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James Linzel

Caveman to Chemist Projects: Potash - 0 views

  • As the evaporation continues, the substances present are deposited in reverse order to their solubilibies. Finally, the most soluble substances present are deposited as the uppermost stratum as the sea gives up the last of its moisture. The substances deposited depend on what was present in the original sea, and the order in which they are deposited depends on their relative solubilities
  • For solids, however, we turn to recrystalization as our primary purification technique.
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    "Solvay"
James Linzel

Good news on ozone, bad news on greenhouse gases | Ars Technica - 0 views

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    " Good news on ozone, bad news on greenhouse gases The ozone layer is on track for recovery even as carbon emissions boom. by John Timmer - Sept 13 2014, 2:10am CST ShareTweet 42 The Montreal Protocol, created in response to the decline in the Earth's ozone layer, called for a world-wide phase out in the production of chemicals that were responsible for the ozone's decline. It is perhaps the greatest global environmental achievement to date. And, this week, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program announced it was working. Unfortunately, this week also saw the WMO release its annual greenhouse gas bulletin, and here the news was nowhere near as promising, as emissions returned to levels not seen since the 1980s. First, the good news. In the 2014 version of the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion, the WMO finds that the atmospheric concentrations of most of the chemicals covered by the Montreal Protocol are in decline. The exceptions are hydrochlorofluorocarbons, which are used in refrigeration, and halon, used in fire suppression. The WMO also noted that there must be some unidentified source of carbon tetrachloride to explain its persistence in the atmosphere."
Tom Musk

Effective Oral Presentations | Learn Science at Scitable - 0 views

  • hree components
  • Verbally (and as a general rule)
  • nstead, memorize the outline of your presentation
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Vocally, vary the tone, rate, and volume of your voice
  • Visually, control your body
  • practice more, pace yourself, and support your spoken discourse with appropriate slides
  • non-native speaker
  • Practicing helps you identify missing vocabulary
  • Practicing in front of an audience
  • During your presentation, pace yourself
  • Pacing yourself also means speaking more slowly than you otherwise might
  • Most speakers, even experienced ones, are nervous before or during an oral presentation
  • perhaps the most effective one is to focus constructively on your purpose at all times
  • Before your presentation, eliminate all the unknowns
  • Visualize what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid
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    This is a really useful guide to effective presentations. We can use it as a primary teaching tool.
Tom Musk

Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations - 0 views

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    Good guidelines to support other teaching on presentations
Jason Dillon

Joi Ito: Want to innovate? Become a "now-ist" | Talk Video | TED.com - 0 views

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    from David Gran
Jason Dillon

China Confronts Its Coal Problem - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • tate-owned news outlets reported this month that the government would ban the use of coal in Beijing and other urban areas by 2020 in an effort to reduce the noxious air pollution that chokes many cities. In July, a Chinese academic who is also a senior lawmaker said the government was considering a national cap on coal use as soon as 2016.
  • But he and other officials have provided few details — and, indeed, have sent conflicting, even disturbing, signals about their plans. Some measures China is considering could actually exacerbate climate change. One particularly misguided plan, for instance, would involve building 50 large industrial facilities in western China to convert coal into synthetic natural gas.
James Linzel

Tesla seals landmark deal to mass-produce EV batteries in the US - 0 views

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    Elon Musk keeps looking more and more like Tony Stark
James Linzel

Opinion: Information Density Isn't As Important As Information Hierarchy - DADAPIXEL - 0 views

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    What does Kim Sajan think about this post?
Jason Dillon

Ten Ideas For How We Can Save the Planet | Perspectives | BillMoyers.com - 0 views

  • We reached out to a handful of scientists, policy experts, writers and activists to ask: “If you could require America to do just one thing — any one thing — to combat climate change in 2014, what would it be?” Here’s what they said:
  • Take Action in Your CommunitiesAnnie LeonardExecutive director, Greenpeace USA; creator, The Story of StuffIf I could require Americans to do one thing, it is to get active!
Jason Dillon

Bees and Colony Collapse - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more.
  • the most sophisticated data set available for any species about synergies among pesticides, and between pesticides and disease. The only human equivalent is research into pharmaceutical interactions, with many prescription drugs showing harmful or fatal side effects when used together, particularly in patients who already are disease-compromised.
  • We discovered that crop yields, and thus profits, are maximized if considerable acreages of cropland are left uncultivated to support wild pollinators. Continue reading the main story 98 Comments Continue reading the main story Recent Comments Clyde Wynant 26 minutes ago There is no precedent in the short history of mankind for the toxic soup of chemical we all ingest from birth to death, in our food supply,... Carolyn Egeli 37 minutes ago Thank you for this thoughtful piece on the demise of the honeybees. The clear message is we have a problem the increasing use of pesticides... phyllis 58 minutes ago Bzzzzzzzzz! A very good reminder of the dying huge numbers of honeybee colonies and the also the plants they pollinate . We must always... See All Comments Write a comment A variety of wild plants means a healthier, more diverse bee population, which will then move to the planted fields next door in larger and more active numbers.
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  • Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts.
  • farmers who planted their entire field would earn about $27,000 in profit per farm, whereas those who left a third unplanted for bees to nest and forage in would earn $65,000 on a farm of similar size.
  • lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies.
  • Mark Winston, a biologist and the director of the Center for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive.”
Jason Dillon

Invitation to a Dialogue: Globalizing Wisely - NYTimes.com - 2 views

  • we sometimes forget that cultural differences represent profound psychological differences. The critical question for all nations is, “How can we engage globalization without losing our traditions?” For traditions are our links with the past. How do our traditions become integrated into some new worldview?At its core, globalization is not about communications technology; it’s about personal identity. It goes to the psychological foundations of a people. It is the process of realizing that wherever we come from, from now on, we are “one people” with one destiny.
    • Patrice Parks
       
      This will make a great introduction for my ninth grade students at the beginning of the year as we launch the initial foundational learning in English in preparation for the first PBL unit. Use it to spark discussion.
  • WILLIAM V. WISHARD Lake Ridge, Va., May 27, 2014 The writer is a former trends analyst and author of “Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning.”
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    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/a-global-community.html?ref=opinion This link shows reader letters in response to the original article... and the writer's reply to those letters.
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