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"latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/
 From the Los Angeles Times
Bedbugs tuck into Southland
Calls to exterminators are rising. Eradication is neither quick nor cheap. By Leslie Earnest
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 13, 2007

Bed feeling a little crowded? Maybe you have company.

The Cimex lectularius, better known and despised as the common
bedbug, is snuggling into households across Southern California, giving people the heebie- jeebies. The blood-sucking, heat-seeking, pint-size parasites aren't believed by the experts to transmit
disease, but they do have a way of cranking up stress levels.

"It was just horrendous," said a West Hollywood middle-school
teacher, who, like others who have been horrified to have lived with the uninvited guests, asked that she not be identified. "Think of how you wouldn't sleep at night if you had roaches, and this is even worse," she said. "These roaches feed on you."

They used to be associated with cramped and dirty living quarters, grimy motels and high-rise living in places like New York. For much of the second part of the last century the liberal use of the
eventually banned pesticide DDT seemed to all but do away with them. Now bedbugs have moved into single-family homes with a vengeance and taken up lodging in schools, hospitals and college dormitories too. The wide-open spaces of the West are no defense.

"Bedbugs are just going ballistic everywhere," said Michael Potter, a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. "It is going to really rock this country. I'm not trying to sound sensationalist."
Bedbugs hitchhike on humans or in luggage and burrow into bedding, books, sofas and just about any cozy place, even picture frames. Once they establish squatter's rights, evicting them isn't easy. Or cheap. Casting them out of the average house in Southern California can cost thousands of dollars and require multiple visits.

"The last customer we dealt with compared it to having her home
destroyed by fire or flood," said Sean Murray, manager of
exterminator Orkin's branch in Pasadena.

Seven years ago, a pest control company may have received one or two bedbug calls a year, according to the National Pest Management Assn. Now there may be 50 or more calls a week.

Western Exterminator Co., which serves California, reported a 240% increase in bedbug work from 2000 to 2006. Isotech Pest Management Inc. in Pomona is conducting about 1,000 inspections a month -- 700% more than last year.

It's "a huge problem," said Isotech owner Mike Masterson, whose staff includes a pair of beagles professionally trained to sniff out bedbugs.
Neither the California Department of Public Health nor county
officials keep statistics on what the department recently called a bedbug "resurgence," and the state is surveying local public health agencies to get a handle on the size of the problem.

A number of reasons are cited for the infestations, among them the DDT ban and an increase in international travel. "It's not a case of being a lower socioeconomic thing," said William Brogdon, a research entomologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "These things can happen to anybody."

Like the West Hollywood teacher. She had just outfitted her apartment with a new bed, sofa and window treatments when a mysterious rash blanketed her body, sparing only her face, hands and feet. Her
students took note. "It was like, 'Miss, you're scratching again,' " she said. "It was just such a nightmare."

Doctors were stumped by her condition, which continued to worsen. When she noticed fluid settling in her ankles and at the back of her neck, she went to a hospital emergency room, where she got relief for her symptoms in the form of a cream that she slathered all over her body, including under her fingernails.

It took "divine intervention" -- actually, the Internet -- to
pinpoint the cause. She clicked on "bedbugs" and raced to inspect her bed, first finding black marks on the mattress, then the bugs
themselves. She tossed out her down pillow, sheets and every blanket.
When the Orkin man arrived, he served as part-pest controller,
part-therapist, calming her as one bug marched across her pillow and an adult one, about the size of a large apple seed, scaled her curtain.
He said, "Don't worry, we'll get rid of these." He did, but it took three visits.

Because the strange bedfellows are so tenacious, pest controllers have added heat and steam to their arsenals.

"A bedbug is really a wonderful survivor" that can persevere for as long as 18 months without nourishment, said entomologist Frank Meek, a technical director for Orkin. "They can hide and live a long time."
Which is why one former Glendale family now lives in Pasadena. The wife, a new mother, had "a meltdown" after discovering a plague in her box springs and spent weeks debugging her home. In the end, she decided to move.

There wasn't much to pack. She had thrown out beds, dressers,
clothes, shoes, an alarm clock, a television set and five boxes of books. Stuff that was too precious to dump went into storage to give bugs time to die.

"The losses are astronomical," the woman said. Worse yet was the psychological toll. "I didn't sleep for five weeks. I don't believe I'll ever be the same."

Now she's a bedbug expert, having given herself a crash course on insects she considers "biblical." It particularly creeps her out that they like to stay close to their hosts.

"Host is the word," she said, drawing it out. "They are parasites."
Bedbugs are established members of the global community.
Archaeologists in Europe have found bedbug fossils dating back 3,500 years, the University of Kentucky's Potter said, "and they go way back before that."

They arrived in the New World with the first colonists and were
plentiful until about the 1940s, when DDT seemed to do away with them.
Their comeback means public education is vital, Potter said. For example, it's foolhardy to retrieve a mattress or couch from a curb or a dumpster. "That," he said, "is going to have to stop."

Of course, retailers are aiming to cash in. Target and Macy's sell mattress and pillow covers meant to form a barrier between bugs and sleepers. Home Depot sells Sprayway "Good Night" for $6.48 with the familiar refrain "Don't let the bedbugs bite!" on the can.

Mattress and box spring encasements can be helpful, Potter said, but he generally advises against trying to get rid of the bugs yourself.
He's not optimistic about the future, given current restrictions on powerful chemicals and the bugs' knack for adapting to them. "Our arsenal is depleted of effective products," he said, and there's no "silver bullet in the wings."

leslie.earnest@latimes.com


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"Culture in northern Canadian dioceses threatened by melting ice cap By Sara Loftson
8/24/2007

The Catholic Register

TORONTO, Canada (The Catholic Register) ` An
ice-fisher from Sachs Harbour, Northwest
Territories, and a sugar-cane farmer from the
Fiji Islands have more in common than some may think.

Tropical islands in the south Pacific and the
polar regions are two areas that stand to face
the most immediate and dramatic effects of global
warming, said David Hik, a biology professor at
the University of Alberta in western Canada.

Island countries are particularly vulnerable to
rising sea levels, while melting ice poses its
own set of challenges to the Arctic, said Hik,
director of the Canadian chapter for the
International Polar Year, a two-year project
allowing researchers from 63 countries to
collaborate and gain insight into the Arctic and Antarctic.

](Global warming) is not isolated by geography,
the whole world is connected through the
hydrological system,^ said Hik. ]Changes in the
polar region of the Arctic have effects in other parts of the world.^
A consequence of global warming is that Arctic
sea ice cover is shrinking at the rate of 8.6
percent per decade. If this rate continues the
Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in summer by 2060
according to the United Nations Environment Program.

When sea ice in Hudson Bay melts two weeks
earlier it forces hungry polar bears to come
ashore. Lorraine Brandson, a 24-year veteran with
the Churchill-Hudson Bay Diocese, has witnessed
polar bears coming into town looking for food.

]We have had an increasing number of bears being
handled,^ said Brandson, curator for Churchill\s
Eskimo Museum, established by the Missionary
Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1944.

]The Department of Conservation has a polar bear
alert (675-BEAR) with people available 24 hours
to scare bears out of the zone around the town.
Sometimes they have to put them in a [jail\ or further north.^
When the Inuit, who make up 85 percent of the
diocese\s population, see more bears come into
their communities they believe the bear
population has increased and want their hunting
quota raised; meanwhile, scientists think it\s
because the bears are nutritionally stressed due
to a two week shorter hunting season on the
melting sea ice, said Brandson, who also works as
the administrative assistant to Churchill-Hudson Bay Bishop Reynald Rouleau.
]There you see a conflict between scientific
knowledge and local knowledge. We may be seeing
more of this ... if people perceive things
differently,^ said Brandson. ]There\s always been
a real recognition of our diocese that research
and understanding of the Arctic is important.^

The diocese sits on the board for the Churchill
Northern Studies Centre, a research center for
Arctic studies co-founded by former
Churchill-Hudson Bay Bishop Omer Robidoux. The
center encourages aboriginal people to take
courses so there is some understanding between science and local knowledge.
Changing weather patterns not only affects polar
bears\ lifestyle, it also affects the local
people. For the Inuit, ]their hunting culture is
dependent on sea ice. What\s being documented in
the past is as that sea melts, their ability to
travel on the land is more difficult, unpredictable,^ said Hik.
While Mackenzie-Fort Smith Bishop Denis Croteau
said he has noticed changes in weather such as
shorter cold spells and delayed winters, he
doesn\t think climate change affects the local people that much.
]I don\t think (climate change) has been so
marked in the church here yet, because most of
our native people are not living the old
lifestyle of hunting, trapping and fur trading,^
said Croteau, who\s spent 43 years living in the
north. ]They\ve adapted to the modern way of life
and they have 9-5 jobs and very few will be on
the land ` and it\s more of a holiday. ... From
the church point of view it isn\t an issue.^

Brandson disagrees. ]Climate change has to be
something that\s considered. It will impact
people who\ve already seen a lot of modernization in their life.^
Even if these people can buy supplies from the
store hunting is important from a nutritional and
cultural point of view, she added.

]Every major event or activity is a community
feast that is all based on country food. It\s a
binding element. It tells them who they are.^

Another consequence of warmer temperatures is
melting permafrost, a permanently frozen layer of
soil. It is ]creating havoc for roads, bridges,
pipelines and most importantly for the 4 million
residents of the Arctic, 110,000 (of whom live) in Canada,^ said Hik.
]Things start to twist and sag and sink,^ said
Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon. ]If it starts
thawing out we will have problems; the foundation
starts to get wonky and the building starts
shifting around when the permafrost melts.

]The north likes to blame the south for all of
its problems. It\s sort of like if all those
people down south would stop making all this
pollution things would be better up north,^ said Bishop Gordon.
]I think the witness of Jesus and the gospel
simplifying our lifestyle is both for northern
people and for southern people and the church is
able to help people and witness to people that we
maybe need to downsize. If we lessen our
consumption in the West in order to assist the
consumption in the poorer nations it would create balance,^ he said.
]It really comes down to a deep profound respect
for the human person,^ said Bishop Gordon.

Hik said once the results of the International
Polar Year are revealed faith organizations could
play an important role in communicating them to
the communities in which they serve.

]What I fear is these changes could be so rapid,
the upheaval could be very disruptive for these
communities, but that requires being prepared,
having good information and sufficient time to
plan,^ Hik said, explaining the better integrated
faith communities are into the social, cultural
and spiritual life of the local communities, the
better they will be able to help.

]A strong community that can make good decisions
on how to prepare for change and adapt to change
will be able to maintain its culture,^ he added.

Brandson said people who contemplate working in
northern dioceses need to make a serious time
commitment and not just see it as work experience.

]The local people do know the difference between
someone who is coming up for a job and leaving
and someone who wants to be with them and loves them,^ she said.
]We have to promote that some new people would
want to take a vocation in the north and support
the local lay leaders who are quite admirable,^ Brandson said. "
http://www.catholic.org/printer_friendly.p...151§ion=Cathcom

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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/31/how-voters-are-susce.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/31/how-v...e-susce.html>How voters are susceptible to politicians who can manipulate their fear of death The New Republic has an article called "Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success." It reports on the
research of psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynsk, who believe "a fear of our own mortality guides many of our political choices without our ever realizing it."
Their first experiment was published in 1989. To test the hypothesis that recognition of mortality evokes "worldview defense" -- their term for the range of emotions, from intolerance to religi- osity to a preference for law and order, that they believe thoughts of death can trigger -- they assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges. They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between
personality traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they
inserted in the middle of the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their mortality. One asked the judges to "briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you"; the other required them to "jot down, as
specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead." They then asked the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the
mortality exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the exercises set it at an average of $50. The
psychologists knew they were onto something.

Over the next decade, the three performed similar experiments to illustrate how awareness of death could provoke worldview defense. They showed that what they now called "mortality salience" affected people's view of other races, religions, and nations. When they had students at a Christian college evaluate essays by what they were told were a Christian and a Jewish author, the group that did the mortality exercises expressed a far more negative view of the essay by the Jewish author than the control group did. (German
psychologists would find a similar reaction among German subjects toward Turks.) They also conducted numerous experiments to show that mortality exercises evoked patriotic responses. The subjects who did the exercises took a far more negative view of an essay critical of the United States than the control group did and also expressed
greater veneration for cultural icons like the flag. The three even devised an experiment to show that, after doing the mortality
exercises, conservatives took a much harsher view of liberals, and vice versa.
<http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070827&s=...ng/iBag?a=GmwDca>;

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>2) Association for Library Service to Children Offers Underserved
> Populations Outreach Grant
>
> Deadline: December 3, 2007
>
> The Association for Library Service to Children
> ( http://www.ala.org/alsc/ ), a division of the American Library
> Association ( http://www.ala.org/ ), and Candlewick Press
> ( http://www.candlewick.com/ ) have announced "Light the Way:
> Outreach to the Underserved," a one-time grant of $5,000 for a
> library conducting exemplary outreach to underserved populations.
>
> The ALSC Library Service to Special Population Children and Their
> Caregivers Committee will select the winner and may name up to
> three Honorable Mentions. Special-population children may include
> those who have learning or physical differences, speak English as
> a second language, are in a non-traditional school environment or
> a non-traditional family setting (such as teen parents, foster
> children, children in the juvenile justice system, and children
> in gay and lesbian families), and those who need accommodation
> service to meet their needs.
>
> Criteria and an application for the grant are available at the
> ALSC Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008656/candlewick
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml

>4) Queer Youth Fund Accepting Letters of Intent
>
> Deadline: October 2, 2007 (Letters of Intent)
>
> The Queer Youth Fund is a donor-initiated grantmaking program
> housed at the Liberty Hill Foundation ( http://libertyhill.org/ ).
> A group of committed donors developed the fund to provide large
> multiyear grants to groups that address the multitude of issues
> queer youth face as they acknowledge and celebrate their sexual-
> ity and identity, and seek to become empowered leaders in their
> communities.
>
> The Queer Youth Fund makes multiyear grants to grassroots, local,
> state, and national nonprofit organizations working to improve
> the quality of life among gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,
> queer, and questioning youth. The fund awards grants to inno-
> vative and effective leadership development programs or organ-
> izing projects that empower GLBTQQ youth to improve societal
> conditions affecting GLBTQQ youth and that make a long-term
> difference to their movement. For purposes of the program, youth
> are defined as 25 years old or younger.
>
> Up to four grants of up to $100,000 each, payable over three to
> five years, will be made to different 501(c)(3) organizations (or
> groups with fiscal sponsors) with specific work that matches the
> fund's guidelines. To be eligible, applicant organizations must
> have a total budget for their youth work of $750,000 or less.
>
> The Queer Youth Fund is now accepting Letters of Intent for its
> 2007-08 grant cycle. Guidelines and information on previous
> grantees are available at the Liberty Hill Foundation Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008658/libertyhill
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>
> --------------------------<<>>----------------------------
>
> 5) Youth Service America Youth Venture Program to Support
> Community Service Programs
>
> Deadline: October 1, 2007
>
> The Youth Service America Youth Venture Program, a partnership
> between Youth Service America ( http://www.ysa.org/ ) and Youth
> Venture ( http://www.genv.net/ ), is designed to help build the
> movement of young social entrepreneurs by investing in and
> encouraging the ideas of young people.
>
> The YSA Youth Venture Program provides funding and support to
> young people (ages 12-20) in the United States who want to create
> new, sustainable, civic-minded organizations, clubs, or businesses
> (called "ventures").
>
> To be eligible for the program, ventures must be youth-led and
> designed to be a lasting asset to the community. In addition, YSA
> Youth venture teams are required to plan a Global Youth Service
> Day ( http://www.gysd.org/ ) project every year that their venture
> is operational.
>
> The YSA Youth Venture Program provides a variety of resources,
> including a national network of like-minded young people, media
> opportunities, technical support, helpful toolkits and workshops,
> as well as seed funding of up to $1,000 for start-up expenses.
>
> For application tools and more information about the YSA Youth
> Venture Partnership Program, visit the Youth Venture Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008659/ysa
>
> For additional RFPs in Children and Youth, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_children.jhtml
>8) Applications Invited for National Wildlife Refuge System
> Preserve America Grant Program
>
> Deadline: November 1, 2007
>
> The Fish and Wildlife Service ( http://www.fws.gov/ ) and the
> National Fish and Wildlife Foundation ( http://www.nfwf.org/ )
> are requesting proposals to help foster interpretive, education,
> and visitor initiatives that incorporate history and historic
> sites into the National Wildlife Refuge System's
> ( http://www.fws.gov/refuges/ ) mission. The National Wildlife
> Refuge System Preserve America Grant program seeks to protect
> historic sites, integrate history into refuge interpretive and
> education programs, and build partnerships with communities and
> organizations interested in supporting refuge programs.
>
> The program provides competitive grants of $10,000 to $15,000
> each to help fund national wildlife refuge interpretive and
> education projects focused on history and historic sites and
> how they contribute to conservation and understanding of natural
> resources. Grant proposals must demonstrate national, state, or
> local partnerships to qualify.
>
> Eligible applicants must be nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3)
> organizations or organizations that have applied for nonprofit
> status, including Refuge "Friends" organizations, cooperative
> and interpretive associations, local historical societies,
> academic institutions, or other citizen-support organizations
> interested in assisting a Refuge or group of Refuges and the
> Refuge System as a whole. State, county, and local government
> agencies are not eligible.
>
> For complete program information and application procedures,
> visit the NFWF Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008662/nfwf
>
> For additional RFPs in Environment, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_environment.jhtml
>13) MacArthur Foundation Announces New Digital Media and Learning
> Competition
>
> Deadline: October 15, 2007
>
> The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
> ( http://www.macfound.org/ ) has announced a public competition
> that will award a total of $2 million in funding to emerging
> leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of
> digital media and learning. The competition is part of the
> foundation's $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative
> ( http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/ ), which aims to help
> determine how digital technologies are changing the way young
> people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.
>
> Awards will be given in two categories: 1) Innovation Awards of
> $250,000 or $100,000 each will support learning entrepreneurs
> and builders of new digital environments for informal learning;
> and 2) Knowledge Networking Awards of up to $75,000 will support
> communicators in connecting, mobilizing, circulating, or trans-
> lating new ideas around digital media and learning.
>
> As part of their prize, awardees will receive special consulta-
> tion support on everything from technology development to manage-
> ment training. Winners will be invited to showcase their work at
> a conference that will include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs,
> educators, and policy makers seeking the best ideas about digital
> learning.
>
> The open competition will be administered by HASTAC, the Humani-
> ties, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory,
> ( http://www.hastac.org/ ), a consortium of humanists, artists,
> scientists, social scientists, and engineers committed to new
> forms of collaboration for thinking, teaching, and research
> across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of
> technology.
>
> Detailed information on the competition is available online at
> the program's Web site.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008667/dmlcompetition
>
> For additional RFPs in Science/Technology, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_science_technology.jhtml
>
> --------------------------<<>>----------------------------
>
> 14) National Endowment for the Humanities Invites Applications
> for Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
>
> Deadline: October 16, 2007; and April 2, 2008
>
> The National Endowment for the Humanities ( http://www.neh.gov/ )
> and the Institute of Museum and Library Services ( http://imls.gov/ )
> invite applications to the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
> program. By awarding relatively low-dollar grants during the
> planning stages, the program, which is designed to encourage
> innovations in the digital humanities, hopes to identify pro-
> jects that are particularly innovative and have the potential
> to make a positive impact on the humanities.
>
> Proposals should be for the planning or initial stages of digi-
> tal initiatives in any area of the humanities. All applicants
> must propose an innovative approach, method, tool, or idea that
> has not been used before in the humanities. Digital Humanities
> Start-Up Grants should result in plans, prototypes, or proofs
> of concept for long-term digital humanities projects prior to
> implementation.
>
> Two levels of awards will be made. Level I awards ranging be-
> tween $5,000 and $25,000 each are designed to fund brainstorming
> sessions, workshops, early alpha-level prototypes, and initial
> planning. Larger ($25,001 to $50,000 each) Level II awards can
> be used for more fully-formed projects that are ready for the
> first stage of implementation or the creation of working proto-
> types.
>
> Any U.S.-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization or institution,
> state or local governmental agency or Native American tribal
> organization, or U.S. citizen or foreign national who has been
> living in the United States or its jurisdictions for at least
> the three years immediately prior to the application deadline
> is eligible to apply. Individuals affiliated with an eligible
> institution must apply through an institution (ordinarily their
> own).
>
> There will be two application deadlines: October 16, 2007, and
> April 2, 2008.
>
> Visit the NEH Web site for complete program information.
>
> RFP Link:
> http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008668/neh/gov
>
> For additional RFPs in Science/Technology, visit:
> http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_science_technology.jhtml

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>1. Skylight: The Science Centre for Learning and Teaching [pdf]
>http://www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/
>
>Established in 2001 at the University of British Columbia, the Science
>Centre for Learning and Teaching was created in order to create "an
>environment that supports reflective science teaching and learning
>practices." While Skylight's work is primarily focused on working on
>improving these efforts at the University of British Columbia, they have
>also created a number of online resources designed for science teachers
>everywhere. Perhaps one of the best resources on the entire site is the
>"Teaching Large Classes" area. Within this section, visitors can find
>highlights from the research literature on teaching, descriptions of
>practical strategies to enhance learning outcomes, video clip
>demonstrations, and a selection of links to other relevant resources. There
>are even other features worth perusing, such as the document "Why Calculus
>Workshops Really Work" and an interactive presentation on how to create a
>highly interactive classroom. [KMG]
>
>
>2. Math Science Center [pdf]
>http://www.swtc.edu:8082/mscenter/
>
>Developed by Peter C. Esser and John W. Pluemer of the Math and Science
>Center at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, this site brings together a
>veritable cornucopia of resources related to learning about applied math,
>occupational math, elementary algebra, technical science, and the
>fundamentals of chemistry. First-time visitors will want to start by looking
>at the "Resources" section. Here they will find online tables and scientific
>calculators, sets of tips such as "Fractions: The Basics" and "Using the
>Place Value System", and some rather fine tutorials that cover health
>occupations and culinary mathematics. Moving on, the "Topics" area provides
>access to the various resources on the site organized into subtopics such as
>"Finance", "Geometry", and "Statistics". [KMG]
>
>
>3. Biological ESTEEM [Microsoft Excel]
>http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/3/?pa=content...Document&nodeId=623
>
>Introducing students to different software packages and applications for use
>in biology and math courses can be quite a challenge. With that in mind,
>teachers in these areas will definitely appreciate this rather helpful site
>from the people at the Mathematical Sciences Digital Library. These
>particular simulations and tools draw heavily on Microsoft Excel, so users
>will need to make sure that they also have this program installed. Visitors
>can click on the "Resources By Category" to access modules that deal with
>chemical equations in biochemistry, protein analysis, biodiversity, and
>island biogeography. It is worth noting that other subjects are covered
>here, including genetics, epidemiology, and ecology. [KMG]

7. X or Y-Does it Make A Difference? [pdf]
http://www.bioedonline.org/lessons/chromosomes.cfm

BioEd Online has providing helpful resources for biology teachers for years, and they have recently placed this "ready-to-go" lesson online for use by educators. The basic objective of this particular resource is to have students learn to describe the functional differences of X and Y- chromosomes. To make this possible, the lesson includes four articles, worksheets, and several discussion questions. Instructors can also download a complete lesson plan, along with extensive notes. Finally, the site also includes information about the National Science Standards covered within this unit, along with an estimate of how long this unit will take to complete. [KMG]


8. eHistory at OSU
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/

eHistory has been around in one form or another since 1995, when it was created by the budding historian Scott Laidig. These days, eHistory is operated and maintained by The Ohio State University's history department. Dedicated to all things historical, the site contains primary sources and documents, original book reviews, digitized books, maps, and multimedia features. These multimedia features are uniformly quite good, and they cover topics such as the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II and responses to immigration over the past 125 years. Historians will want to look through the "Primary Sources" area at length, as it contains letters and diaries from the Civil War, along with the oft- cited "The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies" in all of its 128-volume glory. [KMG]

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hard to believe this is true, but Mother Jones is reliable, I think.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/torture-school-subje.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/tortu...bje.html>Torture school subjects children to lethal punishments
Mother Jones has a long, chilling feature on The Judge Rotenberg Education Center, a private radical behavior-modification school based in Canton, Mass. The school is run by a rogue behaviorist who uses discredited "punishment" techniques -- electroshock -- on
children as young as nine to change their personalities. Matthew Israel, the school's $400,000/year executive director, straps
homemade, overpowered shock apparatus to children (including severely autistic and retarded kids) and has his staff administer strong
shocks for even minor infractions. Some children have been shocked thousands of times a day, and several children have died at the school.
Eight states send troubled children to the school, where "high
functioning" kids are "educated" by being sat in front of computers all day, running through automated tutorial programs. Talking,
fidgeting, or acting out during this "school" time is punished with shocks. Some kids' shock apparatus misfires, shocking them without any provocation. The staff are instructed to activate the shock
apparatus out of sight of the children, so that they can't mentally or physically prepare for it.

The Rotenberg process lacks any kind of scientific basis, and the school uses a 20-year-old film of its "successes" to convince parents to send their children to the program -- however, some of the success stories in the film are still institutionalized at Rotenberg 20 years after their "cure," wheelchair bound and in terrible shape.

Then, in June of 2006, a report produced by the New York State
Education Department threatened to destroy the program's carefully cultivated image. A group of investigators, including three
psychologists, spent five days at the Rotenberg Center and compiled a 26-page document packed with damning findings.

* Staff shock kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance" and once threatened to shock a girl who sneezed and then asked for a tissue.
* Some students must "earn" meals by not displaying certain
behaviors. Otherwise they are "made to throw a predetermined caloric portion of their food into the garbage."
* When students enter and leave the school each day, "almost all" are wearing some type of restraints, such as handcuffs or leg shackles. * "Students may be restrained"--on a four-point restraint board or chair--"for extensive periods of time (e.g. hours or intermittently for days)."
* Some students are shocked while strapped to the restraint board. * A "majority" of employees "serving as classroom teachers" are "not certified teachers."
* Rotenberg's marketing reps bestow presents on prospective
families--"e.g. a gift bag for the family, basketball for the student." * Although the center has described its shock device as "approved" by the fda in its promotional materials, it "has not been approved." * The facility collects "comprehensive data" on behaviors it seeks to eliminate, but "there was no evidence of the collection of data on replacement or positive behaviors."
* The facility makes no assessment of the "possible collateral
effects of punishment such as depression, anxiety, and/or social withdrawal."
<http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...ng/iBag?a=5Wz2ZO>;

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Alaskan economy faces a fork in the river
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-mine1sep...l=la-tot-topstories Sides form over building one of the world's largest gold and copper mines at the risk of destroying its longtime fishing industry.
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 1, 2007
NONDALTON, ALASKA -- Fly overhead in a bush plane -- there are no roads between native villages -- and marvel: Eight giant rivers braid across hundreds of miles of wetlands, carving cobalt ribbons through snow-coned mountains before emptying into Bristol Bay.

For more than a century, the wealth of this southwest Alaska
watershed has sprung from the astonishing volume of salmon nurtured by those wild rivers. Bank-to-bank, gill-to-gill, tens of millions of silver-hued fish thrash upstream to spawn each year, unrestrained by dams, untainted by pollution.

Interactive Feature
Bristol Bay on the Brink
(Flash)
Graphic
Fish vs. mining
  click to enlarge
It is the largest sockeye run in the world, accounting for more than a quarter of wild salmon harvested in the United States, feeding millions at a time when fisheries are dwindling across the globe.
But if fish have made the region's past and present fortune, the future sparkles with the promise of precious metal. Beneath the
rolling tundra, straddling the headwaters of two of the watershed's most productive rivers, a Canadian company has discovered North
America's biggest deposits of gold and copper, worth about $300
billion in today's soaring commodities markets.

The dilemma is whether Alaskans will have to choose between the two -- and whether the watershed, its fish and a host of other wildlife will be casualties of what could probably be one of the world's
biggest mines. The project would entail five earthen dams, of which two would be bigger than China's Three Gorges Dam.

Fueled by daily pro and con advertising on Alaska television, the debate is engaging state and federal politicians, commercial
fishermen, Eskimo and Indian villages, the international sportfishing community, environmental groups, major foundations and multinational conglomerates in a state that rarely turns down a major mine permit.
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. of Vancouver, Canada, and partly owned by London-based Rio Tinto, has already drilled hundreds of
exploratory holes, some more than a mile deep, on state-owned land in what's known as the Pebble claim. London-based Anglo American, one of the world's largest mining companies, announced this summer that it would spend $1.4 billion for a 50% partnership to mine the metal.
Opponents say a proposed Pebble mine would destroy one of the
planet's last sustainable fisheries, dry up spawning streams, and poison lakes and groundwater with acid runoff. Biologists have found that salmon's genetic radar, which enable the fish to return from the bay to the very streams where they were spawned, can be ruined by microscopic particles of copper dust.

And Bristol Bay's other wildlife -- including one of the world's largest brown bear populations, a 45,000-head Mulchatna caribou herd, moose, wolverines, beavers and eagles -- also depends on clean water.
Northern Dynasty officials scoff at what they call an alarmist
campaign. "We know Bristol Bay is a sensitive area," said Sean Magee, vice president for public affairs. "But there've been tremendous changes in the mining industry in the past 25 years. These projects can be done safely now: Mining and fishing can coexist."

What is clear is that the mine -- wedged between Lake Clark and
Katmai national parks -- would entail a staggering scale of industrialization.
If the full resource were developed, as much as 12 billion tons of earth would be excavated and milled to extract the tiny flecks of metal: about 82 million ounces of gold, 67 billion pounds of copper and 4 billion pounds of molybdenum.

Ten square miles of impoundments would fill two valleys, to store in perpetuity more than 2.5 billion tons of waste rock and toxic residue.
And to transport equipment and ore, a new 104-mile road would cut through undeveloped forest and wetlands, skirting Lake Iliamna,
Alaska's largest body of fresh water. The lake is host to rare
freshwater seals and is a primary spawning bed for sockeye, the
red-fleshed salmon that are among the world's most prized eating fish.
And Pebble may be just the beginning.

Northern Dynasty's exploration has sparked a surge of claim-staking, with eight other companies asserting rights over more than 700 square miles nearby.This month, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will make a final decision on whether to allow hard-rock drilling on 3,300 square miles of federal land in the area.

"A massive mining district would carve the heart out of the
watershed," said Richard Jameson, president of the Renewable
Resources Coalition, a statewide anti-Pebble group, which is backing legislation and ballot measures to stop the mine.

Northern Dynasty's environmental studies won't be ready until 2009, and obtaining the 67 required state and federal permits could take three more years. But already, Magee said, "Debate is at fever pitch."
Opponents are waging an uphill struggle. Because Pebble is on state land, the key decisions will come from the Alaska Department of
Natural Resources whose commissioner, Tom Irwin, is a former mining executive and whose mission is to promote development.

"It's the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Norman Van Vactor, Bristol Bay manager for Peter Pan Seafoods, which operates the area's oldest cannery.

In the state capital this year, Northern Dynasty lobbyists beat back legislation that would have created a game refuge overlapping the mine site and would have barred polluting or diverting water from salmon streams. But the bills will be revived next year.

So far, Republican Gov. Sarah Palin has remained neutral. She has fished in Bristol Bay herself, and her husband fishes commercially. They named one of their daughters Bristol.

The outcome may hinge less on environmental values than on which economic resource Alaskans value most.

"You can't eat gold," says Robin Samuelsen, a commercial fisherman and chief of the Curyung Tribal Council in Dillingham, the region's principal town.

Bristol Bay's fishery, with $450 million in annual economic benefits, employs 10,000 people in seasonal jobs, including 6,800 fishermen. And it could grow in value: Because contaminants in farmed seafood have come to light, consumers are increasingly turning to wild salmon for health benefits and its superior taste.

This time of year, the rivers that feed Bristol Bay are bedecked with racks of drying salmon, ready to be stored for the winter. In an area where imported food is prohibitively expensive, several thousand Athabaskan Indians and Yupik Eskimos depend on fish, moose, caribou, wild greens and berries.

"I'd rather eat porcupine than hamburger," says Jack Hobson, tribal council president of Nondalton, the village closest to the proposed mine. An Athabaskan outpost of about 220 residents, with its homes of weathered clapboard and corrugated steel, scattered along a dirt road, is plastered with anti-Pebble signs.

Hobson has been a vocal opponent of the mine since the Renewable Resources Coalition flew him and other native leaders to see mines in Nevada. There, he said, they saw landscape that looked like it had been "bombed" -- huge pits, contaminated water and depleted aquifers that have forced a local Indian tribe to truck in drinking water.
Northern Dynasty's helicopters, he said, have scared away caribou for the last two years, depriving villagers of a diet staple. Once the mine is built, he added, "dust will blow all over the plants and the animals will eat this stuff, and -- oh boy!"

The region's 50 commercial lodges are also threatened. The
international sportfishing mecca attracts anglers who pay as much as $8,000 a week to fly in and cast for rainbow trout that measure up to 3 feet.
But mining would mean high-paying, steady jobs at a time when fish prices remain volatile and the North Slope oil that has buoyed the economy is dwindling.

Pebble would run for 50 to 80 years, said Bruce Jenkins, Northern Dynasty's chief operating officer, and "go a long way toward
eradicating poverty in southwest Alaska forever."

In the last two years, Northern Dynasty has mounted a massive public relations campaign, helicoptering in nearly 1,000 politicians,
business leaders, teachers and other influential Alaskans to the site.
The company has staged 800 presentations, in remote villages as well as in Anchorage, offering residents expense-paid trips. Tribal
leaders have been hired as "community outreach people," and more than 120 local residents are on Northern Dynasty's payroll as $17-an-hour drill assistants, bear guards and other mine-related jobs.

Opponents accuse the company of buying influence, but Magee replies: "We don't apologize for hiring local people."

And opponents also have deep-pocket patrons, including Anchorage investor Robert B. Gillam, head of McKinley Capital Management Inc., who has a private lodge 24 miles from the Pebble claim. The
foundation of another wealthy angler, Intel Corp. pioneer Gordon Moore, has awarded $5 million to local conservationists, including Earthworks, a Washington-based group organizing jewelers to boycott Pebble gold.

In Newhalen, a village of 120 on a windy promontory above Lake
Iliamna, Ray Wassillie, the local tribal chief, has a part-time job as a fish observer, and his three sons are also employed by Northern Dynasty.
"No one else is offering our kids the opportunity to work," said Wassillie. Fewer young people in the village "are going to jail when they're doing nothing. Drugs and alcohol become a big part of life," he said.
Home heating fuel costs Wassillie $6,000 yearly, and gas to run his four-wheelers for subsistence hunting runs more than $5 a gallon. The bay's six-week fishing season "doesn't generate enough income for my living standards," he said.

Beyond the local economy, Northern Dynasty says, the mine will bring benefits to the nation. While critics say that gold -- 75% of which is used in jewelry -- is an unnecessary luxury, the company says the copper to be produced by the mine is "a strategic metal." U.S. copper imports are growing as voracious economies in China and India compete for metal.

But environmentalists, citing the web of interconnected streams, ponds and groundwater, say the risk is unacceptable. Salmon is the region's keystone species, food for bears, eagles -- and people. And as the fish decompose after spawning, their carcasses fertilize
plants that nourish caribou and other wildlife.

Despite a rash of negative publicity, the company declines to rule out the use of cyanide, a toxin that helps extract metal from ore and has contaminated watersheds throughout the West.

The region is one of the most earthquake-prone areas on the globe, but Northern Dynasty counters that its dams would be engineered to withstand a 7.8-level quake.

"Most Americans will never get to Bristol Bay," said Brian Kraft, who owns a local fishing lodge and works for the conservation group Trout Unlimited. "But they see our bears playing in waterfalls on the
Discovery Channel. They can experience the taste of wild salmon.

"They know that we can destroy places like this, but we can't create them."
margot.roosevelt@latimes.com

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"Barbara Jordan and Lyndon Johnson: An oral history"
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/09/02...on-an-oral-history/
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub. One of his features is to suggest how history can be implemented in the classroom. Excellent resources.

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This was on NPR radio Sunday AM but Millard
Fillmore's Bathtub may have more info specific to Mr Schempp.

I had never heard of this Sup Ct case before, but
an important one (and in 1956!!)
mpb

"Education
Discovering the Man Behind a Boy's Protest

Listen to this story...

Weekend Edition Sunday, September 2, 2007 &#B7; In
1956, 16-year-old Pennsylvania schoolboy Ellery
Schempp decided to protest his public school's
mandatory prayer and Bible-reading period by
reading silently from the Koran. He was ejected
from class and then sued the school district.

The case eventually went to the Supreme Court,
setting a precedent that banned school-sponsored
prayer, a decision that remains controversial to this day.

Host Liane Hansen speaks with Stephen Solomon,
author of the book Ellery's Protest a and to Ellery Schempp himself." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14124191

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The initial story or two has commentary from other students but not much from anyone official. In addition, most of the story is about only one person.

There is certainly not enough information

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20618540/

>Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:25:05 -0800
>To:
>From:
>Subject: Re: UofA tragedy
>
>
>Thanks. I would have missed that until much later.
>
>Story doesn't mention the tribal politics and clan backgrounds of
>the two (should have been variables in dorm placement)
>
>two-- one of the worst pressures anyone can put on a student,
>especially indigenous students, is to put the "whole fate of the
>race" on their shoulders. Usually it is suicide, an inverse
>homicide. obviously more to the story and it will be very disruptive
>to the other students.
>
>At 9/6/2007 11:40 AM -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Navajo tragedy in a dorm
>><http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20618538/>h...sn.com/id/20618538/

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MSNBC.com

Virus becomes new suspect in bee die-off
Genetic tests find link between colony collapse and little-known microbe By Alan Boyle
Science editor
Updated: 12:22 p.m. AKT Sept 6, 2007

Scientists have found a new prime suspect in the
deaths of about a quarter of America's honeybees,
a mystery that could take a multibillion-dollar
toll on the nation's agricultural industry.

Months of genetic testing have fingered a virus
that was first reported in Israel just three
years ago and may have passed through Australia
on its way to the United States. The correlation
between Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus and the
mysterious bee disease a known as Colony Collapse
Disorder, or CCD a was reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site.
Although the scientists behind the research
cautioned that they haven't yet cracked the case,
their study provides enough curious coincidences
to keep even the fictional detective (and beekeeper) Sherlock Holmes buzzing.
The economic effect of the bee disappearances
goes far beyond the lost honey: In fact, the bee
industry's primary impact is felt through the
crops that the insects pollinate a products that
are valued at $14 billion to $20 billion
annually. Since Colony Collapse Disorder first
came to light last year, the malady has affected
an estimated 23 percent of the nation\s
beekeeping operations, with losses of up to 90
percent. Other countries are reporting mysterious bee losses as well.
The disorder is characterized by the rapid
disappearance of a colony's bees, even if there
are adequate stores of food in the hive. The bees
just seem to fly off into oblivion a hinting that
the malady somehow affects the insects\ navigational sense or learning ability.
For months, researchers have been struggling to
figure out the causes of CCD. Some even proposed
that cell-phone radiation was disrupting bee
colonies. Penn State entomologist Diana
Cox-Foster, the lead author of the Science
report, said the cell-phone theory was on the
bottom of the list of suspects. But she said it's
likely that several factors are contributing to
the bee disappearances a including environmental
stresses, pesticides, viruses and parasitic
Varroa mites, which all weaken the bees' immune systems.

The latest research moves Israeli Acute Paralysis
Virus to the top of the list as a "significant
marker" for Colony Collapse Disorder, the
researchers reported. And they said the technique
they used could be applied to other disease
outbreaks as well, even those that afflict humans.

The genetic game\s afoot
The scientific sleuths began their investigation
early this year by sampling bees from four
colonies that suffered a collapse, and two
healthy colonies. They also took samples from
apparently healthy bees imported from Australia
and royal jelly from China. Royal jelly is a
special food secreted by bees that is also used in cosmetics.

Those samples were run through gene-sequencing
machines and meticulously analyzed. The
researchers subtracted out the honeybee genome
itself, then identified the genetic markers of
bacteria, fungi and viruses that were left over.
A similar technique was recently used to identify
182 species of bacteria living on human skin.

Penn State's Edward Holmes concentrated on an
in-depth analysis of viruses found in the bee
samples. "This is breaking new ground in trying
to look at how viruses work in this class of
animals," he told reporters Wednesday during a pre-publication teleconference.

"We found a remarkably high viral burden in bee
populations. ... We characterize in this paper
seven different viruses that circulate in bee
populations. Only one of them was consistently
associated with CCD and royal jelly," he said.

That was Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV a
a little-known bug that sets bees' wings
shivering and eventually causes paralysis.
IAPV-afflicted bees are typically found dead
outside their hives. IAPV was also detected in
the Australian bees as well as two of the four Chinese royal jelly samples.
These initial clues led the researchers to look
for IAPV and other suspected pathogens in more
bee samples. They checked the genetic sequences
for bees collected over the past three years from
30 colonies that suffered a collapse and 21
healthy colonies. The presence of IAPV was found
to be the best indicator for Colony Collapse
Disorder, with a 96.1 percent correlation.


Not so elementary
"I hope no one goes away with the idea that we've
actually solved the problem," Jeff Pettis of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural
Research Service told reporters. "We still have a
great deal of research to do to resolve why bees
are dying in the U.S. and elsewhere."

Among the questions yet to be answered:
Is IAPV really a cause, or will it turn out that
vulnerability to the virus is merely a consequence of the disease? How and when did IAPV get into the United States?
Why did the Australian bees (and even a few
American bees) seem healthy even though they were carriers of the virus? What roles are played by other bugs that were
found in the bee samples, such as the Kashmir bee virus and Nosema fungi? If the cause or causes can be definitively
identified, what can be done to stop the collapse?

The first task ahead is to confirm the linkage
with the virus and figure out the actual
mechanism behind Colony Collapse Disorder. Not
everyone is convinced IAPV will turn out to be
the culprit. Researchers from the U.S. Army and
Montana-based Bee Alert Technology have turned up
IAPV and other viruses in sick and healthy bees a
but have not found any pattern of correlation.

"For the good of the industry, we wish they had a
smoking gun and a quick answer, but we're not
convinced they're there," Bee Alert's Jerry
Bromenshenk told msnbc.com. He said he and his
colleagues have turned up more than a dozen
suspect viruses, including "a bunch we're still scratching our heads over."
Scientists suspect that some sort of organism
will turn out to be the leading cause of the bee
collapse, whether it's IAPV, a different virus or
a combination of bugs. That's because irradiating
beehives appears to make them safe for recolonization, Pettis said.
The Australian connection is another line of
investigation: The United States allowed the
import of packaged Australian bees in 2004, and
reports of bee disappearances began soon
afterward, Pettis noted. That may be how IAPV
came into the country, though Pettis said it's
also possible the virus was here before that time.

Colin Henderson, one of Bromenshenk's colleagues
at Bee Alert, said it was still premature to
assume that the virus was passed from Australia
to America. Pettis said tests of bee samples that
were taken in the United States and frozen before
2004 could shed light on whether there's a connection or not.

If Australian bees are carrying the virus, why
aren't bee colonies collapsing Down Under? Pettis
noted that the Australian bees aren't afflicted
by Varroa mites, which have decimated America's
wild bee population in recent years. As a result,
the Australians may have weathered the stress of
IAPV better than their American cousins. "That
alone could account for the differences between the two countries," he said.
In the weeks ahead, the researchers behind the
Science study will try combining IAPV with other
stress factors to see if they can experimentally
create the conditions that tip a healthy bee colony into a collapse.
Is there a 100 percent solution?
Pettis said it's still too early to propose
putting new restrictions on bee imports. "We're
looking at the science behind it and what we feel
needs to be done, but no decisions have been made at this time," he said.
Just to be safe, beekeepers should refrain from
using imported royal jelly in their hives, he said.

Pettis said Colony Collapse Disorder was almost
certainly the result of a "combination of
things," and he didn't expect a magic antiviral
bullet to appear anytime soon. "We're really
right now going to have to rely on beekeepers to
continue just to manage nutrition, parasitic
mites, Nosema, things like that a and try to keep
bees as healthy as possible," Pettis told msnbc.com.

There's more hope on the horizon: Recent research
in Israel indicates that some bees have become
resistant to IAPV by incorporating the virus'
genetic code into their own genes. Creating
virus-resistant strains of bees, either through
genetic modification or old-fashioned breeding,
"is a very intriguing idea," Pettis said.

At the same time, the strategy used to track down
the genetic correlation between Colony Collapse
Disorder and the suspect virus provides a "road
map for rigorously and efficiently addressing
outbreaks of infectious disease," said W. Ian
Lipkin, a molecular biologist at Columbia
University's Mailman School of Public Health who
was the corresponding author for the Science study.

"I really do think that these new technologies
will revolutionize our approach to epidemiology
and the characterizing of outbreaks of infectious disease," he said.
If the strategy were available in 2003,
public-health experts might have been able to
track down the roots of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, or SARS, in much less time than the
months that were required back then, Lipkin said.

"We would be able to get similar sorts of answers
in as short as a week," he said.

In addition to Cox-Foster, Lipkin, Holmes and
Pettis, the researchers behind the Science study
included Sean Conlan, Gustavo Palacios,
Phenix-Lan Quan, Thomas Briese, Mady Hornig,
Andrew Drysdale, Jeffrey Hui and Junhui Zhai of
Columbia University; Jay Evans of the USDA-ARS
Bee Research Laboratory; Nancy Moran and Vince
Martinson of the University of Arizona; David
Geiser, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Abby Kalkstein and
Liwang Cui of Penn State; and Stephen Hutchison,
Jan Fredrik Simons and Michael Egholm of 454 Life Sciences.

&#A9; 2007 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20612274/
MSN Privacy . Legal
&#A9; 2007 MSNBC.com

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Anyone over the age of 50 who was offered the
chance to take the SAT at age 13 was pretty
extraordinary. I think we got the PSAT
(preliminary SAT) in 9th grade, but no SAT until
junior year (it costs money. The PSAT did not).
Now, they should look at the Iowa tests, the
California tests to get a broader sample.

But am I confused? 13-year olds plus 25 years
later isn't greater than 50 years old, but let me
check with the kids next door.

[I notice that now they have a predictor, it will
lead to "opportunities for educators and
policymakers to develop programs to cultivate
these individuals". Maybe they shouldn't if the lack worked well.]
By the way, this is the 50th anniversary of Sputnik.

mpb

Source: Vanderbilt University
Date: September 7, 2007

Future Career Path Of Gifted Youth Can Be Predicted By Age 13 By SAT
Science Daily a The future career path and
creative direction of gifted youth can be
predicted well by their performance on the SAT at
age 13, a new study from Vanderbilt University finds.

The study offers insights into how best to
identify the nation's most talented youth, which
is a focus of the new $43 billion America
Competes Act recently passed by Congress to
enhance the United States' ability to compete globally.

"Our economy depends upon the creative
sector--science, technology, the arts, medicine,
law and entertainment," David Lubinski, study
co-author and professor of psychology at
Vanderbilt's Peabody College of education and
human development, said. "Our research finds that
differences in creative potential among highly
gifted youth can be identified at age 13,
offering opportunities for educators and
policymakers to develop programs to cultivate
these individuals based on their unique strengths and abilities."
The research was drawn from the Study of
Mathematically Precocious Youth or SMPY, which is
tracking 5,000 individuals over 50 years
identified at age 13 as being highly intelligent
by their SAT scores. Lubinski and Camilla Benbow,
Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and
Human Development at Peabody College, lead the
study. Their co-author on the new report,
published online by Psychological Science Sept.
7, was Gregory Park, a doctoral student in
Peabody's Department of Psychology and Human Development.

The current study looked at the educational and
professional accomplishments of 2,409 adults who
had been identified as being in the top 1 percent
of ability 25 years earlier, at age 13.

"We found significant differences in the creative
and career paths of individuals who showed
different ability patterns on the math and verbal
portions of the SAT at age 13," Benbow, a member
of the National Science Board and vice chair of
the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, said.
"Individuals showing more ability in math had
greater accomplishments in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, while those showing
greatest ability on the verbal portion of the
test went on to excel in the humanities--art,
history, literature, languages, drama and related fields."

Overall, the creative potential of these
participants was extraordinary. They earned a
total of 817 patents and published 93 books. Of
the 18 participants who later earned tenure-track
positions in math/science fields at top-50 U.S.
universities, their average age 13 SAT-M score
was 697, and the lowest score among them was 580,
a score greater than over 60 percent of all students who take the SAT.
Benbow believes the latest findings from SMPY may
be relevant to the ongoing public discussion
about education and competitiveness.

"SMPY has already shown that highly achieving
adults can be identified at an early age. These
results now show us that we can also predict in
which areas they are most likely to excel," she
said. "The policy question becomes: how best can
we support individuals such as these, especially
during their formative years, to help promote their development and success""
The findings contradict recent reports that the SAT has no predictive value.
"The key factor in our study is that the SAT was
administered at a young age," Lubinski said.
"When students take the test in high school, the
most able students all score near the top, and
individual differences are harder to see. Using
the test with gifted students at a young age
allows us to easily identify differences in
strengths and abilities that could potentially be
used to help shape that person's education."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news
release issued by Vanderbilt University.
  "
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070907092930.htm

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Wired How To's
Write a perfect email

Email, not the web, is the most-used Internet
application by transaction volume. It\s also the
most misused. Since it\s such an important and
often overlooked component of our online lives,
I\m going to step away from preaching about the
web for a moment and focus on simple steps to
make your email discussions more effective.

If you grew up like I did, you were taught how to
write a letter. You learned how to write business
and casual headings and salutations, state your
purpose, make a request, set expectations for a
response, and wrap it up with a Very Truly Yours.

But an email is not a letter, and you\re not
typing at a Selectric II typewriter. You may look
at the days of formal graces in written
communication with some sadness, but rest assured
that they are as dead as Dillinger. If your
purpose is to solicit information or action from
another person via email, you must make that
clear to them at the earliest possible point in the message.

I get hundreds of emails a day, not counting
spam. I know I\m not alone. Email overload is a
problem, and it will probably only get worse.

It\s tempting for geeks like me to propose some
kind of microformat as a solution: begin subjects
with these words, format the first line like
that. But email is too widely distributed to
corral into a any kind of structure now. All we
can do is focus on quick, concise, effective communication.

People differ in how they manage their inboxes,
but attention to a few details can help make your
messages more usable for everyone. These are the
factors I\ve identified that will help you get a quick and valid response:
Brevity
It\s the soul of wit, you know.

Short emails rule. When I get an email that\s
several pages long, I have to make some
decisions: do I have time to handle this now? Is
it important enough to come back to? Can I pass
it on to someone else? If I can\t say yes to any
of these, I will probably never get back to it.

You may have lots of information to share, but in
email you are in a long list of others competing
for your recipient\s attention. Keeping it brief
is a sign of respect, and it\s less likely to
cause added stress to your reader.

Supporting material or other important info can
be attached, but keep it separate from who you
are, what your issue is, and what you want from me.

If you\re passing a thread along, trim what isn\t
needed. Why make the email look longer than it really is?

Context
If I don\t know you by name, tell me how you came
to contact me. We talked about mixers at a
podcasting meetup. You saw a panel I was on last
year. You divorced me and married my best friend
from high school. Something I would remember. I
don\t need or want a resume, but I do need to know where you\re coming from.
Getting a lot of responses asking, ]What do you
mean?^ Context is your problem. When you\re
asking a question, anticipate any missing details
that could cause an extended back-and-forth. Each
time someone sends you a reply, you\ve gone to
the back of that person\s line. Do what you can
to make your emails count the first time.

And for god\s sake, have a subject line. One that
makes sense. Some of the most important emails
I\ve received didn\t have a subject, and they
almost fell through as a result. Don\t waste that
space with words like ]Important^ or ]Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re:^. If the topic changes, change the
subject line to match it. Remember that on
recipients\ screens, your subject competes with a
large number of others for their attention.

Old-school email users have a tendency to trim
everything out of the body of an email except
their replies. Don't do this. For example, if you
send me an invitation to speak at a conference
and I ask what the topic is, you might reply with
just the topic, snipping out all the details of
the conference. If I've forgotten about your
email by the time you reply, this means that I've
got to go back through an enormous email archive
to find your original message in order to figure
out what you're talking about. Even if I
remember, it means that I no longer have the
details to hand. Don't trim email. Let it run
long. It's the 21st century: an email with an
extra 10k of old text at the bottom of it isn't
going to swamp my mailer (the 20,000 daily spams
are doing that very nicely, thank you).

Something to act on
Make your requests clear.

You should set them apart from the rest of the
message by paring them down to one sentence, with
white space before and after. Make lists with
dashes, asterisks, or bullets if you use HTML
email. Closed-ended (yes or no, this or that)
questions are preferred; open-ended questions can
get long and involved, reducing their overall
relevancy and the likelihood that you\ll get the response you desire.
Don\t give people an excuse to misread you. If
you\ve written a request at the end of a long
paragraph, or been passive (]it\d be nice if
somebody couldU^), it\s likely to have been
missed on the receiver\s end. If you sent an
email, you have a point. Get to it.

Some examples:

Can I call you tomorrow morning at 10am PT?
Here is my contact info for your address book.
Would you send me any links you have where I can read more about x? Would you forward this to person y?
I need your travel itinerary by end of day.
Reasonable expectations
Given that most of us have several current
projects to keep up on, it\s not very likely that
we\re be able to spend more than 10 minutes at a
time helping someone who is emailing me out of
the blue. My ability to draft my famous
page-scrolling expositions of a given issue is
limited. If I\ve already written something that
covers it, I might just send you a link.
Otherwise, if you can frame the question such
that a lengthy answer isn\t required, you\re apt to get a quicker response.
A deadline
There comes a time when the response you seek is
no longer useful. If you know when that is, tell
your recipient. This can be a good way both to
prompt a speedy turnaround, and to let people off
the hook in the long term. When someone sees
that, for example, you need a proposal in a
timeframe they can\t make, they will probably bow
out, rather than leaving you hanging. Everybody
wins. Especially whoever it is you end up choosing in their place.
You can\t win them all. If you need to send a
single reminder, do so, but if that doesn\t do
the trick, pick up a phone. If it\s not important
enough to call the person directly, then let it go.

Daily reminders suggest to recipients that
they\re being bossed around, and that\s not the
best way to manage people, and certainly no way
to treat casual contacts. They may be too busy,
or away from the computer, or actually working on
your last request. If you\re forcing the issue,
you don\t improve your chances of success with that person in the long term.


Created by swr_10016@hidden on Sep 4 1:29pm.
Updated by accounts@hidden on Sep 8 9:08pm.

"
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http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/11/history-of-the-infam.html

    <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/11/histo...fam.html>History of the infamous "Daisy" H-bomb commercial
<http://www.conelrad.com>Ken says:
On the 43rd anniversary of its first broadcast on NBC's Monday Night at the Movies (1964) CONELRAD has published a complete history of the infamous and iconic Daisy Ad. Bill Geerhart spent the last year
researching the story and documenting its disputed authorship.

In addition to the collected video, audio, and historical documents, Bill interviewed the 'Daisy Girl' Birgitte Olsen. As a bonus we've posted video of 'Fighting Words' -- a 1951 military training film about propaganda starring James Gregory. Enjoy!

<http://www.conelrad.com/daisy/index.php>...ng/iBag?a=FTOVhR>;

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<http://www.freenewmexican.com/news>News:
<http://www.freenewmexican.com/nationworld>Nation / World
A loss deeply felt

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA AND FELICIA FONSECA | Associated Press
September 12, 2007

A slaying involving two Navajo college students
strikes at the core of the Indian nation

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. &#AD; That they had made it off
the reservation at all was no small feat in a
place where adversity runs as deep as tradition.
But they were success stories: Two Navajo girls
gone to the big-city university, planning to come home one day and give back.
Mia Henderson, the one they called ]Princess
Mia,^ captain of the softball team and a star
student who had a flair for science and yearned
to work in genetics or sports medicine.

Galareka Harrison, ]Reka^ to friends and family,
the track standout and rodeo girl who excelled in
roping and dreamed of becoming a pharmacist.

On this remote stretch of land where kids
sometimes have neither the means nor the desire
to reach for something more, Henderson and
Harrison stood out. They studied hard, played
sports and won scholarships &#AD; then set out to
make their mark at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, hundreds of miles and a world away from
the rolling hills and hogans of home.

They were just 18, the kind of young people
Navajo elders hope and pray will carry on for them.

Now one is dead. The other is charged with her
murder. And a community struggles to understand.

The loss is felt so deeply here because it goes
beyond one unfathomable act of violence. Among a
people who consider life sacred and their ritual
teachings the path to salvation, they wonder what
this tragedy says about the survival of a belief
system &#AD; and the next generation of Navajos.

Navajo hardships

]We pray for our young to get knowledge,^ says
medicine man Wilbur Begay. ]We pray for them so
they can help our Indian people. They are our future leaders.^
His face, etched with five decades of wisdom,
hints at the despair that has pervaded the Navajo
Nation since word spread of the Sept. 5 killing
and arrest. His words ring of doubt, the kind
that accompanies unanswered questions of why and how.

]Did we do something wrong?^ he asks. ]Didn\t we pray hard enough?^
Life for the young has never been easy on the
reservation that spans 27,000 square miles of
Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. Poverty levels,
dropout rates, teen pregnancies, suicides,
violent crimes &#AD; the many markers by which
non-Indians measure success or failure &#AD; have
long been higher here, along with substance abuse among both teens and adults.
In the face of these many challenges, Navajo
leaders have long grappled with how to keep their
heritage alive among future generations. They
fight to instill the traditional principle of k\e
&#AD; respect for yourself and others &#AD; as well as kinship, balance and harmony.
]We\re all family,^ says Navajo President Joe
Shirley Jr. ]We\re supposed to be getting along.
We\re supposed to be looking out for each other.
That\s supposed to be the philosophy, the belief, the way.

]In spite of us wanting to save the ways,^ he adds, ]we\re losing a lot of it.^
Education is meant to be part of the answer. Only
about 18 percent of the adult population on the
reservation has earned a four-year degree, below
the national average of 24 percent. So the tribe
has worked to provide scholarships and other
assistance to those wanting to pursue a college
degree. Some schools even go so far as to develop
promotional DVDs of their top students.

Mighty Mia

Henderson, in fact, won a prestigious Chief
Manuelito Scholarship, a $7,000-a-year, four-year
award for college-bound Navajos named for a
legendary chief who was dedicated to providing
quality education for his people.

Henderson grew up in Tuba City on the western
edge of the reservation, 85 miles north of
Flagstaff, Ariz., and east of the Grand Canyon.
Her father once worked as a principal and
administrator for the Tuba school district, while
her mother taught middle school.

Friends liked to call her ]Princess,^ though she
used ]Mighty Mia^ for her e-mail address and
MySpace page. At Tuba City High School, she
excelled as both an athlete and an academic, a
National Honor Society member who graduated in
May as one of the top 10 students in a class of 184.

Softball coach Flora Sombrero remembers her third
baseman and team captain as sweet and humble,
nurturing and analytical. Once, during a
difficult at-bat, Sombrero called time out and
instructed Henderson to step into the ball. The
girl returned to the plate and swung.

It was her first grand slam.

]She ran around the bases with this big ol\ grin
on her face,^ Sombrero says. ]She would listen
and take things to heart. She got it.^

The summer before her senior year, Henderson was
one of 25 Arizona students picked to spend seven
weeks working on biomedical research projects at
the University of Arizona. She worked eight hours
a day, five days a week in a lab studying albinism in American Indians.
At the end of the program, when each student
stood before an audience of professors and
researchers to show a slide presentation of their
work, Henderson spoke quietly but confidently for
12 minutes. She then thanked her parents,
]because they pushed me during school.^

Henderson was ]this incredible comet coming
across the sky,^ says program director Marlys Witte.

]There\s nothing she couldn\t have done,^ Witte
says. ]She loved the reservation. She loved her
culture. She loved her family. She loved her
grandmother. But she saw something outside the
reservation, as well, that she wanted to be a part of.

]Full of possibilities &#AD; wonderful possibilities
&#AD; that\s how I see her,^ Witte says.

Rodeo hand

Harrison, meanwhile, grew up 100 miles east of
Tuba in the reservation village of Chinle, a
wind-swept slice of land where cows and horses graze along the highway.
One of seven children, she, too, was an
accomplished athlete, a member of the track and
field team at Many Farms High School. But the
rodeo was her love, and she was especially good
at breakaway roping, where a contestant on
horseback attempts to rope a calf around the
neck. Two years ago, the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys
Association named her rookie of the year in the event.

Friends and relatives describe a good girl &#AD;
]cool,^ says 16-year-old Lavonne Yazzie, who
competed against Harrison in rodeo events. ]We
both just like to laugh. We just go out there and give it everything we got.^
Her mother, Janice, says Galareka was a good
student who won a full-ride to the Tucson
university. ]The way I taught my kids, that\s the
only way &#AD; to go to school,^ she says.

Things go wrong

The two girls &#AD; strangers until only a few weeks
ago &#AD; were brought together under the University
of Arizona\s First-Year Scholars Program,
intended to help American Indians make the
transition from home to campus, where just 812 of
nearly 37,000 students were Indian in the 2006-2007 school year.

Fifty native students, most of them Navajo, were
selected for this year\s program, which requires
participants to live together in a wing of
Graham-Greenlee dormitory called O\odham Ki &#AD; or The People\s House.
When school began Aug. 20, Harrison and Henderson were matched as roommates.
Clearly, things went very wrong, very quickly.
But the bare-bones police blotter account raises
more questions than it answers.

On Aug. 28, Henderson filed a police report
accusing Harrison of theft and forgery after she
saw her Social Security card and a campus debit
card sticking out of Harrison\s wallet, according to a court affidavit.
On Aug. 29, Harrison admitted in a police
interview that she had stolen the cards and
fraudulently bought a sweat shirt. She also
admitted stealing Henderson\s checkbook and
cashing a $500 check, and using another stolen
identification as her own, according to the
affidavit. University police declined to explain
why Harrison wasn\t immediately arrested, citing an ongoing investigation.
Harrison then went home for a Labor Day weekend
visit with family, returning to school Sept. 4.

At 5:45 a.m. the next morning, students called
university police to report hearing screams in
Graham-Greenlee hall. Police say Harrison bought
a knife on her return to campus, then wrote a
note pretending to be Henderson. She had falsely
accused her roommate, the note said, and she
mentioned ending her own life. Then, police say,
Harrison stabbed Henderson numerous times as she slept.

University police Sgt. Eugene Mejia says Harrison
had been accused by a second student of theft,
but there was no indication she presented a
physical threat to any of her classmates.
Harrison\s mother maintains her daughter had no
history of violence, and those who remember her
from high school were stunned by her arrest.

]Our whole staff was just numb when we heard the
news,^ says Dave Lepkojus, an assistant principal at Many Farms High.
]Those who did know her just couldn\t imagine
that she would be involved in anything like this.
She was a good student, an honor student, was
accepted to the university. She was just a really good kid.^

[Hard to accept\

A Navajo medicine man whose son is a freshman at
the University of Arizona has since performed a
cleansing ceremony inside Graham-Greenlee hall.
The university wanted to do something to help
their students start anew, says Kendal Washington
White, the school\s director of multicultural affairs.

At least one student in the Indian scholars
program has already withdrawn from the
university. Still, says White, ]it was important
to bring in the medicine man to provide a sense of spiritual relief.^
But healing may be a long ways off for many on the reservation.

A few days after Henderson\s death, Navajos
gathered in Window Rock for the 61st annual
Navajo Nation Fair. It is the tribe\s biggest
event of the year, but pride and exultation were
infused with concern as Navajos tried to make sense of what had happened.
]I think that people will start to wonder about
Navajo Nation people: Are we teaching our kids
the values of our elders?^ says Yvonne
Kee-Billison, a program supervisor for the Navajo
Office of Youth Development. ]It just saddens
everyone, that two of our young children are involved in something like this.^
]If there\s any lesson to be learned it would be:
How do we nurture and how do we support our
kinship among our children?^ says Tanya Gorman
Keith, a vice president at Din&#E9; College, the
first college established by Indians for Indians.
]They are of the same family and of the same
people U they have to care for each other.

]The question now is really &#AD; moms, dads,
grandparents, educators: How do you make sure this happens?^

Harrison was to have competed in the rodeo at the
fair along with her sister, Garveda. The family
instead watched only one of the girls perform,
sitting somberly in the grandstand. Harrison
remains jailed on a first-degree murder charge as
her family tries to raise the money for her $50,000 bond.

Henderson was laid to rest Monday. Navajo
tradition calls for four days of mourning, after
which those left behind must find a way to go on.
For Henderson\s loved ones, that time has come &#AD;
if they can somehow find a way to begin.

]In Navajo culture, we cherish life to the
fullest. To lose someone like this, this
tragically, it\s very hard to accept,^ says
Sombrero, the girl\s coach and friend. ]Look at
all the potential she had, what she could have
brought back to her people, what she would have
taught them, what she could have contributed. That\s all gone.
]A lot of people are saying: [Why?\ ^ she says. ]Why?^
AP National Writer Pauline Arrillaga reported
from Phoenix. Albuquerque-based reporter Felicia
Fonseca reported from the Navajo reservation.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/68409.html