Self portrait maze cartoon of cartoonist Yonatan Frimer
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Maze cartoon of a motorcycle lableled, "middle east" speeding down a road in the direction of war, and away from the direction of peace. Created by Yonatan Frimer
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Turkey’s provocative flotilla—often described in Orwellian terms as a humanitarian mission—has set in motion a flurry of diplomatic activity, but if the Iranians send escort vessels for the next round of Turkish ships, it could present a casus belli.
It is also instructive that Syria is playing a dangerous game with both missile deployment and rearming Hezbollah. According to most public accounts, Hezbollah is sitting on 40,000 long-, medium- and short-range missiles and Syrian territory has served as a conduit for military material from Iran since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War.
Should Syria move its own scuds to (Click here to read the full article)
Squeals erupt from the children as the black and white rat scurries through a maze of brightly colored foam puzzle pieces and cardboard boxes, searching for the elusive cheese.
Unable to locate the cheese, the rat is at a standstill, prompting Michelle McPherson, director of school programs at Port Discover, to encourage the Port Discover Sensational Science camp-goers to modify the layout of the maze.
Quickly the group of eight to 12-year-olds moves into action in an ultimate display of teamwork using their recently acquired knowledge of positive reinforcement and learned animal behaviors to construct a new maze.
The best way to learn is through hands-on activities, said McPherson, an Elizabeth City State University graduate and former high school biology teacher.
Port Discover is Elizabeth City’s hands-on science museum for children. This summer marks the first series of summer camps since the center moved into its expanded space on Main Street. Port Discover director LuAnne Pendergraft says the larger space is allowing the center to offer expanded activities for the children, such as this week’s science camp aimed at teaching kids a variety of scientific techniques.
Moses McDaniel, Port Discover educator and ECSU research associate, demonstrated “laboratory techniques” on Monday helping campers create their own bacteria slides.
“It is absolutely great to see
them excited about science,” said McDaniel.
Sensational Science Camp attendees were introduced to the themes of microbiology, animal science, space exploration, technology/design and water quality this week. Camper Chaz McDaniel, 11, was excited to design and launch a water bottle rocket during Wednesday’s space exploration day.
McPherson said the space exploration theme was a result of requests for space themed projects on surveys at the end of last year’s summer science camp at Port Discover. The surveys at the end of each camp provide valuable feedback for planning future events.
The success of Port Discover’s programs has been maintained since its creation five years ago through the collaborative efforts of the staff, local government, community sponsors and Elizabeth City State University, according to Pendergraft.
“We wouldn’t be able to do what we are doing without the guidance of the university,” said Pendergraft.
The university’s “expertise of faculty,” “shared resources,” and presence of faculty on the 2010 Port Discover Board of Directors has led to “true community collaboration.”
Pendergraft said Port Discover has also been able to thrive through the recently purchased property that previously contained the Pasquotank Arts Council.
After moving into the larger space in March, the program was able to increase the number of participants in programs, decrease off-site travel and provide children with a “freer space to learn in,” said Pendergraft.
The larger facility contains a computer area with two computers loaded with science software, science board games and an Interactive Gallery that is open to the public. Enticing games like the cell require users “to match organelles with their functions,” by pressing buttons as a large model of a cell lights up with each selection. Another game asks users to pull a lever as they watch two balloon like lungs fill with air in a torso.
Glass habitats provide the onlooker with a glimpse into the activities of fish, Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, toads, frogs, tadpoles and snakes. There is also a toddler area with “very basic” activities that provide an introduction to science, said Pendergraft.
Wendy Pierce, Port Discover director of community programs and ECSU graduate, said one of the best aspects of working with the program is the “ability to be creative in an informal learning environment.”
Pierce said the scientific method and North Carolina Standard Course of Study are used in the implementation of lessons and programs.
It is vital that we “spark a continued interest” in the areas of science, math and technology, said Pierce.
Port Discover will provide a Discovery Days camp for five to seven-year-olds June 28 to June 30.
Pendergraft said the Port Discover camps provide “quality fun” in a scientific environment.
Maze of Monkey Illusion - 2009
Optical illusion maze caused by conflicting horizontal and vertical lines.
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Gulf residents outraged by BP CEO's yacht outingVENICE, La. (AP) - Just when it seemed Gulf residents couldn't get any more outraged about the massive oil spill fouling their coastline, word came Saturday that BP's CEO was taking time off to attend a glitzy yacht race in England.
Tony Hayward's latest public relations gaffe didn't sit well with people in the U.S. who have seen their livelihoods ruined by the massive two-month oil spill.
"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."
As social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook lit up with anger, BP spokespeople rushed to defend Hayward, who has drawn withering criticism as the public face of his company's halting efforts to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Robert Wine, a BP spokesman at the company's Houston headquarters, said it's the first break Hayward has had since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off the undersea gusher.
"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend," Wine said Saturday. "I'm sure that everyone would understand that."
Not Mike Strohmeyer, who owns the Lighthouse Lodge in Venice, on Louisiana's southern tip, who said Hayward was "just numb."
"I don't think he has any feelings," he said. "If I was in his position.....
Sarah A. Topol Contributor
Smugglers in Egypt and Gaza worry their trade will be adversely affected by returning Palestinians lugging goods bought for cheaper prices in Egypt. They know a total termination of the blockade will spell the end of their industry. When I was in high school, I had to drive a long distance on a freeway to get to school. After arriving, I often wondered how I got there. I didn't remember the drive or even thinking about driving.
This feeling is a common (and, yes, somewhat scary) experience that a group of neuroscientists think they can better explain. In an experiment with rats, researchers at MIT identified two distinct neural circuits in the brain that show distinct changes when the rats were learning to navigate a maze and, later, after they mastered the task.
The rats were placed in a maze that had chocolate sprinkles at the end. The activity in specific parts of their brains was analyzed as they learned the maze, which included a T-juncture where they had to stop and choose to turn right or left. The rats performed the maze repeatedly until they had learned it.
The study showed that one specific neural circuit became stronger with practice. A second neural circuit showed high activity occurring at times when the rats had to make a decision in the maze. But as they learned the maze, activity in this circuit declined. The task had become habitual.
So, arriving at school in one piece wasn't just a matter of luck. "It is good to know that we can train our brains to develop good habits and avoid bad ones," the lead author of the study, Ann Graybiel, said in a news release.
Understanding how specific regions of the brain change through learning could help in developing new treatments for brain-based diseases. The study was published Thursday in the journal Neuron.
-- Shari Roan
Photo credit: Advanced Cell Technology Inc.I am appalled that Helen Thomas's comments on Israel prevent her from speaking at Walt Whitman High School's commencement ["Helen Thomas bows out of speech," Metro, June 7]. I am also disgusted that Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis conducted a campaign to punish Ms. Thomas, no doubt as retribution for her outspoken questions when they served in earlier administrations. Freedom of speech, however, is lost to their petty maneuvering.
Most of us would not agree with Ms. Thomas's unfortunate and seemingly uninformed comments about where Jews might live in peace. But she has the right to say what she thinks, and listeners can decide whether she is foolish, biased and out of touch. Had she spoken at Whitman, perhaps she would have retracted, perhaps she would have lamented further . . . or maybe not.
Whitman's cancellation under...Read entire articleShit My Dad Says will star William Shatner as the father with a penchant for saying some really funny and weird stuff, like "We didn't accidentally kill a hooker, we had dinner!"
Halpern started the Twitter account to showcase the things his father would say to him, and the experiences they shared while living together in the same house.
The division between Sunnis and Shi'a is the largest and oldest in the history of Islam.
The division between Sunnis and Shi'as is the largest and oldest in the history of Islam.
They both agree on the fundamentals of Islam and share the same Holy Book (The Qur'an), but there are differences mostly derived from their different historical experiences, political and social developments, as well as ethnic composition.
These differences originate from the question of who would succeed....(click here to read the article in full)
May 24, 2010 9:08 AM
Tall, black cyclone fencing and dark screen barriers are in place on the White House north lawn as a long-anticipated utility improvement project gets underway.It will be a big dig on a wide swath of the postcard-scene lawn just to the left of what is often seen as the front door to the White House. Officials say antiquated utility connections must be replaced. The work is creating a new maze for White House staffers, official guests and media personnel who work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The traditional entrance through what is known as the Northwest Gate will be blocked by the work. That means diplomatic motorcades will be directed to other routes instead of the traditional West Wing entrance where Marines stand watch.
Media types and others arriving at the gate are being directed to a sidewalk that approaches the White House Portico, but they won't enter through that hallowed doorway. Instead, under the always-watchful eye of the Secret Service, they'll walk down a flight of outdoor steps that lead to the briefing room level.
There's talk of erecting a temporary platform so that TV crews beaming reports from the familiar North Lawn scene will be able to shoot an unobstructed view over the construction work.
Tourists outside the White House fence will likely readjust their camera shots to get a "clean view" of the majestic North Portico.
Dozens of construction workers lined up outside the White House for security clearances so they could begin the project.
LONDON: Britain's first post-war coalition government, with Conservative leader David Cameron as Prime Minister and his Liberal Democrat counterpart Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister, took office on Wednesday, promising to give the country a “historic new direction” as the sun set on the 13-year Labour rule with Gordon Brown's dramatic resignation on Tuesday.
There was relief in...(Read more)
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How off shore drilling is affected by this gulf oil spill
As the environmental disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday that he no longer supports offshore drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara, NPR reported.
“Two birds found in the oil slick were recovering at a rescue center — a gannet found Friday and a brown pelican found sometime between then and Tuesday,” according to the Associated Press. (To see how trained officials clean birds, check out this article.)
“'We’re preparing for the worst,' said Jim Hood, the attorney general of Mississippi, referring both to the spill itself and the possibility of fierce legal struggles. The state has been taking photos and video of coastal areas and counting fish and birds, he said, to have a record of what exists before the oil arrives," a New York Times article stated.
The United States appears to be moving toward early implementation of the New START treaty signed with Russian less than one month ago.
The rapid implementation is evident in the State Department’s latest fact sheet, which declares that the United States as of December 31, 2009, deployed 1,968 strategic warheads.
| Current pace of U.S. strategic warhead downloading could reach New START limit in 2010. |
The New START force level of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads is not required to be reached until 2017 at the earliest. But at the current downloading rate, the United States could reach the limit before the end of this year.
Since the signing of the Moscow Treaty in 2002, the United States has removed an average of 490 warheads each year from ballistic missiles and bomber bases, for a total of approximately 3,436 warheads. There are now only a few hundred strategic warheads left at U.S. bomber bases, with most of the deployed warheads concentrated on ballistic missiles.
The last time the United States deployed less than 2,000 strategic warheads was in 1956. The peak was nearly 12,790 deployed strategic warheads in 1987.
Posted: April 26, 2010
By Bruce Bower, Science News
People who have nap-time dreams about a task that they’ve just practiced get a big memory boost on the task upon awakening, Harvard researchers report.
Those who dream about anything else have no such enhanced recall, the team reports in a paper published online April 22 in Current Biology. Neither do those who stay awake, even if they think about the task.
“I was startled by this finding,” says study coauthor Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. “Task-related dreams may get triggered by the sleeping brain’s attempt to consolidate challenging new information and to figure out how to use it.”
His new findings elaborate on research suggesting that sleep generally enhances memory and learning (SN: 4/28/07, p. 260).
Dreaming about a demanding undertaking doesn’t cause enhanced memories for that experience, Stickgold emphasizes. Rather, memory-fortifying brain processes during sleep cause the dreams, he proposes. During slumber, Stickgold posits, a structure called the hippocampus integrates recently learned information, such as how to navigate a virtual maze, while other brain regions apply this information to related but broader situations, such as how to navigate a maze of job application forms.
That’s a “tempting speculation,” remarks physiological psychologist Jan Born of the University of Lübeck in Germany. Stickgold’s idea has much potential for fostering advances in dream research, Born says.
Stickgold’s group focused on dreams that occur during non–rapid eye movement, or NREM, sleep. Previous studies found links between chemical and electrical activity in the brain during NREM sleep and better learning by rats and people. Neural activity sparked by recent learning has not been observed during rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, which often includes especially vivid and bizarre dream elements.
In the new investigation, 99 college students age 18 to 30 spent an hour practicing a virtual maze task on a computer. In a series of trials, volunteers navigated through a complex, three-dimensional maze, starting from a different spot each time. They were instructed to remember the location of a particular tree in the maze.
For the first 90 minutes of a five-hour break from practicing, students were assigned either to take a nap or to engage in quiet activities such as watching videos.
Nappers’ electrical brain activity was monitored with scalp sensors. Experimenters questioned the students about their dreams just before they fell asleep, after one minute of continuous NREM sleep and at the end of the nap period. Volunteers who stayed awake recounted their thoughts at the start, middle and end of the 90-minute session.
After lunch and a period of quiet activity, participants reentered the virtual maze at random spots and were asked to find the tree that they had previously tried to remember.
Those who had dreamed of the experimental task — four of 50 nappers — found the tree much faster than they had in initial trials. These individuals described dreams such as seeing people at particular locations in a maze or hearing music that had played in the lab during testing.
All of the volunteers who dreamed about the maze had performed relatively poorly during pre-nap training, Stickgold notes. Memory processes invoked by the sleeping brain may respond most strongly to challenges perceived as difficult and important to solve, he suggests.
Stickgold’s group is now designing a more exciting maze task intended to elicit task-related dreams in a larger proportion of volunteers.
The researchers also plan to examine whether people who have REM dreams about a maze task during a full night’s slumber navigate that maze better the next day.
In defence of the Pope - Cartoon Maze
Editorial Maze Cartoon "In Defence of the Pope"
The buck may stop with the previous pope, if Pope Benedict XVI's defence is accurate. As fresh child sex abuse scandals rock the Vatican, The Washington Post reports that the current pope is going on the offensive with a media blitz in anticipation of Easter Sunday. This week...(READ MORE)
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