bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Voices of Students and Parents
Authors: Astor Ron Avi , Jacobson Linda , Wrabel Stephanie L. , Benbenishty Rami , Pineda Diana
Published: November 2020

In addition to analyzing data on which students are moving and how often, educators can learn about the circumstances, needs, and experiences of new families and students by asking them directly. Online customer satisfaction surveys are becoming more common in school districts. District and school leaders are asking parents and students to rate their performance in a variety of areas, from their communication practices to the classroom environment. A 2013 report from Hanover Research suggests that these surveys coincide with the increasing level of competition in education spurred by the growing number of charter school options, magnet schools, and open enrollment policies in many districts. “As school attendance in charter and magnet settings is not determined by geographic boundaries, such schools must make efforts to satisfy parent and student ‘customers’ to ensure robust enrollments,” the report says. These surveys also show evidence of the influence that the business world has had on the education field. Business practices that can help schools improve the way they welcome new families will be discussed in Chapter 8, but it’s clear that schools are thinking more about how they serve students and their parents. While the use of surveys is growing, it’s far less common for districts to ask for feedback specifically about their enrollment procedures or how the schools handle the issue of transition in general. As part of the Welcoming Practices initiative, the Consortium districts surveyed parents to gather input on topics such as the registration process, the responsiveness of the staff, and the interest shown in meeting students’ individual needs. More than 1,400 parent responses were received, representing 2,300 children. On a 5-point scale, the parents indicated their level of agreement with statements such as: The school made my child feel like he/she was part of the school community. The school helped my child connect with other students. The school helped me connect to other families. The school helped connect me to services and resources in the community. The parents responded that, overall, they and their children felt welcomed by the school, giving ratings above a 4.
Making Virtual Connections
Authors: Astor Ron Avi , Jacobson Linda , Wrabel Stephanie L. , Benbenishty Rami , Pineda Diana
Published: November 2020

A student’s transition into a school starts well before he or she walks through the front doors or sits down at a desk. There are multiple strategies schools can use to smooth students’ transition and make families feel welcome before they arrive at the school. Since many of these strategies involve technology, they are presented in their own chapter. The first impression many schools leave on incoming families takes place in front of a computer, tablet screen, or mobile phone—not face-to-face. When a family is moving to a new community, one of the first things many parents— and students— will do is search online for the district or school and try to gather some basic information about the enrollment process, the neighborhood, and the achievement scores. “During my most recent move, I spent time on the school website to get a feel of how the school ran and what classes were available,” says Eraina, a student featured in Chapter 3. “This was helpful and made the transition not so shocking and confusing.” Parents might also search for information on courses or activities for their children and even read teacher profiles if those are available. Parents want to cushion the transition process for their children as much as possible; they want to be able to answer their children’s questions about the new school. School and district websites don’t, however, always make that process simple. Sometimes registration information is not easily found on a homepage, and parents might end up on pages that say “under construction” when they try to dig for more details. Some schools and districts provide email addresses for key staff members; others don’t. And, sometimes, staff members have left their position or the district, but their contact information is not updated. School Webmasters is a Mesa, Arizona-based company that develops and administers websites for schools and districts. A December 2014 blog post on the company’s site entitled “Do Parents Use Your Website?” offered this advice: In this digital age, parents looking to find a school for their child are likely to visit your website before ever visiting your campus.
Conclusion
Authors: Astor Ron Avi , Jacobson Linda , Wrabel Stephanie L. , Benbenishty Rami , Pineda Diana
Published: November 2020

Each school's transition story is different, and it's important for educators to understand where their students are moving from, why they're moving, and if they're about to move again. Having a sense of these characteristics can help teachers, administrators, and other school professionals decide which practices are the best fit for their individual school. While some routines and strategies can be implemented at the district level, such as opening a welcome center, creating an app, or having a standard registration process, the practices and environment at each individual school will make the most difference in whether children and families feel that they have been greeted with warmth and understanding. Established transition programs tend to focus on students who are moving between levels, such as from elementary to middle and from middle to high school. These programs do offer lessons that can be implemented more broadly for students who change schools at other times as well. But great ideas on how to welcome, connect with, and support new families are also emerging from schools every day. Gathering and sharing these locally developed ideas can help contribute to greater awareness of how changing schools impacts students and to a collection of promising practices from which educators can choose.
Focus Groups
Authors: Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: November 2020

A focus group1 is a meeting between a moderator or two and group of students, staff members, parents, or other stakeholders. In this meeting, the facilitator presents questions or raises certain issues, and the group members share their thoughts and perspectives. A facilitator or an assistant documents the main issues and points raised by the group members. A focus group is a great way to delve deeper into a specific topic, particularly one that was raised by the results of a survey. For example, if a survey showed an increase over the previous year in students reporting having things stolen, a focus group with students can then explore what types of items are being stolen, where they are being taken from, and any solutions students might suggest. A focus group could also be one of the first steps in developing a monitoring system. A focus group with parents can help identify issues of concern to parents. Then, based on the information, school leaders may design a survey that asks all the parents in the school how well they think the school is responding to their concerns. See Box 9.1 for tips on how to conduct a focus group. The participants in a focus group should represent the racial and ethnic make-up of the school, be balanced by gender, and should include those students or adults who are not typically the most outspoken about issues in the school. Diverse viewpoints are important, but it’s best not to include those who could potentially argue with each other and dominate the discussion. Be aware of issues of hierarchy and whether some participants are not engaging in the discussion or are not being genuine because of the presence of someone in authority. Eight to twelve people is usually a good size for a focus group, and about two hours is a good length of time— enough to cover six to ten substantive questions or topics. Less time is probably better if students are participating.
Analysis and Presentation
Authors: Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: November 2020

When school leaders begin collecting more data and feedback from multiple groups or receive the results of statewide surveys, the information might at first create more confusion than clarity about the needs within a school. It is important to have an organized way of looking at the data, either by asking for specific answers from those providing the data or by developing a plan to analyze the collected data. The questions can be organized under several rubrics. Feedback can be used to assess how the school is doing on a range of issues, as mentioned in earlier chapters. These include questions such as: How many students reported being victimized last month? What were the types of victimization? What do students think about their social- emotional skills, such as their ability to deal with interpersonal conflict? How satisfied are parents with teachers’ performance? How safe do teachers feel? Are there differences in the victimization of students in different grade levels? Are female students vulnerable to certain types of victimization more than males? Do first-generation students feel welcomed in schools more or less than do second- generation immigrant students? Do teachers in the district feel safer than administrators? Do military- connected parents feel less respected than other parents? Are hallways safer than playgrounds or other outside areas? Are there fewer weapon- related incidents than in previous years? Do students engage in risk behaviors less than in the past? Do teachers think that students have better social-emotional skills? Do staff members feel more supported by school leaders than they did in the last survey? Are parents engaged in school activities more than they were last year? Sometimes educators are concerned that although positive changes did take place in school, they may have not been uniform, and some groups did not make the same progress as others. For instance, although overall there are fewer incidences of substance use in school, changes may have been less evident among gang- affiliated students. Other comparisons can be made between groups that received certain interventions or participated in a school safety program and those that did not.
Sharing the Monitoring Feedback
Authors: Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: November 2020

Whether it’s survey data, focus group responses, or the results of a mapping exercise, a vital component of a monitoring system is sharing the information with educators, parents, students, and sometimes even community members as soon as possible so it can be used to improve school climate for the students who are still in the school. Most people— especially those in education— have taken surveys at one point or another and never heard anything about the results. They’re left wondering how their responses compared to others and whether anyone would do anything with the informa­tion collected. As we mentioned earlier, monitoring isn’t just collecting data and storing it in a data warehouse or using it to write scientific journal articles that most parents and teachers might never read. Parents deserve to hear what they said as quickly as possible and to see how their views differed from those of their children, from those of the staff, or from parents at other schools (see Box 15.1). As part of the Building Capacity and Welcoming Practices projects, individual reports were prepared for the districts and schools as soon as possible so they could review their data and determine which issues to address. Jennifer Walters, who served as superintendent of the Escondido Union School District, in California, says it was refreshing to work as part of a research project in which the information was not only shared, but also shared in a timely way. “From the very beginning, it wasn’t something being done to the district, but really some common work,” Walters said. “Not only would the data information be shared with me or be discussed with us and move our organization forward, but then in updated communications, it was ‘here’s what we’re doing in Washington, here’s what we’re doing with the coalition.’ Other times I’ve worked with universities, they’ll come in and they want to do some research or an investigation. They’ll do that and then I have no idea to what extent it’s used afterward.”
India’s iGen : Growing Up with Nomophobia
Authors: Agrawal Ravi
Published: November 2020

Sometime in the middle of May in 2017—at the height of summer in India—a grainy mobile phone video began to make its way across the country. The recording rocketed from phone to phone, first in the eastern state of Jharkhand and then nationally, circulating among groups on WhatsApp. The video was shot in portrait, showing a man beaten and bloodied, crumpled up on a patch of barren earth. His white undershirt was rolled up to his chest and drenched in blood. Encircling him was a small mob of men armed with cane sticks. Several appeared to be filming the proceedings on their phones. “You son of a bitch,” someone screamed. “Motherfucker! We’ll kill you!” A cacophony of abuse was under way. The man was pleading for his life, but his cries were drowned out by a rising tide of expletives and fury. The mob continued to beat the man. The video cut to black. The subject, Sheikh Haleem, was killed. He was only twenty-eight. Six others were killed as well, across two separate vigilante attacks. It was as if a cloud of rage had suddenly descended on a small part of Jharkhand, propelling village men to embark on extrajudicial murder sprees. It turned out that a rumor had spread that a group of strangers was abducting children from nearby villages. The rumor made its way onto WhatsApp; the rumor morphed into “news”; the news, circulating from phone to phone, villager to villager, was weaponized; a group of locals decided to act. The rest happened very quickly. A mob was formed. Strangers were produced, beaten up, and murdered. Justice was delivered. The recordings of the killings were duly sent back out into the ether of WhatsApp, completing the cycle of horror. Jharkhand’s police were befuddled. There had been no reported cases of child abductions. The rumor was completely unfounded. “Rumors have always flourished in India,” says Pratik Sinha, the founder of a myth-busting website, AltNews.in. “But it’s become exponentially dangerous because of the internet.”
Transforming Service Learning Into Critical Service Learning
Authors: Johnson Annette , McKay-Jackson Cassandra , Grumbach Giesela
Published: November 2020

Service learning is a pedagogical approach that engages youth in achieving learning goals that link communities and schools through intentional, structured activities (McReynolds, 2015). Through service learning, the practitioner engages students in projects that serve the community while building social, civic, and academic skills to help them learn about others. Critical service learning, on the other hand, builds on service learning and expands to include social justice principles. Critical service learning as an approach compels youth to interrogate systems and structures of inequality and distribution of power and to seek to develop authentic relationships among all participants (Mitchell, 2008). It also encourages participants to examine issues of power, privilege, and oppression within the service activity by questioning hidden biases and assumptions concerning race, class, and gender and to challenge the status quo by working toward changing inequities within social and economic systems (Cipolle, 2010). Engaging in critical service learning, as a therapeutic strategy, allows youth to con¬template community problem- solving through critical thinking that raises questions about the roots of social inequality. For example, youth who embark on service learning may develop a wellness project that considers the effect of health on mood and behavior. Students may incorporate simple physical exercises and healthy eating tips and create a nutritional food menu for students to share with their peers and families. Students who participate in this same example from a critical service learning framework not only will do all of these activities but also will critically analyze factors that contribute to healthy living. For example, students may explore the barriers to accessing fresh fruits and vegetables in communities that are food deserts (communities with a scarcity of mainstream markets that have fresh fruits and vegetables). Students may delve further to consider the economic and political decisions that reduce access to healthy foods in their neighborhoods. Students may perform action research through facilitating a shopping field trip to neighborhood, and mainstream food outlets to inspect and compare the produce for quality and price value. As a result, students may bring their findings to their local political office to request sup¬port to improve local food outlet resources.
Self- Care and Preventing Burnout
Authors: Johnson Annette , McKay-Jackson Cassandra , Grumbach Giesela
Published: November 2020

Maslach and Jackson (1981) aptly pointed out that helping professionals are often required to spend considerable time in intense involvement with clients. The time is focused on solving the client’s current problem and may therefore be charged with a wide array of strong emotions. In addition, Maslach and Jackson (1981) noted that solutions are not always easily reached, thus adding to the social workers’ feelings of frustration or inadequacy about job performance. “For the helping professional who works continuously with people under such circumstances, the chronic stress can be emotionally draining and poses the risk of burnout” (Maslach & Jackson, 1981, p. 99). Finding solutions to client problems can be tough, especially dur¬ing times of dwindling resources. It is critical for social workers to stay connected to their own energy level, sense of agency, and self- care during times when the lack of adequate resources constrains the amount and types of services practitioners are able to provide.The practice of self-care is important in providing quality service and may help to prevent burnout in the workplace. Over time, practitioners may become overwhelmed by societal ills, declining resources, and the pressure to fix really tough problems. Critical service learning (CSL) is an approach to practice that empowers students or youth to work toward solutions and encourages them to take action toward social change within their own communities. Furthermore, CSL provides secondary benefits to the practitioner. The practitioner becomes proactive in addressing community problems by empowering youth to examine and challenge the status quo. In this way, practitioners may feel reenergized by an empow¬ering process. Practitioners may also realize faster returns on their investment of time and energy as students or youth become more engaged in community action. In addition, CSL allows the practitioner to seek creative solutions and new strategies for dealing with difficult problems. Implementing CSL projects promotes innovative youth engagement. A well- executed CSL project has the potential to enhance the practitioner’s job satisfaction as well as increase youth motivation. As practitioners engage youth in CSL and witness youth becoming more empowered, the practitioner’s sense of purpose may be renewed.
Weathering, Soil, and the Minerals in Wine
Authors: Maltman Alex
Published: November 2020

Weathering of rocks is the crucial first step in making vineyards possible. For where the debris produced by weathering—the sediment we met in Chapter 5—becomes mixed with moist humus, it will be capable of supporting higher plant life. And thus we have soil, that fundamental prerequisite of all vineyards, indeed of the world’s agriculture. So how does this essential process of weathering come about? Any bare rock at the Earth’s surface is continually under attack. Be it a rocky cliff, a stone cathedral, or a tombstone, there will always be chemical weathering—chemical reactions between its surface and the atmosphere A freshly hewn block of building stone may look indestructible, but before long it will start to look a bit discolored and its surface a little crumbly. We are all familiar with an analogy of this: a fresh surface of iron or steel reacting with moisture and oxygen in the air to form the coating we call rust. In his “Guide to the Lakes” of England, William Wordsworth put the effects of weathering far more picturesquely: “elementary particles crumbling down, over-spread with an intermixture of colors, like the compound hues of a dove’s neck.” A weathered rock is one that is being weakened, broken down. The rock fragments themselves are further attacked, which is why stones in a vineyard often show an outer coating of discolored material, sometimes referred to as a weathering rind (Figure 9.1; see Plate 22). If the stone is broken open, it may show multiple zones of differing colors paralleling the outer surface of the fragment and enclosing a core of fresh rock. Iron minerals soon weather to a powdery combination of hematite, goethite, and limonite, and the rock takes on a reddish-brown, rusty-looking color. The great example of such weathering in viticulture is the celebrated terra rossa, but the rosy soils in parts of Western Australia and places further east such as McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley are also due to iron minerals. Several Australian wines take their names from this “ironstone.”
Vineyards and the Mists of Geological Time
Authors: Maltman Alex
Published: November 2020

Geological time is much mentioned in the wine world. Many a label proclaims the geological age of the rocks and soils in which the vines were growing; many a vineyard description enthuses about just how old its bedrock is. The age may be expressed as a fine-sounding technical term or as a quantity, typically, some unimaginably large number of millions of years: “The area’s best vineyards are on Turonian soils”; “Cretaceous limestone is best for our vines”; “the wine’s secret is the Devonian slate”; “our Shiraz grows in soils 500 million years old.” It’s almost as though the older the geology can be made to appear, somehow the finer the wine. I must declare my own position in all this: surely the geological age of the bed­rock has little to do with viticulture? The age of the soil is certainly relevant, as it is continually changing on a human timescale, but these geological time words almost always are referring to the age of the vineyard bedrock. And almost invariably the age of the soil will be unrelated and vastly younger than the bedrock. Surely the vine doesn’t care, so to speak, how long ago the bedrock happened to form. Nevertheless, the fact is that geological time pervades wine literature, so this chapter explains how geologists work with the ages of rocks. The thinking is nicely explained by outlining how geological time was “discovered.” Modern geology began two or three centuries ago, essentially when it dawned that answers to questions about the physical world were better answered by going out and observing nature rather than poring over ancient scriptures. We saw in Chapter 1 how James Hutton peered into the “abyss of time.” Soon after, other founders of the science began to compare features preserved in rocks with processes they could see happening all around them, and they were able to establish rules (see the accompanying box) that enabled them to disentangle past geological time and to work out the geological history of a particular place. Using these kinds of principles, the early geologists were soon able to recognize past intervals of geological time and give them names.
Zooming through scales by the billion
Authors: Lovejoy Shaun
Published: November 2020

“The climate is what you expect, the weather is what you get”: The climate is a kind of average weather. But is it really? Those of us who have thirty years or more of recall are likely aware of subtle but systematic changes between today’s weather and the weather of their youth. I remember Montreal winters with much more snow and with longer spells of extreme cold. Did it really change? If so, was it only Montreal that changed? Or did all of Quebec change? Or did the whole planet warm up? And which is the real climate? Todays’ experience or that of the past? The key to answering these questions is the notion of scale, both in time (du­ration) and in space (size). Spatial variability is probably easier to grasp because structures of different sizes can be visualized readily (Fig. 1.1). In a puff of cigarette smoke, one can casually observe tiny wisps, whirls, and eddies. Looking out the window, we may see fluffy cumulus clouds with bumps and wiggles kilometers across. With a quick browse on the Internet, we can find satellite images of cloud patterns literally the size of the planet. Such visual inspection confirms that structures exist over a range of 10 billion or so: from 10,000 km down to less than 1 mm. At 0.1 mm, the atmosphere is like molasses; friction takes over and any whirls are quickly smoothed out. But even at this scale, matter is still “smooth.” To discern its granular, molecular nature, we would have to zoom in 1,000 times more to reach submicron scales. For weather and climate, the millimetric “dissipation scale” is thus a natural place to stop zooming, and the fact that it is still much larger than molecular scales indicates that, at this scale, we can safely discuss atmos­pheric properties without worrying about its molecular substructure. Clouds are highly complex objects. How should we deal with such apparent chaos? According to Greek mythology, at first there was only chaos; cosmos emerged later.
The weather: Nothing but turbulence . . . and don’t mind the gap
Authors: Lovejoy Shaun
Published: November 2020

“This afternoon, the sky will start to clear, with cloud shreds, runners, and thin bars followed by flocks.” If Jean- Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) had had his way, this might have been an uplifting early- morning weather forecast announcing the coming of a sunny day. Unfortunately for poetry, in 1803, several months after Lamarck proposed this first cloud classification, the “namer of clouds,” Luke Howard (1772–1864), introduced his own staid Latin nomenclature that is still with us today and includes terms such as “cumulus,” “stratus,” and “cirrus.” Howard not only had a more scientific-sounding jargon, but was soon given publicity in the form of a poem by Goethe; Lamarck’s names didn’t stand a chance. For a long time, human- scale observation of clouds was the primary source of scientific knowledge of atmospheric morphologies and dynamics. This didn’t change until the appearance of the first weather maps based on meager collections of ground station measurements around 1850. This was the beginning of the field of “synoptic” (literally “map- scale”) meteorology. Under the leader­ship of Wilhelm Bjerknes (1862–1951), it spawned the Norwegian school of me­teorology that focused notably on airmasses, the often sharp gradients between them called “fronts,” and the stability of the airmass interfaces. This was the dom­inant view when, in the mid 1920s, Richardson proposed his scaling 4/ 3 diffusion law. The spatial resolution of these “synoptic- scale” maps was so low that features smaller than 1,000 kilometers or so could not be discerned. Between these and the kilometric human “microscales,” virtually nothing was known. Richardson’s claim that a single scaling law might hold from thousands of kilometers down to millimeters didn’t seem so daring. Not only was it compatible with the scale- free equations that he had elaborated, but also there were no scalebound paradigms to contradict it. By the late 1940s and ʼ50s, the development of radar finally opened a window onto the intermediate range.
Macroweather predictions and climate projections
Authors: Lovejoy Shaun
Published: November 2020

“Does the Flapping of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?” This was the provocative title of an address given by Edward Lorenz, the origin for the (nearly) household expression “butterfly effect.” It was December 1972 and it had been nearly ten years since he had discovered it,1 yet its significance was only then being recognized. Lorenz explained: “In more technical language, is the behavior of the atmosphere unstable to small perturbations?” His answer: “Although we cannot claim to have proven that the atmosphere is unstable, the evidence that it is so is overwhelming.” Imagine two planets identical in every way except that on one there is a butterfly that flaps its wings. The butterfly effect means that their future evolutions are “sensitively dependent” on the initial conditions, so that a mere flap of a wing could perturb the atmosphere sufficiently so that, eventually, the weather patterns on the two planets would evolve quite differently. On the planet with the Brazilian butterfly, the number of tornadoes would likely be the same. But on a given day, one might occur in Texas rather than Oklahoma. This sensitive dependence on small perturbations thus limits our ability to predict the weather. For Earth, Lorenz estimated this predictability limit to be about two weeks. From Chapters 4 and 5 and the discussion that follows, we now understand it as the slightly shorter weather– macroweather transition scale. In Chapter 1, we learned that the ratio of the nonlinear to linear terms in the (deterministic) equations governing the atmosphere is typically about a thou­sand billion. The nonlinear terms are the mathematical expressions of physical mechanisms that can blow up microscopic perturbations into large effects. Therefore, we expect instability. Chapter 4, we examined instability from the point of view of the higher level statistical laws— the fact that, at weather scales, the fluctuation exponents H for all atmospheric fields are positive (in space, up to the size of the planet; in time, up to the weather– macroweather transition scale at five to ten days).
Implementation Challenges
Authors: Detterman Robin , Ventura Jenny , Rosenthal Lihi , Berrick Ken
Published: November 2020

By now you are likely aware that unconditional education (UE) is a practice of optimization. That is, the aim is to provide just the right amount of intervention to get the job done, but never unnecessary excess. Chapter 1 introduced the key principles that drive UE: efficiency, intentional relationship building, cross-sector responsibility, and local decision-making. Much of the rest of this book has addressed what happens in schools when these principles are absent. However, in reviewing early UE implementation pitfalls, most, if not all, missteps can be traced back to an overzealous application of these principles without adequate consideration for a just-right approach. This chapter will explore these common missteps and trace the surprising ways in which an over-application of the principles of UE can unintentionally replicate the very practices of exclusion it was designed to address. The previous chapters have proposed that healthy and trusting relationships play a central role when it comes to both personal and organizational learning. While the cultivation of relationships takes time, once established, the presence of relational trust can accelerate efforts. In schools highly impacted by trauma, an initial investment in relationship building is in fact a prerequisite for any successful transformation to take hold. The work of creating trauma-informed schools necessitates that we acknowledge these experiences and create plans to address the vicarious trauma often felt by school staff themselves. In some cases, even this is not enough. Organizational trauma—in which interactions within the entire building or district itself evidence the weight of working in resource-strapped environments—is common in public schools. It is often the case that years of unhealthy competition, inadequate funding, and failed initiatives and promises have overwhelmed an organization’s protective structures and rendered it less resilient for the hard work required to bring about the exact change the organization needs in order to heal and thrive (Vickers & Kouzmin, 2001). Not all public schools operate as traumatized systems, yet the conditions within many schools, particularly those serving a high percentage of students who belong to systematically oppressed groups, are most vulnerable.
Introduction
Authors: Rohling Eelco J.
Published: November 2020

In 2015, the annual mean global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) level surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm; Figure 1.1), and we know very well that this rise is caused by human activities (Figure 1.2). It was the first time in 3 million years that such a level had been reached. Crossing this level has caused widespread concern among climate scientists, and not least among those called pale climatologists, who work on natural climate variability in prehistoric times, before humans. Over the last few decades, researchers have been repeatedly raising the alarm that emissions of CO2, along with those of other greenhouse gases, are getting dangerously out of control and that urgent remedial action is needed. With the crossing of the 400 ppm threshold, this sense of urgency reached a climax: at the Conference of Parties 21 meeting in Paris—also known as COP21 or the 2015 Paris Climate Conference—broad interna¬tional political agreement was reached to limit global warming to a maximum of 2°C, and if at all possible 1.5° C, by the end of this century. If one calculates this through, this implies a commitment for society to operate on zero net carbon emissions well before 2050, along with development and large-scale application of methods for CO2 removal from the climate system. (Scientists focus on carbon (C) emissions when they discuss emissions because it helps in calculating CO2 changes produced by the processing of specific volumes/ masses of fossil fuel hydrocarbons.) Clearly, the challenge is enormous, especially given that even implementing all the pledges made since COP21 would still allow warming to reach about 3°C by 2100. But, regardless, the agreement was ground breaking. It was a marker of hope, optimism, and international motivation to tackle climate change. Moreover, there are concerns about the stated COP21 targets. First, the proposed 2°C or 1.5°C limits to avoid 2 “dangerous” climate impacts may sound good, but there is no specific scientific basis for picking these particular numbers. Second, the implied “end of this century” deadline is an arbitrary moment in time.
Synthetic Elements
Authors: Scerri Eric
Published: November 2020

The periodic table consists of about 90 elements that occur naturally ending with element 92 uranium. This lack of precision is deliberate since one or two elements such as technetium were first created artificially and only later found to occur naturally on earth. This kind of occurrence provides a foreshadowing of things to come when we begin to discuss the transuranium elements, meaning those beyond uranium that have been artificially synthesized. Chemists and physicists have succeeded in synthesizing some of the elements that were missing between hydrogen (1) and uranium (92). In addition, they have synthesized a further 25, or so, new elements beyond uranium, although, again, one or two of these elements, like neptunium and plutonium, were later found to exist naturally in exceedingly small amounts. The existence of superheavy elements raises a number of interesting questions that pertain to the field of philosophy of science and also sociology of science. In fact, the very question of whether these superheavy elements actually exist needs to be dissected further, as it will be in the course of this chapter. The synthetic elements are extremely unstable, and only the lightest ones among them have been created in amounts large enough to be observed. Roughly speaking, the heavier the atom, the shorter its lifetime is. For example, the heaviest element for which there is now conclusive evidence is element 118, a few atoms of which have been created in just one single isotope form and with a half-life of less than a millisecond. Laypersons and specialists alike have asked themselves in what sense these elements can really be said to exist. The superheavy elements also have philosophical implications for the study of the periodic system as a whole and the question of whether there is a natural end to chemical periodicity. A related question, which has now become quite pressing, is the possible extension of the periodic table to include a new g-block which in formal terms should begin at element 121.
May: Plugging the Nutrient Leaks
Authors: Wohl Ellen
Published: November 2020

Just when spring appears to have arrived, a late-season storm blows down from the north. Despite the overcast sky, the temperature at first is beguilingly warm. Rain starts to fall, then changes to sleet as the temperature drops. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,” indeed. The sleet becomes graupel—crusty, rounded pellets of snow—and then wet flakes. Blobs of slush fall from overhanging branches and float briefly down the creek before melting and dispersing. Pulses of wind and snow gust in as birds shelter silently among the densely needled branches of big spruce trees. The moose that has spent the winter around the beaver meadow lies calmly in a protected spot at the base of a spruce. A foot of snow obliterates the newly green shoots of grass. I see no outward indication of it, but perhaps, in the warm darkness of the lodge, the beaver kits have been born. They start small, only about a pound at birth, but they are born fully furred, with open eyes and incisors erupted, almost ready to get down to the business of chewing branches. Each year’s litter is born in May or early June. Usually two to four kits are born, but a litter can be a single kit or as many as eight kits. Baby food for beavers is herbaceous vegetation, which the kits start eating within two weeks. By the end of July or early August the kits will be weaned and able to forage on their own. A varied diet of vegetation allows them to reach a weight of 10 to 16 pounds by the time the ice returns. The first year is a grace period for the new kits. Unlike the yearlings, the kits do not help maintain the lodge or cache food against the lean days of winter. They simply get to enjoy life and explore the wondrous new world into which they have been born. Diverse human observers watching this exploration by young beavers have interpreted their activities as an expression of joy.
Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties
Authors: Selikowitz Mark
Published: November 2020

Dyslexia and other learning difficulties: The Facts addresses problems many intelligent children face who, while having normal IQ levels, still struggle to learn in the classroom setting. A short attention span, restlessness, an inability to write clearly, and reading comprehension well below age level are all indicators of learning disabilities, and this book offers a clear and sympathetic guide to the difficulties that parents and teachers face when working with a child with these sorts of obstacles to learning. The book deals with difficulties in traditional academic areas such as reading, spelling, and arithmetic, but also looks into lesser known conditions like clumsiness, social unease, and hyperactivity. Providing practical advice to parents to help understand their children's difficulties and to help them overcome problems and improve their self-esteem, Dyslexia and other learning difficulties: The Facts also offers a number of suggestions for managing difficult behaviour. This new edition has been fully updated and draws on the most recent research on learning difficulties and some associated disorders and their treatments. It also provides information about electronic and computer aids that are now available to help individuals with learning difficulties. This encouraging approach and easy-to-read style will appeal to parents as well as to professionals who work with children with learning disabilities.
How a specific learning difficulty is diagnosed
Authors: Selikowitz Mark
Published: November 2020

In many cases it is the teacher who first suspects that a child may have a specific learning difficulty. Teachers are able to compare a child’s work and behaviour to that of his peers, and so can often spot a child who is experiencing difficulties before this is noticed by his parents. Sometimes, however, parents are the first to realize that their child may have a problem. There is no completely reliable way of detecting that your child has a specific learning difficulty, but here are some pointers that may alert you to the need for further evaluation of your child’s difficulties. . . . Pointers to a specific learning difficulty . . . It is quite normal for a child to struggle with skills such as reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic in the first year or two of school, but after this period, he should attain a basic level of competence. If your child continues to struggle beyond this period, he may have a specific learning difficulty. This should be suspected if he seems to be out of his depth and is not showing signs of becoming competent in basic academic skills. It may also be apparent to you that he seems brighter than these difficulties in his academic work would suggest. His reading may be slow and hesitant, with elementary errors. When reading, he may make up the story based on the illustrations to cover his difficulties, or he may guess wildly at words. He may be unable to spell the words in his spelling list, despite trying reasonably hard. His writing may remain very immature or illegible despite his best efforts. Another warning sign is a child who can write neatly, but only if he writes at an extremely slow speed. If his arithmetic skills are affected, he will seem to be lost when asked to do the calculations expected of a child in his class. He may have great difficulties understanding the meaning of arithmetical operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Another clue that a child may have a specific learning difficulty is speech delay.
Conclusion
Authors: Selikowitz Mark
Published: November 2020

It is now over a hundred years since Dr Pringle Morgan reported the story of Percy; this was the first description of a child with a specific learning difficulty. Gradually, the concept of specific learning difficulties has evolved to account for the unexplained struggle of intelligent children, like Percy, to learn. The pattern of difficulties seen in these children is now well recognized. Parents can, therefore, be reassured that their child does not have a serious disease, that the problems are real and not imaginary, that they are due to constitutional factors in the child, and that it is not their fault, nor the fault of their child. Assessment of the nature of the child’s difficulties is now far more precise. This makes possible more appropriate help and teaching. The greater awareness of the needs of such children has resulted in better provision of specialized teaching and a wider range of support. The development of computerized aides and teaching resources has made life easier for children and adults with specific learning difficulties. The future will, no doubt, bring a greater understanding of why some children learn with ease, while others struggle to learn. The group of disorders we call learning difficulties will be separated gradually into a number of conditions, each with its own cause. This will lead to the development of more effective treatments. For the present, there are no easy remedies for children with specific learning difficulties. But, as I have tried to show in this book, there is, nevertheless, a great deal that can be done to help them.
The poisonous elements of alchemy
Authors: Emsley John
Published: November 2020

The South Sea Bubble of 1720 saw prices on the London stock market rise to unsustainable heights and new companies were launched to take advantage of the public’s willingness to invest. As in the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s, many of the companies were little more than hope and hype and among them was one for ‘transmuting of quicksilver into a malleable fine metal’. Back in the early 1700s the idea that it was possible to convert mercury into gold was still widely accepted, even by eminent scientists such as Isaac Newton. He had spent much of his earlier life carrying out alchemical experiments, as we shall see. Nor was he alone. Indeed alchemy was actively encouraged by dukes, emperors, monarchs, and popes. The company that sought to make gold was banned, along with a hundred others, in July 1720 as the Government tried to control the South Sea Bubble (which finally burst in September of that year). Just how insane things had become was demonstrated by another company whose prospectus declared that it was ‘for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is’.
Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age
Authors: Budiansky Stephen
Published: November 2020

The paths that took men and women from their ordinary lives and deposited them on the doorstep of the odd profession of cryptanalysis were always tortuous, accidental, and unpredictable. The full story of the Colossus, the pioneering electronic device developed by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) to break German teleprinter ciphers in the Second World War, is fundamentally a story of several of these accidental paths converging at a remarkable moment in the history of electronics—and of the wartime urgency that set these men and women on these odd paths. Were it not for the wartime necessity of codebreaking, and were it not for particular statistical and logical properties of the teleprinter ciphers that were so eminently suited to electronic analysis, the history of computing might have taken a very different course. The fact that Britain’s codebreakers cracked the high-level teleprinter ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe high command during the Second World War has been public knowledge since the 1970s. But the recent declassification of new documents about Colossus and the teleprinter ciphers, and the willingness of key participants to discuss their roles more fully, has laid bare as never before the technical challenges they faced—not to mention the intense pressures, the false steps, and the extraordinary risks and leaps of faith along the way. It has also clarified the true role that the Colossus machines played in the advent of the digital age. Though they were neither general-purpose nor stored-program computers themselves, the Colossi sparked the imaginations of many scientists, among them Alan Turing and Max Newman, who would go on to help launch the post-war revolution that ushered in the age of the digital, general-purpose, stored-program electronic computer. Yet the story of Colossus really begins not with electronics at all, but with codebreaking; and to understand how and why the Colossi were developed and to properly place their capabilities in historical context, it is necessary to understand the problem they were built to solve, and the people who were given the job of solving it.