The ResMed and the Farrell Family Foundations Return for the Third Time as Festival Sponsors!
The ResMed Foundation and the Farrell Family Foundation, which served as key Sponsors for the inaugural Festival last year and for the original San Diego Science Festival(SM) (organized by the Science Spark team) in 2009, is continuing its support by signing on as a Sponsor for the 2nd USA Science & Engineering Festival in 2012!
“As the world becomes increasingly complex,” says Dr. Peter C. Farrell, Founder of the Farrell Family Foundation and Founder, Chairman and CEO of ResMed Corporation, “an understanding of science and technology is ever more critical – which is the value that a nationwide science event such as the Festival can provide. We need bright children to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics, otherwise we are in danger of public policy being decided by ignorance rather than circumspection.”
When first approached by the Festival, Dr. Farrell immediately saw the importance of this major event and committed funds from the ResMed and Farrell Family Foundations to support the Festival’s mission.
In addition, he says, the Festival, in its goal to motivate and encourage more students to pursue careers in STEM, is helping to assure a robust climate of innovation and entrepreneurship for tomorrow in America, which in turn will help drive economic growth, wealth and job creation.
“In short,” says Dr. Farrell, “we need to stimulate a critical mass of bright students to undertake careers in science and engineering or society as a whole will suffer. The ResMed and Farrell Family Foundations are committed to helping catalyze this process.”
Learn more about The ResMed Foundation and the Farrell Family Foundation.
Researchers identify tumor-specific pathway; finding could lead to new cancer-stopping therapies
DALLAS – Nov. 22, 2011 – A research team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists has identified an atypical metabolic pathway unique to some tumors, possibly providing a future target for drugs that could reduce or halt the spread of cancer.
Dr. Ralph DeBerardinis, senior author of the study published Nov. 20 in Nature, likened the newly discovered pathway to traffic that is rerouted during a highway construction project.
Dr. Ralph DeBerardinis
“If we hone in on this reverse pathway, then we may be able to prevent the growth of certain types of cancer,” said Dr. DeBerardinis, assistant professor of pediatrics and a physician scientist in the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development. “It’s long been thought that targeting tumor-specific metabolic pathways would lead to an effective way to treat cancer. This is one of the few metabolic pathways that may actually exist specifically in tumors.”
The pathway involves the Krebs cycle, a series of chemical reactions that generates energy and is considered one of the most familiar and widely studied processes in biology. In the normal cycle, energy is derived by the breakdown of acetate from ingested carbohydrates, fats and proteins into carbon dioxide and water.
For more than 70 years, biology textbooks have depicted the Krebs cycle as running clockwise in normal cells. UT Southwestern researchers found that in some tumors the cycle runs in reverse.
The discovery is the latest milestone in a long line of scientific inquiry that began in the 1920s when biochemists first recognized metabolic differences between cancer cells and normal cells. Scientists since have thought they could stop the growth of cancer cells with drugs that target only tumor-specific pathways, leaving normal cells unaffected.
Researchers have identified only a few such therapeutic windows, the latest of which appears to be the reverse Krebs cycle pathway identified by Dr. DeBerardinis and colleagues in this investigation.
“There is no pathway that has been more extensively studied over the years than the Krebs cycle,” Dr. DeBerardinis said. “The fact that with relatively modest manipulation, it can run in reverse is incredibly fascinating.”
Dr. James K.V. Willson, director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the findings are significant.
“We are learning that certain cancers have previously unrecognized mutations in genes controlling metabolism – and these abnormalities are providing new therapeutic opportunities,” he said.
Andrew Mullen, a graduate student in genetics and development at UT Southwestern, was first author of the paper. Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Dr. Eunsook Jin, instructor in the Advanced Imaging Research Center; Pei-Hsuan Chen, graduate student in integrative biology; and Dr. Tzuling Cheng, a postdoctoral researcher in pediatrics. Scientists from Northwestern University and from the National Cancer Institute also participated.
The project was funded in part with a grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
Study Abroad Special Offer: Black Friday Weekend
Select any AmeriSpan program of 2 weeks or longer and save $150. You must register by the end of the day November 29, 2011 and use discount code “Black Friday” at the time of registration to receive the discount. You may select a program starting this year or next year.
The importance of outdoor playing and toys
The game is an important part of the mental growth of your child. When they engage in physical activity through outdoor equipment, they can develop the initiative, imagination, cooperation and self-confidence. Buying a scooter with pneumatic tyres can be useful for reducing idleness, learning relationship building and negotiation skills. Playing at open air is the foundation of social skills your child will need for the future. Today, there are wide range of outdoor toys at affordable prices, you can order online and buy easily.
Your garden or outdoor play area should give your children the freedom to play freely. You can buy modern toys in different models, because they are an important part of the growth of your children. Playing outside is vital for your kid’s all-round development, such as staying inside all the time with video games and watching TV lead to physical inactivity and can hinder their personal development.
In addition to toys for education, there are many toys available that are developed for fun playing for children and adults. Buying a pool is a useful idea. Also parents are involved in a fun game to play in the pool with children during the hot summer months. The available options are limitless and games can be as simple as a fun game of volleyball in the water or you can choose adventure games using the most advanced diving rings.
There are many different types of children’s toys such as outdoor tables, sandpits, jungle gyms and trampoline nets and poles. All toys have different sizes, shapes, colors and accessories. Toys can be used even in winter, which can keep your children occupied and entertained for hours. Suppliers of the best outdoor equipment offer superior products that meet safety standards. You can buy outdoor toys at the best price now.
Report: Publishing teacher ratings will hinder reform
There are better ways to use value-added scores to drive improvement, researchers say
When we want to try a new restaurant, we read the reviews; when we want to see a movie, we listen to the critics. But should the same online ratings that influence our lifestyle decisions be used for teachers? According to a new report, that’s the education reform question du jour.
The report, titled “Subtraction by Distraction: Publishing Value-Added Estimates of Teachers by Name Hinders Education Reform,” published by the Center for American Progress (CAP), argues that publicly identifying teachers with value-added estimates of their abilities actually will undermine efforts to improve public schools.
CAP’s report notes that the discussion of publishing teachers’ names along with their value-added score (a measure of a teachers efficacy, relative to other teachers in the group, in promoting student achievement) began when the Los Angeles Times published a report featuring the performance ratings for Los Angeles Unified School District teachers.
Parents and the public could look up specific teachers in the database and see how they ranked in both math and English, from least effective to most effective in the district.
The data were based on students’ standardized test scores, and the teachers’ rankings were in relation to their peers.
“At first glance, the idea seems to possess intuitive appeal,” the report says. “After all, research using value-added estimates shows that teachers are the most important school-based driver of students’ academic success.”
However, the report notes that value-added estimates should never be used as the sole basis for informing high-stakes decisions about individual teachers.
10 Inspiring Youtube Videos for Teachers
I get to watch lots of online videos in my search for new additions to my Teaching Videos site. The site now has almost 2,500 educational videos, so I thought that I would share some of my favourites the most inspirational the most incredible the most beautiful and the most entertaining. Here they are:
1) Try to Do This wonderful video tells a great story about a baby squirrel who tries to climb a big wall. It is a fantastic way of encouraging children to think about perseverance and determination, as well as exploring ways of helping others.
2) Ill Be Gone - This video could be used to discuss how sounds and music are made watch the rhythm of each sound played out in the video.
3) Steve Spangler Science Steve has a huge collection of online videos which teach Science in very exciting ways. Lots of his experiments can be tried at home or in the classroom, but some (like the one below) are definitely not appropriate!
4) Landscapes: Volume Two This is a beautiful video which features stunning time-lapse video of landscapes in Arizona and Utah. It would be great for inspiring descriptive writing about settings and locations.
5) The Water Cycle stop motion I love stop-motion animations and we make lots of them at school too. This video is a great animation about the water cycle which is perfect for Science lessons:
6) The Balloon Lady - Can you write a story about the Balloon Lady? Why is she so cheerful? How does it make the other people feel to be given a balloon? What happens to the balloons after the end of the film?
7) Kuroshio Sea This looks incredible in full-screen HD on an interactive whiteboard. Ive shown this to classes a number of times and the reaction is always WOW!.
8 ) The Highwayman Lots of schools use The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes as part of their Literacy lessons and this animated video is a great accompaniment for any work using the book. Dont forget that there are more teaching ideas linked to The Highwayman on my Teaching Library site.
9) Test Your Awareness This extremely popular video is a great test of childrens observation skills!
10) Haerskogen These amazing little creatures could be used in the classroom in lots of ways. Can your children write a description of them, or a story about their lives? Could they design their own creatures in Art, DT or ICT? Could you use them in Science for work on habitats and adaptation?