III. POLITICAL HOTLINE |
DEMS WILL FIGHT CLIMATE SKEPTIC’S NOMINATION TO EPA…
President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Scott Pruitt, a climate-change skeptic with close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has Democrats and environmental groups vowing to wage battle against the nomination. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, has been at the vanguard of a lawsuit fighting the agency’s climate-change regulations. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told The Hill newspaper that ’we’re certainly going to draw a line the sand. This is the worst-case scenario when it comes to clean air and clean water, to nominate a climate denier to the agency charged with protecting natural resources.’ Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders promised to
’vigorously’ oppose Pruitt. The Sierra Club, in a statement, said that ’having Scott Pruitt in charge (of the EPA) is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.’ Other green groups, including the League of Conservation Voters, also pledged to oppose the nomination. But the outgoing Republican chair of the committee, Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma, says Pruitt is ’very familiar with all the issues’ and he was ’very excited’ about his selection. Pruitt also got a big thumbs up from the incoming chairman, Wyoming Republican John Barrasso, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, The Hill reported. The GOP controls the Senate, so putting the kibosh on Pruitt’s nomination will require Democrats to pick up support from a few Republican senators’an outcome that seems unlikely.
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...BUT PRUITT MAY FIND IT HARD TO KILL CLIMATE REGS
Although Pruitt’s selection to head the EPA has environmentalists fearful that he’ll roll back regulations aimed at curbing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, as well as those that limit emissions of other air and water pollutants, experts say it won’t be that easy to do—at least in the short term. Harvard law professor Jody Freeman told Vox that making big changes to the Clean Air Act would require Republicans to overcome a likely filibuster by Senate Democrats’which is probably impossible. Lawmakers could use the Congressional Review Act to overturn some of the Obama administration’s most recent rules, but doing that would require a lot of time and effort, she told Vox, and GOP members already want to fill the early part of the
congressional calendar with other big-ticket legislation, including tax reform and dismantling Obamacare. Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a directive aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, is being contested in court. If the EPA were able to get the court to remand the plan back to the agency, any effort to rescind and replace it would require a year or two of public hearings, Freeman said, and the proposed changes would also ultimately end up back in court. Rescinding any current EPA rules, especially those already affecting industry, would be hard because the changes can’t be arbitrary, she said, and it’s unlikely the courts would allow it. Georgetown law professor William W. Buzbee made similar arguments in a New York Times opinion piece. He wrote that clean air and water acts require rules based on science, and have been upheld by even very
conservative judges. ’These empirical groundings for rules are not just made up. Mr. Pruitt and the incoming Trump administration cannot simply rely on their preferences or on baseless claims about science and markets,’ he wrote.
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III. INNOVATIONS |
WANT A SELF-MAKING BED? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
There are probably not many people who actually enjoy making their bed every morning. And some folks are in such a rush to get to work on time, they can’t be bothered. Then there are the disabled and elderly who may find the chore too difficult. To the rescue of all of the above comes Smartduvet, a Canadian startup company that’s developed a lattice-shaped apparatus, which is laid over and connected to a duvet. The apparatus is then inserted, along with said duvet, into the duvet cover. The device is connected by a hose to a small compressor beneath the bed. Activate the compressor, and it inflates the device, which uncurls itself and the duvet back into its correct position. The Smartduvet can be activated by a smartphone app and set to a specific time of day. The company hopes
to raise $30,000 Canadian dollars ($22,770) on Kickstarter by Dec. 27, and as of early December, it was nearly two-thirds of the way there. Early backers can get a twin-sized Smartduvet for $269, or a double for $279. It hopes to begin shipping the automated bed-maker in May.
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NEW USE FOR SILLY PUTTY: MEDICAL SENSORS
Researchers from Trinity College Dublin and the National Graphene Institute at Britain’s University of Manchester have teamed up to make extremely sensitive sensors by embedding the stretchy, bouncy children’s play material, Silly Putty, with graphene. Graphene, a two-dimensional single layer of carbon atoms, is not only the world’s strongest material’as well as the thinnest and lightest’but is a superb conductor of electricity. And it was first isolated by Manchester researchers in 2004. Silly Putty is a polymer: boric acid-treated polysilicone. The team discovered that the electrical resistance of the graphene-infused putty was extremely sensitive to the slightest deformation or impact. For instance, the researchers placed the G-putty, as they call it, on the
chest and necks of subjects and were able to measure breathing, pulse and even blood pressure. As a monitor of strain and pressure, the material was hundreds of times more sensitive than current sensors. How sensitive is it? It can pick up the footsteps of small spiders. Clearly, they think, G-putty has a big future in a range of medical devices. Nothing silly about that.
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IV. THE K-12 REPORT
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NEW ANNUAL LIST HIGHLIGHTS THE BEST STEM BOOKS FOR KIDS
The National Science Teachers Association has begun compiling an annual list of the Best STEM Books K-12. The 31 books on the inaugural list were selected by a panel of STEM educators and literacy experts, and were picked from around 330 submissions. The panelists placed an emphasis on books they thought would help inspire K-12 students. The project is a joint venture with several organizations, including ASEE, the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, and the Children’s Book Council. The list can be read here (http://www.nsta.org/docs/2017BestSTEMBooks.pdf), but it will also appear in NSTA’s journals
for elementary, middle, and high school teachers next March. Among the books selected were three about Ada Bryon Lovelace, who overcame struggles in life to pursue an education in science and math, and created the first published computer program: Ada Bryon Lovelace and the Thinking Machine, by Laurie Wallmark; Ada’s Ideas, by Fiona Robinson Abrams; and Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science, by Diane Stanley. Another pioneering woman, Ruth Law, is the subject of Heather Lang’s Fearless Flyer. Law was a 1916 biplane pilot who redesigned her plane’s equipment and flew cross-country, setting a long-distance record. Also picked was Super Gear, by Jennifer Swanson, about using nanotechnology to make sports equipment stronger, safer, lighter, and faster.
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AMERICA'S PISA SCORES REMAIN STUCK IN MEDIOCRITY
The results are in, and once again, the performance of American students was pretty dismal. We’re talking about the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, exams, which are administered every three years to 15-year-olds in 72 countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The PISA tests focus on three areas: math, science, and reading. As they have in past years, U.S. students this year performed below average in math for a developed country (40th), and had average results in science and reading (25th and 24th, respectively). Singapore topped the list in all three categories, while Hong Kong came in second in math and reading, and Japan came in second in science. OECD crunches the results and some lessons can be derived from its findings, the
New York Times reports. Top-performing countries make teaching a prestigious career that’s hard to get into. They shower money on the neediest children. (As the Economist notes, spending more money on students only works in poorer countries. In wealthier countries, spending more than $50,000 per pupil throughout their school life brings no extra improvement.) They enroll most kids in high-quality preschool programs. Their schools promote constant improvement. And they apply rigorous, consistent standards across all schools. One PISA official tells the Times that, long term, the recently deployed Common Core State Standards should help pump up America’s scores.
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