MGTutoring.com. A Rational Perspective on Education.

August 28, 2009

The Function of the Appendix

Filed under: Biology,Exercise, Health & Nutrition — Administrator @ 7:34 am

In “The Appendix: Useful and in Fact Promising,” (LiveScience; posted: 24 August 2009 07:05 am ET)  Charles Q. Choi writes:

Parker and his colleagues recently suggested that the appendix still served as a vital safehouse where good bacteria could lie in wait until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea. Past studies had also found the appendix can help make, direct and train white blood cells.

Now, in the first investigation of the appendix over the ages, Parker explained they discovered that it has been around much longer than anyone had suspected, hinting that it plays a critical function.

“The appendix has been around for at least 80 million years, much longer than we would estimate if Darwin’s ideas about the appendix were correct,” Parker said.

Moreover, the appendix appears in nature much more often than previously acknowledged. It has evolved at least twice, once among Australian marsupials such as the wombat and another time among rats, lemmings, meadow voles, Cape dune mole-rats and other rodents, as well as humans and certain primates.

“When species are divided into groups called ‘families,’ we find that more than 70 percent of all primate and rodent groups contain species with an appendix,” Parker said.

© Imaginova Corp. All rights reserved.

Calculator For Vitamin D From Sunlight

Filed under: Exercise, Health & Nutrition — Administrator @ 7:08 am

Go to Calculated Ultraviolet Exposure Levels for a Healthy Vitamin D Status and plug in your numbers. (HT: Dr. Michael Eades.) You’d want to multiply the time by 5 to get 5,000 IU instead of merely 1,000 IU.

The creator of the calculator says:

Method outline (see the journal article above for details)

FastRT was used to compute erythema [MacKinley and Diffey, 1987] and vitamin D effective [MacLaughlin et al., 1982] UV doses. The former were expressed in standard erythemal units (SED = 100 Jm-2 erythemally effective UV, which for skin type I = half Minimal Erythemal Dose, MED). The latter were computed using the action spectrum for conversion of 7-DHC to previtamin D in human skin [MacLaughlin et al., 1982] with an exponential decay extrapolation. We then defined a Standard Vitamin D Dose (SDD) corresponding to the UV equivalent of an oral dose of 1000 IU vitamin D [Holick 2004c] i.e. the dose recommended to gain all the possible health benefits of vitamin D [Holick, 2004a]. Since radiation is incident on the skin, and the response to either irradiation or oral dosing is measured in the blood, the SDD must be qualified by the conditions of skin exposure. Following the formula of Holick [2004a] that recommends exposure to a quarter of a personal MED on a quarter of the skin area (hands, face and arms), we calculated the equivalent D effective UV. We calculated UV doses for a mid-latitude midday in spring (Boston, 21 March, 42.2 degrees N, ozone = 350DU) when it is known that vitamin D can be synthesised in the skin. This latter assumption is based on the work of Webb et al. (1988) who showed that from November to February there was insufficient solar UVB to synthesise vitamin D in Boston, but by March previtamin D was formed from 7-DHC in both solution and the skin. From this we calculated the time to acquire a quarter MED (= half SED for a fair skinned person). Using the same solar exposure we then calculated the vitamin D effective dose acquired over the same time interval. This is then the SDD based on exposure of a quarter body surface area, and is equivalent to 37.2 Jm-2 vitamin D effective UV for the cloudless conditions above, corresponding to about 16 minutes of exposure at solar noon. A fair skinned person exposing hands, face and arms (ca. 25% of the body) would now make sufficient vitamin D with 1 SDD, and will suffer a minimal erythema after 1 MED (2 SED), which by definition is 4 times the SDD exposure in these reference conditions (i.e. Boston, 21 March, 42.2 degrees N, ozone = 350 DU). Darker skinned people will require both multiple SDDs and a greater number of SEDs to achieve the same effects.

Copyright © 2006 Ola Engelsen

The author also says:

(more…)

Fats, Rats, and People

Filed under: Biology,Exercise, Health & Nutrition,Logic — Administrator @ 7:04 am

In “High-Fat Diets Are Bad For You? I Smell A Rat” (“Fat Head” Blog, August 20, 2009), Tom Naughton writes about a recent pseudo-scientific study:

The point is, a high-fat diet isn’t natural for rats.  I looked it up, and rats are listed as omnivores who will eat pretty much whatever is available, but prefer cereal grains.  (They probably like looking at that American Heart Association seal of approval on the box.)  When you feed an animal – or a human – an unnatural diet, you’re going to get negative results.

The Lipid Hypothesis became accepted partly because when researchers fed rabbits lard and cholesterol, the rabbits rapidly developed heart disease.  Well, go figure … rabbits rarely attack pigs and eat them.  When other researchers tried the same experiment on dogs, they couldn’t induce heart disease, no matter how much lard they fed them.  So they concluded that dogs don’t get heart disease.  But they do – if you feed them grains.

If rats eat a lot of fat and then become lethargic and stupid, that says nothing about how a high-fat diet affects humans.  We’ve been eating fatty diets for hundreds of thousands of years.  We didn’t become fat until we started eating grains.  (And we didn’t become stupid until we started feeding fat to rats and thinking the results mean anything.)

In another rat study that hit the news this week, researchers suggested that high-fat, high-protein diet leads to insulin resistance.  Once again, we’re looking at animals that aren’t eating anything close to their natural diet.  If a high-fat, high-protein diet had the same effect on humans, the Inuits and the buffalo-hunting tribes should’ve been plagued by diabetes.  They weren’t.  But after Native Americans were herded onto reservations and forced to live on flour and sugar, they became one of the most diabetic populations on the planet – more than 50% in some tribes.

August 27, 2009

SAT and ACT Score Trends

Filed under: College,Culture,Education — Administrator @ 10:24 am

In “SAT Down and Cried Today” (Core Knowledge Blog, August 26, 2009), Robert Pondiscio writes:

The Class of 2009, who were in 5th grade when No Child Left Behind became the law of the land, and were not yet born when A Nation at Risk ushered in the era of education reform, have posted SAT scores that summon to mind a flatlined EKG.  Math unchanged at 515.  Writing down a point to 493.  Critical reading, down a point to 494.  The results are of a piece with last week’s ACT scores, which showed only one of four high school graduates are prepared to do C level college work in English, math, reading and science.

“Completing a core curriculum remains strongly related to SAT scores,” the College Board notes in a news release.  ”Students in the class of 2009 who took core curricula scored an average of 46 points higher on the critical reading section, 44 points higher on the mathematics section, and 45 points higher on the writing section than those who did not.”

“The College Board, as always, hung a smiley face on it, but the latest SAT results are a real bummer,” writes Checker Finn at Fordham’s Flypaper blog.  Looking at years of stagnant NAEP results, last week’s dispiriting ACT scores and flat high school graduation rates, Finn says “please sing out if you’ve spotted any good news regarding the readiness of American adolescents to face successfully the challenges of higher education, the workforce, adulthood and citizenship. I can’t find it.”

Happy Birthday Oil!!

Filed under: Announcements,History,Technology — Administrator @ 7:27 am

Oil 150 says:

From medicine to jet fuel, the oil industry has not only powered progress, but transformed the world. It all began in the United States in 1859 in northwestern Pennsylvania, when Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the first successful commercial well.

Oil 150 is the official website of the 150th anniversary celebration of the oil industry, which occurs in 2009.

From now through 2009, this site will be updated with information on anniversary events, educational materials, historical places to visit, commemorative items, and more.

You are invited to join the celebration and share our pride in an American-born industry that has fueled unparalled progress in lighting, heating and transporting civilizations worldwide.

Check out the Drake Well Museum’s Website!!

Image from Wikipedia.

And Titusville Oil 150 says, in a blog post:

(more…)

Some Carlene C.

Filed under: Art — Administrator @ 7:26 am

Every Little Thing” by Carlene Carter. Love this song. The video is goofy, but it works in this case. (In contrast to the video for “Think About Elvis” by Patty Loveless, which I don’t care for.) That I like this video might be due, in part, to the old toys and radios and other old stuff they show; too cool…

Some Ms. Krauss

Filed under: Americana,Art,History — Administrator @ 7:25 am

You’re Just a Country Boy” by Alison Krauss. I absolutely love that wispy, floating, soft voice…

August 26, 2009

Today’s Exercise Routine & Heart Rate

Filed under: Exercise, Health & Nutrition — Administrator @ 9:37 pm

How’s your heart rate? I checked mine today after exercising. I got this:
1. Heart rate at 4:30 PM, right after exercising for 45 minutes: 152 bpm.
2. At 4:45 PM, after also doing 150 sit-ups and showering: 92 bpm.
3. At 5:40 PM, after reading while standing up: 68 bpm.
4. At 9:15 PM, after finally finishing eating (a process than can go on for an hour or two): 58 bpm.

My exercise routine today was (with 100 = go 50 yds, make it around a bench/tree, go back):
1. Jog 100, walk 50, jog 100, walk 50, sprint 100, walk 100, sprint 100, walk 100.
2. 10 sets of walking up and down a flight of about 15 steps, straight-arming a 35 lb kettlebell; did some single steps, double steps, single arm, both arms.
3. Did 2 or 3 sets hopping up a step or two at a time while straight-arming the kettlebell (both arms).
4. Played with a kettlebell: swings, clean and jerks, this-and-that.

All done in a Houston summer. Weather records say at 4 PM it was 92 deg F, 46% rel humidity, 29.96 mm Hg. My eyes say it was overcast. This is pretty good as far as Houston goes!

My heart rate after dinner probably would have been higher if I had eaten flour and sugar products — which I assiduously avoid.

Update (8-27-09, 8:00 AM):  My heart rate was 50 bpm just a minute ago (after being up for an hour).

“AP” Courses Often Aren’t “Advanced”

Filed under: College,Culture,Education — Administrator @ 5:55 pm

In “Advanced Placement: A detour for college fast track?” (USA TODAY, 3/20/2006 11:02 PM), Mary Beth Marklein wrote:

Admissions officials at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, like those at most colleges nationwide, like to see Advanced Placement courses on high school transcripts. And like many colleges, they typically exempt students who have passed AP exams from taking certain introductory courses.

But in recent years, a troubling pattern has emerged. Increasingly, admitted students who boast AP credits “really weren’t in many ways ready for the rigor of our college curriculum,” says Edith Waldstein, vice president for enrollment management.

Like Wartburg, a number of colleges are re-evaluating whether to exempt students with AP credit from certain classes. Already, several highly selective schools, including Harvard, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, require many students to take introductory courses in certain subjects, even if they passed an AP exam in the same subject.

[T]he California study also found that taking AP (and honors) courses bore “little or no relationship to students’ later performance in college” and suggested that institutions reconsider the use of AP as an admissions criterion.

Meanwhile, in a just-released update of a 1999 Education Department study showing that the “academic intensity of the curriculum” is a predictor of bachelor’s degree completion, researcher Clifford Adelman found that, by itself, AP coursework did not “reach the threshold of significance.”

Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Our Educational System is Broken: An Anecdote

Filed under: Culture,Education,Philosophy — Administrator @ 6:59 am

In “Arne Duncan, Among the Scientists” (Curriculum Matters Blog on Education Week; August 25, 2009 12:21 PM) Sean Cavanagh writes:

[Secretary of Education Arne Duncan] also stressed the potential for the money to help states and schools recruit new teachers in math and science. Today, too many students are taught by educators who don’t know the content in those subjects, the secretary noted. He made another pitch for differential pay for math and science teachers, as well as for teachers in other high-need subjects, possibly spec-ed and foreign languages. He also mentioned the importance of increasing access to AP programs, and singled out a teacher-training program, the University of Texas’ “UTeach,” for helping produce the “next generation of great leadership” in schools. Interestingly, those remarks came on the same day that the Dallas-based organization that’s seeking to replicate the UTeach model and expand AP access said that its participating schools have seen a major increase in AP passing scores.

Overall, American schools need to churn out students with better math and science skills, said Duncan, who, as he has previously, cited mediocre U.S. scores on international tests as a source of worry.

“We’ve become complacent,” he told the audience. “We’ve sort of lost our way. This is huge challenge for us.”

© 2009 Editorial Projects in Education

And they are looking to be complacent in the future.  Sean Cavanagh, in “Grounded in Content” (Published Online: December 4, 2007, Published in Print: December 5, 2007)  gives us an illustration of the fact that UTeach seems to be the same old John Dewey-influenced mess:

(more…)

« Newer PostsOlder Posts »

Powered by WordPress