

Copyright &#A9; 2006 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...2840717_baby03.html

"Monday, March 6, 2006
Tests better than studying for learning?
A new study suggests that repeated test-taking may help students understand and retain information better than studying the material over and over. Henry L. Roediger III, a memory expert at Washington University in St. Louis, reports that tests not only can be used to assess what you know, but also helps you remember information longer. From a press release:
     Perhaps equally important, this study demonstrates that students who rely on repeated study alone often come away with a false sense of confidence about their mastery of the material.

     In an experiment in which students either took quizzes or were permitted to study material repeatedly, students in the study-only group professed an exaggerated confidence, sure that they knew the material well, even though important details already had begun slip-sliding away. The group that took tests on the material, rather than repeatedly reading it, actually did better on a delayed test of their knowledge...

     Previous research, says Roediger, offers a number of theories on why this phenomenon takes place. One suggests we learn more efficiently when placed in difficult situations -- think of that sinking feeling in your stomach when a pop quiz is announced.

     Others suggest that repeated testing improves long-term recall by forcing students to practice the very skills they will need to recollect this information at a later date, a memory quirk that might be called the "use-it or lose-it" effect.

Link http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/wuis-rtb030606.php
posted by David Pescovitz at 09:30:27 AM
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/06/tests_better_than_st.html

Too late for this year, but maybe students can plan for next year. Pam


>Hundreds of Students to Compete in TOYchallenge Nationals
>(http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/education/toy.team.shtml)
>
>Hundreds of middle school students will compete in Sally Ride Science's
>2006 TOYchallenge Nationals at the San Diego Aerospace Museum on April
>29 and at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., on May 6.
>Sigma Xi is, for the third year running, a national sponsor of the
>event. The East Coast Nationals will be open to the public.
"Mentor 5th through 8th Grade Children through
Fun and Exciting Toy Design Challenge

The application deadline was January 6, 2006.

Preliminary Round Entries deadline was January 25.

If you have any questions, please e-mail education@sigmaxi.org

There is little doubt that the future well-being of society depends not just on how well we educate our children, but also on how well we educate them in engineering, science, mathematics and technology. Research points to the middle school years as a time when maintaining the interest of young students, especially girls, in engineering, science and technology is crucial.
Toys are a great way to learn about science, engineering and the design process, and working on a team builds skills in collaboration, leadership and communication. Sally Ride Science's TOYchallenge connects students in 5th through 8th grade with all of these principles in an exciting and fun environment. That is why Sigma Xi is pleased to announce our third annual sponsorship of Sally Ride Science's TOYchallenge and the wide range of opportunities this sponsorship provides for our members and chapters." http://www.sigmaxi.org/programs/education/toy.team.shtml

>Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas Speaks Again
>from the New York Times (Registration Required)
>
>In the new movie about Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in
>North America, founded in 1607, the paramount Indian chief Powhatan asks
>Capt. John Smith where his people came from. The sky?
>
>Responding to the question, translated by an Indian whose smattering of
>English probably came indirectly from the earlier failed Roanoke colony in
>North Carolina, Smith replies: "The sky? No. We come from England, an island
>on the other side of the sea."
>
>The dialogue continues as the interpreter puts Smith's reply in Powhatan's
>own words, Virginia Algonquian, a language not spoken for more than two
>centuries. Like most of the 800 or more indigenous languages of North
>America when Europeans first arrived, Powhatan's became extinct as Indians
>declined in number, dispersed and lost their cultural identity.
>http://tinyurl.com/lplmf

"Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas Speaks Again

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: March 7, 2006

In the new movie about Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607, the paramount Indian chief Powhatan asks Capt. John Smith where his people came from. The sky?

Responding to the question, translated by an Indian whose smattering of English probably came indirectly from the earlier failed Roanoke colony in North Carolina, Smith replies: "The sky? No. We come from England, an island on the other side of the sea."

The dialogue continues as the interpreter puts Smith's reply in Powhatan's own words, Virginia Algonquian, a language not spoken for more than two centuries. Like most of the 800 or more indigenous languages of North America when Europeans first arrived, Powhatan's became extinct as Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost their cultural identity.

But a small yet growing number of linguists and anthropologists has been busy in recent years recreating such dead or dying Indian speech. Their field is language revitalization, the science of reconstructing lost languages. One byproduct of the scholarship is the dialogue in Virginia Algonquian for the movie "The New World."

More than moviemaking is behind the research. A revival of ethnic pride and cultural studies among Indians has stimulated Indians' interest in their languages, some long dead. Of the more than 15 original Algonquian languages in eastern North America, the two still spoken are
Passamaquoddy-Malecite in Maine and Mikmaq in New Brunswick.

In other cases, the few speakers of an Indian tongue are the old people, never their grandchildren, and so the research is a desperate attempt to save another language from burial with a departing generation.

The passing of a language diminishes cultural diversity, anthropologists say, and the restoration of at least some part of a language is an act of reclaiming a people's heritage.

Blair A. Rudes, a linguist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who specializes in reconstructing Indian languages, said several Algonquian communities in the East had efforts under way to recover their lost languages and return them to daily use.

"What turns out to be really important is just that they learn some piece of the language because it is reclaiming their heritage," Dr. Rudes said. "So much was lost that reclaiming any of it is a major event."

Ives Goddard, who is a curator for linguistics and anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, said, "The loss of languages continues, and it's a worldwide phenomenon."

At least half the world's estimated 6,000 languages, Dr. Goddard said, have so few remaining speakers that they are threatened with extinction. By 2100, he predicted, "there will be fewer than 3,000 languages still spoken."
When the director of "The New World," Terrence Malick, decided that for authenticity Powhatan should speak in his own language, he called in Dr. Rudes, who has worked with Dr. Goddard in reconstructing the defunct Algonquian language of the Pequot of Connecticut. He is also engaged in language restoration for the Catawba of North Carolina and is collaborating with Helen Rountree, emeritus professor of anthropology at Old Dominion University, on a dictionary of Virginia Algonquian.

Dr. Rudes was asked what Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas would say and how they would say it. It was a daunting assignment.

The related Algonquian languages were among the first in America to die out, and no one is known to have spoken Virginia Algonquian since 1785. Like many other Indians, except some cultures in Mexico and Central America, Algonquian speakers had no writing system, and their grammar and most of their vocabulary were lost.

Just two contemporary accounts a one by Captain Smith and the other by the Jamestown colony secretary, William Strachey a preserved some Virginia Algonquian words, including ones that have passed into modern English as raccoon, terrapin, moccasins and tomahawk.

Clearly, even the wits of the celebrated roundtable at the namesake Algonquin Hotel, who had something cutting to say about everything and everybody, would have for once been at a loss for words in the presence of Powhatan and Pocahontas. Unless, perhaps, the two happened to wear their moccasins and the soup of the day was terrapin.

The first challenge for Dr. Rudes was the limited vocabulary. Smith, the colony leader, set down just 50 Indian words, and Strachey compiled 600. The lists were written phonetically by Englishmen who were not expert in linguistics and whose spelling and pronunciation differed considerably from modern usage, making it difficult to determine the words' actual Indian form.
Dr. Rudes had to apply techniques of historical linguistics to rebuilding a language from these sketchy, unreliable word lists. He compared Strachey's recorded words with vocabularies of related Algonquian languages, especially those spoken from the Carolinas north into Canada that had survived longer and are thus better known.

This family of Indian tongues, in one respect, reminded linguists of the Romance languages. Each was distinctive but as closely related as Spanish is to Italian or Italian to Romanian. Comparisons with related languages revealed the common elements of grammar and sentence structure and many similarities in vocabulary.

A translation of the Bible into the language once spoken by Massachusetts Indians offered more insights into the grammar. The Munsee Delaware version spoken by coastal Indians from Delaware to New York, including those who sold Manhattan, may be dead, but its grammar and vocabulary are fairly well known to scholars.

"We have a big fat dictionary of Munsee Delaware," said Dr. Rudes, who adapted some of those words when needed for Virginia Algonquian. Recordings of the last Munsee Delaware speakers, a century ago, were a valuable guide to pronunciations.

Another research tool was what is called Proto-Algonquian. It is the hypothetical ancestor common to all Algonquian speech, 4,000 words that scholars have compiled from the surviving tongues and documentation of the extinct ones.

The reconstruction involves educated guesses. Strachey set down words for walnut, shoes and two kinds of beast, "paukauns," "mawhcasuns,"
"aroughcoune" and "opposum." In Proto-Algonquian, similar words are paka-ni (meaning large nut), maxkesen (shoe), la-le-ckani (raccoon) and wa-pa'oemwi (white dog).

 From this, Dr. Rudes reconstructed the Virginia Algonquian words pak&#E1;n, mahkusun, &#E1;rehkan and w&#E1;pahshum," or pecan, moccasin, raccoon and opossum.
When he started the project, he was handed the movie script for the parts to be translated. "I had to rewrite terms for the dialogue," he said. "For example, we often use nonspecific verbs, 'He went to town.' In Algonquian, you have to tell the mode of travel, 'He walked to town.' "

The peculiar sentence structure required changes in the Indian translation. Pocahontas would not have said to Smith, if she ever actually did, "I love you." She would have used the verb for love, with a prefix meaning you and a suffix for I. "It is one of the few languages that give greater importance to the listener than the speaker," Dr. Rudes said.

Then there was the problem of creating dialogue reflecting what the Indians would have understood in the early 17th century. This also required changing the script for the initial Powhatan-Smith conversation.

In a paper summarizing his methods, Dr. Rudes said the original script had Smith saying: "The sky? No. From England, a land to the east." At the time, though, a land to the east was for the Indians more myth than reality, he noted, but they probably had already heard about "white-skinned people who lived on islands in the Caribbean."

So Smith's reply was changed to "We came from England, an island on the other side of the sea," and the translator then used documented words of Virginia Algonquian for sky, no, island and sea. The spelling was slightly modified to account for Strachey's misspellings and conform to similar words in other Algonquian speech. Because the word signifying a question is not known in Virginia Algonquian, Dr. Rudes borrowed the word s&#E1; from a related language.

Of course, Powhatan's interpreter could not be expected to have a word for England. He presumably did his best to reproduce what it sounded like in Algonquian, Inkurent, to which he added the general locational ending -unk, meaning at or in. He also followed the practice of naming the place first and adding the word for "we come from there."

The translation thus reads: "S&#E1; arahqat? Mahta. Inkurent-unk kunowamun - mununag akamunk yapam."

William M. Kelso, director of archaeology of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, which owns the Jamestown fort site, said that he could not assess the language of the dialogue, but that the costumes, armor, arms and nearly all aspects of the fort were realistic.
Dr. Kelso and other archaeologists found the remains of the three-sided Jamestown fort in 1996. Their goal between now and the 400th anniversary celebration of Jamestown next year is to excavate the well at the site, search for artifacts and look for the foundations of the colony's storehouse and church. At the festivities next spring, some of the words of celebration may echo the Virginia Algonquian of 1607, the resurrected language of Powhatan and Pocahontas."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/...ogin&pagewanted=all

>Kids Might Tune In to This Cartoon Billionaire
>
>Warren Buffett plays himself in an animated series aimed at
>teaching financial responsibility. By Richard Verrier.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ey2g0Mm2NO0G2B0HKXc0EJ



"Kids Might Tune In to This Cartoon Billionaire
Warren Buffett plays himself in an animated series aimed at teaching financial responsibility.
By Richard Verrier, Times Staff Writer
February 28 2006

The Oracle of Omaha is Tinseltown's newest animated hero.

But, at least in Warren E. Buffett's crystal ball, he still has no future here.
"I can't afford to go Hollywood," he said. "There's no money in this stuff."
If anyone knows the value of a dollar, it's a guy with 40 billion of them. Which is why the world's second-richest individual decided to become a cartoon character to teach children financial responsibility.

Working pro bono, Buffett will play himself in an upcoming 13-part DVD series, "The Secret Millionaire's Club," produced by Burbank-based DIC Entertainment Corp. The 75-year-old grandfather plays an animated version of himself who offers his wisdom with the kind of down-home delivery that has made him a folk hero to investors.

"An educational approach to money and investing struck me as a very good idea," Buffett said in an interview. "People do form behavior habits very young on matters of money. I get calls every day from people who are in a financial hole."

In the series, Buffett offers advice to a group of children who want to raise money to ward off an unscrupulous developer aiming to shut down a youth center in Buffett's hometown of Omaha.

To raise money for the center, the children auction some valuable baseball memorabilia they discover in the attic of the club. After paying off the club's mortgage, they turn to Buffett for advice on what companies they should invest in.

Not surprisingly, the stories, aimed at children 8 to 12, reflect many of Buffett's own investment preferences. The kids invest in an ice cream franchise and a candy store. Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns International Dairy Queen Inc. and See's Candies Inc.

His skepticism toward risky technology stocks also shows up in another episode, when kids pull the plug on investing in a company fraudulently claiming to have invented a self-charging battery.

The series also teaches basic principles of managing money, especially avoiding debt, a pet subject of Buffett's.

"The American public is in love with credit cards," he said.

DIC Chief Executive Andy Heyward approached Buffett about the project six months ago.

"Our company is focused on education programs for children, and we felt this is an area that has not been addressed," he said. "When you talk about teaching kids financial literacy, he's the gold standard. He brings a credibility that doesn't exist anywhere else."

Buffett has known Heyward since the early 1990s, when DIC was a unit of Capital Cities/ABC Inc., in which Berkshire Hathaway was a large investor. Heyward led a buyout of DIC after Capital Cities/ABC was sold in 1996 to Walt Disney Co.

Buffett asked Heyward to assist one of his charities, a children's theater in Omaha. Heyward not only helped develop stories for the theater, but he also began using local actors to record voices for his company's cartoon characters, which include Trollz, Inspector Gadget and Strawberry Shortcake.
Buffett soon tapped Heyward to produce humorous cartoons for Berkshire Hathaway's annual meetings. In last year's show, a takeoff on "The Wizard of Oz," Buffett played Dorothy while Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates a his good friend and the only person on Earth richer than Buffett a played the Scarecrow.

Heyward also gave Buffett a small part as James Madison in the DIC series "Liberty's Kids," which was shown on PBS.

"The Secret Millionaire's Club" will begin production this month, with Buffett and other characters recording their voices in Omaha. DIC is negotiating with a home video distributor for the series, which will cost about $4 million to make and premieres this fall, Heyward said. One of the two authors of the series is a University of Connecticut finance professor who is an expert on Buffett's "value investing" approach.

Although the project was led by Heyward, Buffett made some key suggestions, including nixing one story idea that had the children winning money in a lottery.

"The last thing in the world I want to do," Buffett said, "is to encourage kids to play the lottery.""
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-warr...6603.story?track=to ttext

(WebGURU)

It doesn't look like this has actually started yet, but maybe something to keep in mind.
mpb


>New Website Available
>The Web-Guide to Research for Undergraduates (WebGURU)
>
>Website available at:
>http://www.webguru.neu.edu/
>
>----------------------------------------------------------- -------------
>The Web-Guide to Research for Undergraduates (WebGURU) is an interactive
>web-based tool intended to assist undergraduates navigate the hurdles of
>an undergraduate research experience.
>
>The purpose of this website is to provide undergraduates interested in
>and/or currently participating in undergraduate research experiences in
>science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics with ready
>information and links to reliable electronic resources on all aspects of
>the undergraduate research experience.
>
>The website is available at:
>http://www.webguru.neu.edu/
>
>Resources available on this website include:
>
>- Information on all the technical aspects of undergraduate research
>including lab safety, record keeping, experimental design, data
>analysis, technical writing, oral presentations, intellectual property,
>etc.
>- A discussion board for discussing anything about undergraduate
>research with other undergraduate students
>- Links to undergraduate research programs and program information
>- Scholarships and fellowships in support of undergraduate research
>experiences
>- Meeting opportunities for undergraduate scientists and engineers
>
>The Web-GURU project is funded by the National Science Foundation
>Division of Undergraduate Education
>(http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=DUE) through the Educational
>Materials Development Program:
>http://www.nsf.gov/ehr/rec/cclilinks.jsp
>
>------------------------------------------------------------ -------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

>Congratulations to Peter MacDonald and his students at Eel Ground First
>Nations School in New Brunswick. With the help of story teller, Joseph
>Leonard Ward, they've developed some fabulous online Mi'kmaw stories.
>Get more details below, and by all means visit the site.
>
>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Fwd: Beautiful example of ICT and First Nation storytelling
>Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 15:13:19 -0400
>From: Peter MacDonald <macdonal@nbnet.nb.ca>
>To: dawn@encs.concordia.ca
>
>
>
> > Do you remember sitting in class, hearing content, and then feeding it
> > back to the teacher at test time? To borrow a line from the ad
> > agencies, "this isn't your grandmother's content" ... then again, in
> > the case of First Nation education, this really is your grandparents
> > content!
>
> > http://www.eelgroundschool.ca/storytelling/
>
> > The Industry Canada First Nation NIS (Network of Innovative Schools)
> > project done by Eel Ground (NB) First Nation school illustrates how
> > ICT can promote education and culture.
>
> > Mi'kmaw storyteller and spiritual advisor Joseph Leonard Ward shared
> > stories with students from grade 5 through 8. The students feed it
> > back, okay, but with a media richness and meaning that's guaranteed to
> > make you smile! All the while, learning more lessons than are taught
> > ... technology, teamwork, dedication, and creativity.
>
> > Mr. Ward's synopsis of the importance of storytelling (5 minutes) is a
> > study in uncluttered eloquence. There's merit in all of the video
> > clips and presentation. My personal favourite is "The Legend of the
> > Young Warrior" (4 min 34 sec) done by grade 5-6 students and filmed
> > using ultraviolet light and dayglow paint.
>
> > Several of the Digital Storytelling segments are a minute or less.
> > For example, Alyssa uses claymation to explain how the northern lights
> > came to be and Mike uses Flash Animation to retell the legend of two
> > buffalos. Take a moment! These are not their parents' projects!
>
> > Note: All of the clips are in quicktime. You probably have a
> > quicktime player. If not, you can get one for free at
>
> > http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html
>
> > Wela'lioq (thank you),
>
> > ~ Kevin
>
> > ______________
>
> > Kevin R. Burton, RMO Manager
>
> > Atlantic Canada's First Nation Help Desk &
>
> > Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey
>
> > 47 Maillard Street
>
> > Membertou, NS B1S-2P5
>
> > Tel: 902 567-0842
>
> > Toll Free: 1 877 484-7606
>
> > fax: 902 567-0337
>
> > cell: 902 565-9175
>
> > http://firstnationhelp.com
>
> > IP Videoconferencing: 69.71.71.86
>
>
>
>--
>
>Principal
>Eel Ground School
>55 Church road
>Eel ground,N.B.
>E1V 4E6
>506- 627-4615 office
>506-778-8991 home
>macdonal@nbnet.nb.ca
>eelgroundschool@yahoo.ca
>www.eelgroundschool.ca
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

>Wednesday, March 15 -My Space or Your Space?
>Approximately 43 million people are using it. Almost 150,000 new clients
>log on each day. It is "MySpace," an internet service that is deemed a
>social-networking space. This webpage lets you create for free. Through it
>you can connect to new and old friends by viewing the page. People can
>share photos, comments, and video and participate in blogs. Many Native
>youth are creating their own accounts and it might interest the parents to
>see what's on this interactive website. Who is regulating the content on
>MySpace? What are you agreeing to when you sign up? How can parents check
>to make sure their child isn't giving out information that's too personal?
>Guests include Jana (Lumbee), Performer.

You can listen to Native America Calling LIVE on-line. Or visit the web site at www.nativeamericacalling.vom for information about Native America Calling, to meet the Native America Calling staff, and to view pictures of our travels and in studio action.

Water, water everywhere U and not a drop to drink

[see also http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25&L=0]
mpb

===========================
  National Catholic Reporter By Joan Chittister, OSB

It\s quiet here on this Irish mountaintop overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I get up, get a little breakfast, do the dishes, work at the computer a while, get a little lunch, do the dishes, work through the afternoon, put the turf in, light the fire, get a little supper, do the dishes. It sounds so far away from things, doesn\t it? So safe from the problems of the world.
Not quite. Think again.

]The bogs are drying up, being bled dry,^ the neighbor said, meaning that Ireland\s supply of peat, thousands of years old, is slowly but surely disappearing.

Last week the mountain water that comes out of the cold tap on the sink ran brown for three days. I couldn\t wash the dishes, couldn\t make the tea. The hot water -- rain water caught in a tank up the hillside -- went dry. The wash would have to wait a while and so would the shower.

Then, I got it: This place is neither quiet nor remote from the problems of the world. On the contrary, Ireland may be one of the best clues we have of how close we are to finding ourselves victims of our own distorted sense of progress.

The important thing to understand is that this idyllic little place is not primitive or backward or underdeveloped. Ireland is one of the fastest growing economies on the globe. It is fast becoming one of the banking centers of Europe.

It is, at the same time, however, surrounded by salt water, not usable either for showers or dishes. Bog is a natural fuel that has for centuries heated Irish homes and cooked Irish food, and does to this day, heating oil and modern furnaces notwithstanding. But Ireland\s once major source of fuel is disappearing.

What\s more, Ireland\s population is small and there are few, if any, major factories gulping up either water or energy. And yet, Ireland does not have limitless supplies of either.

Here, I thought, is the tomorrow we\re all facing if we don\t do something about it today.

In the United States, for instance, we have built whole cities in the desert and nourish them with water piped in from other population centers that are also built on sand and rock, also growing rapidly, also consuming energy and water at great rates.

Maybe this can help explain the problem: According to an article in this week\s London Independent, Britain\s Defense Secretary John Reid predicts that in the near future wars will not be fought for oil. They will be fought for water.

And the leading cause of diminishing water supplies everywhere? Global warming.
Right. Global warming, that scientific specter of oncoming doom that the U.S. government has made a business of doubting, is now a universally recognized reality everywhere but in the United States. Headlines on the National Resources Defense Council Web site
(http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/), which monitors the Bush administration record on Global Warming, reads like a press release from a fun house. The record cited goes all the way from ]Bush administration rejects Kyoto Protocol^ 03/28/01 to ]Bush administration finally admits big trouble from global warming^ 06/03/02 to ]EPA scuttled global warming videos to avoid White House wrath^ 07/01/05 to ]Bush admits humans cause global warming but rebuffs action.^ 07/06/05.

I suppose you can call a succession of gradually decreasing rejections like that ]progress.^ After all, if you start out talking to a stone wall and end up in any kind of conversation at all about a commonly acknowledged topic, that\s an improvement. But whether or not it will be seen so positively in the west of Ireland or India, in Turkey or Botswana -- places where water is scarce, energy resources are missing and global warming is making things worse every day -- is anybody\s guess.

In the meantime, England is hosting a ]crisis Downing Street summit,^ the Independent reports, to address what Tony Blair calls ]the major long-term threat facing our planet.^ Most of all, he admits being alarmed at ]the political consequences of failing to deal with the specter of global warming.^
Translation: Water wars, far more serious than wars for oil because of their universal implications, are on the way tomorrow if we don\t do something about global warming today. Reid predicts that we can expect violent confrontation over water in the next 20 to 30 years. In fact, he ranks climate changes due to global warming alongside international terrorism, demographic changes and global energy demands as the major threats facing the world in future decades.

But we haggle and duck the subject. Do we doubt the existence of global warming because we\re smarter? Hardly, given the fact that our reports on the effects of global warming are in stark contrast to the findings of scientific bodies around the world. No, we doubt it because if we face it, we\ll have to do something about it. Cut back on our oil usage. Invest in electric cars. Meter our water. Change our technologies. Curb our usage. Stop our polluting.

How do you get campaign funds from the big oil companies if you do something like that? How do you get elected if you do something like that? How do you keep under-funding peacetime research and development programs in order to cut taxes, if you admit that the land of milk and honey is not only running out of honey but whatever honey there was, was destroyed as well?
More than 300 million people in Africa live without safe water, Reid says, a situation that will only get worse thanks to the climate changes heralded by global warming.

The recommended water requirement per person per day is 50 liters and some countries, Mozambique, for instance, use less than 10 liters per person. The West, meanwhile, goes its merry way. Every English citizen uses on average 200 liters of water a day, every US citizen, 500 liters of water a day. People in the West, according to the Independent, use eight liters of water just to brush their teeth and 100-200 liters to take a shower.
 From where I stand, the message is in the brown water in my Irish sink and the ubiquitous bottle of ]pure^ commercial water now carried everywhere in the United States by the wealthy healthy.

By the way, this morning\s headlines also read: ]Iran threatens U.S. with [harm and pain\ ^ and ]North Korea reportedly test-fires two missiles.^ If you think the two sets of headlines -- one on U.S. government responses to the problem of global warming and the other on the emerging nuclearization of the world -- are unrelated, think again. Otherwise, time for thinking about our responsibilities as citizens of the world may well be running out -- and also drying up."
http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/fw030906.htm

A Mystery Malady in Chechnya
The official diagnosis for 93 violently ill victims, mostly children, is the stress of chronic fear. Parents and some doctors have doubts. By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2006

SHELKOVSKAYA, Russia a It started just after the midafternoon recess. As they lined up to return to class, Zareta Chimiyeva saw a girl in front of her collapse and begin convulsing wildly. Only a few minutes later, Zareta was at her desk when she smelled "a bad smell," and started feeling ill.
She rushed out of the classroom but made it only as far as the stairs. "Darkness surrounded me, and there was darkness in my eyes, and I fell," said the 12-year-old from this small town in eastern Chechnya.

When Zareta woke up in a hospital, it took three adults to hold her down. She was thrashing and clutching her throat, unable to get a breath, screaming in terror. She wasn't alone. Thirteen other girls were in nearby hospital rooms, also saying they were unable to breathe, many of them shrieking and crying.

The next day, 23 students and seven teachers in a neighboring village fell ill with similar symptoms. About the same time, four dozen children in two towns a little farther away also began clutching their throats, screaming and convulsing.

They have yet to get better. The outbreak began Dec. 16, and doctors and parents say the children are still suffering fits day and night. The list of victims has grown to 93, including several teachers and janitors, with a small number of cases reported as far away as the Chechen capital, Grozny, and Urus-Martan, 60 miles to the southwest.

With the diagnosis caught up in the suspicion, politics and fear that surround most of what happens in this fractured separatist republic, the answer to what happened to Shelkovskaya's children may never be fully known.
What is clear, officials say, is that a new generation has fallen victim to the unexpected and devastating effects of a war that began before many of them were born.

After exhaustive chemical and radiation tests, authorities with the Moscow-backed government announced that the culprit was not poison, but a form of mass hysteria. The whole episode was triggered, most doctors now believe, by the extreme and chronic levels of stress among children who have experienced a war with Moscow that lasted more than 10 years and its devastating economic aftermath.

Yet with Chechen rebel leaders issuing proclamations that the Russian military has secretly poisoned the schools with nerve gas, and public health officials at a loss to explain why after months of treatment the children are only getting worse, parents a and some local physicians a are not ready to accept the official diagnosis. Very few are willing to send their children back to the schools where they were first afflicted.
"The fact is that the children are getting worse. No treatment helps them," said Khazman Bachayeva, principal at School No. 2 here, where only 30 of 998 students showed up for school recently. "And as of today, nobody has given us a concrete explanation. All they say is, it's psychological stress. Well, the parents don't buy that, and I don't buy it either."
Sultan Alimkhadzhiyev, Chechnya's deputy health minister, said it was difficult to explain to parents that their children had become living specimens of what it means to grow up with the constant threat of violence and chronic joblessness and poverty.

"Our children have seen bombings, artillery attacks, large-caliber bombardment. They saw houses, schools and hospitals burning. They lost parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors," he said. "And they still see tanks and armored vehicles every day in the street.

"In this case, what we have seen are not symptoms of poisoning U but of psychosis. A state of panic. Children are feeling constant fear, a premonition of tragedy."

The ability of the human mind to convert psychological stress into physical symptoms, officially known as "mass sociogenic illness" or "conversion disorder," is well documented but not completely understood. Why, for example, are chiefly girls affected? Only four of the Chechen victims were boys. And why were there families in which one girl was afflicted, but a sister who was in the same room with her showed no symptoms?

Through the centuries, mass hysteria has been a medically accepted but publicly doubted diagnosis. Young nuns at convents in medieval France who began twitching and shouting were thought to be diabolically possessed.
In recent years, scientists have recorded cases in Rhode Island, Washington, California and elsewhere in which people exposed to harmless smells or food were suddenly beset with real but baseless symptoms of poisoning, often brought on by hyperventilation.

The most acute outbreaks involve victims who are already suffering unusual levels of stress and living in "intolerable social settings," Australian and British researchers Robert E. Bartholomew and Simon Wessely concluded in a 2001 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The issue of wartime stress was documented during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, they said, when many Israelis reported symptoms of chemical weapons exposure even though the Scud missiles fired at Tel Aviv contained no chemical warheads.
The two researchers also saw a possible link between the respiratory symptoms reported by rescuers and lower Manhattan residents after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and a form of psychogenic illness.
In Grozny, where Shelkovskaya victims were transferred in December, doctors tried music therapy and set up concerts in the basement of the main children's hospital for as long as seven hours a day for two weeks. The fits improved, but when a television journalist began filming one of the sessions, 12 girls immediately fell into new seizures.

Next, the victims were moved to a clinic in Stavropol, outside Chechnya. Doctors there treated some of the patients with medication they refused to identify that caused some of the girls to gain as much as 19 pounds in three weeks. For many patients, the number of fits was substantially reduced, or even eliminated. But many others returned home in mid-February only to begin having nosebleeds and hallucinations, in addition to their twitching and asthmatic fits.

On Feb. 22, just when parents were beginning to feel confident enough to send their children back to School No. 2, three teachers fell ill with symptoms slightly resembling those of the original victims. The school quickly emptied again, and 11 new people showed up at a hospital with breathing difficulties. Three were admitted.

"If it was merely stress, this case would be the starting point for a massive spread of the illness, creating a chain reaction. But it's not spreading to those outside the schools," said Ruslan Kokanayev, regional head of administration. "I think the government doesn't want to get to the bottom of this, because if they do, they know they will be facing a level of public indignation that they're not prepared to handle."

Complicating the psychology diagnosis are blood tests showing the presence in five victims a three in Shelkovskaya, two in a neighboring village a of ethylene glycol, a highly toxic substance used in antifreeze, glass sterilization and a variety of industrial processes.

Doctors can't explain how the children might have been exposed to the chemical, although the general level of environmental pollution in Chechnya is so high that it is perhaps not surprising. Still, health officials believe the traces were so small that they could not have been a factor.
Parents are not convinced.

"It's a clear case of chemical poisoning," said Elim Nogamevzuyev, a resident who showed up for a meeting last week with senior Chechen health officials at School No. 2. "They tested new chemical weapons on our children here."

Principal Bachayeva said she was at a loss to explain why nothing was found when investigators pulled up the floorboards, scanned the basement and tested the air around the school.

"I would agree with the psychological diagnosis. But I have just one question: Why didn't children get sick on that day in the first shift? Why did the children get sick only during the second shift?" she said. "That's why I can't agree with that opinion.

"The children went out into the yard for a break between classes, they were healthy. And when they got back, they started to collapse."

Shelkovskaya has escaped much of the war's violence. But health officials say many of its residents are refugees from war elsewhere. The region is one of the most economically depressed in Chechnya, with large numbers of families living on government stipends and handouts from humanitarian organizations.

Fourteen-year-old Dinara Damayeva was 8 when her family fled Grozny under artillery fire during the separatist republic's second war with Moscow. They took refuge in what appeared to be a safe village, only to come under repeated missile attack, including one strike that killed a boy next door.
Uprooted again, Dinara and her six sisters moved with their parents into a rented house in Shelkovskaya.

Dinara was already having frequent epileptic seizures, said her father, Beslan Damayev, but had never experienced anything as violent as the fits that began when she went to school on the afternoon of Dec. 19.

The girl said she felt a powdery substance in her throat after coming in from recess, and smelled an odor in the hallway that resembled a mixture of gasoline and the chlorine-based fluid that is commonly used for washing floors in Chechnya.

"I couldn't breathe, it was so bad. I didn't have enough air," Dinara said.
Some of the other students reported memory loss and hallucinations, along with panic attacks.

"At one point, she didn't recognize her father when he came into the hospital room," said Zareta's mother, Aiza Askhabova. "She asked me, 'Who are you?' And she came out onto the balcony of the hospital with me and she's looking at the street and she sees a dog, and she says, 'What's this?' This lasted four days.

"She was having a fit almost every hour, up to 25 times a day, from 20 to 25 minutes each, and they tell us it's a here, look at this paper they gave us: 'Conversion reaction of psychogenic genesis.'

"Let me tell you, we don't understand head or tail of this diagnosis."
Authorities in Grozny and Moscow say the Shelkovskaya events highlight years of inattention to the psychological effects of the war.

Even now, Chechnya's only children's psychological rehabilitation center lies in a cramped, donated apartment in Grozny with no room for residential care. Its outpatient clients include children who sit in the corner and do not communicate at all, some who have strong aggressive streaks and some who are convinced that they are responsible for the deaths of their loved ones.
"We have children who witnessed the death of their own parents. There are children who were strongly traumatized by the first war, and then they had to live all over again through the second war, which was even worse," said Milana Dashayeva, a psychologist at the center. "It has been layer upon layer of extreme stress."

Doctors at the government-run Serbsky Forensic Psychiatry Institute in Moscow have organized emergency training programs in Moscow for Chechen psychologists and will begin mental health training for regional doctors in Chechnya next month.

"You see, it would have been much easier to have found some toxicological problems," said Zurab Kikalidze, the Serbsky Institute's deputy director, who traveled to Chechnya to help diagnose the victims in the Shelkovskaya area. "Much more difficult is to rebuild the system of psychological support in Chechnya.""
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...,4251052,full.story

>This offer limited, so act now!
>
>Are you down on the public school system in your community? Would you
>send your young son or daughter to one of those prestigious academies
>in Britain if you could? Well, it turns out there is a way ... and it's
>virtually free. Yes, Brighton College in East Sussex, England, is
>seeking one student to enroll for the next academic year and it has a
>fully paid scholarship available, thanks to an endowment provided by
>one of its alumni. In his will, Maj. David Wakehurst Peyton left
>hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide for a male or female
>student between 13 and 18. There's just one condition : The recipient
>must have the same last name (which may not be hyphenated, as in, say,
>Peyton-Manning) and must be able to prove it by means of a birth
>certificate. A search of British telephone directories turned up
>roughly 600 Peytons, but none was interested in the opportunity. So it
>has been opened to Americans. In fact, representatives of the school
>have even gone so far as to contact Peyton Manning himself to ask
>whether the Indianapolis Colts quarterback could provide leads to
>prospective candidates. And make no mistake, Brighton is exclusive.
>Tuition costs $37,150 a year. Said headmaster Richard Cairns: "It seems
>mad, having all this money ... and not having anyone to take the spot."

>
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 03:36:20 -0500
>
>
>From: Laufman, Larry E [1]
>Fyi. Larry.
>From: Nicole Bowman [2]
>Subject: Reviewers for Journal of American Indian Education Needed
>
>
>Hello Colleagues: I am sending this on behalf of Dr. Denis Viri, Editor
>of the Journal of American Indian Education (JAIE). Thank you. Nicky
>Bowman
>
>
>The Journal of American Indian Education, based at the Center for Indian
>Education, Arizona State University is seeking to expand its existing
>review panel with well-qualified Native academics and practitioners.
>JAIE has been published continuously since 1961. David Beaulieu is the
>Editor.
>Applications are welcome from fields specific to and related to American
>Indian/Alaska Native/First Nations/Native Hawaiian education. There is
>no compensation to serve as a reviewer. JAIE reviewers must be
>committed to devote time and energy required for completing thorough and
>timely reviews.
>The only rewards for your hard work and dedication will be the knowledge
>that you have contributed to research concerning American Indian, Alaska
>Native, First Nations and Native Hawaiian people that will be more
>accurate and meaningful. You will also receive a complimentary copy of
>each issue of the Journal, where you name will appear as a member of the
>review panel.
>JAIE receives an average of 30 manuscripts per year. Each reviewer can
>expect to review 3-4 manuscripts in one year. Of course the number of
>manuscripts per individual will vary depending upon the topic and the
>type of research presented. Three individuals review each manuscript,
>which has already been carefully screened before being sent out for
>formal review.
>The following statements communicate our primary expectations of review
>panel members:
>
>1. Reviews must have breadth and depth. Every aspect of the manuscript
>must be scrutinized in order to insure that we publish the highest
>quality research on the field of American Indian/Alaska Native
>Education.
>
>2 We expect reviews to be completed within four weeks from receipt of
>the manuscript. Prompt and careful reviews will assure timely and
>thorough revisions well ahead of the publication schedule.
>
>Denis Viri, Associate Editor of JAIE, will be attending AERA and
>specifically the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas SIG to speak with
>and receive short resumes from qualified reviewer candidates. He can
>also schedule an appointment with interested potential reviewers at any
>time during the conference to further explain the process. He can be
>e-mailed at denis.viri@asu.edu, or contacted by telephone at (480)
>965-4681.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------- ------
>EVALTALK - American Evaluation Association (AEA) Discussion List. See
>also
> the website: http://www.eval.org

>
>Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:51:16 -0500
>To: nae@nativeaccess.com
>
>Good morning all:
>
>Last evening there was quite a lively discussion on one of the
>listservs I subscribe to about the top ten bits of advice every
>beginning teacher should receive. Below I've just compiled the
>collective wisdom that was shared (there may be a few repeats). It's
>pretty good advice for any of us, no matter who or what we are
>teaching.
>
>If you've got anything to add, feel free.
>
>Dawn
>
>
>
>1. Be interested in your subject matter and willing to learn about it
>with your students.
>2. Manage your time wisely!
>3. Respect the students
>4. Be organized
>5. Be ready to teach at the beginning of the period.
>6. Be flexible
>7. Enjoy your subject, enjoy your job.
>8. Be positive
>9. Be honest with the students.
>10. Be a teacher first, then a friend.
>11. Don't kill yourself. Be kind to yourself.
>12. Remember kids are kids. That's why they hire an adult to be in the room.
>13. Sense of humor...you gotta have it
>14. Spend half as much time planning and twice as much time grading.
>15. The ability to maintain a loving relationship with another human
>being for at least 6 months at
> a time!
>16. Always remember the 5P's: Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance
>17. Expect the unexpected.
>18. Don't reinvent the wheel, but also don't spend more time looking
>for the wheel than it would
> take to invent it!
>19. Don't take it personally. Your job is to teach and draw the
>line: their job is to learn and try to
> cross the line. they want you to check them. Be
>consistent! most important: teaching is not a
> 9 to 5 job!
>20. Love the students and respect them for where they are right now.
>Relate to them where they
> are, but don' t allow yourself to think they'll stay there.
>Challenge them to always move
> forward. Explain to your students what you want, and various
>ways to get there allow them
> different ways to get where you want them to go,
>21. Be consistent and fair
>22. Don't give up your principles, but always re-examine them
>23. Know your stuff. Remember every year 'your stuff' changes so,
>don't stop learning
>24. Always work with teachers better than yourself
>25. Go to professional conference-keep learning new things
>26. Learn what they have found works
>27. Try something new all the time if it doesn't work, try something else
>28. Teach a new class every time-never let it get old
>29. Join your professional organization-it is a great learning tool and
>network
>30. Always love your job.
>31. Be authentic (true to yourself)--students will see right through
>you and you won't sustain
> yourself if you're not.
>32. Never assign more homework that you are willing to grade
>33. Know thy students
>34. As a teacher, you may never know what impact you may have on a
>student, yet you can be
> certain that you ARE having an impact. You need to teach
>every day, the best you can,
> knowing that the rewards of teaching are in the future and may
>not be visible to you.
>35. Have compassion.
>36. Remember your students reflect you.
>37. Remember Bloom.
>38. Use the Learning Cycle (Engage - Explore - Explain - Elaborate - Evaluate)
>39. Always aim to keep the students engaged.
>40. Remember less is more.
>41. Use a variety of teaching techniques.
>42. If you say it, enforce it!
>43. Be sure to use correct grammar and punctuation in your writing.
>44. Research, review, and fully understand the content that you are teaching.
>
>And a suggested web site.
>
>Good teaching: The top 10 requirements
><http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/commit...teachtip/topten.htm
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

Guys Read

>In the age of the constant Internet-access, cell phone madness and
>high-impact video games, a lot of young men don't think of reading as
>"fun". This cool site, entitled GuysRead.Com, aims to motivate boys to
>read by making it easy for them to find material that they personally find
>interesting.
>
>http://guysread.com
The Cool Tricks and Trinkets Newsletter #394 3/16/06
==============================

This has a flash intro (annoying at low bandwidths) which is interesting, nonetheless.
mpb
================================

"A lot of boys aren\t too crazy about reading

I grew up with five brothers. I taught elementary school for ten years. I\ve been writing books for kids for fifteen years. And I think I have an idea why boys might not like reading.

Boys often have to read books they don\t really like. They don\t get to choose what they want to read. And what they do like to read, people sometimes tell them is not really reading.

I think boys need to:
         _ Choose what they read.
         _ Pick from all different kinds of reading ` not just school novels.
         _ Find out what other guys like to read.
This GUYS READ website is made to help with all of those things.

So go choose something from all different kinds of reading and tell some other guys about it."
http://guysread.com/about_guys.html

"Our Mission
Our mission is to motivate boys to read by connecting them
with materials they will want to read, in ways they like to read. Our mission is to:
1. Make some noise for boys.
We have literacy programs for adults and families. GUYS READ is our chance to call attention to boys\ literacy.
2. Expand our definition of reading.
Include boy-friendly nonfiction, humor, comics, graphic novels, action- adventure, magazines, websites, and newspapers in school reading. Let boys know that all these materials count as reading.
3. Give boys choice.
Motivate guys to want to read by letting them choose texts they will enjoy. Find out what they want. Let them choose from a new, wider range of reading. 4. Encourage male role models.
Men have to step up as role models of literacy. What we do is more important than all we might say.
5. Be realistic. Start small.
Boys aren\t believing that ]Reading is wonderful.^ Reading is often difficult and boring for them. Let\s start with ]Here is one book/magazine/text you might like.^
6. Spread the GUYS READ word.
Encourage people to use the information and downloads on this site to set up their own chapters of GUYS READ, and get people thinking about boys and reading."
http://guysread.com/about_guys_mission.html

"Friday, March 17, 2006
HOWTO make a plush hairy Arctic lobster
A crafty maker has created a plush version of the recently discovered freaky-hairy kiwa hirsuta lobster, and released a pattern for it under a Creative Commons license. Link (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:44:20 AM permalink
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/17/howto_make_a_plush_h.html

Computer drives cutting-edge car dealership

WASILLA: Alaska Sales & Service is most modern GM vendor on the West Coast.
By ZAZ HOLLANDER
Anchorage Daily News

Published: March 18, 2006
Last Modified: March 18, 2006 at 03:46 AM

WASILLA -- A computer controls just about everything at the new Valley headquarters for Alaska Sales & Service: energy use, water treatment, how warm the sidewalks get -- everything but the intercom that pages employees.
"It's a regular good old-fashioned loudspeaking system," said service manager Jack Jackson, who decided that hearing your name hollered out loud is a lot more effective than a silent page.

In business in Alaska since 1944, the dealership sells Buick, Pontiac, GMC, commercial and GM-certified used vehicles. The company had a Valley store until the mid-1970s, then returned in 2001 with a purchase of Valley Motors.
The dealership outgrew the location on Blue Lupine Drive, which covered about 11,600 square feet, according to a borough database.

The new facility, about five minutes south on Blue Lupine, is 65,000 square feet and the most advanced GM dealership on the West Coast, according to Jackson. The new building, assessed by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough at $6.3 million, is state of the art, company officials say.

A self-contained water treatment system recycles wastewater generated by the brushless car wash or rinsed into drains. Jackson described the self-monitoring system as a miniature municipal water-treatment plant that uses bacteria or "biodigesters" to eat oil, antifreeze and other contaminants.
It's the only one in the state and one of 200 around the country, he said.
Recycled waste oil heats the building, concrete floors, outdoor aprons and sidewalks. Reusing waste oil is standard in the auto industry. This system uses the heat generated to warm glycol that circulates through a network of tubes buried in concrete floors and sidewalks.

The computer controls lighting, scheduled to go on and off automatically, and building temperature.

"This place, it's like the HAL 9000," Jackson said, referring to the nefarious upstart computer star in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."
"People come to me ... 'In my office it's cold.' The computer 'thought' they were too warm."

Daily News reporter Zaz Hollander can be reached at zhollander@adn.com or 1-907-352-6711."
http://www.adn.com/money/story/7542772p-7454246c.html

"Little-studied ice worm has become hot topic for science

POSSIBILITIES: Space exploration, organ transplants could benefit from research.

The Associated Press

Published: March 18, 2006
Last Modified: March 18, 2006 at 02:29 AM

PARADISE, Wash. -- A tiny worm that lives in glaciers and snowfields is drawing attention for what it could reveal about life on other planets.
The ice worm inhabits glacial regions in the coastal ranges of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. The odd creature easily moves through ice, is liveliest near the freezing point of water and dissolves into a goo when warmed.

There's been increased interest in ice worms and other animals whose glacial habitat could disappear within 50 years because of global warming.
National Geographic funded one of the first field surveys to focus on ice-worm ecosystems.

NASA last year provided $200,000 to explore the worms' cold tolerance and what it might say about the possibility of life on Jupiter's icy moons and other planets. That work could also improve cold storage of organs and tissues for transplantation.

"They're kind of hot right now," said Ben Lee, a senior at the University of Puget Sound who with roommate Dave Eiriksson recently trekked up Mount Rainier's slopes to uncover the worms.

Lee, 23, chose ice worms for his biology thesis because they haven't been studied much -- and because they provided an excuse to get out in the mountains. He spent last summer gathering specimens from glaciers across the Olympic range.

Lee has also discussed the worms with biologists Dan Shain and Paula Hartzell.
Shain, a professor at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., first encountered ice worms during a 1995 fishing trip to Alaska, where he saw them on display at the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center outside Anchorage.

He has since gotten money from National Geographic and NASA for his studies on ice-worm physiology.

The NASA project focuses on a key enzyme that regulates the worms' energy cycle.

Organs harvested for transplant deteriorate as the cells' energy stores are depleted, he said. Examining the ice worms' metabolism may lead to drugs or chemical solutions that could keep organs alive longer.

Hartzell worked with Shain and has surveyed more than 80 glaciers.
She's writing a book on the peculiar community of snow fleas, nematodes and spiders that dwell on the ice. As the largest invertebrate, ice worms dominate this frozen world.

Hartzell believes the worms travel through tiny fissures in the ice, but other scientists have suggested the worms secrete a substance that melts a path, like a warm knife through butter.

The worms can boost their cells' energy production when the temperature drops, Shain discovered.

"It's equivalent to putting more gasoline in your tank," he said.
They also have cell membranes and enzymes that function and stay flexible in temperatures where most animals' cellular processes creak to a halt.
The downside is extreme sensitivity to heat. At about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the worms' membranes melt and their enzymes go haywire.
Around sunset during warm weather, the black worms are hard to miss as they swarm to the surface to feed on algae, pollen and other digestible debris.
"In some places, they're so thick you can't step without killing tons of them," Lee said.

Before dawn, the worms retreat back into the ice. Their species name, solifugus, means sun-avoiding.

In winter, when algae can't grow and snow blankets the surface, Lee suspects the worms stay deep inside the ice, perhaps going dormant.
In an attempt to root them out, he and Eiriksson recently followed a snowshoe trail that wound steeply through stands of subalpine fir half-buried in pillowy drifts. More than 600 inches of snow fall in the area in an average year.

They dig in an area below McClure Rocks at an elevation of about 7,000 feet. It's not a glacier, but the depression is filled with snow year-round and in summer worms are regularly spotted there.

"I found one!" Lee shouted after the two have dug a 12-foot hole.
"I can't believe it," he said, grinning. "The elusive ice worm."

In each hand was a chunk of snow and what looked like a dark thread. The shorter of the two worms corkscrewed slowly, then froze.

Lee touched the tiny spiral and it snapped. The outside air temperature of about 20 degrees was apparently below the ice-worm survival point.
"Oh well," Lee said. "It's still pretty exciting.""
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7542815p-7454278c.html

"Book argues prehistoric boys doodled in caves to prove themselves
GIRLS AND GLORY: Subject matter points to adolescents, historian says.
By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press

Published: March 18, 2006
Last Modified: March 18, 2006 at 02:28 AM
Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Dale Guthrie

R. Dale Guthrie, natural historian, sculptor and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, sees Paleolithic art lifted from cave walls and makes a connection to 21st century walls -- the stalls of a junior high boys' bathroom.

Some social anthropologists and art historians focus on the most detailed examples of prehistoric art and see symbols of religion or mysticism. Guthrie looked at thousands of more rudimentary drawings that never make it into coffee table art books. He saw themes that have always seized young boys' brains, and stimulated them to draw -- large animals, bloody spears, male sex organs, voluptuous women.

"They're all naked, their boobs are exaggerated, their hips are
exaggerated," he says of the female forms.

He contends that a large fraction of Pleistocene art is the work of boys learning to find their way in their world, and evolving into the people who make up our world.

He lays out his contentions in a new book, "The Nature of Paleolithic Art," published by the University of Chicago Press.

The theory has plenty of detractors.

French prehistorian Jean Clottes, co-author of "The Shamans of Prehistory," is a friend of Guthrie's and wrote a blurb for his book jacket but acknowledged that his theory is not likely to be accepted by other scholars.
Clottes said in an e-mail that the presence of children of all ages in caves has long been established by their footprints.

He also noted that next to elaborate cave drawings made by experts, often at heights that indicate they were made by adults, there are quite a number of doodles, marks on the walls and even crude drawings that children could do. But that they did so at play or for fun is an entirely different proposition, he said.

As for the subject matter, Clottes said, an interest in large animals, hunting and sex would not be confined to boys.

"Does it mean that adult men are not interested in these subjects?" he said.
The drawings and carvings are humans' earliest preserved art, pieces produced late in the Pleistocene Era, 10,000 to 40,000 years ago, across Europe and Asia.

It's a world before villages, churches, crops, dogs, houses and war, when people lived in bands of 20 to 40 and women valued men for their protection and their hunting prowess, because a good hunter meant survival and a lousy one meant starvation.

Most books on Pleistocene art focus on the best of the era, images produced by highly skilled hands. The Mammoth Steppe, the portion of the Northern Hemisphere that stayed ice-free while much of the Earth was covered by ice age glaciation, was rich in deposits of earth pigments, such as red, orange and yellow iron oxides. Paleolithic artists sometimes applied them by brush, sometimes by chewing and spitting in a fine, dry spray, producing a stipple.

"Most prehistorians think of adults doing all these things," Guthrie said. Many scholars also contend that most of the art was done by shamans for religious purposes -- pictures to please the gods, or bless a hunt or dramatize a shaman's vision.

Overlooked, Guthrie said, are thousands of less sophisticated drawings that he believes have a more mundane origin. More than half the population was teenage or younger. With artists' tools available, Guthrie said, it's highly likely youngsters were artists too, and their work just as likely to be preserved as works by experienced painters.

Instead of photographs, Guthrie illustrated his book with his own line drawings of Pleistocene art. His renderings allow comparisons between paintings, carving and etchings and focus the eye away from artistic qualities toward content, he said.

Guthrie says he didn't intend to focus on children as possible artists but was forced into the conclusion.

He was struck by the consistency of images across thousands of years and square miles. Mammoths, cave bears, lions, bison and wild cattle abound. Hunting scenes show animals stuck with spears, flowing blood, and sometimes attacking the hunters.

It's not graffiti, but boys playing, drawing for fun, using pictures to learn how to become men, across prehistoric cultures stretching from what's now Spain to Russia.

"You see the same things coming up over and over again, for a reason," he said. "It's their life."

There are also renditions of the female form, with sexual parts emphasized.
"People doing the art," he said, "were thinking of girls."

Many of the images are the kind of coarse, faceless pictures still drawn by 12-year-olds, not particularly erotic except to the young artist, Guthrie said.
"We're the same creature," he said. "Evolution hasn't given us a clean slate."
The artists probably were boys, the subgroup most likely to take risks, who left drawings deep in caves. People didn't live deep in caves and there was nothing back there they wanted, he said.

Guthrie contends it was a group most likely to engage in high-risk behavior who would take a burning pine bough deep into a cave and leave a picture behind: a testosterone-laden boy trying to prove himself to peers, girls and potential in-laws.

"Older women don't do that," he said. "Older men don't. It's a time in your life when you gain status by being risk-prone, not risk-averse. Everyone else is risk-averse."

He bolsters his contentions with forensic evidence. He digitized hand prints from 700 schoolchildren in Fairbanks, looking for characteristics of sex and age, and judged them against 200 hand prints found in 20 caves. He concluded that most hand prints he analyzed were male.

The book is biased toward art produced by males, he said. Boys weren't the only ones doing art, but they picked a medium that lasted. Paleolithic art likely included furs, leather, lace, braiding, weaving fiber and wood utensils lost to the ravages of time.

"They don't fossilize," he said. "What fossilizes are things of violence: antlers, ivory, bone."

Clottes said he does not believe the drawings were made by children:
"It runs counter both to the evidence of the caves -- the sophisticated panels made by 'professionals' in places where people did not live -- and to what we know from the ways of thinking of hunter-gatherers and, more generally, of traditional cultures: For them, the underground is a liminal or supernatural place, where one may go to access supernatural power or have ceremonies."

Caves were not a place for children to play or to make drawings as their whims moved them, he said."
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7542816p-7454281c.html

"Last Updated: Monday, 27 February 2006, 13:48 GMT

Europe's chill linked to disease
By Kate Ravilious

Spitalfields Market where skeletons from the Great Plague were discovered (BBC)
Bubonic plague may have wiped out over a third of Europe's population Europe's "Little Ice Age" may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.

Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says.

The Little Ice Age was a period of some 300 years when Europe experienced a dip in average temperatures.

Dr Thomas van Hoof and his colleagues studied pollen grains and leaf remains collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast Netherlands.
Monitoring the ups and downs in abundance of cereal pollen (like buckwheat) and tree pollen (like birch and oak) enabled them to estimate changes in land-use between AD 1000 and 1500.

Pore clues

The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas.

This bubonic plague is said to have wiped out over a third of Europe's population.

Counting stomata (pores) on ancient oak leaves provided van Hoof's team with a measure of the fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide for the same period.

This is because leaves absorb carbon dioxide through their stomata, and their density varies as carbon dioxide goes up and down.

"Between AD 1200 to 1300, we see a decrease in stomata and a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to deforestation we think," says Dr van Hoof, whose findings are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

But after AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague.

The researchers think that this drop in carbon dioxide levels could help to explain a cooling in the climate over the following centuries.

Ocean damper

 From around 1500, Europe appears to have been gripped by a chill lasting some 300 years.

There are many theories as to what caused these bitter years, but popular ideas include a decrease in solar activity, an increase in volcanic activity or a change in ocean circulation.

The new data adds weight to the theory that the Black Death could have played a pivotal role.

Not everyone is convinced, however. Dr Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia, UK, said: "It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen."
And Professor Richard Houghton, a climate expert from Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, US, believes that the oceans would have compensated for the change.

"The atmosphere is in equilibrium with the ocean and this tends to dampen or offset small changes in terrestrial carbon uptake," he explained.
Nonetheless, the new findings are likely to cause a stir.

"It appears that the human impact on the environment started much earlier than the industrial revolution," said Dr van Hoof.

"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4755328.stm

"Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Reasons to take math in high school
Espen Andersen -- a Norwegian net-head and a prof at the Norwegian School of Management -- has written an excellent article on why students should choose math at the high-school level, giving 12 reasons to pursue math at the secondary level. Here are my two favorites:

     Choose math because you will lose less money. When hordes of idiots throw their money at pyramid schemes, it is partially because they don't know enough math. Specifically, if you know a little bit about statistics and interest calculations, you can look through economic lies and wishful thinking. With some knowledge of hard sciences you will probably feel better, too, because you will avoid spending your money and your hopes on alternative medicine, crystals, magnets and other swindles -- simply because you know they don't work...

     Choose math because you will live in a world of constant change. New technology and new ways of doing things change daily life and work more and more. If you have learned math, you can learn how and why things work, and avoid scraping by through your career, supported by Post-It Notes and Help files -- scared to death of accidentally pressing the wrong key and running into something unfamiliar. posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:43:37 AM permalink" http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/21/reasons_to_take_math.html

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i11_math.html


WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE MATH IN HIGH SCHOOL

by Espen Andersen, Associate Professor, Norwegian School of Management and Associate Editor, Ubiquity

[The following article was written for Aftenposten, a large Norwegian newspaper. The article encourages students to choose math as a major subject in high school - not just in preparation for higher education but because having math up to maximum high school level is important in all walks of life. Note: This translation is slightly changed to have meaning outside a Norwegian context.]

Why you should choose math in high school

A recurring problem in most rich societies is that students in general do not take enough math - despite high availability of relatively well-paid jobs in fields that demand math, such as engineering, statistics, teaching and technology. Students see math as hard, boring and irrelevant, and do not respond (at least not sufficiently) to motivational factors such as easier admission to higher education or interesting and important work.
It seems to me we need to be much more direct in our attempts to get students to learn hard sciences in general and math in particular. Hence, addressed to current and future high school students, here are 12 reasons to choose lots of math in high school:

Choose math because it makes you smarter. Math is to learning what endurance and strength training is to sports: the basis that enables you to excel in the specialty of your choice. You cannot become a major sports star without being strong and having good cardiovascular ability. You cannot become a star within your job or excel in your profession unless you can think smart and critically -- and math will help you do that.
Choose math because you will make more money. Winners of American Idol and other "celebrities" may make money, but only a tiny number of people have enough celebrity to make money, and most of them get stale after a few years. Then it is back to school, or to less rewarding careers ("Would you like fries with that?"). If you skip auditions and the sports channels and instead do your homework -- especially math -- you can go on to get an education that will get you a well-paid job. Much more than what pop singers and sports stars make -- perhaps not right away, but certainly if you look at averages and calculate it over a lifetime.

Choose math because you will lose less money. When hordes of idiots throw their money at pyramid schemes, it is partially because they don't know enough math. Specifically, if you know a little bit about statistics and interest calculations, you can look through economic lies and wishful thinking. With some knowledge of hard sciences you will probably feel better, too, because you will avoid spending your money and your hopes on alternative medicine, crystals, magnets and other swindles -- simply because you know they don't work.

Choose math to get an easier time at college and university. Yes, it is hard work to learn math properly while in high school. But when it is time for college or university, you can skip reading pages and pages of boring, over-explaining college texts. Instead, you can look at a chart or a formula, and understand how things relate to each other. Math is a language, shorter and more effective than other languages. If you know math, you can work smarter, not harder.

Choose math because you will live in a global world. In a global world, you will compete for the interesting jobs against people from the whole world -- and the smart kids in Eastern Europe, India and China regard math and other "hard" sciences as a ticket out of poverty and social degradation. Why not do as they do -- get knowledge that makes you viable all over the world, not just in your home country?

Choose math because you will live in a world of constant change. New technology and new ways of doing things change daily life and work more and more. If you have learned math, you can learn how and why things work, and avoid scraping by through your career, supported by Post-It Notes and Help files -- scared to death of accidentally pressing the wrong key and running into something unfamiliar.

Choose math because it doesn't close any doors. If you don't choose math in high school, you close the door to interesting studies and careers. You might not think those options interesting now, but what if you change your mind? Besides, math is most easily learned as a young person, whereas social sciences, history, art and philosophy benefit from a little maturing -- and some math.

Choose math because it is interesting in itself. Too many people - including teachers - will tell you that math is hard and boring. But what do they know? You don't ask your grandmother what kind of game-playing machine you should get, and you don't ask your parents for help in sending a text message. Why ask a teacher -- who perhaps got a C in basic math and still made it through to his or her teaching certificate -- whether math is hard? If you do the work and stick it out, you will find that math is fun, exciting, and intellectually elegant.

Choose math because you will meet it more and more in the future. Math becomes more and more important in all areas of work and scholarship. Future journalists and politicians will talk less and analyze more. Future police officers and military personnel will use more and more complicated technology. Future nurses and teachers will have to relate to numbers and technology every day. Future car mechanics and carpenters will use chip-optimization and stress analysis as much as monkey wrenches and hammers. There will be more math at work, so you will need more math at school.
Choose math so you can get through, not just into college. If you cherry-pick the easy stuff in high school, you might come through with a certificate that makes you eligible for a college education. Having a piece of paper is nice, but don't for a second think this makes you ready for college. You will notice this as soon as you enter college and have to take remedial math programs, with ensuing stress and difficulty, just to have any kind of idea what the professor is talking about.

Choose math because it is creative.* Many think math only has to do with logical deduction and somehow is in opposition to creativity. The truth is that math can be a supremely creative force if only the knowledge is used right, not least as a tool for problem solving during your career. A good knowledge of math in combination with other knowledge makes you more creative than others.

Choose math because it is cool. You have permission to be smart, you have permission to do what your peers do not. Choose math so you don't have to, for the rest of your life, talk about how math is "hard" or "cold". Choose math so you don't have to joke away your inability to do simple
calculations or lack of understanding of what you are doing. Besides, math will get you a job in the cool companies, those that need brains.
You don't have to become a mathematician (or an engineer) because you choose math in high school. But it helps to chose math if you want to be smart, think critically, understand how and why things relate to each other, and to argue effectively and convincingly.

Math is a sharp knife for cutting through thorny problems. If you want a sharp knife in your mental tool chest - choose math!

*This point was added by Jon Holtan, a mathematician who works with the insurance company If.

Source: Ubiquity Volume 7, Issue 11 (March 21, - March 27, 2006) www.acm.org/ubiquity

>As experts ponder world water crisis, teenagers show creativity
>Youths on grass-roots campaigns are reaching those hardest hit by the
>lack of safe water. By Monica Campbell
>http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0322/p01s01-wogi.html?s=hns
"from the March 22, 2006 edition

As experts ponder world water crisis, teenagers show creativity
By Monica Campbell | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor MEXICO CITY ` As water experts meet in Mexico City to debate the world's daunting water crisis, 15-year-old Dolly Akhter is here to share her simple approach.

She and 6,000 other girls canvass the slums of Dhaka, going door to door in the Bangladeshi capital to tout good hygiene. "We talk to families and especially the teenage girls about the importance of washing their hands," explains Dolly.

She is among 100 or so children from more than 30 countries participating in the Children's Water Forum held parallel to the 4th World Water Forum. While the adults argue over ideological differences, the youngsters showcase the grass-roots action that reaches those hardest hit by the lack of safe water and basic sanitation:

_ Suresh Baral, 13, leads a club in rural Nepal that helps communities pay for toilets through microfinancing;

_ As leader of Nigeria's Children Parliament, 15-year-old Ibrahim Adamuy implores government officials to put aside their "mounds of paper" and talk about solutions;

_ Anyeli Gonz&#E1;lez, 16, heads a program at her high school in Colombia that brings in local storytellers, puppeteers, and water company executives to raise environmental awareness;

_ 9th-grader Happy Sisomphone directs a radio program in Laos to improve sanitation;

"Youth-led ideas may seem simple," says Jamal Shagir, the World Bank's director of water and energy. "But they represent fantastic opportunities for changing behavior and attitudes within communities. The international community must continue to push these programs along and harness young people's energy."

Coming together to find solutions

In the conference halls, the teenagers mix with the larger forum's 11,000 adult participants - industry leaders, government ministers, and nongovernmental groups - from more than 100 countries.

Adult-led seminars on water policy have been marked by ideological feuds: Business-friendly politicians and corporationspromote privatization and private sector control over water delivery, while others - who also push their agenda in street protests outside the conference - believe water is a public domain that should be managed by communities.

Just like the older experts here, the teenage activists rattle off the grim facts: More than a billion people are without adequate sewage and sanitation, according to the United Nations (UN), and more than 3 million deaths a year are blamed on water-borne disease.

The teenagers tend to avoid politics and corporate agendas and focus on cooperative action. They're here to learn about each other's projects and spread the word to more children.

"We must all fight together to change our lives and those of others," says Dolly, who was flown here from her bamboo-and-tin home by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "How can we stand by and let children die if there are solutions?"

Vanessa Tobin, chief of UNICEF's water and sanitation section, appreciates the straightforward talk. "There's no diplomacy in their dialogue. It's all very direct and very honest."

Ms. Tobin's section also runs education programs at schools in more than 70 countries, and helped kick-start Dhaka's hygiene education program. Such youth-led projects are often launched and funded by UNICEF and other groups, such as the US-based nonprofit Water Education for Teachers and the humanitarian agency Oxfam. They hope that getting kids involved at the grass-roots level now will pay off in the long term.

"When you get young people involved at an early enough age, you're putting in place a mind-set that will be there 20 years from now," says Tobin. "The experiences these children are having now won't be forgotten."

Getting results, bit by bit

Suresh's toilet-financing project in Nepal, started with advice from UNICEF, is already producing results: Two-thirds of homes in his village of Pumbi Bhumbi now have toilets, he says. "Bit by bit, we're managing to bring change," he affirms.

Ethiopian Ojulu Okelli hopes to get running water and latrines in his school, but few places pose a bigger challenge for water activists than his town of Gambella on the border with southern Sudan. It's an area mired in absolute poverty that is just now recovering from years of ethnic conflict. Okelli only gets access to clean water when his mother and sister return from their five-kilometer walk from the nearest well.

Ojulu and his friends spotted a chance to improve their underdog surroundings by getting involved in their school's environmental club. "We started cleaning up the grounds on Saturdays, picking up the litter and all that," he says, adding that he hopes that community leaders will notice the cleanups and bring tap water and latrines to the school.

"The girls need this especially," adds Okelli, who is aware that menstruation means an inconvenient and humiliating trip to a lone bush - sometimes causing girls to drop out of school when they hit puberty.
In other parts of Africa, schoolkids spin on brightly colored
merry-go-rounds that pump water from nearby wells when spun. About 600 UNICEF-financed "play pumps" are now in place in South Africa.

Meanwhile, in his southeastern village in Laos, spiky-haired Happy Sisomphone directs a radio segment on sanitation, hygiene, and water-borne diseases.

"In school we're reminded that it's important to wash your hands after playing with dirt," says Happy, trained by UNICEF as a volunteer radio producer. "But we never learn why. So I interview people about the reasons we should be careful."

Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokeswoman, considers youths "incomparably useful" to community projects. "They take their messages to their schools, their families and friends," she says. "They create a domino effect. And if adults see kids leading these initiatives then they think, oh, I can do this, too."

Already, a good deal of the talk at the forum has centered on local, homegrown solutions. At the same time, UN studies highlighted that bringing such solutions requires tighter cooperation between governments and private companies, with less of an eye on profits.

But despite the good intentions, some of the youths run into walls. When Happy started up his radio show, some villagers rejected the idea of a young voice over the radio waves lecturing about the ills generated by bad water. "Big messages from little people don't always work," he says. "But little by little people tend to come around.""
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0322/p01s01-wogi.html?s=hns

The Washington Post article is a good start. The government's checklists are a bit wordy. If anyone develops a localized version of either the schools or communities checklists, please let me know. (possibly to share here http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org)
mpb

Schools Told to Prepare for Bird Flu

By BEN FELLER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; 7:48 AM

WASHINGTON -- The nation's schools, recognized incubators of respiratory diseases among children, are being told to plan for the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu.

Federal health leaders say it is not alarmist or premature for schools to make preparations, such as finding ways to teach kids even if they've all been sent home.

School boards and superintendents have gotten used to emergency planning for student violence, terrorism or severe weather. Pandemic preparation, though, is a new one.

They have a lot to think over, top government officials said Tuesday.
Who coordinates decisions on closing schools or quarantining kids? If classes shut down for weeks, how will a district keep kids from falling behind? Who will keep the payroll running, or ease the fear of parents, or provide food to children who count on school meals?

"Those are the kinds of issues that I don't think people have spent a lot of time talking about yet," said Stephen Bounds, director of legal and policy services for the Maryland Association of School Boards.

"But if New Orleans and Katrina taught us nothing else, it taught us you need to be thinking about things ahead of time _ and preparing for the worst," Bounds said.

The urgency is about bird flu, the name for the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu.

It remains primarily a contagious bird disease. Typically spread from direct contact with contaminated birds, it has infected more than 170 people and killed roughly 100. None of those cases occurred in the United States, but officials say bird flu is likely to arrive this year in birds.
As outbreaks have hit Africa, Asia and Europe, officials have launched campaigns to educate the public. To help stop the spread of the disease, farmers have killed tens of millions of chickens and turkeys.

Experts fear the virus could change into a form that passes easily among people.

In North Carolina on Tuesday, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings joined Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to encourage schools to prepare. Spellings said schools must be aware that they may have to close their buildings _ or that their schools may need to be used as makeshift hospitals, quarantine sites or vaccination centers.

The government has created checklists on preparation and response steps, specialized for preschools, grade schools, high schools and colleges. The dominant theme is the need for coordination among local, state and federal officials.

Some of the advice is common sense, like urging students to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze to keep infection from spreading. Other steps would take schools considerable time to figure out, such as legal and communication issues.

"I don't think that the issue of bird flu has resonated yet," said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, which represents many of the country's teachers.

Weaver praised the federal government for providing guidance that can be plugged into a school district's crisis plan. But the sudden urgency on bird flu, he said, should not steal attention from the daily struggles schools face, like trying to keep their classrooms safe.

Children age 5 to 18 tend to be the biggest spreaders of flu viruses in the community, experts say. Schools may be ordered to close to prevent spreading the disease.

In Massachusetts, school administrators are considering using an automated phone bank to announce homework assignments and update parents. Another plan would use the Internet for communication between students and their teachers.

But those plans are limited, and many places have had budget cuts in technology, said Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. "I don't think we're anywhere near having a systemic way of approaching this," he said.

Any school closing may not be for only a day or two. A shutdown would probably have to last a month or longer to be effective, said flu specialist Ira Longini, a faculty member at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"The school itself plays a big role," said Longini. "It's just a massive mixing ground for respiratory illness."

At the college level, the American Council on Education, a higher education umbrella group, has alerted thousands of college presidents about the need to prepare for bird flu.

Federal health leaders have advised each college to establish a pandemic response team and plan for outbreak scenarios that could close or quarantine their campuses.

__

On The Net:

Pandemic Flu school checklists: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/tab5.html" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...06032200255_pf.html

The government's version, even the print version, had to be re-formatted so people could localize it.

I re-designed it for MS Word, stripped the macros and other junk, etc.
It is posted here
http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/2006/0...aredness-checklist/
[It is not uncommon for institutions to assume everybody else has the resources they do, including the background that they know. Bad public involvement. My 3 cents. mpb]

From a fellow FYI Teacher--
Unfortunately, I think studies have shown that whistle-blowers usually do not fare well--at least they sleep better at night. I think it is Bacon who said all it takes for tyranny to succeed is one good [person] to say nothing? mpb

-----Original Message-----

To: economics-Hawaii@googlegroups.com; livingnation@yahoogroups.com Cc: kaleimailealii@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 08:50:27 -1000
Subject: [livingnation] Fw: Rewriting The Science


<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/...06/03/17/60minutes/
 > Rewriting The Science
 > March 19, 2006
 >
 > (CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says > there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's > going to say them anyway.
 >
 > Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. > He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this > imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush > administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he > can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.
 >
 > But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he > knows.
 >
 > Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to > the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say > it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it."
 >
 > What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He > points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show > massive losses of ice to the sea.
 >
 > Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is > that possible?
 >
 > "There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. "The natural changes, the > speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans > are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."
 >
 > Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that > pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his > research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases > before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes > unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message. >
 > "In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed > such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the > public," says Hansen.
 >
 > Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in > 2004. ". there is a new review process . ," the e-mail read. "The White >
 > House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases," it > continued.
 >
 > Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for > Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on > warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. > Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that > time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked > someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation's leading > institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.
 >
 > "I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You > might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody > better," says Cicerone.
 >
 > And Cicerone, who's an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every > leading scientist told 60 Minutes.
 >
 > "Climate change is really happening," says Cicerone.
 >
 > Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse > gases: "Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a > couple of others, which are all - the increases in their concentrations > in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple."
 >
 > But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like > they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled > "not sufficiently reliable." It's a tone of scientific uncertainty the > president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a > global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
 >
 > "We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the > future," President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of > the White House. "We do not know how fast change will occur, or even > how some of our actions could impact it."
 >
 > Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, > saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University > of Iowa: "I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of > scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I > believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster."
 >
 > Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit > down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. > Other interviews have been denied.
 >
 > "I object to the fact that I'm not able to freely communicate via the > media," says Hansen. "National Public Radio wanted to interview me and > they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA
 > headquarters and the comment was made that they didn't want Jim Hansen > going on the most liberal media in America. So I don't think that kind > of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be > able to communicate the science."
 >
 > Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he's had trouble > with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton
 > administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen > refused to spin the science that way.
 >
 > "Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or > to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that > you should be a spokesman for the administration?" asks Hansen. "I've > tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as > best I can."
 >
 > Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at > the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It > appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate > reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change > Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House > to make global warming seem less threatening.
 >
 > "The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is > to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can't even > being to discuss impacts and response strategies," says Piltz. "There's > too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying > that, its lawyers and politicians."
 >
 > Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he > helped write a report to Congress called "Our Changing Planet." >
 > Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a > review draft to the White House.
 >
 > Asked what happens, Piltz says: "It comes back with a large number of > edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the > Council on Environmental Quality."
 >
 > Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, "Phil Cooney."
 >
 > Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist > for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White > House," he says.
 >
 > Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the > White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited > climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth > is undergoing rapid change becomes "may be undergoing change." > "Uncertainty" becomes "significant remaining uncertainty." One line >
 > that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed > out.
 >
 > "He was obviously passing it through a political screen," says Piltz. > "He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text > that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up > uncertainty language throughout."
 >
 > In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line ". the uncertainties > remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. > ." References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the > drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it > into the final report: the phrase "earth may be" undergoing change made >
 > it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn't room at the > White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.
 >
 > "Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says > Piltz. "That's why you will find not too many people in the federal > agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless > they're retired or unless they're ready to resign."
 >
 > Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is > nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the > arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the > world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for > ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north. >
 > "Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right > about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those > two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream > but, these days, its a more like a melt river," Pelley said, standing > at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.
 >
 > The Bush administration doesn't deny global warming or that man plays a > role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate > research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says > what's urgent now is action.
 >
 > "We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and > begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions," Hansen > explains. "And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of > the century, we've got to be on a declining curve.
 >
 > "If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don't think we can keep > global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we're going to, > that there's a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If > the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You > can't tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can't build a wall around > the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control." >
 > But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted > for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice > sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the > paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was > added: "straying from research strategy into speculative findings and > musings here."
 >
 > Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top > official scolded him for using the word danger.
 >
 > "I think we know a lot more about the tipping points," says Hansen. "I > think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional > global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the > potential effects on the ice sheets."
 >
 > "You just used that word again that you're not supposed to use - > danger," Pelley remarks.
 >
 > "Yeah. It's a danger," Hansen says.
 >
 > For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president's > science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be > available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental > Quality didn't return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White > House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.
 >
 >

Hand Sanitizers, Good or Bad?

  By DEBORAH FRANKLIN
Published: March 21, 2006

What started out as an informal classroom experiment at East Tennessee State University has turned up disturbing evidence about some alcohol-based instant hand sanitizers a the antiseptic gels and foams that have become popular as a quick way to disinfect hands when soap and water aren't available.
FOR GENERAL USE Some sanitizers can be a good supplement to soap and water.
Many such sanitizers a whether a brand name or a generic version a work well, and are increasingly found in hallway dispensers in hospitals, schools, day care centers and even atop the gangways of cruise ships as one more safeguard against the hand-to-mouth spread of disease. Several studies from such settings have shown that use of the alcohol-based rubs on hands that aren't visibly soiled seems particularly helpful in curbing the spread of bad stomach and intestinal bugs.

But a study published in this month's issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found that at least one brand of sanitizer found on store shelves, as well as some recipes for homemade versions circulating on Web sites about crafts or directed at parents, contain significantly less than the 60 percent minimum alcohol concentration that health officials deem necessary to kill most harmful bacteria and viruses.

"What this should say to the consumer is that they need to look carefully at the label before they buy any of these products," said Elaine Larson, professor of pharmaceutical and therapeutic research at Columbia's nursing school. "Check the bottle for active ingredients. It might say ethyl alcohol, ethanol, isopropanol or some other variation, and those are all fine. But make sure that whichever of those alcohols is listed, its concentration is between 60 and 95 percent. Less than that isn't enough."
Scott Reynolds, a specialist in infection control at the James H. Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Mountain Home, Tenn., discovered the problem inadvertently, in the course of giving a simple demonstration on the merits of hand washing to a friend's class of biology students at nearby East Tennessee State.

Mr. Reynolds had the students place their hands on agar plates of growth medium before and after one of several experimental conditions: rubbing their hands briskly under tap water; sudsing with hospital-grade soap and then rinsing with water; or rubbing their hands with a dollop of one of two types of alcohol-based hand sanitizer. The sanitizers used were a foam version from the hospital that contained 62 percent ethanol, and a gel version Mr. Reynolds's wife bought at a local discount store.

The next day, much to Mr. Reynolds's surprise, the culture plates from hands doused and rubbed with the store-bought gel were covered with clumps of bacteria that had, in some cases, formed a visible outline of the student's handprint on the plate.

Only when he flipped the bottle around to read the label on the back did Mr. Reynolds see that the gel's active ingredient was "40 percent ethyl alcohol."

"Otherwise, it looked like all the rest you see in the store," he said. "Same price. Same claims. Same pump bottle."

In a more formal follow-up study, Mr. Reynolds and two colleagues replicated the results, and confirmed that the lack of sufficient alcohol was to blame. If anything, he said, the faulty gel seemed to mobilize the bacteria, spreading them around the hand instead of killing them.
Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who has studied the use and relative effectiveness of alcohol-based gels and antibacterial soaps by consumers as well as hospital workers, said she wasn't surprised by Mr. Reynolds's results from the low-alcohol sanitizer, but she was concerned to read that such a product was on the market.
"I used to work in a virology lab," Dr. Aiello said, "and we knew a it has been known for decades a that an alcohol concentration under 60 percent won't kill the microbes. It's really frightening to think that there are products out there that contain levels lower than that."

Sometimes much lower. One recipe Mr. Reynolds and his colleagues discovered on the Internet for a bubble gum-scented sanitizer aimed at children called for half a -cup of aloe vera gel and a quarter cup of 99 percent rubbing alcohol, with a bit of fragrance. That translates to a concentration of roughly 33 percent alcohol, Dr. Aiello said.

Since 2002, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended that health care workers routinely use high quality alcohol-based gels instead of soap and water on their hands when moving from patient to patient a as long the worker's hands aren't visibly soiled.
Alcohol doesn't cut through grime well, so dirt, blood, feces or other body fluids or soil must be wiped or washed away first, if the alcohol in the sanitizer is to be effective. In such cases, hand washing with soap and water is advised.

In October 2005, a committee appointed by the Food and Drug Administration met to discuss, among other things, whether consumers should also be encouraged to use the alcohol-based hand sanitizers.

Dr. Tammy Lundstrom, representing the nonprofit Association for
Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, argued that they should. The committee's decision is expected this month.

"About 60 percent of surgery these days is outpatient," Dr. Lundstrom said last week in a phone interview. "We have so many people caring for ill family members at home. Maybe you're without running water because of a hurricane or blackout, or you've got a bad hip and can't move easily to get to the sink as often as you should to wash your hands. What about after you sneeze in the car, or stop to put in contact lenses?"

In all those cases, she said, alcohol-based hand sanitizers a of the correct formulation a could be a godsend, not to replace soap and water, but as an important supplement.

Dr. Aiello sees even more potential uses in the office. "Studies show that the computer keyboard, the phone receiver, and the desk are worse than the bathroom in terms of micro-organisms," she said. "Washing with plain old soap and water should be your first choice. But if you're stuck between meetings and about to grab lunch at your desk, or just use somebody else's keyboard, using a hand sanitizer before and after could be a really good idea."
How much goop should you use? Vigorously rub all sides of your hands with enough gel or foam to get them wet, and rub them together until they are dry. If your hands are dry within 10 or 15 seconds, according to the C.D.C. guidelines for health care workers, you haven't used enough."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/health/21cons.html

Whose Internet is it, anyway?

Commentary > The Monitor's View
from the March 24, 2006 edition

The hot debate over "Net neutrality" has spilled beyond Internet chat rooms and into Congress. The concept that those who own the "pipes" can't dictate what goes through them has made the Internet an engine for individual and economic growth. An Internet with gatekeepers threatens the Net's creative soul.

A group of 70 organizations has sent a letter to Congress urging that it pass "meaningful and enforceable" Internet neutrality legislation. Among them are citizen groups, such as the Consumer Federation of America and the AARP, as well as the stars of the 21st-century Internet-based economy: Google, Microsoft, eBay, TiVo, and Yahoo.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon has introduced legislation that would ban Internet service providers from setting up special "fast lane"
higher-priced services or from blocking, degrading, altering, modifying, or changing the Internet traffic they handle.

Opposing them are big providers such as AT&T and Verizon. They'd like to charge extra to those who don't want to have their Internet traffic caught in the slow lane, as well as use that fast lane for products they create and own.

What's the harm in that? Google surely has the cash to pay extra for premium service. But could Google, a tiny startup only a few years ago, have sprung up in an environment where the established search engines of the day could pay more to buy premium service? YouTube is a fledgling online company that already transmits some 30 million videos per day and is attracting attention. Would it get fair treatment if big TV and movie corporations can pay to have their video get special service?

Internet-based phone companies like Vonage and Skype have revolutionized the phone industry by offering calls over the Web at low cost. But AT&T and Verizon eventually saw what they were doing and jumped in to offer those services, too. What's to keep them from giving these little guys poor connections and expediting their own products on the fast lane?

"Net neutrality" simply means that data - a phone call, an e-mail, a video - can travel freely over the Internet without the interference of those who own parts of the pipeline. Those transmitting it shouldn't discriminate as long as the content is legal and doesn't damage the system.

The phone companies argue that competition between carriers will prevent abuses. If customers feel unfairly treated by one provider, they can switch to another.

But no such competition exists. A handful of cable TV and phone companies control the lion's share of US broadband Internet access. Many consumers have no choice among broadband providers. The acquisition of Bell South by AT&T, now under way, shows that competition is shrinking, not expanding.
If Congress fails to act, the only hope may be that neutrality advocates can open up a "third pipe" to homes, even if only in some key markets. That might create just enough competition to keep the cable-phone duopoly honest. That third pipe might be a municipal wireless (WiFi) network, another wireless system, or some future technology.

Pipeline owners shouldn't choose winners and losers in the online marketplace. Tollbooths and gates are the last thing the Net needs. "
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0324/p08s02-comv.html?s=hns

>Online Classroom Expedition Underway
>GoNorth! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2006
>
>For further information, see the GoNorth! website at:
>http://www.polarhusky.com/welcomeletter.asp?menuID=0
>
>----------------------------------------
>GoNorth! is a five-year program consisting of online dogsled expeditions
>exploring the circumpolar Arctic and offering unique learning
>opportunities for K-12 classrooms.
>
>The first of five expeditions, GoNorth! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
>2006, began in February and aims to explore the prospects of oil
>exploration and the value of traditional ecological knowledge, as well
>as document the realities of arctic climate change. The GoNorth! team,
>consisting of 27 Polar Huskies and seven international educators,
>scientists, and explorers, is traveling through Alaska to learn from the
>Gwiich'n and Inupiat Eskimo (Inuit) people along the trail while
>gathering scientific data from the field.
>
>GoNorth! was developed by the College of Education and Human Development
>at the University of Minnesota and NOMADS Online Classroom Expeditions
>and is partly funded by the Office of Polar Programs at NSF.
>
>Learn how real-time learning adventures create a standards-aligned
>curriculum resource for the K-12 classroom, covering science, math,
>language arts, and social studies. Register your class and take your
>students to the Arctic:
>http://www.polarhusky.com/welcomeletter.asp?menuID=0
>
>------------------------------------------------------------ -------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

>Monday, March 27- My Space Or Your Space?:
>Approximately 43 million people are already using the website, "MySpace,"
>and nearly 150,000 new clients sign up each day. It's an internet service
>that is promoted as a social networking site. You can connect with old
>friends and make new ones by visiting personal pages. Musicians and film
>makers are using the site to promote their art. People share photos,
>comments and even videos on-line. Many Native youth are among the users.
>Native parents might be interested in seeing what's on this site and
>learning about the regulation of this site. Some internet safety experts
>warn it could be a playground for pedophiles. What are you agreeing to
>when you sign up? How can parents make sure their child isn't giving out
>information that's too personal? Guests include: Jana (Lumbee) MySpace
>subscriber. http://www.nativeamericacalling.org/

"The MySpace Age
By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Magazine

In little more than a couple of years MySpace.com has gone from zero to being a top five website which no self-respecting US teenager can ignore. Now, it's gaining ground in Britain.

As any creative thinker knows the best ideas are always the most obvious. The rise of MySpace.com from nowhere to almost the top of the internet tree in just 36 months does nothing to change that maxim.

MySpace is simplicity itself - a site that enables anyone to build their own homepage for free, listing their likes, dislikes, favourite bands, top books, best movies, general interests, relationship status etc, and then hook-up with other like-minded folk.

As 25-year-old Briana Dougherty, a MySpace devotee, puts it, "it's a casual way to stay in contact without appearing weird".

When Briana, who works in the music industry, hits the town, goes to a gig or a party and meets someone interesting, they trade MySpace profiles and stay in contact.


It's a central meeting point to stay in contact with friends all the time MySpace user Briana Dougherty
Asking for someone's e-mail address can be "creepy", says Briana, who is from California and works in London, because it's "personal, one-to-one contact".

She has 224 "friends" on MySpace. Some are good friends from back home in the US, some are just people "you occasionally see around parties" and some are not actually individuals, but bands she likes.

Music, always a lively topic of conversation among the young, is a great common denominator on MySpace, and fertile ground for emerging bands - the Arctic Monkeys' owe much of their success to the site.

These days the time-honoured teenage conversational gambit "What music are you into?" will likely be met with a response along the lines of "Can I refer you to my MySpace page."

MySpace is what's known as a social networking site. It's by far the biggest, claiming about 57 million registered users, and is currently ranked the fifth most popular English language site on the net by the Alexa ratings service. Others of the same genre include Facebook, Bebo, MSN Spaces, Friendster and Yahoo 360.

Rupert Murdoch
The new man behind MySpace - media mogul Rupert Murdoch
All work in a similar way, offering users a host of conventional internet functions - blogging, user forums, instant messaging, personal profiles, online photo albums, visitor comment spaces - in one place.

See someone who's into the same music as you, similar films, is a compatible star sign, or you just fancy? Send them a message and if they're interested, bingo, you've made a friend. Although MySpace wouldn't confirm its UK audience, it has been cited at between two and four million. The launch of a UK-specific site is thought to be imminent.

The success of MySpace has not gone unnoticed by commercial operators who have seized on it as a handy way of targeting potential customers. For example, anyone who proclaims their interest in kite-surfing, should steel themselves for a torrent of e-mails from companies trying to sell them the latest kit.

And with millions of users, social networking sites, which make money out of advertising, are potential goldmines. MySpace was bought last year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m (&#A3;332.85m).

But while Mr Murdoch, 75 this week, is clearly hip to the appeal of MySpace, many people even half his age will never have heard of it.

DANGERS OF NETWORKING SITES
The safety of people, particularly children and women, using MySpace is a growing concern
Rachel O'Connell, who leads the Home Office taskforce on internet safety, is anxious that pages are so easily searchable
Displaying photos of oneself helps stalkers, she says
MySpace's Chris DeWolfe says 'This isn't a MySpace issue, it's an internet issue'
"The appeal of these sites lies in the crucial part of the adolescent socialisation process which we all go through... finding your identity, voice, place and status - the tribe with which you most identify," says Jo Twist, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
The ideas behind these sites are not new, says Dr Twist, but what is characterising the trend now is the "ease with which people can upload and share their own 'digital assets' - motifs that say something about who they are."

Some parents will doubtless gaze at their offspring busily cultivating friendships online - rather than in the real world - with an air of despair. But, says Miss Twist, it can be hard for them to understand because "many of us have our social networks in place".

The ease with which relationships can be forged online is changing the nature of friendship too. After all, how common is it to have upwards of 200 friends?

MySpace user Stella Sims, 26, sees a clear, but unspoken, competitive streak among users.

"It's a place to show off your personality and how many friends you have. It's a bit of statement of how popular you are," says Stella.

MySpace homepage
The site is said to have 57 million registered users
Any philosopher or psychologist will tell you that close friendships with more half-a-dozen people is not possible, says Mark Vernon, author of the Philosophy of Friendship.

MySpace friendships are more akin to "audience reach... like Richard and Judy" than traditional social reach.

"Friendship takes time to develop. The person who says they have hundreds of friends wants our compassion not our envy. The heart of friendship is wanting to know someone and be known by them. This is not the same as knowing about someone which is what you get if you never meet your online pal face to face."

Some will find the idea of setting out one's personal life to a potential audience of millions perplexing. Yet MySpace users show little sign of being intimidated by their extensive friendship networks, or indeed by the inevitable threat posed by dishonest, even predatory, users.

Despite a spate of paedophiles and stalkers targeting the site - two men were charged in the US on Tuesday with assaulting girls they met on MySpace - most users simply ignore unwanted communications, according to a recent academic study in the US.

Perhaps the biggest headache anyone with a couple of hundred mates needs to get their head around is how to manage their Christmas card list.
Add your comments on this story, using the form below."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4782118.stm

>7) Horace Mann Offers Continued Education Funding for
> Educators
>
> Deadline: May 16, 2006
>
> For the fourth consecutive year, Horace Mann Educators
> Corporation ( http://www.horacemann.com/ ), a national
> multi-line insurance company focusing on educators'
> financial needs, will offer scholarships totaling $30,000
> to help educators continue their education.
>
> This year's scholarship program for educators will offer
> thirty-six awards, including one $5,000 award payable over
> four years, fifteen $1,000 awards payable over two years,
> and twenty one-time $500 awards.
>
> To be eligible, an applicant must be an educator employed
> by a U.S. public or private school district or U.S. public
> or private college/university and be planning to take
> classes at a two- or four-year accredited college or
> university. In addition, the applicant must have a minimum
> of two year's teaching experience.
>
> Program guidelines and application are available at the
> Horace Mann Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.fdncenter.org/pnd/10001591/horacemann
>
> For additional RFPs in Education, visit:
> http://fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_education.jhtml
>

Worked for me. Even at the age of 2 I was out playing in the mud and snakes. mpb

Lifelong love of nature
By Melissa Healy, Times Staff Writer
March 20, 2006

SCIENCE camp won't do it, and neither will joining the 4-H Club. In fact, being a Boy Scout, with all its outdoor activity, may not be enough.
Parents wishing to raise a future environmentalist should give their kids plenty of time for free play in the wild before they're 11 years old, suggests a new Cornell University study.

Psychologist Nancy Wells and her research staff reviewed data gathered in a 1998 U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service survey in which urban adults provided details of their childhood play activities. They discovered that those who, as children, had engaged in activities such as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, fishing and hunting were significantly more likely to consider themselves active environmentalists than those whose experiences of nature were more controlled or instructional.

Domestic nature-oriented activities, such as gardening, had some effect on adult attitudes about environmental issues, but it was not strong. "When children become truly engaged with the natural world at a young age, the experience is likely to stay with them in a powerful way a shaping their subsequent environmental path," says Wells. The article will appear later this month in the biannual, peer-reviewed online journal Children, Youth and Environments."
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-...la-headlines-health

This is a good example of why proper public involvement/community involvement is so important.
mpb

On the Brink: Guinea Worm | A Long Crusade
March 26, 2006

Dose of Tenacity Wears Down a Horrific Disease
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

OGI, Nigeria a Whatever secrets the turgid brown depths of the Sacred Pond of Ogi may keep, there is one they betray quite easily: why it is so infuriatingly hard to wipe even one disease off the face of the earth.
Ogi is one of the last areas of Nigeria infested with Guinea worm, a plague so ancient that it is found in Egyptian mummies and is thought to be the "fiery serpent" described in the Old Testament as torturing the Israelites in the desert.

For untold generations here, yardlong, spaghetti-thin worms erupted from the legs or feet a or even eye sockets a of victims, forcing their way out by exuding acid under the skin until it bubbled and burst. The searing pain drove them to plunge the blisters into the nearest pool of water, whereupon the worm would squirt out a milky cloud of larvae, starting the cycle anew.
"The pain is like if you stab somebody," said Hyacinth Igelle, a farmer with a worm coming out of a hand so swollen and tender that he could not hold a hoe. He indicated how the pain moved slowly up his arm. "It is like fire a it comes late, but you feel it even unto your heart."

Now, thanks to a relentless 20-year campaign led by former President Jimmy Carter, Guinea worm is poised to become the first disease since smallpox to be pushed into oblivion. Fewer than 12,000 cases were found last year, down from 3 million in 1986.

Mr. Carter persuaded world leaders, philanthropists and companies to care about an obscure and revolting disease and help him fight it. His foundation mobilized volunteers in tens of thousands of villages to treat the drinking water the worms live in.

But the eradication effort has already taken a decade longer than expected. And sometimes, when the world beyond their farthest sorghum field or camel-grazing spot takes an interest in them, the villagers fight the message.
Guinea worm's Latin name is dracunculiasis, or "affliction with little dragons," but in Africa it is often called empty granary because of its tendency to erupt at harvest time, rendering farmers unable to work. It ought to be almost ridiculously easy to wipe out, because it has a complex life cycle in which humans, worms, fleas and shallow ponds each must play their parts perfectly. Any missing link disrupts the chain of transmission.
Wells can be drilled to prevent the afflicted from plunging their limbs into the village's drinking water. Or local water sources can be treated with a mild pesticide that kills the fleas that swallow the worm larvae and are, in turn, swallowed by the humans. Or every family can faithfully pour its water through a filter cloth each day, or drink through filtering straws. With unremitting effort, experts at the Carter Center now estimate, purging the last nine African countries of the disease could take five more years. Dr. Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben, technical director of its campaign, says he is sure that, at long last, victory is in sight.

Nigeria is in the homestretch. Last year, it reported only 121 new cases, down from estimates of 650,000 two decades ago.

Dr. Ruiz-Tiben has been fighting it for 22 years. And for all the success, he groans, "sometimes it's like dragging a dead elephant through a swamp by its tail."

A Pond's Dangers

In 2001, Jacob Ogebe, a field officer for the Carter Center Guinea Worm Eradication Program, was trying to track down every pond in the area surrounding Ogi. He treated each with Abate, a mild pesticide that left the water potable, but killed the microscopic fleas that carry Guinea worm.
But slowly, he realized that Ogi's villagers were misleading him. He heard rumors of a sacred pond, but no one would take him to it. "They kept leading me to other places," he said. "Then one day, I was treating another pond, and I got lost and discovered it."

Though it is only a triangular puddle about 20 feet on each side in a heavily trodden grove of trees, the villagers revere it. "We have laws here, so no one dirties it," Gabriel Egba, the pond's high priest, said in an interview on its edge.

The rules are painted on a metal sign. The sacred water may not be sold or bartered. Any animal that drinks must be killed. Anyone who bathes, fishes, urinates or dips an oily pot in it is to be fined. Fines range from 35 cents to a live goat.

The pond teems with whiskery fish, turtles and snakes. More important, villagers say they believe that the souls of their ancestors also dwell in it, and Mr. Egba officiates at the sacrifices of roosters and rams for anyone wishing to talk to them.

After Mr. Ogebe found the pond, he said, villagers tried to dissuade him from treating it. "Some of them offered me money to hide it," he said. "But I told my boss at the Carter Center. Then, each time I went to the village, people followed me around. There were threats on our lives."

But by November 2003, the Carter Center's office in Jos, the regional capital, had persuaded village leaders to treat it. Nigeria's political leaders, constantly on the defensive against foreign accusations that the government here is inept or corrupt, had developed a sudden interest in the country's increasingly successful Guinea worm eradication campaign. The Carter Center's office was able to send in its biggest gun, short of a visit from Mr. Carter himself: Gen. Yakubu Gowon, who ruled Nigeria from 1966 to 1975.

For General Gowon, whom Mr. Carter had met in 1997 and asked to join his work, the Guinea worm campaign had become a point of personal pride. At 32, he took power in a coup against military rulers who had overturned Nigeria's first democratic government, and he crushed a war of secession in Biafra that cost a million lives. Now in his 70's, he is an elder statesman with his own foundation, the Gowon Center, modeled on Mr. Carter's.
He feels, he said, "a sort of guilt" that he did nothing about the disease while he was in office. "It was never reported in those days," he said. "If we had known, I would have done something about it."

On the day of his visit to Ogi, he was greeted politely beneath the village's central tree and was personally invited to pour the Abate into the pond. But when he and the other dignitaries walked the several hundred yards through tall grass to it, they found many of the village's women forming a human wall around it.

"They had colors rubbed on their faces to show resistance," like Indian war paint, Mr. Ogebe said. "They were chanting songs of their refusal."
Sarah Pantuvo, General Gowon's Guinea-worm eradication director, said the women shouted: "This disease is a curse from our ancestors, it has nothing to do with the pond water! If we let you touch anything, the ancestors will deal with us. We heard them crying all night!"

"I was very angry," Ms. Pantuvo said.

But General Gowon tried to defuse the situation, telling the women: "You, the women who fetch water from this pond, were not consulted about treating it? You should have been."

He assured them that the Abate would not harm the fish, and he told them that if their ancestors were benign, they would not want their children to be sick, and would like the pond treated.

But the women would have none of it. "Why don't you go treat AIDS instead?" they shouted.

Finally, he backed down, saying he would return when the women were ready.
That evening, he visited Matthew Ogbu Egede, the paramount chief of the area around Ogi. Chief Egede was mortified.

"I am a Christian," he said in an interview. "I don't believe in anything about juju. These people objected out of ignorance. The devil made them object."

He convened a meeting of "the elites," a local chiefs council. Furious, they ordered the village to accept the pesticide treatment and pay a fine of "one very mighty native cow, plus goats, yams and kegs of palm wine," Chief Egede said. The council sent the general an effusive letter of apology.
"As Socrates of the old Greek people took a cup of hemlock poison from his people for the love of his state, so have you borne our people's churlish misbehaviour," it said, further comparing him to William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English and was martyred for heresy, and to St. Polycarp, who smiled as he was burned at the stake.

Mr. Ogebe was allowed to treat the pond. Slowly, cases of Guinea worm disease died out in the area.

The mud hut in Ogi called the Guinea Worm Containment Center recently housed four patients, including Mr. Igelle, the farmer. There they are given buckets of water to cool their burning limbs, and three simple meals a day to keep them from working in the fields, where they might be tempted to soak a painful blister in a drinking pond.

Each sufferer had at least one yardlong worm painfully emerging, a few agonizing inches a day, carefully wound around a twig or bit of gauze.
"I blame myself, because I drank that water," said Mr. Igelle, 55, admitting that he had drunk from a stagnant pond when the water his wife had carefully filtered had run out as he worked in his far-off yam field. "Now my children go to the field to fetch food, and I tell them not to drink."
Though Mr. Igelle may be one of Ogi's last cases, migrant herders and farm laborers still pass through, and any one of them could have picked up a worm in the last year. It could come back.

A Cause in Need of a Leader

That such a mighty struggle would erupt over one pond gives a sense of how daunting a disease eradication campaign can be. Without a relentless leader, it will go nowhere. In the case of Guinea worm, that role is played by Mr. Carter, who in 1986 was hunting for projects for his new foundation.
He had a chat with a former aide, Dr. Peter Bourne, who was then leading a very ambitious effort, ultimately abandoned, by the United Nations to bring clean drinking water to every village in the world.

"He had slides of Guinea worm to show me," Mr. Carter said. "I was intrigued."
Soon after, on a human rights mission to Pakistan, he mentioned the disease to Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, then the president. "General Zia didn't know anything about it," he said, "but his prime minister had come from a village with Guinea worm."

It turned out that 2,000 villages did, but villagers never reported it, thinking it was "a curse of God, or some confluence of planets, or came from drinking goat blood."

President Zia told a general to wipe it out, and in 1993, Pakistan became the first country to do so.

Mr. Carter himself first saw the worms in Ghana in 1988, in a village where 300 of 500 inhabitants were disabled by it.

"My most vivid memory was of a beautiful young 19-year-old-or-so woman with a worm emerging from her breast," he said. "Later we heard that she had 11 more come out that season."

He arranged for a well to be drilled, "and when we went back a year later, they had zero cases a zero."

But drilling, at $1,500 a well, is prohibitive. Filtering out the larvae-carrying fleas is cheaper. At a 1989 lunch with Edgar M. Bronfman, the Seagram's liquor heir, Mr. Carter explained the technique with a damask napkin. Mr. Bronfman, who held a major stake in the DuPont chemical company, had its scientists develop a tough but fine mesh.

Other donations followed: Abate larvicide from the BASF chemical company, pipes with steel mesh filters from a Norwegian power company, $16 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

When Mr. Carter started organizing his campaign, his experts estimated that eradication would take 10 years. Asked if he worried that the worms would outlive him, he grinned and shook his head.

"I don't have any doubt that it will be eradicated during my active service," he said. "The discouraging thing is the extreme cost. I have to keep explaining to donors why it costs so much for these last few cases."
An Army of Volunteers

While his campaign could not have succeeded without a large vision and contributions to match, the eradication of a disease ultimately depends on the dedication of workers in the field.

In rural Nigeria, as is true everywhere when literacy rates are low and telephones rare, everything must be done face to face. Twenty years ago, the Carter Center began its campaign by surveying 95,000 villages in Nigeria alone, sending someone to each one to ask if it had any cases of Guinea worm.

In each of the 6,000 villages that did, a team had to be formed to visit the authorities, explain the campaign and ask them to pick a "Guinea worm volunteer," someone who could read and write, would be willing to track each case, teach others how to roll worms out on a stick and keep their larvae out of drinking water.

The volunteers are unpaid. "They get a T-shirt, and people look up to them," said Dr. Cephas Ityonzughul, a consultant for the Carter Center's program in central Nigeria.

Supervisors like Mr. Ogebe are also unpaid but may get the use of a bicycle or motorbike, which in rural Africa are major status symbols. They also receive a Carter Center backpack full of sterile bandages.

Part of their job is to fight folk-medicine habits that sometimes die harder than any disease.

In a village north of Ogi, a traditional healer, Yahaya Sarki, demonstrated his own "worm treatment." Plucking a short iron blade from his straw roof, he whetted it on his stone doorstep and heated it on a hot coal. Then he mimed how he would plunge it into the emerging worm's head.

"The idea is to burn the worm to death," Dr. Ityonzughul explained, "but as soon as you touch it, it recoils and tries to find an exit elsewhere. It's very brutal, and it frequently causes tetanus. In 2002, we lost two volunteers to it. But in northern Nigeria, it's used in almost all cases. I've given up fighting it. No matter what I say, they do it anyway."
"Besides," he added of the victims, "it incapacitates them. They can't walk, so they don't put it in the water."

People also pick off their dressings, saying "the worm must breathe," he said. He has tried paying them a few cents to keep wounds bandaged, but it rarely works.

Still, he is not easily put off his mission, though tactics are not always as public and confrontational as they were in Ogi.

"We have paid people to put Abate in the sacred ponds secretly," he admitted.
He described a northern village that practiced both ancestor worship and Islam, which considers dogs unclean.

"They refused the Abate," he said, adding with a grin: "But someone killed a dog and threw it in their sacred pond. People stopped drinking the water a and Guinea worm cases went down."

     * Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

"
http://nytimes.com/2006/03/26/internationa...ge&pagewanted=print

"The Times February 24, 2006


Bird flu? It's kids' stuff
Penny Wark
If avian flu infects humans it will be spread through schools. America is more than prepared for the eventuality. We are not
The boy in the Germ Stopper poster is friendly, vigorous and positive, and as he looks you confidently in the eye he shares the familiar can-do pose of the superhero. But what\s that he brandishes in his right hand? Yes, it\s a box of tissues.

His message is simple. You too can be as strong and cool as he is if you use tissues when you sneeze and cough. You should wash your hands carefully, too a make sure you wash for long enough to sing the Happy Birthday song twice while you do it a and you will help to stop germs spreading, and to stop colds and flu.

For four years Germ Stopper has encouraged American children to adopt good basic hygiene habits. And now that avian flu is regarded as a potential threat, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is about to launch a programme designed to combat it. The advice, to be published on March 1, means that should bird flu start to mutate to affect human beings, the spread among American children will be controlled because viruses are passed by sneezing and coughing and contact, and children do a lot of that. The evidence lies in the 1957 flu pandemic in Britain, in which half of those affected were children: although some cases occurred that June, the pandemic was not triggered until children returned to school in September.
In residential schools attack rates reached 90 per cent, often affecting a whole school within two weeks.This month 60 schools in the Midlands reported outbreaks of both the norovirus (winter vomiting bug) and influenza B, and more than 20 schools in Birmingham, Sandwell and Dudley closed when children and staff became ill. Specialist cleaning teams were called in to two schools in Gloucestershire to tackle the virus.

Further evidence that children are key in the spread of disease lies in Japan, the only country that has initiated a flu-control policy based on the vaccination of children. The policy began in 1962, eased in 1987 and ended in 1994 amid doubts about its effectiveness and concerns about side-effects of the vaccine. But between 1970 and 1990 deaths from pneumonia and flu decreased by 10,000 to 12,000 a year a showing, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine, that controlling the spread of flu in children protects the whole population, including the elderly.
So let\s put these facts together and ask a question. One, it is well known that good hygiene can control the spread of viruses. Two, it is well known that viruses can spread rapidly in schools, or, as the Department of Health\s contingency plan on avian flu states specifically: ]Influenza will spread rapidly in schools.^ So why has the Department of Health failed to pass on to schools the information about hygiene that could, should bird flu affect humans in Britain, significantly restrict its spread?

]If a flu pandemic emerges we don\t know which groups will be vulnerable,^ says a DH spokeswoman who seems to be unaware of the statement quoted above. ]In terms of schools our pandemic plan talks about different sorts of public health measures. Included is whether we would have to consider closing schools to try to stop the spread. We would take a decision at the time as to whether children were specifically vulnerable.^

The Department for Education and Skills had a similar answer: ]There are measures being discussed but there is no guidance being issued.^
Why not? During the 1940s and 1950s the Government recognised the importance of good hygiene practice: it issued pamphlets recommending it. In 2006 DH guidelines on avian flu stress the need for good hygiene in hospitals: ]It is important to educate children and their families to adopt good hygiene measures to minimise potential transmission, including the use of disposable tissues for wiping noses, covering nose and mouth when coughing, sneezing or using tissues, and keeping hands away from the mucous membranes of the eyes and mouth.^

The information is there a so why not join up the thoughts and extend the advice to schools? It doesn\t require extra staff or expensive resources, it\s common sense, and it is precisely what virologists such as Professor John Oxford of St Bartholomew\s and the Royal London Hospital recommend.
Last year Professor Oxford published a study that found hand-washing to be more effective than products such as antiviral tissues in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses. By washing hands frequently and not touching your face, you can reduce the incidence of respiratory disease by about half, he says, and he applauds the US practice: ]It\s a splendid idea. If children are educated about hygiene it can help to break the chain because normally it\s children who bring these viruses home to their parents.
]Children get close to each other and there will be a relatively high attack rate in schools. Their parents might be sitting at home with their grandparents and get the virus from the child. If the child is educated in cross-infection it will reduce the chances of transmission.^

The main lines of attack on avian flu will be new antiviral drugs and vaccines, Professor Oxford says. But this does not dilute the importance of hygiene: ]The main thing would be to supervise hand-washing: soap, fairly hot water, rubbing, drying a that rigmarole has been forgotten. It\s not just about flu. The projectile vomiting/diarrhoea virus that\s roaring through schools at the moment could be controlled by good hygiene.
]Schools should also concentrate on keeping doorknobs clean. During the Sars outbreak in Hong Kong it was shown that pressing buttons in lifts and all these everyday events were significant in transmission, and
hand-washing has been shown to be effective in controlling MRSA in hospitals. It\s ordinary things that matter.

]These messages are not getting across clearly. The message is either panic mode, or nothing is happening.^

It is true that good hygiene is part of the British national curriculum but many parents doubt the consistency of the message reaching their children, talking of the four-year-old who wipes his nose on his sleeve or the six-year-old who has to be pestered to wash his hands before eating. No matter how often parents remind their children at home, they say, small children often fail to respond unless the message is also repeated constantly at school.

This is the strength of the American response. The Atlanta-based Centre for Disease Control a a division of the US Department of Heath and Human Services a has received questions from schools about how best to prepare for and prevent avian flu, so it has repackaged and supplemented the guidance it has issued about preventing infection in recent years. Whether or not individual states and school districts take up the advice, it is available to all schools and is, without doubt, an attractive, imaginative and child-friendly package.

Websites explain how flu spreads and exactly when and how children should wash their hands and use tissues. But what distinguishes the guidance from similar information issued by British government sources is that it relates specifically to children, taking into account their conventional reluctance to pay attention to such matters. Rather than just giving teaching staff the message they need to pass on, the CDC has come up with strategies that will engage children, and which therefore stand a chance of being successful.
For younger children there is a gallery of villains including Influenza Enzo, ]the godfather of all viruses^ who will ]make you a fever you can\t refuse^. He is ]Wanted^, as a poster puts it: ]For causing sniffles, sneezes and headaches. If you come into contact with him, do wash your hands right away . . . Send the flu bug up the river to sink-sink. Reward: a happier, healthier you!^

There are computer games, too, that reinforce the hand-washing message, and songs instructing children on precisely how they should wash their hands. The greater challenge, says Dave Daigle of the CDC, ]has not been to convince the five-year-old to wash his hands, but the middle-school-aged child that hand-washing is an important, sensible strategy for preventing illness.^

This has been done in conjunction with the CDC\s Division of Adolescent and School Health a and the Soap and Detergent Association a through a programme that provides information but relies on pupils to convince themselves, their peers and their families that hand-washing matters. Schools are encouraged to run hand-hygiene campaigns and the best entry wins a trip to Washington. One group of pupils cultured bacteria lifted from frequently touched surfaces such as the water fountain and toilets.
]The students were so disgusted by what they found a the toilets were cleaner than the water fountains they drank from a that they decided for themselves that hand-washing was essential,^ says Daigle.

What impact does he think this would have should avian flu mutate as feared? ]The important point is that frequent, proper hand-washing is cheap, easy and a first line of defence against infection,^ he says.
Back in Britain the information remains buried in websites that are not aimed at schools. As the head teacher of one Inner London secondary school puts it: ]There has been no specific advice relating to the possible arrival of avian flu. The emphasis in the Healthy Schools promotion is on exercise and healthy eating.^

Or, as David Tuck, head teacher of Dallow Primary School in Luton, says: ]We know that viruses spread quickly in schools and it\s an area where we can be proactive. Schools need advice on avian flu now.^

Advice to US schools on preventing the spread of germs

Take care to:

# Clean your hands often

# Cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing

# Cough or sneeze into a tissue, then throw it away. Cover your cough or sneeze if you do not have a tissue. Then clean your hands, and do so every time you cough or sneeze.

# Wash your hands a with soap and warm water a for 15 to 20 seconds. That\s about the time it takes to sing the ]Happy Birthday^ song twice.
# Alcohol-based hand wipes and gel sanitisers work, too. If you are using gel, rub your hands until the gel is dry. The gel doesn\t need water to work a the alcohol in it kills the germs on your hands.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FRASER NEWHAM

www.cdc.gov/flu/school/

www.timesonline.co.uk/birdflu"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25149-2055020,00.html

"Public release date: 27-Mar-2006


Contact: Elizabeth Chester
61-894-897-965
Research Australia
Little improvement in Aboriginal educational performance in over 30 years The most comprehensive survey every undertaken of Aboriginal education has found little significant improvement in outcomes for children in more than 30 years.

The finding is contained in the latest volume of the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey, launched today by Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich.

The survey, undertaken by researchers at Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, analysed data from more than 2500 students from across Western Australian.

Chief Investigator Professor Steve Zubrick said the report Improving the Educational Experiences of Aboriginal Children and Young People provided powerful evidence for an urgent major overhaul of Aboriginal education.
"It is clear that it is a matter of too little too late. Many of the programs to support Aboriginal children start in late primary or high school by which time the gap in performance between Aboriginal children and others is simply too great," he said.

"The focus needs to shift substantially to the early years of child development to help Aboriginal children be ready, socially and
academically, to learn at school."

Professor Zubrick said the data show that not only are Aboriginal students starting well behind non-Aboriginal children, the gap widens the longer they are at school.

58 per cent of Aboriginal children were rated by their teachers as having low academic performance compared with 19 per cent of non-Aboriginal children. Only a quarter of Aboriginal students entering year 8 go on to Year 12. Of those who start Year 11 just 22 per cent of those complete their Year 12 certificate, compared with 62 per cent of all students.
Head of the Institute's Aboriginal research division, Kulunga Network Manager Colleen Hayward, said the very poor educational outcomes of Aboriginal students needed urgent attention.

"If we are serious about overcoming the social, economic and health disadvantage faced by Aboriginal communities then we need to start by making sure children have access to a good education," Assoc Prof Hayward said.
The report identified three major factors driving the poor outcomes for Aboriginal students:
higher rates of school absenteeism
much higher prevalence of emotional and behavioural difficulties
parents and carers having generally lower levels of education.

"While absenteeism is a big issue, this only accounts for a portion of the educational outcomes we have observed. Simply making sure that children get to school will not fix the problems - there is clearly more which schools can do to provide learning environments which are appropriate to the specific needs of Aboriginal children," Assoc Prof Hayward said.

"At the same time we must also address other opportunities to improve Aboriginal children's life chances well before they begin school, and even before birth.

"What's also worrying is that most parents in the survey thought their kids were doing okay even where the results in the classroom show a very different story.

"What that tells us is that poor educational outcomes are being passed down between generations as families are disengaged from their child's learning and communication between schools and parents is failing."

The report makes fifteen recommendations including:
more funding to support early child development and school readiness programs to support, engage and equip parents
a focus on improving school attendance
support for children with emotional or behavioural difficulties
mandatory Aboriginal studies for teachers
an emphasis on explicit methods for teaching standard Australian English a national research agenda to chart progress, evaluate programs and measure improvement.

###

Copies of the full report and summary booklet are available at
http://www.ichr.uwa.edu.au/news/news.lasso?id=170

Media contacts: Elizabeth Chester
Media Relations, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research
+61 8 9489 7965, +61 (0) 409 988 530 (mobile)
or
Tammy Gibbs
Public Relations, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research
+61 8 9489 7963

"
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/ra-lii032606.php

Resources for Science Teachers
You may be interested in a new flyer from the Specialized Information Services Division of NLM, "Resources for Science Teachers: Classroom Resources from the National Library of Medicine". SIS does not have printed copies to distribute but you're welcome to adapt and print the file to suit your promotional opportunities or link to it from your web site. http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro/resources_science_teachers.pdf

>___________
>Testing Darwin's Teachers
>
>LIBERTY, Mo.-Sometimes disruptive but often sophisticated
>questioning of evolution by students has educators increasingly on
>the defensive. By Stephanie Simon.
>http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A60Mm2NO0G2B0HPqk0EB
"COLUMN ONE
Testing Darwin's Teachers
Sometimes disruptive but often sophisticated questioning of evolution by students has educators increasingly on the defensive.
By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer
March 31, 2006

LIBERTY, Mo. a Monday morning, Room 207: First day of a unit on the origins of life. Veteran biology teacher Al Frisby switches on the overhead projector and braces himself.

As his students rummage for their notebooks, Frisby introduces his central theme: Every creature on Earth has been shaped by random mutation and natural selection a in a word, by evolution.


The challenges begin at once.

"Isn't it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?" sophomore Chris Willett demands. " 'Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn't."
Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn't listening. "I feel a tail growing!" he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.

Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He's about to start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: "How are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could just be some deformed raccoon."

 From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: "Those are real bones that someone actually found? You're not just making this up?"
"No, I am not just making it up," Frisby says.

At least half the students in this class of 14 don't believe him, though, and they're not about to let him off easy.

Two decades of political and legal maneuvering on evolution has spilled over into public schools, and biology teachers are struggling to respond. Loyal to the accounts they've learned in church, students are taking it upon themselves to wedge creationism into the classroom, sometimes with snide comments but also with sophisticated questions a and a fervent faith.
As sophomore Daniel Read put it: "I'm going to say as much about God as I can in school, even if the teachers can't."

Such challenges have become so disruptive that some teachers dread the annual unit on evolution a or skip it altogether.

In response, the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science is distributing a 24-page guide to teaching the scientific principles behind evolution, starting in kindergarten. The group also has issued talking points for teachers flustered by demands to present "both sides."
The annual science teachers convention next week in Anaheim will cover similar ground, with workshops such as "Teaching Evolution in a Climate of Controversy."

"We're not going to roll over and take this," said Alan I. Leshner, the executive publisher of the journal Science. "These teachers are facing phenomenal pressure. They need help."

About half of all Americans dismiss as preposterous the scientific consensus that life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years. Some hold to a literal reading of Genesis: God created the universe about 6,000 years ago. Others accept an ancient cosmos but take the variety, complexity and beauty of Earth's creatures as proof that life was crafted by an intelligent designer.

Religious accounts of life's origins have generally been kept out of the science classroom, sometimes by court order. But polls show a majority of Americans are unhappy with the evolution-only approach.

Daniel Read, for instance, considers it his Christian duty to expose his classmates to the truths he finds in the Bible, starting with the six days of creation. It's his way, he said, of counterbalancing the textbook, which devotes three chapters to evolution but just one paragraph to creationism. A soft-spoken teen with shaggy hair and baggy pants, Daniel prepares carefully for his mission in this well-educated, affluent and conservative suburb of 28,000, just outside Kansas City, Mo. He studies DVDs distributed by Answers in Genesis, a "creation evangelism" ministry devoted to training children to question evolution.

Other students gather ammunition from sermons at church, or from the dozens of websites that criticize evolution as a God-denying sham. They interrupt lectures to expound on the inaccuracies of carbon dating; to disparage transitional fossils as frauds; to show photos of ancient footprints that they think prove humans and dinosaurs walked side by side.

Most will learn what they need to pass the test, but some make their skepticism clear by putting their heads down on their desks or even stalking out of class.

Liberty High School senior Sarah Hopkins was proud of her response when a botany teacher brought up evolution last year: "I asked, 'Have you ever read the Bible? Have you ever gone to church?' "

Such personal questions can make teachers uncomfortable, but they're fairly easy to deflect. Far tougher are the science-based queries that force teachers to defend a theory they may not ever have studied in depth.
"If a teacher is making a claim that land animals evolved into whales, students should ask: 'What precisely is involved? How does the fur turn into blubber, how do the nostrils move, how does the tiny tail turn into a great big fluke?' " said John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research near San Diego. "Evolution is so unsupportable, if you insist on more information, the teacher will quickly run out of
credibility," he said.

Anxious to forestall such challenges, nearly one in five teachers makes a point of avoiding the word "evolution" in class a even when they're presenting the topic, according to a survey by the National Science Teachers Assn.

"They're saying they don't know how to respondU. They haven't done the research the kids have done on this," said Linda Froschauer, the group's president-elect.

In a classroom cluttered with paper models of DNA, newspaper clippings about global warming and oddities such as a four-eared pig in formaldehyde, Frisby parries his students' questions patiently but with a bit of disappointment.

For the first 27 years of his career, he taught life's origins without controversy. Then in 1999, the Kansas Board of Education deleted evolution from the mandatory science curriculum.

Frisby was teaching biology at the time in Shawnee Mission, Kan., and he was determined not to alter his curriculum. His students, however, seemed emboldened by the board's action.

The daughter of a local minister took to bringing in creationist research that she thought proved Charles Darwin wrong. That year, more than a third of the students wrote in their class evaluations that they did not accept their teacher's account of how life emerged.

Kansas restored evolution to the science curriculum in 2001 after conservatives lost their majority on the board. A subsequent election again shifted the balance, and last year the board issued a mandate that still stands: Students must be taught that the theory of evolution is a "historical narrative" based on circumstantial evidence. They must also learn specific criticisms of evolution.

Though he retired from his Kansas teaching job in 2002 for personal reasons, Frisby remains active in efforts there to elect a more liberal state school board. His job across the state line in Missouri is less political; Missouri does not require teachers to introduce criticisms of evolution or alternative accounts of life's origins. Nonetheless, those views come up in Room 207 every year.

Toward the end of his second class one recent morning, Frisby held up an old issue of National Geographic. The cover asked in bold type: "Was Darwin Wrong?"

"Yes!" one student called.

Another backed him up: "Yes!"

Six or eight other voices joined in. Frisby quieted them and opened to the article inside, which began with the one-word answer: "No."

"It's my job to show you the overwhelming evidence for evolution," he said.
"What about the other side?" Jeff Paul called. An approving murmur swept the room.

Frisby, 59, rarely gets angry at such interruptions; even his most skeptical students praise his willingness to listen. He has attended two creationist conferences to hear their evidence firsthand; he digs out articles that respond to their doubts; he'll even sit down with a student to talk about God a though only after class.

Growing up in nearby Independence, Mo., Frisby learned the biblical creation account from his mother, a Sunday school teacher. "I believed it without question," he said. "It was literal to me."

He doesn't remember hearing about evolution in high school, but then he didn't pay much attention to academics. It wasn't until college that he discovered a passion for biology.

One evening in 1968, Frisby was dissecting a shark's heart for a night course. As he spread the organ out in front of him, studying the looping valves and arteries, he had what he can only describe, with wonder, as a religious experience. "All those beautiful arches coming off the heart a it was just too perfect," he said. "I thought to myself, 'God could have created this animal just this way.' "

That satisfied his religious nature. But the scientist within him wouldn't let the matter rest. Dissecting more animal hearts, Frisby found the same awe-inspiring beauty. He also came to understand how an organ as complex as the heart could evolve; he could see the progression there on his lab table, from one chamber to two to four.

Frisby still believed that God created the universe, but his faith couldn't tell him what happened next; to answer that question, he concluded, he would need science.

At 22, he decided the best way to honor his faith was to hold it sacred in his heart a and to keep it out of his lab.

Casting about for ways to explain that to his students, Frisby tried a new approach this year: He strapped a leather tool belt around his waist. Life, he told the class, required a variety of tools. Sometimes they would find it helpful to use art or music to help them make sense of their world. Sometimes they would use religion.

"We're in science class now, so we're going to use our science tools," he told them. "I don't want to be in a debate about religion or literature or art. My job is to explain evolution so you can understand it. Whether you accept it or not, that's your business."

On the wall behind him, a poster read: "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
To engage students who might be inclined to tune out, Frisby fills his lesson plans with hands-on activities.

In one, he'll unspool a long roll of adding-machine tape and have the kids make a timeline of Earth's history. They'll be able to see at a glance how long it took for a vast diversity of creatures to evolve, from the humble worm 430 million years ago to the first fish 345 million years ago and on through dinosaurs and mammals. On his timeline, early man won't appear until the very end of the paper.

Frisby hopes the exercise will make an impression on students like Chris Willett, who offered this rebuttal to evolution: "I think it's kind of strange that they can find all these dinosaur fossils from what you say is millions of years ago, but they can't find any transitional human fossils."
Frisby promised to show the class several fossils that document the halting and gradual evolution from apes to humans. Then he reminded them not to expect equal numbers of human and dinosaur remains, because hominids emerged only recently, while dinosaurs ruled the planet for nearly 200 million years.

At that, sophomore Derik Montgomery snapped to attention. "I heard that dinosaurs are only thousands of years old, like 6,000. Not millions," he said.
"That's wrong," Frisby responded briskly. "What can I tell you? You can't believe everything you read."

Sprawled out across his chair, Derik muttered: "You can't believe everything you hear in here, either."

Frisby put up his next transparency."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...coll=la-home-nation

This is a fascinating collection of journalist's reports on a broad range of topics. The journalists had won a fellowship.
mpb

http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF_Reporter/Index.html

"The Alicia Patterson Foundation Program was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, who was editor and publisher of Newsday for nearly 23 years before her death in 1963. One-year grants are awarded to working journalists to pursue independent projects of significant interest and to write articles based on their investigations for the The APF Reporter, a quarterly magazine published by the Foundation."
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF_Info/About_APF.html

I doubt my dial-up can get this, but it sounds like fun.

    <http://feeds.feedburner.com/boingboing/iBa...boing/iBag?m=532>; video show on DIY tech for girls
Xeni Jardin: Snip from a Wired News article by Rachel Metz about <http://www.iheartswitch.com/>Switch:

A new web-based show encourages young women to tune in and associate DIY less with bread making and more with breadboard wiring.

Created by Alison Lewis, a web designer and instructor at Parsons School of Design, Switch is a free online show connects young women with technology by guiding them through fashion and design projects.

Lewis said she hopes "to inspire people with design and to get young girls thinking about how electronics are approachable and not so scary."
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70433-...n_culture_1>Link (Thanks, <http://www.wifi-toys.com/>Mike Outmesguine). Photo: Alison Lewis and Diana Eng (of Project Runway fame) show viewers how to make a talking picture frame in the first Switch episode. (courtesy Alison
Lewis<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/boingboing/iBag?a=QRrDH7>;)

4/4/2006 03:08 PM |
<http://www.boingboing.net/#GreatNewsTag_LabelItem_4369>Label This | <http://www.boingboing.net/#GreatNewsTag_EmailItem_4369>Email This | by Xeni Jardin

>Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:29:25 +1000
>From:
>Subject: World-Wide Day in Science 2006
>
>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>************************************************************* ***************
>
>
>Inspire students to follow a career in science by participating in this =
>interesting project...
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asc-list-bounces@lists.asc.asn.au on behalf of Will Rifkin
>Sent: Tue 11-Apr-06 1:19 PM
>To: asc-list@lists.asc.asn.au
>Subject: [ASC-list] Hang your slide rules & lab coats by the chimney ...
>=20
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>Hang your slide rules and lab coats hung by the chimney tonight ....
>
>Science-based professionals and students the world over are eagerly
>awaiting the World-Wide Day in Science.
>
>The 'Day' is Wednesday, April 12th.
>
>For this 'virtual event,' it takes as little as 10 minutes to illuminate
>your career path to bright high school students.
>
>Here is what to do:
>
>1. Send us a paragraph on the high point of your April 12th, the Day in
>Science.
>
>2. Add a paragraph about where your day's activity fits into your job
>and career path.
>
>3. A third paragraph wraps it up. Explain what interested you while
>you were in high school. What steered you toward a career involving
>science?
>
>4. Have any digital images or links to add? Send them along as well.
>
>Send the report to: wwds@unsw.edu.au.
>
>All reports go live on the web on June 1st 2006.
>
>Read more about the project at: www.science.unsw.edu.au/worldwide.
>
>For the World-Wide Day in Science 2005, students and scientists
>represented every continent, including Antarctica, with reports in
>Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, ...
>
>The project is now poised to host thousands of such reports. It can
>provide a most engaging and comprehensive international career guide in
>science.
>
>And, all in just 10 minutes .
>
>
>Will Rifkin, PhD
>Coordinator, World-Wide Day in Science
>Director, Science Communication Program
>Faculty of Science, BSB-BABS
>UNSW, Sydney, NSW 2052
>AUSTRALIA
>wwds @ unsw.edu.au
>www.science.unsw.edu.au/worldwide
>www.scom.unsw.edu.au
>www.onset.unsw.edu.au
>(02) 9385 2748

"Daily News letters

Published: April 11, 2006
Last Modified: April 11, 2006 at 12:39 AM

Low-hanging jeans style might lead to injuries in boys' bones and joints
Comfort in clothing is a fine thing, but I'm concerned about the hidden cost of the exceptionally low-slung pants a friend calls hobble-crotchers. Every afternoon while waiting to pick up my granddaughter from high school, I see too many athletic-looking young men unable to walk with grace, their movements not only hampered by their pants but actually distorted. The individuality in fashion doesn't trouble me, nor even their potential exposure, but the potential toll on their joints does.

Humans have perpetrated a number of bizarre and disabling traditions and fashions, usually directed against women. The hobbling of young men is equally troublesome. The fact that the young men choose to limit their abilities and unwittingly disfigure their bodies makes it no less disturbing.
Physical education/health as well as science are required subjects in high school. Perhaps physics could be taught of the repercussions to the rest of the body from this binding of the knees. I expect more than agility is being lost to this fashion.

---- Pat Erickson

Anchorage"
http://www.adn.com/opinion/letters/story/7616720p-7528186c.html

>Workshop Announcement
>Natural Science Experiential Workshop for Educators
>13-16 June 2006
>McCarthy, Alaska
>
>--------------------------------------------
>A natural science experiential workshop for educators will be held at
>the Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, Alaska, which is in the heart
>of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Participants will
>learn the tools, techniques, and background for incorporating the
>natural world into K-12 curriculum. This intensive 4-day, 2 credit
>workshop includes lesson modeling, interactive hands-on activities from
>the Alaska Wildlife Curriculum, content information about Alaska natural
>history, and focused discussions. Participants will also receive a CD
>with four books from the Alaska Wildlife Curriculum.
>
>K-12 teachers, home schoolers, outdoor educators, teacher's aides, and
>community leaders are all invited to attend. The cost is $450 per person
>which includes all food. Two graduate credits are available for an
>additional $25. Sliding scale fees and local scholarships may be
>available based on need. Families are invited to dine with participants
>for an extra $15 per person per day.
>
>To register or for further information about facilities, costs, and
>scholarships, please contact the Wrangell Mountains Center at
>wmc@alaska.net or 907-554-4464.
>
>For questions regarding course content only, please contact instructor
>Lilly Goodman at lgoodman@mtaonline.net.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------- --------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

"[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 13-Apr-2006
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Contact: Shelley Dawicki
sdawicki@whoi.edu
508-289-2270
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Walrus calves stranded by melting sea ice
Scientists have reported an unprecedented number of unaccompanied and possibly abandoned walrus calves in the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice may be forcing mothers to abandon their pups as the mothers follow the rapidly retreating ice edge north.

Nine lone walrus calves were reported swimming in deep waters far from shore by researchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy during a cruise in the Canada Basin in the summer of 2004. Unable to forage for themselves, the calves were likely to drown or starve, the scientists said.
Lone walrus calves far from shore have not been described before, the researchers report in the April issue of Aquatic Mammals. The sightings suggest that increased polar warming may lead to decreases in the walrus population.

="We were on a station for 24 hours, and the calves would be swimming around us crying. We couldn't rescue them," said Carin Ashjian, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a member of the research team.
The researchers found evidence of warmer ocean temperatures that may have rapidly melted seasonal sea ice over the shallow continental shelf where walruses dive to feed on bottom-dwelling animals such as clams and crabs. Walrus need the ice to rest themselves and to leave the pups to rest while the mothers feed. Ice remained over very deep water.

"If walruses and other ice-associated marine mammals cannot adapt to caring for their young in shallow waters without sea-ice available as a resting platform between dives to the sea floor, a significant population decline of this species could occur," the research team wrote. The lead author of the study is Lee W. Cooper, a biogeochemist at the University of Tennessee.
Cooper, Ashjian and other researchers made the unexpected walrus calf sightings during a cruise to investigate the impact of global climate change on the oceanic ecosystem over the continental shelf of Alaska. Their work focused on the shallower waters of the continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea to deeper waters in the Beaufort Sea of the Western Arctic Ocean. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

Adult Pacific walrus, Odobenus rosmarus divergens, forage for food by diving as far as 200 meters about (630 feet) down to the seafloor and using sensitive facial bristles to locate prey. Sea ice normally forms over the continental shelf north of Alaska and persists even in summer. Adult walrus use the sea ice as a resting platform; mothers leave the calves there and dive to the bottom for food.

"The young can't forage for themselves," Ashjian said. "They don't know how to eat," and are dependent on their mothers' milk for up to two years.
The researchers measured a mass of water as warm as 44&#B0;F (7&#B0;C) moving onto parts of the shelf from the Bering Sea to the south in 2004. This warm-water intrusion was more than six degrees higher than temperatures at the same time and location in 2002. The warmer water apparently caused seasonal sea ice to melt rapidly over the shallow continental shelf and retreat to deep water over the Arctic Ocean basins, where the water remained colder.

In the areas where ice remained, the bottom is up to 3,000 meters (about 9,300 feet) deep, too deep for even adult walrus to dive to feed. When sea ice retreats to such deep water, as it did in 2004, there are no platforms in shallow waters for mothers to rest and to leave their calves while they feed, and the pairs become separated.

Scientists on the Healy used geographic positioning, digital photography, ship bridge logs, and other observations to record the calves' positions and bathymetric charts and depth sounder data to identify water depth. They documented the very warm water using both conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) profile sampling and plankton-net sampling, which revealed zooplankton species that prefer warmer waters.

###

In addition to Copper and Ashjian, other researchers participating in the study were Sharon L. Smith of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami; Louis A. Codispoti of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; Jaqueline M. Grebmeier of the University of Tennessee; Robert G. Campbell of the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography; and Evelyn B. Sherr of the College of Oceanographic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University.


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   "
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/whoi-wcs041306.php

Dogs help scientists find seals

LABRADORS: Retrievers' noses lead team to hidden ice lairs for tagging effort.
By MARY PEMBERTON
The Associated Press

Published: April 15, 2006
Last Modified: April 15, 2006 at 02:29 AM

America's most popular dog is a big hit with scientists who are using Labrador retrievers to hunt up seals for study in the Arctic.

The dogs are proving nifty at finding the breathing holes and snow lairs of ringed seals, which after centuries of being hunted by human and beast alike, are strictly covert.

"Ringed seals are pretty well adapted to not being found because they live in a world with polar bears and human seal hunters," said Peter Boveng, program leader for the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle. "You can walk along on top of the snow on top of the ice and see no sign of them whatsoever."

Seals begin maintaining breathing holes in the ice at freeze-up in the fall. Once there is enough snow, they excavate snow caves.

"They come up, they clear holes through long cracks in the ice and excavate little caves in the snow," Boveng said.

Boveng and Brendan Kelly, an associate professor of marine biology at the University of Alaska Southeast, as well as other scientists, are entering a second season of tagging ringed seals to get basic information about numbers and breeding sites. The study hinges on being able to find the seals -- no small issue it turns out.

"Fortunately, for us the problem had been solved a long time ago by Inuit hunters," said Kelly, who has been tagging seals since 1982. "They figured out their dogs could smell the seal holes under the snow."

Kelly learned to use Labs to find seals from a Canadian biologist and an Inuit hunter in the Northwest Territories of Canada. He trained his first Lab to find seals by burying sealskin slippers in the snow.

During the hunt, the dogs run ahead of researchers traveling on
snowmobiles. Hand and voice commands are used to tell the dogs to find 'natchiq' -- the Inupiaq word for ringed seal.

When the dogs get a whiff of seal, they run in a zigzag pattern, which gets shorter as the dogs zero in on the source, and presto -- a breathing hole or lair. The dogs start digging at the spot, but are quickly called off so that researchers can set up a capture net at the hole.

Kelly said the net fits in the bottom of the hole.

"What happens is that the seal swims up through an open net into the breathing hole. We hear the seal breathing through a microphone and transmitter that we've placed in the snow and that transmits back to our hut," Kelly said.

When the scientists hear the seal breathing, they close the net using a radio trigger.

"Then we get on our snowmobiles and take a quick ride back to the seal hole," Kelly said.

Once there, the snow cover is swept off and the seal is grabbed and pulled onto the ice for tagging.

Kelly tried finding seals without the help of dogs, using an infrared camera that detects body heat. It didn't work.

"Under ideal conditions, we could detect the seal holes under infrared sensors only if the dogs first showed us where it was," he said.

The dogs have an 80 to 85 percent success rate within several miles of the campsites and can find between 100 and 200 holes a month.

The satellite tagging study in Peard Bay and Point Barrow in northernmost Alaska, more than 300 miles above the Arctic Circle, is entering its second season. Kelly expects to return to the Arctic on May 8. Last year, 13 seals were tagged. This year the goal is 20.

Last year, they learned that ringed seals use the same breeding sites each year. What they hope to find out this year is whether the seals breed with each other throughout the Arctic, in effect creating one big gene pool, or if breeding takes place locally.

Preliminary findings suggest the seals are breeding locally, but more study needs to be done, Kelly said, and with a lot more DNA samples. To get more samples, scientists are extracting DNA from skin samples left by the seals at the breathing holes.

"These are like little pepper flakes on the ice," Boveng said.

Global warming is raising concerns for the future of the seals, especially if they're breeding only locally, Kelly said.

"One of the things we are seeing is increasingly early snow melts," he said. "The pups' very survival depends on inhabiting the snow cave for the first couple months of their lives while they are still nursing."
Early snow melts expose the pups to the harsh Arctic and leaves them vulnerable to predators. They can freeze to death, Kelly said.

"If you have lots of small, isolated populations, each one of them is more vulnerable to local extinction," Kelly said."
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7628892p-7540498c.html

"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim heritage in our world
*
Location: The Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, United Kingdom Date: 8 March 2006 - 4 June 2007
Organised by: The Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation
Description
The exhibition examines a thousand years of missing history and reveals the scientific contributions from ancient Islamic scholars that have helped shape much of Western civilisation. The exhibition uses advanced engineering software, historical manuscripts and state of the art multi-media technology to bring to life an overlooked golden age of scientific innovation, pioneered by Muslims over 1,000 years ago.
1001 Inventions brings to life historical inventions and innovations made by some of the greatest Muslim minds of all time, including:

     * discovering coffee and developing the art of coffee drinking; * inventing the camera and using carpets for home insulation; * paper, the fountain pen, and using libraries to promote public learning; * making soap and setting up public baths;
     * formulating pills and making surgical tools;
     * navigation devices and charting world maps; and
     * flying with wings and rocket flying. "
http://www.scidev.net/events/index.cfm?fus...emid=877&language=1

National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science

They also have links to other case study sites. mpb

"ALTHOUGH the case method has been used for years to teach law, business, and medicine, it is not common in science. Yet the use of case studies holds great promise as a pedagogical technique for teaching science, particularly to undergraduates, because it humanizes science and well illustrates scientific methodology and values. It develops students\ skills in group learning, speaking, and critical thinking, and since many of the best cases are based on contemporaryaand often contentiousascience problems that students encounter in the news (such as human cloning), the use of cases in the classroom makes science relevant.

At the University at Buffalo, we have been experimenting with case studies in science courses for over 15 years. We have found the method to be amazingly flexible. It has been used as the core of entire courses such as ]Scientific Inquiry^ or for single experiences in otherwise traditional lecture and lab courses. Cases dealing with cold fusion, AIDS, acid rain, ozone depletion, and toxic waste disposal have been used with
undergraduates, graduates, and students in professional schools. A case on cystic fibrosis has been used in small laboratory sections run by teaching assistants and a case on the spotted owl has been employed in a large class of over 400 students. In our experience, students exposed to the case method have been extraordinarily excited and actively involved in their learning.

The aim of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science is to promote the development and dissemination of innovative materials and sound educational practices for case teaching in the sciences. Our website provides access to an award-winning library of case materials and we offer a variety of opportunities, including a five-day summer workshop and two-day fall conference, for science faculty to receive training in the method. Our work has been supported over the years by the National Science Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the U.S. Department of Education." http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/case.html

This sounds intriguing but I have no further info.
Pam


>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: Siberia summer school
>Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 15:44:18 +0300
>From: Raija Kivilahti
><mailto:Raija.Kivilahti@ulapland.fi><...ahti@ulapland.fi>;
>To: <mailto:arktis-list@ulapland.fi>arktis-list@ulapland.fi,
><mailto:tukolista@ulapland.fi>tukolista@ulapland.fi
>
>
>
>If anybody is interested in Russian experiences in summer, you might
>consider the following opportunity.
>Best
>Florian Stammler
>************************************************************** ************
>
>We are looking for INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS and VOLUNTEERS to attend the
>'LINKING
>THE PLANET' International
>Summer Language Camp, which is an educational multi-cultural program run
>in a
>picturesque area outside of the city of Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia, in
>four
>consecutive two-week sessions during the summer of 2006, with
>participation of
>local Russian schoolchildren,
>youth and adults, as well as volunteer teachers and international
>students from
>around the globe.
>
>I thought that since you are particularly interested in Siberian region,
>some
>of your students may be interested in coming to Russia, and especially
>Siberia,
>to participate in our summer camp. Russian schoolchildren come to our
>camp to
>learn foreign languages (classes are taught by volunteer teachers, native
>speakers of the foreign languages taught at the camp). Overseas students
>(and
>also many of volunteer teachers) come to learn and practice their
>Russian and
>get immersed into the Russian culture. I am positive that the students and
>youth from different countries will be excited to interact with each
>other on a
>daily basis and participate together in various interesting activities
>scheduled within the summer camp program.
>
>Teachers and university students are also welcome to participate in the
>camp as
>volunteer teachers and Creativity Workshops coordinators. Teaching at
>the camp
>can be considered as an INTERNSHIP with all necessary paperwork provided.
>
>For the past few years volunteer teachers from Argentina, Australia,
>Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Great
>Britain,
>Holland, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Sweden,
>Switzerland, Spain,
>the United States of America, as well as university students and school
>children from the USA, Great Britain and Germany have participated in our
>summer language school programs.
>
>The program is a great chance for international participants to learn the
>Russian language and get a first-hand experience of the Russian culture. It
>provides the unique cultural opportunity of daily interaction with the
>Russian children, youth and adults. The RUSSIAN COURSE is organized for
>overseas students and volunteer teachers and includes language studies as
>well as learning about the Russian culture, history and society.
>
>The major benefits to join our summer program are as follows:
>1) We organize an exciting cultural, social and excursion program for
>international participants of the camp, which is a very enriching
>experience. You will be involved in interaction with the Russian children,
>youth and
>adults all the time. This is the kind of experience you will never get if
>you go as a tourist.
>The camp lives a full cultural and social life. In addition to language and
>culture studies we also offer sports, intellectual games, quizzes,
>entertaining
>activities, shows, performances, presentations, parties, discos, etc.
>2) You will gain a first-hand experience of the Russian culture and life
>style and particularly the Siberian one. They say if you want to know what
>real Russia is like you should go to Siberia.
>3) This is a not-for-profit program. Participation fee covers expenses on
>accommodation and ALL meals, and tuition fee for students as well. If
>you come
>to Russia (Siberia) on your own or through a travel agency you will
>spend much more money compared to what you would pay to participate in our
>program. Participating in our program you won't need much pocket
>money, just maybe some to buy souvenirs and gifts to take back home.
>All the local services (airport pick-up, local transportation, excursions)
>are provided by our school without any additional payment.
>4) International participants attend Russian languages classes every day.
>Russian classes
>are taught by well-educated native speakers trained to teach foreigners.
>Students are placed in a group
>according to their level of Russian. No previous knowledge of Russian is
>required.
>We will also be happy to arrange courses on the Russian culture, history,
>music, etc., if required.
>5) We are dedicated to providing a student with the most excellent
>supervision
>possible. All the students are supervised and each group has a group
>leader who
>is normally responsible for between 10 - 15 students and stays with the
>group
>24 hours a day. Everyone can expect a warm, supportive and friendly
>atmosphere
>along with professional service. Our goal is that a student has the most
>enjoyable and worthwhile experience possible during the stay with us. We
>are
>determined to ensure that everyone benefits fully from the interaction with
>other students and the staff. The Head of Studies, Psychologist, the Social
>Program Coordinator and the Program Director are constantly monitoring the
>program to assure that everyone is enjoying the stay and taking
>advantage of
>the many activities offered by the school. Parents are allowed to the
>program.
>6) You will meet people from other countries who are going to
>participate in
>this program and this is a very interesting experience. Many of our former
>foreign participants keep in touch with each other after the program and
>even visit each other in all the different countries.
>7) We also offer excursion packages which include trips to Moscow, St.
>Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk,
>Lake Baikal, the Altai Mountains, TransSiberian Railroad, 'Welcome to
>Siberia' program. All the details
>and tour descriptions are available at request.
>8) If you are planning a trip to Russia and would like to consider our
>program you should take into consideration that if you do go to Russia you
>will need an invitation to receive the Russian visa in any case. All travel
>agencies and tourist companies charge for an invitation. As far as our
>program is concerned, you won't have to pay anything extra for the official
>invitation form that you will need to get the Russian visa. We provide all
>our foreign participants with the invitation and arrange their
>registration on
>arrival.
>
>I can assure you of a very warm welcome that all our foreign participants
>receive. We do have a web site but it is currently being re-edited
>and updated and you may not have access to some of its sections. However,
>the update of the International Summer Language School (CAMP) section on
>our
>web
>site has almost been finished. You can also see the photos from the past
>years summer programs in the 'Photo Album' section (which is at the bottom
>of the main menu on the homepage). The link to the site is
><http://cosmo.qc.nov.net/>http://cosmo.qc.nov.net/
>Sorry for the inconveniences caused by the site update.
>
>
>This CAMP program is scheduled during the summer. However, if some of your
>students would like to consider planning a trip to Russia during the school
>year we will be happy to arrange for them a homestay style Russian studies
>program in the city of Novosibirsk. We will also be delighted to offer a
>Russian studies program that could be incorporated into your university's
>study-abroad plan.
>
>Please let me kow if you are interested in finding out more about our
>programs
>and would be willing to consider them as a possibility for your
>students, and I
>will be happy to provide the detailed information on any of the programs
>and
>discuss this matter further. I look forward to hearing from you and remain
>hopeful that we will be able to establish a worthwhile co-operation. I will
>very much appreciate it if you could forward the information on our
>program to
>your students, colleagues and other people who may be interested in
>attending.
>
>Regards,
>
>Natasha Bodrova,
>Director of International Language School "Cosmopolitan",
>Novosibirsk, Russia
><mailto:cosmopolitan@online.nsk.su>cosmopolitan@online.nsk.su
><mailto:cosmoschool2@mail.ru>cosmoschool2@mail.ru
>
>--
>
>Dr Florian Stammler
>Senior researcher
>Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies
>Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
>P O Box 122, 96101 Rovaniemi, Finland
>Tel: +358 40 5305639
>Fax: +358 16 3412777
><http://www.arcticcentre.org/?deptid=12438&...e.org/?deptid=12438

from one of our fellow listees--

>FYI
>-----Original Message-----
>From: U.S. Department of Education's Teacher Initiative
>[1]
>
>Subject: Register Now for Free Summer Workshops!
>
>The U.S. Department of Education's Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative has
>opened registration for its free summer workshops:
><https://www.t2tweb.us/Workshops/About.asp>https://www.t2tweb.us/Workshops/About.asp.
>Due to overwhelming feedback and high demand, Teacher-to-Teacher will be
>offering more workshops for teachers this summer than ever before - 14 in all!
>
>The workshops will be held across the country from June through August and
>will target specific grade levels and content areas.
>
>Summer 2006 Workshop Dates, Locations and Themes
>
>General Summer Workshops
>
>June 5-6, Denver, Teachers of Grades 6-12
>June 12-13, Atlanta, Teachers of Grades K-8
>June 20-21, St. Paul, Teachers of Grades K-8
>July 17-18, Pittsburgh, Teachers of Grades 6-12
>
>Joint Workshops with the National Park Service
>
>June 22-23, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park, Math and
>History, Grades K-8, Dayton, OH
>July 20-21, Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Celebration, Science and History,
>Grades K-12, Billings, MT
>August 7-8, Edison National Historic Site, Science, Grades 6-12, West
>Orange, NJ
>
>Joint Workshops with TechNet Partners
>
>July 10-11, San Jose, CA, National Semiconductor, Science K-12
>July 12-13, Boston, MA, EMC, Math and Science K-12
>August 1-2, Raleigh, NC, Cisco, Math and Science 8-12
>August 8-9, Redmond, WA, Microsoft, Math and Science K-12
>
>Foreign Language Workshops K-12 with a Special Focus on Mandarin Chinese
>July 31-August 1, Los Angeles, CA
>August 3-4, Washington, DC
>
>Workshop for Reading and ESL Teachers K-12
>
>August 10-11, Dearborn, MI
>
>Registration and professional development sessions are free-of-charge.
>Meals and refreshments will be provided during scheduled workshop
>activities, but participants will be responsible for their own
>transportation and lodging expenses. Teachers may be able to earn
>professional development credit through their district or state for
>participation in a Teacher-to-Teacher free summer workshop.
>
>For more information and registration, please visit:
><https://www.t2tweb.us/Workshops/About.asp>https://www.t2tweb.us/Workshops/About.asp.
>Registration is on a first come, first-served basis. Space is limited.
>
>*********************************************************** *********
>To unsubscribe, go to
><http://www.T2TWeb.us/Updates/JoinLeave.asp...dates/JoinLeave.asp.
>Send any questions or comments to
><mailto:Teachers@westat.com>Teachers@westat.com.
>************************************************************* *******

Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella
April 18, 2006
The Consumer
Nemo Beware: Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella
By DEBORAH FRANKLIN

Tropical fish seem the tidiest of pets: they never lick your face, leap from the cat box to the kitchen counter or take pleasure in rolling around in some wad of mysterious rot.

But recent findings from Australia confirm that fish owners should nonetheless take care when cleaning an aquarium or otherwise interacting with finned friends or the water they swim in.

Researchers reported in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases on cases of bacterial infections serious enough to send some children to the hospital with high fever and bloody diarrhea. The infections stemmed from a multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella paratyphi B that was traced via DNA analysis to fish tanks in the patients' homes.

"The fact that 12 to 14 percent of Australian households have ornamental fish and as many as 12 million American and 1 million Canadian families own domestic aquariums, together with the young age of most affected patients," make the risk of contamination from the tanks a matter of public health, the scientists concluded in their report.

The risk of catching salmonella bacteria from pet reptiles, chicks, ducklings and other animals has been widely recognized for decades.
In the 1970's, the Food and Drug Administration banned the sale and distribution of nearly all turtles with shells less than four inches long (a size children can easily hold and put in their mouths) because as many as 250,000 children were thought to have contracted salmonella infections from them.

More recently, links to pet fish have been suspected in isolated cases in North America and Europe as well as in Australia over the last 10 years, according to Dr. Diane Lightfoot, a microbiologist and salmonella specialist at the University of Melbourne, who contributed to the Australian study.

But the number of salmonella outbreaks linked to pet fish and aquariums is relatively small and widely scattered. That makes them harder to trace than the vastly more numerous infections from raw or undercooked poultry, other meats, raw eggs or other contaminated food.

Most salmonella infections entail a few days of cramping, vomiting and diarrhea that may not even be reported to a doctor, let alone a public health department. Only rarely do the illnesses require treatment with antibiotics.

Still, young children, pregnant women, the elderly and others with weakened immune systems are at greater risk of developing much more serious or even fatal salmonella infections.

In a phone interview, Dr. Lightfoot emphasized that she and her colleagues were not opposed to having fish as pets. In fact, she said, she keeps a few ornamental carp in her own backyard pond.

"The world would be a terrible place without fish tanks," she said. "We're just calling on people to use common sense. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water. And when Mum's cleaning the tank, a child shouldn't play with the pebbles or sticks or splash in the water. It's easy to get infected."
Dr. Colette Gaulin, who has been tracking aquarium-linked salmonella for the health ministry in Quebec, said health workers there developed posters and brochures with "tips on handling your aquarium" for distribution to consumers at local pet shops.

The list includes admonitions to replace one-third of the tank's water twice each month and to strictly follow the manufacturer's instructions regarding filtration.

"Do not wash aquarium accessories in the kitchen sink, bathroom sink or bathtub," another item on the list advises.

"If you have no other option," it continues, "then thoroughly clean and disinfect all the surfaces used with a bleach solution of four tablespoons per liter of lukewarm water. Rinse these surfaces well before reusing."
Though the particular drug-resistant strain identified in Australia has yet to be reported from American aquariums, Dr. Fred Angulo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that taking the sorts of precautions that Dr. Lightfoot and Dr. Gaulin recommended made good sense.

All three researchers agreed that beyond any immediate public health risk, a potentially bigger problem is the makeup of the strain of Salmonella paratyphi B making the rounds in Australian fish tanks.

The strain was loaded with five different genes that enable any bacteria carrying them to be impervious to at least as many different antibiotics.
There are still effective drugs that, if needed, will readily kill the strain, and it shows no signs of spreading to the human food supply or through it.

But where is such multipronged drug resistance likely to have developed? Almost certainly not in the aquariums of individual pet owners, or even in the larger network of aquariums in local pet shops or in veterinary clinics, Dr. Lightfoot said.

She said she believed it came from Southeast Asia, which exports most of the world's ornamental fish. The use of antibiotics in the region's aquaculture tends to be heavy and not tightly regulated.

Since the 1990's, the researchers noted, multidrug-resistant versions of the same salmonella strain have been increasingly isolated from infected people in different parts of the world.

"We can't tell from our work if this multidrug-resistant strain is coming in through the fish, the snails or even the seaweed," Dr. Lightfoot said, "but we can be fairly certain that it's not in the fish food, and also fairly certain that we are importing it."

Michael Feldgarden, who helps track resistant bacteria, said he agreed that the blanketing doses of antibiotics necessary to create that deep pattern of resistance were probably given much earlier in the distribution chain of the fish a probably on fish farms in Southeast Asia.

He is part of a Boston-based surveillance network, the nonprofit Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, that, among other activities, works to identify the reservoirs of drug resistance among nonpathogenic bacteria.
One long range concern, Dr. Feldgarden said, is that now that the five resistance genes seem to be established in that strain of salmonella, they may fairly easily jump as a unit to another strain a or even to a completely different, nastier organism living in the same soup.

And those new changes may prove even more dangerous to people, he said.
"I'd be interested to culture some of those fish and see what else is infecting them," Dr. Feldgarden said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/health/1...in&pagewanted=print

This is a nice discovery--TV and radio archives including previous pandemics. And the radio clips, at least, are easily downloadable.
Influenza: Battling The Last Great Virus

For centuries it has silently stalked us, killing tens of millions of people and evading all the best efforts at a permanent cure. It is influenza, a potentially lethal bug whose unique ability to reinvent itself in deadlier forms has prompted researchers to dub it the "last great virus" facing humanity. CBC Archives explores the deadly history of influenza and looks at what's being done to avoid a new global pandemic."
http://archives.cbc.ca/300c.asp?id=1-75-1965

Check out the teachers section-- (flu isn't on it but TB is.)
# "For Teachers" home page
Index of Topics with educational materials
http://archives.cbc.ca/295p.asp?IDLan=1&IDMenu=-4

CSI camps let junior sleuths put science studies to work

The most important thing to notice in the on-line version is that the Forensic Scientist is actually dressed like one--face mask to keep from contaminating the sample; lab coat; separate work area not in the middle of wandering traffic. No eye protection, but still miles ahead of the TV depictions. (and no one ever wears hat and long sleeves in Las Vegas CSI and no one has a swamp cooler or sweats in Phoenix on Medium.)
mpb

Published: April 20, 2006
Last Modified: April 20, 2006 at 02:52 AM

Students who crammed definitions and equations into their brains to pass biology and chemistry classes during the school year will get a shot at using that knowledge during a forensic science camp being offered this summer.
Forensic science involves applying science to the law.

"Anytime you have any kind of evidence, forensics is involved," said Tom Anderson, former director of the Alaska State Troopers and administrator of the CSI Forensic Science Camp offered by the Fraternal Order of Alaska State Troopers.

Forensics can include employing scientific measures to learn answers to such diverse questions as why a bunch of birds might have died, who burglarized a home or whether it was your accountant who fixed the books and made off with all that dough, said Jeanette Hencken, a high school forensic science and physics instructor in Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.

"As a teacher, the sky is the limit in how you can use forensics in the classroom," she said in a telephone interview. "Anytime you'd use inquiry to find out what a substance, object or material is or how something could have happened, you use forensic science."

The troopers organization contracted with Hencken to organize two camps: one for high school students June 12 to 16 and another for middle-schoolers June 19 to 23 -- partly in response to a national upswing in interest in forensics spurred by TV shows like "CSI" and partly because it dovetails with its mission to support youth.

Two other forensics camps are being offered to kids this summer, including the weeklong CSI: Anchorage for elementary-school students at the Imaginarium and the CSI Forensic Challenge for middle-school students in Wasilla.

Hencken has been teaching forensic science classes at Webster Groves High School since 1998. Her students are involved in an ongoing forensics project with the St. Louis Police Department. Every semester, they photograph all the non-name-brand shoes carried by area Payless and Wal-Mart stores. They enter the information into a database for use by the local police department and the FBI. (The FBI already gets all the info on name-brand shoes).

"If you're at a crime scene and leave a footprint, they can tell what shoe was at the scene, they can trace it to where it was purchased. I found out last summer two pictures of our shoes were used in cases the FBI was prosecuting," Hencken said.

This kind of hands-on learning clicks with her students, she said.
"They know it's important and it's going to be used. That's real-life application."

Hencken met George Taft, the former head of Alaska's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory on Tudor Road, at a forensic science camp for educators in 2002 in St. Louis.

The two collaborated on the Alaska Summer Justice Institute, a forensic science class for educators and law enforcers taught at the University of Alaska Anchorage the past two summers. An outgrowth of that class has been forensics classes started by teachers at East, South and Lumen Christi high schools.

During her 2004 visit here, Hencken met Anderson, and the two brainstormed a CSI lecture series for the community and Taft's idea for a summer camp. The lecture series has been offered by the Fraternal Order of Alaska State Troopers the past two years,

In the science lab at Grace Christian School, youthful sleuths will make casts of footprints and tires, dust for fingerprints, analyze handwriting and DNA, peer through microscopes at hair, fiber and soil samples and assess (simulated) blood spatters, among other tasks.

Experts from the FBI, Alaska State Troopers and state crime lab will break up the post-lunch stupor with talks on DNA analysis, crime scene evidence, computer crime, narcotics investigations and bioterrorism, said Debbra Brewer, a biology and physics teacher at Lumen Christi High who will lead the camps along with Hencken.

The camp will extend the science concepts students have studied in school, Hencken said, such as the introduction of Newton's law in seventh and eighth grades and the basics of physics and chemical reaction in high school.
"We'll build on those ideas," she said. "We won't teach those concepts, but there will be a review so kids can understand where we're going with them."
The curriculum is age-appropriate, with the high-schoolers delving deeper into DNA analysis through an online, virtual crime scene. They'll also visit UAA to view its electronic microscope and to learn about applying forensics to anthropology.

Middle school students will take a field trip to the Alaska State Troopers Museum downtown.

Both camps will culminate in a crime scene investigation. Middle-schoolers will work in small groups using forensics to learn who stole a backpack. High school students will work as a single team on a more in-depth crime simulation yet to be determined.

Brewer began teaching a forensic science class at Lumen Christi this year after attending Justice Institute classes at UAA.

"(Forensics) gives students a chance to see real live connections between what they learn in the classroom and how it is used. It holds their interest in science and in technology," she said.

Daily News reporter Rose Cox can be reached at rcox@adn.com."
http://www.adn.com/life/story/7645517p-7557100c.html

Student gives wings to bird research

OSU student tasked with testing migrant birds for Asian bird flu on remote Alaskan island

By Peter Chee

story image 1
Ian Rose, a senior in fishery and wildlife at Oregon State, sits in a lab where he works in Nash hall. Each summer, he studies the diets and population size of Alaskan seabirds.

Tzu-Ying Chen / The Daily Barometer

Summer is supposed to be warmer than winter, but for fisheries and wildlife senior Ian Rose, things are opposite.

Fifty degrees outside is a hot summer day for Rose on the remote Alaskan island of St. Lawrence. It\s a T-shirt day for him and other researchers.
Under Fish and Wildlife Service employ, Rose\s role is to monitor the diets and population size of five seabird species that nest on the island.
But this summer, the U.S. government has given his team additional funding to track something else a the possible spread of bird flu to the United States, carried on migrant birds who fly from the north-east tip of Asia.
Rose is a team leader for the ]St. Lawrence Island Seabird Monitoring Project,^ a joint effort between Oregon State University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He first joined the team in 2003 to help with a graduate student\s research.

]I like it a lot,^ Rose said, explaining that the two to three months he spends every summer is a good break from typical American culture.
In addition to their usual work, the team will take test samples for Asian bird flu from birds they catch, along with ones caught by the
native-Alaskan Yupik tribe, who live on the island.

]It\s something the government is obviously concerned about,^ Rose said, although he says the risks of Asian bird flu are over exaggerated. ]I\d be very surprised if we got any positives,^ he said.

So far, Rose said there is no proof that migratory birds, such as ducks and geese, could contract and carry the disease across the Bering Sea from Asia. But Rose and the other researchers will be on hand testing just in case.
]We consider ourselves experts on these sea birds,^ Rose said. But that knowledge pales in comparison to what the native islanders have learned after countless generations living on the island.

]These people know vastly more than we do,^ he said.
St. Lawrence Island is located off the western coast of Alaska. The nearest town, Nome, is located more than 100 miles away.

contributed photo

Rose said he and his two seasonal technicians may know the numerical data, but as far as the intricacies of bird behavior and exact migration patterns, the Yupiks are the ones who know.

St. Lawrence Island is about 100 miles distant from the nearest Alaskan town of Nome: population 5,000. And although phone lines are in place, connections can still be spotty.

Working far from home can be hard, but Rose said he looks forward to packages from his mom and from friends.

]He likes to get oranges in the mail,^ said Tina Buescher, office manager for KBVR-FM, OSU\s student radio station where Rose recently served as station manager. ]He also loves it when we send movies and DVD\s.^
Fresh fruit must be mailed to the island. Rose said last summer, his mother tried to mail fresh pears to him, but the package got stuck in Nome and arrived two weeks late.

]It was rotting through the bottom of the package,^ Rose said laughing.
On St. Lawrence, Rose said the Yupik tribe, for the most part, has welcomed him into their home. He said in the past, representatives from Fish and Wildlife have been treated with suspicion because most of the time, they are there to lay down hunting regulations.

Rose said the Yupiks rely on what they catch for about 75 percent of their food consumption, and few warm to the idea of outsiders telling them what they can and cannot hunt. They\ve maintained the same practices for centuries.
But Rose says the tribe has mostly accepted the team. They have earned their trust over the years.

Rose said testing for bird flu is in no way a primary purpose for the project. Its main goal is to monitor changes in bird behavior and population.
]The Bering sea has warmed significantly^ he said, saying it was worrisome that there is now less ice and the water temperature environment has shifted from sub-arctic to something similar to waters much farther south, closer to conditions found off the Oregon coast.

]That\s affected everything from plankton (which the birds feed on) to walruses,^ he said. ]It\s really affected the people too.^
The Yupiks use ice on the frozen ocean as hunting platforms.

Despite the isolation, Rose said he enjoys his work. It\s provided him a unique experience in the frigid wilderness.



Peter Chee, features editor

features@dailybarometer.com, 737-2231"
http://barometer.orst.edu/vnews/display.v/...04/20/44473a31d83f0

"Monday, April 17, 2006

The Gap
We've been talking with a local high school about a program to allow some motivated seniors to take courses at the college, in lieu of AP courses. The high school benefits by saving money on an AP course, and we benefit both by increased enrollments without giving up a classroom, and quality control over the credits that many of those students would bring to us next year anyway.
Good idea all around.

The sticking point is placement exams.

The high school doesn't want its students to have to take our placement exams. If students place 'developmental' (that is, remedial) in either math or writing, they are barred from college-level courses in relevant disciplines until those deficiencies have been addressed. (I say 'in relevant disciplines' because we allow students with shortfalls in math to take, say, drawing.) Although the high school claims that it will subject any students in the program to rigorous criteria, they don't want to risk the placement exams. I consider this revealing.

What data I've seen suggest that the high school's fear is well-founded. We have a special scholarship program for students who graduate in the top x percent of their high school class. A distressing number of those students test as 'developmental.'

Community colleges take a lot of flak for teaching remedial courses. But as open-admissions institutions, what choice do we have? As long as students show up with legitimate high school diplomas, we're mission-bound to accept them. If they show up with trouble writing a sentence or solving an equation, well, I don't see how that's our fault. We do our best to fix the educational deficits with which we're presented. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but I don't think we're wrong to make the attempt. In fact, I'd argue that we represent the last, best chance for many students.
Still, it bothers me that students who graduate in the upper echelon of their high school cohorts test developmental. That shouldn't happen.
I don't think it's the tests. We use a common math test across the state, and part of the writing test is standard. Our cut scores are in the same ballpark as everyone else's. In fact, there's a move afoot now to make placement tests entirely uniform across the state. I'm a little wary about what kind of test would lend itself to that, but it should certainly put to rest any accusations of self-dealing. The questions on these exams are quite a bit easier than on, say, the SAT. (We also have an SAT cutoff that exempts a student from placement exams.) They're not out of line.
Taxpayers in some states (so I've heard) have drawn a line in the sand, refusing to reimburse cc's for remedial courses. The argument, to the extent that one exists, is that they shouldn't have to pay for the same education twice. The flaw in the argument is that it punishes the wrong institution. If a high school didn't teach a kid to write a paragraph, the high school still gets paid. The cc is punished for the sins of the high school. This is a basic confusion of categories.


I don't know how to fix K-12 education. (If I did, I wouldn't do this job.) Part of me suspects that the problem isn't so much educational as economic; if there were more living-wage jobs out there that didn't require a college degree, we could give up the fiction that every kid belongs in college without thereby consigning entire groups to poverty. There have always been kids who were, well, screwups. This is not new. In the past, those kids might join the Army, or get a union job at a factory. Now they're afraid to join the Army for fear of going to Iraq (or they can't get in due to entrance exams, obesity, drug use, etc.), and those factory jobs are long gone. So some of them find their way to us, despite long and uninterrupted records of struggle with (or indifference to) formal education. Then we get called wasteful for trying to teach them basic math and writing.

Sometimes I suspect that the insistence on education degrees for teachers is the culprit. Our high schools require education degrees, and are laggards on international comparisons. Our colleges and universities don't, and our higher education sector is the best in the world. Correlation may not prove causation, but it's awfully hard to argue that education degrees are necessary for quality control when the institutions that don't require them are more successful than the ones that do.

More basically, housing segregation by income (and, indirectly, race) probably plays a major role. If an entire town is devoid of
college-educated parents, the teachers in that high school will face an uphill battle even on good days. Since it's not politically realistic to fail entire classes, they pass students who, by any objective measure, haven't mastered high-school level academic skills. Then we get blamed for noticing.

I'll admit to being an amateur in this area, and there is a vast scholarly literature devoted to it. But from the perspective of a manager in the trenches at a cc, I'm getting a little tired of being bashed for trying to help students whom other institutions have failed. The gap between what gets a kid out of high school and what equips him for success in college is dramatic, wasteful, disturbing, and sometimes fixable. If it deep-sixes our new program, I'll be disappointed, but we can always catch those kids next year, when they come to us to learn what they didn't learn in high school. "
http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2006/04/gap.html

"The Home Forum > Kidspace
from the April 24, 2006 edition

Kidspace: Short stuff
Compiled from wire services and websites by Steven Ellis
Fed goes kid friendly

Breathe a sigh of relief, Hilary Duff and Justin Timberlake. In the future, there could be less competition for your status as celebrity teen heartthrobs. (Photograph) ANDY NELSON - STAFF/FILE

Instead of the big screen, a generation of middle schoolers might be setting their sights on seats in the Federal Reserve boardroom.

Huh?

The Federal Reserve, which is the nation's central bank, launched a Web page geared to kids at www.federalreserve.gov/kids.

The page is part of the Fed's effort to bolster financial literacy among young people. "This new Web page provides younger students with a basic approach to the complexities of the Federal Reserve that is both enjoyable and interesting," says Mark Olson, a member of the Fed's board of governors. .
Of course, kids will be the ultimate judge of that.

Little guy, big score

Michael Tang of San Francisco doesn't let pins stand in his way. Bowling pins, that is. He's the youngest American ever to bowl a perfect game at a sanctioned event.

Michael bowled a 300 score last month in Pacifica, Calif. He was 10 years, 3 months, and 16 days old, which was three months younger than the previous record holder, according to the website of the United States Bowling Congress.
Michael's been bowling since he was 6, but says he doesn't want to be a professional bowler. Instead - watch out Tiger - he hopes to become a professional golfer.

Virtual cats and dogs?

Speaking of websites, did you know that even if Mom and Dad won't let you own a pet, you can adopt a furry friend online? It's true. But it's not what you might think.

The thing is, it's not a "real" pet. It's a Neopet, and, according to the website, www.neopet.com, more than 30 million "pet owners" already have one.
Visitors can choose from 52 different Neopets, but don't expect to find a golden retriever, Siamese cat, or hamster among them.

Instead, you can select a Shoyru, a winged dragon that stands on its two hind legs, or a Ruki, a virtual pet that's loosely based on the praying mantis.
And forget about playing "fetch." Neopets such as Eyries "can be ferocious at times," according to the website, and they inhabit the tropical parts of Neopia - where Neopets reside online, of course.

All kiwi - and some fruit

When a North Island brown kiwi hatched at the National Zoological Park in Washington two months ago, zookeepers were cautious. That's because it's been more than 30 years since one of these endangered birds, native to New Zealand, emerged from an egg at the zoo.

Unlike most birds, a kiwi doesn't have a special "egg tooth" to poke its way out of its shell. Instead it kicks its way out.

Zookeepers named the bird Manaia. In Maori (a native language of New Zealand) it means "guardian of the earth and sky."

The bird now weighs about 17 ounces. As an adult, it will weigh about three times that amount and live on a diet of worms, insects, and even small fruits and berries.

Thank a volunteer this week

When former President Richard Nixon signed an executive order in 1974 naming the fourth week of April National Volunteer Week, he started a trend. Each president since has signed a proclamation promoting the week in which volunteers across the country are recognized and celebrated. "
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0424/p18s02-hfks.html?s=hns

"4/17/06

Response to education article

I read with much interest a letter to the editor from by Stan Zuray of Tanana (published March 22 in the Anchorage Daily News) asserting that rural children fail to get the same quality education as urban kids. It reminded me of what I had said over 30 years ago about the quality of education, or lack thereof, in the Bush.

In 1972, I came to Anchorage for high school. I had always been considered bright, but noticed immediately I had to work much harder for good grades. In Bethel, I remember it always too easy.

A couple years later I went back to Bethel and this, I swear, is the description of a high school history exam back then: First, there was a large, colorful illustration of our founding fathers that took up most of the one page test. Below that was a short paragraph to read, followed by three questions to answer. That was it. A student could just glance upward and get the answers to the questions from the paragraph. I never saw an exam like that in Anchorage.

The rural education curriculum has been watered down for generations. The results throughout the years of employing this separate system for rural students have shown up in high drop out rates, especially in college, where rural students arrive unprepared. Diplomas simply aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

I strongly believe this is intentional. Those who designed this policy regarding education for rural students long ago knew it would inhibit Native people from advancing themselves. The last thing those responsible for rural schools wanted were enlightened, educated Natives stirring things up by demanding their rights as human beings and citizens of the United States.
On the other side of this issue, I also believe it is, ultimately, the responsibility of the parents - and especially the students - themselves to learn as much about the world and how it works in order to survive. They should not depend on the school system for everything. Much of what I know now I learned by reading and asking questions, especially information about my own culture and history, which by the way, was never offered in primary school, only in college. Why? Same answer as before.

Finally, to Anchorage Senator Con Bunde, who has proposed taxing Bush residents for their schools, I ask: Would he and his constituents be willing to continue paying taxes if urban schools were run in the same manner as rural schools? The proposed tax would only further marginalize those who have already been put at an educational disadvantage by the government and the system.

I have noticed in the past that when money gets tight, the blame for the problems are usually placed on those who can least afford it. Never mind how the governme