March 28, 2012
Good Morning,
Check out the first article in this issue to find out how e-readers are encouraging boys, specifically, to up their reading game. What's interesting is the gender difference; girls seem to prefer a good old fashion book.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
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Study: E-readers improve boys' readingDALLAS - Boys who are reluctant readers find reading a more valuable activity after two months of using an e-reader, researchers in Texas say. Scientists at Southern Methodist University reported the findings based on a study of 199 middle school students who struggled with reading and participated in a reading improvement class that employed Amazon's Kindle e-reader. Boys consistently had a higher self-concept of their reading skill than girls both before and after using e-readers, researcher Dara Williams-Rossi said. After use of the e-readers, boys' attitudes about the value of reading improved, while girls' attitudes declined, she said. "The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read while many girls preferred the actual books," Williams-Rossi said. "It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends." Students generally liked using e-readers and many felt using them helped their reading improve, the researchers found. The e-readers sparked excitement among the students, they said, resulting in positive attention for the students in the reading improvement classes, with students who weren't in such classes asking how they could join "the Kindle classes."
Marine diversity expedition nears endHEIDELBERG, Germany - A 60,000-mile ocean journey to map the globe's marine biodiversity is almost completed after two and a half years, German researchers say. The TARA OCEANS ship and its expedition crew are scheduled to reach Lorient, France, Saturday, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany reported Tuesday. The journey covered all the world's major oceans to sample and investigate microorganisms in the largest ecosystem on the planet, researchers said. "Life and evolution started in the oceans, yet we know very little about the distribution of marine biodiversity," Eric Karsenti, the lab's senior scientist, wrote in the journal Molecular Systems Biology. "If it were not for these microorganisms we would not exist. "First, we are their evolutionary descendants, and second they generate the atmosphere of the Earth." The goal of systems biology, he said, is to map, understand and model the whole network of interactions that make up life. "Systems biology can be applied at any organizational level of living organisms, from molecular interactions to ecosystems and evolution," Karsenti said. The round-the-world project has brought back samples from 155 stations taken from all the main oceans on the planet. "After the completion of the ocean voyage and the collection phase of the operation, the land-based investigation is truly picking up speed," Karsenti said.
NASA launches five rockets in studyWALLOPS ISLAND, Va. - NASA says it successfully launched five rockets from Virginia early Tuesday as part of a study of the upper level jet stream on the edge of space. The first rocket was launched from its Wallops Flight Facility at 4:58 a.m. EDT and four subsequent rockets were launched in succession at 80-second intervals, the space agency reported. Each rocket released a tracer chemical at a different altitude to create milky white clouds scientists will use to study the atmospheric flow of the jet stream. The jet stream, 65 miles above Earth's surface, typically courses at speeds of 200 mph to well over 300 mph and create rapid transport of air masses and weather systems from Earth's mid latitudes to the polar regions. The jet stream is located in the same region where strong electrical currents occur in the ionosphere that can adversely affect satellite and radio communications, NASA said. The clouds created by the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment were reported as being visible from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y.
Science research called 'dysfunctional'WASHINGTON - The increasing number of retractions in scientific journals is a symptom of dysfunction in the world of biomedical research, a scientist told a U.S. committee. Ferric Fang, editor-in-chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, and Arturo Casadevall, editor-in -chief of mBio, both organs of the American Society for Microbiology, appeared Tuesday before a committee of the National Academy of Sciences. "Incentives have evolved over the decades to encourage some behaviors that are detrimental to good science," Fang told a meeting of the Committee of Science, Technology and Law of the NAS. In the past decade, the number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than ten-fold while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44 percent, the committee heard. Some retractions are due to simple error but many are a result of misconduct, including falsification of data and plagiarism, a release from the American Society for Micro-biology said. Driving the problem is an economic incentive system that has created a hypercompetitive environment that encourages poor scientific practices, including misconduct, Fang and Casadevall said. Too many researchers are competing for too little funding, creating a survival-of-the-fittest, winner-take-all environment where researchers increasingly feel pressure to publish, especially in high-prestige journals, they said. "The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high profile journal," Fang said. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior to salvage their career."
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