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January 2004 Newsletter |
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Dates to Remember Jan 12 – Spring Semester begins Feb 7 – CEOE Tests Mar 16 – Science Summit Mar 19 – Registration deadline for Apr 24 CEOE Apr 24 – CEOE Tests May 3-7 – Finals Week!! May 21 – Registration deadline for June 26 CEOE Jun 26 – CEOE Tests
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Shannon White - Publicity/Newsletter It’s almost gone, the long awaited winter break is almost gone. Only a few more days to lounge around and watch your favorite daytime shows. I however will be happy to get back to school because I am very board and very anxious to get the spring semester out of the way. But whether we are looking forward to it or not the spring semester is quickly approaching. Our meetings for this semester are not yet scheduled. We need feedback on when everyone would like to attend meetings so please e-mail an officer to let us know when you might like to see our meetings happen. Also, I don’t think there are any plans for our spring meetings, so also let us know if there is anything you would like to happen this semester. Would you like to hear a certain speaker? Would you like to present or see presentations of a certain program (Great expectations, ect)? We could really use some feedback from other members. Well, that is all I’ve got for you now. Can’t wait to see all of you again as we start yet another semester at NSU.☼ |
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Speakers, Sessions Set for March 16 Summit on
Science Top leaders in science and education will take to the
national stage for a day of dialogue about effective science education and
the importance of K-12 science to the nation during the U. S. Department of
Education's Summit on Science, scheduled for March 16, 2004, in Washington,
D.C. The Science Summit, part of the Administration's nationwide Math and Science
Initiative, will take place during the Excellence in Science, Technology, and
Math Education (ESTME) week-long celebration of K-12 science and math
education. For more information on the national Summit on Science, go to http://science.nsta.org/nstaexpress/nstaexpress_2004_01_05_summit.htm |
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Bipartisan
education law now splits Bush, Democrats ST. LOUIS — Two years after
President Bush and Sen. Edward Kennedy joined forces to pass a landmark
education law, the Massachusetts Democrat and others in his party are
accusing Bush of turning his back on the legislation. On Monday, while the president
celebrated the second anniversary of his No Child Left Behind Act at a St.
Louis elementary school, Democrats complained that he hasn't followed through
with adequate funding for it. Legislation once hailed as a bipartisan
achievement has become the subject of a bitter partisan dispute that's
spilled into the presidential election campaign. The law established new
performance standards for students and schools. It also gave parents the
right to remove their children from failing institutions. "Making sure every child
learns to read and making sure every child is educated is the number one
domestic priority of this country," Bush told a receptive audience at Pierre
Laclede Elementary School in a poor St. Louis neighborhood. "It is
essential we get it right." Critics contend that the new
law requires too much testing and fails to provide the resources that
struggling schools need to meet the new standards. Democrats say funding for
the new law is about 15 percent short of what's needed to help schools
comply. Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., a
presidential candidate whose congressional district includes part of St.
Louis, said Bush had "broken his promise to make funding public
education as important as raising standards." Kennedy, who worked with the
White House to push the bill through Congress, also voiced disappointment,
saying in a statement issued by his office that "the president's
education budget fails to keep pace with growing needs." White House officials responded
by highlighting big increases in certain categories of education funding,
including money for programs aimed at low-income students. Margaret
Spellings, one of Bush's top advisers on education, also noted that the
Treasury Department has $6 billion in unspent education money that's
available to the states. This year's Democratic
presidential candidates are eager to reclaim education as an issue as they
seek to deny Bush a second term. At a candidate debate in Iowa on Sunday,
Democrats who voted for the president's education bill were quick to distance
themselves from it. "The truth is, we put too
much faith in a Bush administration administering that policy," said
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Bush said the new law is
working. In his first official outing since the Christmas holidays, he touted
the education changes in a poverty-stricken neighborhood filled with
boarded-up buildings, rusting cars and trash. In 1999, 7 percent of the third-graders at Pierre Laclede, the neighborhood school, were reading at grade level. Now tests show that 80 percent are at grade level. The school is one of 234 that have been awarded "blue ribbon" status under the new education standards. |
New beginnings
for old galaxies Early formations have scientists rethinking origins
By Dan Vergano
USA TODAY ATLANTA -- The discovery of old galaxies formed when the universe was
young has astronomers rethinking the origins of these vast islands of stars. The results of a survey of more than 300 distant galaxies challenge
certain assumptions about the formation of giant galaxies. The survey of
galaxies that existed when the universe was from 3 billion to 6 billion years
old was presented here Monday at the American Astronomical Society by the
Gemini ''Deep Deep'' Survey team. ''Our big result is that massive galaxies seem to be forming
surprisingly soon after the Big Bang,'' says co-leader Roberto Abraham of the
University of Toronto. ''We should be seeing fewer of them further back in time, but we
don't.'' The researchers found by telescope that about 19% of the galaxies
surveyed are giant ellipticals already filled with aging red stars, says team
astronomer Sandra Savaglio of Johns Hopkins University. That implies the galaxies formed about 12 billion years ago, only a
billion or so years after the Big Bang started the cosmos -- and much earlier
than first expected. The idea that giant elliptical galaxies slowly built up over billions
of years has been under siege recently in results from the Hubble Space
Telescope and elsewhere, but the survey results ''really give it a strong
push aside,'' says astronomer David Koo of the University of California-Santa
Cruz, who was not a member of the GDDS team. He expects results from NASA's Spitzer infrared space telescope to
provide within the year an even better picture of how giant galaxies form,
along with solving other mysteries about galaxies from all ages of the
universe. Scientists at the meeting also reported a pair of space oddities: the
brightest star and the fastest-moving star yet seen. Astronomer Steve Eikenberry of the University of Florida in
Gainesville described perhaps the brightest and biggest star of all, LBV
1806-20. Up to 40 million times brighter than the sun, it outshines the
''Pistol'' star, the previous brightness record-holder spotted by Hubble in
1997. Despite its brightness, LBV 1806-20 isn't visible from Earth. The
star hides on the far side of the Milky Way, and dust blocks the view, except
from infrared telescopes. The fastest star, called PV Ceph, appears to have been a young star
booted out of its home solar system by other nearby stars at speeds of about
40,000 mph, 10 to 20 times more than normal for a star. It was reported by
astronomers Alyssa Gordon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
and Hector Arce of Caltech. |
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2003-2004 Year
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