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http://www.usaweekend.com/10_issues/100110/100110parent-great-websites.html
Issue Date: January 10, 2010
Paul Wisenthal
These artistic sites are fun, safe and free. Explore them with your children to get your creative juices flowing.
1) Draw and design. Shidonni lets kids draw animals online, give them names and design backgrounds for imaginary worlds. Winner of 2009 Parents' Choice Gold Award. Ages 5 to 12; shidonni.com.
We have created Shidonni as a place to nurture kids' creativity and imagination.
We wanted to go one step further from the templates we found online and give a remarkable and personal experience, which allows kids of all ages to express themselves.
The answer was simple! Give any 5 years old a pen and a paper and see them create their own pets, friends, worlds, galaxies and stories.
Shidonni is mimicking just that. In Shidonni, kids get their own online "pen and paper" to sketch animals. The moment they do, their creations come to life ‘virtually’.
Kids can then create worlds for their animals, feed them, play with them and share them with their friends.
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2) Devise games. "Fidgit" is a multiplayer game on PBS' Design Squad site. Kids can also design and build their own games and challenge their friends. Ages 8 to 13; pbskids.org/designsquad/games/fidgit.
The Design Squad Web site is the online companion to the television series airing on PBS Kids. The site targets kids ages 8 and older, and features a mixture of magazine-style articles, interactive features and downloadable content that can be used away from the computer.
Like the show, the goal of the Web site is to give kids a stronger understanding of the connection between engineering and the things we all use in everyday life.
The results of engineering are all around us: from cars to cameras and everything in between. Being an engineer doesn't mean being a "nerd" with a pocket protector. It means being a creative problem solver, an innovative thinker and a team-player. The Pro-File videos offer a quick look at engineers with very different jobs and backgrounds. These clips just might leave you thinking, "Hey, that's cool, I want to do that!"
The Web site offers many examples that contextualize engineering concepts shown in the series, and spurs kids to explore those concepts on their own or with a parent or educator.
Together, the Design Squad television series and Web site equips kids with science and math skills, inspires them and lays the foundation they need to participate in engineering activities later in life.
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A Message From Bill Zimmerman
Dear Friend,
I envisioned MakeBeliefsComix.com as a place for you to come to and have fun by creating your own world of comic strips. My hope is that by giving you a choice of characters with different moods and the chance to write words and thoughts for them, you will tap into your creativity and explore new possibilities. After all, there is no greater force in life than the power of the imagination to free us from our immediate problems and to spur our energies to find solutions to our befuddlements.
MakeBeliefsComix is for people of all ages who like to play and explore. They include, for example, those wanting a few minutes of fun; youngsters and their parents; students and teachers; business executives trying to unwind from the stress of work, and activities directors and social workers who try to help people express their deepest thoughts and feelings. My intent is that you will regard this site as a safe place where you feel empowered to create and to test new ideas and ways to communicate through art and writing.
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4) Program a video. Create movies, music and video games at Scratch, developed by MIT Media Lab members. Ages 8 and up; scratch.mit.edu
Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.
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5) Make music. On Crank It Up!, kids can compose and record multilayered rhythms using pots, pans, wooden spoons and even the computer keyboard to create a masterpiece. All ages; pbskids.org/arthur/games/crankitup.
Welcome to the Parents & Teachers area of the ARTHUR Web site! Here's where grown-ups can learn more about the ARTHUR television series and Web site, and access lots of useful resources and activities. Use the links along the left to explore everything this area has to offer.
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Officials work to speed aid to devastated Haitians
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake
(Map of Haiti. Capital: Port-Au-Prince)
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/online-atlas/central-america/haiti-map.htm
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http://www.kansascity.com/934/gallery/1670321-a1670358-t3.html#
Elvis Presley was born 75 years ago today.
Elvis Presley is shown with his Gibson J-200 guitar in a 1957 MGM studio publicity photo. Born in Tupelo, Miss., Elvis was an immediate sensation in the mid-1950s with his blend of blues rock and rockabilly. Because of his stage gyrations, television producers initially refused to show him below the waist on screen. Critics called him "Elvis the Pelvis," but his fans called him the "King of Rock 'n' Roll." The Elvis empire grew with live performances, records, films and a grand estate in Memphis,Tenn., known worldwide as Graceland. Elvis died at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977. He was 42. (AP Photo)
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091217/ap_on_re_us/us_deep_sea_volcano
In this image taken from a May 7, 2009 video and provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Abstract:
By JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writer Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writer – Thu Dec 17, 4:32 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO – Scientists have witnessed the eruption of the deepest submarine volcano ever discovered, capturing for the first time video of fiery bubbles of molten lava as they exploded 4,000 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in what researchers are calling a major geological discovery.
A submersible robot witnessed the eruption during an underwater expedition in May near Samoa, and the high-definition videos were presented Thursday at a geophysics conference in San Francisco.
Scientists hope the images, data and samples obtained during the mission will shed new light on how the ocean's crust was formed, how some sea creatures survive and thrive in an extreme environment and how the earth behaves when tectonic plates ram into each other.
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In this astonishing image he merges into rubble after an earthquake in Sichuan, Central China
Abstract:
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 10:37 PM on 22nd July 2009
Look carefully. A little closer. This is a portrait of a man trying to blend beautifully into the background.
Whether lurking next to a telephone box or standing to attention at a cannon, Liu Bolin has made an art of becoming the invisible man.
The Chinese artist is creating more than just startling images with his works.
He claims they make a statement about his place in society. He sees himself as an outsider whose artistic efforts are not always valued, especially in his native country.
Standing silently in front of his chosen scene, in locations all around the world, the 36-year-old uses himself as a blank canvas.
Then, with a little help from an assistant, he paints his body to merge as seamlessly as possible with what is behind him.
It means people walking by while he is carrying out his performances often have no idea he is nearby until he begins to move.
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The movie is based on a novel “Five Point Someone” by Chetan Bhagat of IIT-Delhi. The film was shot at IIM-Bangalore. The beginning of the credit title shows “Prof. Pankaj Chandra (Director)” among list of advisors. He is Director of IIM-Bangalore and our (Mining 1984) alumnus.
Is '3 Idiots' the new 'Sholay'?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Is-3-Idiots-the-new-Sholay/articleshow/5414683.cms
Abstract:
Bharati Dubey, TNN, 6 January 2010, 03:35am IST
The film has grossed about Rs 240 crore in just 10 days of worldwide theatrical business and may touch the staggering Rs 300 crore figure, according to most trade pundits, by the time it finishes its run.
'3 Idiots' has overtaken Aamir's own film Ghajini's collections, which held the previous record of the biggest business done by films in the post-multiplex era.
The film, apart from breaking Indian domestic market records, in this time has also emerged as the highest Bollywood earner even in the overseas markets. The film has done well in multiplexes as well as single screens despite its seemingly English title, which is considered a deterrent in single-screen markets.
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3 Idiots on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots
Lessons from 3 Idiot Movie.pdf
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http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/108558/even-in-a-recovery-some-jobs-wont-return
by Justin Lahart
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Provided by
Even when the U.S. labor market finally starts adding more workers than it loses, many of the unemployed will find that the types of jobs they once had simply don't exist anymore.
The downturn that started in December 2007 delivered a body blow to U.S. workers. In two years, the economy shed 7.2 million jobs, pushing the jobless rate from 5% to 10%, according to the Labor Department. The severity of the recession is reshaping the labor market. Some lost jobs will come back. But some are gone forever, going the way of typewriter repairmen and streetcar operators.
Many of the jobs created by the booms in the housing and credit markets, for example, have likely been permanently erased by the subsequent bust.
"The tremendous amount of economic activity associated with housing, I can't see that coming back," says Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz. "That was a very unhealthy part of the economy."
Unhealthy but a boon for men without a college education. One in three jobs, or six million total, have been lost in the manufacturing sector since 1997, the last year the sector posted job gains. The upsurge in construction jobs accompanying the housing boom provided these workers in manufacturing with an opportunity to earn decent wages.
Now that door, too, has shut. With 1.6 million jobs lost over the last two years, the construction sector has accounted for more than a fifth of the jobs lost since the recession began.
For more highly educated workers, finance may no longer offer as many high-paying jobs as it has in the past. Thomas Philippon, an economist at New York University's Stern School of Business, estimates that the financial sector's share of the economy was nearly 20% larger than it should have been. Since the start of the recession, the financial sector has lost 548,000 jobs, or 6.6% of its work force. Mr. Philippon's estimate suggests there will be further pressure on financial jobs.
In other areas of the labor market, the recession accelerated job losses that were probably coming anyway. In November, there were 36% fewer people working in record shops than two years earlier, according to the Labor Department. There were 23% fewer people working at directory and mailing list publishers, and 46% fewer at photofinishing establishments. Those are jobs that, with the advent of mp3 recordings, Google and digital photography, were likely disappearing anyway.
But as the recession hurt already ailing businesses, workers were forced into a sudden adjustment rather than the gradual one they would have otherwise faced. The recession also provided companies with an opportunity to cut jobs no longer as critical as they once were. That may be particularly true of the secretaries and mailroom clerks that advances in information technology have made less necessary. The ranks of people doing office and administrative work have fallen 10.1% since the recession began.
"Those are the production jobs of the information age, and they're being to a substantial extent automated," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor.
The permanent loss of many jobs may keep the labor market from fully recovering for a long time to come.
Prior to the 1990s, jobs rebounded quickly once recessions ended. Payrolls fell by nearly three million in the deep downturn that extended from July 1981 to November 1982. But by the start of 1983, the economy was creating jobs again, and by the end of 1983, the U.S. job count had exceeded its old peak.
That was because more of the job losses were essentially temporary, with manufacturers and the like letting workers go with the implicit expectation that they would be hiring them back once the worst was over.
But since the early 1990s, jobs have been slower to recover from recession. After the 2001 downturn ended, job losses continued for nearly two years. It wasn't until 2005 that the job count returned to its prerecession high.
Productivity-enhancing technology and competition from low-wage countries like China made more job losses permanent. And it took time for new jobs to be created and for workers to acquire the skills needed to do them. In the wake of a far deeper recession, creating new jobs and retraining workers to do them could take even longer.
It is anyone's guess what those jobs will be. The Labor Department has done little more than extrapolate from recent trends. It expects growth in areas like health care, which has been one of the few bright spots. Given the exigencies of an aging population, that seems a fair bet.
One could also make the case that the U.S. is shifting from a consumer nation to a nation of producers, and that will lead to a resurgence in technology and high-tech manufacturing jobs.
But Harvard's Mr. Katz warns that past experience suggests such conjecture is likely fruitless. "One thing we've learned is that when we attempt to forecast jobs 10 or 15 years out, we don't even get the categories right," he says.
Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com
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http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2010/gb20100111_945753.htm
India January 11, 2010, 11:44AM EST
With big foreign players introducing models in the fast-growing Indian market, companies face new price pressure, which weighs on margins
By Subramaniam Sharma and Vipin Nair
Asia
As they prepared to launch their first small car designed for the Indian market, Toyota (TM) engineers knew they had to do some things differently. India is one of the world's hottest auto markets—and it's also one of the most competitive. So Toyota needed to design its new India compact, called the Etios, to attract India's increasingly affluent middle-class consumers who have plenty of other options for low-priced cars. "When you have at least 10 to 12 other manufacturers eyeing the same segment," explains Sandeep Singh, a deputy managing director at Toyota in India, "you will be under pressure in terms of pricing."
That's where Yoshinori Noritake, chief engineer of the Etios, stepped in. He and his team of Toyota engineers decided to rethink some basic systems to lower prices. For instance, a typical air conditioner in a Toyota car uses six major parts, with 12 workers in the factory needed to put them all together. For the Etios, which Toyota will launch later this year, the air conditioner has just four parts and needs just four factory workers for assembly. "India is a price-sensitive market [so] we made sure we designed the car by reducing the number of components needed," says Noritake.
With sales in the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe slumping, India is a market Toyota and other automakers can't ignore. At the India Auto Expo, a weeklong show that closed on Jan. 11, automakers like Honda (HMC), Volkswagen (VOW:GR), and General Motors unveiled new cars they plan to launch in India. With good reason: Per capita income has doubled from 2003, rising to $1,700 in the year ended March 2009.
Car Sales Up 19%
As incomes rise, the auto market is growing quickly. Car sales rose 19% last year, to 1.4 million, according to a Bloomberg News calculation of data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers on Jan. 8. That puts India well behind China, which last year became the world's top market, ending a century-long reign by the U.S. Still, India is now Asia's third-largest market, topped only by China and Japan, and by 2014, annual sales of light vehicles (including cars and light commercial vehicles) will exceed 3 million, according to a report by Ernst & Young that cited a forecast by Global Insight. That's up from 1.96 million in 2008.
The growing competition is already putting the heat on market leader Suzuki (7269:JP), the Japanese automaker that has long dominated India through its local subsidiary, Maruti Suzuki (MSIL:IN). Tata Motors (TTM) last year launched the most high-profile salvo with its low-priced Nano, with a price tag of around $2,500. Toyota hasn't revealed the price yet for the Etios, but the hatchback version is likely to compete with Suzuki's Swift, which sells for $8,800. An Etios sedan will likely compete with Suzuki's Dzire, which sells for as low as $10,200. Even VW, which is buying a 20% stake in Suzuki, is competing with the market leader by selling its low-cost Polo starting in March. "We are feeling very high pressure" on prices, concedes Shinzo Nakanishi, managing director of Maruti Suzuki.
That sort of price pressure means automakers will no longer be able to count on fat profits from their Indian operations. Typically, India has been a good place to sell cars, with profit margins of around 12%, says Mahantesh Sabarad, an analyst in Mumbai with Centrum Broking. That compares with 8 to 9% elsewhere, he says. Because of the influx of new passenger cars designed for the Indian market, Sabarad sees companies boosting spending on incentives and discounts, with profit margins therefore falling to what they are globally. Automakers "will have to live with a lower profit margin in India," he says.
Dealing with Profit Erosion
For many foreign players, the goal is to minimize the profit erosion. Honda, for instance, aims to lower its costs by increasing the amount of parts and raw materials it buys in India. "To be competitive, we need local procurement more than before," says Koichi Kondo, executive vice-president of Honda. The Japanese company plans to boost the amount of steel it buys locally, for example. The new small car that Honda will begin selling in India next year will be more than 80% locally sourced, about 10 percentage points higher than the Honda City, one of its most popular Indian cars.
As a role model, Honda might look to Hyundai. The Korean automaker has pursued localization aggressively and Arvind Saxena, a director of Hyundai India, boasts the company's Santro hatchback is "92% to 93% localized." Hyundai is No. 2 in the market, behind only Suzuki, and that size means "I can localize because I have the volume and a huge network of vendors," says Saxena. Hyundai now is looking to expand that vendor network further. The company has dealers in close to 260 Indian cities and aims to reach 310 by yearend, Saxena says.
There's only so much automakers can do to maintain margins, though. In the crowded Indian market, "competition can easily imitate the steps you are taking," says Centrum analyst Sabarad. "Profit margins will slip regardless."
Even an optimist like Hyundai's Saxena admits there's no escaping the price pressure that all automakers in India are facing. "Yes," he concedes, "profitability will be thinner than what one enjoyed five years back."
Sharma and Nair are reporters for Bloomberg News
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100110/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_trade
By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer Joe Mcdonald, Ap Business Writer – 20 mins ago
BEIJING – China overtook Germany as the world's top exporter after December exports jumped 17.7 percent for their first increase in 14 months, data showed Sunday, in another sign of China's rise as a global economic force.
AP – FILE - A worker stands in front of containers at the newly open Yangshan deep water port in this Dec. …
Exports for the last month of 2009 were $130.7 billion, data from the General Administration of Customs showed. That raised total 2009 exports to $1.2 trillion, ahead of the 816 billion euros ($1.17 trillion) for Germany forecast by its foreign trade organization, BGA.
China's new status is largely symbolic but reflects the ability of its resilient, low-cost manufacturers to keep selling abroad despite a slump in global consumer demand due to the financial crisis.
December's rebound was an "important turning point" for exporters, a customs agency economist, Huang Guohua, said on state television, CCTV.
"We can say that China's export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports," Huang said.
Stronger foreign sales of Chinese goods could help to drive the country's recovery after demand plunged in 2008, forcing thousands of factories to close and throwing millions of laborers out of work.
Boosted by a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus, China's economic expansion accelerated to 8.9 percent for the third quarter of 2009 and the government says full-year growth should be 8.3 percent.
Economists and Germany's national chamber of commerce said earlier the country was likely to lose its longtime crown as top exporter.
German economist Volker Treier predicted recently that Germany was set to lose the "world export championship" because of China's bigger size and higher population.
"By 2010, this title will be history, because the Chinese will simply outdo us due to their bigness," Treier told the German news agency DAPD.
He said it may not be a bad thing, either, "because if China grows, this pushes the world's economy — and that's good for export-oriented Germany as well."
China is best known as a supplier of shoes, toys, furniture and other low-tech goods, while Germany exports machinery and other higher-value products. German commentators note that their country supplies the factory equipment used by top Chinese manufacturers.
China surpassed the United States as the biggest auto market in 2009 and is on track to replace Japan as the world's second-largest economy soon. China passed Germany as the third-largest economy in 2007.
China's trade surplus shrank by 34.2 percent in 2009 to $196.07 billion, the customs agency said. That reflected China's stronger demand for imported raw materials and consumer goods while the United States and other economies are struggling and demand is weak.
The United States and other governments complain that part of China's export success is based on currency controls and improper subsidies that give its exporters an unfair advantage against foreign rivals.
Washington has imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese-made steel pipes and some other goods, while the European Union has imposed curbs on Chinese shoes.
The U.S. and other governments also complain that Beijing keeps its currency, the yuan, undervalued. Beijing broke the yuan's link to the dollar in 2005 and it rose gradually until late 2008, but has been frozen since then against the U.S. currency in what economists say is an effort by Beijing to keep its exporters competitive.
The dollar's weakness against the euro and some other currencies pulls down the yuan in markets that use them and makes Chinese goods even more attractive there, adding to China's trade surplus.
Even though China overtook Germany as top exporter, the customs agency said total 2009 Chinese trade fell 13.9 percent from 2008.
Commodities were among China's key imports, the agency said, with the country bringing in 630 million tons of iron ore last year, up 41.6 percent from the previous year, and 200 million tons of crude oil, an increase of 13.9 percent, as prices for both commodities fell.
Economists say China has been rushing to build up stockpiles at bargain prices since crude oil and other commodity prices plunged in 2008. That motive, more than a revival in actual industrial demand, has driven its recent import boom of oil, copper and other metals.
Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.
maps.google.com (CHINA)
http://www.graduateshotline.com/europe/de.html (GERMANY)
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http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/05/google.nexus.announcement/index.html
By Doug Gross, CNN
Nexus One will be a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera.
(CNN) -- Calling it their "superphone," Google unveiled the Nexus One on Tuesday, marking the online search giant's first leap into the smartphone market.
The phone, which goes head to head with Apple's darling of the market, the iPhone, is sold only through a Web store operated by Google and, unlike the iPhone and most other current smartphones, is available either with or without mobile service.
"We are very happy to be able to offer a choice," said Mario Queiroz, Google's vice president of product management.
T-Mobile is the initial service provider. Verizon in the United States and Vodafone in Europe will be coming on board later, and more operators are expected.
Already available Tuesday, the phone costs $180 with a contract or $530 unlocked, leaving the phone open to other carriers.
Among the Nexus One features Google announced at an invitation-only event at its California headquarters was text without typing. A voice-enabled keyboard allows users to send texts, e-mails or Facebook updates by speaking into the phone.
It is a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer and a compass, according to Google.
Video: Google announces nexus One
Nexus One runs the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 2.1, which is also made by Google but runs on other phones as well.
"It pushes the limits of what's possible of a mobile phone today," said Peter Chou, the CEO of HTC, which designed the Nexus One.
Google recently released the phones for use by some of its employees, leading to the inevitable appearance of videos and unofficial reviews online.
The move has prompted online chatter about an "iPhone killer," a phrase bandied about before every major smartphone debut. But reviewers who saw the phone pre-release have more modest expectations.
"I don't think anything is an iPhone killer," said Kevin Burden, a mobile industry analyst with New York-based ABI Research. "Was the iPhone a Blackberry killer? It's never going to be that one device that was promised to us a decade ago."
Google spokesmen on Tuesday repeatedly stressed their phone's openness: allowing multiple service providers and applications from multiple developers, unlike Apple's one-stop shopping approach for the iPhone.
But they downplayed suggestions of becoming an "iPhone killer."
"I think the message isn't to the iPhone specifically," Google Vice President of engineering Andy Rubin said. "I think it's to consumers. I think choice to consumers is an important thing."
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/haitiearthquakesciencewhatcausedthedisasterLiveScience.com andrea Thompson
livescience Senior Writer
livescience.com – Wed Jan 13, 12:55 pm ET
The major earthquake that struck Haiti Tuesday may have shocked a region unaccustomed to such temblors, but the devastating quake was not unusual in that it was caused by the same forces that generate earthquakes the world over. In this case, the shaking was triggered by much the same mechanism that shakes cities along California's San Andreas fault.
The 7.0-magnitude Haiti earthquake would be a strong, potentially destructive earthquake anywhere, but it is an unusually strong event for Haiti, with even more potential destructive impact because of the weak infrastructure of the impoverished nation.
While reports from the ground on the effects of the quake are spotty because of downed communication lines, geologists can use worldwide measurements of the event as well as their general knowledge of how earthquakes work to piece together a picture of what happened in Haiti.
Sliding plates
Earthquakes typically occur along the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of Earth's crust, called plates, which move relative to one another, most of the time at an imperceptibly slow pace. In the case of the Haiti quake, the Caribbean and North American plates slide past one another in an east-west direction. This is known as a strike-slip boundary.
Stress builds up in points along the boundary and along its faults where parts of the crust stick; eventually that stress is released in a sudden, strong movement that causes the two sides of the fault to move and generate an earthquake. The fault system that ruptured to cause this quake is called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system.
Major earthquakes are rare in this part of the world in part because the Caribbean is a minor plate, with a fault system that isn't as long as, say, the San Andreas, which is at the boundary between two of the world's largest plates - the Pacific and North American plates.
The unusually high magnitude of Tuesday's quake for this region is part of the reason it has likely caused enormous damage to Haiti.
Intensity and infrastructure
Another factor in the damage that a quake can cause is it intensity. While magnitude is a measurement of how much energy is released by an earthquake, intensity is "simply an estimate or a measure of how strongly that earthquake was felt," said Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst with the United States Geological Survey.
One factor that influences earthquake intensity is the distance to the epicenter of those who feel the earthquake's effects. In the case of the Haiti quake, the epicenter of the quake was only 10 miles (15 km) southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince and just 6.2 miles (10 km) below the Earth's surface, "which for earthquakes is very shallow," Blakeman told LiveScience.
"So everyone in Port-au-Prince is basically within 30 to 40 km [18 to 25 miles] of the earthquake," he added.
"The depth of this earthquake in Haiti was very shallow meaning that the energy that was released is very close to the surface," said Carrieann Bedwell of the USGS and NEIC.
In contrast, areas like the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific can experience earthquakes that originate hundreds of miles down in the Earth's crust, which would already put them hundreds of miles away from the earthquake, Blakeman explained. Earthquakes are much deeper in this the South Pacific because instead of two plates sliding past one another, one is descending deep into the Earth below the other, allowing earthquakes to originate much farther down below the surface. This is called a subduction zone.
Another unfortunate factor in the intensity equation for Haiti is the infrastructure involved.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that struck San Francisco just before Game 3 of the 1989 World Series was also about a 7.0-magnitude quake. While it killed scores of people and caused billions of dollars in property damage, the relatively high construction standards in the city kept the devastation much lower than what will likely be the case in Haiti.
Haiti is a poor country with lax building standards and high population density, which makes buildings more likely to crumble, according to Blakeman. "Unfortunately that's going to be a lot of the factor here," he said.
Experts have estimated that the death toll will likely reach into the thousands, with untold numbers homeless.
Another problem is the relative rareness of major earthquakes in the area coupled with poor public communication and education, which likely means that most Haitians were not prepared for such a disaster, as many Californians might be.
Waiting for answers
Information from the earthquake will help scientists better understand the future quake threat that exists for Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean by providing information that isn't available from the previously known major quakes in the region, which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Just how bad the destruction from the quake will be remains to be seen and likely will not be known fully for days, as reports trickle in from the crippled island nation. The United Nation and Red Cross have both mobilized emergency efforts.
"There is no doubt that we are facing a major humanitarian emergency and that a major relief effort will be required," said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Compounding the problems of the quake aftermath will likely be the numerous aftershocks that accompany any major earthquake. Though aftershocks are typically several orders of magnitude below the original temblor, they can still cause further damage, especially with the precarious building situation in Haiti.
The USGS has already measured more than 40 aftershocks above a 4.0 magnitude (including a 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude) and many more below that, Bedwell said. More aftershocks are anticipated in the coming days and weeks as the restive fault continues to react to the jolt that set it off in the first place.
"We like to think they are more repositioning of the faults in the area because of the larger earthquake," Bedwell said.
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http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1952645,00.html
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010
Illustration by Denis Scott / Corbis
When astronomers began spotting planets around distant stars in the mid-1990s, they were baffled. Many of these early discoveries involved worlds as big as Jupiter or even bigger — but they orbited their stars so tightly that their "years" were just days long. Nobody could imagine how a Jupiter or anything like it could form in such a hostile location, where the radiation of the parent star would have pushed the light gas — which makes up most of such a planet's mass — out to the farthest reaches of the solar system before it could ever coalesce. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.)
But a handful of theorists already had a better explanation at hand. The giant planets could have formed in a much more sensible location, like Jupiter did, and then migrated inward, establishing a stable orbit there. It all made sense, except for one tiny problem: this same model also suggested that a little world like Earth shouldn't exist at all; it (or more precisely, the moon-size proto-planets that eventually assembled into Earth) should have spiraled into the sun more than 4 billion years ago. A star might not gobble a Jupiter whole when it moves close enough, but it could surely swallow a canapé like proto-Earth.
"It's a problem," admits Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, an astronomer at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Or, rather, it was a problem — but Mac Low and his collaborators may have solved it. In a paper recently submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, they say that the old, Earth-destroying theory was generally accurate but lacked some key details — ones that both reshape theories about how planets form and, oh yes, allow the planet we know best to exist. (See an illustrated history of Earth.)
Here's the basic difference: when the planets in our solar system first formed, they were swimming through a disk-shaped cloud of gas. Their passage roiled and compressed the gas, and the gravity of the compressed gas in turn pulled on the proto-planets. The original models suggested that the net effect would have been to drag the proto-planets inward — and while the drag would have stopped as the gas eventually dissipated, it would have been too late. They would long since have fallen into the sun.
But those early models didn't take into account the fact that compressed gas heats up, which limits how dense it can become, and in turn limits how hard its gravity can pull on the proto-planets. Beyond that, the planets' own gravity would fling gas around — the same sort of phenomenon NASA counts on, say, when a spacecraft en route to Saturn gets a slingshot velocity boost from Jupiter on the way. By adding in both effects, Mac Low's collaborator Sijme-Jan Paardekooper, now at Cambridge, found that there are places where the net force pushes a planet inward, but other places where it pushes outward. And in between those are places where the net force is pretty much zero. "Once planets move into these regions," he says, "they stay." And that includes small planets like ours. (See pictures of Saturn.)
Eventually, the disk of gas dissipates, and the proto-planets are fixed in their permanent orbits. Exactly where those orbits lie depends on all sorts of factors peculiar to a given planetary system — how much material there is in the original proto-planetary disk, how much of that is dust and how much is gas, how big the dust grains are, how hot the star is and more. That's one reason we should expect each solar system to look a little bit different. Which, as it turns out, they do.
The new theory is one that has deep appeal to planet geeks but perhaps not as much to folks who don't ordinarily contemplate these things. But consider this: if the theory weren't right, it's possible that none of us would be here to contemplate anything at all.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/sciencemathematicsfranceoffbeat
Pi= 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288…
(Fabrice Bellard)
AFP/File – A French software engineer said he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that …
Fri Jan 8, 10:08 am ET
PARIS (AFP) – A French software engineer said on Friday he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that has fascinated mathematicians for millennia.
Fabrice Bellard told AFP he used an inexpensive desktop computer -- and not a supercomputer used in past records -- to calculate Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion decimal places.
That is around 123 billion digits more than the previous record set last August by Japanese professor Daisuke Takahashi, he said.
Takahashi, using a T2K Open Supercomputer, took 29 hours to crunch Pi to 2.577 billion digits.
Bellard took 131 days, comprising 103 for the computation in binary digits, 13 days for verification, 12 days to convert the binary digits to a base of 10 and three final days to check the conversion.
The gear cost "a bit less than 2,000 euros" (3,000 dollars), Bellard, who earns a living as a software consultant in digital television in Paris, said in an email exchange.
"It is a completely standard PC. The only unusual thing is that it has five 1.5-teraoctet hard disks. Mainstream PCs generally have only one 1-teraoctet disk."
Bellard has placed on his website details of the achievement, including the use of a high-powered mathematical engine called the Chudnovsky algorithm that chewed through the computation.
Extracts of the 2,699,999,990,000-digit outcome have been published so that they can be compared to preceding records in order to gain independent verification, Bellard told AFP.
Files containing the digits are also being offered to any outside organism keen on hosting the record, he said.
Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, kicks off with 3.14159... in a string whose digits are believed never to repeat or end.
Bellard said he was "not especially interested" in Pi's digits but more in taking up the gauntlet of writing the software to carry out the arithmetic.
"Optimising these algorithms to get good performance is a difficult programming challenge," he wrote.
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Blog of Fabrice Dellard:
http://bellard.org/pi/pi2700e9/announce.html
http://bellard.org/pi/pi2700e9/pipcrecord.pdf
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Pi in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius. It is approximately equal to 3.14159 in the usual decimal notation (see the table for its representation in some other bases). π is one of the most important mathematical and physical constants: many formulae from mathematics, science, and engineering involve π.
π is an irrational number, which means that its value cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction m/n, where m and n are integers. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends or repeats. It is also a transcendental number, which implies, among other things, that no finite sequence of algebraic operations on integers (powers, roots, sums, etc.) can be equal to its value.
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http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/108509/cramped-on-land-big-oil-bets-at-sea
by Ben Casselman and Guy Chazan
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
provided by The Wall Street Journal
Chevron is leasing the Clear Leader, which floats in 4,300 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico, to drill for oil through nearly five miles of rock.
Big Oil never wanted to be here, in 4,300 feet of water far out in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling through nearly five miles of rock.
It is an expensive way to look for oil. Chevron Corp. is paying nearly $500,000 a day to the owner of the Clear Leader, one of the world's newest and most powerful drilling rigs. The new well off the coast of Louisiana will connect to a huge platform floating nearby, which cost Chevron $650 million to build. The first phase of this oil-exploration project took more than 10 years and cost $2.7 billion -- with no guarantee it would pay off.
Chevron came here, an hour-long helicopter ride south of New Orleans, because so many of the places it would rather be -- big, easily tapped oil fields close to shore -- have become off-limits. Western oil companies have been kicked out of much of the Middle East in recent decades, had assets seized in Venezuela and seen much of the U.S. roped off because of environmental regulations. Their access in Iran is limited by sanctions, in Russia by curbs on foreign investment, in Iraq by violence.
So, Chevron and other major oil companies are moving ever farther from shore in search of oil. That quest is paying off as these companies discover unexpectedly large quantities of oil -- oil that only they have the technology and financial muscle to find and produce.
In May, the first wells from Chevron's latest Gulf of Mexico project came online. The wells are now pumping 125,000 barrels of oil a day, making the project one of the gulf's biggest producers. In September, BP PLC announced what could be the biggest discovery in the gulf in years: a field that could hold three billion barrels.
Beyond the Gulf of Mexico, companies have announced big finds off the coasts of Brazil and Ghana, leading some experts to suggest the existence of a massive oil reservoir stretching across the Atlantic from Africa to South America. Production from deepwater projects -- those in water at least 1,000 feet deep -- grew by 67%, or by about 2.3 million barrels a day, between 2005 and 2008, according to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm.
The discoveries come as many of the giant oil fields of the past century are beginning to dry up, and as some experts are warning that global oil production could soon reach a peak and begin to decline. The new deepwater fields represent a huge and largely untapped source of oil, which could help ease fears that the world won't be able to meet demand for energy, which is expected to grow rapidly in coming years.
For oil companies, the discoveries mean something more: After a decade of retreat, large Western energy companies are taking back the lead in the quest to find oil. "A lot of people can get the very easy oil," says George Kirkland, Chevron's vice chairman. "There's just not a lot of it left."
There are challengers to Big Oil's deepwater dominance. Brazil recently has moved to give a larger share of its offshore oil to its state-run oil company, Petrobras. A handful of smaller companies, such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Tullow Oil PLC, have had success offshore, particularly in Ghana, where giants like BP and Exxon Mobil Corp. are now playing catch-up.
The enormous investments of time and money required for such projects have made many experts skeptical that they can ease the long-term pressure on global oil supplies. The scale of the projects means that few smaller companies have the resources to take them on. Devon Energy Corp., an independent producer based in Oklahoma City, recently announced plans to abandon its deepwater-exploration business to focus on less-expensive onshore projects, which is says will produce a better return.
"This is technology capable of going to the moon," says Robin West, chairman of consulting firm PFC Energy, involving "extraordinary uncertainty, immense levels of information processing, staggering amounts of capital."
Offshore drilling is almost as old as the oil industry itself. In the 1890s, companies began prospecting for oil from piers extending off the beach near Santa Barbara, Calif. Gulf Oil drilled the world's first fully offshore well from cedar pilings on a shallow lake near Oil City, La., in 1911.
From there, the industry pushed gradually outward, from the Louisiana bayous in the 1920s into the Gulf of Mexico, where Kerr McGee drilled the first well out of sight of land in 1947.
The push into deeper water has come in the past decade.
"What has enabled us to do that is technology," says David Rainey, BP's head of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico. "We have been pushing the limits of seismic-imaging technology and drilling technology."
Perhaps a bigger reason for the recent emphasis on deepwater exploration is that companies had few other places to go. In the early decades of oil exploration, Western companies were the only ones with the technology to manage big oil projects. But as technology spread and state-run oil companies became more sophisticated, foreign governments have relied less on outside help and have demanded greater control of their own oil resources.
With a few exceptions, state-run companies have largely stayed out of the deep water, with its enormous technical challenges and multibillion-dollar investment requirements. Western companies have steadily pushed farther offshore, not just in the Gulf of Mexico but in places like Nigeria, Malaysia, Norway and Australia.
At the same time, traditional oil fields have begun to dry up. In Mexico, the world's seventh-largest oil producer, daily production has dropped 23% since 2004 as output from its giant Cantarell field fell sharply. Other countries have seen their own, mostly smaller, declines.
Falling output from old fields has stoked fears that world-wide production could be nearing its peak. Global oil reserves -- a measure of oil that has been found but not yet produced -- fell in 2008 for the first time in a decade, according to BP's annual statistical review. Moreover, there are signs demand could soon catch up to supply. Global oil consumption has risen by 5.4 million barrels a day in the past five years, while production has risen by just 4.8 million barrels a day.
Such fears helped drive a rapid run-up in oil prices to nearly $150 a barrel in July 2008. The global recession cooled demand, driving down prices, although many experts expect prices to rise again when the economy recovers. Already, prices have rebounded to about $80 a barrel, from under $35 in December 2008.
Rising prices have spurred offshore exploration. By 2008, about 8% of global oil production came from deepwater fields.
Yet even the biggest deepwater projects aren't enough to put a dent in global supply problems on their own. The world's largest deepwater platform, BP's Thunder Horse in the Gulf of Mexico, produces 250,000 barrels of oil a day, just 0.3% of global consumption.
"These discoveries are changing the debate," says Ed Morse, chief economist for LCM Commodities, a brokerage firm. What remains unclear, he says, is whether the deepwater projects will ensure that new discoveries continue to meet demand.
Many in the industry argue the new fields have expanded the limits of where the industry can find oil, potentially delaying a decline in global production.
"There are vast unexplored areas in deep water, so tremendous opportunities for growth," says Steven Newman, president of Transocean Ltd., which owns the Clear Leader rig.
The push into deeper water hasn't always been smooth sailing. Offshore projects are expensive, time-consuming and prone to failure. Chevron boasts of a 45% exploration overall success rate in recent years, a remarkable run by industry standards, but one that also means the company has spent billions on projects that haven't panned out.
Chevron's successes have outweighed its failures. It was expected to be the fastest-growing big oil company in 2009, as measured by oil production, in large part because of new offshore projects in the Gulf of Mexico and off Brazil. Other companies that have embraced offshore exploration, such as BP, are also seeing big growth, while those that haven't are scrambling.
Exxon, which hasn't emphasized deepwater exploration as much as competitors, recently offered $4 billion for a stake in an oil field off the coast of Ghana.
Chevron made its big offshore bet in the 1990s, when it began buying up leases in the Gulf of Mexico that were in such deep water, the technology didn't yet exist to drill there. Confident that technology would catch up, the company in 1996 bid in and won a U.S. government auction for the right to explore for oil in several areas of the gulf, in hopes that a fraction would turn into producing fields.
Chevron then spent six years analyzing its new holdings, figuring out which were most likely to hold oil. The key tool in its arsenal: seismic imaging, a sonar-like process in which sound waves are shot into the rock, and their echoes are picked up by sensors on the surface.
Adding to the challenge: The oil that Chevron was pursuing lay beneath a thick layer of salt, which disrupts seismic sound waves and blurs the images like a smudge on a camera lens. The company had to analyze the data with supercomputers to clear up that distortion.
The analysis revealed a potentially huge oil reservoir. Even so, Chevron estimated it had only a one-in-eight chance of finding commercial quantities of oil. The only way to know for sure was to drill.
So, in 2002, Chevron spent about $100 million to sink its first well in the field, which came to be known as Tahiti. That well needed to hit a 200-foot-long target from five miles away -- akin to hitting a dart board from a city block away.
"You have to roll the dice, and the dice roll now is north of $100 million," says Gary Luquette, president of Chevron's North American exploration and production division.
Chevron's first Tahiti well struck enough oil to make it worth more drilling to see how big the field might be. By 2005, the company had learned enough to go forward with the project. That required building a 700-foot-tall, 45,000-ton floating oil-production platform, and drilling a half dozen wells to feed oil to it. Tahiti produced its first commercial quantities of oil in May.
On a recent morning, the Clear Leader rolled on the waves 190 miles south of New Orleans, held almost perfectly in place by its satellite-controlled navigation system and six Korean-made engines.
In a cabin on the ship's deck, a team of drillers in coveralls monitored computer terminals as they used joysticks to control a drill bit more than 12,800 feet below. The oil they were targeting lay another 14,000 feet underground -- an easy reach for a ship that can drill down 7.5 miles.
The well is part of a second phase of the Tahiti project, which will require drilling several more wells and expanding the floating platform -- an additional $2 billion in spending, still with no guarantee of success.
Kevin Ricketts, a Chevron engineer who worked on both phases of the Tahiti project, recalled looking up at the massive platform while it was still on shore, and reflecting on how his team's analysis had led to its construction.
"I'd never seen anything that big," Mr. Ricketts said. "I thought, holy moly, our production forecast led to that thing being built. I sure hope we're right."
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100111/hl_afp/chinapopulationmenmarriage
AFP – Chinese couples parade during a mass wedding ceremony at a shopping mall in Beijing in 2006. More than …
Mon Jan 11, 5:59 am ET
BEIJING (AFP) – More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, state media reported on Monday, citing a study that blamed sex-specific abortions as a major factor.
The study, by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country's population of 1.3 billion, the Global Times said.
"Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas," where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, while noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were "complex."
Researcher Wang Guangzhou said the skewed birth ratio could lead to difficulties for men with lower incomes in finding spouses, as well as a widening age gap between partners, according to the Global Times.
Another researcher quoted by the newspaper, Wang Yuesheng, said men in poorer parts of China would be forced to accept marriages late in life or remain single for life, which could "cause a break in family lines."
"The chance of getting married will be rare if a man is more than 40 years old in the countryside. They will be more dependent on social security as they age and have fewer household resources to rely on," Wang said.
The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation's family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, as well as an insufficient social security system.
The situation influenced people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents.
The Global Times said abductions and trafficking of women were "rampant" in areas with excess numbers of men, citing the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
Illegal marriages and forced prostitution were also problems in those areas, it said.
Authorities put the normal male-female ratio at between 103-107 males for every 100 females. But in 2005, the last year for which data were made available, there were 119 boys for every 100 girls, the newspaper said.
However, the study said that in some areas the male-female ratio was as high as 130 males for every 100 females, a report by the Mirror Evening newspaper said.
The report said the study urged the government to relax the so-called "one-child" policy and study the possibility of encouraging "cross-country marriages."
China first implemented its population control policy in 1979, generally limiting families to one child, with some exceptions for rural farmers, ethnic minorities and other groups.
It has said the policy has averted 400 million births.
Researchers said the gender imbalance problem cropped up in the late 1980s when the use of ultrasound technology became more prevalent.
This allowed women to easily determine the sex of their foetuses, leading to an increased number of sex-selective abortions.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100112/en_nm/us_health
Mon Jan 11, 8:17 pm ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Couch potatoes, beware. Sitting in front of the television for hours daily could shorten your life, according to an Australian study.
This is what all reality TV is coming to: People Watching People Watching People Watching People Watching TV
(http://fx.worth1000.com/entries/405215/people-watching)
Researchers from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in the state of Victoria tracked the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults and found that each hour spent in front of the TV daily increased the risk of dying earlier from cardiovascular disease.
The study, published in "Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association," found every hour in front of the TV was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death from all causes, a 9 percent higher risk of cancer death, and an 18 percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) related death.
"Compared with people who watched less than two hours of television daily, those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death," the researchers said in a statement.
The researchers said this association held regardless of other independent and common cardiovascular disease risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, unhealthy diet, excessive waist circumference, and leisure-time exercises.
Researcher David Dunstan said the study focused specifically on television watching but the findings suggest that any prolonged sedentary behavior, such as sitting at a desk or in front of a computer, may pose a health risk.
"The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time," said Dunstan, head of the institute's physical activity laboratory in the division of metabolism and obesity.
"Technological, social, and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to - consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continue to shrink.
"For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another -- from the chair in the car to the chair in the office to the chair in front of the television."
Dunstan said the findings applied not only to individuals who were overweight and obese, but also those of a healthy weight.
"Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods of time still has an unhealthy influence on their blood sugar and blood fats," he said.
"In addition to doing regular exercise, avoid sitting for prolonged periods and keep in mind to 'move more, more often'. Too much sitting is bad for health."
The researchers interviewed 3,846 men and 4,954 women aged 25 and older who underwent oral glucose-tolerance tests and provided blood samples so researchers could measure biomarkers such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
Participants were enrolled from 1999 and followed through 2006 and reported their television-viewing habits.
(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03adult-t.html
Illustration from istockphoto.com
GRAY MATTER Neurons make new connections during learning.
By BARBARA STRAUCH
Published: December 29, 2009
I LOVE reading history, and the shelves in my living room are lined with fat, fact-filled books. There’s “The Hemingses of Monticello,” about the family of Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress; there’s “House of Cards,” about the fall of Bear Stearns; there’s “Titan,” about John D. Rockefeller Sr.
Illustration from iphotostock.com
A really old brain — from a 19th-century textbook.The problem is, as much as I’ve enjoyed these books, I don’t really remember reading any of them. Certainly I know the main points. But didn’t I, after underlining all those interesting parts, retain anything else? It’s maddening and, sorry to say, not all that unusual for a brain at middle age: I don’t just forget whole books, but movies I just saw, breakfasts I just ate, and the names, oh, the names are awful. Who are you?
Brains in middle age, which, with increased life spans, now stretches from the 40s to late 60s, also get more easily distracted. Start boiling water for pasta, go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — all thoughts of boiling water disappear. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, fall into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begin daydreaming.
Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way, is this a brain that should be in school?
As it happens, yes. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that inducement overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age.
Many longheld views, including the one that 40 percent of brain cells are lost, have been overturned. What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons.
One explanation for how this occurs comes from Deborah M. Burke, a professor of psychology at Pomona College in California. Dr. Burke has done research on “tots,” those tip-of-the-tongue times when you know something but can’t quite call it to mind. Dr. Burke’s research shows that such incidents increase in part because neural connections, which receive, process and transmit information, can weaken with disuse or age.
But she also finds that if you are primed with sounds that are close to those you’re trying to remember — say someone talks about cherry pits as you try to recall Brad Pitt’s name — suddenly the lost name will pop into mind. The similarity in sounds can jump-start a limp brain connection. (It also sometimes works to silently run through the alphabet until landing on the first letter of the wayward word.)
This association often happens automatically, and goes unnoticed. Not long ago I started reading “The Prize,” a history of the oil business. When I got to the part about Rockefeller’s early days as an oil refinery owner, I realized, hey, I already know this from having read “Titan.” The material was still in my head; it just needed a little prodding to emerge.
Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.
The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”
Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.
Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.
“There’s a place for information,” Dr. Taylor says. “We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”
Such stretching is exactly what scientists say best keeps a brain in tune: get out of the comfort zone to push and nourish your brain. Do anything from learning a foreign language to taking a different route to work.
“As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses,” Dr. Taylor says. “We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up. And if you learn something this way, when you think of it again you’ll have an overlay of complexity you didn’t have before — and help your brain keep developing as well.”
Jack Mezirow, a professor emeritus at Columbia Teachers College, has proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma,” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”
Dr. Mezirow developed this concept 30 years ago after he studied women who had gone back to school. The women took this bold step only after having many conversations that helped them “challenge their own ingrained perceptions of that time when women could not do what men could do.”
Such new discovery, Dr. Mezirow says, is the “essential thing in adult learning.”
“As adults we have all those brain pathways built up, and we need to look at our insights critically,” he says. “This is the best way for adults to learn. And if we do it, we can remain sharp.”
And so I wonder, was my cognitive egg scrambled by reading that book on Thomas Jefferson? Did I, by exploring the flaws in a man I admire, create a suitably disorienting dilemma? Have I, as a result, shaken up and fed a brain cell or two?
And perhaps it doesn’t matter that I can’t, at times, recall the given name of the slave with whom Jefferson had all those children. After all, I can Google a simple name.
Sally.
Barbara Strauch is The Times’s health editor; her book “The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain” will be published in April.
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Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP