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Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Ever wonder if your insecurities about math will be passed down to your children? You’re not alone. Many parents who struggled with math in the past believe that their children may have similar problems in the future. Relax. Remedial and even advanced math skills are not genetic.

You can help your child acquire a love of math by turning everyday activities into learning opportunities.

According to Dr. Andrea Pastorok, education psychologist for Kumon Math and Reading Centers, fostering a child’s love of math should be fun and stress-free. “Children have a natural ability to reason and problem solve. Parents who show enthusiasm for math will help build these important skills needed for life,” says Pastorok.

Here are some simple activities that can make learning seem more like child’s play:

• Draw a large number on a piece of paper and encourage your child to transform the number into his favorite animal, food, person or imaginary character.

•Involve your child in measuring ingredients when you cook or in figuring out if a container is big enough to hold her toy cars and blocks.

•Ask your child to count each apple slice or pretzel while dividing snacks onto two plates to share with a sibling or friend.

• When you ask for something, ask for a certain number. (“Can I please have five crayons?”)

• Count together daily; count cars, trees, homes, stoplights. Each day, add a few numbers to your child’s vocabulary.

• Teach fractions by cutting a whole sandwich in half and then in fourths, showing the relationship between “whole, half and fourths” -and then have your child put the sandwich together as a whole.

• Hands should be washed for a minimum of 10 seconds. Have your child count to 10 or 15 each time he washes his hands.
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Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898-1976) was an agronomist. During the reign of Lenin and Stalin years in the Soviet Union, he became the chief proponent of the work of the self-taught plant breeder Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin (1855-1935) and his brand of Lamarckism – a pre-Darwinian theory of evolution of the species proposed in the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). He was appointed as the president (1938-56) of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the director (1940-65) of the Institute of Genetics, USSR Academy of Sciences. The leadership of the USSR believed his promises to deliver rapid increases in crop yields.

Lamarck proposed that organisms can inherit traits acquired by their ancestors. The first giraffes stretched their necks to eat leaves on tall trees. Their offspring acquired this elongated neck and the desire to further stretch it. A species with long necks was born.

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Geothermal energy is often viewed as a relatively new form of alternative energy. In truth, the use of geothermal energy stretches far back into the past.

Looking To The Past Of Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is literally, “earth heat”. This type of energy’s name comes from two Greek words: “geo” meaning earth, and “therme”, which means heat. While it may seem that the use of geothermal energy is a relatively new idea, it is actually an ancient practice. Many different cultures have used geothermal power to their advantage, dating back to some of the Earth’s earliest civilizations.
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Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, cartographer, engineer, scientist and inventor in the 15th century. Yet, despite his genius, he referred to himself as “senza lettere” (the illiterate, the man without letters). For good reason: until late in life, he was unable to read, or write, Latin, the language used by virtually all other Renaissance intellectuals, the lingua franca, akin to English today. Nor was he acquainted with mathematics until he was 30.

Leonardo was born out of wedlock but was raised by his real father, a wealthy Florentine notary. He served at least ten years (1466-1476) as Garzone (apprentice) to Andrea del Verrocchio and painted details in Verrocchio’s canvasses. Only in 1478, when he was 26, did he become independent.

He was not off to an auspicious start. He never executed his first commission (an altarpiece in the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio della Signoria, Florence’s town hall). His first large paintings were left unfinished (“The Adoration of the Magi” and “Saint Jerome”, both 1481).

Most of the sketches and studies for Leonardo’s works of art and engineering are found on his shopping lists, personal notes, and personal expenditure ledgers.

No one was allowed to enter Leonardo’s den, where he kept, as Giorgio Vasari in “Lives of the Artists”, describes: “a number of green and other kinds of lizards, crickets, serpents, butterflies, locusts, hats, and various strange creatures of this nature”.

Leonardo’s clients were often dissatisfied with his glacial pace, lack of professional discipline, and inability to conclude his assignments. He was frequently involved in litigation. The Cofraternity of the Immaculate Conception sued him when he failed to produce the Virgin on the Rocks, an altarpiece they commissioned from him in 1483. The court proceedings lasted 10 years. The head of Jesus in “The Last Supper” was left blank because Leonardo did not dare to paint a human model, nor did he trust his imagination sufficiently. Leonardo worked four years on the Mona Lisa but never completed it, either. He carried it with him wherever he went.
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