Group items tagged

"Striking evidence has emerged that an ancient virus previously known only from fossil evidence has persistently infected some humans at very low levels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This ancient retrovirus is a kind of living fossil, and the discovery of an intact copy of it within the human genome poses questions as to how it has survived, and suggests others from the distant evolutionary past may lie dormant in the DNA of many species. ..."

"Striking evidence has emerged that an ancient virus previously known only from fossil evidence has persistently infected some humans at very low levels for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. This ancient retrovirus is a kind of living fossil, and the discovery of an intact copy of it within the human genome poses questions as to how it has survived, and suggests others from the distant evolutionary past may lie dormant in the DNA of many species. ..."

"Call it counterintuitive clickbait if you must, but Forbes' Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry made an intriguing argument when he granted the title of "Language of the Future" to French, of all tongues. "French isn't mostly spoken by French people and hasn't been for a long time now," he admits," but "the language is growing fast, and growing in the fastest-growing areas of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. The latest projection is that French will be spoken by 750 million people by 2050. One study "even suggests that by that time, French could be the most-spoken language in the world, ahead of English and even Mandarin." I don't know about you, but I can never believe in any wave of the future without a traceable past. But the French language has one, of course, and a long and storied one at that. You see it visualized in the information graphic above (also available in suitable-for-framing prints!) created by Minna Sundberg, author of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent. "When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor," writes Mental Floss' Arika Okrent. "An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which themselves have branches (West Germanic, North Germanic), which feed into specific languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian)." Sundberg takes this tree metaphor to a delightfully lavish extreme, tracing, say, how Indo-European linguistic roots sprouted a variety of modern-day living languages including Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Italian - and, of course, our Language of the Future. The size of the branches and bunches of leaves represent the number of speakers of each language at different times: the likes of English and Spanish have sprouted into mighty vegetative clusters, while others, like, Swedish, Dutch, and Punjabi, assert a more local dominance over their own, separately grown regional branches. Will French's now-modest leaves one day cast a shadow over the w

"Call it counterintuitive clickbait if you must, but Forbes' Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry made an intriguing argument when he granted the title of "Language of the Future" to French, of all tongues. "French isn't mostly spoken by French people and hasn't been for a long time now," he admits," but "the language is growing fast, and growing in the fastest-growing areas of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. The latest projection is that French will be spoken by 750 million people by 2050. One study "even suggests that by that time, French could be the most-spoken language in the world, ahead of English and even Mandarin." I don't know about you, but I can never believe in any wave of the future without a traceable past. But the French language has one, of course, and a long and storied one at that. You see it visualized in the information graphic above (also available in suitable-for-framing prints!) created by Minna Sundberg, author of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent. "When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor," writes Mental Floss' Arika Okrent. "An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which themselves have branches (West Germanic, North Germanic), which feed into specific languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian)." Sundberg takes this tree metaphor to a delightfully lavish extreme, tracing, say, how Indo-European linguistic roots sprouted a variety of modern-day living languages including Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Italian - and, of course, our Language of the Future. The size of the branches and bunches of leaves represent the number of speakers of each language at different times: the likes of English and Spanish have sprouted into mighty vegetative clusters, while others, like, Swedish, Dutch, and Punjabi, assert a more local dominance over their own, separately grown regional branches. Will French's now-modest leaves one day cast a shadow over the w

"Burden of Poverty Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Mani et al. (p. 976; see the Perspective by Vohs) gathered evidence from shoppers in a New Jersey mall and from farmers in Tamil Nadu, India. They found that considering a projected financial decision, such as how to pay for a car repair, affects people's performance on unrelated spatial and reasoning tasks. Lower-income individuals performed poorly if the repairs were expensive but did fine if the cost was low, whereas higher-income individuals performed well in both conditions, as if the projected financial burden imposed no cognitive pressure. Similarly, the sugarcane farmers from Tamil Nadu performed these tasks better after harvest than before. Abstract The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy."

"Burden of Poverty Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Mani et al. (p. 976; see the Perspective by Vohs) gathered evidence from shoppers in a New Jersey mall and from farmers in Tamil Nadu, India. They found that considering a projected financial decision, such as how to pay for a car repair, affects people's performance on unrelated spatial and reasoning tasks. Lower-income individuals performed poorly if the repairs were expensive but did fine if the cost was low, whereas higher-income individuals performed well in both conditions, as if the projected financial burden imposed no cognitive pressure. Similarly, the sugarcane farmers from Tamil Nadu performed these tasks better after harvest than before. Abstract The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy."

"Close Reading and Argument Writing - Authentically Across the Curriculum 7/16/2015 0 Comments Close reading of informational texts and non-fiction articles is not - and should not be - reserved for language arts classes. Every content area would be immensely enhanced if science teachers, social studies teachers, physical education teachers, welding teachers, woodworking teachers (in other words, "all technical subjects," as Common Core states) would not push aside the textbook, but instead embrace it, along with content area and trade articles. Students would then simultaneously learn how to dissect the readings while gaining knowledge in these content areas. What often happens is that teachers feel that students can't handle the text books or can't read the articles independently - and often that is true. However, when teachers instead go into a survival mode, of sorts, and read aloud the whole chapter or article or summarize it with a slideshow, it ends up doing a disservice to students - students are not learning HOW to read these complex texts. They are not learning how to acquire the information on their own. They are not being given the skills to read the sometimes intricate information within a particular content area or even within their possible future trade. They are not being given the opportunity to read, understand, articulate, and discuss or even debate topics within their area of study. Teachers sometimes feel that they can't do these things with students because they are not language arts teachers, or because they don't have time, or simply because they don't know how. Alternatively, a simple solution is to let go of the control and let students do…..with the guidance called close reading. Close reading is a guided reading approach. It is guided because 1) the close reading strategy is reserved for complex texts that are often too high for students to be left with independently and 2) students don't use close reading strateg

"Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review The world's insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems", according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century."

"To revert the current ecological overshoot and build a sustainable society, we have to collectively engage in changing our economic model. "Sufficiency: moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency" suggests introducing hard limitations to unsustainable trends-in particular to overconsumption-and putting emphasis on distributional justice. Seven chapters written by sustainability and economics experts plus a foreword by Janez Potočnik (Co-chair of the International Resource Panel and former European Commissioner for the Environment) shed light on different angles of sufficiency and formulate concrete recommendations to EU policy makers. The booklet ends with a discussion of several eco-social policies that can start the transition towards an "economics of enough". Many new ideas for an economic paradigm shift have been developed and discussed at the academic and grassroots levels in recent years. The aim of this booklet is to build on a rich body of knowledge and bring these ideas to the attention of engaged citizens and policy makers in order to advance the debate on how to implement sufficiency."

"The Minute Paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students: What was the most important thing you learned today? What question still remains in your mind? Taken together, those two questions accomplish multiple objectives. The first one not only requires students to remember something from class and articulate it in their own words (more about that in a moment), but it also requires them to do some quick thinking. They have to reflect on the material and make a judgment about the main point of that day's class. The second question encourages them to probe their own minds and consider what they haven't truly understood. Most of us are infected by what learning theorists sometimes call "illusions of fluency," which means that we believe we have obtained mastery over something when we truly have not. To answer the second question, students have to decide where confusion or weaknesses remain in their own comprehension of the day's material. Closing connections. If we want students to obtain mastery and expertise in our subjects, they need to be capable of making their own connections between what they are learning and the world around them - current events, campus debates, personal experiences. The last five minutes of class represent an ideal opportunity for students to use the course material from that day and brainstorm some new connections.The metacognitive five. We have increasing evidence from the learning sciences that students engage in poor study strategies. Likewise, research shows that most people are plagued by the illusions of fluency. The solution on both fronts is better metacognition - that is, a clearer understanding of our own learning. What if all of us worked together deliberately to achieve that?Close the loop. Finally, go back to any of the strategies I introduced in my recent column on the first five minutes of clas

"Open with a question or two. Another favorite education writer of mine, the cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, argues that teachers should focus more on the use of questions. "The material I want students to learn," he writes in his book Why Don't Students Like School?, "is actually the answer to a question. On its own, the answer is almost never interesting. But if you know the question, the answer may be quite interesting." My colleague Greg Weiner, an associate professor of political science, puts those ideas into practice. At the beginning of class, he shows four or five questions on a slide for students to consider. Class then proceeds in the usual fashion. At the end, he returns to the questions so that students can both see some potential answers and understand that they have learned something that day. What did we learn last time? A favorite activity of many instructors is to spend a few minutes at the opening of class reviewing what happened in the previous session. That makes perfect sense, and is supported by the idea that we don't learn from single exposure to material - we need to return frequently to whatever we are attempting to master.But instead of offering a capsule review to students, why not ask them to offer one back to you?Reactivate what they learned in previous courses. Plenty of excellent evidence suggests that whatever knowledge students bring into a course has a major influence on what they take away from it. So a sure-fire technique to improve student learning is to begin class by revisiting, not just what they learned in the previous session, but what they already knew about the subject matter.Write it down. All three of the previous activities would benefit from having students spend a few minutes writing down their responses. That way, every student has the opportunity to answer the question, practice memory retrieval from the previous session, or surface their prior knowledge - and not just the students most likely to

"Hardly anyone seems to have noticed that the newest climate science suggests we are about to pass the point of no return, to unstoppable, catastrophic global warming. This short animation explains the positive feedback mechanisms that mean the Earth's climate system has a tipping point, followed by a brief glimpse into the crystal ball of horrors that will almost certainly come to pass if we cross it. Finally, the film explores how we got into the mess we're in, and the possibilities still open to us to prevent the worst natural and humanitarian disaster in human history, and the very real possibility of the end of civilization, and of life as we know it."

"Respeta las reglas narrativas básicas Involucra a tu audiencia Crea y comparte contenido regularmente para lograr que tu audiencia crezca Sigue la receta de los videos sobre gatos para lograr éxito mundialmente No te preocupes si no es perfecto"

"Es la primera vez que entra en YouTube y pregunta en su buscador, el segundo más usado del mundo, por el cambio climático. Entre los resultados, la mayoría son vídeos más o menos acordes con el consenso científico. Pincha en el primero que YouTube le recomienda que vea, uno en el que Acciona sugiere soluciones a esta crisis climática. Tras verlo, YouTube le recomienda varios vídeos científicos, solo tres sobre el futuro del clima. En el primero de ellos, un youtuber desconocido explica que el calentamiento es "falso". Su canal se llama Atraviesa lo desconocido y si deja que empiece su vídeo, atraviesa realmente un umbral hacia una nueva pantalla en la que casi todas las recomendaciones son conspiraciones pseudocientíficas. Incluso evitando este canal, tras un par de vídeos con mensajes correctos sobre la ciencia del clima, YouTube le muestra una mayoría de vídeos conspiranoicos y negacionistas. A partir de ahí se desciende por una espiral de vídeos que defienden todo tipo de patrañas, desde que la Tierra es plana hasta que la Luna es una construcción artificial que se nos oculta. ..."

"La aplicación tiene como objetivo que los adultos se involucren, entiendan y conecten con los más pequeños a través del juego. En un mundo cada vez más vertiginoso con pesadas e inciertas jornadas laborales, el tiempo de calidad que los padres pasan con sus hijos es casi inexistente. Si a esto le sumamos el cansancio y la falta de planificación, pasar tiempo con los más pequeños se puede convertir en toda una batalla. En este escenario llega 'Hazte Pequeño', una aplicación gratuita apta para iOS y Android, orientada a proporcionar a todos los padres de recursos, ideas originales y divertidas para jugar con nuestros hijos."

"Quizá en un principio puede sonar un poco abrumador, y quizá no sabes muy bien por dónde empezar a cambiar las cosas. Es por eso que compartimos con fines educativos - pastorales la publicación del Blog EDUCREA en donde muestra las siguientes Técnicas de enseñanza y Estrategias de Motivación, esperamos puedan orientarte en esta aventura."