News Items
Pennsylvania State University has begun a formal
investigation into whether a prominent faculty member is guilty of scientific
misconduct for the way he carried out research into climate change.
But the university
said a preliminary inquiry into Dr. Michael Mann's work, completed late last
month, cleared him of allegations that he conspired with other scientists to
squelch views and data at odds with their belief that the earth is
warming.
Google Inc. has awarded a two-year, $1 million research
grant aimed at slashing energy usage in large internet data centers to a team of
computer scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Rutgers
University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia, Rutgers
reports. The company also might award an additional $500,000 for a third year
subject to program review.
Yale University announced on Wednesday that it planned a
number of steps to close a remaining $150 million budget gap, including cutting
staff, freezing salaries for deans and officers, reducing the number of graduate
students — even turning down all thermostats to 68
degrees.
Dayton Daily News 12/16/2009 - Ohio colleges and
universities could face cuts exceeding $309 million statewide in fiscal year
2010 if the General Assembly fails to resolve a budget shortfall by Dec. 31,
according to the state’s top higher education
official.
Applications for $650 million in new federal grants
that encourage school innovation will be available in early 2010 and due in the
spring, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) said in a conference call with
reporters Oct. 6. The department estimates that all money under the program will
be committed by Sept. 30, 2010.
Friday,
October 2, 2009 -- If you answer The Kite Runner, the acclaimed novel
by Khaled Hosseini about life in Afghanistan, then you’re turning the pages of
one of the top-ten most challenged books of 2008, according to the American
Library Association (ALA).
Paul Washington oversaw hundreds of employees in the
auto industry and navigated the finicky retail market for Target. Now he's
taking on a much more daunting task: teaching history to
eighth-graders.
Washington, who will start work this month at Stafford
Middle School in Frisco, is among a cadre of professionals leaving corporations
for classrooms as the economy continues to wallow and frustrated employees
reconsider career trajectories.
The
National Science Foundation (NSF) recently joined the InCommon Federation to
provide NSF's research and education community simpler and easier access to
online services.
In 1998,
in response to the growing number of new science teachers in local schools and
mindful of how difficult it is to retain new teachers, the Teacher Institute
created the Teacher Induction Program. The program is designed to support new
science teachers in their first two years of teaching (the Beginning Teacher
Program) and to train mentors and classroom coaches to work with the new
teachers (the Leadership Program). It’s an alarming fact that more than a third
of beginning teachers leave the profession within the first few years. Research
indicates that
the single most effective way to prevent this exodus is
by supporting the beginning teacher in those early years of in
the profession.
Mr. Kress served as senior
advisor to President George W. Bush on education with respect to the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001. He also previously served as
president of the board of trustees of the Dallas Public Schools. Sandy Kress'
practice focuses on public law and policy at the state and national levels with
a strong focus on education matters, including policies, reform and
accountability.
K-12 technology survey reveals interactive
whiteboards, laptops are most useful classroom
tools.
The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) released a
report describing a strategy to promote preservation and access to digital
scientific data. The report, Harnessing the Power of Digital Data for Science
and Society, was produced by the NSTC's Committee on Science under the auspices
of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of
the President. March 23, 2009 click on title for full
article.
Better enforcement is largely responsible for a rise in
online sex arrests, researchers say.
More people have been arrested in recent years for sexually
soliciting youths online, but the sharp increase comes from better enforcement,
and the internet remains a relatively safe social environment, researchers said
in a new study.
In a report released March 31, the researchers saw a nearly
fivefold jump in arrests for soliciting undercover investigators who posed as
juveniles--to 3,100 in 2006, up from 644 in 2000, the last time the study was
conducted. Click on title for full article.