Eideard

Whether rich or poor, residents of the United States or China, illiterate or college graduates, parents who have books in the home increase the level of education their children will attain, according to a 20-year study led by Mariah Evans, University of Nevada, Reno associate professor of sociology and resource economics.

For years, educators have thought the strongest predictor of attaining high levels of education was having parents who were highly educated. But, strikingly, this massive study showed that the difference between being raised in a bookless home compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate…compared to having parents who have a university education… Both factors, having a 500-book library or having university-educated parents, propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average.

Being a sociologist, Evans was particularly interested to find that children of lesser-educated parents benefit the most from having books in the home. She has been looking for ways to help Nevada’s rural communities, in terms of economic development and education.

“What kinds of investments should we be making to help these kids get ahead?” she asked. “The results of this study indicate that getting some books into their homes is an inexpensive way that we can help these children succeed.”

Evans said, “Even a little bit goes a long way,” in terms of the number of books in a home. Having as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact on propelling a child to a higher level of education, and the more books you add, the greater the benefit…

The researchers were struck by the strong effect having books in the home had on children’s educational attainment even above and beyond such factors as education level of the parents, the country’s GDP, the father’s occupation or the political system of the country.

Having books in the home is twice as important as the father’s education level, and more important than whether a child was reared in China or the United States. Surprisingly, the difference in educational attainment for children born in the United States and children born in China was just 2 years, less than two-thirds the effect that having 500 or more books in the home had on children.

I presume the benefit was from having access to the books. It certainly was an advantage for me and my sister.

Though both of us were taught to read before entering kindergarten, though both took those long Saturday roundtrip walks to the Carnegie Library in our community – our parents had belonged to a couple of book clubs for all their lives together. It took me years – enjoyable years I might add – to catch up to both of them reading through our home library.

An American daredevil made history when he successfully crossed the Channel dangling beneath a cloud of coloured helium balloons, landing in a French field near Dunkirk after a four-hour flight – by the simple means of cutting his balloons free one by one, with a pair of scissors.

Jonathan Trappe, 36, who has set several records for helium balloon flights, took off at 5am into a beautiful clear blue sky, from the Kent Gliding Club at Challock about 10 miles from the coast, to cheers from spectators. The scene filmed by a Sky news helicopter was reminiscent of the film Up, in which an intrepid veteran flies his whole house into a world of adventures. Trappe was using a slightly sturdier basket than the usual fragile chairs he is strapped into. He carried a GPS system to work out his location, but no float suit to save him if he crashed into the Channel.

He rose to a maximum height of 11,000ft during the crossing.

“We are the least manoeuvrable of aircraft, so we have right of way,” he said before taking to the skies…

In reference to previous cross-channel pioneers, he wrote early this morning: “That iconic ribbon of water separating the UK from the continent has called to people for generations, tempting them to cross since long before you or I were born. [Louis] Blériot crossed in 1909. Bryan Allen in 1979. Yves Rossy crossed in 2008…

“And here it is, the English Channel, continuing to call to us. I don’t know if it is a siren’s song, or if crossing that ribbon of water will be like breaking the ribbon at the finish line. With good luck, I will find out today.”

That anarchist streak, doing it our own way, on the cheap and shaking a fist at conventionality always holds an appeal for me.

My kinda inventor. Both of them.

St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, with its colorful onion domes, is an architectural icon. And now you can eat it.

Pastry Chef Troman Felizmenio has created a piece of culinary art by making a gingerbread copy of the landmark for the holiday season. He works at the Ritz Carlton hotel near the Kremlin and Red Square.

Creation of the edible cathedral, which is 2 meters (6.5 feet) high, began in early September and lasted nearly three months, according to a description from the hotel.

The chef and his crew have made smaller versions for sale – only $1600 each.

Producing metallic hollow spheres is complicated: It has not yet been possible to make the small sizes required for new high-tech applications. Now for the first time researchers have manufactured ground hollow spheres measuring just two to ten millimeters.

New drive technologies combined with lighter and stronger materials will make the airplanes and automobiles of the future more fuel-efficient. But a number of technical details need to be resolved first. Magnetic ball valves are one example – for them to react extremely quickly, the balls must be as light as possible, and the same applies to rapidly moving bearings. Hollow spheres made of steel represent a solution.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing and Advanced Materials IFAM in Dresden working in cooperation with hollomet GmbH Dresden have created the technology for the manufacture of rapidly reacting ball valves and bearings. “In an injection valve the movement of a ball causes the valve to open and close. The lighter the ball, the quicker it moves,” explains Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Göhler, project manager at the IFAM.

“For the first time we’ve been able to produce metal hollow spheres in the required diameter of just two to ten millimeters. The hollow spheres are 40 to 70 percent lighter than solid ones.”

RTFA. The process is ingenious. It even appears to be practical.

Bravo!

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized “nuclear battery” that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes…

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries.

They have developed it in an attempt to scale down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (Mems and Nems).

The means to power such devices has been a subject of study as vigorous as the development of the devices themselves.

The Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon and J.David Robertson, employed a liquid semiconductor to capture and utilise the decay particles…

Most nuclear batteries use a solid semiconductor to harvest the particles, but the particles’ extremely high energies means that the semiconductors suffer damage over time…

The team’s solution incorporates a liquid semiconductor, in which the particles can pass without causing damage.

So – no one will need replaceable batteries. They’ll outlast the device and the owner.

Law enforcement officers figured they would find gamecocks when they raided the house in Shelton, CT.

Instead, petite songbirds with bright yellow feathers and orange crowns awaited.

Because they had been trained to be aggressive, the South African tanagers will be monitored for a month to see how well they’re getting along, said Roger Sweeney, the Salt Lake City bird park curator.

Which is one of the locations where the rescued birds have been transported for rehab.

“We’d gotten 100 cages ready to house these fighting cocks that we were going to seize,” said Bruce Sherman, director from the CT Dept of Agriculture. “There was a lot of time spent setting up and preparing for that, then everything changed when we found out they were finches.”

The cages sized for roosters were made of wire mesh open enough for the tanagers to fly right back out of the cages.

Our society has so many demented, strung out, lame cultural hangups, you have to wonder what will be the next focus for sex, drugs or gambling?

Laws banning marriage between first cousins are based on outdated assumptions about a high degree of genetic risk for offspring and should be repealed, according to a population genetics expert.

In an opinion article published in the US open-access journal PLoS Biology, Professors Hamish Spencer and Diane Paul argue that laws against cousin marriage are ill-advised. “Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny,” says Professor Spencer. For example, a 2002 expert review of studies regarding birth defects in offspring of cousins found that the risk was much smaller than generally assumed.

The US National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) report estimated the average risk as 1.7 – 2 per cent higher than the background population risk of congenital defects and 4.4 per cent higher than general risk for dying in childhood.

“Women over the age of 40 have a similar risk of having children with birth defects and no one is suggesting they should be prevented from reproducing. People with Huntington’s Disease or other autosomal dominant disorders have a 50 per cent risk of transmitting the underlying genes to offspring and they are not barred either,” Professor Spencer says.

I’ll keep my mouth shut on this one. I have kin who read my blog.