Rosetta was designed to help answer some of the most basic questions about Earth and our solar system, such as where water and life originated by landing in May 2014, on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, about 673million km away. Read the full article by Natalie Starkey, Research Associate at the Open University.
Innovation Challenge. US$20,000 award by Innocentive / Scientific American
What if you were able to clean your clothes at home without using any water? The seeker desires to revolutionize the laundry process with a novel technology that uses no liquid, creates no wrinkles, and does not damage clothes. Deadline 11/01/2014. More details
The natural desire to learn:
Every child is born with an innate sense of curiosity and a desire to learn. But, slowly school curriculum and in some cases lack of qualified and inspired teachers, makes school work rather routine and the excitement to learn gets lost, quite often. Students slog through school with aspirations to go to college for higher education to learn something ‘real’ and get a good job. School curriculum is not expected to provide life skills or prepare students to secure a job.
Read Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart, Phd in Mathematics who switched from teaching math to University students to K-12 students because he found out that it was his ‘true calling’. Stanford Professor, Keith Devlin, under whom I took a course in ‘Intro to Mathematical Thinking’ said ‘It is, quite frankly, one of the best critiques of K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen’ in the Kindle edition of the book which is an expanded version of the original article. Keith Devlin goes on to say ‘it should be obligatory reading for anyone going into mathematics education, for every parent of a school aged child and for every school and government official with responsibilities towards mathematics education’. ‘ A Mathematician’s Lament ‘ is already a landmark in the world of mathematics education. Keith Devlin’s foreword is one of the best forewords to a book that I have read and the best compliment he paid to Paul Lockhart is “I wish he was my school mathematics teacher”.
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