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Source: boston.com
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The stem-cell treatment restored sight to more than three-quarters of the 112 patients treated, Pellegrini said this week at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting. The patients were followed for an average of three years and some for as long as a decade, Pellegrini said.

Science is amazing. It’s a very short read; go check it out.

Source: Washington Post
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Michele Kerr talks about criteria that should be met if teachers are assessed by student test scores. I agree with her completely. One of my favorite parts is what she says about her first point, only including students in teacher evaluations that are present at least 90% of the time:

Without the missing students, the tests won’t yield a complete picture of learning. But the tests’ purpose is to yield a picture of teaching, which isn’t the same thing as learning. Teachers can’t teach children who aren’t there.

And further, her reasoning for positing that students who cannot score at a “basic” proficient level should be “prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression:”

Students who can’t prove they know algebra can’t take geometry. If they can’t read at a ninth-grade level, they can’t take sophomore English — or, for that matter, sophomore-level history or science, which presumes sophomore-level reading ability. Not only is it nearly impossible for these students to learn the new material, but they also slow everyone else as the teacher struggles to find a middle ground.

That point alone could solve the issues of high school students who can’t read at a high school level. If they can’t read that well, why are they in high school? Who failed to do their job by promoting them? They will just fall through the cracks more and more until someone actually sits them down and gives them intensive reading programs until they get it. Because they can be taught, no matter what it takes.

There’s so much more good stuff in this article and I could quote every word she says. It’s a really good read.

Source: Release Candidate One
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This is an awesome post about having a sort of “Services” menu for the iPhone so you can take things from one application and use them in another (for example, send an e-mail with the selected text or upload a selected image to Facebook). Having a universal menu such as this would be amazing because it would reduce the need for app developers to create these “droplets” and services on their own and simply make something that any application can use right out of the box. I hope Apple’s listening.

Read it for yourself, and if the jargon gets to you, just watch the video.

Source: boston.com
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Cahill — he of the fast-sinking gubernatorial campaign — couldn’t resist trying to squeeze some mileage out of Governor Deval Patrick’s meeting last weekend with about 1,000 local Muslims. The candidate issued a ludicrous statement accusing Patrick of “pandering to special interest groups” by, you know, meeting with some constituents.

“Now is the time for Governor Patrick to look radical Islamic terrorism full in the face, call it what it is, and make sure that federal law enforcement officials who are tracking the Times Square case give our local law enforcement the information they have in real time.’’

Again, Patrick’s crime here was to meet with a group of people who are not accused of anything, or suspected of anything. But in Tim Cahill’s world, it’s as if any gathering of Muslims is the moral equivalent of an Al Qaeda meeting.

No doubt here who was doing the pandering.

Globe Columnist Adrian Walker hits it on the nail. What Tim Cahill said was beyond stupid and racist and I’m not surprised it gained the ire of the religious community. I’m surely not voting for him.

Some really well-taken photos from boston.com concerning the oil spill. Apparently it’s reached the shore of Louisiana (that part’s the bad news): http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html.

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