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SAN DIEGO — It's always tough being the other woman, and no one knows that better than Emma Stone.
In the franchise reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, the 22-year-old actress plays Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's first comic-book love. It's her job to make fans forget Spidey's famous red-haired love Mary Jane Watson and Kirsten Dunst, the actress who portrayed her in the first three Spider-Man films.
"I was so, so excited to learn about Gwen because (I) hadn't read the comic book growing up and my experience was with the Sam Raimi movies. . . . I always assumed that Mary Jane was his first love," Stone said in an exclusive interview with Postmedia News at ComicCon, the annual pop culture convention in San Diego. "Now I've become so hyper-protective of Gwen, the way she affected Peter and what happened with him and Mary Jane later on . . . his reaction to Mary Jane is different because of Gwen."
During a news conference on Friday at ComicCon, Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad called Peter Parker's romance with Gwen Stacy "probably the greatest love story in Marvel (history)."
"I just thought her story was epic," Stone said. "When you hear the story of Gwen Stacy for the first time, I'm sure at any age it floors you."
The re-imagined Spidey recently finished shooting and is slated to hit screens in July 2012. Stone will be front and centre in the biggest film of next summer, but is also all over current summer efforts. She co-stars in Friends with Benefits, which is currently in theatres and will star in Crazy, Stupid, Love, which opens in wide release July 29.
While plot details of the Spider-Man film are being kept largely under wraps, Gwen Stacy's story in the comic books is littered with drama and tragedy. Her police-chief father dies at the hands of falling debris during one of Spider-Man's battles, something she blames the hero for. Stacy herself later dies at the hands of the Green Goblin; the incident shocked the comic-book world in 1973 because a superheroes' failure had never had such dire consequences before.
Stone also says her character "couldn't be any more different than Mary Jane," who in the films was a struggling, poor actress with a verbally abusive father.
"(Gwen) grew up on the upper east side (of New York), had a very stable family — a daddy's girl," she said. "Her father was the police chief . . . she's the oldest in her family (and) she has younger brothers. She is very responsible and very protective of her family and she loves science, she is a valedictorian. She has her whole life planned out for her and then she gets to know Peter . . . . They teach each other so much because they're from two so totally different backgrounds and experiences . . . he's never really known sit-down family dinners with siblings and parents and what it's like to grow up in one house your whole life and be under the thumb of your father."
Stone said Gwen offers Parker a world of stability, of a family unit not marred with parental loss and, beyond physical allure, the two also forge an intellectual connection over their shared love of science.
"And they're first loves," she added. "So that alone will give you so much as a person."
As for the new man behind the mask, Stone said Andrew Garfield, a lifelong fan of the comic, was practically born to play the role.
"The most important thing in anyone who is going to play Peter Parker . . . is that they truly love Spider-Man and Peter Parker and want to protect them and do them proud," she said. "And Andrew truly loves Spider-Man and truly loves Peter Parker, and seems to really understand his flesh and blood. Peter is in his bones . . . . At the camera test, we'd be talking in-between (takes) while they were setting up and the camera would turn on and his body would change and his face would change . . . truly, I feel like this is a crazy thing to say, but it's not. He became Peter before all of our eyes. He goes from 27 to 17 in a span of seconds. It's like nothing I've ever seen before, it's fantastic."
Stone said the film makes a conscious choice to be more gritty, dark and grounded in our everyday reality.
"One of the major reasons they wanted to tell this version of the story (is) to kind of get up close and personal with Peter and into the really intimate details of how he grew, not just into becoming Spider-Man, but how he grew to become the Peter Parker we see today. What his experience was as a child and what his relationship was with his father . . . and the story of Gwen Stacy, which we've never seen before cinematically.
"There are just a lot of elements that are really grounded and earthbound," she said. "They just happen to take place in this world where an ordinary boy becomes super-human . . . . That was definitely the draw for me wanting to be part of it. It felt like us sitting here talking and you forget, in a minute, (he's) going to swing away. He just happens to be Spider-Man and things proceed from there that are extraordinary, but his actual outlook, his reasoning, his relationships are right here on Earth with us."
The film's director, Marc Webb, who spun a magical onscreen romance in 500 Days of Summer, said to "expect great things" from Stone and Garfield's performance on screen together
"That's one of the things that has made Spider-Man very unique in terms of the comics — there is a really tender, romantic quality to it," he said at ComicCon. "And that's something that has always fascinated me about cinema, is good romance, and that was something really fun to explore with Andrew and Emma, who did such great work on screen. We just finished shooting and I'm having so much fun putting together the scenes with Andrew and Emma. There is such tenderness and honesty in that. One of the reasons I wanted to make the film is to explore that very important part of the Spider-Man mythology."


text: Awesome just barely begins to describe this DVD. For someone without access to a certified teacher of systema like myself, this kind of study material is invaluable. There is enough information in the STRIKES DVD to keep me practicing and re-watching for years to come. Although the strikes may not s..read more >>

subset: commoncrawl


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Macerich Co., the developer behind Flatiron Crossing in Broomfield and Twenty Ninth Street in Boulder, isn't usually in the business of hosting religious processions in its mall parking lots.
But when it allowed a Good Friday event featuring a costumed Jesus, prisoners and Roman guards at a Phoenix mall last year, hundreds of shoppers turned out from the heavily Hispanic community, where re-enactments of the Stations of the Cross are a major occasion.
The response proved to Macerich that its program to attract the surrounding population to its malls was working.
A small but growing number of real estate owners and developers are tapping into the same demographic change U.S. politicians have begun to recognize.
Two ethnic groups — Hispanics and Asian-Americans — are expected to see their population and buying power soar in the coming years. And several demographic experts project that non-Hispanic whites will be a minority nationally by 2040 or 2050.
If mall and shopping center owners fail to adapt to the changing demographic makeup of the country, they risk seeing their properties become mausoleums of a less-diverse American past.
"It's a bunch of guys trying to build for a (white) world that's no longer growing. But there are those individuals out there that are seeing the growth in different ways. They're picking it apart and making some big money off of it," said James Chung, president of the strategy and research firm Reach Advisors.
Many developers focusing on ethnic shoppers have come to the rescue of dying malls and shopping centers throughout the United States.
In California, Primestor Development is transforming the 850,000-square-foot Baldwin Hill Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles into an Hispanic-focused mall, plowing in up to $40 million for renovations. Further south in Irvine, Diamond Development Group has created Diamond Jamboree, with small service-oriented tenants, such as doctors' offices, anchored by an Asian food market. In Atlanta, a vacant 220,000-square-foot furniture store has been converted into Global Mall, the largest U.S. mall targeting consumers whose roots are in southern India.
Desert sky brightens
Macerich is in the forefront of large, publicly traded mall owners courting the growing numbers of ethnic shoppers. Two years ago it teamed up with Legaspi Co, a consultant and operator of Hispanic-oriented malls, to help Desert Sky Mall. Occupancy at the Phoenix mall had fallen to 77 percent from over 90 percent as the demographic makeup of its trade area shifted.
Several changes were made, including converting a vacant Mervyns store into a mercado — Spanish for market — with scores of small shops and stands. Occupancy at the mall is now back up to 90 percent.
With the success of Desert Sky, Macerich and Legaspi Co President José de Jesús Legaspi created Vanguardia, a program that includes marketing and renovations to transform malls before their occupancy suffers.
"We aren't about to let good real estate go that way," Macerich Executive Vice President Eric Salo said.
José de Jesús Legaspi started more than 30 years ago helping retailers reach Hispanic shoppers. His company operates or has a stake in four malls and is eyeing a 700,000-square-foot mall in Oklahoma City.
Transforming struggling malls has a lot to do with marketing, including using bilingual staff, sending out direct mail in both English and Spanish, and hosting events like Mexican Independence Day.
Not just dim sum and chimichangas
When building its Asian-focused, grocery-anchored shopping centers, Diamond Development followed the engineering workforce, which includes a heavy concentration of Asians. It found that restaurants were in demand, and leases had to include clauses prohibiting restaurants from copying each other's specialties.
But it takes more than adding a dim sum restaurant or chimichangas to the food court to attract the growing U.S. Hispanic and Asian populations.
Primestor, which has built or redeveloped more than 80 Hispanic-focused malls, shopping centers and strip malls, uses research from Pew Hispanic Center and the U.S. Census, and conducts town hall meetings to discover the types of retailers an area lacks and to gauge demand.
"We're not in the build-it-and-they-will-come mentality," said Arturo Sneider, Primestor's chief executive. "We're in the build-it-improve-it-because-they're-already-here mentality."
Developers of malls and shopping centers aimed at Hispanic Americans say they often change the facilities' physical appearance, transforming dull, fortress-like malls into festive, colorful shopping centers. Because Latino families tend to be larger, developers broaden the corridors and make common areas bigger; because such families tend to be younger, there is more demand for shoe and clothing stores for growing children.
Third-generation Hispanic Americans add another consideration. Like the American mainstream, they want the latest consumer electronics and tend to like restaurants such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, that are popular with their mainstream peers, Sneider said.
No such thing as a Chinese tie
But what works for some ethnic groups doesn't necessarily work for others. Seoul Plaza, a Korean marketplace billed as a "mall within a mall" in Baltimore's Security Square Mall, did not fare well in competition with other Asian markets in the area. Many stores closed, and the plaza has been up for sale since 2010.
In targeting Asian-American shoppers, merchants selling soft goods such as clothing and toys tend to find the going tough, said Steve Zuckerman, project manager at Diamond Development.
"The reason for that is there's really no such thing as a Chinese necktie," Zuckerman said. "A Chinese guy, if he wants to save money, he's going to go to Ross, Walmart. If he wants to spend money, he'll go to Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom."
The Macerich-Legaspi Vanguardia program has been implemented at six of Macerich's 59 malls, and aspects of it have been employed to some degree at a few others.
"There's been enough financial success here that we're going to continue to invest in this," Macerich's Salo said. "It's good business."


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Showing 1–12 of 38 results
All new Loudener Muzzle Brake for AR rifles.
Do it! Get em DD!
The city's always got a promise for you.
Might be a lie, an illusion, but it's there, just around the corner and it keeps you going.
It's a city of dreams and I'm a big dreamer.
He's a special guy, you know. Little weird but a hell of a fighter.- Darvo
You thought you were talking to Master Miller, but it was I LIQUID!
Deadpool Maximum Effort patch
Innadesert what? NO.


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Ingram: Martin A Miracle Man?
From the Monday Morning Crew Chief:
The past week produced a remarkable batch of late fall racing news. One writer's view of the top ten stories.
1. Prior to the Texas race, Mark Martin was headed for yet another runner-up finish or even third in the Sprint Cup championship. Yet again, it looked like an excellent season by Martin would be trumped by a rival driver's great season. But that was before the Jimmie Johnson bandwagon ran aground in the tight confines of the world's shortest 1.5-mile track.
Leaving Ft. Worth, it looks like there's a new bandwagon and it's headed for Phoenix with Martin, who dominated in Arizona in the spring, riding shotgun.
(Miracles can happen. On the track Martin has always loved chasing – and he might even learn to love the Chase.)
2. Kyle Busch again did not complete his bid to become the first driver to sweep three victories in NASCAR's three top touring series in one weekend, but he ended up with 61 career victories. If Busch, now averaging 20 victories a season since joining Joe Gibbs Racing last year, eventually reaches 200 career NASCAR touring series victories, should it be considered the same as "King" Richard Petty winning 200 victories in what is now known as the Sprint Cup?
Bonus: Did Busch's new crew chief, Dave Rogers, screw up with his strategy in the Cup race, given that leader Busch ran out of fuel before pitting?
(No. Rogers didn't need to worry about points and the No. 18 just got beat by the Penske team's better mileage and bad luck, i.e. no yellow flags at the finish.)
3. Kurt Busch's victory at Texas, the second Cup win of the season for Penske Racing, turned around what was becoming a rather dull ending to the 2009 campaign for team owner Roger Penske.
The Penske team failed to score a victory in the Grand-Am with its Riley-Porsche (but got beat twice by the Porsche team of Brumos Racing) and failed to close out the IndyCar title. Off the track, the team's manufacturer in the Sprint Cup, Chrysler, went through bankruptcy and the team owner went the distance before his bid to buy Saturn from GM turned sour. Petty lousy season, huh?
(It's never a bad season when you win the Indy 500 for the 15th time, make the Chase, win two Sprint Cup races and six IndyCar races.)
4. If NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship is now closer, what do you call the Countdown to 1 scenario in the NHRA's Top Fuel division heading into the finale in Pomona? Beyond close. Tony Schumacher and Larry Dixon, separated by a point, and Cory McClenathan all have a shot to win the title depending on how many rounds they go in Pomona this weekend.
(When you have four pro divisions like the NHRA, it's practically Jimmie Johnson-proof.)
5. Toyota has left the F1 building – but only after spending an estimated $2.5 billion dollars without winning a race since 2002.
(And Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo says it's the mismanagement of the F1 series by the FIA that is the problem?)
6. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is likely to sign Danica Patrick to drive a partial schedule in JR Motorsport's entries in the Nationwide Series next year. On a team that has good equipment, can the diminutive Patrick surprise some people by how well she runs?
("You don't carry the car," said Janet Guthrie, "you drive it.")
7. The US F1 team was again predicted to be most likely to fail to make the grid in Bahrain for the F1 season opener in 2010 on the strength of rumors about its schedule for crash-testing, which is mandatory for all teams. It seems people who are not afraid of using the rumor mill are lining up to grab the entry that belongs to US F1, a signatory to the Concorde agreement in June.
(How fast the car runs, one would think, is more important than how quickly you build it.)
8. Formula One is headed back to the following: a) Great Britain, b) France and c) the United States.
This information is based on:
a) kind words from Formula One commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone about Silverstone after Donington Park's bid to host the British Grand Prix in 2010 was stillborn due to financing problems;
b) French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, a native of Le Mans, admittedly does not have much to do in his job under President Nicolas Sarkozy other than push for the return of F1 to France. The recently elected FIA president, Frenchman Jean Todt, would also like to see the return of the French Grand Prix.
c) newly elected FIA Senate President Nick Craw has acknowledged that the FIA is looking to placate its remaining manufacturers by returning to the U.S. on a street circuit.
(As usual in F1, believe it when you see it.)
9. Scott Sharp became the latest driver to win a championship and then get demoted, traded or fired, depending on one's point of view. In Sharp's case, after co-driving with David Brabham to the LMP1 championship in the American Le Mans Series for Acura, he has moved on to GT2 competition as an owner/driver on his new two-car Ferrari team. Sharp's replacement at Patron Highcroft Racing, which is expected to continue running Acuras under a leasing deal, will presumably be a driver with IndyCar or F1 experience.
(It'll be a soft landing for Sharp: his team retains some of the Patron sponsorship that he brought to Highcroft.)
10. American Ben Spies made his MotoGP debut for Yamaha at Valencia and finished seventh.
(Ride on, bro.)
Quote of the week: This is an excerpt from Ryan Newman's meeting with the media at the Texas Motor Speedway and refers to his ongoing complaints about the current aerodynamics on the COT when it comes to accidents at Talladega:
"From an engineering standpoint, whatever we can do speed-wise and aerodynamically to keep the cars on the ground, in particular things in the back of the car, when it sees the air first for downforce, keep the lift out of the back of the cars is what we need to focus on. There has been testing done.
"I learned some of that stuff on Wednesday morning talking to Mr. (John) Darby and Mr. (Robin) Pemberton, that they have tested. But I don't know that they have tested everything. I don't know that you can test everything. But obviously more testing needs to be done in order to make it safer for everybody. Speed is a part of it. The faster you go, the more likely you are to take lift.
"We were talking before, an airplane takes off at 160 miles an hour. We're 40 miles an hour above that at times. There's plenty of potential for a car to take lift, whether it's going forwards, backwards or sideways. We have to take everything into consideration, as drivers, as teams, as a sanctioning body, to control that situation."
See ya! …At the races.
– Jonathan Ingram can be reached at email@example.com.
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Volume IX, No. 9
This is the final edition of The Education Innovator for 2010.
What's inside...
Transforming Education with Web-based Curricular and Instructional Resources
Special Report: Unleashing Technology's Full Potential to Transform Education
- From the U.S. Department of Education
- From the Institute of Education Sciences
- Arts Education
- Charter Schools
- College Readiness and Completion
- Raising Student Achievement
- School Improvement
- Standards and Assessments
- Education Data Systems
- Teachers and Leaders
- Interventions in Low-Performing Schools
Transforming Education with Web-based Curricular and Instructional Resources
Most students are told to leave their cell phones and gaming devices at the schoolhouse door, but some schools are handing them out as students enter the classroom. Clearly, technology can motivate students, and it can deliver huge amounts of content as well as interact with students to assess what they know and what they need to learn. Technology can connect learners within a classroom or around the world. With it, teachers share their expertise and skills and reach out to experts. And technology can bridge information gaps between parents and community stakeholders with schools.
Schools that use technology effectively to support teacher collaboration, to facilitate personalized learning, and to nurture a community of learners have been found to improve student learning, especially among traditionally disadvantaged groups, according to Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. The office compared such schools with others that were also using technology (97 percent of schools reported being connected to the Internet in 2008), just not effectively. A recent survey PDF [2.56MB] of teachers by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that more than half of them thought that they had not received the training necessary to use technology effectively.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, addressing the State Directors of Education Technology programs at their conference this past month, succinctly assessed the challenge: "We're at an important transition point ... getting ready to move from a predominately print-based classroom to a digital learning environment." The Secretary expressed optimism that America's education system can make the critical transition because he has observed states and districts beginning to act.
Success nationwide can be supported by a solid plan of action, which Secretary Duncan used the occasion of the State Education Technology Directors' forum to announce. The National Education Technology Plan lays out a comprehensive vision for how teachers working with technology can transform student learning in classrooms across America.
The plan focuses on how to ensure that every student has the opportunity to graduate from high school ready for college and a career by transforming education's core learning, teaching, and assessment processes. New and emerging technologies support student success by engaging students' imagination, accelerating their work, and assuring that they have access to the most up-to-date information and instructional tools. Teachers have access to a range of tools that allow them to collaborate with their fellow teachers and experts, to better track the full range of information about their students and subject matter, and to communicate more efficiently with students and parents. Teachers and students are finding that new technology-driven assessments are more timely, more accurate, and more useful in personalizing instruction to students' needs. All of these advances are being supported by new technology infrastructures and productivity improvements.
This plan represents a five-year strategy and incorporates the research and insights of thousands of experts, leaders, practitioners, and others. The panel of experts who helped the department draft the National Education Technology Plandrew on their extensive domain experience observing how new technologies are changing the ways schools operate and students learn. The plan resulted from this advice combined with a broad, one-and-a-half-year effort to listen to the voices of thousands of teachers, students, and others at conferences, in small group meetings, and on the Web. The plan provides a model with goals in five strategic areas, with the overarching aim of achieving all of the goals by 2015.
Goal 1: Support Student Success by Ensuring Relevance and Rigor
Games and simulations are what get a lot of devices confiscated at the classroom door, but they are also one of the most exciting ways of insuring engagement and personalization. One example is SimScientists, developed by WestEd with support from the National Science Foundation. It features science simulations on topics such as plate tectonics, cells, body systems, and climate. For example, students can interactively explore the relationships among different members of an ecosystem over time. If they change the starting value of algae up or down by over 20 percent, their shrimp and alewife will be unlikely to survive the first five years. If they start with too many alewife, there won't be any shrimp left and then the algae will take over and smother the alewife. Students can assess their understanding of these relationships to improve their knowledge of how ecosystems work, learning just like scientists do.
The Internet is filled with supplemental materials that teachers and students can use to expand horizons for students who have mastered a topic or to zero in on a concept or skill for those students who are struggling. More importantly, because of the innovation and leadership of nonprofit organizations such as National Geographic and the National Council of Teachers of English and federal agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, expertly curated, user-friendly websites offer highly effective virtual learning encounters with standards-based content in all core subjects for classrooms and students. Thinkfinity, a consortium of free education websites sponsored by the Verizon Foundation, offers teachers and students a one-stop virtual destination for content in math, the sciences, the arts, and the humanities.
The Internet also gives students access to significant American institutions and their educational resources that most students are not be able to take advantage of in person. ARTSEDGE, the National K-12 Arts and Education Network that is part of Thinkfinity, provides a full range of multimedia and digital resources of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. With its recent relaunch, ARTSEDGE now offers an option for teachers and students to personalize online experiences by saving and organizing their favorite site resources. Funding for ARTSEDGE is provided by the Office of Innovation and Improvement as part of its annual support for the Kennedy's Center's Education Department.
Online courses are increasingly available for students at all levels. Research indicates that "blended learning," where online courses are supplemented or cotaught with in-room teachers, are more successful than either stand-alone online courses or solo-taught classroom courses. Online courses are particularly helpful for students in rural schools where there are not enough teachers to cover the full range of the curriculum and for students in need of remediation or enough courses to graduate. The Florida Virtual High School was the first to offer an online curriculum statewide. Thirty-nine states and many districts now offer online classes, with a combined 450,000 course enrollments in state-led online programs in 2009-2010, according to the latest edition of "Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning," an annual review of the status of online instruction in the U.S.
Goal 2: Improve Teacher Effectiveness
Online courses and resources are increasingly available for teachers to augment their instruction. Many universities now offer course lectures, syllabi, and handouts online. Carnegie Mellon, with support from Hewlett Packard, has taken this a step further with courseware, materials, and assessments adapted for the secondary level and college students, as well as for adult learners. The Open Learning Initiative offers teachers resources to brush up on – or learn from scratch – material they need to be able to pass on to their students; or they can connect an advanced student to the online resources directly. Most of the offerings from Carnegie Mellon and other universities were initially developed for postsecondary students. Some of them, however, are appropriate for many secondary students, especially remedial or introductory modules. Advanced students can also get a head start on postsecondary studies.
For teachers who are gaining the use of new technologies in their classrooms, the challenge often is knowing how to use them effectively. Research indicates that merely exchanging a high-tech device for a low-tech one – using a whiteboard, for example, as merely a backdrop for a lecture – does not improve instruction or learning. The power of new technologies is in using the whiteboard (or other devices) to connect to the wealth of content on the Internet, to interact with other learners, and to collaborate on mutually beneficial solutions. And, in addition to more effective learning encounters with critical content, today's learning technologies can instill the attitudes and behaviors students will need to be successful in the 21st century economy.
The Internet also provides an avenue for teachers to collaborate. Many sites have attempted to provide online resources for teachers. Since the quality of these sites varies considerably, several states and regional support centers have attempted to fill the gap. One of the most promising ideas, now possible with improved interactivity standards, is online collaboration with peers. The Department of Education is supporting design research on online communities of practice for educators.
Goal 3: Support Good Teaching and Learning by Measuring What Matters
The Internet has ushered in a new era of online assessments that include simulations, such as the SimScientists example above, as well as opportunities for students to show their work, write short essays, and engage in other types of performance assessments. Moreover, new algorithms make it possible to evaluate how a student arrived at an answer as well as whether the answer is correct. In an application similar to SimScientists, the Concord Consortium developed and evaluated a fourth-grade evolution curriculum, titled the Evolution Readiness project. Students in the three states where it was implemented showed significant gains in understanding of the curriculum content over those students who did not engage in the technology-based instruction. The speed and power of the new online assessments make it possible to use their results immediately to improve instruction or to tailor lessons and supplemental materials to the learning needs of individual students. The Department of Education recently announced the award of $330 million in Race to the Top Funds to two state consortia that will develop state-of- the-art assessments of the common core standards developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association.
Technology will play a significant role in the new assessments, including plans to test students using computer adaptive technology that will ask students tailored questions based on their previous answers. New technology also makes electronic portfolios highly effective learning tools. Videos, recordings, pictures, text, formulas, conversations, and diagrams can be stored and organized with a wide variety of digital tools available today. Students can use their electronic portfolios to track their progress, including assessments, teacher feedback, and personal reflections. Teachers can also use them to reflect on student progress and to support their own professional growth and development.
Goal 4: Ensure Adequate Infrastructure for Teaching, Learning and Assessment
To capture the promises of new technologies and their many applications for students, schools and extended-learning environments must be designed to meet the educational needs of all learners on a 24/7 basis. Many schools now have student information and learning management systems that can be used to tailor the learning environment to the needs of each student and to provide up-to-date information for parents, students, and teachers about assignments, attendance, schedules, and reports, as well as ways for students, parents, and teachers to interact online. Increasingly, schools and districts are integrating these systems with their transportation, library, athletics, support services, and maintenance systems in order to make information about the entire school system available to those who need it, when they need it. To speed up the progress of such cyber-systems integration, the department is working to strengthen voluntary interoperability standards so that different systems and software can connect with each other to provide that whole-school view.
At a broader scale, the department is working with other agencies and organizations to develop a learning registry that would tag educational content to core learning standards (initially on government websites) so that it could be easily accessed by teachers and curriculum developers. This linking of content to standards and ultimately to assessments will help teachers connect each student with the resources they need to continue their learning progression.
Goal 5: Focus on Key Levers of Productivity to Drive Systemic Redesign and Realignment
Technology makes possible many of the good ideas for moving education beyond the seat-time industrial model of education towards a standards-driven, highly interactive model that prepares students for life and careers in the 21st century.
Chugach School District in Alaska won the Malcolm Baldridge Award for the quality for its total redesign based on student performance against state standards. The district's curriculum is no longer defined by seat time, but by learning results. From just one college graduate in 20 prior to the reforms, the Chugach district, which has a high-minority and high-poverty student population, now sends more than 70 percent of its high school graduates on to college. Hundreds of other districts have adopted results-based models similar to Chugach.
For an increasing number of schools and districts, the expanded school day and year (see the October 2010 Innovator feature PDF (281KB)) provides another opportunity to use technology to rethink how schools can work. Online courses or modules targeted to individual students' learning needs can greatly accelerate the rate of learning and the efficiency of schooling. Add to that the opportunity for secondary-level students to take college courses online and the structure of a school becomes physically as well as temporally virtual – a space encompassing much more than its classrooms.
Onward to 2020
The National Education Technology Plan recognizes that with technology at the core of virtually every aspect of our daily lives and work, it must also be leveraged to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement. The process has begun, but only in some places and only to limited extents in America's pre-K to 16 education systems. President Obama has challenged the country to achieve the national goal of once again being a leader among nations in our college graduation rate by 2020. The National Education Technology Plan holds the promise for not only harnessing the power of technology for the benefit of achieving that goal, but doing so in a way that will ensure that success by exercising an unprecedented level of cooperation among the national, state, and local levels of our public education enterprise.
Special Report: Unleashing Technology's Full Potential to Transform Education
Societal changes that significantly affect our way of life – how and where we work, relate to one another, think and solve problems – need to be part of how we learn. Technology, particularly the sphere of it that stated a generation ago with the Internet, burgeoned into the World Wide Web in the 1990s, and has gone from institutional to personal in its applications, is a critical part of an "unprecedented opportunity to reform our schools." That was Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's message to the State Educational Technology Directors Association members this past month.
"With this ... plan, we have laid out a comprehensive vision for how we can empower teachers with technology and there by transform student learning in classrooms across America."
— Secretary of Education ArneDuncan
Titled "Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology," the plan evolved over the past 18 months, resulting from the input of a broad range of stakeholders – leading education researchers, thousands of educators and students, industry leaders, and the public. Under the direction of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, the NETP's development involved the most rigorous and inclusive process ever undertaken for a national education technology plan. The plan, as Secretary Duncan noted in his opening letter in the document, is a crucial component of administration's efforts to have America lead the world in college completion by 2020 and help close the achievement gap so that all students graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers.
The NETP presents a model for 21st century teaching and learning that is fully supported by technology, with goals in five key areas: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity. At its core, the plan responds to a central question: What should learning in the new century look like? And other follow-up questions, such as: Why can't American schools be incubators of exploration and innovation and not just information factories?
The essential question of what education can be like was pursued in the development of the plan with several key acknowledgements. First, advances in the learning sciences – what we know today and will increasingly learn in the future about how learning occurs – should be powered by technology in order to hasten the pace of new knowledge being brought to bear on teaching and learning.
Another is that contemporary technology offers the qualities of unprecedented performance, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness that can combine to drive the needed transformation of pre-K-12 education. And, given the challenges facing American public education presently, the plan voices a strong sense of urgency, asserting " ... we must accept that we do not have the luxury of time." To seize the moment, it recommends adopting the principles of process design to guide actions that can be improved through fine-tuning.
In implementing the plan, a final acknowledgement: It will take an unprecedented level of leadership at all levels, from the U.S. Department of Education to local schools, coupled with collaboration to allow the encouragement and support of innovation that the department can provide to result in the best ideas going to scale.
"Our nation's schools have yet to unleash technology's full potential to transform learning," Secretary Duncan told the educational technology leaders. He urged them and all involved in education reform to recognize the historic transition point the nation is at, and to use the new national plan to "leverage technology's promise to improve learning."
What's New
From the Department
American education is dealing with a "New Normal," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told an American Enterprise Institute forum. "For the next several years, preschool, K-12, and postsecondary educators are likely to face the great challenge of doing more with less," he said. What to do about it? Embrace it as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements, the secretary asserted. By being "smart, innovative, and courageous in rethinking the status quo," he observed that enormous opportunities for improving the productivity of the education system could lie ahead. To illustrate the vastly different ways to view the challenge, the secretary suggested an analogy of two buckets of opportunity: The first is reducing waste throughout the system. "The second ... is doing more of what works, and less of what doesn't." While a simple sounding idea, he admitted, " ... as experience shows, that simple mantra is often not followed." Among the transformational productivity reforms that can also boost student outcomes, Secretary Duncan suggests rethinking policies around seat time requirements, class size, compensating teachers based on their educational credentials, the use of technology within the classroom, inequitable school financing, and the over-placement of students in special education. (November 2010)
Results of the 2009 Nation's Report Card for Reading and Math indicate improvement in both subjects by America's 12th graders, but also evidence of a lower average score in reading compared to 1992. In addition, significant achievement gaps among major racial/ethnic groups remain in both subjects. Commenting on the report, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said it "suggests that high school seniors' achievement in reading and math isn't rising fast enough to prepare them to succeed in college and careers." The 2009 NAEP assessments were administered for the first time in 11 states in order to gain state-specific scores at grade 12. (November 2010)
Also this past month, Secretary Duncan named six members of the National Assessment Governing Board. These leaders, representing fields ranging from education to business to policymaking, will serve four-year terms for the Governing Board, which works with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as The Nation's Report Card. The Governing Board — a group of governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators and researchers, business representatives, and other citizens — determines the content to be tested and sets achievement levels for scores, and it works to inform the public about the results. (November 2010)
Outstanding teachers and principals from the 2010 Blue Ribbon Schools gathered in Washington this week for a two-day celebration in their honor. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other officials offered their congratulations to representatives from the 250 public and 64 private schools named in this year's competition. "I thank all of you for the example you set for me, and I thank all of you for the example you set for the country," Duncan said. The Blue Ribbon Schools Program honors public and private elementary, middle, and high schools whose students achieve at very high levels or have made significant progress and helped close gaps in achievement, especially among disadvantaged and minority students. During the ceremony, 10 of the principals also received the Bell Award, an additional distinction recognizing their outstanding leadership in fostering successful teaching and learning. (November 2010)
From the Institute of Education Sciences
The National Board for Education Sciences approved new research priorities for the Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Proposed by IES Director John Easton and submitted for public comment this summer, these new priorities are intended to make education studies more relevant to educators and help practitioners become more involved in developing and using research. The new priorities place greater emphasis on putting research findings into context, "to identify education policies, programs, and practices that improve education outcomes, and to determine how, why, for whom, and under what conditions they are effective." IES has also set as a priority identifying new and rigorous methods to measure outcomes in education research and building partnerships with educators and the community to develop greater "analytic capacity" at the local level. (November 2010)
Arts Education
Fifteen after-school and out-of-school programs across the country received the 2010 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award (formerly known as the Coming Up Taller Award), the highest honor awarded to such programs in the United States. First Lady Michelle Obama recognized these programs for their effectiveness in developing creativity and fostering academic success for young people at a White House ceremony. The National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award is the signature program of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and is presented in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. (October 2010)
The Big Read, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, is accepting applications from nonprofit organizations seeking funding to conduct month-long, community-wide reads between September 2011 and June 2012. The Big Read is a national program designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture. Organizations selected to participate in The Big Read will receive a grant ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, access to online training resources, educational and promotional materials, inclusion of local activities on The Big Read Web site, and the prestige of participating in a highly visible national program. Approximately 75 organizations from across the country will be selected by a panel of experts. For this cycle, communities will choose from 31 titles, including the work of several poets. The application deadline is February 1, 2011. (November 2010)
Charter Schools
Charter schools in New Orleans topped the list of districts served by charter schools in a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Citing New Orleans as the most prominent example of cities faced with the challenge of significantly improving public education and using charter schools as a solution, Peter C. Groff, president and CEO of the National Alliance, noted that the top four recognized districts shared the fact that one student in three attends a charter school. The other three districts were Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Kansas City. The recognition of these four cities is part of the annual report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools of school districts with the highest percentage and highest number of public school students in public charter schools. (November 2010)
The program guide for the "Best Cooperative Practices: Charter and Traditional Public Schools" conference, sponsored by the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, provides summaries of the 26 collaborative projects that were presented. The projects were identified through a nationwide search to find the most promising and innovative cooperative practices between charter and traditional public schools that evidenced strong collaboration, originality, inventiveness, and the ability to replicate. [See the Nov. 9 Education Week article in the "Innovations in the News" section of this issue for more information on charter-traditional school collaborations.] (November 2010)
College Readiness and Completion
The Southern Regional Education Board, in a new report, urges states to place a major focus on increasing the numbers of students who complete college degrees and career certificates toward the goal of having 60 percent of working-age adults earning some type of high-quality credential by the year 2025. "No Time to Waste: Policy Recommendations for Improving College Completion" contains 10 major policy recommendations for states to pursue, including, among others: setting specific and ambitious goals for raising the numbers of each degree type and graduation rates at each institution, system, and statewide; using better measures of progress to show education attainment levels and how various groups of students are faring; and paying more attention to college costs and targeted financial aid, high school students' readiness for college-level work, and institutional practices that can help more students succeed. (October 2010)
Dual enrollment programs is the subject of a new report from the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships that documents the strategies that six states employ to ensure that college courses offered to high school students are of the same high quality and rigor as courses offered to matriculated college students. The report, "Promoting Quality: State Strategies for Overseeing Dual Enrollment Programs," also highlights the main approaches used by these states to encourage colleges and universities to align their dual enrollment programs with state and national quality standards. While 29 states have adopted quality standards for post-secondary providers of dual enrollment, few have developed systems to encourage and monitor colleges' progress toward meeting those standards. (October 2010)
North Carolina has a new student and school accountability model that focuses on college and career readiness that will be in place with the 2013-14 school year. As part of the new Career & College: Ready, Set, Go! plan approved by the state board of education this fall, the new model has five accountability indicators: student performance, measures of college readiness, student academic growth, the five-year cohort graduation rate, and the rigor of students' high school mathematics course selections. Also included will be a requirement that all students take a college admissions exam in the 11th grade and preliminary college readiness exams in grades 8 and 10. For students not prepared for college at the 11th grade, there will be provisions for extra help, such as an academic camp preceding their senior year. (October 2010)
The new Florida Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT) has gone live to the 28 colleges in the state system. The rollout signifies completion of the first phase of PERT implementation, the development of the placement test. The test is the first of its kind to be customized to align with the new Common Core College and Career Readiness Standards. In phase two of the PERT's implementation, diagnostic tests will be created to accurately identify a student's specific areas of weakness in reading, writing, and math skills, thus enabling faculty to customize coursework to address those needs. In the final phase of the project, developmental education courses will be redesigned to address specific areas of weakness in a given subject. This will result in students being able to build their understanding of specific knowledge areas without the need to take entire courses over again. (October 2010)
Raising Student Achievement
The Education Trust honored four public schools with the 2010 "Dispelling the Myth" Awards: Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in New Orleans; Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina; Griegos Elementary School in Albuquerque; and Morningside Elementary School in Brownsville, Texas. "Each of these schools demonstrates that when tough and smart educators fully commit themselves to high achievement, students perform at high levels," said Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust. (November 2010)
The achievement gap between black and white male students is a result of more than poverty, according to a new report from the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS). When federal testing data for fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP assessments in reading and math were analyzed, CGCS researchers found that white males who qualified for free or reduced-price lunches outperformed black males from large urban districts who did not qualify for the assistance. Michael Casserly, CGCS's executive director, hopes that the report is "a louder and more jolting wake-up call" to the nation about the causes of the continuing black-white achievement gap. The report offers a number of recommendations to speed up progress, from actions by the White House and Congress to increased mentoring and counseling at the school building level. (November 2010)
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is offering educators a convenient web page with which to keep updated on the latest developments with the common-core standards. The site includes a map that helps to track states' adoptions of the standards, and there are links to related information, including ASCD resources on instruction, curriculum, and assessment. (November 2010)
In another study of NAEP reading and math results, the Center on Education Policy analyzed whether trends in NAEP contradict or confirm trends in state test scores. The study examined results in 23 states with comparable data for the NAEP assessments between 2005 and 2009 at grades 4 and 8, and generally determined that the majority of states with sufficient data evidenced gains on both their NAEP and state tests; the size of gains in scores, however, tended to be greater on state tests than on NAEP assessments. (October 2010)
School Improvement
The American Architectural Foundation (AAF) launched a new publication this fall to share the power of architecture and design as a tool for school leaders. Long known for its nationwide series of design institutes for educational leaders, as well as programs and resources for students to gain an understanding of architecture and design, the inaugural issue of Catalyst features a number of AAF initiatives, such as Voice of the Teacher, an effort to learn from teachers in schools such as High Tech High Chula Vista and New York City's School of One about the effects of innovative school design on teaching and learning. (November 2010)
Innovations in the News
Standards and Assessments
Math and science teachers in Maryland will soon be able to share lessons and collaborate with scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland, thanks to a public-private partnership involving the state education agency and the Maryland Business Roundtable on Education. STEMnet Teachers Hub, which was designed by 29 Maryland science teachers at the invitation of state education officials and business leaders, will debut next spring in either Baltimore City or Baltimore County. Funding for the initiative will come from $2 million in federal Race to the Top funds and more than $300,000 in donations from a number of technology-based corporations. [More—The Baltimore Sun] (Nov. 11)
Students in Utah are reportedly excited about school testing because of the computer-adaptive testing in place in some schools and districts. The technology behind the new generation of tests allows for questions to be adapted to each student's ability level, while also giving teachers immediate results that allow them to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. The tests, according to local school leaders using them, also provide parents with such helpful information as graphs that depict their child's progress compared to other students in both the local district and the nation. "It's the direction the whole country is moving," noted state Superintendent Larry Shumway. Utah is part of a consortium of 31 states that was recently awarded $176 million in Race to the Top funds to develop and implement computer adaptive tests by 2014-2015. [More—The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)] (Nov. 1)
High school students in two California communities don't just study DNA in their text books; they also conduct experiments such as extracting DNA from vegetables in a state-of-the-art lab. The $1.5 Center for Advanced Research and Technology in Clovis, which opened this school year, is operated by the Fresno and Clovis Unified School Districts and serves more than one thousand high school juniors and seniors who are getting a head start on college studies and possibly careers in the sciences. Behind the scenes, teachers and school leaders are challenged to find the annual funding needed to operate such sophisticated equipment as a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, which costs $10,000 a year to maintain. [More—The Fresno Bee (Calif.)] (Nov. 1) (free registration)
Education Data Systems
While the amount of student data related to schools' progress as a result of recent accountability policies has increased substantially, with it comes questions of federal and state laws governing privacy of personal information on students. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the Department of Education is helping school officials to be able to share information without running afoul of privacy statutes such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which the Department plans to amend in the near future to address new longitudinal databases and interagency data sharing. The Privacy Technical Assistance Center, now housed within NCES, will offer training materials for educators and researchers who use student data and guidance for information officers charged with establishing new databases. [More—Education Week] (Nov. 15) (premium article access compliments of EdWeek.org)
Indiana released data for the first time under its new ISTEP+ growth model for tracking student achievement based on performance on multiple years of proficiency testing. Called "Academic Growth," the new system measures how much students learn in a year in math and language arts in grades three to eight. Students are grouped based on their beginning scores and then their relative growth is tracked over time, with students ending up in three student-growth percentiles – low, typical, and high growth, which are divided into even thirds (e.g., high growth is from the 66th to the 99th percentile). The new system is awaiting review by the state legislature, which will decide if it will become the new accountability tool statewide. [More—The Fort Wayne (IN) Journal-Gazette] (Nov. 9)
Teachers and Leaders
Next year, Minnesota will be the first state to assess the real-life performance and abilities of prospective teachers, using video tapes of them executing curriculum and engaging with students. As part of an overhaul of its teacher certification process, the new program, Teacher Performance Assessment, is receiving a positive reception from the state's teacher union, Education Minnesota. The program will apply to prospective teachers for the areas of early childhood, special education, elementary literacy, or high school math, English, science, and social studies. The video tapes will be viewed and scored by a panel of independent evaluators. [More—The Minneapolis Star-Tribune] (Nov.12)
Professional development, a term in education today that is "both ubiquitous and all but meaningless," is the subject of a special report in "Education Week" that explores new developments in education policy, including the idea of "teacher effectiveness," that portend a time for a re-examination of what professional development is and does for in-service teachers. In a series of nine articles, three general areas are addressed: policy and practice, business and finance, and curriculum. Throughout the report, teachers are profiled, offering many firsthand observations on the state of professional development and prospects for it in the future. [More—Education Week] (Nov.10) (premium article access compliments of EdWeek.org)
An increasing number of school districts are shifting the focus of their teacher compensation plans to achieve two goals: better alignment of compensation with local student achievement objectives and help for teachers to reach those objectives. But whether the plans are long standing (such as in Eagle County, Colo., where teachers' pay is linked partially to both their annual evaluations and to an index of student-achievement growth), or very newly devised (as in Pittsburgh, where teachers will continue to receive small annual increases, but will receive major salary increases only through periodic teaching-practice reviews), there is "no reason to believe that that one size fits all," according to Michael Podgursky, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri. Plans of individual districts will necessarily adapt to local labor markets, the "circumstances of the places they're operating in, and the kinds of people they're attracting." [More—Education Week] (Nov. 9) (premium article access compliments of EdWeek.org)
The nationwide efforts to make the teacher-student relationship a "more powerful force for achievement" is also explored in the latest "Hechinger Report." Fueling the attention to the role of the teacher and the locally based systems that determine how they are hired, evaluated, and paid are several factors, including research pointing to the fact that "students who have the most effective teachers make gains three times as large as those with less effective teachers," according to researchers at Stanford University. There is a clear momentum throughout the country, according to education leaders such as Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. "Ultimately, it's all going to change," he notes, "and this is the period before we pick out what it is going to look like." [More—The Hechinger Report] (Nov.8)
The need for change in teacher evaluation is a major problem in Minneapolis, according to human resources officials of the Minneapolis School District, where the district's administrators and local union representatives are working together to redesign the process. The effort will be helped along by the New Teachers Project, which will use resources from a $200,000 grant to the district over the next year to help "devise a development and assessment system that both sides can support." [More—The Minneapolis Star-Tribune] (Nov. 4)
Interventions in Low-Performing Schools
African American and Hispanic students in Montgomery County, Md., are enrolled in record numbers in Advanced Placement courses, and credit goes to the school district's concerted efforts to close the achievement gaps through a school-level focus on issues of race. A significant component of that effort is Study Circles – conversations among parents who meet two hours a week for six weeks. The point of the discussions, according to John Landesman, whom district leaders brought in to help facilitate the discussions, is to help parents understand the role of race in American society. Twenty study circles are currently underway, following more than 50 that occurred last year. In one recent circle, the discussions ended in a plan to increase parental involvement, have more school-wide events to bring the entire school population together, and improve relations between parents and teachers. [More—The Washington Post] (Nov. 9)
Collaborations between charter and traditional schools, while not yet widespread, are part of the original purpose of charters – to "be a source of innovation and be a benefit not only for the children attending charter schools, but [for] all public schools," according to Scott D. Pearson, acting director of the Charter School Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Education. In Houston, for example, plans are underway to bring five tenets identified in the district's high-performing charter schools into the Houston Independent Schools (HISD), starting with nine schools this year and expanding to 20 next year. Among the five tenets are investing in human capital, providing extended learning time, and creating a high-expectations school culture. [More—Education Week] (Nov. 9) (premium article access compliments of EdWeek.org)
The New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, known locally as Sci Academy, may have some lessons to share based on its status of having the highest test scores of nearly all of the high schools in the city, save two that benefit from selective admissions. While the city has made significant strides to boost achievement in the lower grades in the district's post-Katrina era, such successes have not been replicated at the high school level. At the Sci Academy, a combination of factors contribute to the charter's success, boiling down to an "all-consuming culture" of high expectations that is fueled by rigorous coursework, dedicated teachers who field calls from students until 9:30 p.m. on school nights, and a major emphasis on teamwork among the faculty and administrators. [More—The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)] (Nov. 7)
This is the tale of two high school turnarounds – one in Cincinnati that went from a 21-percent graduation rate to a nearly 100-percent rate in eight years; the other the much-publicized Central Falls High School in Rhode Island that is off to a rocky start in its first year of turnaround. Taft High School in Cincinnati was described by one of its former teachers as "an insane asylum," lacking not just solid academics, but such extracurricular staples as a football team. With the partnership of community stakeholders, particularly Cincinnati Bell, Taft used technology as the focal point of its turnaround, even renaming itself the Robert A. Taft Information Technology High School and garnering both state and national recognition, including the prestigious National Blue Ribbon School Award. At Central Falls High School, absenteeism – of both students and teachers – is at 15 percent, a new discipline program is running into implementation problems, and a low level of trust between some Central Falls teachers and school leaders is making a major change in the school's culture difficult to get off the ground. Despite the challenges, positive developments – increased tutoring by teachers, start up of a drop-out prevention program, and a nascent parent organization – give hope to many in and around the troubled school that the long process of changing culture may be getting underway. [More—The Providence (RI) Journal & The Cincinnati Enquirer] (Nov. 5 & 7, respectively)
Office of Innovation and Improvement
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here's kenny:
"I expected to make a trade," Williams said. "[The Blue Jays] deemed my request of money off the contract was not worth as much to them as the savings of cash. At the end of the day, I have to call (Chairman) Jerry Reinsdorf and lay all the cards on the table. And [Reinsdorf] said, 'I absolutely love the idea of not having to give up some of these players,' and we're OK with the cash because of the way we structured our payroll over the years."
"We've been in trade discussion with Toronto before the deadline to try to get this guy," Williams explained of how the whole thing came together. "And the way the waiver claim was made was to A: hopefully resurrect talks. B: in the event someone else claimed him, we didn't want him going elsewhere because we targeted him not only as a guy who not only would help us in our quest for the division but future seasons as well."


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Toxoplasmosis is an infection by a tiny parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) that can live inside the cells of humans and animals, especially cats and farm animals.
If you have been pregnant, you may already know it's important to avoid toxoplasmosis, which people can develop by cleaning the litter box of an infected cat or eating undercooked meat or other contaminated foods.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about 60 million people in the United States could have toxoplasmosis, but most won't have symptoms because their immune systems are strong.
People can catch toxoplasmosis from:
Although infection doesn't normally spread from person to person except through pregnancy, in rare instances toxoplasmosis can contaminate blood transfusions and organs donated for transplantation.
Toxoplasmosis is passed from animals to humans, sometimes without causing any symptoms. When kids do have symptoms, they vary depending on a child's age and the immune system's response to the infection. (Both humans and infected cats often don't show any signs of a toxoplasmosis infection.)
In kids, toxoplasmosis infections can be:
When a pregnant woman (even one with no symptoms) catches toxoplasmosis during pregnancy and it's not treated, there's a chance that she could pass the infection to her developing fetus. Babies infected during their mother's first trimester tend to have the most severe symptoms.
A woman who got toxoplasmosis before getting pregnant usually won't pass the infection to the baby — this is because she (and, therefore, her baby) will have built up immunity to the infection. Toxoplasmosis can be reactivated, meaning it can come back, in a pregnant woman who's had a previous toxoplasma infection and has a weakened immune system. Generally, it's probably a good idea to wait to try to get pregnant until at least 6 months after a toxoplasmosis infection.
Up to 90% of children born with congenital toxoplasmosis have no symptoms early in infancy, but a large percentage will show signs of infection months to years later. Premature newborns and very small newborns show clear signs of infection at birth or shortly after.
Signs and symptoms, if they happen, can include:
Some babies with congenital toxoplasmosis have brain and nervous system problems that cause:
They're also at high risk for eye damage involving the retina (the light-sensitive lining at the back of the eye that's responsible for sight), resulting in severe vision problems.
If a child is born with congenital toxoplasmosis and isn't treated during infancy, there's almost always some sign of the infection (often eye damage) by early childhood to adolescence.
A healthy child with toxoplasmosis may have no signs of infection or only a few swollen glands that:
Most healthy kids with these symptoms won't need medical treatment unless the infection gets worse.
Kids whose immune systems are weakened (for example, by AIDS, cancer, or medicines taken after organ transplants) are at special risk for severe toxoplasmosis infections. Especially in children with AIDS, toxoplasmosis can attack the brain and nervous system, causing toxoplasmic encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain) with symptoms that include:
Although toxoplasmosis parasites may grow and multiply within a week of entering a person's body, it may be weeks or months before symptoms of infection appear (if they appear at all).
Once someone becomes infected with toxoplasmosis, the infection remains in the body for life, usually in a latent (inactive) form that won't cause side effects or harm. The infection can be reactivated, however, if the immune system becomes compromised by an HIV infection or cancer therapy.
In a child with a healthy immune system, mild symptoms of toxoplasmosis (such as swollen glands) usually pass within a few months, even without medical treatment. But kids born with severe congenital toxoplasmosis may have permanent vision problems or mental retardation. And in a child with a weakened immune system, toxoplasmosis can be fatal.
Doctors can diagnose toxoplasmosis through laboratory tests that check for microscopic parasites in the blood, spinal fluid, amniotic fluid, placenta, lymph nodes, bone marrow, or other body tissues.
More often, doctors order blood tests to measure the level of antibodies (substances that are part of the body's defensive immune reaction) produced to fight the parasites.
Genetic tests can identify the DNA-containing genes of toxoplasmosis parasites once they've invaded the body. These tests are especially useful for checking the amniotic fluid for evidence of congenital toxoplasmosis in a fetus. Obstetricians may use ultrasounds to help diagnose congenital toxoplasmosis. But these tests aren't 100% accurate and can lead to false-positive results, meaning there may not actually be an infection.
For babies, doctors ask the mother about things like exposure to household cats or contaminated food or water sources. Tests that might be done for these babies include eye, ear, and nervous system examinations, spinal fluid analysis, and imaging of the head to look for changes in the brain.
Unless someone has a weakened immune system or is pregnant, there's often no need to treat a toxoplasmosis infection — symptoms (such as swollen glands) usually go away on their own in a few weeks or months. However, kids should always be checked by a doctor because swollen glands can be a sign of other illnesses.
If a pregnant woman gets infected, her doctor and an infectious disease specialist work together to create a treatment plan. Research has shown that treating the mother can help make the infant's disease less severe, but it won't necessarily prevent the infant from getting toxoplasmosis.
Children born with congenital toxoplasmosis are treated with different combinations of anti-toxoplasmosis medications, usually for 1 year after birth. A specialist will decide which medicines to use and for how long.
In healthy older kids who develop serious toxoplasmosis infections, treatment usually lasts 4 to 6 weeks (or for at least 2 weeks after symptoms are gone). Kids with weakened immune systems often need to be hospitalized when they develop toxoplasmosis, and those with AIDS may need to take anti-toxoplasmosis medication for life.
Call your doctor right away if your child develops symptoms of toxoplasmosis and any of the following:
Also call the doctor if you are concerned that your otherwise healthy child may be sick with symptoms of toxoplasmosis.
If you're pregnant, call your doctor right away if you notice even one swollen gland, especially if you've been exposed to cats or have eaten raw or undercooked meat.
If your cat is kept indoors and never fed raw or undercooked meat, then your family's feline probably has a low risk of catching or spreading toxoplasmosis. Still, you can also catch it from eating raw meats or uncooked produce that's contaminated.
To help prevent toxoplasmosis in your family:
Food Tips
Cat Tips
General and Household Tips


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Changing the Masquerading
Edit entry
by Patrick O'Brian
I read these
very quickly, mostly at the gym. I read these where many would read detective novels, and I like to believe that they are vastly superior to all but the very best detective fiction.
Special text:

*...
Currently Reading / Just Read
Wow, I seem to have stopped updating this...
King Alfred of England
At the Mountains of Madness
The League of Frightened Men
Howl\'s Moving Castle
Fer de Lance
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room
Casino Royale
The Mistborn Trilogy
The Thin Man
The Audacity of Hope
Dreams of my Father
The Aeneid
Fragile Things
Trickster makes this world
Cloud Atlas
The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing Book I
The King in Yellow
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Big Con
A History of God
Why Do Birds
The Letter of Marque
The New Sun, Books 1 & 2
The Riddle-Master Trilogy
Goodbye Tsugumi
The Far Side of the World
Treason's Harbour
The Master and Margarita
The Ionian Mission
The Surgeon's Mate
The Fortune of War
The Idiot
Desolation Island
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare : 1599
The Viriconium series
Oath of Swords
More Rootabaga Stories
Rootabaga Stories
The Mauritius Command
The Historian
Right-ho, Jeeves!
The Shades of Time and Memory
The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure
Anansi Boys
Twilight of the Idols
The Bookman's Promise
The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire
The Bewitchments of Love and Hate
The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit
Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge
The Alchemist
Prince of Foxes
Sleep of Death
The Faery Queene, Book 2
The Faerie Queene, Book One
The Adventures of Augie March
But is it Art?
The Eyre Affair
An Introduction to Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen: A Handbook
A New Christianity for a New World
You are Not a Stranger Here
Tales from the Opera
Thinking in Pictures
Refusing to be a Man
H.M.S. Surprise
Writing: The story of alphabets and scripts.
Projects I'm in the middle of
Things I want to buy.
Music to remember
Bicycle Helmet
Good Gifts to Buy for Me
Paying off Debt
Previous Posts
Hamlet, Prince of Cumberbatch
Guide to the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest!
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Climate change has been a constant reality for many Filipinos, with impacts ranging from extreme weather events to periodic droughts and food scarcity. The most affected populations are coastal residents and rural communities that lack proper disaster preparedness.
Climate change has been a constant reality for many Filipinos, with impacts ranging from extreme weather events to periodic droughts and food scarcity. The most affected populations are coastal residents and rural communities that lack proper disaster preparedness.
According to the Center for Global Development, the Philippines is the world's fourth most vulnerable country to the direct impacts of extreme weather events. Averaging 20 tropical cyclones a year, it may be the world's most storm-exposed nation. Last November, Supertyphoon Haiyan, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded, claimed more than 10,000 lives, affected over 9 million people, and left over 600,000 Filipinos homeless. With both the oceans and the atmosphere warming, there is broad scientific consensus that typhoon are now increasing in strength.
Like most developing countries, the Philippines plays a minor role in global carbon emissions yet suffers an inordinately higher cost. With over a third of its population living in poverty, the country emits just 0.9 metric tons of carbon per capita, compared to the United States' 17.6 metric tons. "We lose 5% of our economy every year to storms," observes Philippine Climate Change Commissioner Naderev Sano. The reconstruction costs of Haiyan alone are estimated at $5.8 billion.
As the Philippines embarks on a long road to recovery, sustainability is key for post-Haiyan rebuilding. "We must build back better and more resilient communities," says Senator Loren Legarda, chair of the Philippines' Senate Committee on Climate Change, who was named a Regional Champion by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. "We must prevent disasters and be prepared for the next natural hazards. This disaster also tells us about the urgent need to save and care for our environment."
It is widely argued that taking early action against climate change through mitigation efforts outweigh the costs and economic impacts of inaction. In the Philippines, transitioning to a low-carbon economy has many challenges, but it also offers strong prospects for growth and development. The country has tremendous mitigation opportunities and is graced with significant renewable energy resources. According to the Philippine Department of Energy, renewable energy already provides 40 percent of the country's primary energy requirements, and much of its potential has yet to be tapped.
To achieve an environmentally secure future, the Philippines must not only rebuild more sustainably but also create a sustainable pathway for future development. With one of the most progressive energy laws in Asia, the country has committed to a renewable energy target of 50 percent by 2030 under its Renewable Energy Act.
Read more at ENN affiliate Worldwatch Institute.
Death toll graphic from typhoon Haiyan image via Shutterstock.


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Tagged: vr art
Animating in the Air: The Magic of ANIMVR
Animation is tough. Like REALLY tough. Like most other creative endeavors, the techniques to learn and possible workload are endless, but animation is also magical. NVRMIND has brilliantly designed a VR animation program that captures and streamlines the magic of animation in 3D space. ANIMVR succeeds in bringing the difficulty of making animation down while still keeping robust features that make the process way faster.
While I'm not an animator personally, I've used countless animation programs with varying levels of success. Creating a good animation interface is extremely challenging: there's a ton of tools, settings, keyframe interpretations, modes and other options that can really clutter and distract from the process of creation. ANIMVR excels at keeping everything out of the way, while keeping important options easily accessible. The button layout was perfect, and after 15 minutes everything became second nature.
Since I'm pretty bad at making traditional animation (the kind that doesn't interpolate a model or rigged 2D drawing between keyframes), I was quite intimidated at having to redraw the character in 3D space on every frame, but luckily the inclusion of 'timelines' allowed me to break up the characters I made into different objects which could be cloned and moved independently per frame.
I wished there was a way to group these timelines together so when I cloned or deleted a frame it would do the same for all the other pertinent objects. I found the best way to work was to animate one object until the end of my project, remember the amount of frames and then animate the other objects for the same amount of frames, but I found everything would often get out of sync (thankfully the developers put in a frame offset for each individual timeline, so I'd often be able to put the elements back into sync).
The 'timeline' layers were extremely powerful while being incredibly simple and easy to understand (everything on that timeline layer flashes when you select it, so you can see how many objects you accidentally drawn on that layer). Everything on this the app had an incredible level of polish, although I had problems with the eraser tool not being able to destroy small sections of my lines, and the colour brush lacking some important customization like brush size (or at least no feedback for brush size). Overall, nothing got in my way of making some really fun stuff in under an hour.
While I really enjoy VR gaming and experiences, my real excitement for the technology is in making computing more natural and less abstracted. The mouse and keyboard, while extremely efficient and precise, don't feel as fun (or as healthy) as manipulating objects through more human gestures and actions. Crouching, reaching, stretching, walking as you draw an animation in the air not only breathes life into your creation, but into your body as well! Here's to the future!
ANIMVR is currently in beta and looking for other artists to try out their app! See more details on their Twitter:
We just released the AnimVR Beta! https://t.co/zcFP22t83x
Sign up here: https://t.co/b2AzBqQI5s#VR #animation pic.twitter.com/SS8PcwnLOf
— NVRMIND (@NVRMINDIO) March 4, 2017
Full disclosure: This press key was provided for the creation of this content.


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The Adobe® Photoshop® 10.0.1 update addresses a number of issues discovered after Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended (10.0) software were released.
The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 10.0.1 update include the following:
The speed of moving objects contained within multiple layer sets has been improved.
Converting images to CMYK using certain profiles no longer results in black files.
The Save for Web feature now includes an option to "Include XMP" (metadata) in the settings menu within the main Save for Web interface, making the existing capability easier to access.
When using Save For Web with "Include XMP" enabled, all XMP data is now included in the optimized file.
Print color matching has been improved.
Images saved as DICOM and reopened in Photoshop CS3 are no longer corrupted on PowerPC® based Mac computers.
|File Name
|File Size
|Proceed to Download
One of the following language versions of Photoshop CS3: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Italian, Korean, Chinese Simplified, or Chinese Traditional; updates for other language versions will be available separately
Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher
To install the Photoshop 10.0.1 update:
1. Disable all virus protection software.
2. Ensure that the folder on your hard drive containing Photoshop is named "Adobe Photoshop CS3."
3. Double-click the "Adobe Photoshop Updater" application. If the updater reports that it cannot find the application to update, uninstall Photoshop CS3, and then reinstall the application (using the default folder name "Adobe Photoshop CS3"). To uninstall Photoshop, navigate to the "Applications/Utilites/Adobe Installers" folder and run "Add or Remove Adobe Photoshop CS3" to remove the original installation of Photoshop. Once the removal is complete, reinstall Photoshop, and then run the updater.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions.
This updater will update only the retail version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 and not any prerelease (beta) versions. To confirm that the updater has run successfully, launch Photoshop and verify that the version number on the splash screen shows 10.0.1 and not 10.0. If it does not show 10.0.1, you may not have a retail version of Photoshop CS3. Contact your local Adobe retailer or visit the Adobe website to purchase one.
License agreement
By using software of Adobe Systems Incorporated or its subsidiaries ("Adobe"); you agree to the following terms and conditions. If you do not agree with such terms and conditions; do not use the software. The terms of an end user license agreement accompanying a particular software file upon installation or download of the software shall supersede the terms presented below.
The export and re-export of Adobe software products are controlled by the United States Export Administration Regulations and such software may not be exported or re-exported to Cuba; Iran; Iraq; Libya; North Korea; Sudan; or Syria or any country to which the United States embargoes goods. In addition; Adobe software may not be distributed to persons on the Table of Denial Orders; the Entity List; or the List of Specially Designated Nationals.
By downloading or using an Adobe software product you are certifying that you are not a national of Cuba; Iran; Iraq; Libya; North Korea; Sudan; or Syria or any country to which the United States embargoes goods and that you are not a person on the Table of Denial Orders; the Entity List; or the List of Specially Designated Nationals.
If the software is designed for use with an application software product (the "Host Application") published by Adobe; Adobe grants you a non-exclusive license to use such software with the Host Application only; provided you possess a valid license from Adobe for the Host Application. Except as set forth below; such software is licensed to you subject to the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement from Adobe governing your use of the Host Application.
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capital structure(redirected from Optimal capital structure)
Capital structure
The makeup of the liabilities and stockholders' equity side of the balance sheet, especially the ratio of debt to equity and the mixture of short and long maturities.
Capital Structure
How a company finances its operations. The three most basic ways to finance are through debt, equity (or the issue of stock), and, for a small business, personal savings. Capital structure usually refers to how much of each type of financing a company holds as a percentage of all its financing. Generally speaking, a company with a high level of debt compared to equity is thought to carry higher risk, though some analysts do not believe that capital structure matters to risk or profitability.
capital structure
See capitalization.


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Judging by the flood of fan mail we received over the holiday break, The Path of Go — the new Xbox LIVE game – is quite the gaming hit, at least in the go community. "I just played The Path of Go with my 8 year old grand daughter and we could not get her to stop," writes longtime go player and organizer Ernest Brown. "The three year old wanted to try also. This should be a great thing for promoting go. In fact I believe we will get a bump in people wanting go lessons similar to the Hikaru No Go phenomena. I think this beginning could attract more attention from the computer gaming community as well. I hope it gets Bill Gates more engaged with go!"
Thanks to everyone who sent in reviews (Path of Go Available on Xbox 12/23/2010); "It's a fun game," wrote Joshua Ward. "It has a story mode that I was able to play through fairly quickly. The story mode is good for beginners as it plays entirely on a 9×9 board and teaches them the basics of the game. There is a multiplayer function to the game as well. You can go onto Xbox Live and play against other people on a 9×9, 13×13, and 19×19 board." Here's an edited excerpt of Christian Haught's review: The game's plot is interesting. You begin by being summoned to the residence of a wise old go master, who teaches you the basics of go. He then informs you of a twin you didn't know of, who possesses go prowess like you, but who could never learn how to lose with grace. Leaving to pursue the Path of Go, he left his – and now your – master, who allows you to leave to look for your twin. This is an interesting setup for the game, as it hints to leading to a suspenseful final game between you and your twin, who has an odd habit of leaving games unfinished, which the masters you meet along the way ask you to finish. The control system for the game is relatively simple to understand, graphics were really well done and the three dimensional effects are impressive, adding a sense of depth and realism to the game. The insertion of your xbox live avatar into the game is also carried out quite well, as they make it seem as though your avatar belongs in the game, not just coded in. The settings in which the game takes place are also beautifully put together, and look like places you could find in nature. The computer that you play against is also decently strong, sometimes even forcing players who are more then just beginners into a corner. I wonder how that will work with players who are new to the game, but I imagine that this will force newer players to improve at a more rapid rank. Even if you have never played a game of go in your life, the game starts out with an excellent tutorial that introduces many of the beginning basics. These are, of course, added onto as the game proceeds, but these few beginner tips will allow you to get the basic understanding of the game and begin your journey into becoming a skilled go player. I imagine that most players will be at least 18k in rank, if not higher, by the end of this game.
– click here for the original version of this review