SALUD Medical Spanish: First Days in Cusco!
Finally I have made it to my final destination of Cusco, Peru. I was greeted at the airport by my gracious house mom, Nancy. She has many children and two grandchildren Fabio and Francesca who are over at the house all the time and are so fun! We take turns singing the alphabet (them in English, me in Spanish) and practice our colors, shapes, numbers etc. It´s like I´m in 1st grade all over again!
In the morning, my roommate, Dalya, and I walk to our schoolwhich is about a 20 minute walk. We have spanish classes from 8-11:15, which can be a little long, but on our half hour break, its fun to meet the other students who have come from all over the world to be here. Thereare 2 girls from Belgium, a guy from England, one from Switzerland and several from all over the US, but so far, I think I´m the only California girl!After our classes, we go back home for lunch which is the biggest meal of the day here. Usually 3 courses consisting of these huge cornkernels that you are supposed to eat whole, cheese, a hearty soup, anda main dish of rice and some sort of thick potatoe stew. For drinks we have Maize Jugo (purple corn juice) which is pretty plain but good. After lunch, its back to schoolfor tours….yesterday we had a walking tour of the city and while the whole thing was in spanish, surprisingly I learned a lot! Today we go back to have a tour of a huge market here called Market San Pedro and are also going to be given a tour of several medicinal plants. The main center of the city is the Plaza Del Armas and it is absolutely gorgeous! I want to go there every day and just take in the beautiful churches, fountains and parks. It´s crazy how completely immersed I´ve been in spanish here…you really have no choice! Today I 
even had a slight politcal discussion with Nancy´s son as this Sunday is Peru´s independence day from their socialist rule to their newcommunist government. Wish I could have talked to him more, but the communica tio n barrier was a little tough talking politics. But we both definitely agreed that we hope things will change for Peru in this upcoming year! Time to go back to school for the tour!
Join in the Big Schools’ Birdwatch 2012!
Get ready for the Big Schools’ Birdwatch! Schools can take part in the upcoming Big Schools’ Birdwatch from 16-30 January 2012, helping the RSPB to monitor UK bird numbers.
Run every year, the Birdwatch is a free activity for all UK schools and youth groups (brownies, scouts etc). There are different resource packs for each age group:
- Little Schools Birdwatch is for 3-5 year olds
- Big Schools Birdwatch is for 6-11 year olds
- Really Big Schools Birdwatch is for 12-14 year olds.
This simple activity is for all ages and abilities; it only takes an hour to complete and is rich in curriculum links. Its also a great way to get to know more about the wildlife visiting your school grounds. If you dont have school grounds, dont worry! You can still take part by visiting a local park. Teachers and group leaders can find out more at and to register for their free resource pack. The website also has lots of other activities to accompany the Birdwatch to download, including child (and teacher) friendly bird ID pages.
Dont forget to explore other educational events that you can can get involved in at Teaching Events.
Change.edu Rebooting For the New Talent Economy. A Review.
Change.edu By Andrew Rosen – cover courtesy of FSB Associates A review of Andrew Rosen’s book Change.edu Rebooting for the New Talent Economy. Mr. Rosen is CEO of Kaplan Inc., which specializes in adult education.
The first item a reader must realize about this book is that both the author and the publisher are part of Kaplan Inc., a conglomerate devoted as a for-profit education system. This should not negate any message from the book, nor cause the reader to doubt the information. But it does reveal why so much of the book justifies its existence and tries to dispel supposed myths of for-profit education institutions.
Change.edu Rebooting for the New Talent Economy by Andrew S. Rosen is promoted as a book that delves into the future of education, and how hopefully every adult educators dream would come true – that all programs would be tailored to the specific students needs while being accessible to all. But followers of Paolo Freire should not rejoice just yet. Unfortunately, only a very small section of the book actually deals with this possibility, and of course not in any fashion as to how.
Prisoner rehabilitation project ‘dumbed down’
PRISONERS at half of Scotland’s jails will suffer a blow to their hopes of receiving quality education after qualified lecturers were replaced by tutors, it was claimed last night.
Carnegie College in Dunfermline, Fife, was accused by the biggest teaching union of dumbing down a national rehabilitation project after it took the cost-saving decision.
It serves inmates at half of Scotlands prisons including Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Peterhead, Inverness, Polmont and Castle Huntly.
Ken Wimbor, assistant secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland which represents the lecturers involved has now written to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill urging him to intervene. Mr Wimbor acted after Carnegie College, which runs the project, decided it could be delivered by tutors instead of qualified lecturers.
It is understood employing tutors would save the college more than 1 million annually, because it does not have to pay them nationally agreed rates of pay.
Mr Wimbors letter states: You will be aware that the education service for Scottish prisons has recently been put out to tender and, as a consequence, Motherwell College will have responsibility for prison education in the west of the country and Carnegie College will look after the east.
Unfortunately, in the case of Carnegie College, the education service will be delivered by non-qualified staff who will not be employed on lecturers terms and conditions.
Motherwell continues to employ qualified staff, he added.
Aidan McCorry, director of planning for Apex a leading prisoner support charity said: Education in the wider community is undertaken by qualified teachers because it is an important element of our society and we would argue the same level of quality should be applied in a prison setting.
The college was unavailable for comment last night.
Major variation in bladder cancer subtype trends highlights need for focused research
Wiley-Blackwell
Researchers are being urged to differentiate between two types of bladder cancer when they carry out studies, after a detailed trends analysis revealed significant differences between the main subtypes of the disease.
A major study of nearly 128,000 American bladder cancer cases, published in the January edition of the urology journal BJUI, shows that bladder cancer rates showed a 9% overall decrease between 1973 and 2007.
However, when the researchers looked at the two main subtypes, which accounted for 94% of the bladder tumours, they found that papillary transitional cell carcinoma (PTCC) increased by 56% over that period and non-papillary transitional cell carcinoma (NPTCC) fell by 53%.
“These two subtypes of bladder cancer are normally categorised as a single disease called transitional cell carcinoma in research studies, but our findings highlight major trend differences over more than three decades” says lead author Dr Yawei Zhang, from the School of Public Health and School of Medicine at Yale University, USA.
“This is a significant finding that underlines the importance of future research differentiating between these two subtypes.”
Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the USA and is responsible for approximately 70,000 new cases and 15,000 deaths a year. Cigarette smoking and occupational exposure to arylamines organic chemicals is thought to account for more than half of the cases in the USA.
The research team used the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance and Epidemiology and End Results data for 1973-2007 to analyse trends in bladder cancer by subtype, disease stage and grade. This revealed the different trends between papillary tumours, that grow on the outside surface of the bladder, and non-papillary tumours, that grow on the inside of the bladder.
Key findings of the study included:
- The statistics covered 127,614 first primary bladder cancer cases. The majority of the patients (74%) were male and white (92%). Nearly two-thirds of the tumours (65%) were PTCC and 29% were TCC. The other 6% included squamous cell, adenocarcinoma and small cell carcinoma.
- The overall age-adjusted incidence rates for bladder cancer fell by about 9% between 1973 and 2007 from 16.7 per 100,000 to 15.2. Similar trends were noted in both genders and racial groups.
- However, significant differences emerged when the research team looked at the two main subtypes. While the age-adjusted rates for NPTCC fell by about 53%, from 7.9 per 100,000 in 1973 to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2007, PTCC increased by 56% from 6.8 to 10.6 per 100,000 over the same period. Similar trends were noted in both genders and racial groups and in different stages of the disease localised, regional and distant.
- A dramatic increase in the incidence rates of grade four tumours was found between 1998 and 2007, with decreasing trends for grade one, two and three tumours. This is probably due to changes in the grading system introduced in 1998, but the lack of reduction in more aggressive bladder cancer is of great concern. Similar increases were observed for NPTCC and PTCC, genders, racial groups and different disease stages.
“The striking differences in the trends between PTCC and NPTCC suggest that they may be two disease entitles with different causes” concludes Dr Zhang. “Recent survival analysis has also shown that survival rates are substantially higher for PTCC than NPTCC.
“Despite this, no epidemiological studies have investigated the risk factors of these two subtypes separately. Our study suggests that future research must make clear distinctions between PTCC and NPTCC and not just treat them as subtypes of transitional cell carcinoma.”
La Ceiba Spanish School: Going With the Flow
Ive learned in Honduras that its best to just go with the flow… Or sometimes the lack of flow.
This morning while I was in the middle of washing my hair in the shower, the water suddenly turned off! I waited a few seconds to see if it would restart, and when it didnt, it struck me that I was standing in the shower with shampoo in my hair and no water. I just laughed. What else was I supposed to do? So, I got out, used a tiny bit of my drinking water to get the excess suds out, and now Im sitting on my bed in a towel waiting for the water to come on again so that I can finish what I started. (Thankfully today is Sunday, so Im in no rush to go anywhere.) Ive learned that there is really no reason to stress the things I cant control, and- if possible- I try to enjoy the unexpected!
Yesterday morning, for example, the family that I live with ran out of drinking water, and for some reason (I dont quite understand) we could not get more until today. It turned out not being so bad, though! I got to help collect oranges from the tree outside and juice them so that we could drink orange juice. Ive had fresh-squeezed orange juice before, but never from oranges that were just picked, and it was amazing. (Interesting fact: the oranges that grow here arent orange. Theyre green! Apparently oranges only actually turn orange in cool climates, and most of the oranges we see in the grocery store were artificially turned orange after being picked.) I also tried juice from a fruit called “tamarindo” yesterday, and it was so good! If you ever get a chance to try it, I recommend you do. Its an oddly-shaped brown fruit, I think, and maybe it grows in the U.S., too, but Id never heard of it. (I live in Texas, though, so I guess that isnt saying that much.) Last week I also tried juice from “nance” berries (pronounced “nacy,” but I could be butchering the spelling of that horribly, sorry). Nance berries look sort of like blueberries except that theyre yellow, but they taste unlike anything Ive ever had before.
So, long story short, things dont always go exactly as planned in Honduras, but Im learning how to live in spite of that, and sometimes very good things come of it!