16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
There is No "Pokemon Gap"
While educators debated whether children learn to read best through drill-and-practice phonics or "whole language" instruction, Nintendo was, quite informally, teaching a generation of children how to read. Pokemon also taught children how to analyze and classify more than 700 different types of creatures through trading cards that were dense with specialized, technical, cross-referenced text. Gee would later call Pokemon "perhaps the best literacy curriculum ever conceived." He offered the o... 1 
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notes06 MAR 2016 by ideonexus
Fever-Reducer Extends Illness
Multivariate analysis suggested that antipyretic therapy prolonged illness in subjects infected with influenza A, but its use was the result of prolonged illness in those infected with S. sonnei. The precise nature of these relationships requires a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
1 This was an unintended discovery of the research on different types of influenza. Subjects who took fever-reducer were ill 3.5 days longer than those who did not.
16 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Religious Children Less Capable of Distinguishing Fantasy...
In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist
embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events,
all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a
real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine
intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion.
C... 1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Praise a Child's Character Rather than Actions
The researchers randomly assigned the children to receive different types of praise. For some of the children, they praised the action: “It was good that you gave some of your marbles to those poor children. Yes, that was a nice and helpful thing to do.” For others, they praised the character behind the action: “I guess you’re the kind of person who likes to help others whenever you can. Yes, you are a very nice and helpful person.”
A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities...The opposite of telling a child they work hard instead of telling them they are "smart." Tell a child they are a good person when they do good things so that they internalize morality.
21 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Different Cells are Replaced at Different Rates
Different types of cells have different lifespans, e.g.:
we shed our skin cells about every 35 days
red blood cells live about 120 days, platelets 6 days and white cells less than a day
most of the adult skeleton is replaced about every 10 years
the average age of a fat cell seems to be about 10 years
a 25-year-old heart replaces about 1% of all its cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells ) over the course of a year, while a 75-year-old heart replaces about half a percent
our neocorti...Folksonomies: biology physiology
Folksonomies: biology physiology
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notes
notesNeural cells are not replaced at all.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Explanation of Isotopes
The number of neutrons in an atom's nucleus is less fixed than the number of protons: many elements have different versions, called isotopes, with different numbers of neutrons. For example, there are three isotopes of carbon, called Carbon-12, Carbon-13 and Carbon-14. The numbers refer to the mass of the atom, which is the sum of the protons and neutrons. Each of the three has six protons. Carbon-12 has six neutrons. Carbon-13 has seven neutrons and Carbon-14 has eight neutrons. Some isotope... 1 notes
notesThe different types of carbon have different numbers of neutrons and therefore different masses.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Taxonomies are Not Arbitrary, but Factual
Mayr lived exactly 100 years, producing a stream of books and papers
up to the day of his death. Among these was his 1963 classic, Animal
Species and Evolution, the very book that made me want to study evolution.
In it Mayr recounted a striking fact. When he totaled up the names
that the natives of New Guinea’s Arfak Mountains applied to local birds,
he found that they recognized 136 different types. Western zoologists,
using traditional methods of taxonomy, recognized 137 species. In other
w... 1 notes
notesExample of the natives of an island having nearly the same number of classifications of birds as the taxonomists who studies the species.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Convergent Evolution in Cacti and Succulents
Let’s begin with one observation that strikes anyone who travels widely.
If you go to two distant areas that have similar climate and terrain,
you find different types of life. Take deserts. Many desert plants are
succulents: they show an adaptive combination of traits that include
large fleshy stems to store water, spines to deter predators, and small or
missing leaves to reduce water loss. But different deserts have different
types of succulents. In North and South America, the succulents a... 1 notes
notesThe two groups of species share many many traits, but they exist in completely different parts of the world, evolving separately, but converging to be almost interchangeable.
17 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Seeing the Species for the Ecosystem
The authors comment that from this perspective, it could be stated that multiccellular beings are also ecosystems. That is, we are formed by different types of cells that cooperate and compete for resources; we are colonized by diverse types of bacteria (in the intestines, in the skin, etc.) whose activity is linked to other processes in our organism: we are invaded by viruses, which can be harmful or can take part in processes that regulate our DNA. "These beings are constantly being changed... 1 notes
notesIt is helpful to think of species in the context of the ecosystem in which they live, as they are an part of it, indistinguishable from it in very important ways. Any single species' ecosystem includes all of the other species within it.
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Immune System VS Viruses
The immune system consists of white blood cells that come in about 10 million different types. Each type has a protein lock on it called an "antibody," which corresponds to a key carried by a bacterium called an "antigen." If a key enters that lock, the white cell starts multiplying ferociously in order to produce an army of white cells to gobble up the key-carrying invader, be it a flu virus, a tuberculosis bacterium, or even the cells of a transplanted heart. But the body has a problem. It ...An excellent description of the battle going on inside our bodies.
