Are you searching for highly recommended math and science trade books for your classroom?

Then look no further, the two links below will take you to the best 10 math trade books recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the top 10 science trade books recommended by the National Science teachers Association.

Top 10 Elementary Science Trade for 2008

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="273" caption="Em pesquisa, universitárias foram filmadas andando; soma de passos largos e rotação da vértebra facilita o orgasmo das mulheres, diz estudo"][/caption]

Um estudo realizado por pesquisadores da Escócia e da Bélgica indica que o modo de andar dá indicações sobre o histórico de orgasmos de uma mulher. A pesquisa, publicada na revista "Journal of Sexual Medicine", indica que especialistas em sexualidade podem fazer a análise desses orgasmos apenas ao ver as mulheres andando.

Far more men than one usually sees at a writers festival session made it to this one, which fitted very nicely with Playing God, yesterday's look at doctors as writers. In that session Norman Doidge and Glenn Colquhoun talked about the necessity to be very careful with metaphor; Doidge even set out on a trip to disprove the metaphor of the brain being "hard-wired".

The scientists and science writers in today's session had no such qualms about metaphor, in fact  they found metaphors and analogy to be very helpful in giving us ways to think about things that are too big for our brains. Hamish Campbell illustrated this very nicely when describing the oceanic crust and the continental crust as milk and cream - I always like a good food analogy.

As promised: Field Notes from 8/30/08 5-6pm

I was delighted that the first applied maths assignment of the year I received was focussed on one of my key interests: algorithmic programming (despite it being a very simple task programmatically). The scenario is that a rabbit travels at a constant speed of 10m/s from the origin to (100, 0). There's also a fox who starts at (0, 50) and runs with a speed of v directly towards where the rabbit is at any time.

The assignment was to use a mathematical model (which treats time as a discrete variable) and, by plotting points on graph paper, to find out the minimum speed of the fox to catch the rabbit before it gets to (100, 0); naturally this was job for Excel!

Here's what I wrote while I was watching the US Open quarterfinal match between Djokovic and Roddick and when I flipped to the RNC:

The Republicans are a really big propaganda machine.  They've got all these cheesy images behind the speakers.  They also shout USA at inappropriate and awkward times.  McCain (something like this): "I know many of you are going through hard times and you're worried about your job or finding your job.  Crowd:  "USA!  USA!  USA!"

McCain says "Warshington."

Why is McCain complaining about pork barrel spending?  The war costs way more money than any pork barrel spending.  And no one is dying with the domestic spending.

I came across the following article written by Richard M. Jones on the following website:

Check it out!

http://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/087.html

After twenty years of study by more than 2,000 scientists and engineers about the feasibility of using Yucca Mountain, Nevada as a permanent nuclear waste repository, the United States is about "three to four years away from answering that question and putting it to bed." So stated Edward F. Sproat III, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of the Department of Energy at a congressional hearing last month.

With sightings of the Virgin Mary on a grape and a grilled cheese sandwich and sightings of Jesus in a store window and on a potato chip, it was just a matter of time until science and reason hero Charles Darwin made an appearance, right? The Onion claims to have spotted an image of the author of The Origin of Species on a concrete wall on a certain courthouse in Dayton, Tenn. Key quote:

WIRED Science has a new video podcast series with the inaugural show covering the new California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park.  (Click on the image above to be taken to the video page.)

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