Tag: Arlen Benny Cenac Jr. education

The Bacteria All Around Us

From the great outdoors to our internal organs, the world is awash in unseen bacteria. Most people assume that these germs are all dangerous but biologists know better. Studying these poorly understood microbes could better reveal how they function as the “invisible backbone of life.”  Victoria Orphan of San Diego, California and now a geobiologist at Caltech, has loved the ocean for as long as she can remember. She now spends her days exploring the hidden single-celled world found in ocean water. She studies how bacteria and other microscopic life shape the deep sea.  Bacteria play central roles in many ecosystems. These include the oceans, soil and atmosphere. They’re also a big part of the global food web. Bacteria make it possible for all other life on Earth to exist. That’s why scientists say these single-celled organisms are the invisible backbone of all life — at least on Earth.  Yet there’s plenty we don’t know about them. Scientists think they’ve identified fewer than one percent of all bacterial species. That’s been driving Orphan and others to explore the mysteries of their one-celled world. They suspect bacteria will prove key to understanding — and protecting — Earth’s most important natural resources.  Specifically, Orphan studies a type of bacteria that live on the sea floor and gobble up methane.  Methane can seep out of the Earth on the sea floor. Some scientists say that even more methane would escape into the atmosphere if it wasn’t for marine bacteria. Certain of those bacteria dine on methane. That allows the oceans to trap a huge amount of the gas. “These microorganisms are the gatekeepers. They prevent ocean methane from getting into the atmosphere where it can change greenhouse-gas levels,” Orphan explains.

 

Finding single-celled organisms on the vast sea floor can be a challenge. Through the window of a submarine, she looks for clusters of clams and giant tube worms. These organisms signal that invisible marine bacteria live there, too. Wherever those methane-eaters live, they create new molecules as they dine. Other organisms use those new molecules as food. An entire food web springs up on the ocean floor.  Orphan and her team have found methane-eating bacteria along cracks on the sea floor, where this gas is seeping out. These cracks often happen where two tectonic plates bump into each other and create enormous canyons. Some bacteria, they learned, can eat methane only by partnering with other single-celled organisms called archaea. That important detail could help scientists better predict how much methane is escaping into the air, says Orphan.

 

More than 1,000 scientists around the world are helping collect samples. They’re looking in a host of different environments, then testing them for bacterial DNA.  So far the researchers have collected 100,000 samples. They’ve catalogued bacteria from the deepest ocean. They’ve found bacteria on the International Space Station, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth. They’ve discovered bacteria in exotic locations like the Amazon rainforest and ordinary places like public toilets.

 

Click here to read more about Victoria Orphan’s research on bacteria and here for more education-related articles.

 

Scientists Uncover Rain Forest in Mount Lico

Mount Lico is a relatively isolated cliff jutting out nearly 2,300 feet above the plains of northern Mozambique. Yet for hundreds of years, people were unaware that inside the ancient volcano lay a hidden rain forest, protected by the volcano’s high walls.  Discovered by conservation biologist Julian Bayliss in 2012, the untouched biosphere is a gift for scientists. The only disturbances it has experienced over centuries are natural, such as droughts, as opposed to man-made. And so it offers a benchmark that scientists can use to compare the full effect of human interference on rain forests.  Now, for the first time, scientists have scaled the 125-meters up a near-vertical rock face to explore the undisturbed rain forest within. Bayliss took five years to assemble a team that included biologists, botanists, lepidopterists, and other experts from Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The team also included rock climbers who trained the scientists for the expedition from May 10-24—an adventure that sounds straight out of a novel.  After only one expedition, scientists have already found a new species of butterfly and a mouse species that has yet to be classified, and expect to find more previously undiscovered animals. Because Mount Lico’s habitat is a rain forest, unique plants and animals have developed there, and can help us better understand both the past and future of the natural world. The discovery is also noteworthy because it’s the second undisturbed rain forest that scientists have found in Mozambique thanks to Google Earth—offering an example of how big data can lead to new discoveries in long-overlooked habitats. Click Here for more information on Mount Lico.

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LDOE Begins New Career Option Course

The LDOE has recently announced, “select school systems across the state are piloting a new course designed to help ensure all students are prepared for success following high school graduation. The course, called Quest for Success, allows middle and high school students to develop essential workplace skills, explore various careers and industry sectors, and learn about themselves and their interests in order to successfully navigate high school, post-secondary education and career pathways”.

The article explains, “the ultimate indication of our students’ career readiness and our effectiveness in preparing them is the success they find after they leave us–the extent to which they are employed in jobs they enjoy and that allow them to earn a good living, support their families and meaningfully contribute to their communities,” said State Superintendent John White. “These are bold ambitions that will require families, educators and industry leaders to work together, but the implementation of Quest for Success, first through the pilot schools and then statewide, is a step in the right direction.”

Quest for Success, which replaces the current course called Journey to Careers, was written by 22 educators as part of their participation in the Louisiana Educator Voice Fellowship. The fellowship, a partnership between the Louisiana Department of Education and national nonprofit organization America Achieves, supports the state’s comprehensive effort to improve career readiness, which includes its Jump Start program.

Quest for Success is now being piloted in 38 school systems, and only teachers in those school systems who completed a specialized training are allowed to lead the course this year. Throughout the 2018-2019 school year, the course will be studied and revised based on teacher and student input, and a formal evaluation will be conducted at the year’s end.

For the full article and more information on the release of Quest for Success, click here.

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SLCC Maritime Training Receives Cenac Barge Donation

South Louisiana Community College’s Maritime Training Program has received the donation of a fully refurbished barge from Cenac Marine Services.  The barge, which replicates a standard Cenac tank barge, is located in Munson Slip in Houma. SLCC tankerman training is being held there. This barge will allow for more hands-on training to a school that was badly in need of better training materials.  Depending on the size of the class, hands-on barge training can last approximately 8 hours long, according to a statement issued by Cenac. For now, the goal is a new class every two weeks. The very first batch of future mariners began training on August 12th.  Certified Cenac captains are serving as instructors, on their off time. They are certified by the state of Louisiana to teach the course, which takes a total of 32 hours to complete. After that course completion each candidate must complete basic firefighter training. Once that is done, the Cenac statement says, the candidates are certified as oil tankermen.  “From the very start of this project I have been excited about what we can offer to the community and to those interested in becoming tankermen,” Cenac said. “My company and I are fortunate to have the opportunity to provide a hands-on learning experience to many people for years to come.” If you or someone you know is interested in enrolling in SLCC’s maritime training program, you can register at 331 Dickson Road in Houma where the barge is housed or to learn more about South Louisiana Community College and its maritime training offerings, visit http://www.solacc.edu.

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Is There a Nontraditional Student Anymore?

Just what is a “traditional” and a “nontraditional” college student these days?  It seems that more and more people are going back to school as parents, taking a “gap year” after high school, and making other life decisions that used to not be the norm.  Popular culture tells us that college students are recent high school graduates, living on campus, taking remedial classes, and (hopefully) graduating four years later. But these days that narrative of the residential, collegiate experience is way off, says Alexandria Walton Radford, who heads up postsecondary education research at RTI International in North Carolina. Today’s college student is decidedly nontraditional — and has been for a while. Radford has done a lot of research on this and defines the nontraditional student as having one or more of the following characteristics:

Financially independent from their parents
Having a child or other dependent
Being a single caregiver
Lacking a traditional high school diploma
Delaying postsecondary enrollment
Attending school part time
Being employed full time

Close to 74 percent of undergrads fall into one of these categories — and about a third have two or three. Here’s a snapshot of the 17 million Americans enrolled in undergraduate higher education, according to numbers culled by the National Center for Education Statistics.

1 in 5 is at least 30 years old
About half are financially independent from their parents
1 in 4 is caring for a child
47 percent go to school part time at some point
A quarter take a year off before starting school
2 out of 5 attend a two-year community college
44 percent have parents who never completed a bachelor’s degree

As demographics shift, Radford argues, policy should follow. It’s vital that institutions look at the characteristics of their undergrad cohorts, she adds, to explore how to address their students’ unique concerns. Perhaps that means offering services like financial aid, advising or tutoring after-hours (instead of the typical 9 to 5). Maybe it means offering child care for student-parents, or extra parking for commuters. One thing for sure, says Radford, is that it’s probably time to coin a new phrase for nontraditional students, considering they are the new norm. Click here to read more.

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Gates Foundation Gives $92 Million in Grants

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced $92 million in grants to help students of color and low-income students into college—marking its first major wave of K-12 giving since last fall.  The money is divided into 19 separate grants that will support improvements in everything from middle school language arts, to Algebra 1, to solving the problem of “undermatching,”—when high-achieving, low-income students select colleges that are less ambitious or rigorous than what their track records qualify them for. “Rather than coming in with a bright, shiny new idea, we’re asking districts, schools, and intermediaries to look at investments they’ve already made, and we’re trying to make that last-mile investment that enables them to connect their work, to set the strategies or data that will enable them to be successful for students,” said Robert Hughes, the foundation’s director of K-12 education. It’s a remarkably different strategy than its past K-12 philanthropy. The foundation received about 530 applications for the first cohort of giving, Gates officials said, and it plans to roll out more grants sometime in the fall. Below are brief descriptions of the 19 winners; all the grants are targeted to help black, Latino, and low-income students.

  • Achieve Atlanta
  • The Baltimore City school district 
  • The Bank Street College of Education 
  • California Education Partners
  • The Center for Leadership and Educational Equity
  • City Year 
  • The Community Foundation of Texas 
  • The Community Center for Education Results 
  • The CORE Districts
  • The High Tech High Graduate School of Education 
  • The Institute for Learning
  • KIPP
  • The Network for College Success 
  • New Visions for Public Schools
  • The Northwest Regional Education Service District
  • Partners in School Innovation 
  • Seeding Success
  • The Southern Regional Education Board 
  • Teach Plus

Click here for more information.

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