Teacher Quality Moderates the Genetic Effects on Early Reading

Children’s reading achievement is influenced by genetics as well as by family and school environments. The importance of teacher quality as a specific school environmental influence on reading achievement is unknown. We studied first- and second-grade students in Florida from schools representing diverse environments. Comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, differentiating genetic similarities of 100% and 50%, provided an estimate of genetic variance in reading achievement. Teacher quality was measured by how much reading gain the non-twin classmates achieved. The magnitude of genetic variance associated with twins’ oral reading fluency increased as the quality of their teacher increased. In circumstances where the teachers are all excellent, the variability in student reading achievement may appear to be largely due to genetics. However, poor teaching impedes the ability of children to reach their potential.

Science 23 April 2010:
Vol. 328. no. 5977, pp. 512 - 514
DOI: 10.1126/science.1186149

bustardization of physics

Physics and the 6-Day of Creation

It is a very clear example on what I mean by a good intention with a not-so-good outcome. The intention to educate the public in physics may be good, but often it leads to an unwanted bastardization of the physics itself. Deepak Chopra is one very good example. This is another.

This appears to be a Letter to the Editor by someone who learned about Relativity rather superficially.. "... especially in the Discover magazine with Einstein on the front cover... " no less. The writer seemed to be referring to one of the consequences of SR, which is time dilation. This "knowledge" was used to somehow justify the biblical description of the creation of the universe in 6 days.

And one thing struck with the theory that was shown in an illustration of a boy standing in the center of a circle with an old man riding around him at the speed of light. The theory shows that within a few minutes the young boy in the circle would be older than the man riding around him on the bike.

After we talked about that for a while, everything got plugged in. Time is different with speed and gravity and all those crazy variables. If this type of theory scientifically would exist, it blows the mind with the possibilites of everything else. If the universe is expanding, then if we rewind far enough back, the time dilation would be different. If that boy in the middle is older than that man on the bike, then he still went through the aging process, much like Earth going through the billions of years of aging.

Maybe a day really was nearly a billion years and maybe not much was lost in translation.

It is one thing to actually think and wonder about such a thing, especially considering that one only has a superficial understanding of the physics, it is another to have no qualms to actually write to a paper and let it be known to the world about it. There doesn't seem to be any kind of "quality control" on the part of many, especially in double-checking to see if one has fully understood what one is about to use and present to the "world".

The flaw in this argument, of course, is the very common mistake that almost everyone makes when they first encounter SR. Time dilation is the apparent slowdown of time in ANOTHER REFERENCE FRAME AS VIEWED BY SOMEONE IN A DIFFERENT REFERENCE FRAME. If A views the clock of B, where B is moving relative to A, then A sees B's clock as being slow. A doesn't see HIS clock as being any slower or different. And the same could be said from B's point of view. B sees clocks in A reference frame as being slower than his. B doesn't see his clock being any different.

Now, unless the author is implying that the universe literally has a motion that is VERY fast when compared to "God", so much so that god sees the clock in the universe as being time dilated, then the whole argument above makes no sense. Furthermore, why would god describes the formation of the universe from that point of view? After all, everything else about the genesis was described from the point of view within the universe itself, so the proper time to be used here is the local time of the universe. This, of course, is ignoring the lack of definition for "6 days", considering that Earth didn't come into existence until the final days.

While we can't stop some poor misguided souls from taking something and completely bastardizing it, as science writers and communicators to the public, we should always, in the back of our minds, think of what we say and how the public might understand what we say, because when they do this to physics, it isn't progress, but rather a step backwards. They understood the WRONG THING. I've often wondered in cases like this whether no knowledge is better than having the wrong knowledge. Having the wrong knowledge can often be dangerous.

Zz.

Posted by ZapperZ at 5:36 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Taking The Mind Of God Out Of Science

By Marcelo Gleiser

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," wrote the poet John Keats in 1819. For centuries, this belief has been the life force of science and of physics in particular. No wonder that the emblem of the venerable Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Einstein's American academic home after 1933, depicts the goddesses Beauty and Truth holding hands. Here, beauty represents the rational order behind the perceived complexity of the natural world, an expression of mathematical symmetry and perfection.

This rational order is truth in its purest form, the hidden code of Nature, the blueprint of Creation. The implicit assumption is that we, humans, can decipher it through the diligent application of reason and intuition. As we search, we transcend our human boundaries, our frailty, lifting ourselves into a higher plane of existence. This has been the dream of countless philosophers and scientists, from Plato and Ptolemy to Kepler and Einstein. Who can resist the seductive appeal of searching for immortal truth through reason? Who wouldn't want to play god?

Since Thales asked what is the primal substance that makes up all matter around 650 BCE, we have been searching for oneness. This search, as old as philosophy, has served us well. There is a value system behind it, based on a double belief: First, that there is indeed an overarching structure behind all that is; second, that we can figure it out.

I question both. The corollary here is that this unique structure is beautiful and thus true: the aesthetics of physics. Yesterday, my esteemed co-blogger Adam Frank presented some of the thoughts behind this search, as he generously introduced A Tear at the Edge of Creation to our faithful 13.7 readers. Today, I want to take this notion further.

Symmetry principles are extremely useful in the natural sciences. The problem starts when symmetry ceases to be a tool and is made into dogma. Nowadays, the hidden code of Nature is represented by the so-called theory of everything, or final theory. The best candidate is superstring theory, a theoretical construction that shifts the basic atomistic paradigm -- that matter is made of small building blocks -- to a new one whereby vibrating strings in nine spatial dimensions can represent what we measure as particles at lower energies and in 3d.

I spent my Ph.D. years and a few years after working in higher dimensional theories, trying to make sense of how to go from 9 to 3 spatial dimensions. For many years, I was a devoted unifier. Now I see things in very different ways, prompted by a combination of empirical evidence (or better, lack thereof) and an understanding of the historical roots of monistic thinking in science.

People should be free to search for theoretical constructions and follow their tastes and beliefs. However, as a scientist, one should also think critically about what's going on and ponder if, indeed, the pursuit of a certain idea makes sense. After some 26 years, we have no clue how to construct a viable superstring model that reproduces our universe. Right now, there seems to be a near-infinite number of possible formulations, each producing a different cosmos. We may call these solutions parts of a multiverse, but that doesn't really help. We don't know even how to write down the equations for string theory to search for plausible solutions. Add to this very practical and technical limitation the empirical lack of any reason to believe there is a single theory behind the myriad phenomena of Nature, and you start to realize that maybe this is simply the wrong way to think about the world.

The world isn't perfect in a rational, mathematical sense. Yes, we find symmetries out there, and they are useful. But we should have the humility to see Nature for what it is and not for what we want it to be. Fifty years of particle physics have again and again crushed the symmetries that we have hoped for.

(For the experts, just think of the violation of parity and of charge conjugation in the weak nuclear force. Also, remember that even electromagnetism is only perfectly symmetric in vacuo, that is, in the absence of sources: there are no magnetic monopoles. Finally, the electroweak unification is not a true unification since the electromagnetic and weak forces retain their signatures throughout. And Grand Unified Theories, well, no trace of them either.)

Science is a construction, a wonderfully successful but still limited construction. What we have are models that approximate what we measure with more or less efficiency. And speaking of measurement, we see right here an impediment to a final theory: because what we know depends on what we measure, and what we measure is limited by our instruments, we can never be certain of what's hiding in the shadows of our ignorance. No, I'm not speaking of gods, fairies, and spirits. I'm speaking of a possible new layer of "fundamental" particles, a new force, an unexpected effect. We can't know all there is to know. Ergo, we can't ever know if our theory is final or not. We should take the mind of God out of physics. It's very liberating! We don't need to believe in the existence of a sunken treasure to explore the ocean. The treasures are many, starting with each drop of water.

It's time to let go of the old aesthetic of perfection, of equating beauty with truth. Here is a new banner, based on the beauty of imperfection: Nature creates through asymmetry. Perhaps we can use Andy Warhol's print of Marilyn Monroe as our emblem, stressing her very prominent and very beautiful asymmetric beauty mark. Would she be as beautiful without it?