The Future of Education: How Small Colleges Can Build A Competitive Edge [Science] Why online education? Dramatic diversity of columbine flowers explained by a simple change in cell shape. Related images(click to enlarge) Scott A.
Hodges, UCSB Columbine flowers are recognizable by the long, trailing nectar spurs that extend from the bases of their petals, tempting the taste buds of their insect pollinators. New research at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) helps to explain how columbines have achieved a rapid radiation of approximately 70 species, with flowers apparently tailored to the length of their pollinators' tongues. Bees, for example, enjoy the short spurs of Aquilegia vulgaris, whereas hawkmoths favor A. longissima, whose spurs can grow to up to 16 centimeters.
A Missing Piece in the Economic Stimulus: Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation. As the economy stumbles, the first things to get cut at the national, state, and local levels are the arts.
The first thing that goes in our school curricula are the arts. Arts, common wisdom tells us, are luxuries we can do without in times of crisis. Rethinking How Kids Learn Science. Copyright © 2011 NPR.
For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. Chemists reveal the force within you. A new method for visualizing mechanical forces on the surface of a cell, reported in Nature Methods, provides the first detailed view of those forces, as they occur in real-time.
Russian Mars probe loses its way minutes after launch. 9 November 2011Last updated at 16:05 By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, if salvaged, would reach Mars in late 2012 Russian engineers are fighting to save the country's latest mission to Mars.
The Phobos-Grunt probe launched successfully but then failed to fire the engine to put it on the correct path to the Red Planet. Russian space agency officials say the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out. The project is Russia's most ambitious space venture in recent years. It has been designed to collect rock and dust samples from Mars' moon Phobos and bring them back for study in labs on Earth. X-Rays. As the wavelengths of light decrease, they increase in energy.
X-rays have smaller wavelengths and therefore higher energy than ultraviolet waves. We usually talk about X-rays in terms of their energy rather than wavelength. This is partially because X-rays have very small wavelengths. It is also because X-ray light tends to act more like a particle than a wave. X-ray detectors collect actual photons of X-ray light - which is very different from the radio telescopes that have large dishes designed to focus radio waves!
Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap. Abstract Why aren't there more women in science?
This paper begins to shed light on this question by exploiting data from the U.S. Air Force Academy, where students are randomly assigned to professors for a wide variety of mandatory standardized courses.We focus on the role of professor gender. Our results suggest that although professor gender has little impact on male students, it has a powerful effect on female students' performance in math and science classes, and high-performing female students' likelihood of taking future math and science courses, and graduating with a STEM degree. 'Eyeballs in the Fridge': Science Interest Starts Early - Curriculum Matters. A new study finds that scientists' initial interest in their subject is often sparked before they enter middle school, a conclusion the researchers suggest has implications for rethinking policy efforts aimed at getting more young people to become scientists.
The federally funded study examines the experiences reported by 116 scientists and graduate students that first engaged them in science. Sixty-five percent said their interest began before middle school. Women were more likely to report that their interest was ignited by school-related activities, while most men recounted self-initiated activities, such as conducting home experiments or reading science fiction. The early interest in science "runs counter to many initiatives ... where the focus is on improving science education at the secondary level by simply improving student achievement or increasing enrollments in advanced science courses," write the co-authors, Robert H. Interactive Science Software - Atom Builder. Atom Builder allows students to investigate the properties of elements from the periodic table.
Students can use this software to lookup the atomic structure of elements and change the number of protons, neutrons and electrons to produce different atoms. This is a free and complete version of LJ Create's popular Atom Builder app. You can use this software for any educational purposes. Bent out of shape over refraction « The Scientific Teacher. September 2, 2011 by Nick Mitchell My 3rd graders will soon begin their first science unit on light and sound, which in my opinion is a great way to start the year- it’s hard to beat making noise and playing with flashlights.
Despite all the hands-on investigations that we’ve done in the past though, there’s always one phenomenon that students have trouble with: refraction, the bending of light.