Eideard

As depicted in the bible in 1893

Even as schools aim to better prepare students for a global work force, fewer than one in three American students are proficient in geography, with most eighth graders unable to explain what causes earthquakes or accurately describe the American Southwest…

The average test score for 12th graders declined to 282 (on a scale of 500) from 284 in 2001 when the test was last given. It remained essentially unchanged for eighth graders during that period, though there were gains among the lowest-performing students. Fourth graders had the largest gains, with the average score rising to 213, up five points from 2001.

“Geography is not just about maps,” said David P. Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, who expressed concern that students were not doing better in geography. “It is a rich and varied discipline that, now more than ever, is vital to understanding the connections between our global economy, environment and diverse cultures…”

Roger M. Downs, a geography professor at Pennsylvania State University who has studied the results, said that while he was encouraged by the improving test scores for fourth graders, and for low-performing and minority students, he was concerned that “geography’s role in the curriculum is limited and, at best, static.”

“That is ironic given the convincing case that can be made for the importance of geographic literacy,” Mr. Downs said. “But it is doubly ironic given a world in which adults and now children have smartphones and tablets that can download maps on the fly, provide directions to places, and give your location to your friends…”

Some of our local high school graduates would have a hard time finding a rock concert one state over – except for the freeway taking them straight to the appropriate city.

I know it’s an easy hit to comment on the ignorance our school systems roll out like so many candy bars on a Cadbury production line. There still breathes a jot or two of hope that repeated smacks on the bottom will jolt some life not only into voters who easily share missing the absence of educated graduates – but, folks who care about how and what combines into local movements to turn our education systems back into something that once did our country proud.

Every autumn, as predictably as falling leaves, flu season descends upon us. Every spring, just as predictably, the season comes to a close. This cyclical pattern, common in temperate regions, is well known, but the driving forces behind it have been in question.

Do existing strains die off each spring, only to be replaced each fall by new founding strains from other parts of the world, or does a “hidden chain of sickness” persist over the summer, seeding the next season’s epidemic?

A genetic analysis by University of Michigan postdoctoral fellow Trevor Bedford and colleagues at U-M, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Florida State University reveals that in the United States, not all strains of influenza die off at the end of winter; some move southward to South America, and some migrate even farther.

“We found that although China and Southeast Asia play the largest role in the influenza A migration network, temperate regions — particularly the USA — also make important contributions,” Bedford said. Rather than dying off at the end of our flu season, many strains simply move on to more favorable environments.

Growing knowledge about patterns of flu migration eventually may make it possible to tailor vaccines to particular locations, Bedford said.

“We found, for instance, that South America gets almost all of its flu from North America. This would suggest that rather than giving South America the same vaccine that the rest of the world gets, you could construct a vaccine preferentially from the strains that were circulating in North America the previous season. As we gather more data from other regions, this could be done for the entire world.”

All the more reason to develop a universal flu vaccine – even if it needs to be tailored geographically.

Captain Jack Harkness will sort this lot out!

While you may be sure Cardiff is the capital of Wales, Facebook users in the city were baffled after the social networking website put it in England.

People in Swansea, Wrexham and even the very Welsh sounding Llandrindod Wells were confused too as the location on their profile was also moved there. Over 8,000 users joined campaign groups demanding the locations on their profiles be returned to Wales.

Facebook blamed the problem on a bug and apologised…

Student Alex Smith said his friends had changed their location on their profiles to different Cardiffs elsewhere in the world as a protest.

Mr Smith, 18, said he had been a user of the site almost since it launched in 2004 and the problem had never happened before…

A spokesperson for Facebook said: “There was a bug causing this issue which has been fixed. We apologise to users who were affected.”

Let’s see. Facebook was founded by American college graduates. It’s maintained and run in the GOUSA.

Do you know anyone in the United States who knows squat about geography?