Electronic readers allow children to interact with texts in ways they don't interact with the printed word, encouraging them to read, according to Kansas State University professor of Education Lotta Larson.

Since fall 2009, Larson has been using the Amazon Kindle in her work with a pair of second-graders. The e-reader has features that make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.

"It's interesting to see the kinds of things these kids have been able to do," Larson said.

Sometimes they make comments summarizing the plot, therefore reinforcing their understanding of the book. Other times they ponder character development, jotting down things like "If I were him, I'd say no way!"

The world's water cycle has already intensified and the changes are consistent with predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to  new research in the Journal of Climate.

The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.

The study shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world's oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans' interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

I read with interest and excitement a very lightweight preprint on the Cornell preprint arxiv this afternoon. Although I usually skip reading papers on subjects I know little about (Cosmology), the title startled me enough to plunge into it:


Single author, Paul Howard Frampton. Hmmm. A thought crossed my mind at the very start. Was this the work of a crackpot, sneaked into the arxiv while nobody was looking ?

Volcano in Iceland Grounds UK Flights

Edit: for latest updates please see comments, below.

A volcanic ash cloud in UK airspace has left tens of thousands of travellers returning from Easter holidays facing long delays in getting home.  All non-emergency flights have been banned within UK airspace.

Statement on Icelandic volcanic eruption: Thurs April 15, 09:30

UEA CRU Scientists Cleared Of Malpractice Allegations

An independent panel of scientists has cleared scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit of the malpractice allegations which have been made against them.

This follows the the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report, which I abstracted in The Mother Of Inquiries: Parliamentary CRU Report.

Response by the University of East Anglia to the Report by Lord Oxburgh’s Science Assessment Panel

Wed, 14 Apr 2010

Simon Singh Wins Legal Battle

Good news for lovers of freedom of speech across the planet.

The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) this morning dropped its libel
claim against Dr Singh.

Thanks to the adoption by British judges of a principle of US Law, the BCA has finally realised that the legal maxim: 'when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging' is a truth of universal application.

Have a look at the figure on the left. It shows the number of visits to this site broken down in hours of the day -the time of the server used by the visitor. The statistics of each bar is sufficient that the uncertainty on their height is of the order of 2%, so almost indistinguishable by eye. What you can see, therefore, are real variations with time of the traffic to this site, and not random fluctuations up and down.

Scientists cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a new article in Science.

While we may have been spared some of the warming that inevitably results from our reckless C02 emissions, "the heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article's lead author.

The researchers warn that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.

Through the study of a popular Martian meteorite's age, University of Houston researchers have uncovered important details about the history of volcanic activity on Mars.

ALH84001 is a thoroughly studied, well-known Martian meteorite, unique among Mars rocks available for study on Earth. Since its formation age is more than 2.5 billion years older than any other recognized Martian meteorite, it offers scientists the only view of Mars' early history. Data from this rock may also help geologists better understand, through analogy, the processes of early Earth evolution.

The new analysis of ALH84001 is published in Science
                

Life and health insurance companies are greedy, for-profit enterprises that do not care about public health, according to Harvard researchers writing in the American Journal of Public Health.

Why such scorn for the insurance industry? The authors of the study found that U.S., Canadian and European-based insurance firms hold at least $1.88 billion of investments in fast-food companies.

Although there is normally nothing wrong with investing in fast food companies, the busy bodies at Harvard are irritated because the health care legislation just enacted in the U.S. essentially guarantees business for these insurance companies, and they are invested in the industry that is supposedly making us unhealthy.