This is for all of us physics geeks! And we know who we are! With special thanks to Katy D for finding this gem!

SThe results, announced Tuesday, came from analyzing eight years worth of data from the Tevatron collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

“Many of us felt goose bumps when we saw the result,” said Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a particle physicist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. “We knew we were seeing something beyond what we have seen before and beyond what current theories can explain.”

The Tevatron collider and its bigger cousin, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, can smash matter and antimatter particles together to create energy, as well as new particles and antiparticles. Otherwise, antiparticles only arise due to extreme events such as nuclear reactions or cosmic rays from dying stars.

Measurements made by the DZero collaboration, a 500-member international group, are still limited by the number of collisions recorded so far. That means physicists will continue to collect data and refine their analysis of the matter-antimatter struggle for dominance.

Researchers came up with their latest finding by performing a so-called blind data analysis, so that they would not bias their analyses based on what they observed. They have submitted their results to the journal Physical Review D.
PACE.com Staff

Space.com – Tue May 18, 6:30 pm ET

The seemingly inescapable fact that matter and antimatter particles destroy each other on contact has long puzzled physicists wondering how life, the universe or anything else can exist at all. But new results from a particle accelerator experiment suggest that matter does seem to win in the end.

The experiment has shown a small — but significant — 1 percent difference between the amount of matter and antimatter produced, which could hint at how our matter-dominated existence came about.

The current theory, known as the Standard Model of particle physics, has predicted some violation of matter-antimatter symmetry, but not enough to explain how our universe arose consisting mostly of matter with barely a trace of antimatter.

But this latest experiment came up with an unbalanced ratio of matter to antimatter that goes beyond the imbalance predicted by the Standard Model. Specifically, physicists discovered a 1 percent difference between pairs of muons and antimuons that arise from the decay of particles known as B mesons.

The results, announced Tuesday, came from analyzing eight years worth of data from the Tevatron collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

“Many of us felt goose bumps when we saw the result,” said Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a particle physicist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. “We knew we were seeing something beyond what we have seen before and beyond what current theories can explain.”

The Tevatron collider and its bigger cousin, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, can smash matter and antimatter particles together to create energy, as well as new particles and antiparticles. Otherwise, antiparticles only arise due to extreme events such as nuclear reactions or cosmic rays from dying stars.

Measurements made by the DZero collaboration, a 500-member international group, are still limited by the number of collisions recorded so far. That means physicists will continue to collect data and refine their analysis of the matter-antimatter struggle for dominance.

Researchers came up with their latest finding by performing a so-called blind data analysis, so that they would not bias their analyses based on what they observed. They have submitted their results to the journal Physical Review D.

______________________

From NASA Website with thanks to Jon Glassman for sharing

NASA will launch the first human-like robot to space later this year to become a permanent resident of the International Space Station. Robonaut 2, or R2, was developed jointly by NASA and General Motors under a cooperative agreement to develop a robotic assistant that can work alongside humans, whether they are astronauts in space or workers at GM manufacturing plants on Earth.

The 300-pound R2 consists of a head and a torso with two arms and two hands. R2 will launch on space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-133 mission planned for September. Once aboard the station, engineers will monitor how the robot operates in weightlessness.

R2 will be confined to operations in the station’s Destiny laboratory. However, future enhancements and modifications may allow it to move more freely around the station’s interior or outside the complex.

“This project exemplifies the promise that a future generation of robots can have both in space and on Earth, not as replacements for humans but as companions that can carry out key supporting roles,” said John Olson, director of NASA’s Exploration Systems Integration Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The combined potential of humans and robots is a perfect example of the sum equaling more than the parts. It will allow us to go farther and achieve more than we can probably even imagine today.”

The dexterous robot not only looks like a human but also is designed to work like one. With human-like hands and arms, R2 is able to use the same tools station crew members use. In the future, the greatest benefits of humanoid robots in space may be as assistants or stand-in for astronauts during spacewalks or for tasks too difficult or dangerous for humans. For now, R2 is still a prototype and does not have adequate protection needed to exist outside the space station in the extreme temperatures of space.

Testing the robot inside the station will provide an important intermediate environment. R2 will be tested in microgravity and subjected to the station’s radiation and electromagnetic interference environments. The interior operations will provide performance data about how a robot may work side-by-side with astronauts. As development activities progress on the ground, station crews may be provided hardware and software to update R2 to enable it to do new tasks.

R2 is undergoing extensive testing in preparation for its flight. Vibration, vacuum and radiation testing along with other procedures being conducted on R2 also benefit the team at GM. The automaker plans to use technologies from R2 in future advanced vehicle safety systems and manufacturing plant applications.

“The extreme levels of testing R2 has undergone as it prepares to venture to the International Space Station are on par with the validation our vehicles and components go through on the path to production,” said Alan Taub, vice president of GM’s global research and development. “The work done by GM and NASA engineers also will help us validate manufacturing technologies that will improve the health and safety of our GM team members at our manufacturing plants throughout the world. Partnerships between organizations such as GM and NASA help ensure space exploration, road travel and manufacturing can become even safer in the future.”

By Rosanne D’Arrigo, Special to CNN
April 16, 2010 7:40 a.m. EDT

Editor’s note: Rosanne D’Arrigo is a senior research scientist at the Tree-Ring Laboratory of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. She is also the associate director of the Biology and Paleoenvironment Division at the observatory.

Palisades, New York (CNN) — The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland is stranding hundreds of thousands of air travelers at Heathrow Airport in the UK and other airports across northern Europe, due to its voluminous clouds of volcanic ash that can clog airplane engines and limit visibility.

However, this is by no means the first such volcanic eruption in Iceland to affect human activities. Long before the advent of air travel, the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano in 1783-84 had profound effects on climate, not just in Iceland but around the globe.

Volcanologists Thorvaldur Thordarson and Stephen Self estimated that a comparable event in the modern era would release enough ash and other eruptive materials into the atmosphere that the resulting ash cloud and sulfuric haze would probably disrupt air travel over much of the Northern Hemisphere for about five months. But there were impacts well afield of Iceland and Europe at the time of Laki.

Besides releasing clouds of ash into the atmosphere that can disrupt visibility and damage airplane engines, eruptions can cool the climate with the reflection of incoming solar radiation from the troposphere by volcanic sulfur-rich ash, which can decrease temperatures significantly for months or years in some cases.

Just such an aerosol effect is believed to have disrupted the Earth’s thermal balance during the Laki event, cooling some Northern Hemisphere regions by as much as 1 or more degrees Celsius below the long-term average.

Highly unusual conditions were described in the summer of 1783 after Laki, including poisonous volcanic fumes that killed perhaps 25 percent of the population of Iceland, persistent haze and oppressive heat in Europe, and blood-red sunrises over North America, Europe and other locations. The Laki eruption was believed to have caused thousands of deaths because of unusual conditions in Europe that summer, along with the severe cold of the following winter.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to suggest that the extreme cold of 1783-84 over much of the Northern Hemisphere was connected to the Laki event. In North America, Laki has been blamed for the starvation of Inuit populations from severe cold in northwestern Alaska, based on Inuit oral history as well as tree-ring density data investigated by Gordon Jacoby and others, who estimated that conditions were about 4 degrees Celsius colder than the mean.

The density record of temperature-sensitive white spruce for this region showed extremely low values in the summer of 1783, known in Inuit lore as “the summer that did not come”.

This observation was used to infer that this was the coldest summer in at least the past 400 years.

Such tree-ring records, along with other so-called proxy archives, can provide a wealth of information about volcanic events and their varying impacts around the globe because of resulting shifts in atmospheric circulation and other climate changes, dating for centuries prior to the period of instrumental record.

The effects of major volcanic eruptions such as Laki can also be felt elsewhere on the globe, often far from their actual location. For example, significant cooling and strong dynamical effects after the Laki event and other high-latitude eruptions are believed to have caused decreased flow of the Nile River in Egypt and weakened African and Asian monsoons based on climate model simulations, with potentially very significant impacts on food and water supplies.

Tree-ring, coral and ice core records also indicate the effect of major volcanic events in the tropics of monsoon Asia for low-latitude eruptions such as that of Tambora, Indonesia, in 1815 and other such events of the past several centuries, although this climate signal is also complicated by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Although the current eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland appears not to be comparable in intensity to those of Laki and Tambora, it will have some effects, such as those on air travel, that were never realized back in those simpler times.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rosanne D’Arrigo.

By Michael Specter, Special to CNN
April 13, 2010 9:38 a.m. EDT
With Thanks to Richard Sklar for sharing!

Editor’s note: Michael Specter is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens our Lives.” TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” hosts talks on many subjects and makes them available through its Web site, http://www.ted.com/

(CNN) — American denialism threatens many areas of scientific progress, including the widespread fear of vaccines and the useless trust placed in the vast majority of dietary supplements quickly come to mind.

It doesn’t seem to matter how often vaccines are proved safe or supplements are shown to offer nothing of value. When people don’t like facts, they ignore them.

Nowhere is that unwillingness to accept the truth more evident than in the mindlessly destructive war that has been raging between the proponents of organic food and those who believe that genetically engineered products must play a role in feeding the growing population of the Earth. This is a divide that shouldn’t exist.

All the food we eat — every grain of rice and kernel of corn — has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn’t whether our food has been modified, but how.

Read more about Michael Specter at www.TED.com

I wrote “Denialism” because it has become increasingly clear that this struggle threatens progress for us all.

Denialists replace the open-minded skepticism of science with the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment. It isn’t hard to find evidence: the ruinous attempts to wish away the human impact on climate change, for example. The signature denialists of our time, of course, are those who refuse to acknowledge the indisputable facts of evolution.

Nowhere has the screaming been louder, however, than in the fight over how we grow our food. If you are brave enough to set a Google Alert for the phrases “genetically modified food” and “organic food,” you will quickly see what I mean.

The anxiety is certainly understandable. When it comes to food — the way we produce it and particularly the way we consume it — we have a lot to worry about.

One third of American children are overweight or obese; for adults, the numbers are higher. Our addiction to mindless consumption has made millions sick and costs this country billions of dollars. The financial toll comes in terms of time lost at work and money spent treating and supporting people with diabetes, heart disease and many cancers, who, had they followed a better diet, would never have fallen ill.

Nonetheless, better eating habits have nothing specific to do with organic food, which provides no nutritional advantage over more conventionally raised products. Opponents of genetically modified food constantly argue that it is unsafe. There has, however, never been a single documented case of a human killed by eating genetically modified food.

If every American swallowed two aspirin right now, hundreds of us would die today. Does that mean we ought to ban aspirin? Of course not. It simply means that there are risks and benefits associated with everything we do and with every decision we make.

When people say they prefer organic food, what they often seem to mean is they don’t want their food tainted with pesticides and their meat shot full of hormones or antibiotics. Many object to the way a few companies — Monsanto is the most famous of them — control so many of the seeds we grow.

Those are all legitimate complaints, but none of them have anything to do with science or the way we move genes around in plants to make them grow taller or withstand drought or too much sun. They are issues of politics and law. When we confuse them with issues of science, we threaten the lives of the world’s poorest people.

We are doing that now. By 2050, we are going to have 9 billion people to feed, a huge increase over today’s 6.8 billion. It’s not a figure about which there is much dispute. To feed that many will require nearly 50 percent more food than we produce now.

It’s not enough to simply say we waste food and consume too many calories, so that if we distributed it more intelligently everyone could eat just fine. Not in sub-Saharan Africa, where drought is nearly permanent.

Many of those people subsist on cassava, the basic potato-like staple in the region. It lacks most protein, nutrients and vitamins.

You cannot survive for long without them, so a team of international scientists funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is engineering vitamins and micronutrients into cassava.

They are engineering success into a failed crop. It will save and prolong many lives; that is farming and genetic modification at their best. Who could be opposed to that?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Michael Specter.

Had to put this up. With thanks to George for the reminder and for National Geographic Daily News for posting it.              A video recording of the event will be made available at the following link:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Videos)

Ker Than for National Geographic News
Published March 30, 2010

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reached a much-anticipated milestone today when it began smashing subatomic particles together at half its maximum power.

Earlier this month the “big bang machine” had broken its own energy record when it sent two 3.5-trillion-electron-volt (TeV) proton beams racing in opposite directions around the collider’s 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) underground tunnel.

Today, at 1:06 p.m. local time in Geneva, Switzerland, LHC operators smashed those beams of protons together to create a record-shattering 7-TeV collision.

Reaching this point has been “marvelous,” said David Evans, a physicist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and head of the LHC’s ALICE detector project.

“I’ve been involved in [the LHC] personally for over ten years. … It’s like waiting ten years for Christmas to come,” said Evans, who watched the collisions from the ALICE control center at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which operates the atom smasher.

(See Large Hadron Collider pictures.)

Large Hadron Collider “Like a Child”

As the first data from the impacts were announced, physicists who had gathered at CERN applauded, jumped up and down, and clutched laptops displaying images of the collisions to their chests as if the computers were newborn babes.

A large part of the excitement at CERN—and around the world—was relief that the Large Hadron Collider’s previous electrical problems have had no lasting effect on the machine’s ability to perform as expected, said Ian Shipsey, a co-coordinator of the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab in Illinois.

“When the machine started to do its early testing last fall, everyone was on a knife’s edge. Every time the machine had a little problem, everyone imagined that it might have a disastrous meltdown,” said Shipsey, who watched the show from half a world a way.

(See “Worst Case: Large Hadron Collider Spawns Planet-Devouring Black Hole”)

“Now there’s a sense of relief mixed with joy, and everybody’s pinching themselves to make sure that it’s real.”

Despite today’s smashing success, it’s anything but smooth sailing from this point on, said Richard Cavanaugh, also a co-coordinator at Fermilab’s LHC Physics Center.

After all, there’s still much to be done to ready the machine for the types of experiments scientists have in mind.

“This is a fantastic machine, but it’s also very complex. It’s very much like a small child,” Cavanaugh said. “The child has just been born and we’re learning how to raise it, and during the process the child is going to go through teething and adolescence before finally reaching maturity.”

LHC Still Just Half Power

The current plan is to run the Large Hadron Collider at 7 TeV continuously for 18 to 24 months. Then the LHC will shut down for up to a year to prepare the machine for 14-TeV collisions—the atom smasher’s maximum operating energy.

The LHC’s record-breaking smashups could uncover evidence of dark matter, discover new forces in physics, unveil new dimensions, and even find the Higgs boson, aka the God particle, a theoretical particle that physicists think is responsible for mass in the universe.

(See also “Large Hadron Collider to Have ‘Practical’ Spin-Offs?”)

“Two years of continuous running is a tall order both for the LHC operators and the experiments, but it will be well worth the effort,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said in a statement.

“By starting with a long run and concentrating preparations for 14-TeV collisions into a single shutdown, we’re increasing the overall running time over the next three years, making up for lost time, and giving the experiments the chance to make their mark.”

From Stuart Scoon who came across this while researching topics for future SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT programs. Thanks, Stu!

By Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers Les Blumenthal, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Sun Mar 7, 12:01 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth’s oceans, particularly off the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.

They warn that the oceans’ complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.

In some spots off Washington state and Oregon , the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.

Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas — in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans — appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest , encroaching on the continental shelf within sight of the coastline.

“The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking,” said Gregory Johnson , an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle .

In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.

“The real surprise is how this has become the new norm,” said Jack Barth , an oceanography professor at Oregon State University . “We are seeing it year after year.”

Barth and others say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models. Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“If the Earth continues to warm, the expectation is we will have lower and lower oxygen levels,” said Francis Chan , a marine researcher at Oregon State .

As ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water on the surface acts as a cap, which interferes with the natural circulation that normally allows deeper waters that are already oxygen-depleted to reach the surface. It’s on the surface where ocean waters are recharged with oxygen from the air.

Commonly, ocean “dead zones” have been linked to agricultural runoff and other pollution coming down major rivers such as the Mississippi or the Columbia . One of the largest of the 400 or so ocean dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico , near the mouth of the Mississippi .

However, scientists now say that some of these areas, including those off the Northwest, apparently are linked to broader changes in ocean oxygen levels.

The Pacific waters off Washington and Oregon face a double whammy as a result of ocean circulation.

Scientists have long known of a natural low-oxygen zone perched in the deeper water off the Northwest’s continental shelf.

During the summer, northerly winds aided by the Earth’s rotation drive surface water away from the shore. This action sucks oxygen-poor water to the surface in a process called upwelling.

Though the water that’s pulled up from the depths is poor in oxygen, it’s rich in nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic organisms form the bottom of one of the richest ocean food chains in the world. As they die, however, they sink and start to decay. The decaying process uses oxygen, which depletes the oxygen levels even more.

Southerly winds reverse the process in what’s known as down-welling.

Changes in the wind and ocean circulation since 2002 have disrupted what had been a delicate balance between upwelling and down-welling. Scientists now are discovering expanding low-oxygen zones near shore.

“It is consistent with models of global warming, but the time frame is too short to know whether it is a trend or a weather phenomenon,” Johnson said.

Others were slightly more definitive, quicker to link the lower oxygen levels to global warming rather than to such weather phenomena as El Nino or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a shift in the weather that occurs every 20 to 30 years in the northern oceans.

“It’s a large disturbance in the ecosystem that could have huge biological changes,” said Steve Bograd , an oceanographer at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Southern California .

Bograd has been studying oxygen levels in the California Current, which runs along the West Coast from the Canadian border to Baja California and, some scientists think, eventually could be affected by climate change.

So far, the worst hypoxic zone off the Northwest coast was found in 2006. It covered nearly 1,200 square miles off Newport, Ore. , and according to Barth it was so close to shore you could hit it with a baseball. The zone covered 80 percent of the water column and lasted for an abnormally long four months.

Because of upwelling, some of the most fertile ocean areas in the world are found off Washington and Oregon . Similar upwelling occurs in only three other places, off the coast of Peru and Chile , in an area stretching from northern Africa to Portugal and along the Atlantic coast of South Africa and Namibia .

Scientists are unsure how low oxygen levels will affect the ocean ecosystem. Bottom-dwelling species could be at the greatest risk because they move slowly and might not be able to escape the lower oxygen levels. Most fish can swim out of danger. Some species, however, such as chinook salmon, may have to start swimming at shallower depths than they’re used to. Whether the low oxygen zones will change salmon migration routes is unclear.

Some species, such as jellyfish, will like the lower-oxygen water. Jumbo squid, usually found off Mexico and Central America , can survive as oxygen levels decrease and now are found as far north as Alaska .

“It’s like an experiment,” Chan said. “We are pulling some things out of the food web and we will have to see what happens. But if you pull enough things out, it could have a real impact.”

This was sent to me by my new friend Fran Ginsburg who is with the American Society of the University of Haifa.
They do some incredible research to benefit us all.

This has been shown in a new study carried out at the University of Haifa’s Department of Maritime Civilizations. “Unfortunately, we turn our backs to the sea and do not give much consideration to our marine neighbors,” states researcher Dr. Aviad Scheinin.

The study, which was supervised by Prof. Ehud Spanier and Dr. Dan Kerem, examined the competition between the two top predators along the Mediterranean coast of Israel: the Common Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and bottom trawlers. (Trawling is the principal type of commercial fishing in Israel and involves dragging a large fishing net through the water, close to the sea floor, from the back of a boat.) These two predators off the coast of Israel trap similar types of fish near the sea floor, so the researchers decided to examine the nature of the competition between the two.

Commercial trawling in the Mediterranean off the coast of Israel targets codfish, red mullet and sole, three commercial and sought-after types of fish. The Department of Fisheries in Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture has data showing that over the years the amount of fish from the sea floor looted by Israel’s commercial trawling is larger than the amount of fish that nature provides, indicating that the sea floor fish population dropped between the years 1949 and 2006.

Would this decline in fish supply necessarily cause direct harm to the dolphins, seeing as their diet might also include other types of fish? In order to verify this, the researcher examined the contents of the stomachs of 26 dolphins that died and landed on the beach, or that had been caught by mistake. He also examined the behavior of living dolphins by carrying out 232 marine surveys over more than 3,000 km. along the central coast of Israel. The dolphins’ stomachs contained mainly non-commercialized fish, suggesting that they perhaps do not compete directly with the commercial trawlers, and that the commercial fishing does not directly affect the dolphins’ nutrition.

The living dolphins’ behavior, on the other hand, draws an entirely different picture. According to Dr. Scheinin, most of the dolphins were observed around the trawling boats: the chances of observing a school of dolphins near a trawler is ten times higher than in the open sea. This is because the trawler serves as a “feeding station” for the dolphins: there they are not able to feed from the more expensive loot caught in the nets, but they are able to enjoy schools of other types of fish that swim around the trawler. “The problem is that this type of fishing endangers the dolphins. Eight dolphins die each year off the coast of Israel on average, and of those, four die after having been mistakenly caught in trawling nets. Seeing as many studies have proven the high intelligence of the dolphin, it is clear that these sea mammals are aware of this danger, but are left with little choice due to their need to search for food around the trawlers due to the scarcity of other food sources,” Dr. Scheinin explains.

This conclusion is reinforced by the suckling female dolphins. These dolphins require larger quantities of food than usual, and despite the risk for the younger and much less experienced dolphins that swim by their side, all of the suckling dolphins have been observed significantly more frequently around the trawlers. This indicates that they could not obtain enough food in other places.

The dolphins off the coast of Israel spend most of their time in search of food while their mates in other areas in the world are far busier with social activities. This fact is yet another contributing factor to the assumption that they suffer a deficiency in food resources.

The present study illustrates, for the first time, the characteristics of the dolphins inhabiting the sea region off the Mediterranean coast of Israel. This dolphin population is stable and at any given time can be counted at about 350 dolphins. Of these, the researchers are personally familiar with 150 dolphins – on a first name basis – which can be identified by the dorsal fin, the dolphin’s fingerprint. Forty of these are seen repeatedly and are permanent inhabitants of opposite the coast of Israel. “There is a stable dolphin population off the shores of Israel, and any resolution concerning the sea must also consider the dolphins. So as to preserve this population we must declare extensive marine nature reserves, so as to regulate fishing and bring an end to sea pollution. Regrettably, we are not considerate enough of the dolphins,” concludes Dr. Scheinin.

…with special thanks to Judi Sitkin for “digging” this one up!

In response to increasing concern in the scientific community about the inadequacies of science teaching in American schools, the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology has been supporting projects that encourage the use of microorganisms to teach science in the K-12 classroom. Our principal goal has been, and remains raising public understanding of science and demonstrating the importance that microorganisms play in our lives. These concerns lie behind the high priority assigned by the Foundation over the last decade to professional development workshops for K-12 teachers. Other related educational activities supported by the Foundation have included the development of loan trunks, CD’s and websites and equipment donations.

Virtually every type of American institution engaged in education or research has received grants in K-12 education from the Foundation: Universities; Research Institutes; Scientific Societies; Museums; Schools; Associations; Consortia and Fellowship Programs. Every successful project has provided teachers with background information and current understanding of microbial diversity and the importance of microbial processes in the biosphere and has incorporated the use of hands-on activities for students at elementary, middle, or high school level.

The Foundation is now considering alternative innovative approaches to strengthening public understanding of microbiology and improving K-12 science education.

From the work of its grantees, the Foundation has developed the following resources for teachers:

A. Hands-On Activities for Students
1. Table of Exercises
2. Institutional Sources for these Exercises
B. Additional Enrichment Programs for School Teachers
C. Teacher Programs at Marine Laboratories
D. Microbiology Related Resources for School Teachers
E. Agencies Promoting New Programs for School Teachers

Hands-On Activities for Students:

This database is a collection of field tested hands-on microbiology laboratory exercises, developed by grantees of the Foundation, for use in high schools, middle schools or elementary schools. The Foundation believes that the excellence of the scientists and teachers who have cooperated to develop the various exercises presented here ensures their value in conveying both basic principles of scientific research and something about the microbial world. The exercises are certified for safety. (Complete information on safety can be found in Micro-Organisms for Education, by H. T. Ewald et al. at http://www.science-projects.com/safemicrobes.htm).

Below are two means of accessing our collection of exercises. The first is a table that displays information about the nature and use of each of 84 hands-on exercises. The second is a list of institutional sources that can be consulted for additional information about most of these exercises.

1. Table of Exercises. In Table 1A are listed all of the exercises by Title, Source, URL, and Grade Level. Table 1B matches exercises to the National Science Standards.

2. Institutional Sources. Teachers seeking additional information for a particular exercise should refer to the following list of sources for contact information (The Foundation has included the most current information possible, but some website information and some contact individuals may have changed).

1. American Society for Microbiology
2. California State University, Chico
3. Columbia U, P & S
4. Cornell University
5. Des Moines University – Osteopathic Medical Center
6. Louisiana State University
7. Marine Biological Laboratory
8. National Association of Biology Teachers
9. The New Jersey Business/Industry/Science Education Consortium
10. University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
11. University of Missouri-St. Louis
12. University of Rochester
13. Washington State University
14. Woodrow Wilson Leadership Program for Teacher

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES IN THE SCIENCE COMMUNITY: Allegro Productions Inc., producers of The Virtual Scientist Guest Lecture Series is looking for minority scientists and engineers to participate in “virtual” videoconference lectures and lessons from their labs or offices, directly into classrooms via SKYPE.

We welcome all inquiries, but have received specific requests for African-American and Latino scientists to participate in “virtual lectures” from schools that serve populations under-represented in science.

Minimal time required and you’ll get to work with students, many of whom are considering further studies in the sciences. This is a great opportunity to encourage more minority students to consider science-based careers. Thank you for your time, consideration, understanding. Please send email to 2scott@ssrvideo.com. All the best, Scott

SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT has been a trusted resource of objective science news reporting for science teachers and students for nearly 40 years. The award‐winning DVD series focuses on the most recent developments in science and technology and is produced with the cooperation of the Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology.  It is designed to help students understand the vital role that science plays in our everyday lives, as well as addressing   some of the most critical issues facing society today.   SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT has been working with corporate America for four decades to reach the best and the brightest while encouraging them to pursue careers in the sciences.

SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT is endorsed as an exemplary resource by the Smithsonian Institute’s Teacher Resource Center, the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse and MIT’s prestigious Haystack Laboratory.  Our active SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT network covers more than 7,000 schools nationwide.

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The technology requirements are minimal, requiring only that each participant (i.e. school and scientist) have a computer with high speed internet access, a high quality monitor, webcam, speakers and microphone. Skype software can be downloaded from www.skype.com free of charge. As the liaison between the school, sponsor and guest lecturer SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT makes all necessary arrangements for the virtual visit.

“Virtual” visits last about 30 minutes in order to fit within a standard class period. The presentation format varies according to the preference of the speaker and educator but will generally include a presentation followed by Q&A. The classroom teacher acts as the moderator and oversees the necessary pre‐visit preparation.

For more information about the Virtual Scientist Guest Lecture Series or SCIENCE SCREEN REPORT, please contact  Scott Forman at 800-232-2133 Ext. 201.   Thank you and be well!