Nobel in Economics - why are some countries wealthy, ,others poor?

 This is a summary paper about the Nobel winners in economics (2 from MIT, 1 from U. of Chicago), who contribute to our understanding of how and why some countries such as the USA have accumulated massive wealth, while many other countries have not and whose citizens are sometimes desperately poor. 

Generally, it largely depends on the types of institutions developed in a country - the more inclusive the institutions, such as in countries leaning towards or practicing democracy, the more wealth is generated and the higher the GDP per capita. If institutions are extractive, such as in oligarchies and authoritarian countries, the less wealth per citizen, and whatever wealth there is tends to be concentrated with the few in power. 

A good Equipotential Line simulation - Thanks to Desmos

 Equipotential lines and surfaces are a big thing in electrostatics. Graphically, these provide a way of trying to visualize an abstract quantity such as voltage, and mathematically it makes use of a gradient -                                                                     E-field = dV/dr

The graphing program and site DESMOS has a wonderful visualization and simulator for this. We just wanted to be sure everyone has access to this, and hopefully it will help make sense out of this abstract, mathematical concept. 

                                                                      From xmPhysics

Projectile Pollen possible in certain plant to aid in pollinating female flowers

 What great timing, where an article in Science News about a projectile method of spreading pollen for a certain type of plant, came out while we are studying projectile motion. 

The Brazilian flower Hypenea macrantha has evolved a catapult-like mechanism that can launch its pollen when hummingbirds have their beaks in the flower, sipping out nectar. This does two things: it helps knock other, competitor flower's pollen off the beaks of hummingbirds, and then increases the amount of the flower's own pollen that sticks to the beak, thus increasing the odds of having its pollen transferred to a female flower. Nature is awesome! 

AP Scores being inflated on some of the exams

 It appears that the College Board has changed the way some of the AP subject exams are scored. For example, the percentage of students getting scores of 4 or 5 on the US History, US Government, and European History nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024. Others, like Chemistry and Biology, have seen dramatic recalibrations a couple years ago. 

Grade inflation is something that has dramatically risen since the Covid shutdowns, mostly done to help alleviate the severe and oftentimes traumatic stresses that were present for everyone, both students and adults. But as we have come out of the shutdowns, perhaps a key question should be "is getting a B or C the end of the world?" It doesn't make any sense if everyone gets an A in classes if they clearly have not mastered much of the material...'average' is a concept that has seemingly been dismissed. On an AP exam, a score of 4 or 5 is supposed to represent high levels of mastery of the subject. Perhaps we all have done ourselves a disservice by boosting up the acceptance of mediocrity and confusing it with mastery and excellence. Where this tends NOT to happen, though, is when trying to get jobs ultimately. 

So let's work on the excellence part of all this throughout the school year, and have some fun learning all about how our world and universe work fundamentally, and become excellent problem solvers who will have the ability to truly fix some of the problems in the world and discover new bits of knowledge that can be useful in our understanding of life and nature! The scores on tests will come along for the ride, and if we are successful building up our knowledge and skills, they will be representative of our excellence. BUT, it is also true that it is likely NOT EVERYONE WILL GET THERE! AND THAT'S OK! We all learn at different rates and have different strengths and weaknesses, so sometimes it takes many of us longer than others to master topics and courses. If some of us need to take some classes over when in college, THAT IS OK, TOO! You will be well-prepared for that scenario because of the background from the high school course, and AP classes are called 'Advanced' for a reason - they are challenging! 

Let's have fun learning, together, and see where it leads! 

One thing to check on photos to determine if it's a Deepfake

 Scientists have found a feature of photos that can be added to a list of things to determine if a photo is authentic or a deepfake. Deepfakes are electronically created photos or videos, using AI, that are nearly impossible for untrained eyes to determine if the photo/video is of something real or made-up. There are countless examples online, and perhaps the most deepfaked person is former President Obama. 

Using techniques and information learned primarily from astronomers, and how they take and analyze photos of distant galaxies, it turns our that for photos of humans the key is to check out the eyes. In real photos, generally the reflections of light in the eyes should be the same. AI has not learned this correctly - YET - so presently one can check the colors and reflections of eyes, and that can help determine if it is a fake or not. 

This is especially important right now, heading into fall elections, when different individuals and groups are trying to smear candidates and get disinformation to go viral online. Deepfakes have become so easy to create that the average person looking at ads and content would likely not be able to tell the difference, making it SO challenging to determine what's real or not. 

Preliminary evidence for past life on Mars

Scientists have wondered for a long time about the possibility of past life on Mars. The Perseverence probe, which has been on Mars since 2021, detected organic materials, normally associated with life as we know it, in new rock samples in July, 2024. Of course, this will be studied as thoroughly as possible, and is encouraging scientists to setup missions that will bring rock samples back to earth for more detailed chemical analysis. Check out this article for more details!

A Research Program: Lumiere Research Scholar Program

A FYI I received:

 Create an independent research paper. Work with top researchers 

The Lumiere Research Scholar Program helps high school students work one-on-one with a scholar on an independent research project. At the end of the program, you'll develop an independent research paper that you could use for college admissions or future studies. Our mentors are PhD scholars from top research universities such as Harvard, MIT,  Stanford, Yale, Duke and LSE. The program was founded by a Harvard & Oxford PhD who met as undergraduates at Harvard.  

 

The program is rigorous and fully virtual. We offer need based financial aid for students who qualify. You can find the application in the brochure! To learn more, you can reach out to our Head of Growth and Partnerships, Maya Novak-Herzog, at maya.novak-herzog@lumiere.education or go to lumiere-education.com.

The early bird deadline for application to the Fall cohort is July 30th, 2024.

 

Link to the application: Lumiere Research Scholar Application.

Next level of AI developed at U. of Illinois - CyberOctopus

 Using the way an octopus thinks about and navigates spatially, and also in time, researchers have created the next level of AI 'thinking' and processing information in its environment. This is episodic memory, and allows an AI to have better remembrances of past events it was involved in, learn from it, and have better thought out solutions to future problems based on those past events. It allows AI to be more animal-like rather than machine-like. Researchers have taken the leap from a sea slug brain, which is very simple, and made it more like an octopus brain...the evolution of this will ultimately, they think, to how a human brain operates, remembers, thinks things through, react to internal 'feelings', predict, and have creative, original thoughts. 

What are your thoughts about where AI is and where it will go? What should the ethics of creating and using AI's be? Who should make those decisions about AI? What are the consequences of more and more advanced AI in our human world, such as how will it change and replace humans jobs and careers? These are all vital questions we all should be thinking about, because AI is affecting most jobs and aspects of life already! 

Rebel Human study in Doc V's classes - effectiveness on mental health of our students

 This summarizes the study results of the effectiveness of Rebel Human school resources on the mental health of my students, who were juniors and seniors in 3 and 4 Chem/Phys AP Physics classes. The RH resources have been used exclusively at ETHS in Physical Education classes for the last 3 years, for nearly all students in the building, grades 9-12. This is part of an effort to begin exposing and teaching students some critical social-emotional learning (SEL) skills, and SEL is one of the 4 primary goals of ETHS. If it helps, rearrange the letters and let's call this ELS, ESSENTIAL LIFE SKILLS - this is what we're really talking about when you hear or read SEL!! 

We wanted to go outside of PE classes, and do a formal study on RH impact on the mental health of my students. We had enough sections of juniors and seniors to have two control sections and three intervention sections. Despite limited sample sizes and limited time (December 2023 - April 2024) of exposure to the deep breathing methods to help manage stress and one's emotions in a healthy way, we were honestly surprised to find statistically significant results for some of the measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as the use of eustress (the positive use of stress for things like motivation, emotional control, reduction of stress, etc.). Check out a summary of the entire study, including dozens of anonymous positive comments from students in the intervention sections. The more students used and talked about the RH methods and SEL skills, the more they saw the relevance and importance of making use of them in classes, in relationships, in athletics, and generally in life, to help manage stress and their mental health.

Keep in mind that healthy students learn more, show better behavior, get along with each other better, and find more growth, happiness, and success in life. This is the essence of being strong in SEL skills, and is why this is a primary goal of ETHS!

Hurricane Beryl - a monster for this early in the hurricane season

 The first major hurricane of the season, Hurricane Beryl, is hitting the Caribbean, and is now a category 5 (the strongest category) monster. This is a good article with an expert who says conditions for this year's season are unprecedented. In fact, this is the strongest storm on record this early in the season, due to the record high temperatures of the oceans and Gulf of Mexico. Remember, warm, moist air is the fuel for any storm, including hurricanes/cyclones, which is why the strengths of storms and amount of rain they release has been steadily rising the last couple decades. 

Old photo of Hurricane Florence (Wikipedia)