CHICAGO — They’re the kids who fall through the cracks, the ones who rarely get extra attention or tutoring – who, very often, disappear even from the statistics. But high school dropouts are getting increasing attention as groundbreaking studies show how alarming the problem is. Nearly a third of high school students don’t graduate on time; among blacks, Hispanics, and native Americans, it’s almost half. Now, a new survey, released Thursday, suggests that the problem, while deep, can be fixed. Most students don’t drop out because they can’t do the work. Nearly 90 percent had passing grades when they left school, according to the survey of dropouts by Civic Enterprises. Their major reason for opting out? The classes were too boring. “We’ve gone in and talked face to face with kids who have dropped out of school. What they’re telling us debunks popular assumptions,” says John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises and one of the authors of the survey. “The problem is solvable.” Such findings will be key as states begin tackling the issue. Already this year, Massachusetts, Colorado, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Indiana, among others, are seeking to raise the legal dropout age or […]
WASHINGTON — Pesticides linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders contaminate almost all of the nation’s rivers and streams and most fish found in them, but seldom at concentrations likely to affect people, government scientists said Friday. Though the pesticides were less common in ground water, the U.S. Geological Survey’s study of data between 1992 and 2001 found them present in streams in both urban and agricultural areas at concentrations that could affect aquatic life or fish-eating wildlife. Robert Hirsch, the USGS associate director for water, said that “while the use of pesticides has resulted in a wide range of benefits to control weeds, insects, and other pests, including increased food production and reduction of insect-borne disease, their use also raises questions about possible effects on the environment, including water quality.” About 40 pesticides of 100 that were studied accounted for most of the findings in water, fish and sediment. Three herbicides used mainly on farms, atrazine, metolachlor, and cyanazine, were the most frequently detected in agricultural streams. Three herbicides used commonly in cities, simazine, prometon, and tebuthiuron, showed up more often in urban streams. The pesticides also showed up more than 90 percent of […]
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said it saw unprecedented signs pointing to a looming La Nina, a phenomenon that originates off the western coast of South America but can disrupt weather patterns in many parts of the globe. In a press release, the Geneva-based agency said temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific had been between 0.5 and 1.0 C (0.9 and 1.8 F) below normal since the start of the 2006. “Combined with broader tropical Pacific ocean and atmosphere conditions, this is consistent with the early stages of a basin-wide La Nina event,” it said. “(…) It is unprecedented in the historical record for a La Nina of substantial intensity or duration to develop so early in the year.” La Nina, which has the opposite effects to the more notorious El Nino, last occurred from mid-1998 to early 2001. Under La Nina, the sea-surface temperature in the central and eastern tropical Pacific falls below normal. This typically brings far dryer weather to the southwestern United States, Florida and western Latin America and above-average rainfall to Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. But there can also be a knock-on much further afield, […]
The pristine forests of Papua New Guinea are at risk of being wiped out through illegal and unsustainable logging by a timber industry mired in corruption, according to an investigation by a Washington-based think-tank. Export documents validating the timber in effect “launder” illegally logged tropical hardwood, says a report by Forest Trends, a non-profit environmental organisation. Government-appointed inspectors of Papua New Guinea’s timber exports verify the quantity and description of the logs to ensure that export taxes are paid, but they give little heed to the legality of the timber operations themselves, with the result that the official documentation can give the impression that the wood was lawfully produced when it was in fact logged illegally, claimed Forest Trends. “Thus, official export documentation merely launders the ‘unlawful’ timber into legitimately-produced exports accepted by governments and retailers worldwide,” says the organisation’s report. Michael Jenkins, the chief executive officer of Forest Trends, said that a legal fund has been set up to fight the logging industry in the courts of Papua New Guinea, which harbours one of the most ecologically valuable tropical rainforests on Earth. “The system must be fixed. The nexus between the logging companies and […]
Scientists have long wondered why organisms bother with sexual reproduction. It makes a whole lot more sense to just have a bunch of females that can clone themselves, which is how asexual reproduction works. Turns out sex might have evolved as a way to concentrate lots of harmful mutations into individual organisms so they could be easily weeded out by natural selection, a new computer model suggests. The classic explanation for the onset of whoopee, about 1 billion years ago, is that it provides a way for organisms to swap and shuffle genes and to create offspring with new gene combinations that might survive if the environment suddenly changes. But some scientists think this isn’t enough of a justification to outweigh the many costs of getting together to make little ones. Just ask any single person sexual organisms have to spend valuable time and resources finding and attracting mates. If all organisms were like starfishes and cacti, which just drop pieces of themselves when they want to multiply, reproduction would be a whole lot simpler. There would be no need for elaborate peacock feathers or bird songs; stags wouldn’t need antlers; elephant bulls wouldn’t have […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
