The Future of Education: How Small Colleges Can Build A Competitive Edge [Science] Why online education? And how small colleges can give themselves a competitive edge In the near future, with widely available technology and connectivity, students will demand and get convenience. They will want courses that are available anywhere, any time, customized, self-paced, transfer, oriented to actionable skills etc.). In response to this increased demand for convenience, and the fact that it is not too difficult to offer online courses, there is likely to be a rush for most colleges to jump on the online course bandwagon.
Firmly established colleges with a brand name and reputation will have an easier time making the transition. The Chronicle report notwithstanding, we believe that if the colleges in the middle start to position themselves now, they will be in a good position to build a competitive advantage in delivering relevant and quality education to the future’s highly connected, diverse and discerning consumers. Virtualizing Science Labs The Science magazine says: 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. According to results published November 15 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the dramatic diversity in the length of the columbines' spurs is the result of one simple change during development: the extent of cell elongation.
For more than 60 years, biologists have assumed that the length of columbine spurs was achieved primarily by cell proliferation. 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. Or can we? Let's see what happens when we start throwing out all the science and technology that the arts have made possible. You may be shocked to find that you'll have to do without your cell phone or PDA. In the first place, it uses a form of encryption called frequency hopping to ensure your messages can't easily be intercepted. Next, the electronic screen that displays your messages (and those on your computer and TV) employ a combination of red, green, and blue dots from which all the different colors can be generated.
Then there are all those computer chips running our critical devices. (Parenthetically, artists also figured out how to hide information. That's only the beginning. The fact is that the arts foster innovation. 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. I'm Ira Flatow. We're going to be hearing President Obama talking about the need to help kids learn science in places other than the classroom. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotic competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent, to be makers of things, not just consumers of things. FLATOW: And we keep hearing about how American students are falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to math and science, but new studies are showing that the places to teach science, places where kids will soak up science, are not in the classrooms, but museum trips, TV shows, afterschool clubs, even radio shows about science.
Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. FLATOW: Nice to have you. 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. "Now we're able to measure something that's never been measured before: The force that one molecule applies to another molecule across the entire surface of a living cell, and as this cell moves and goes about its normal processes," says Khalid Salaita, assistant professor of biomolecular chemistry at Emory University. "And we can visualize these forces in a time-lapsed movie. " Salaita developed the florescent-sensor technique with chemistry graduate students Daniel Stabley and Carol Jurchenko, and undergraduate senior Stephen Marshall. "Cells are constantly tugging and pushing on their surroundings, and they can even communicate with one another using mechanics," Salaita says.
"One way that cells use forces is evident from the characteristic architecture of tissue, like a lung or a heart. 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. Scientists hope the dusty debris would provide fresh insights into the origin of the 27km-wide moon, which many scientists suspect may actually be a captured asteroid.
The venture is also significant because it is carrying China's first Mars satellite. Torrid history. 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! X-rays were first observed and documented in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, a German scientist who found them quite by accident when experimenting with vacuum tubes. The Earth's atmosphere is thick enough that virtually no X-rays are able to penetrate from outer space all the way to the Earth's surface.
How do we "see" using X-ray light? What would it be like to see X-rays? We use satellites with X-ray detectors on them to do X-ray astronomy. 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. The estimates are largest for students whose SAT math scores are in the top 5% of the national distribution. The gender gap in course grades and STEM majors is eradicated when high-performing female students are assigned to female professors in mandatory introductory math and science coursework. © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
'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. This version of the software does however have to be loaded using this web page. The app contains a periodic table reference so students can see where a particular element fits into the periodic table classifications. 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. I think refraction stumps students because it contradicts their particle-based intuition. Other kinds of light behavior (absorption, reflection, and transmission) make sense even from a particle perspective because they have simple analogies: a sponge absorbing water, a ball bouncing off the ground, sand passing through a sieve. But light bending inside something?? It’s a lot to wrap your head around, even for teachers.
So, how to deepen student’s understanding about refraction? For example, take one of our more traditional investigations, like observing the effects of concave and convex lenses.