Good Afternoon All,
Things are looking good here in Korea, and I may have found myself an apartment. Yippee! If so, I will finally be out of the suit-case and hotel life by 5 April.
Anyway, today I'd like to mention 3 articles I found particularly interesting. First, is the story about the dog in Australia who sensed that a baby joey was still in its dead mother's pouch, and then rescued the joey. Second, is the story about the clay tablet which has recently been deciphered and holds astronomy data of great significance. Third is about the new research that helps Koa trees in Hawaii to grow by 120 percent per year, with the only affects being beneficial and neutral!
I hope that you enjoy today's posts. I have had a great time reading and posting them this morning (it's 7:21 am here). Happy reading, and see you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Dog Comes to the Rescue of Baby Kangaroo (Telegraph UK)
2. Clay Tablet Holds Ancient Secret to Asteroid Crash (Independent IE)
3. Archaeologists Start Stonehenge Dig (Yahoo News)
4. Vaccine For Ebola Virus Successful In Primates (Science Daily)
5. Cuba Allows Citizens to Stay in Hotels (Yahoo News)
Honorable Mentions:
1. Faster Hawaiian Tree Growth Without Adverse Ecosystem Effects (Science Daily)
2. Bean Crop Brimming with Hope (The Denver Post)
Unpublishable:
Off-Duty Massachusetts Firefighter Rescues Skier from Frozen Pond
http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?id=58942§ionId=46
31 March 2008
This story is about a firefighter who was skiing at Wachusset Mountain, off duty, and was able to save someone who got stuck on the thin ice of a frozen pond.
Today's Top 5:
1. Dog Comes to the Rescue of Baby Kangaroo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/31/wkangaroo131.xml
Last Updated: 5:52pm BST 31/03/2008
A dog has rescued a tiny baby kangaroo, gently carrying it to safety in its mouth after the joey's mother was killed by car.
Rex the dog found the four-month-old joey in the pouch of its dead mother and carried it to safety Rex, the German short-haired pointer cross, was walking with his owner, Leonie Allan, near the Bells Beach in Torquay, on Australia's south coast, when they passed a dead kangaroo.
The marsupials are often killed while crossing busy roads, so Mrs Allan thought nothing of it. But Rex sensed something and when Mrs Allan went outside later in the day, she saw the ten-year-old family pet pointing and went to investigate.
"I was worried he'd found a snake and called him back, but when he returned he dropped the joey at my feet," Mrs Allan said.
"I was so surprised and delighted. Rex saved the day."
advertisementThe dog had found the four-month-old joey in the pouch of its dead mother and gently prised it out, carrying it back to his owner.
"He obviously sensed the baby roo was still alive in the pouch and somehow had gently grabbed it by the neck, gently retrieved it and brought it to me."
The animals showed an instant fondness for each other, nuzzling and playing together, Mrs Allan said.
"The joey was snuggling up to him, jumping up to him and Rex was sniffing and licking him. It was quite cute."
Most joeys whose mothers are killed by cars die in the same collision. Those who survive the impact are rarely able to fend for themselves outside the pouch and succumb soon after.
But the prospects of this kangaroo - named Rex junior after its saviour - are good. It will be hand-reared at a wildlife sanctuary until it is 18 months old, when it will be released into the wild.
Tehree Gordon, director of Jirrahlinga Wildlife Sanctuary, was amazed at the bond between the animals and said the fact Rex was so gentle with his younger namesake was proof that dogs - often criticised in Australia for killing native fauna - could live in harmony with local species if they were taught not to attack them.
"That Rex was so careful and knew to bring the baby to his owners, and that the joey was so relaxed and didn't see Rex as a predator, is quite remarkable," she said.
2. Clay Tablet Holds Ancient Secret to Asteroid Crashhttp://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/clay-tablet-holds-ancient-secret-to-asteroid-crash-1332923.html?r=RSSBy Lewis SmithMonday March 31 2008
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness's account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been over half a mile across.
Found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal palace at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, the tablet is thought to be a 700BC copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as "white stone bowl approaching" and recorded it as it "vigorously swept along".
Using computers to re- create the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.
About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations.
In the past 150 years scientists made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.
Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet's code, said: "It's a wonderful piece of observation, a perfect piece of science."
He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Kofels. As it travelled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact. (© The Times, London)
3. Archaeologists Start Stonehenge Dig http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080331/ap_on_re_eu/britain_stonehenge_dig;_ylt=AnW_MfM3wA52D1BblV_oulS9IxIFBy GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago (Current time 4:22pm CST) LONDON - Some of England's most sacred soil was disturbed Monday for the first time in more than four decades as archaeologists worked to solve the enduring riddle of Stonehenge: When and why was the prehistoric monument built?
The excavation project, set to last until April 11, is designed to unearth materials that can be used to establish a firm date for when the first mysterious set of bluestones was put in place at Stonehenge, one of Britain's best known and least understood landmarks.
The World Heritage site, a favorite with visitors the world over, has become popular with Druids, neo-Pagans and New Agers who attach mystical significance to the strangely shaped circle of stones, but there remains great debate about the actual purpose of the structure.
The dig will be led by Timothy Darvill, a leading Stonehenge scholar from Bournemouth University, and Geoffrey Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries. Both experts have worked to pinpoint the site in the Preseli Mountains in south Wales where the bluestones — the earliest of the large rocks erected at the site — came from. They will be able to compare the samples found in Wales to those at Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain.
"The excavation will date the arrival of the bluestones following their 153-mile journey from Preseli to Salisbury Plain and contribute to our definition of the society which undertook such an ambitious project," Wainright said. "We will be able to say not only why, but when the first stone monument was built."
Scientists believe the bluestones were first put in place about 2600 B.C., but they concede the date is only an approximation at best. The original bluestones were removed about 200 years later and scientists hope to find bits of them embedded in the earth.
Darvill said the excavation marks the first opportunity to bring the power of modern scientific archaeology to bear on a problem that has taxed the minds of so many experts since medieval times: Why were the bluestones so important to have warranted bringing them from so far away?
The excavation goal is to find remnants of the original bluestones, or related materials, that can be subjected to modern radiocarbon dating techniques to establish a more precise timeline for the construction of Stonehenge, said Dave Batchelor, an archaeologist with English Heritage, which oversees the Stonehenge site.
"We have to find the material that will give us a good date," he said. "That's where the luck comes in. We could get an absolute blank or we could get something magnificent or we could get something in between."
He said bluestones have an "inky, bluey, black" appearance and come from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales. About 6 feet tall, they are the smaller stones that make up part of the monument, alongside the larger sarsen stones, which are about twice as tall and were added later.
It is hoped that fixing the date of the start of construction with more precision will allow scientists to finally grasp how and why the monument was built. They also may learn more about how the stones were transported. Research shows the bluestones, weighing an estimated five tons apiece, may have been dragged from the mountains in south Wales to the sea, put on huge rafts and floated up the River Avon.
Archaeologists believe that before the bluestones were put in place, Stonehenge consisted of a circle of wooden posts and timbers built in approximately 3100 B.C.
The research that began Monday with the digging of a trench marks the first time ground inside the inner stone circle has been excavated since 1944. The area, revered as a powerful link to England's pagan past, is so sensitive that Cabinet approval was needed before the work could begin.
Renee Fok, a spokeswoman with English Heritage, said the project was okayed only after experts were convinced of its potential value. She said the project represents "the logical next step" after the two professors located the source of the bluestones in Wales.
"It's the culmination of their work, it makes sense to go back to the stone circle and get a date," she said.
"We want to strike a balance. We want the best research, but we can't just say go ahead and dig as you like, it's a very fragile area. Even the Druids are happy with this project, we've spoken to them and they don't object."
She said tourists will be able to visit Stonehenge as usual and will also be able to watch live video coverage of the excavation in special tents at the site.
4. Vaccine For Ebola Virus Successful In Primateshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080330200630.htmScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2008)
One of the world's deadliest diseases, caused by the Ebola virus, may finally be preventable thanks to US and Canadian researchers, who have successfully tested several Ebola vaccines in primates and are now looking to adapt them for human use. Dr Anthony Sanchez, from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia is presenting an overview of Ebola vaccine development March 31, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting.
"The biothreat posed by Ebola virus cannot be overlooked. We are seeing more and more naturally occurring human outbreaks of this deadly disease. With worldwide air travel and tourism the virus can now be transported to and from remote regions of the world. And it has huge potential as a possible weapon of bioterrorism", says Dr Sanchez. "We desperately need a protective vaccine."
So far, there have been over 1500 cases of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in humans. Illness starts abruptly and symptoms include fever, headache, sore throat, weakness, joint and muscle aches, diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pain. A rash, red eyes and bleeding may also occur. Ebola haemorrhagic fever can have a mortality rate of around 90% in humans.
Because Ebola virus is so dangerous, producing and testing a vaccine is extremely challenging for the scientists. One significant factor slowing down progress has been that there are only a very limited number of high containment facilities with staff capable and authorised to conduct the research.
"Ebola virus is a Biosafety Level 4 threat, along with many other haemorrhagic fever viruses", says Dr Sanchez. "As well as the difficulty in getting the right staff and facilities, vaccines for viruses like Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever have been difficult to produce because simple 'killed' viruses that just trigger an antibody response from the blood are not effective. For these viruses we need to get a cell-mediated response, which involves our bodies producing killer T-cells before immunity is strong enough to prevent or clear an infection."
The researchers have now used several different recombinant DNA techniques, which have allowed them to trigger a cell-mediated response and produce a vaccine that is effective in non-human primates. One of the candidate vaccines is about to be tested on people for the first time, after entering Phase 1 clinical trials in autumn 2006.
"Ebola virus infection of humans can be highly lethal but monkeys rarely survive the infection and have been very useful as animal models. Ebola vaccine trials using nonhuman primates have provided unambiguous results and have allowed the development of protective vaccines to progress rapidly", says Dr Sanchez. "Successful human trials will mean that we can vaccinate healthcare workers and other key personnel during outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, helping us to protect their lives and control the spread of the disease."
The US team hopes that the findings from their studies will provide important insights that will improve or accelerate the future development of vaccines for other haemorrhagic fever viruses like Marburg virus, and agents such as HIV and avian influenza.
Adapted from materials provided by Society for General Microbiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
5. Cuba Allows Citizens to Stay in Hotels http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080331/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_hotelsBy WILL WEISSERT Associated Press Writer 6 minutes ago (Current time 4:18pm CST)31 March 2008 HAVANA - New President Raul Castro's government has lifted a ban on Cubans staying at hotels previously reserved for foreigners, ending another restriction that had been especially irksome to citizens. Employees at the Nacional, Valencia and Santa Isabel Hotels in Havana said Ministry of Tourism officials told them Cubans were allowed to stay in hotels across the island as of midnight on Monday. Like other guests, they will be charged in hard currency worth 24 times the Cuban pesos state employees are paid in.
"They have informed us that with a national ID card, anyone can stay here," an employee at the Ambos Mundos Hotel in Old Havana said Monday. Non-guests who are Cuban nationals will also be allowed to pay for other hotel services, including gyms, said the employee, who asked for anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to foreign reporters.
Some hotels scheduled morning meetings with staff members to discuss the changes. and officials said new rules will also allow Cubans to rent cars at state-run agencies for the first time.
On Friday, Cuba authorized its citizens to obtain mobile phones, which only foreigners and key officials in the Communist Government were previously allowed to have. A resolution signed by the Interior Commerce Ministry on March 21 also authorized the sale of computers, microwaves and DVD players, items which had only been sold to companies and foreigners.
Many Cubans are too poor to benefit the lifting of restrictions. The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and the average monthly state salary is a little less than $20.
But much of the population has access to convertible pesos, either through jobs in tourism or with foreign firms or cash sent by relatives living in the United States. They will suddenly have a host of new ways to spend their money.
Official restrictions that banned all Cubans — even those who could afford it — from enjoying beach resorts and luxury hotels have been an especially sore point for many on the island since the government began encouraging foreign tourism en masse in the early 1990s. Critics of the government have branded the bans "tourism apartheid."
Tourism generates more than $2 billion annually in Cuba.
Since taking power from his ailing, 81-year-old brother Fidel on Feb. 24, Raul Castro, 76, has pledged to make improving everyday life for Cubans a top priority and undo "excessive restrictions" on society and the economy.
(This version CORRECTS the name of one hotel to "Santa Isabel" instead of "Maria Isabel")
Honorable Mentions:
1. Faster Hawaiian Tree Growth Without Adverse Ecosystem Effectshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327093626.htmScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2008)
U.S. Forest Service scientists with the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry have completed a study on ways to make high-value koa trees grow faster, while increasing biodiversity, carbon sequestration, scenic beauty and recreation opportunities in native Hawaiían forests.
Acacia koa is a native Hawaiían hardwood tree that traditionally has been prized as a craft and furniture-making wood. Its range has been greatly reduced because of logging and land clearing for agricultural production.
Scientists involved in the study have published their findings in the April edition of Forest Ecology and Management. The article is entitled, "Understory Structure in a 23-Year-Old Acacia Koa Forest and Two-Year Growth Responses to Silvicultural Treatments."
Previous studies have shown that a lack of knowledge about koa tree production has hampered commercial forestry investment efforts in Hawaií.
Scientists in this study began to fill this knowledge gap in 2002 when they started measuring how koa trees respond to the thinning of competing trees and the application of fertilizers. They were also concerned about how the trees and understory plants responded to chemical control of non-native grasses because about 20 percent of endangered plants in Hawaií are understory species found in koa forests.
They found the potential koa crop trees in the test area on the eastern slope of Mauna Loa annually increased their stem diameter at chest height by nearly 120 percent.
In addition, they found the treatments did not adversely affect the growth of native understory plants and non-native grasses did not grow more where tree thinning had occurred. Scientists even found fertilizers reduced the growth of these alien grasses when compared to unfertilized test plots.
The study's findings also showed the treatments were either neutral or beneficial to forest bird habitat, an important consideration because many trees in koa forests bear fleshy fruits or provide habitat for insects eaten by many Hawaiían birds.
"Our findings indicate the use of low-impact silvicultural treatments in young koa stands not only increases wood production, but also is compatible with maintenance of healthy, intact native understory vegetation," said Paul
Scowcroft, an Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry research ecologist and one of the study's authors.
Adapted from materials provided by US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
2. Bean Crop Brimming with HopeBy William PorterDenver Post ColumnistArticle Last Updated: 03/31/2008 12:34:00 AM MDT
Spring is the season of renewal. The concept is not lost on Katie Bordas, a woman working hard at a second chance in a life that could have ended on any number of crystal meth binges.
Wednesday morning, she sat down with me and laid out the details of her story like cards in a badly played poker hand.
Bordas has brown hair and a pleasant face. There's a star-shaped scar above her upper lip. The scars inside her run far deeper.
"I've had a pretty rough life," she said. "I started drinking when I was 13 and have had an addiction to drugs for about 15 years. And I have felony convictions for possession and forgery."
At 31, she is on probation and has been clean for 16 months. And much of the thanks goes to a hill of beans.
Bordas is one of the beneficiaries of the Women's Bean Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping women break out of poverty and unemployment.
The operation is housed in the old Denver Fire Station No. 10 at 3201 Curtis St. in the Five Points neighborhood.
The Bean Project was founded in 1989 by Jossy Eyre, a volunteer at a women's shelter. Eyre decided such facilities weren't enough: Women needed jobs and skills to help them make lasting changes.
Starting with $500 worth of beans and two homeless women to bag them for sale, the Bean Project took off.
Today the project employs 20 women in a given week and has a $1.2 million operating budget. Products include beans, salsas and spice rubs, which are sold in grocery stores. For Bordas, the Bean Project has been a godsend.
"They've helped me start over in the workforce, refreshed my computer skills, led me through mock interviews and given me the confidence to go back," she said. "And just how to go out there and be a productive person."
Bordas, who is single, has three daughters. They range from 7 years old to 11 months.
She lives with her youngest child at The Haven, a Denver treatment facility for addicts.
"It's a therapeutic community where we attack the behavior that makes us act the way we do and change our way of thinking," she said.
Bordas realizes there are no do-overs in life. But sometimes you can start over.
She knows it will be tough.
"I've had five felonies, and it's hard to get a job with five felonies," she said. "And there are big gaps in my employment history."
And that is why she works 39 hours a week at the Bean Project. It's a four-month work-training program for women who qualify.
Bordas started Feb. 4. Soon she will move into a Haven-sponsored apartment.
"I think she'll make it," said Tamra Ryan, the Bean Project's executive director. "At this point, you can kind of tell. She's very focused. She's a good egg."
Before she bottomed out, Bordas worked at a mortgage company. She hopes to return to some type of office work.
I asked Bordas how she felt about her prospects. She smiled — the first real smile I had seen on her face.
"Super," she said. "I'm very optimistic."
I asked her whether she had any advice for others.
"Just take it day by day and stay in the here and now," she said. "And don't give up hope. There's help out there if you want it."
Monday, March 31, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
2008: March 30th Good News (Marathon Runner donates Hair, 91 Year Old Anime Found, more...)
Good Afternoon All,
Today I'm afraid I don't have time to expound on the news. I may come back later and give a brief synopsis. I did want to point out the article about the marathon runner who donated his hair for cancer. In the US there is also a program for this, called Locks for Love. It's a great program, which both my sister and I have participated in, as well as a couple of good friends. If you plan to totally change your hairstyle, may I suggest this as a course of action? And if you're in Wales, look up the Kith for Kids charity. :)
Have a great day, enjoy the posts, and I'll see you tomorrow! :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Historic 91-year-old Anime Discovered in Osaka (Mainichi News)
2. Free Cancer Screenings for (Idaho) Women Through April (Idaho Statesman)
3. Helping the Homeless with Hands, Heads, Hearts (Seattle Times)
4. World's Biggest Collection of Dead Butterflies Moves its Home (Earth Times)
5. French Architect Wins Pritzker Prize
Honorable Mention:
1. Kids Who Talk to Themselves do Better (Times of India)
2. Dressing Down for National Pyjama Day (Irish Independent)
3. Idaho Youth Named as Epilepsy Spokesperson (Idaho Statesman)
4. Hair’s a Really Great Way to Help a Worthy Cause (IC Wales)
Today's Top 5:
1. Historic 91-year-old Anime Discovered in Osaka
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080329p2a00m0na029000c.html
March 30, 2008
A scene from Japan's oldest existing animation, "Namakura Gatana," which was discovered in Osaka. (Original image in the possession of Mr. Natsuki Matsumoto; restored by the National Film Center, Tokyo)OSAKA -- Footage of an animation film dating back to the Taisho Period (1912-1926) has been discovered here, and has been confirmed as the oldest existing example of Japanese animation ever produced.
The 2-minute animation, directed by Junichi Kou'uchi and titled "Namakura Gatana," was the second animation film ever made in Japan and was first shown at domestic theaters in 1917.
It was purchased at an antique fair in Osaka in July last year by film historian Natsuki Matsumoto. The film was found in nearly perfect condition.
The historic footage was unveiled during a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, following restoration work by the National Film Center in Tokyo's Chuo-ku.
The film is a comedy about a samurai warrior, who tries out a new sword only to suffer revenge at the hands of his would-be target.
"We knew the film was highly acclaimed at the time, but there was no information on the content of the film. I am surprised that it was actually found. It's a major discovery that will shed light on the origin of Japanese animation," Yasushi Watanabe, an animation historian, said.
The film was initially screened in 1917 at theaters following the release of the nation's first animation film, "Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki" (1917), which remains lost to this day.
Almost a century after its initial release, the film "Namakura Gatana" will be shown again at the National Film Center in the Kyobashi district, starting on April 24.
2. Free Cancer Screenings for (Idaho) Women Through April
http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/337432.html
Edition Date: 03/30/08
The Idaho Foodbank and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare are partnering to spread the word about Women's Health Check, a program providing free breast and cervical cancer screening to women age 40 and over who are uninsured and economically disadvantaged.Health and Welfare will take advantage of the foodbank's extensive statewide network to distribute information about the screening to its target audience.
The goal of the program, which is scheduled to run through the end of April, is to increase the number of Idaho women who have regular mammograms and pap tests.
Pantries, feeding sites and other foodbank partner agencies will have information cards about the free screenings and who qualifies prominently displayed.
For more information about the program, call the toll-free Idaho Careline at 211.
3. Helping the Homeless with Hands, Heads, Hearts
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004315716_design30m.html
By Haley Edwards
UW architecture student Sean Kelly, seated, and his classmates are building a composting toilet out of recycled materials such as wooden pallets and burlap sacks — and their design would require no tools or nails for assembly.You've got four friends, six bucks and 72 hours to build a portable toilet for the homeless. You ready?
Then welcome to this year's Design Build Challenge, a three-day competition in Seattle in which teams of amateur architects team up with local nonprofits to create innovative solutions to real-life problems. This year, all the nonprofit partners serve the area's homeless.
The competition is sponsored by Project Locus, a national nonprofit that encourages social responsibility among architects.
Beginning late Thursday, 30 amateur architects, most of them University of Washington students, divided into five teams, met their nonprofits and got their assignments.
Two teams were asked to design and build portable toilets for the homeless. Two other teams were asked to design traveling memorials for homeless people who have died. The fifth team was asked to design an educational kiosk where homeless communities could learn about waste management.
There's a chance, if the final results are good enough, the designs could actually be used to help the homeless.
The two teams assigned the task of building a portable toilet labored in separate backyards on opposite sides of the city.
In Ballard, five guys, all undergraduates at the UW, built a toilet out of wooden shipping pallets, burlap sacks from the Tully's Coffee plant, and an old tub that once held kalamata olives. Their compostable toilet's bowl was a blue plastic barrel the team saw on the street and traded for a six-pack of beer.
While there's no official budget for the projects, teams are encouraged to use recycled goods and spend as little as possible.
The Ballard-based toilet-building team used tools, but no hammers or nails. The finished kit would require no tools for assembly.
"We wanted to create a port-a-potty prototype that anyone could re-create using things they could find on the street," said Kit Kollmeyer, 26. Their nonprofit partner was Operation Nightwatch, a Central District-based homeless-aid program.
"So much of what we do as students is theoretical," Kollmeyer said. "This is actually something that's needed, and it's something we can build ourselves. That's kind of cool."
Meanwhile, in Madrona, the other toilet-building team spent Saturday in a basement workshop where it was so cold you could see your breath. Ashle Fauvre, 25, used a jigsaw on plywood to make the structure's base, while her teammates — all first-year graduate students — sawed, drilled and hammered.
"We're trying to create something that'll be really quality, but easily replicable," said Fauvre, whose team's nonprofit partner was SHARE/WHEEL, a group that works with tent cities in the Seattle area. "It'll slide apart and fold up into a portfolio-sized package."
The toilet-building project happens to come just as Seattle Public Utilities last week recommended that the city's pricey self-cleaning public toilets, installed in 2004 to provide clean facilities for the homeless and others, should be discontinued because of cost.
"It's an important project right now, and we hope our design is actually something that can be used," said Jack Hunter, 30, of the Madrona crew. "We don't know a whole lot about toilet building. We're longtime toilet users, first-time toilet builders."
A panel of five judges is to critique each team's final products at 4 p.m. today at Our Redeemer's Lutheran Church, 2400 N.W. 85th St., Seattle.
4. World's Biggest Collection of Dead Butterflies Moves its Home http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/195476,worlds-biggest-collection-of-dead-butterflies-moves-home.html
Posted : Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:24:00 GMT
Munich - The world's biggest collection of preserved butterflies has been safely moved to a bigger, new home in the southern German city of Munich, museum officials said Sunday. Prize specimens from the 10-million-insect collection will go back on public display on Friday. They were netted over decades by German scientists and enthusiasts all over the globe and neatly pinned on cards at the Bavarian Zoological Collection ZSM museum.
It took several months to gingerly transport the fragile butterflies, which are now kept in 50,000 glass cases.
Chief conservator Axel Hausmann said the new space in the building would allow 100,000 species to be put on public display at any one time.
Friday's re-opening of the collection will also feature an award to Zoltan Varga, a Hungarian professor who donated his huge collection of Noctuidae butterflies to the ZSM.
Varga, who collected them on several expeditions to Central Asian mountain ranges, will receive the Ritter von Spix Medal.
5. French Architect Wins Pritzker Prize http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/design/31prit.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1206907711-Bz080UccynHInA0c/TLDhg
By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: March 30, 2008
Jean Nouvel, the bold French architect known for such wildly diverse projects as the muscular Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the exotically louvered Arab World Institute in Paris, has received architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize. Jean NouvelMr. Nouvel, 62, is the second French citizen to take the prize, awarded annually to a living architect by a jury chosen by the Hyatt Foundation. His selection is to be announced Monday.
“For over 30 years Jean Nouvel has pushed architecture’s discourse and praxis to new limits,” the Pritzker jury said in its citation. “His inquisitive and agile mind propels him to take risks in each of his projects, which, regardless of varying degrees of success, have greatly expanded the vocabulary of contemporary architecture.”
In extending that vocabulary Mr. Nouvel has defied easy categorization. His buildings have no immediately identifiable signature, like the curves of Frank Gehry or the light-filled atriums of Renzo Piano. But each is strikingly distinctive, be it the Agbar Tower in Barcelona (2005), a candy-colored office tower that suggests a geyser, or his KKL cultural and congress center in Lucerne, Switzerland (2000), with a slim copper roof cantilevered delicately over Lake Lucerne.
“Every time I try to find what I call the missing piece of the puzzle, the right building in the right place,” Mr. Nouvel said recently over tea at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo.
Yet he does not design buildings simply to echo their surroundings. “Generally, when you say context, people think you want to copy the buildings around, but often context is contrast,” he said.
“The wind, the color of the sky, the trees around — the building is not done only to be the most beautiful,” he said. “It’s done to give advantage to the surroundings. It’s a dialogue.”
The prize, which includes a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion, is to be presented to Mr. Nouvel on June 2 in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Among Mr. Nouvel’s New York buildings are 40 Mercer, a 15-story red-and-blue, glass, wood and steel luxury residential building completed last year in SoHo, and a soaring 75-story hotel-and-museum tower with crystalline peaks that is to be built next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown. Writing in The New York Times in November, Nicolai Ouroussoff said the Midtown tower “promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation.”
Born in Fumel in southwestern France in 1945, Mr. Nouvel originally wanted to be an artist. But his parents, both teachers, wanted a more stable life for him, he said, so they compromised on architecture.
“I realized it was possible to create visual compositions” that, he said, “you can put directly in the street, in the city, in public spaces.”
At 20 Mr. Nouvel won first prize in a national competition to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By the time he was 25 he had opened his own architecture firm with François Seigneur; a series of other partnerships followed.
Mr. Nouvel cemented his reputation in 1987 with completion of the Arab World Institute, one of the “grand projects” commissioned during the presidency of François Mitterrand. A showcase for art from Arab countries, it blends high technology with traditional Arab motifs. Its south-facing glass facade, for example, has automated lenses that control light to the interior while also evoking traditional Arab latticework. For his boxy, industrial Guthrie Theater, which has a cantilevered bridge overlooking the Mississippi River, Mr. Nouvel experimented widely with color. The theater is clad in midnight-blue metal; a small terrace is bright yellow; orange LED images rise along the complex’s two towers.
In its citation, the Pritzker jury said the Guthrie, completed in 2006, “both merges and contrasts with its surroundings.” It added, “It is responsive to the city and the nearby Mississippi River, and yet, it is also an expression of theatricality and the magical world of performance.”
The bulk of Mr. Nouvel’s commissions work has been in Europe however. Among the most prominent is his Quai Branly Museum in Paris (2006), an eccentric jumble of elements including a glass block atop two columns, some brightly colorful boxes, rust-colored louvers and a vertical carpet of plants. “Defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric, it is not an easy building to love,” Mr. Ouroussoff wrote in The Times.
A year later he described Mr. Nouvel’s Paris Philharmonie concert hall, a series of large overlapping metal plates on the edge of La Villette Park in northeastern Paris, as “an unsettling if exhilarating trip into the unknown.”
Mr. Nouvel has his plate full at the moment. He is designing a satellite of the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, giving it a shallow domed roof that creates the aura of a just-landed U.F.O. He recently announced plans for a high-rise condominium in Los Angeles called SunCal Tower, a narrow glass structure with rings of greenery on each floor. His concert hall for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation is a tall rectangular box with transparent screen walls.
Before dreaming up a design, Mr. Nouvel said, he does copious research on the project and its surroundings. “The story, the climate, the desires of the client, the rules, the culture of the place,” he said. “The references of the buildings around, what the people in the city love.”
“I need analysis,” he said, noting that every person “is a product of a civilization, of a culture.” He added: Me, I was born in France after the Second World War. Probably the most important cultural movement was Structuralism. I cannot do a building if I can’t analyze.”
Although he becomes attached to his buildings, Mr. Nouvel said, he understands that like human beings, they grow and change over time and may even one day disappear. “Architecture is always a temporary modification of the space, of the city, of the landscape,” he said. “We think that it’s permanent. But we never know.”
Honorable Mention:
1. Kids Who Talk to Themselves do Better
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kids_who_talk_to_themselves_do_better_/articleshow/2911489.cms
30 Mar 2008, 1415 hrs IST,ANI
WASHINGTON: The next time you see your kids chatting to themselves, don’t worry - for a new study has shown that children who talk to themselves do better on motor tasks.
The study led by Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University showed that preschoolers perform better while doing their tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent.
"Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," said Winsler.
"On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children," he added.
During the study 78 per cent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent.
Private speech helps the children to improve their communication skills with the outside world.
"This is when language comes inside. As these two communication processes merge, children use private speech in the transition period. It's a critical period for children, and defines us as human beings," Winsler added.
Winsler also conducted the study in children with autism. The findings revealed that high-functioning autistic children talk to themselves often and in the same ways that non-autistic children do. Talking aloud also improved their performance on tasks.
"Children with autism have problems with their external social speech, so psychologists assumed that their private speech would also be impaired," he said.
"But this study shows that it is not the case-that autistic children use their private speech very effectively as a tool to help them with tasks," he added.
The study titled ‘ Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behaviour problems’ is published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly .
2. Dressing Down for National Pyjama Day
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/dressing-down-for--national-pyjama-day-1331732.html
Saturday, March 29 2008
Dressing up was not the fashionable thing to do yesterday - at least not for one charity fundraising event. The opposite was the case as children, including Molly Fallon, Andrea Ragulaite and Zuikomboreko Kufazuvinei, pictured , were told to stay in their pyjamas while attending the nursery in an effort to make €500,000.
The drive was part of the National Children's Nurseries Association's 'Pyjama Day' in which 40,000 children did not bother getting changed when they got up. Parents were asked to sponsor a child to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation and Children in Hospital Ireland.
3. Idaho Youth Named as Epilepsy Spokesperson
http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/337447.html
Edition Date: 03/30/08
Nine-year-old Sam Gottsch of Boise is one of 50 young people with epilepsy from across the country who will travel to Washington, D.C., next week to meet with congressional leaders. The young lobbyists, ranging in age from 7 to 16, will encourage lawmakers to support the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as public health programs and research toward finding a cure for epilepsy.
Gottsch is part of Kids Speak Up!, a national program coordinated by the Epilepsy Foundation.
4. Hair’s a Really Great Way to Help a Worthy Cause
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/03/29/hair-s-a-really-great-way-to-help-a-worthy-cause-91466-20688897/
Mar 29 2008
by Katie Norman, South Wales Echo
A MARATHON runner has given up his hair to help children with cancer.
Terence Canning, 35, of Llandaff North, Cardiff, not only shaved his head to raise money for charity – he also gave his locks to help make a wig for a young cancer patient.
The former London banker, who recently quit his job and returned to Cardiff, decided to raise sponsorship for his forthcoming London Marathon bid by cutting off his 16-inch ponytail and shaving his head.
The money raised will go to Kith and Kids, a charity running activities for young people with learning and physical disabilities.
But instead of throwing his locks away, Terence has giving them to the charity Little Princesses, which helps create real-hair wigs for young cancer sufferers whose families would not otherwise be able to afford one.
Terence, who has been growing his hair for about four years, said: “I heard about the idea through someone I met on holiday and I just thought it was a good chance to put my hair to good use while I was shaving it off for charity.
“I don’t think I will miss my hair. I won’t miss washing it. I just hope I don’t get sunburnt on my head while I’m running.”
To help Terence raise money for Kith and Kids, visit www.justgiving.com/ terencecanning
Today I'm afraid I don't have time to expound on the news. I may come back later and give a brief synopsis. I did want to point out the article about the marathon runner who donated his hair for cancer. In the US there is also a program for this, called Locks for Love. It's a great program, which both my sister and I have participated in, as well as a couple of good friends. If you plan to totally change your hairstyle, may I suggest this as a course of action? And if you're in Wales, look up the Kith for Kids charity. :)
Have a great day, enjoy the posts, and I'll see you tomorrow! :)
Today's Top 5:
1. Historic 91-year-old Anime Discovered in Osaka (Mainichi News)
2. Free Cancer Screenings for (Idaho) Women Through April (Idaho Statesman)
3. Helping the Homeless with Hands, Heads, Hearts (Seattle Times)
4. World's Biggest Collection of Dead Butterflies Moves its Home (Earth Times)
5. French Architect Wins Pritzker Prize
Honorable Mention:
1. Kids Who Talk to Themselves do Better (Times of India)
2. Dressing Down for National Pyjama Day (Irish Independent)
3. Idaho Youth Named as Epilepsy Spokesperson (Idaho Statesman)
4. Hair’s a Really Great Way to Help a Worthy Cause (IC Wales)
Today's Top 5:
1. Historic 91-year-old Anime Discovered in Osaka
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080329p2a00m0na029000c.html
March 30, 2008
A scene from Japan's oldest existing animation, "Namakura Gatana," which was discovered in Osaka. (Original image in the possession of Mr. Natsuki Matsumoto; restored by the National Film Center, Tokyo)OSAKA -- Footage of an animation film dating back to the Taisho Period (1912-1926) has been discovered here, and has been confirmed as the oldest existing example of Japanese animation ever produced.
The 2-minute animation, directed by Junichi Kou'uchi and titled "Namakura Gatana," was the second animation film ever made in Japan and was first shown at domestic theaters in 1917.
It was purchased at an antique fair in Osaka in July last year by film historian Natsuki Matsumoto. The film was found in nearly perfect condition.
The historic footage was unveiled during a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, following restoration work by the National Film Center in Tokyo's Chuo-ku.
The film is a comedy about a samurai warrior, who tries out a new sword only to suffer revenge at the hands of his would-be target.
"We knew the film was highly acclaimed at the time, but there was no information on the content of the film. I am surprised that it was actually found. It's a major discovery that will shed light on the origin of Japanese animation," Yasushi Watanabe, an animation historian, said.
The film was initially screened in 1917 at theaters following the release of the nation's first animation film, "Imokawa Mukuzo Genkanban no Maki" (1917), which remains lost to this day.
Almost a century after its initial release, the film "Namakura Gatana" will be shown again at the National Film Center in the Kyobashi district, starting on April 24.
2. Free Cancer Screenings for (Idaho) Women Through April
http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/337432.html
Edition Date: 03/30/08
The Idaho Foodbank and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare are partnering to spread the word about Women's Health Check, a program providing free breast and cervical cancer screening to women age 40 and over who are uninsured and economically disadvantaged.Health and Welfare will take advantage of the foodbank's extensive statewide network to distribute information about the screening to its target audience.
The goal of the program, which is scheduled to run through the end of April, is to increase the number of Idaho women who have regular mammograms and pap tests.
Pantries, feeding sites and other foodbank partner agencies will have information cards about the free screenings and who qualifies prominently displayed.
For more information about the program, call the toll-free Idaho Careline at 211.
3. Helping the Homeless with Hands, Heads, Hearts
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004315716_design30m.html
By Haley Edwards
UW architecture student Sean Kelly, seated, and his classmates are building a composting toilet out of recycled materials such as wooden pallets and burlap sacks — and their design would require no tools or nails for assembly.You've got four friends, six bucks and 72 hours to build a portable toilet for the homeless. You ready?
Then welcome to this year's Design Build Challenge, a three-day competition in Seattle in which teams of amateur architects team up with local nonprofits to create innovative solutions to real-life problems. This year, all the nonprofit partners serve the area's homeless.
The competition is sponsored by Project Locus, a national nonprofit that encourages social responsibility among architects.
Beginning late Thursday, 30 amateur architects, most of them University of Washington students, divided into five teams, met their nonprofits and got their assignments.
Two teams were asked to design and build portable toilets for the homeless. Two other teams were asked to design traveling memorials for homeless people who have died. The fifth team was asked to design an educational kiosk where homeless communities could learn about waste management.
There's a chance, if the final results are good enough, the designs could actually be used to help the homeless.
The two teams assigned the task of building a portable toilet labored in separate backyards on opposite sides of the city.
In Ballard, five guys, all undergraduates at the UW, built a toilet out of wooden shipping pallets, burlap sacks from the Tully's Coffee plant, and an old tub that once held kalamata olives. Their compostable toilet's bowl was a blue plastic barrel the team saw on the street and traded for a six-pack of beer.
While there's no official budget for the projects, teams are encouraged to use recycled goods and spend as little as possible.
The Ballard-based toilet-building team used tools, but no hammers or nails. The finished kit would require no tools for assembly.
"We wanted to create a port-a-potty prototype that anyone could re-create using things they could find on the street," said Kit Kollmeyer, 26. Their nonprofit partner was Operation Nightwatch, a Central District-based homeless-aid program.
"So much of what we do as students is theoretical," Kollmeyer said. "This is actually something that's needed, and it's something we can build ourselves. That's kind of cool."
Meanwhile, in Madrona, the other toilet-building team spent Saturday in a basement workshop where it was so cold you could see your breath. Ashle Fauvre, 25, used a jigsaw on plywood to make the structure's base, while her teammates — all first-year graduate students — sawed, drilled and hammered.
"We're trying to create something that'll be really quality, but easily replicable," said Fauvre, whose team's nonprofit partner was SHARE/WHEEL, a group that works with tent cities in the Seattle area. "It'll slide apart and fold up into a portfolio-sized package."
The toilet-building project happens to come just as Seattle Public Utilities last week recommended that the city's pricey self-cleaning public toilets, installed in 2004 to provide clean facilities for the homeless and others, should be discontinued because of cost.
"It's an important project right now, and we hope our design is actually something that can be used," said Jack Hunter, 30, of the Madrona crew. "We don't know a whole lot about toilet building. We're longtime toilet users, first-time toilet builders."
A panel of five judges is to critique each team's final products at 4 p.m. today at Our Redeemer's Lutheran Church, 2400 N.W. 85th St., Seattle.
4. World's Biggest Collection of Dead Butterflies Moves its Home http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/195476,worlds-biggest-collection-of-dead-butterflies-moves-home.html
Posted : Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:24:00 GMT
Munich - The world's biggest collection of preserved butterflies has been safely moved to a bigger, new home in the southern German city of Munich, museum officials said Sunday. Prize specimens from the 10-million-insect collection will go back on public display on Friday. They were netted over decades by German scientists and enthusiasts all over the globe and neatly pinned on cards at the Bavarian Zoological Collection ZSM museum.
It took several months to gingerly transport the fragile butterflies, which are now kept in 50,000 glass cases.
Chief conservator Axel Hausmann said the new space in the building would allow 100,000 species to be put on public display at any one time.
Friday's re-opening of the collection will also feature an award to Zoltan Varga, a Hungarian professor who donated his huge collection of Noctuidae butterflies to the ZSM.
Varga, who collected them on several expeditions to Central Asian mountain ranges, will receive the Ritter von Spix Medal.
5. French Architect Wins Pritzker Prize http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/arts/design/31prit.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1206907711-Bz080UccynHInA0c/TLDhg
By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: March 30, 2008
Jean Nouvel, the bold French architect known for such wildly diverse projects as the muscular Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the exotically louvered Arab World Institute in Paris, has received architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize. Jean NouvelMr. Nouvel, 62, is the second French citizen to take the prize, awarded annually to a living architect by a jury chosen by the Hyatt Foundation. His selection is to be announced Monday.
“For over 30 years Jean Nouvel has pushed architecture’s discourse and praxis to new limits,” the Pritzker jury said in its citation. “His inquisitive and agile mind propels him to take risks in each of his projects, which, regardless of varying degrees of success, have greatly expanded the vocabulary of contemporary architecture.”
In extending that vocabulary Mr. Nouvel has defied easy categorization. His buildings have no immediately identifiable signature, like the curves of Frank Gehry or the light-filled atriums of Renzo Piano. But each is strikingly distinctive, be it the Agbar Tower in Barcelona (2005), a candy-colored office tower that suggests a geyser, or his KKL cultural and congress center in Lucerne, Switzerland (2000), with a slim copper roof cantilevered delicately over Lake Lucerne.
“Every time I try to find what I call the missing piece of the puzzle, the right building in the right place,” Mr. Nouvel said recently over tea at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo.
Yet he does not design buildings simply to echo their surroundings. “Generally, when you say context, people think you want to copy the buildings around, but often context is contrast,” he said.
“The wind, the color of the sky, the trees around — the building is not done only to be the most beautiful,” he said. “It’s done to give advantage to the surroundings. It’s a dialogue.”
The prize, which includes a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion, is to be presented to Mr. Nouvel on June 2 in a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Among Mr. Nouvel’s New York buildings are 40 Mercer, a 15-story red-and-blue, glass, wood and steel luxury residential building completed last year in SoHo, and a soaring 75-story hotel-and-museum tower with crystalline peaks that is to be built next to the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown. Writing in The New York Times in November, Nicolai Ouroussoff said the Midtown tower “promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation.”
Born in Fumel in southwestern France in 1945, Mr. Nouvel originally wanted to be an artist. But his parents, both teachers, wanted a more stable life for him, he said, so they compromised on architecture.
“I realized it was possible to create visual compositions” that, he said, “you can put directly in the street, in the city, in public spaces.”
At 20 Mr. Nouvel won first prize in a national competition to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By the time he was 25 he had opened his own architecture firm with François Seigneur; a series of other partnerships followed.
Mr. Nouvel cemented his reputation in 1987 with completion of the Arab World Institute, one of the “grand projects” commissioned during the presidency of François Mitterrand. A showcase for art from Arab countries, it blends high technology with traditional Arab motifs. Its south-facing glass facade, for example, has automated lenses that control light to the interior while also evoking traditional Arab latticework. For his boxy, industrial Guthrie Theater, which has a cantilevered bridge overlooking the Mississippi River, Mr. Nouvel experimented widely with color. The theater is clad in midnight-blue metal; a small terrace is bright yellow; orange LED images rise along the complex’s two towers.
In its citation, the Pritzker jury said the Guthrie, completed in 2006, “both merges and contrasts with its surroundings.” It added, “It is responsive to the city and the nearby Mississippi River, and yet, it is also an expression of theatricality and the magical world of performance.”
The bulk of Mr. Nouvel’s commissions work has been in Europe however. Among the most prominent is his Quai Branly Museum in Paris (2006), an eccentric jumble of elements including a glass block atop two columns, some brightly colorful boxes, rust-colored louvers and a vertical carpet of plants. “Defiant, mysterious and wildly eccentric, it is not an easy building to love,” Mr. Ouroussoff wrote in The Times.
A year later he described Mr. Nouvel’s Paris Philharmonie concert hall, a series of large overlapping metal plates on the edge of La Villette Park in northeastern Paris, as “an unsettling if exhilarating trip into the unknown.”
Mr. Nouvel has his plate full at the moment. He is designing a satellite of the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, giving it a shallow domed roof that creates the aura of a just-landed U.F.O. He recently announced plans for a high-rise condominium in Los Angeles called SunCal Tower, a narrow glass structure with rings of greenery on each floor. His concert hall for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation is a tall rectangular box with transparent screen walls.
Before dreaming up a design, Mr. Nouvel said, he does copious research on the project and its surroundings. “The story, the climate, the desires of the client, the rules, the culture of the place,” he said. “The references of the buildings around, what the people in the city love.”
“I need analysis,” he said, noting that every person “is a product of a civilization, of a culture.” He added: Me, I was born in France after the Second World War. Probably the most important cultural movement was Structuralism. I cannot do a building if I can’t analyze.”
Although he becomes attached to his buildings, Mr. Nouvel said, he understands that like human beings, they grow and change over time and may even one day disappear. “Architecture is always a temporary modification of the space, of the city, of the landscape,” he said. “We think that it’s permanent. But we never know.”
Honorable Mention:
1. Kids Who Talk to Themselves do Better
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kids_who_talk_to_themselves_do_better_/articleshow/2911489.cms
30 Mar 2008, 1415 hrs IST,ANI
WASHINGTON: The next time you see your kids chatting to themselves, don’t worry - for a new study has shown that children who talk to themselves do better on motor tasks.
The study led by Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University showed that preschoolers perform better while doing their tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent.
"Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," said Winsler.
"On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children," he added.
During the study 78 per cent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent.
Private speech helps the children to improve their communication skills with the outside world.
"This is when language comes inside. As these two communication processes merge, children use private speech in the transition period. It's a critical period for children, and defines us as human beings," Winsler added.
Winsler also conducted the study in children with autism. The findings revealed that high-functioning autistic children talk to themselves often and in the same ways that non-autistic children do. Talking aloud also improved their performance on tasks.
"Children with autism have problems with their external social speech, so psychologists assumed that their private speech would also be impaired," he said.
"But this study shows that it is not the case-that autistic children use their private speech very effectively as a tool to help them with tasks," he added.
The study titled ‘ Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behaviour problems’ is published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly .
2. Dressing Down for National Pyjama Day
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/dressing-down-for--national-pyjama-day-1331732.html
Saturday, March 29 2008
Dressing up was not the fashionable thing to do yesterday - at least not for one charity fundraising event. The opposite was the case as children, including Molly Fallon, Andrea Ragulaite and Zuikomboreko Kufazuvinei, pictured , were told to stay in their pyjamas while attending the nursery in an effort to make €500,000.
The drive was part of the National Children's Nurseries Association's 'Pyjama Day' in which 40,000 children did not bother getting changed when they got up. Parents were asked to sponsor a child to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation and Children in Hospital Ireland.
3. Idaho Youth Named as Epilepsy Spokesperson
http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/337447.html
Edition Date: 03/30/08
Nine-year-old Sam Gottsch of Boise is one of 50 young people with epilepsy from across the country who will travel to Washington, D.C., next week to meet with congressional leaders. The young lobbyists, ranging in age from 7 to 16, will encourage lawmakers to support the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as public health programs and research toward finding a cure for epilepsy.
Gottsch is part of Kids Speak Up!, a national program coordinated by the Epilepsy Foundation.
4. Hair’s a Really Great Way to Help a Worthy Cause
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/03/29/hair-s-a-really-great-way-to-help-a-worthy-cause-91466-20688897/
Mar 29 2008
by Katie Norman, South Wales Echo
A MARATHON runner has given up his hair to help children with cancer.
Terence Canning, 35, of Llandaff North, Cardiff, not only shaved his head to raise money for charity – he also gave his locks to help make a wig for a young cancer patient.
The former London banker, who recently quit his job and returned to Cardiff, decided to raise sponsorship for his forthcoming London Marathon bid by cutting off his 16-inch ponytail and shaving his head.
The money raised will go to Kith and Kids, a charity running activities for young people with learning and physical disabilities.
But instead of throwing his locks away, Terence has giving them to the charity Little Princesses, which helps create real-hair wigs for young cancer sufferers whose families would not otherwise be able to afford one.
Terence, who has been growing his hair for about four years, said: “I heard about the idea through someone I met on holiday and I just thought it was a good chance to put my hair to good use while I was shaving it off for charity.
“I don’t think I will miss my hair. I won’t miss washing it. I just hope I don’t get sunburnt on my head while I’m running.”
To help Terence raise money for Kith and Kids, visit www.justgiving.com/ terencecanning
Saturday, March 29, 2008
2008: March 29th Good News (Blind, 74 year old Archer Woman shoots Robin Hood, Female Afghan Teen to Join Olympics, more...)
Good Afternoon everyone,
Today's topics are, well, heartwarming! Among other stories, there is a story about a 57 year old woman who thought she miscarried, but 9 weeks later she had a beautiful, healthy baby girl. There is a story about a young afghan teenage woman who will be competing in the Olympics. And there is a story about a blind woman who shot a "Robin Hood".
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the stories! See you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'(Google News)
2. Afghan Girl Defies Death Threats Over Olympics (Telegraph UK)
3. Garda Plays Down Pier Rescue Heroics
4. Can You Rescue A Rainforest? The Answer May Be Yes (Science Daily)
5. 'My Little Miracle Baby' by Mother Aged 57 Who Thought She'd Miscarried
Honorable Mentions:
1. Blind Luck Helps Archer Make One-in-a-Million Robin Hood shot
2. JK Rowling Visits Prison to Help Inmates Learn to Read
Unpublishable:
Vietnamese Man, on Anti-abortion Mission, Opens Home to Moms and Babies
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/asia_pacific/view.bg?articleid=1083702&srvc=rss
© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.This is a very cool article! I recommend following the link to find out what this one man is doing.
1. Lights Out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWEjNjkf_cEeuCMbeDumW2q75VtwD8VN8TEG0
Posted 2 Hours ago (current time 3:55pm CST)
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Sydney's iconic Opera House and Bangkok's famous Wat Arun Buddhist temple went dark Saturday night as cities across Asia turned off its lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.
A lightning show was the brightest part of Sydney's skyline during Earth Hour, which began at 8 p.m. when the lights were turned off at the city's landmarks.
Most businesses and homes were already dark as Sydney residents embraced their second annual Earth Hour with candlelight dinners, beach bonfires and even a green-powered outdoor movie.
As the clock ticked forward, Asian cities to the west followed suit.
"This provides an extraordinary symbol and an indication that we can be part of the solution" to global warming, Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett told Sky News television, standing across the harbor from the dark silhouette of the Opera House.
During the one-hour event, Sydney was noticeably darker, though it was not a complete blackout. The business district was mostly dark; organizers said 250 of the 350 commercial buildings there had pledged to shut off their lights completely, and 94 of the top 100 companies on the Australian stock exchange were also participating.
The number of participants was not immediately available but organizers were hoping to beat last year's debut, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions during that hour.
"I'm putting my neck on the line but my hope is that we top 100 million people," Earth Hour Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said.
The effect of last year's Earth Hour was infectious. This year 26 major world cities and more than 300 other cities and towns have signed up to participate.
New Zealand and Fiji kicked off the event this year. In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour from 8 to 9 p.m. Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.
Auckland's Langham Hotel switched from electric lights to candles as it joined the effort to reduce the use of electricity, which when generated creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
WWF Thailand said the campaign in Bangkok saved 73.34 megawatts of electricity, which would have produced 45.8 tons of carbon dioxide.
In Manila, the grounds of the seaside Cultural Center of the Philippines went dark after four city mayors ceremonially switched off its lights. Street lamps around Manila were shut off.
Following Asia, the lights will go out in Europe and then North America as dusk descends there too. One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco — home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.
Organizers see the event as a way to encourage the world to conserve energy. While all lights in participating cities are unlikely to be cut, it is the symbolic darkening of monuments, businesses and individual homes they are most eagerly anticipating.
Even popular search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a completely black page and the words: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."
2. Afghan Girl Defies Death Threats Over Olympics
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/29/nbrowne329.xml
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul
Last Updated: 2:16am GMT 29/03/2008
A teenage athlete has overcome a campaign of intimidation including death threats to become the only female member of the team to represent Afghanistan at the Beijing Olympics.
Telegraph TV: Afghan athletes' Olympic odysseyFull coverage of the build-up to the Beijing OlympicsMehboba Ahdyar, a shy 19-year-old from Kabul, will face the worlds best 1,500-metre runners in August wearing a veil and a baggy tracksuit. While she is unlikely to mount the winner's podium, few of her opponents will have endured such a perilous training regime to get them to the Games.
Training for Mehboba begins after nightfall. At 8.30pm, when Kabul residents are transfixed by the daily episode of the country's most popular soap opera, a racy Indian drama named Because a Mother-in-Law was Once a Daughter-in-Law Too, Mehboba slips out of her house in a poor suburb and starts running.
She runs up and down the streets for the duration of the programme. It is the only time when, as a woman, she can supplement her official training sessions without threats or harassment.
She recently had to destroy the Sim card on her mobile phone because the number had become known to fundamentalists who bombarded her with death threats.
"They say that they will not leave me alive," she said, with a shrug.
Mehboba, whose father scrapes a living as a carpenter, is a devout Muslim and insists that if she is forced to wear the sort of figure-hugging kit favoured by other international athletes she will not take part.
But such dedication to her faith has not prevented further intimidation. After a Western journalist visited her house this week a rumour spread that she was entertaining foreign men as a prostitute.
Mehboba received a visit from the police, while her family were warned that they might have to leave their house.
In spite of the taunts and death threats, she insists she will run for national pride.
"I will compete against heroes," she said, although she could not name any of the world's leading middle-distance runners. "We have trained for three years. I hope for a medal or at least to break Afghanistan's record."
Her personal best is a full minute outside the 1,500-metre world record, but she has beaten all comers in national competitions.
Three times a week she and her fellow Olympian, Masood Azizi, a 20-year-old sprinter, train for three hours at the national stadium, a concrete track around the field where the Taliban used to perform public executions.
Mehboba and Azizi, along with a wrestler and a Taekwondo competitor will today fly to Malaysia for five months of intensive training to give the four-athlete team their best shot at Olympic glory.
Mehboba was excited and nervous. "I have never left the country," she said, "except for a refugee camp in Pakistan."
3. Garda Plays Down Pier Rescue Heroics
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/garda-plays-down-pier-rescue-heroics-1331738.html
Saturday March 29 2008
The hero garda who braved icy waters to save a man from drowning said yesterday he didn't understand why everyone was making such a fuss about his life-saving deed.
Garda Dermot Moriarty (20), from Anglesboro, Co Limerick, but now stationed in Dun Laoghaire, recounted Thursday night's dramatic rescue and described how he was lowered into the cold waters off Dun Laoghaire to save a 44-year-old man.
"We got the call into the station at around 10.10pm that there was a man in trouble off the East Pier. We immediately went there and, at that stage, civilians had thrown out a lifebuoy."
Gardai saw that the man was unable to reach the lifebuoy and appeared to be losing consciousness.
"We decided action needed to be taken immediately because he didn't look to be in too good shape," said Garda Moriarty, who was then lowered 25 feet into the sea using another lifebuoy.
"Two of my colleagues, Garda Joe Griffin and Sergeant Con Mulhall, lowered me down, along with a member of the harbour police and members of the public. Just when I got to him, he slipped out of consciousness. I suppose it was because of hypothermia."
Lifeboat
The Dun Laoghaire RNLI inshore lifeboat had also arrived by this stage and took both Garda Moriarty and the man back to safety.
He was brought to St Vincent's Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. But Garda Moriarty's hero status is not sitting well with him.
"I got some good praise from the sergeant but it was just instinctive. And then people started making a big deal out of it but I still don't understand what it's all about," he said.
4. Can You Rescue A Rainforest? The Answer May Be Yes
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172031.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2008)
Half a century after most of Costa Rica's rainforests were cut down, researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute took on a project that many thought was impossible - restoring a tropical rainforest ecosystem.
When the researchers planted worn-out cattle fields in Costa Rica with a sampling of local trees, native species began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rainforests can one day be replaced.
Carl Leopold and his partners in the Tropical Forestry Initiative began planting trees on worn-out pasture land in Costa Rica in 1992. For 50 years the soil was compacted under countless hooves, and its nutrients washed away. When it rained, Leopold says, red soil appeared to bleed from the hillsides.
The group chose local rainforest trees, collecting seeds from native trees in the community. "You can't buy seeds," Leopold says. "So we passed the word around among the neighbors." When a farmer would notice a tree producing seeds, Leopold and his wife would ride out on horses to find the tree before hungry monkeys beat them to it.
The group planted mixtures of local species, trimming away the pasture grasses until the trees could take care of themselves. This was the opposite of what commercial companies have done for decades, planting entire fields of a single type of tree to harvest for wood or paper pulp.
The trees the group planted were fast-growing, sun-loving species. After just five years those first trees formed a canopy of leaves, shading out the grasses underneath.
"One of the really amazing things is that our fast-growing tree species are averaging two meters of growth per year," Leopold says. How could soil so long removed from a fertile rainforest support that much growth?
Leopold says that may be because of mycorrhizae, microscopic fungi that form a symbiosis with tree roots. Research at Cornell and BTI shows that without them, many plants can't grow as well. After 50 years, the fungi seem to still be alive in the soil, able to help new trees grow.
Another success came when Cornell student Jackeline Salazar did a survey of the plants that moved into the planted areas. She counted understory species, plants that took up residence in the shade of the new trees. Most plots had over a hundred of these species, and many of the new species are ones that also live in nearby remnants of the original forests.
Together, these results mean that mixed-species plantings can help to jump-start a rainforest. Local farmers who use the same approach will control erosion of their land while creating a forest that can be harvested sustainably, a few trees at a time.
"By restoring forests we're helping to control erosion, restore quality forests that belong there, and help the quality of life of the local people," says Leopold.
That quality-of-life issue is drinking water. It's in scarce supply where forests have been destroyed, since without tree roots to act as a sort of sponge, rain water runs off the hillsides and drains away.
Erosion is also out of control. "You might drive on a dirt road one year, and then come back the next to find it's a gully over six feet deep," says Leopold. "It's a very serious problem."
Does the experiment's success mean that rainforests will one day flourish again? Fully rescuing a rainforest may take hundreds of years, if it can be done at all.
"The potential for the forest being able to come back is debatable," Leopold says, but the results are promising.
"I'm surprised," he said. "We're getting an impressive growth of new forest species." After only ten years, plots that began with a few species are now lush forests of hundreds. Who knows what the next few decades - or centuries - might bring?
The findings were published in the March 2008 issue of Ecological Restoration.
Adapted from materials provided by Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.
5. 'My Little Miracle Baby' by Mother Aged 57 Who Thought She'd Miscarried
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=548590&in_page_id=1879&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5By BETH HALE -
Last updated at 17:47pm on 29th March 2008
The arrival of little Freya is the conclusion of a remarkable and moving story.
Last week the Daily Mail revealed how Mrs Tollefsen had feared the worst when, suspected of suffering ovarian cancer, she was sent for a scan on a growing bump.
She was stunned when the sonographer congratulated her on being nearly 30 weeks pregnant. It followed several years of desperate attempts to have a baby using IVF treatment in foreign clinics.
The special needs teacher and her partner Nick Mayer, who is 11 years her junior, thought their final hope had been dashed last August when she suffered what appeared to be a miscarriage.
But nature had other ideas. Mrs Tollefsen was still pregnant and on Tuesday - just nine weeks after that fateful scan - she went in to hospital where Freya was delivered by Caesarean section weighing 6lb 6oz.
Two days later both mother and daughter were so well that doctors allowed them home. Last night Mrs Tollefsen spoke of her joy at having the daughter she had longed for.
"The doctor held her up, I took one look and burst into tears," she said.
She knew her baby had been developing normally but was unable to relax until medical staff checked Freya and told her everything was well.
"It's always in the back of your mind - 'Is everything OK?',' said Mrs Tollefsen at her home in Romford, Essex. "I looked at her and she had blonde hair, tiny features, everything was perfect."
It was Mr Mayer, a warehouse manager, who had the first cuddle. Then, in a tiny pink babygrow bearing the words I Love My Mummy, Freya was carried in to her mother.
Worth the wait: Baby Freya at home with her parents Susan Tollefsen and Nick Mayer, who say: 'She is our perfect little person'
"They put her on my chest and I think I just sat staring at her for a couple of hours," said Mrs Tollefsen. "I was stroking and cuddling her and said to her 'I've been waiting for you for such a long time, now you have come you really are a little miracle baby'.
"I know everyone thinks their own baby is the best in the world, and we are prejudiced, but she really is beautiful.
"It's amazing to look at her with all her perfect little fingers and toes. You almost can't believe you carry a baby then out comes this perfect little person."
Freya was created using a donor egg and Mr Mayer's sperm and the embryo was implanted at a clinic in Moscow.
Mrs Tollefsen said Freya is already proving to be a daddy's girl. "I think she's got his nose and mouth, and when she sleeps she looks like him," she said.
"At the hospital they asked him if he wanted to do the first feed and at first he was saying 'my hands are too big' but the nurse left him and when she came back she said he was doing a great job. He's being very much a hands-on dad, changing nappies and feeding her."
Mrs Tollefsen has admitted she has thought about what will happen when Freya is older. But she will "cross that bridge when we come to it" and feels as healthy and capable as any other mother.
"People have been very supportive," she said. "Everyone has said 'what a wonderful story'." Mrs Tollefsen, who met Mr Mayer in 1998, had thought her hopes of having children were over after years of caring for a sick mother and holding down a full-time job.
The couple investigated British fertility clinics but were turned down because of her age.
Honorable Mentions:
1. Blind Luck Helps Archer Make One-in-a-Million Robin Hood shot
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/27/nhood127.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
Last Updated: 2:53am GMT 27/03/2008
An archer has achieved a one-in-a-million feat of marksmanship after splitting one arrow with another. What makes the shot even more remarkable is that Tilly Trotter is blind.
The 74-year-old grandmother pulled off the shot, known among archers as a "Robin Hood", at a practice session of the Wellington Bowmen in Somerset.
Mrs Trotter, who has been an archer for two years at the invitation of granddaughter Charlotte, said: "The second arrow made such a noise going into the back of previous arrow I thought I had hit the ceiling or done some expensive damage.
"Then I heard people jumping up and down shouting that I'd done a Robin Hood.
"It was a one-in-a-million shot and a bit of a fluke really."
Mrs Trotter, from Uffculme, North Devon, lost most of her sight following a head injury 17 years ago. "I can see movement but I have no central vision," she said.
advertisementHer husband, Tony, is crucial to her success, telling her how near her shots are to the target each time she shoots.
"He isn't allowed to tell me to aim left or right before I let loose an arrow," Mrs Trotter said. "I can only make my own adjustments to my aim before I shoot."
She may dismiss the shot as a fluke, but she also won a gold medal at the British Blind Sports National Championship last year.
Peter Jones, a spokesman for the Grand National Archery Society, said: "It's a very rare feat - like getting two holes in one on the same round of golf."
2. JK Rowling Visits Prison to Help Inmates Learn to Read
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/JK-Rowling-visits-prison-to.3927155.jp
29 March 2008
HARRY Potter author JK Rowling gave prisoners learning to read a "real boost" when she visited them in jail, says a literacy charity. The writer presented awards to inmates at Edinburgh. She had been
invited to carry out the honours by the Shannon Trust, the charity that helps prisoners across the UK learn to read. The trust's David Ahern said: "We were delighted that JK Rowling was able to visit. She gave the prisoners a real boost… a real incentive to continue learning. Prison can be a lonely place for learners, so knowing there are international figures like JK Rowling supporting them makes a huge difference."
The full article contains 116 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Today's topics are, well, heartwarming! Among other stories, there is a story about a 57 year old woman who thought she miscarried, but 9 weeks later she had a beautiful, healthy baby girl. There is a story about a young afghan teenage woman who will be competing in the Olympics. And there is a story about a blind woman who shot a "Robin Hood".
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the stories! See you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'(Google News)
2. Afghan Girl Defies Death Threats Over Olympics (Telegraph UK)
3. Garda Plays Down Pier Rescue Heroics
4. Can You Rescue A Rainforest? The Answer May Be Yes (Science Daily)
5. 'My Little Miracle Baby' by Mother Aged 57 Who Thought She'd Miscarried
Honorable Mentions:
1. Blind Luck Helps Archer Make One-in-a-Million Robin Hood shot
2. JK Rowling Visits Prison to Help Inmates Learn to Read
Unpublishable:
Vietnamese Man, on Anti-abortion Mission, Opens Home to Moms and Babies
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/asia_pacific/view.bg?articleid=1083702&srvc=rss
© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.This is a very cool article! I recommend following the link to find out what this one man is doing.
1. Lights Out for Asia in 'Earth Hour'
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWEjNjkf_cEeuCMbeDumW2q75VtwD8VN8TEG0
Posted 2 Hours ago (current time 3:55pm CST)
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Sydney's iconic Opera House and Bangkok's famous Wat Arun Buddhist temple went dark Saturday night as cities across Asia turned off its lights for this year's Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.
A lightning show was the brightest part of Sydney's skyline during Earth Hour, which began at 8 p.m. when the lights were turned off at the city's landmarks.
Most businesses and homes were already dark as Sydney residents embraced their second annual Earth Hour with candlelight dinners, beach bonfires and even a green-powered outdoor movie.
As the clock ticked forward, Asian cities to the west followed suit.
"This provides an extraordinary symbol and an indication that we can be part of the solution" to global warming, Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett told Sky News television, standing across the harbor from the dark silhouette of the Opera House.
During the one-hour event, Sydney was noticeably darker, though it was not a complete blackout. The business district was mostly dark; organizers said 250 of the 350 commercial buildings there had pledged to shut off their lights completely, and 94 of the top 100 companies on the Australian stock exchange were also participating.
The number of participants was not immediately available but organizers were hoping to beat last year's debut, when 2.2 million people and more than 2,000 businesses shut off lights and appliances, resulting in a 10.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions during that hour.
"I'm putting my neck on the line but my hope is that we top 100 million people," Earth Hour Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said.
The effect of last year's Earth Hour was infectious. This year 26 major world cities and more than 300 other cities and towns have signed up to participate.
New Zealand and Fiji kicked off the event this year. In Christchurch, New Zealand, more than 100 businesses and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness, computers and televisions were switched off and dinners delayed for the hour from 8 to 9 p.m. Suva, Fiji, in the same time zone, also turned off its lights.
Auckland's Langham Hotel switched from electric lights to candles as it joined the effort to reduce the use of electricity, which when generated creates greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
WWF Thailand said the campaign in Bangkok saved 73.34 megawatts of electricity, which would have produced 45.8 tons of carbon dioxide.
In Manila, the grounds of the seaside Cultural Center of the Philippines went dark after four city mayors ceremonially switched off its lights. Street lamps around Manila were shut off.
Following Asia, the lights will go out in Europe and then North America as dusk descends there too. One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco — home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.
Organizers see the event as a way to encourage the world to conserve energy. While all lights in participating cities are unlikely to be cut, it is the symbolic darkening of monuments, businesses and individual homes they are most eagerly anticipating.
Even popular search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a completely black page and the words: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."
2. Afghan Girl Defies Death Threats Over Olympics
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/29/nbrowne329.xml
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul
Last Updated: 2:16am GMT 29/03/2008
A teenage athlete has overcome a campaign of intimidation including death threats to become the only female member of the team to represent Afghanistan at the Beijing Olympics.
Telegraph TV: Afghan athletes' Olympic odysseyFull coverage of the build-up to the Beijing OlympicsMehboba Ahdyar, a shy 19-year-old from Kabul, will face the worlds best 1,500-metre runners in August wearing a veil and a baggy tracksuit. While she is unlikely to mount the winner's podium, few of her opponents will have endured such a perilous training regime to get them to the Games.
Training for Mehboba begins after nightfall. At 8.30pm, when Kabul residents are transfixed by the daily episode of the country's most popular soap opera, a racy Indian drama named Because a Mother-in-Law was Once a Daughter-in-Law Too, Mehboba slips out of her house in a poor suburb and starts running.
She runs up and down the streets for the duration of the programme. It is the only time when, as a woman, she can supplement her official training sessions without threats or harassment.
She recently had to destroy the Sim card on her mobile phone because the number had become known to fundamentalists who bombarded her with death threats.
"They say that they will not leave me alive," she said, with a shrug.
Mehboba, whose father scrapes a living as a carpenter, is a devout Muslim and insists that if she is forced to wear the sort of figure-hugging kit favoured by other international athletes she will not take part.
But such dedication to her faith has not prevented further intimidation. After a Western journalist visited her house this week a rumour spread that she was entertaining foreign men as a prostitute.
Mehboba received a visit from the police, while her family were warned that they might have to leave their house.
In spite of the taunts and death threats, she insists she will run for national pride.
"I will compete against heroes," she said, although she could not name any of the world's leading middle-distance runners. "We have trained for three years. I hope for a medal or at least to break Afghanistan's record."
Her personal best is a full minute outside the 1,500-metre world record, but she has beaten all comers in national competitions.
Three times a week she and her fellow Olympian, Masood Azizi, a 20-year-old sprinter, train for three hours at the national stadium, a concrete track around the field where the Taliban used to perform public executions.
Mehboba and Azizi, along with a wrestler and a Taekwondo competitor will today fly to Malaysia for five months of intensive training to give the four-athlete team their best shot at Olympic glory.
Mehboba was excited and nervous. "I have never left the country," she said, "except for a refugee camp in Pakistan."
3. Garda Plays Down Pier Rescue Heroics
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/garda-plays-down-pier-rescue-heroics-1331738.html
Saturday March 29 2008
The hero garda who braved icy waters to save a man from drowning said yesterday he didn't understand why everyone was making such a fuss about his life-saving deed.
Garda Dermot Moriarty (20), from Anglesboro, Co Limerick, but now stationed in Dun Laoghaire, recounted Thursday night's dramatic rescue and described how he was lowered into the cold waters off Dun Laoghaire to save a 44-year-old man.
"We got the call into the station at around 10.10pm that there was a man in trouble off the East Pier. We immediately went there and, at that stage, civilians had thrown out a lifebuoy."
Gardai saw that the man was unable to reach the lifebuoy and appeared to be losing consciousness.
"We decided action needed to be taken immediately because he didn't look to be in too good shape," said Garda Moriarty, who was then lowered 25 feet into the sea using another lifebuoy.
"Two of my colleagues, Garda Joe Griffin and Sergeant Con Mulhall, lowered me down, along with a member of the harbour police and members of the public. Just when I got to him, he slipped out of consciousness. I suppose it was because of hypothermia."
Lifeboat
The Dun Laoghaire RNLI inshore lifeboat had also arrived by this stage and took both Garda Moriarty and the man back to safety.
He was brought to St Vincent's Hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. But Garda Moriarty's hero status is not sitting well with him.
"I got some good praise from the sergeant but it was just instinctive. And then people started making a big deal out of it but I still don't understand what it's all about," he said.
4. Can You Rescue A Rainforest? The Answer May Be Yes
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172031.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2008)
Half a century after most of Costa Rica's rainforests were cut down, researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute took on a project that many thought was impossible - restoring a tropical rainforest ecosystem.
When the researchers planted worn-out cattle fields in Costa Rica with a sampling of local trees, native species began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rainforests can one day be replaced.
Carl Leopold and his partners in the Tropical Forestry Initiative began planting trees on worn-out pasture land in Costa Rica in 1992. For 50 years the soil was compacted under countless hooves, and its nutrients washed away. When it rained, Leopold says, red soil appeared to bleed from the hillsides.
The group chose local rainforest trees, collecting seeds from native trees in the community. "You can't buy seeds," Leopold says. "So we passed the word around among the neighbors." When a farmer would notice a tree producing seeds, Leopold and his wife would ride out on horses to find the tree before hungry monkeys beat them to it.
The group planted mixtures of local species, trimming away the pasture grasses until the trees could take care of themselves. This was the opposite of what commercial companies have done for decades, planting entire fields of a single type of tree to harvest for wood or paper pulp.
The trees the group planted were fast-growing, sun-loving species. After just five years those first trees formed a canopy of leaves, shading out the grasses underneath.
"One of the really amazing things is that our fast-growing tree species are averaging two meters of growth per year," Leopold says. How could soil so long removed from a fertile rainforest support that much growth?
Leopold says that may be because of mycorrhizae, microscopic fungi that form a symbiosis with tree roots. Research at Cornell and BTI shows that without them, many plants can't grow as well. After 50 years, the fungi seem to still be alive in the soil, able to help new trees grow.
Another success came when Cornell student Jackeline Salazar did a survey of the plants that moved into the planted areas. She counted understory species, plants that took up residence in the shade of the new trees. Most plots had over a hundred of these species, and many of the new species are ones that also live in nearby remnants of the original forests.
Together, these results mean that mixed-species plantings can help to jump-start a rainforest. Local farmers who use the same approach will control erosion of their land while creating a forest that can be harvested sustainably, a few trees at a time.
"By restoring forests we're helping to control erosion, restore quality forests that belong there, and help the quality of life of the local people," says Leopold.
That quality-of-life issue is drinking water. It's in scarce supply where forests have been destroyed, since without tree roots to act as a sort of sponge, rain water runs off the hillsides and drains away.
Erosion is also out of control. "You might drive on a dirt road one year, and then come back the next to find it's a gully over six feet deep," says Leopold. "It's a very serious problem."
Does the experiment's success mean that rainforests will one day flourish again? Fully rescuing a rainforest may take hundreds of years, if it can be done at all.
"The potential for the forest being able to come back is debatable," Leopold says, but the results are promising.
"I'm surprised," he said. "We're getting an impressive growth of new forest species." After only ten years, plots that began with a few species are now lush forests of hundreds. Who knows what the next few decades - or centuries - might bring?
The findings were published in the March 2008 issue of Ecological Restoration.
Adapted from materials provided by Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.
5. 'My Little Miracle Baby' by Mother Aged 57 Who Thought She'd Miscarried
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=548590&in_page_id=1879&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5By BETH HALE -
Last updated at 17:47pm on 29th March 2008
The arrival of little Freya is the conclusion of a remarkable and moving story.
Last week the Daily Mail revealed how Mrs Tollefsen had feared the worst when, suspected of suffering ovarian cancer, she was sent for a scan on a growing bump.
She was stunned when the sonographer congratulated her on being nearly 30 weeks pregnant. It followed several years of desperate attempts to have a baby using IVF treatment in foreign clinics.
The special needs teacher and her partner Nick Mayer, who is 11 years her junior, thought their final hope had been dashed last August when she suffered what appeared to be a miscarriage.
But nature had other ideas. Mrs Tollefsen was still pregnant and on Tuesday - just nine weeks after that fateful scan - she went in to hospital where Freya was delivered by Caesarean section weighing 6lb 6oz.
Two days later both mother and daughter were so well that doctors allowed them home. Last night Mrs Tollefsen spoke of her joy at having the daughter she had longed for.
"The doctor held her up, I took one look and burst into tears," she said.
She knew her baby had been developing normally but was unable to relax until medical staff checked Freya and told her everything was well.
"It's always in the back of your mind - 'Is everything OK?',' said Mrs Tollefsen at her home in Romford, Essex. "I looked at her and she had blonde hair, tiny features, everything was perfect."
It was Mr Mayer, a warehouse manager, who had the first cuddle. Then, in a tiny pink babygrow bearing the words I Love My Mummy, Freya was carried in to her mother.
Worth the wait: Baby Freya at home with her parents Susan Tollefsen and Nick Mayer, who say: 'She is our perfect little person'
"They put her on my chest and I think I just sat staring at her for a couple of hours," said Mrs Tollefsen. "I was stroking and cuddling her and said to her 'I've been waiting for you for such a long time, now you have come you really are a little miracle baby'.
"I know everyone thinks their own baby is the best in the world, and we are prejudiced, but she really is beautiful.
"It's amazing to look at her with all her perfect little fingers and toes. You almost can't believe you carry a baby then out comes this perfect little person."
Freya was created using a donor egg and Mr Mayer's sperm and the embryo was implanted at a clinic in Moscow.
Mrs Tollefsen said Freya is already proving to be a daddy's girl. "I think she's got his nose and mouth, and when she sleeps she looks like him," she said.
"At the hospital they asked him if he wanted to do the first feed and at first he was saying 'my hands are too big' but the nurse left him and when she came back she said he was doing a great job. He's being very much a hands-on dad, changing nappies and feeding her."
Mrs Tollefsen has admitted she has thought about what will happen when Freya is older. But she will "cross that bridge when we come to it" and feels as healthy and capable as any other mother.
"People have been very supportive," she said. "Everyone has said 'what a wonderful story'." Mrs Tollefsen, who met Mr Mayer in 1998, had thought her hopes of having children were over after years of caring for a sick mother and holding down a full-time job.
The couple investigated British fertility clinics but were turned down because of her age.
Honorable Mentions:
1. Blind Luck Helps Archer Make One-in-a-Million Robin Hood shot
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/27/nhood127.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
Last Updated: 2:53am GMT 27/03/2008
An archer has achieved a one-in-a-million feat of marksmanship after splitting one arrow with another. What makes the shot even more remarkable is that Tilly Trotter is blind.
The 74-year-old grandmother pulled off the shot, known among archers as a "Robin Hood", at a practice session of the Wellington Bowmen in Somerset.
Mrs Trotter, who has been an archer for two years at the invitation of granddaughter Charlotte, said: "The second arrow made such a noise going into the back of previous arrow I thought I had hit the ceiling or done some expensive damage.
"Then I heard people jumping up and down shouting that I'd done a Robin Hood.
"It was a one-in-a-million shot and a bit of a fluke really."
Mrs Trotter, from Uffculme, North Devon, lost most of her sight following a head injury 17 years ago. "I can see movement but I have no central vision," she said.
advertisementHer husband, Tony, is crucial to her success, telling her how near her shots are to the target each time she shoots.
"He isn't allowed to tell me to aim left or right before I let loose an arrow," Mrs Trotter said. "I can only make my own adjustments to my aim before I shoot."
She may dismiss the shot as a fluke, but she also won a gold medal at the British Blind Sports National Championship last year.
Peter Jones, a spokesman for the Grand National Archery Society, said: "It's a very rare feat - like getting two holes in one on the same round of golf."
2. JK Rowling Visits Prison to Help Inmates Learn to Read
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/JK-Rowling-visits-prison-to.3927155.jp
29 March 2008
HARRY Potter author JK Rowling gave prisoners learning to read a "real boost" when she visited them in jail, says a literacy charity. The writer presented awards to inmates at Edinburgh. She had been
invited to carry out the honours by the Shannon Trust, the charity that helps prisoners across the UK learn to read. The trust's David Ahern said: "We were delighted that JK Rowling was able to visit. She gave the prisoners a real boost… a real incentive to continue learning. Prison can be a lonely place for learners, so knowing there are international figures like JK Rowling supporting them makes a huge difference."
The full article contains 116 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Friday, March 28, 2008
2008: March 28th Good News (Earth Hour is March 29th; Harlem Teacher to Teach from Antartica; more...)
Good Afternoon all,
My top story today is about Earth Hour. I ran a story about this a few weeks ago, in preparation for the day, well that day is tomorrow (today if you live here in Seoul, like me, lol). So, I wanted to give people one more story as the world begins its earth hour journey.
A couple other stories that might grab your attention are the one about Cell phones being allowed in Communist Cuba; the one about space junk found in an Australian's back yard; and the one about young cyclist Taylor Phinney, who will turn 18 just in time to compete in the Olympics.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the posts! See you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global (Australian Broadcasting Company)
2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy (Denver Post)
3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones (Yahoo News)
4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack (Science Daily)
5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils (New York Times)
Honorable Mentions:
1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks (International Herald Tribune)
2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery (Telegraph UK)
3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation (Idaho Statesman)
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/29/2202413.htm
Posted 1 hour 39 minutes ago
Current time: 4:20 pm CST
Updated 54 minutes ago
An Earth Hour light-bulb-shaped hot air balloon takes flight over Sydney Harbour on March 19, 2008. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)More than 20 cities around the world will switch off their lights in the climate change awareness event Earth Hour tonight.
Earth Hour was launched in Sydney last year when many residents turned their lights out for one hour to reduce the city's carbon emissions.
Tonight, 110 Federal Government departments will also join in the event as the Government also sets up a new task force focussing on energy.
Tonight, 2,200 Federal Government buildings will be involved in turning off appliances and lights at 8:00pm AEDT.
Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley says it is heartwarming to see an initiative that began in Australia has picked up global momentum.
"When people act together it's the aggregate of their actions that start to make a big difference,'' he said.
"Even one hour, that's so tiny, on their own they make absolutely no difference because it's so tiny, but when you add it all up together and imagine we were able to do that a lot more hours of the day - throughout the whole year, that's when we start breaking into really serious emission cuts."
New task force
The new Federal Government task force will look at how to reduce the Commonwealth's footprint on the environment and cutting energy.
Over the next few months, it will consider a range of options, including targets for departments and powering Parliament House with renewable energy.
Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong says it is a necessary step.
"This will report to the Prime Minister in June and will have an ongoing role in making sure this Government leads on sustainability," she said.
The national audit office is also assessing all government agencies to see how much needs to be done to cut emissions.
Senator Wong says the Federal Government wants more long term initiatives focussing on saving energy.
"We'll be looking at things such as setting targets powering Parliament House and electorate offices with renewable and clean energy," she said.
"[Also] looking at how we can use the Government fleet to drive the market for low emission cars.
"These are the options we want to look at to increase Government sustainability."
'Amazed'
Mr Ridley says he is amazed so many people will join the millions in Australia, as well as the Federal Government, in making a difference to global warming.
"What's happened this year has very much surprised us, we're amazed that it's happened and gone so wide,'' he said.
"The way that it's happened has been many different people have gone round the world with the idea and presented on it."
2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8729827
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 03/28/2008 11:09:55 AM MDT
DENVER—Denver is among 12 cities selected this year as Solar America Cities that each will receive $200,000 from the Energy Department to integrate solar energy technologies. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made the announcement today at Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar's third annual energy summit.
Thirteen other Solar America Cities were chosen last year.
President Bush has set a goal to make solar power cost competitive with conventional electricity by 2015.
At Salazar's New Frontiers in Energy Summit, Bodman also stressed the need for a diverse supply of clean, sustainable, secure energy.
3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_cell_phones
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 28, 12:42 PM ET
HAVANA - President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state. It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.
Some Cubans previously ineligible for cell phones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.
Telecommunications monopoly Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban Convertible Pesos, which are geared toward tourists and foreigners and worth 24 times the regular pesos Cuban state employees are paid in.
The decree was published in a small black box on page 2 of the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and while the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is just 408 Cuban pesos, a little less than $20.
A program in Convertible Pesos likely will ensure that cell phone service will be too expensive for many Cubans, but ETECSA's statement said doing so will allow it to improve telecommunication systems using cable technology and eventually expand the services it offers in regular pesos.
The statement promised further instructions in coming days about how the new plan will be implemented, and there were no lines of would-be customers mobbing ETECSA outlets as they opened for business.
ETECSA is a mixed enterprise that operates with foreign capital from the Italian communications firm Italcom.
4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327092140.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008)
Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.
In a new study, an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements. On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.
The team's findings, set for publication in the April 8 edition of the journal Circulation, come just weeks after other international studies in humans suggested that low-dose folic acid supplements may prevent dementia in the elderly and premature births.
"We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of folic acid," says senior study investigator David Kass, M.D., a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.
"But if human studies prove equally effective, then high-dose folate could be given to high-risk groups to guard against possible heart attack or to people while they are having one," says Kass.
The more likely and most practical advantage to ingesting supplements, he says, lies in folic acid's potential to act as a short-term buffer for people who may be having a heart attack and who rush to their local emergency room complaining of chest pain.
Clinical trials are expected in the near future, although Kass says a major challenge in testing is that a high dose of folic acid for humans comparable to that given the rats would require an average-size adult to swallow more than 200 one-milligram pills per day, "an impractical and unrealistic regimen, even if the body excretes the excess."
In addition, he cautions, "we do not yet know if folate is safe to consume in this high a dose, or how much or how little of it is needed to be effective," citing 25 milligrams per day as the highest dose previously tested safe to consume in adults as.
Kass says that such large amount of folate may also yield unpredictable side effects. Some studies have linked the nutrient supplement to increased rates of colon and prostate cancer.
Each year, an estimated 565,000 first-time heart attacks occur in the United States, with an additional 300,000 recurrent heart attacks.
Results from the new study, conducted in rats - dozens were fed supplements and dozens more did not receive any - showed that overall pumping function during heart attack remained strong in vitamin B9-fortified animals.
The amount of blood pumped by the treated hearts during a 30-minute window when blood flow to the heart was restricted to simulate a heart attack stayed near normal for rodents, at an average ejection fraction of 73 percent. Meanwhile, it fell in the untreated group to 27 percent.
Similarly, the muscle wall at the front of the heart kept contracting during heartbeats, thickening by 37 percent in the supplement-fed group, but the muscle could barely compress, thickening by 5 percent, in the untreated group. (Sixty percent would be the normal amount of thickening in a healthy rat heart.)
Moreover, researchers found that an injection of folic acid into the bloodstream of rats that had never before taken supplements, within the first 10 minutes of a heart attack, was almost equally as effective as preventive therapy in reversing muscle damage, and in lowering infarct size by a factor of 10.
"Folic acid is already well known to be safe to consume in high doses in the short term, and it is very inexpensive, costing pennies per milligram, so its prospects look promising," says Kass.
Researchers plan further tests to determine precisely why folate protects the heart, and to determine how effective it is in not-as-high doses. But they point out that it has long been known for its role in the normal workings of the cell's principal energy source, the mitochondria, whose function is essential to maintaining healthy blood vessels.
It was this evidence that led to the latest study, which, says lead investigator An Moens, M.D., suggests that folate acts as an energy reserve in the heart, "providing much needed energy for muscle contraction, in the form of ATP, at the same time the heart is being starved for oxygen-carrying blood by a blocked artery."
According to Moens, a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Johns Hopkins, study results showed that high-energy phosphate levels went down 43 percent in the blood of treated rats, but levels dropped by one-third more (by 66 percent) in untreated rats.
"With more fuel, the heart kept pumping even though its blood flow was reduced," says Moens, now a cardiologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. "The smaller heart attacks seemed related to this better energy balance in the heart produced by the folate."
In the study, heart function was monitored by more than two dozen key tests, such as echocardiogram and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as by blood analysis before, during and after the heart attack, when blood flow was allowed to resume in the coronary artery that had been blocked.
Among the team's other findings that backed up the protective effects of folate on the heart were mild, slight dips in systolic blood pressure during heart attack in treated rats, while pressure fell in untreated animals by 25 percent. Similarly, blood flow was stable in the treated group, but dropped by 40 percent in untreated animals. Post-heart attack buildup of dangerous chemicals, known as reactive oxygen species, was halved in treated rats. And fatal arrhythmias, unstable heartbeats that can immediately follow a heart attack, also went down from 36.7 percent to 8.3 percent in the supplement-fed group.
"In future, we might just pop in an I.V., and give people high-dose folate while they are waiting for their catheterization or CT scans to search for blockages," says Moens.
Funding for the study of folate, one of eight B vitamins, was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Peter Belfer Laboratory Foundation, with additional support from the American Heart Association, the Belgian American Educational Foundations, as well as the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
In addition to Kass and Moens, other Hopkins researchers involved in this study were Hunter Champion, M.D., Ph.D.; Azeb Haile, M.S.; Muz Zviman, Ph.D.; Djahida Bedja, M.S.; Kathy Gabrielson, D.V.M., Ph.D.; Nazareno Paolocci, M.D., Ph.D. Kass is also the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Hopkins. Additional researchers from Belgium included Marc Claeys, M.D., Ph.D.; Dirk Borgonjon, M.S.; Luc Van Nassauw, Ph.D.; Floris Wuyts, Ph.D.; Rebecca Elsaesser, Ph.D.; Paul Cos, Ph.D.; Jean-Pierre Timmermans, Ph.D.; and Christiaan Vrints, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Antwerp; and Barbara Tavazzi, M.D., Ph.D., and Guiseppe Lazzarino, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Rome. Further assistance with biochemical analysis was provided by Pawel Kaminski, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael Wollin, M.D., Ph.D., both from the New York University School of Medicine.
Adapted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/nyregion/28teacher.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
By SARA RIMER
Published: March 28, 2008
Shakira Brown, 29, will be teaching from Antarctica this fall.
The pitch: Eight weeks in Antarctica. Groundbreaking research into the climate before the Ice Age. Glaciers. Volcanoes. Adorable penguins.
The details: Camping on the sea ice in unheated tents, in 20-below-zero temperatures. Blinding whiteouts. The bathroom? A toilet seat over a hole in the ice.
Stephen F. Pekar, a geology professor from Queens College, was selling Shakira Brown, a 29-year-old Harlem middle school science teacher, on his expedition.
Her response: I’m in.
Dr. Pekar had found just the person for his Antarctica team: a talented, intrepid African-American teacher to be a role model for minority science students.
...
Dr. Pekar wants to get more American students, and particularly more minority students, excited about science. Many studies show teenagers across the United States lagging in math and science scores behind their peers in other industrialized countries.
“These kids don’t have the role models, or the environment, that shows them what the possibilities are,” he said. “I want Shakira Brown’s students to be able to live this experience through her. I want them to be thinking like scientists — like lovers of life.”
The trip is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which sends about 300 scientists to Antarctica each year. Tom Wagner, director of earth sciences for the program, estimates that perhaps three or four African-Americans have joined that research effort.
Relatively few African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians work in the earth sciences, Dr. Wagner said, adding that the foundation was working to bring greater diversity to the field.
Ms. Brown, Dr. Pekar and three of his students leave in October. They and 11 other team members will meet at McMurdo Station in Antarctica for survival training, including learning how to build an emergency igloo.
At Promise Academy, the charter school where Ms. Brown teaches, the students are bursting with questions. Will their teacher catch her own food? (No, but Dr. Pekar is bringing a chef.) What if Ms. Brown falls through the ice? (Unlikely, Dr. Pekar says, though their teacher will learn how to avoid cracks.) Will she see polar bears? (No, bears don’t live in Antarctica.)
Will her fiancé let her make the trip?
“What do you mean, ‘Is he going to let me go?’ ” Ms. Brown has told her students. “Of course he’s going to let me go. I’m independent. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
Eva Ramos, 13, who is in Ms. Brown’s eighth grade class, approves. “Ms. Brown is a very smart woman,” she said. “The trip is going to be hard. But it’s for the good of science.”
Dr. Pekar’s search for a teacher began at Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that runs Promise Academy. Ms. Brown — who gets her students excited about science by having them look at cells under microscopes, ask lots of questions and dream up their own experiments instead of just memorizing facts for state standardized tests — was at the top of everyone’s list as the ideal Antarctica explorer-educator.
Ms. Brown makes science both understandable and cool, Eva said. “When I was younger, I hated science,” she said. “The teachers talked too much. After they talk a lot, you get bored. Ms. Brown gives us examples from real life. When she teaches us something, I learn it in a snap.”
Ms. Brown plans to teach her students — along with dozens of others through the Urban Science Corps, a NASA-affiliated, nationwide after-school program she is helping to develop — with lessons live from Antarctica, via video conferencing and blogging.
At Promise Academy, the Antarctica studies have already begun. On a recent outing to the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Brown’s students got to touch penguin feathers. They were enthralled by Dr. Pekar’s slides of his last trip to Antarctica.
“I want to get them to visualize it, to envision themselves there,” Ms. Brown said in a recent interview. “You hear about Antarctica in the fourth grade when they’re doing all the continents of the world, but it’s not a place you consider tangible. You can picture Virginia: Your grandmother lives in Virginia. But who lives in Antarctica?”
Ms. Brown grew up in Irvington, N.J., just outside Newark, one of five children raised by a single mother who is a social worker. Sophomore biology at Irvington High School — and an inspiring teacher named Miss Jordan — hooked her on science. She went to Hofstra University intending to become a doctor.
But during a stint as a substitute teacher in a Newark middle school — she was working her way through college — she felt called to teaching, she said.
Story continues... Please visit website above for full story
Honorable Mentions:
1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks
http://iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/27/sports/OLY-CYC-Track-Worlds-Phinney.php
The Associated Press
Published: March 27, 2008
MANCHESTER, England: Cycling runs in Taylor Phinney's family.
Just six months after making his track debut, the 17-year-old prodigy from an American cycling dynasty is likely off to the Beijing Olympics.
The son of American road star Davis Phinney and 1984 Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter-Phinney was quick to express his disappointment after clocking 4:22.358 in the individual pursuit at the world track championships on Wednesday.
Still, that time would be good enough to get Phinney into the Olympics — if USA Cycling, as expected, officially secures a starting spot in the pursuit. Even after he finished eighth Wednesday, USA Cycling officials believe Phinney's ranking in the world standings will be good enough to get him into the Beijing field.
"I'm somewhat happy with the time — it's a personal record for me — but it's still not what I wanted to do," Phinney told The Associated Press. "It's a bit disappointing not finishing where I wanted to, but I didn't expect to rise so quickly. I just have to keep in check that eighth place out of the 17 in the world championships is not that bad."
Today in SportsSullivan breaks world record againBritons continue to break records at world track cycling championshipsSerena Williams, Henin advance with straight-sets wins at Key Biscayne Especially considering that Phinney would only have been found on a soccer pitch two years ago.
That changed with an inspirational trip in 2005 to the Tour de France, where his father became the first American to win a stage in 1986. Within his first year of competitive cycling, he won 23 races. And despite only pedaling in a velodrome for the first time in September, he has already set the sport alight.
Taylor feels a virus hindered his performance, but vows to be in peak shape after returning to Colorado before participating in junior races in Europe. Then, more than likely, it's off to China, where he is determined to return with a medal and like his mom.
"I go to races to win," said Phinney, who turns 18 a month before the games. "I have a pretty high expectation of myself and I think I can do that with the right legs. For me, it'll be cool to be part of the Olympic experience — the opening ceremony and all that."
He doesn't want his opportunity taken away by a possible boycott over China's human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet.
"If it comes to a boycott situation that will be really disappointing," he said. "I hope it doesn't, it is just unnecessary to involve Olympics with political problems, because the Olympics is about the joining together of greatest athletes in the world."
Reaching Beijing will also be a challenge for his father, who undergoes brain surgery on April 4 — eight years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
"This disease is definitely a challenge, but it's made much easier by being able to use the distraction of Taylor and his results," Davis said. "He recognizes what I've lost with this disease and it gives him a great appreciation for what he's got and he doesn't want to fritter it away.
"He wants to flex his muscle — and that shows me and everyone else he doesn't take it for granted."
Davis Phinney sees the day when his son is an Olympic and Tour de France champion — combining the feats of his parents.
"You have to be careful about imposing your dreams on wishes on your kids," Davis said. "But I know that's what he would like and he's going to surpass my footsteps — or wheel marks — and in many cases he already has.
"I'm biased but what's phenomenal about the kid is his range, he can ride anywhere from 200 meters in a velodrome to 100 miles on the road with equal ease, strength and aplomb."
2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/28/wspace128.xml
By Bonnie Malkin and agencies
Last Updated: 4:02pm GMT 28/03/2008
A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback believes a piece of space junk has landed on his property.
How about that: More tales of the bizarreFarmer James Stirton found a giant ball of twisted metal last year but only recently decided to look into its origins.
The ball could be part of a rocket
He now believes it is part of a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Mr Stirton discovered the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.
It was found in the Queensland outback
"I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Mr Stirton said.
"I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."
The object is hollow He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fibre material.
He has contacted some US-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find spacejunk in remote areas of Australia.
In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia's west.
A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and the then United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologise.
3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation
http://www.idahostatesman.com/westada/story/333696.html
Shawn Raecke/ Idaho Statesman03/26/08
This five bedroom home on Eagle Hills Golf Course was recently donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho and will be sold through a public auction on April 5th.
Provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of OregonAfter the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.Bethann Stewart - Idaho StatesmanEdition Date: 03/26/08
After the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home, shown above, to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas, pictured right, received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.There will be a viewing of the home on Pebble Beach Way at noon Saturday. The five-bedroom, Eagle Hills Golf Course home will be auctioned at noon Saturday, April 5.
"They went to the expense of updating everything inside and out," said Larry Flynn, charity auctioneer and board member of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho. "They were working on it into the fall, knowing they were going to donate it to the Make-a-Wish Foundation."
The Thomases have asked that the proceeds of the auction be used to create a perpetual fund that will be invested to provide wishes into the future.
"Anyone can come and make a bid," Flynn said. "This is a generous gift from a generous family. Whatever we get will be a generous donation."
View the home at www.selequityauction.com/wish/.
My top story today is about Earth Hour. I ran a story about this a few weeks ago, in preparation for the day, well that day is tomorrow (today if you live here in Seoul, like me, lol). So, I wanted to give people one more story as the world begins its earth hour journey.
A couple other stories that might grab your attention are the one about Cell phones being allowed in Communist Cuba; the one about space junk found in an Australian's back yard; and the one about young cyclist Taylor Phinney, who will turn 18 just in time to compete in the Olympics.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the posts! See you tomorrow!
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global (Australian Broadcasting Company)
2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy (Denver Post)
3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones (Yahoo News)
4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack (Science Daily)
5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils (New York Times)
Honorable Mentions:
1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks (International Herald Tribune)
2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery (Telegraph UK)
3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation (Idaho Statesman)
Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/29/2202413.htm
Posted 1 hour 39 minutes ago
Current time: 4:20 pm CST
Updated 54 minutes ago
An Earth Hour light-bulb-shaped hot air balloon takes flight over Sydney Harbour on March 19, 2008. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)More than 20 cities around the world will switch off their lights in the climate change awareness event Earth Hour tonight.
Earth Hour was launched in Sydney last year when many residents turned their lights out for one hour to reduce the city's carbon emissions.
Tonight, 110 Federal Government departments will also join in the event as the Government also sets up a new task force focussing on energy.
Tonight, 2,200 Federal Government buildings will be involved in turning off appliances and lights at 8:00pm AEDT.
Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley says it is heartwarming to see an initiative that began in Australia has picked up global momentum.
"When people act together it's the aggregate of their actions that start to make a big difference,'' he said.
"Even one hour, that's so tiny, on their own they make absolutely no difference because it's so tiny, but when you add it all up together and imagine we were able to do that a lot more hours of the day - throughout the whole year, that's when we start breaking into really serious emission cuts."
New task force
The new Federal Government task force will look at how to reduce the Commonwealth's footprint on the environment and cutting energy.
Over the next few months, it will consider a range of options, including targets for departments and powering Parliament House with renewable energy.
Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong says it is a necessary step.
"This will report to the Prime Minister in June and will have an ongoing role in making sure this Government leads on sustainability," she said.
The national audit office is also assessing all government agencies to see how much needs to be done to cut emissions.
Senator Wong says the Federal Government wants more long term initiatives focussing on saving energy.
"We'll be looking at things such as setting targets powering Parliament House and electorate offices with renewable and clean energy," she said.
"[Also] looking at how we can use the Government fleet to drive the market for low emission cars.
"These are the options we want to look at to increase Government sustainability."
'Amazed'
Mr Ridley says he is amazed so many people will join the millions in Australia, as well as the Federal Government, in making a difference to global warming.
"What's happened this year has very much surprised us, we're amazed that it's happened and gone so wide,'' he said.
"The way that it's happened has been many different people have gone round the world with the idea and presented on it."
2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8729827
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 03/28/2008 11:09:55 AM MDT
DENVER—Denver is among 12 cities selected this year as Solar America Cities that each will receive $200,000 from the Energy Department to integrate solar energy technologies. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made the announcement today at Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar's third annual energy summit.
Thirteen other Solar America Cities were chosen last year.
President Bush has set a goal to make solar power cost competitive with conventional electricity by 2015.
At Salazar's New Frontiers in Energy Summit, Bodman also stressed the need for a diverse supply of clean, sustainable, secure energy.
3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_cell_phones
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 28, 12:42 PM ET
HAVANA - President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state. It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.
Some Cubans previously ineligible for cell phones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.
Telecommunications monopoly Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban Convertible Pesos, which are geared toward tourists and foreigners and worth 24 times the regular pesos Cuban state employees are paid in.
The decree was published in a small black box on page 2 of the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and while the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is just 408 Cuban pesos, a little less than $20.
A program in Convertible Pesos likely will ensure that cell phone service will be too expensive for many Cubans, but ETECSA's statement said doing so will allow it to improve telecommunication systems using cable technology and eventually expand the services it offers in regular pesos.
The statement promised further instructions in coming days about how the new plan will be implemented, and there were no lines of would-be customers mobbing ETECSA outlets as they opened for business.
ETECSA is a mixed enterprise that operates with foreign capital from the Italian communications firm Italcom.
4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327092140.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008)
Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.
In a new study, an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements. On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.
The team's findings, set for publication in the April 8 edition of the journal Circulation, come just weeks after other international studies in humans suggested that low-dose folic acid supplements may prevent dementia in the elderly and premature births.
"We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of folic acid," says senior study investigator David Kass, M.D., a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.
"But if human studies prove equally effective, then high-dose folate could be given to high-risk groups to guard against possible heart attack or to people while they are having one," says Kass.
The more likely and most practical advantage to ingesting supplements, he says, lies in folic acid's potential to act as a short-term buffer for people who may be having a heart attack and who rush to their local emergency room complaining of chest pain.
Clinical trials are expected in the near future, although Kass says a major challenge in testing is that a high dose of folic acid for humans comparable to that given the rats would require an average-size adult to swallow more than 200 one-milligram pills per day, "an impractical and unrealistic regimen, even if the body excretes the excess."
In addition, he cautions, "we do not yet know if folate is safe to consume in this high a dose, or how much or how little of it is needed to be effective," citing 25 milligrams per day as the highest dose previously tested safe to consume in adults as.
Kass says that such large amount of folate may also yield unpredictable side effects. Some studies have linked the nutrient supplement to increased rates of colon and prostate cancer.
Each year, an estimated 565,000 first-time heart attacks occur in the United States, with an additional 300,000 recurrent heart attacks.
Results from the new study, conducted in rats - dozens were fed supplements and dozens more did not receive any - showed that overall pumping function during heart attack remained strong in vitamin B9-fortified animals.
The amount of blood pumped by the treated hearts during a 30-minute window when blood flow to the heart was restricted to simulate a heart attack stayed near normal for rodents, at an average ejection fraction of 73 percent. Meanwhile, it fell in the untreated group to 27 percent.
Similarly, the muscle wall at the front of the heart kept contracting during heartbeats, thickening by 37 percent in the supplement-fed group, but the muscle could barely compress, thickening by 5 percent, in the untreated group. (Sixty percent would be the normal amount of thickening in a healthy rat heart.)
Moreover, researchers found that an injection of folic acid into the bloodstream of rats that had never before taken supplements, within the first 10 minutes of a heart attack, was almost equally as effective as preventive therapy in reversing muscle damage, and in lowering infarct size by a factor of 10.
"Folic acid is already well known to be safe to consume in high doses in the short term, and it is very inexpensive, costing pennies per milligram, so its prospects look promising," says Kass.
Researchers plan further tests to determine precisely why folate protects the heart, and to determine how effective it is in not-as-high doses. But they point out that it has long been known for its role in the normal workings of the cell's principal energy source, the mitochondria, whose function is essential to maintaining healthy blood vessels.
It was this evidence that led to the latest study, which, says lead investigator An Moens, M.D., suggests that folate acts as an energy reserve in the heart, "providing much needed energy for muscle contraction, in the form of ATP, at the same time the heart is being starved for oxygen-carrying blood by a blocked artery."
According to Moens, a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Johns Hopkins, study results showed that high-energy phosphate levels went down 43 percent in the blood of treated rats, but levels dropped by one-third more (by 66 percent) in untreated rats.
"With more fuel, the heart kept pumping even though its blood flow was reduced," says Moens, now a cardiologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. "The smaller heart attacks seemed related to this better energy balance in the heart produced by the folate."
In the study, heart function was monitored by more than two dozen key tests, such as echocardiogram and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as by blood analysis before, during and after the heart attack, when blood flow was allowed to resume in the coronary artery that had been blocked.
Among the team's other findings that backed up the protective effects of folate on the heart were mild, slight dips in systolic blood pressure during heart attack in treated rats, while pressure fell in untreated animals by 25 percent. Similarly, blood flow was stable in the treated group, but dropped by 40 percent in untreated animals. Post-heart attack buildup of dangerous chemicals, known as reactive oxygen species, was halved in treated rats. And fatal arrhythmias, unstable heartbeats that can immediately follow a heart attack, also went down from 36.7 percent to 8.3 percent in the supplement-fed group.
"In future, we might just pop in an I.V., and give people high-dose folate while they are waiting for their catheterization or CT scans to search for blockages," says Moens.
Funding for the study of folate, one of eight B vitamins, was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Peter Belfer Laboratory Foundation, with additional support from the American Heart Association, the Belgian American Educational Foundations, as well as the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
In addition to Kass and Moens, other Hopkins researchers involved in this study were Hunter Champion, M.D., Ph.D.; Azeb Haile, M.S.; Muz Zviman, Ph.D.; Djahida Bedja, M.S.; Kathy Gabrielson, D.V.M., Ph.D.; Nazareno Paolocci, M.D., Ph.D. Kass is also the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Hopkins. Additional researchers from Belgium included Marc Claeys, M.D., Ph.D.; Dirk Borgonjon, M.S.; Luc Van Nassauw, Ph.D.; Floris Wuyts, Ph.D.; Rebecca Elsaesser, Ph.D.; Paul Cos, Ph.D.; Jean-Pierre Timmermans, Ph.D.; and Christiaan Vrints, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Antwerp; and Barbara Tavazzi, M.D., Ph.D., and Guiseppe Lazzarino, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Rome. Further assistance with biochemical analysis was provided by Pawel Kaminski, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael Wollin, M.D., Ph.D., both from the New York University School of Medicine.
Adapted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/nyregion/28teacher.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
By SARA RIMER
Published: March 28, 2008
Shakira Brown, 29, will be teaching from Antarctica this fall.
The pitch: Eight weeks in Antarctica. Groundbreaking research into the climate before the Ice Age. Glaciers. Volcanoes. Adorable penguins.
The details: Camping on the sea ice in unheated tents, in 20-below-zero temperatures. Blinding whiteouts. The bathroom? A toilet seat over a hole in the ice.
Stephen F. Pekar, a geology professor from Queens College, was selling Shakira Brown, a 29-year-old Harlem middle school science teacher, on his expedition.
Her response: I’m in.
Dr. Pekar had found just the person for his Antarctica team: a talented, intrepid African-American teacher to be a role model for minority science students.
...
Dr. Pekar wants to get more American students, and particularly more minority students, excited about science. Many studies show teenagers across the United States lagging in math and science scores behind their peers in other industrialized countries.
“These kids don’t have the role models, or the environment, that shows them what the possibilities are,” he said. “I want Shakira Brown’s students to be able to live this experience through her. I want them to be thinking like scientists — like lovers of life.”
The trip is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which sends about 300 scientists to Antarctica each year. Tom Wagner, director of earth sciences for the program, estimates that perhaps three or four African-Americans have joined that research effort.
Relatively few African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians work in the earth sciences, Dr. Wagner said, adding that the foundation was working to bring greater diversity to the field.
Ms. Brown, Dr. Pekar and three of his students leave in October. They and 11 other team members will meet at McMurdo Station in Antarctica for survival training, including learning how to build an emergency igloo.
At Promise Academy, the charter school where Ms. Brown teaches, the students are bursting with questions. Will their teacher catch her own food? (No, but Dr. Pekar is bringing a chef.) What if Ms. Brown falls through the ice? (Unlikely, Dr. Pekar says, though their teacher will learn how to avoid cracks.) Will she see polar bears? (No, bears don’t live in Antarctica.)
Will her fiancé let her make the trip?
“What do you mean, ‘Is he going to let me go?’ ” Ms. Brown has told her students. “Of course he’s going to let me go. I’m independent. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
Eva Ramos, 13, who is in Ms. Brown’s eighth grade class, approves. “Ms. Brown is a very smart woman,” she said. “The trip is going to be hard. But it’s for the good of science.”
Dr. Pekar’s search for a teacher began at Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that runs Promise Academy. Ms. Brown — who gets her students excited about science by having them look at cells under microscopes, ask lots of questions and dream up their own experiments instead of just memorizing facts for state standardized tests — was at the top of everyone’s list as the ideal Antarctica explorer-educator.
Ms. Brown makes science both understandable and cool, Eva said. “When I was younger, I hated science,” she said. “The teachers talked too much. After they talk a lot, you get bored. Ms. Brown gives us examples from real life. When she teaches us something, I learn it in a snap.”
Ms. Brown plans to teach her students — along with dozens of others through the Urban Science Corps, a NASA-affiliated, nationwide after-school program she is helping to develop — with lessons live from Antarctica, via video conferencing and blogging.
At Promise Academy, the Antarctica studies have already begun. On a recent outing to the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Brown’s students got to touch penguin feathers. They were enthralled by Dr. Pekar’s slides of his last trip to Antarctica.
“I want to get them to visualize it, to envision themselves there,” Ms. Brown said in a recent interview. “You hear about Antarctica in the fourth grade when they’re doing all the continents of the world, but it’s not a place you consider tangible. You can picture Virginia: Your grandmother lives in Virginia. But who lives in Antarctica?”
Ms. Brown grew up in Irvington, N.J., just outside Newark, one of five children raised by a single mother who is a social worker. Sophomore biology at Irvington High School — and an inspiring teacher named Miss Jordan — hooked her on science. She went to Hofstra University intending to become a doctor.
But during a stint as a substitute teacher in a Newark middle school — she was working her way through college — she felt called to teaching, she said.
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Honorable Mentions:
1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks
http://iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/27/sports/OLY-CYC-Track-Worlds-Phinney.php
The Associated Press
Published: March 27, 2008
MANCHESTER, England: Cycling runs in Taylor Phinney's family.
Just six months after making his track debut, the 17-year-old prodigy from an American cycling dynasty is likely off to the Beijing Olympics.
The son of American road star Davis Phinney and 1984 Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter-Phinney was quick to express his disappointment after clocking 4:22.358 in the individual pursuit at the world track championships on Wednesday.
Still, that time would be good enough to get Phinney into the Olympics — if USA Cycling, as expected, officially secures a starting spot in the pursuit. Even after he finished eighth Wednesday, USA Cycling officials believe Phinney's ranking in the world standings will be good enough to get him into the Beijing field.
"I'm somewhat happy with the time — it's a personal record for me — but it's still not what I wanted to do," Phinney told The Associated Press. "It's a bit disappointing not finishing where I wanted to, but I didn't expect to rise so quickly. I just have to keep in check that eighth place out of the 17 in the world championships is not that bad."
Today in SportsSullivan breaks world record againBritons continue to break records at world track cycling championshipsSerena Williams, Henin advance with straight-sets wins at Key Biscayne Especially considering that Phinney would only have been found on a soccer pitch two years ago.
That changed with an inspirational trip in 2005 to the Tour de France, where his father became the first American to win a stage in 1986. Within his first year of competitive cycling, he won 23 races. And despite only pedaling in a velodrome for the first time in September, he has already set the sport alight.
Taylor feels a virus hindered his performance, but vows to be in peak shape after returning to Colorado before participating in junior races in Europe. Then, more than likely, it's off to China, where he is determined to return with a medal and like his mom.
"I go to races to win," said Phinney, who turns 18 a month before the games. "I have a pretty high expectation of myself and I think I can do that with the right legs. For me, it'll be cool to be part of the Olympic experience — the opening ceremony and all that."
He doesn't want his opportunity taken away by a possible boycott over China's human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet.
"If it comes to a boycott situation that will be really disappointing," he said. "I hope it doesn't, it is just unnecessary to involve Olympics with political problems, because the Olympics is about the joining together of greatest athletes in the world."
Reaching Beijing will also be a challenge for his father, who undergoes brain surgery on April 4 — eight years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
"This disease is definitely a challenge, but it's made much easier by being able to use the distraction of Taylor and his results," Davis said. "He recognizes what I've lost with this disease and it gives him a great appreciation for what he's got and he doesn't want to fritter it away.
"He wants to flex his muscle — and that shows me and everyone else he doesn't take it for granted."
Davis Phinney sees the day when his son is an Olympic and Tour de France champion — combining the feats of his parents.
"You have to be careful about imposing your dreams on wishes on your kids," Davis said. "But I know that's what he would like and he's going to surpass my footsteps — or wheel marks — and in many cases he already has.
"I'm biased but what's phenomenal about the kid is his range, he can ride anywhere from 200 meters in a velodrome to 100 miles on the road with equal ease, strength and aplomb."
2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/28/wspace128.xml
By Bonnie Malkin and agencies
Last Updated: 4:02pm GMT 28/03/2008
A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback believes a piece of space junk has landed on his property.
How about that: More tales of the bizarreFarmer James Stirton found a giant ball of twisted metal last year but only recently decided to look into its origins.
The ball could be part of a rocket
He now believes it is part of a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Mr Stirton discovered the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.
It was found in the Queensland outback
"I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Mr Stirton said.
"I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."
The object is hollow He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fibre material.
He has contacted some US-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find spacejunk in remote areas of Australia.
In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia's west.
A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and the then United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologise.
3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation
http://www.idahostatesman.com/westada/story/333696.html
Shawn Raecke/ Idaho Statesman03/26/08
This five bedroom home on Eagle Hills Golf Course was recently donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho and will be sold through a public auction on April 5th.
Provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of OregonAfter the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.Bethann Stewart - Idaho StatesmanEdition Date: 03/26/08
After the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home, shown above, to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas, pictured right, received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.There will be a viewing of the home on Pebble Beach Way at noon Saturday. The five-bedroom, Eagle Hills Golf Course home will be auctioned at noon Saturday, April 5.
"They went to the expense of updating everything inside and out," said Larry Flynn, charity auctioneer and board member of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho. "They were working on it into the fall, knowing they were going to donate it to the Make-a-Wish Foundation."
The Thomases have asked that the proceeds of the auction be used to create a perpetual fund that will be invested to provide wishes into the future.
"Anyone can come and make a bid," Flynn said. "This is a generous gift from a generous family. Whatever we get will be a generous donation."
View the home at www.selequityauction.com/wish/.
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