Getting to Know the Periodic Table of Elements: Phosphorus, Sulphur, Chlorine

NASSMC 2006 Annual Coalition Directors' Meeting, March 28-29

Representatives from NASA, the National Governors Association, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Academies of Science, the Business Roundtable, and the International Technology Education Association were on hand to discuss recent national developments, initiatives, and programs impacting STEM education for the 2006 ACDM. Jacqueline Henson, NASSMC attorney, participated in a Q&A session on nonprofit legal issues, and coalitions that have held state STEM education summits presented on their experiences during the Directors Forum. This has been an eventful year for state STEM coalitions, and the expanded Directors Forum provided opportunity for coalition leadership to share experiences, programs, and results. In addition, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold author Tom Shachtman, and Linda Devillier, president of Devillier Communications, discussed the book, the PBS program, and the national educational outreach campaign.

There was a joint symposium on Wednesday afternoon, March 29, from 1 - 4 PM: A National Response to the President's Call for Increased Focus on Math and Science, hosted by NASSMC and the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education. Speakers included:

• The Honorable John Marburger III, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
• The Honorable Ray Simon, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
• John Bailey, Deputy Director, Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, U.S. Department of Commerce
• John J. Castellani, President, Business Roundtable

Participants entered into the dialogue and shared their views and concerns.

Agenda: www.nassmc.org/agenda2006.html

Tennessee Summit on Mathematics and Science Education: Educating Tomorrow's Workforce Today

The Tennessee Mathematics, Science and Technology Education Center (TMSTEC) held its summit, Tennessee Summit on Mathematics and Science Education: Educating Tomorrow's Workforce Today, on April 11-12 in Nashville. The Summit brought together leaders from across the state in business/industry, government, and education to emphasize the urgent need to improve mathematics and science education for all Tennessee students. Approximately 75 participants attended the Summit including Governor Bredesen, numerous state legislators, and other state government officials, NASA personnel, educators (university and K-12), and representatives from large and small industries (Nissan, TVA, State Farm, Goodman, Schneider-Electric, ARES Corp. and many others).

To date, summits have been held in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Information about all of the state summits held thus far can be found here: www.nassmc.org/summitstates.html

Information about NSSIP can be found here: www.nassmc.org/summits.html

NASSMC and ITEA

On March 22, the NASSMC staff participated in the 2006 National Technology Education Leadership Summit in Baltimore, MD. The Summit was hosted by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) and preceded the opening of the ITEA's national conference in Baltimore. Deborah Jones, Jessica Venable, Jane George and Jim McMurtray met with the group to discuss NASSMC programs and the work of the state STEM coalitions. Information on the coalition states within ITEA's four regions was shared in breakout sessions. Information was also shared by summit attendees on state level activity in technology education.

Promoting connection and involvement of technology education leadership at all levels with the state coalitions was the objective of NASSMC's participation. Further collaboration between ITEA and NASSMC is anticipated and was reinforced by the presence of ITEA Executive Director Kendall Starkweather at NASSMC's Annual Coalition Directors' Meeting on March 29.

Also addressing the ITEA group were Ken Hoffman of the Maryland Mathematics and Science Coalition (MMSC) and Larry Bilbrough of the NASA Headquarters Education Division.

NASSMC NBS Online Forum Now Open

The NASSMC NBS Online Forum opens this month with an article referring to a recent paper by John D. Sterman (MIT Sloan School of Management) in the American Journal of Public Health. It will resonate strongly with veterans of the long struggle for STEM education reform. Reader comments are invited.

The NASSMC NBS Online Forum is a new feature of the NASSMC Briefing Service. The Online Forum publishes commentary from the leaders of NASSMC's member coalitions or from invited contributors. Commentary, opinions, or editorials related to particular NASSMC briefs - or to key national issues - will be posted with notice to NBS subscribers.

How to submit an article for publication.

How to comment.

Go to the NASSMC NBS Online Forum.

NASA's 2006 Explorer Schools Sustainability Conference, July 5-8

NASSMC member coalitions will shortly be receiving an invitation from the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama to participate in NASA's 2006 Explorer Schools Sustainability Conference. The conference will begin on July 5 and end on July 8. This event will allow the 2004 NES teams to develop strategies to continue and strengthen the process of change initiated as a result of becoming a NASA Explorer School. It also affords an opportunity for state coalition representatives to get to know the NES teams from their state and to advise and inform planning for sustainable improvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

NES teams from 50 schools in 34 states will learn about developing partnerships with business and state and local agencies to continue their efforts to transform and enhance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics instruction. NASA Explorer Schools represent an investment by NASA in the states and communities where they are located. The work begun to assist these schools need not end with the Explorer Schools program. The NES experience can be used as a catalyst for developing a process of continuous improvement. Also, input and guidance from state coalitions has contributed to improvements in the Explorer Schools program.

NASSMC's NES Partnerships for Sustainability program facilitates assistance by state business, education, policy coalitions to the NES participating schools in the state. Eighteen such formal partnerships have been funded by NASSMC thus far and a new RFP will be issued soon. Partnerships between NASA, the Explorer Schools and the state coalitions have been designed to help participating schools capitalize on the work already begun and to continue to improve.

Along with the serious work of the conference there is also an opportunity for you or your representative to enjoy a unique Space Camp or Aviation Challenge experience. All travel, meals, and expenses are covered by the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. Please save the date and make plans for yourself or your designated representative to attend. More information will follow.

Resources, Reports, Events, and Opportunities

+ GrantSeeker
The GrantSeeker page has been updated with new opportunities from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the National Science Foundation, among others. NASSMC's GrantSeeker service can help you identify both federal and private funding opportunities exclusively designed to meet the needs of member coalitions. Thanks to a recent expansion, NASSMC now has access to information on over 300,000 public and private sponsoring agencies, including program announcements and guidelines, application materials, the latest updates and deadlines, awards lists, and funded proposals.
www.nassmc.org/grant_seeker/gsintro.html

+ 2006 Partnership Conference: Strengthening Organizational Values and Stakeholder Trust
This U.S. Chamber of Commerce national conference — May 18-19, Washington, D.C. — will focus on how companies are strengthening and communicating positive business values and addressing corporate citizenship issues and attitudes raised by the recent corporate scandals. Speakers include: Norm Augustine, former Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin; Richard Edelman, President and CEO, Edelman; Ginger Hardage, SVP, Corporate Communications, Southwest Airlines ; Stan Litow, VP, Corporate Community Relations, IBM; President, IBM International Foundation; Bernard J. Milano, President and Trustee, KPMG Foundation; Manuel Rodriguez, SVP, Government and International Affairs, Chiquita; and Scott A. Roney, VP, Corporate Compliance & Regulatory Affairs, Archer Daniels Midland Company. Presentations and discussions will include: The Business Case for Business Values - Driving Performance; Promoting a Culture of Commitment; Training and Motivating Employees; Inspirational Leadership; Communications Strategies; and Ethics in the Classroom and the Workplace.
www.uschamber.com/events/ViewEvent.htm?eventID=520

+ 2006 Business Education Network Summit, October 4-6, Dallas
The Business Education Network (BEN) is a national public-private network dedicated to revitalizing the country's public education system to promote student achievement in the areas and subjects that are important to the 21st century economy. Participants at the BEN Summit examined how business-education partnerships can promote more effective school systems that prepare the nation's youth to be productive in higher education and the workplace. BEN is an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Competitiveness in math and science, as well as technology, is critical for the future of the U.S. workforce and to the nation's capacity to conduct research and development, innovate, and excel in manufacturing, IT, bio-technology, pharmaceutical, and other industries. BEN is committed to identifying and sharing information about promising math and science programs at the local, state, and national levels.
www.businesseducationnetwork.com/bclc/ben/default

+ Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold
Absolute Zero, a two-part PBS television special, will demonstrate how civilization has been profoundly affected by the mastery of cold. The documentaries, which are a unique blend of science, cultural history, and adventure story, will explore key concepts, significant individuals, and events in the field of low-temperature physics and the enormous impact that the mastery of cold has had on society through such technologies as air conditioning, refrigeration, and liquefied gases. The website is for students, teachers and all others who are interested in discovering the wonders of low-temperature physics. You can find educational materials, activities, and historical information, learn about the campaign, program, and book, and see who is involved in the campaign. Absolute Zero author Tom Shachtman and Linda Devillier, president of Devillier Communications, discussed the book, the PBS program, and national educational outreach campaign at NASSMC's 2006 Annual Coalition Directors' Meeting in March.
www.absolutezerocampaign.org/

+ April is Mathematics Awareness Month
The American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics announce that the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month 2006 is Mathematics and Internet Security.
www.mathaware.org/

+ April 25 is National DNA Day
On April 25 researchers and professionals from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will serve as "DNA Day Ambassadors." National DNA Day, begun in April 2003, commemorates the successful completion of the Human Genome Project and the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA's double helix in 1953. Webcasts, live online chat, and a variety of free educational tools on genetics and genomics are available for teachers and students online.
www.genome.gov/DNAday

+ Engineering and Pre-engineering Student Resources
EESC is a new company designed to provide the best in engineering education through publications, workshops, presentations and consultations. EESC has acquired Bonamy Publishing, a publishing company that delivered high quality pre-engineering titles. EESC's mission is to provide information resources to promote, guide, and stimulate interest in science and engineering; its vision is to diversify the types of engineers in society by exposing large numbers of students to the capacity they will have to benefit society.
www.engineeringedu.com/

+ Edutopia New Readers Survey: The Best. The Worst. The Unexpected.
Categories include best old-school teaching tool that has not gone out of style, ideal class size, best way to stay current on new education ideas, and best education conference among others. Edutopia News is published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF), a nonprofit operating foundation located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=Art_1496&issue=apr_06

+ Standard & Poor’s State by State Reports Updated
Standard & Poor’s has just released the updated state report for all state. The reports are accessible on each state’s “Overview” page. This reports examine the collective circumstances of each state’s school districts, highlighting trends and anomalies, and raising issues for policymakers to consider.
www.schoolmatters.com/

+ SECME 2006 Summer Institute
The SECME Summer Institute is designed to provide an opportunity for K-16 educators, administrators, parents, and students to receive innovative STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professional development. The 2006 Summer Institute will be held July 7-16 at the University of South Florida. For more details, visit www.secme.org.

+ Academic Competitiveness Council
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is leading this panel established by Congress to evaluate the effectiveness of federally funded programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. The council was established under President Bush’s Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The panel is made up of officials from 13 federal agencies and the White House office of Management and Budget. They are charged with identifying redundant programs and suggesting ways to streamline and coordinate the others.
www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2006/03/03062006.html

+ NCES: TIMSS Video Study of 8th Grade Science Classrooms
A video study of eighth grade science classrooms in the United States and four other countries found that U.S. teachers focused on a variety of activities to engage students, but not in a consistent way that developed coherent and challenging science content. In comparison, classrooms in four other higher-achieving countries exposed eighth graders to science lessons characterized by a core instructional approach that held students to high content standards and expectations for student learning. To view the reports and for more information, visit nces.ed.gov/timss. A second report compares science content in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2000 and TIMSS:
nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006026

+ Study Identifies Factors that Contribute to Minority Successes in STEM Fields
Increasing the Success of Minority Students in Science and Technology highlights the importance of a rigorous high school curriculum, early entry to college, and educated parents as factors in whether a student graduates with a degree in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The American Council on Education's report finds that black and Hispanic students are just as likely as whites and Asian-Americans to select a STEM major when they enter college. Researchers found that black and Hispanic students began to stumble in the STEM fields after their third year in college. Six years after they entered college, 63% of black and Hispanic students still in STEM fields had obtained degrees, compared with 95% of Asian-American and 87% of white students. www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Press_Releases2&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=15602

Getting to Know the Periodic Table of Elements: Phosphorus, Sulphur, Chlorine

PHOSPHORUS
Etymology: From the Greek phosphoros: light bearing; also the ancient name for the planet Venus.

What it is: Magnesium, an alkali Earth metal, is the eighth most abundant element and constitutes about 2% of the Earth's crust by weight, and it is the third most plentiful element dissolved in seawater. Magnesium is a strong, silvery-white, light-weight metal.

• Atomic Number: 15
• Atomic Symbol: P
• Atomic Mass: ~31

SULPHUR
Etymology: From the Sanskrit, sulvere

What it is: Sulfur occurs native in the vicinity of volcanos and hot springs. It is widely distributed in nature as iron pyrites, galena, sphalerite, cinnabar, stibnite, gypsum, epsom salts, celestite, barite, etc. It is also found in meteorites. Sulphur is the brimstone in "fire and brimstone."

• Atomic Number: 16
• Atomic Symbol: S
• Atomic Mass: ~32

CHLORINE
Etymology: From the Greek chloros: greenish yellow.

What it is: It is a member of the halogen group of elements and is obtained from chlorides by the action of oxidizing agents and more often by electrolysis; it is a greenish-yellow gas, combining directly with nearly all elements. In nature it is found in the combined state only, chiefly with sodium as common salt (NaCl), carnallite, and sylvite.

• Atomic Number: 17
• Atomic Symbol: Cl
• Atomic Mass: ~35

Of Interest...

+ The mathematics of Easter: The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.
aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.html

Hexagonal nanotube networks are created on top of layered crystals (Image: LBNL)

+ Nanotube networks conjured on crystals: The key to instantly assembling intricate networks of nanotubes has been discovered by scientists armed with some of the most sophisticated microscopes in the world. The phenomenon may one-day help create tiny nano-circuits that let electrons pass through nano-pipes instead of along silicon wires.
www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn8789.html

+ Sexual reproduction is cleansing: Scientists have long wondered why organisms bother with sexual reproduction. It makes a whole lot more sense to just have a bunch of females that can clone themselves, which is how asexual reproduction works. Turns out sex might have evolved as a way to concentrate lots of harmful mutations into individual organisms so they could be easily weeded out by natural selection, a new computer model suggests.
www.livescience.com/animalworld/060301_evolution_sex.html

Circulation patterns in the North Atlantic Ocean. Cold, dense water is shown in blue, flowing south from upper latitudes, while warm, less dense water flows north. Credit: Jack Cook for Ocean and Climate Change Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

+ Scientists confirm historic massive flood in climate change: Scientists from NASA and Columbia University have used computer modeling to successfully reproduce an abrupt climate change that took place 8,200 years ago. At that time, the beginning of the current warm period, climate changes were caused by a massive flood of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean.
www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/abrupt_change.html

+ Consensus grows on climate change: The global scientific body on climate change will report soon that only greenhouse gas emissions can explain freak weather patterns. Simultaneous changes in sea ice, glaciers, droughts, floods, ecosystems, ocean acidification and wildlife migration are taking place. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously said gases such as CO2 were "probably" to blame.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4761804.stm

+ Pluto has three moons: Pluto is no lone ranger in the farthest expanses of the Solar System — its travelling companions now number three. And if Pluto can have so many, why shouldn't other objects in the distant, icy Kuiper belt? Once thought to be a solitary denizen of the outer reaches of the Solar System, Pluto — which piqued our curiosity in 1978 with the discovery of its large satellite, Charon— is becoming ever more intriguing. In fact, the relative sizes of Pluto and Charon (Charon's diameter of around 1,200 kilometres is just over half that of Pluto's) means they are a 'double planet', orbiting a mutual centre of gravity, or barycentre, outside the surface of Pluto.
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7079/full/439924a.html

Images (c) Barry Rice, sarracenia.com. Author of a forthcoming book, Growing Carnivorous Plants.

+ Galleria Carnivora: These images of carnivorous plants are from the Galleria Carnivora, a museum dedicated to the fine art of carnivorous plant photography. Established in 1923, it is normally closed to the public but has made information ad images available via the web.
www.sarracenia.com/galleria/g343.html

+ Astronomers discover tiny solar-system-to-be: On November 29, 2005, astronomers announced the discovery of what might become the smallest solar system yet known. Listen to the broadcast or read the transcript at Earth & Sky.
www.earthsky.org/shows/show.php?date=20060206

+ Minuscule motor runs on sunlight: The nanomotors—so small that 3.8 million of them lined up end-to-end would barely span the width of a penny—generate absolutely no waste. Each little motor is just 5 nanometers in length, macaroni-like in shape, and has a ringed structure at one end that moves back-and-forth like the pistons under your car’s hood. Energy, in the form of photons from sunlight, excites one end of the molecule, which sets off a four-step process. Electrons are transferred along the molecule until they reach the ring structure, causing it to slide 1.3 nanometers forward on the molecule. As the electron continues its path, it reaches a section that recycles it back to the beginning. This causes the molecule to “reset,” and the ring returns, piston-like, to its original position. The whole process takes about 100 microseconds.
www.livescience.com/technology/060123_solar_nanomotor.html

+ Mars cameras debut as NASA craft adjusts orbit: On April 13, researchers released the first Mars images from two of the three science cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Images taken by the orbiter's Context Camera and Mars Color Imager during the first tests of those instruments at Mars confirm the performance capability of the cameras. The test images were taken from nearly 10 times as far from the planet as the spacecraft will be once it finishes reshaping its orbit. Test images from the third camera of the science payload were released previously.
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20060413.html