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Biotechnology
Human Enhancement
Technology ― A Grey Area between Need and Want
Some drugs and
treatments (e.g., Ritalin, Prozac, and Viagra) blur the lines between therapy
and enhancement. The “Age of Enhancement” is being ushered in by
breakthroughs in modern medicine that not only treat the sick, but also make
the well better. In July, the FDA recognized the practice of injecting
healthy but short children with human growth hormone (hGh). Four years of hGh
treatments can add three inches of height to boys and girls with normal
levels of hGh but who are in the lower percentages of the growth chart.
The question under
debate is at what point does enhancement treatment cross that threshold
between need and want? Many will argue that enhancement is a fundamental
human right that is worth protecting. The FDA’s ruling on hGh seems to
agree with this point.
Source: Gregory
Stock, “Stamping Out Short People,” November 2003 issue of WIRED.
Monkeys Manipulate Robots
with their Mind
Experiments are
underway at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in which implants in a
monkey’s brain pick up signals and subsequently move a robot arm. The
thought-controlled robotic actions of reaching and grabbing require no
complex muscular activity whatsoever. The study was published in the
inaugural issue of the scientific journal, The
Public Library of Science. “For nearly completely paralyzed people,
this promises to be a fantastic boon, “ said Dr. Jon Kaas, a psychology
professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Experimentation using
monkeys to move robots with their thoughts is not new, but the Duke research
is revolutionary in the sense that the robots were “mentally assimilated
into the animals’ brains.”
Dr. John Chapin, a
professor of physiology and pharmacology at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center
in Brooklyn, commented that the monkeys “improve their performance with
time. The stunning thing is that we can now see how this occurs, how neurons
change their tuning as the monkey does different tasks.”
Source: Sandra
Blakeslee, “In Pioneering Study, Monkey Think, Robot Do,” The
New York Times, October 13, 2003.
Genealogy
Goes Hi-tech
For many, genealogy
is a rewarding hobby that provides great satisfaction when a particularly
elusive ancestral link is discovered. Other times, it can be intensely
frustrating not knowing where to start or when hours of research result in a
dead end. Regardless of whether you are a hardcore genealogy enthusiast or
merely curious about your ancestral lineage, DNAPrint in Sarasota, Florida,
can help steer you in the right direction. For $158, DNAPrint will send you a
DNA sampler kit that will pinpoint, say, the proportion of African to
Indo-European genes in your body. To learn more about your racial ancestry,
simply take a swab of your inner cheek and send it the DNAPrint lab for
analysis.
Source: Gareth
Branwyn, “Recreational Genomics,” WIRED,
July 2003, p. 38.
Nanotechnology
Building the World’s
Smallest Synthetic Motor
UC-Berkeley physicist Alex Zettl
has created the first nanoscale motor. Though not as small as some biological
motors that exist already, the synthetic motor ― basically a gold rotor
on a nanotube shaft ― is tiny enough that it could ride on the back of
a virus. The significance of these electrostatic motors and other
nanostructures is that they are proof that a device several hundred times
smaller than the diameter of a human hair can be manipulated and assembled
into independent working units. Such motors have several uses, according to
Zettl. For example, the motor could be used in optical circuits to redirect
light (a process called optical switching), the rotor could be flipped back
and forth rapidly to create a microwave oscillator, or the spinning rotor
could be used to mix liquids in microfluidic devices. Zettl’s work is
supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Energy
Research of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Source:
“Berkeley Physicists Build World’s Smallest Motor,” NanoElectronicsPlanet,
July 24, 2003.
Special
Education
How a Single Subgroup Can
Affect an Entire School Under NCLB
By most measures in North Carolina,
Micro-Pine Level Elementary School is doing a fine job educating its
students. In fact, the school was cited for making exceptional gains on state
tests, which garnered a state bonus for every teacher in the school. In what
is a very common scenario under the mandate of No Child Left Behind (NCLB),
however, Micro-Pine Level gets a failing rating. This rating stems, not from
low proficiency attainment levels – 86 percent of all students scored as
proficient in reading and math – but from the amount of academic progress
achieved by certain groups of students defined in the legislation. The 2002
NCLB legislation states that if just one subgroup (economically disadvantaged
students, minorities, ESL students, etc.) fails to make adequate yearly
progress (AYP) then the school as a whole fails. At Micro-Pine Level, that
one subgroup was the special education students.
For a subgroup to be included in
AYP assessment reporting in North Carolina, it must be comprised of at least
40 students. Micro-Pine Level has 45. With six fewer special education
students, the school would have been rated as successful and meeting AYP
requirements under the federal assessment guidelines – even if all 39
special education students failed. This reality is upsetting to the special
education teachers at Micro-Pine Level who, like many of their counterparts
around the country, are quality teachers who care greatly about the students
they are responsible for.
Source:
Michael Winerip, “How a Good School Can Fail on Paper,” The
New York Times, Oct. 8, 2003.
Full
School Choice
Building
Momentum for Home-schoolers
“Why is it that millions of
children who are pushouts or dropouts amount to business as usual in the
public schools, while one family educating a child at home becomes a major
threat to universal public education and the survival of democracy?”
Stephen
Arons, Compelling Belief, p. 88, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1983.
Legal in all 50 states,
home-schooling is the most rapidly growing method of educating K-12 students.
In 1980, approximately 10,000 students were home-schooled. By the mid-1980s,
that number had grown to an estimated quarter-million, and it is reported now
to be as high as two million. Studies done by the departments of education in
Alaska, Tennessee, and Washington have found that a typical home-schooled
student outperforms his or her public or private school counterpart in every
significant measurement. Perhaps the most surprising statistic is that
home-schooled students average 30 percent higher on achievement tests than
public/private schools students. This statistic is but one of many points of
interest and concern for supporters and critics. Another is that
home-schooling, by some calculations, costs a fraction of public school per
pupil expenditures. Critics argue that home school undermines public support
for education and limits children’s access to ideas and resources.
Advocates and critics agree that, whatever the arguments, as support for
home-schoolers grows, so does its influence.
Source: David W. Kirkpatrick,
“Choosing to Home School.” Article appeared in EducationNews.org,
Oct. 3, 2003.
Educational
Leadership
Assisting
Teachers to Manage their Culturally Diverse Classrooms
Demographic trends are creating new
challenges for K-12 educators, including growing cultural diversity in
classrooms. The U. S. Department of Education found that minority enrollment
in public schools in 2000 was 38.8 percent of the student body, up from 29.6
percent in 1986. Furthermore, the number of students who spoke a language
other than English at home increased from 6.3 million in 1979 to 13.7 million
in 1999.
In 2003, Futrell, Gomez, and Bedden
reported in Phi Delta Kappan that
80 percent of the teachers they surveyed felt unprepared to teach a diverse
student population. One recommendation the article made was for educators to
“create a hospitable environment for students by developing culturally
sensitive and developmentally appropriate rules.”
Source: John H. Holloway,
“Managing Culturally Diverse Classrooms,” Educational
Leadership, Sept. 2003, Volume 61, Number 1.
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The Fall 2003 issue of the Model
Schools News is now available on our Website: www.LeaderEd.com.
(under "Just Published). It features an article by Dr. Daggett on the achievement gap and an
announcement of the newly created Special Education Institute.
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