Category: audio

Faster than Light

Physicists at CERN believe they’ve measured neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light. Since most of modern physics is based on the speed of light being the upper speed limit for practically everything, (remember, in E=mc2, c is the speed of light) this is somewhat of a big deal. NPR has an article:

Notes

1. Neutrinos themselves are quite fascinating and elusive particles. Sciencemadefun has a nice video explaining what is a neutrino.

2. Victor Stenger provides an interesting perspective on these results. He points out that the theoretical particles, tachyons, move faster than light, but they can’t move slower than light, so, seen from the point of view of a tachyon, time would move backward. Only photons move at the speed of light.

Learning from Multiple Perspectives Works Better

In fact scientists have found that variety boosts both attention and retention.

–Patti Neighmond on NPR’s Morning Edition (2011): Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely

Morning Edition has an excellent piece that points out that there is little or no actual experimental data supporting the idea that teaching should be individually tailored for different learning styles.

So presenting primarily visual information for visual learners has no proven benefit.

This is something we’ve seen before, however, this article points out that providing each student with the same information in different ways makes it much more interesting for them, increasing their motivation to learn and their retention of what was taught.

Which is fortunate because it means that if you were trying to teach in multiple ways, hoping that the more vocal stuff benefits the auditory learners and the pretty diagrams resonate more with the visual learners, even if this principle is all wrong, all of your students would still have gotten the benefits of variety.

Another key point is that:

Recent studies find our brains retain information better when we spread learning over a period of time versus cramming it into a few days or weeks.
–Patti Neighmond on NPR’s Morning Edition (2011): Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely

So the educational psychologist, Doug Rohrer, recommends giving less math problems at a time but spreading the work out over a longer time. Our block schedule, with three weeks on and three weeks off, ought to work well for this, since students will be studying math intensely on the on-blocks and doing revision assignments on the off-blocks.

The article is below:

Looking for the beat

Engine room,
It could never die, never,
Because it is nine months my mother make me check out she heartbeat.

—David Rudder (1988): from Engine Room

Despite those nine months, scientists have identified a condition called beat deafness, where people just can’t find the beat.

The article claims it’s rare. My wife tells me it must be genetic.

Crossing the Bering Land Bridge

NPR reports on the discovery of a 11,500 year old house in Alaska that probably belonged to some of the first people to migrate to the Americas over the Bearing Land Bridge during the last Ice Age. Just 500 years later the Land Bridge was submerged by rising sea levels.

It’s a good article to go to for our discussion of human migration patterns. It also has the added poignancy of the fact that, at the end, the home was turned into a burial crypt for a young member of the family.

Modern Evolution

NYU scientists have traced the evolution of tomcod fish that’s been driven by pollution in the Hudson River. The NPR article is nice because it really breaks down how fish with the right genes preferentially survived the PCBs and dioxins in the river, and passed their genes on.

It also turns out that the fish “selected” for pollution tolerance end up being more sensitive to other things, like high water temperatures. It really puts, “survival of the fittest” in context. The fish are “fit” for polluted rivers, but not “fit” for warmer water.

The Economy and Revolution

Vali Nasr’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition talks about what it takes to make a successful revolution. Particularly, they focus on the need for a vibrant, educated, middle-class for a successful transition to democracy.

Another key, and I think essential point, is that the Egyptian protesters share the same global-citizenship values that Brazilians, South Koreans, and even Europeans and American, share. That they have these values, from years of communication with the outside world, offers the best chance that this revolution will be successful.

Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French Revolution because the former was a conservative revolution, the colonists were fighting to regain rights that had lost, while the latter were trying to impose an ideal of democracy and equality that they had no experience with. He was right; the French revolution lead to the Terror then eventually to Napoleon and the restoration of the aristocracy.