Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts

Joe Paterno out at Penn State School Football

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP)
Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier amid the growing furor over how the school handled sex abuse allegations against an assistant coach.

The massive shakeup Wednesday night came hours after Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of his 46th season.

But the outcry following the arrest of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky on molestation charges proved too much for the board to ignore.

One key question has been why Paterno and other top school officials didn't go to police in 2002 after being told a graduate assistant saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in a school shower.

Paterno says he should have done more. Spanier has said he was not told the details of the attack.

Sandusky has denied the charges.

Defensive coordinator Tom Bradley will serve as interim coach while Rodney Erickson will serve as interim school president.

Earlier in the day, Paterno said in a statement he was ''absolutely devastated'' by the case, in which Sandusky, his onetime heir apparent was charged with molesting eight boys in 15 years, with some of the alleged abuse taking place at the Penn State football complex.

''This is a tragedy,'' Paterno said. ''It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.''

John Surma, the vice chair of the board of trustees said, ''these decisions were made after careful deliberations and in the best interests of the university as a whole.''

''The past several days have been absolutely terrible for the entire Penn State community. But the outrage that we feel is nothing compared to the physical and psychological suffering that allegedly took place,'' he added.

Sue Paterno opened the door of the Paterno home briefly when a reporter knocked, then closed it and turned off the light.

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Hi-tech scans catch prehistoric mite hitching ride on spider


Scientists at the University of Manchester colleagues in Berlin believe have produced amazing three-dimensional images of a prehistoric mite as it hitched a ride on the back of a 50 million-year-old spider. At just 176 micrometres long and barely visible to the naked eye, the mite -- trapped inside Baltic amber (fossil tree resin) -- is believed to be the smallest arthropod fossil ever to be scanned using X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning techniques.

The study, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, also sets a minimum age of almost 50 million years for the evolution among these mites of phoretic, or hitchhiking, behaviour using another animal species.

"CT allowed us to digitally dissect the mite off the spider in order to reveal the important features on the underside of the mite required for identification," said Dr David Penney, one of the study's authors based in the Faculty of Life Sciences. "The specimen, which is extremely rare in the fossil record, is potentially the oldest record of the living family Histiostomatidae.

"Amber is a remarkable repository of ecological associations within the fossil record. In many cases organisms died instantaneously and were preserved with lifelike fidelity, still enacting their behaviour immediately prior to their unexpected demise. We often refer to this as 'frozen behaviour' or palaeoethology and such examples can tell us a great deal about interactions in ecosystems of the past. However, most amber fossils consist of individual insects or several insects together but without unequivocal demonstrable evidence of direct interaction. The remarkable specimen we describe in this paper is the kind of find that occurs only once in say a hundred thousand specimens."

Fellow Manchester biologist Dr Richard Preziosi said: "Phoresy is where one organism uses another animal of a different species for transportation to a new environment. Such behaviour is common in several different groups today. The study of fossils such as the one we described can provide important clues as to how far back in geological time such behaviours evolved. The fact that we now have technology that was unavailable just a few years ago means we can now use a multidisciplinary approach to extract the most information possible from such tiny and awkwardly positioned fossils, which previously would have yielded little or no substantial scientific data."

Co-author Professor Phil Withers, from Manchester's School of Materials, said: "We believe this to be the smallest amber inclusion scanned anywhere to date. With our sub-micron phase contrast system we can obtain fantastic 3D images and compete with synchrotron x-ray systems and are revealing fossils previously inaccessible to imaging. With our nanoCT lab systems, we are now looking to push the boundaries of this technique yet further."

Dr Jason Dunlop, from the Humboldt University, Berlin, added: "As everyone knows, mites are usually very small animals, and even living ones are difficult to work with. Fossil mites are especially rare and the particular group to which this remarkable new amber specimen belongs has only been found a handful of times in the fossil record. Yet thanks to these new techniques, we could identify numerous important features as if we were looking at a modern animal under the scanning electron microscope. Work like this is breaking down the barriers between palaeontology and zoology even further."


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Texas Colleges Set An Instance

Texas faculty districts are enjoying a revival, and the way! Lately, the state’s schools are discovering elevated success meeting all the measures of a college’s success- motivated effectively performing college students, and colleges and teachers who set the bar greater for themselves. Extra tellingly, these high achievement ranges of Texas schools cowl college students across all racial and linguistic divides, a contented state of affairs in a system the place academic proficiency differences between ethnic groups are nonetheless marked. It’s not good, however take a look at the outcomes so far.

Enhanced Student Performance at Texas Faculties

In accordance with 2005 schooling statistics, nine out of ten kids in Texas schools handed the Texas Assessment of Information and Abilities Test. This difficult take a look at aims at gauging proficiency levels before graduation. This increased proficiency has long term advantages in different areas as well. Many college students in Texas faculties are now choosing AP (Advanced Placement) courses, and many of them are enjoying profitable results in these exams. In truth in 2004-05, almost 99,429 students taking the AP checks were graded at 3 or greater on a scale of 1 to 5. Examine this to the 28,331 students who placed at the identical grade in 1996.

Increasing Program Choices at Texas Colleges

Yet another measure of a college’s functioning is the kind of alternatives that it might probably supply its students, and it appears Texas schools are doing just that. In many Texas colleges, foreign language research are required to be undertaken for at least two years with the intention to be eligible for graduation. Hiring qualified overseas language lecturers has confirmed to be an issue in the past, but the Texas faculties have discovered a method of circumventing this drawback by making use of distance learning strategies and video conferencing equipment. This method coupled with revolutionary educating methodologies has confirmed to be a terrific success. The truth is, it’s been so well-liked that the program is now being expanded to incorporate courses in other languages, economics, and psychology.

Challenges of Distance Learning in Texas Faculties

The success of this distance studying mechanism in some Texas faculties has prompted the growth of this program to many other schools within the state. The system, although successful, is not without its challenges. Typically lecturers present distance instruction in more than one faculty, and that creates problems when it comes to adjusting dates. Faculty days and breaks may differ between districts, and this creates challenges for lecturers who should resort to some really skilled juggling to reach all the Texas colleges they serve. However, these are comparatively minor issues, and nothing that may’t be aided by utilizing some good old fashioned determination. And new-usual technology. By using innovative tools to smooth out the space studying mechanism these districts are showing the way in which to other faculties around the country.

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