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.
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>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.
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>
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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
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 > 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
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encouraged.
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 > faculty to be full professors (after adjusting for age), and earned lower
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 > 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
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application
 > meets the program priorities of the NHLBI.
 >
 > The entire text can be found at:
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 > 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
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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