Report on K-12 Science Education in USA

post from Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on 27 May 2006 11:25:00 AM. © Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog

The National Assessment of Educational Progress from the United States Department of Education is the definitive report on k-12 science education based on testing 4th, 8th and 12th grade students. The report provides a huge amount of data on testing results. At first look, it seems basically things stayed the same over the last [...]

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http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2006/05/27/report-on-k-12-science-education
-in-usa/

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What Kind of Cat Are You

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 27 May 2006 10:29:17 AM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Take the quiz:
What kind of cat are you?

Alcoholic Cat
You like beer and bars. Maybe you should calm it down before you get a beer belly, if you don't already have one.

Okay, so what kind of cat are you?

Read the comments on this post...

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Positive feedbacks from the carbon cycle

post from RealClimate on 27 May 2006 09:59:02 AM. © RealClimate

Two papers appeared in Geophysical Research Letters today claiming that the warming forecast for the coming century may be underestimated, because of positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle. One comes from Torn and Harte, and the other from Scheffer, Brovkin, and Cox. Both papers conclude that warming in ...

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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/positive-feedbacks-from-the
-carbon-cycle/

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I need to get this off my chest

post from Effect Measure on 27 May 2006 08:50:00 AM. © Effect Measure

The cost of one month of the war in Iraq, $9 billion, is approximately the same as six years of the total operating budget of the World Health Organization ($3.3 billion for the next two years). You can take this any way you want. For now, let's just say that WHO's total budget to save lives over the next year, $1.6 billion, is less than a week's worth of the US expenditure to take lives. This is a double commentary: one on the vast expenditures for killing, by a single country, deployed in a single country; the other, the pitiful expenditure to save lives in the entire globe.

Total US CDC budget for last year was $8.8 billion, $1.6 billion for infectious disease alone, the same as WHO's entire budget for everything, for the entire world.

And "everything" covers a lot. You may be unusually preoccupied with bird flu, but people are dying mostly from other things. When we criticize WHO for its performance in the bird flu , remember this is an agency that has little to work with and much to spend it on. Bird flu is just a piece of a vast and depressing picture that includes malaria, HIV/AIDS, vectorborne disease control, maternal and child health, clean food and water and much more. Without WHO we wouldn't even have known about SARS until it was on top of us. Without WHO we'd still have smallpox in the world. Without WHO tens of millions of women and their children would be dead. Without WHO you wouldn't get a properly matched flu shot every year. And they are asked to do all this on a pittance.

I'm not trying to excuse WHO for inexcusable lapses. But the demonizing of WHO going on here and elsewhere I find troubling and lacking in perspective. It is important to know who your friends are, who your enemies are, who your friends aren't and who your enemies aren't. WHO is not the enemy, no matter how you look at it. You may feel they are misguided, have made mistakes, lack transparency or honesty and many other things I think they could fairly be charged with respect regarding their performance in the rapidly evolving bird flu situation. But they are trying to cope while still carrying an extremely heavy burden through a landscape littered with political hazards, political hazards that affect many of the other things they must do to save lives. And with the most paltry of resources.

Don't worry about "getting your money's worth" from WHO, because frankly, you're not spending much on them.

I don't mind criticizing them here if I think criticism can move things in a better direction. But while I have a great deal of respect (and affection) for the little community that has grown up around Effect Measure (and I welcome the many others arriving daily), I don't mind criticizing some of you, my friends and comrades in this difficult fight, if I think it can move things in a better direction. Some of the talk about WHO here I think is poorly informed, unhelpful and really off the wall.

OK. Rant over. I feel better. And I still like you.

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http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-need-to-get-this-off-my-chest.html

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Nice place for a virus

post from Effect Measure on 27 May 2006 08:43:00 AM. © Effect Measure

CA Nidom, the Indonesian researcher who a year ago found evidence of H5N1 infection in pigs living near infected poultry on the island of Java, is now saying (h/t crofsblog) what almost everyone else is saying, that the large cluster of cases in Sumatra is human to human transmission.

I say "almost" everyone because the Indonesian Health Minister, Siti Faila Supari, is still holding out:

"The cluster bird flu case in Tana Karo cannot yet be said a human-to-human bird flu case because proof on the mutation of virus DNA [sic] which is identical with the H5N1 strain of virus that infected the nine victims has not yet been found. And there is no proof of epidemiological human-to-human infection," the minister said. (Xinhuanet)

No change in the virus is necessary because there has probably been human to human transmission going on in Indonesia since the very first cluster of three cases appeared in Tangerang in July 2005. In fact this may also have been H2H2H, with the chain starting with one of the children (no source known) going to a sibling and then to the father. Contrary to the statement, the epidemiological evidence strongly favors human to human transmission there and in Sumatra.

The statement shows graphically what has been obvioius for a long time. The Indonesian Ministry of Health is incompetent to cope with the bird flu situation and nothing they say can be relied on. An Indonesian friend said to me yeseterday that since the fall of Suharto (no pearl of great value, to be sure), there has been no functioning government in the country. It is a free for all with the spoils going to the most corrupt.

Now they have an erupting volacano and an earthquake disaster. A great place -- if you are an influenza virus.

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http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2006/05/nice-place-for-virus.html

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Teeny Tiny Nano ... Metalworking!

Acadia writes:A team of international scientists have found a way to bombard "a carbon nanotube with electrons, causing it to collapse with such incredible force that it can squeeze out even the hardest of materials, much like a tube of toothpaste." A press release from Rensselear Polytechnic...

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http://cr4.globalspec.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/26/2011251&from=rss

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