Note taking skills

March 15, 2018 5:31 pm

There are many ways to take notes: Note journaling, Cornell notes, Guided notes, Harvard notes, one-pagers, etc. No one system is always best.

Highlighting/taking notes in (printed) textbook or workbook

I often highlight passages in a book, or make notes. Note that studying with a highlighter doesn’t replace taking your own notesduring class.

How To Study With A Highlighter: Three Pitfalls You Should Avoid

Highlighting/taking notes – online textbook or workbook

You can make any OpenStax book yours with digital highlighting and notetaking.

Use a traditional lined notebook

This example is from Mr. Logue’s Middle School Science Lab.

One pagers, sketch notes

Some students take the time to create inspired & artistic versions of notes. These are called sketch notes or one-pagers:

After the class day is over you can put together your notes and thoughts to create something like

Or like this

For details see One-page notes/posters and

Using Sketch Notes in the Biology Classroom

Cornell Notes

A systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/key word column (on the left). The student should leave five to seven lines, or about two in (5 cm), at the bottom of the page.

Notes from a class are written in the note-taking column; they consist of the main ideas; long ideas are paraphrased. Long sentences are avoided; symbols or abbreviations are used instead.

To assist with future reviews, relevant questions (which should be recorded as soon as possible so that the lecture and questions will be fresh in the student’s mind) or key words are written in the key word column.

Within 24 hours of taking the notes, the student must revise and write questions, and then write a brief summary in the bottom five to seven lines of the page. This helps to increase understanding of the topic.

When reviewing the material, the student can cover the note-taking (right) column while attempting to answer the questions/keywords in the key word or cue (left) column.
_ Wikipedia

The Cornell Note Taking system (2 page PDF file)

Guided Notes

“Sometimes lecturers may provide handouts of guided notes, which provide a “map” of the lecture content with key points or ideas missing. Students then fill in missing items as the lecture progresses. Guided notes may assist students in following lectures and identifying the most important ideas from a lecture.

This format provides students with a framework, yet requires active listening (as opposed to providing copies of powerpoint slides in their entirety). Research has shown that guided notes improve students’ recording of critical points in lecture as well as their quiz scores on related content.”

– Wikipedia

Example of guided notes for a biology class:

Harvard Notes

This is an organized, common system. When taking notes from a book or lecture:

 Write down the main idea of at least every other paragraph.

 Use phrases, not complete sentences

 Where you have a I, you have to have a II; where you have an A, you have to have a B

 You don’t need sub ideas

Example

Image from hicksvillepublicschools.org

Here is a example from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Center for College and Student Success, note-taking methods.

For Note Taking, Low-Tech is Often Best; In college lecture halls, evidence suggests it’s time to put down the laptop and pick up a pen. By Susan Dynarski

Scientific Method topics from the AMNH

March 14, 2018 3:45 pm

from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)

Students in science classrooms make sense of natural phenomena and develop explanations for those phenomena. These explanations are not based on opinions but on empirical and observed evidence, along with scientific reasoning. In order to teach students the components of a scientific explanation, and to support their writing, a writing scaffold can be used.

Collections of activities, articles, videos and more, for educators, families, students and anyone interested in teaching or learning about science.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Antarctica

Take your students to the world’s most extreme environment with this curriculum. As they investigate Antarctica, they will also learn about world climate, day and night cycles, ocean circulation, animal adaptation, and scientists working “in the field.”

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Bacteria Evolving: Tracing the Origins of a MRSA Epidemic

These teaching case materials show practicing physicians and infectious disease specialists studying the origins and impacts of pathogens.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Biodiversity Counts

Pick one activity, one article—or use all units to teach your students about plants, arthropods, or both. This curriculum teaches kids about the natural world by taking them into backyards, gardens, vacant lots, and even cracks in the sidewalk to practice observation, identification, and analysis.

Patterns Investigating Weather and Climate

Have you ever wondered how the weather in your area compares with weather in other regions across the United States? This interactive tool allows you to compare weather variables, from multiple locations, over periods of days, weeks, or months.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Deep Sea Vents

Do your students think the age of exploration is over? Show them the shocking truth: the age of exploration has barely just begun at the ocean floor! Introduce your students to the incredible under water environment of the deep sea vents.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Dinosaurs: Activities and Lesson Plans

Resources to help students understand everything from basic dinosaur biology and evolution, to the tools and methods of modern paleontology.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Discovering the Universe

Explore the concepts that underlie the study of the stars and other heavenly bodies, and how astrophysicists analyze their distant light for clues to their physical and chemical properties. This collection sets out the fundamentals and demonstrates them in a set of articles, activities, and reference lists for all ages.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Earthquake Risk in Bangladesh

These teaching case materials show the fieldwork of an international team of scientists working to provide Bangladeshi leaders the tools they need to understand and minimize geologic risks.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Ecology Disrupted

High school ecology curriculum that uses real scientific data to link everyday human impacts to ecological principles.

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Exploring Bolivia’s Biodiversity

Bolivia’s diversity of animal and plant life is among the greatest in the world. Learn why the country has designated more than 17 percent of its land as protected areas.

Collections of activities, articles, videos and more, for educators, families, students and anyone interested in teaching or learning about science.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

Field Trip to the Moon

These materials support student investigations of a virtual journey to the Moon in the Hayden Planetarium, or your own classroom.

INTERACTIVE, ACTIVITY

Find a Vent

Climb aboard this virtual expedition along an unknown stretch of the Pacific Ocean’s Juan de Fuca Ridge to see if you can find a deep sea vent.

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Five Tools and Processes for NGSS

This curriculum is designed to help professional development leaders work with teachers on NGSS-aligned curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION

GRACE

With these resources, students can explore real data to see for themselves how Earth’s water is changing.

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Integrating Literacy Strategies into Science Instruction

A series of videos that paint a picture of what it looks like to use literacy strategies to support students’ science content learning in the classroom.

Polar Climate Change Lesson Plans

These curricular unit plans help students explore and understand climate change with particular attention to the effect of climate change on the polar regions.

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Politics and Pathogens

This medical anthropology course will provide students with a humanistic perspective on health care and disease.

River Ecology

Investigate the effects of zebra mussels on the Hudson River with videos, articles, and interactive graphing tools. This website gives you access to the actual data scientists have collected about the river.

ONLINE RESOURCE, ACTIVITY

Science Explorations

A series of online investigations featuring scientific discoveries from Museum’s experts. Science Explorations is a collaboration between the Museum and Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education, and media company, created to promote science literacy among students in grades 3 through 10.

CURRICULUM COLLECTION, ACTIVITY

Structures & Culture

These activities help students in grades 3-8 discover how everyday objects and architectural elements can be used to study different cultures.

River ecology Scientific Method

March 14, 2018 3:42 pm

from https://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/river-ecology

Investigating the effect of Zebra mussels on the Hudson River

New York State’s Hudson River has seen many changes, but perhaps none more dramatic than the arrival of the zebra mussel in 1991, and its rapid spread. Understanding environmental changes like this one means looking at the whole ecosystem: the web of interactions among organisms and their physical environment. Biologists at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies have been studying the Hudson’s freshwater tidal ecosystem since 1987. They look for patterns and connections in order to understand how the river is changing, and might change in the future.

This website gives you access to the actual data these scientists have collected about the river: factors like the cloudiness of the water, its temperature, and how many and what types of organisms live in it. Use the graphing tool to look for patterns that connect the dynamic parts of this ecosystem. Can you help the scientists investigate the effects of the zebra mussel invasion?

Claims Evidence Reasoning

March 13, 2018 9:50 pm

Claims Evidence Reasoning, also presented as Model-Evidence Link Diagrams Project, from Dr. Doug Lombardi, Dr. Janelle Bailey, Missy Holzer et al

Climate Change MEL

The Climate Change MEL asks students to weigh the connections between evidence and alternative explanations about the causes of current climate change.

Below are links to a series of activities that will help students use the Climate Change MEL and learn more about fundamental scientific principles related to climate and weather.

Fracking MEL

The Fracking MEL asks students to weigh the connections between evidence and alternative explanations about the impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on moderate-strength earthquakes.

Below are links to a series of activities that will help students use the Fracking MEL and learn more about fundamental scientific principles related to earthquakes.

Moon MEL

The Moon MEL asks students to weigh the connections between evidence and alternative explanations about the formation of the Moon.

Below are links to a series of activities that will help students use the Moon MEL and learn more about fundamental scientific principles related to the Moon and its formation.

Wetlands MEL

The Wetlands MEL asks students to weigh the connections between evidence and alternative explanations about wetlands as a natural resources.

Below are links to a series of activities that will help students use the Wetlands MEL and learn more about fundamental scientific principles related to the role of wetlands.

Supplements to the MEL

The Explanation Task is part of each MEL Activity. In this task, students provide written explanations for the arrows they drew on the diagram. The following rubric may be used to score students’ written explanations.

Explanation Task Rubric

This Plausibility Ranking Task (PRT), which may be completed prior to using any MELs, helps students to understand the role of evidence in supporting or refuting models.

Plausibility Ranking Task

The Critical Evaluation Task (CET) asks students to consider the flaws in arguments presented in favor of and in opposition to recycling. It may be completed done prior to and after use of any and all MELs in order to assess students’ ability to be critically evaluative.

Critical Evaluation Task

from Model-Evidence Link Diagrams Project

https://www.activatelearning.com/blog

Claim Evidence Reasoning

If we assume global warming is a hoax, what should we expect to see

March 9, 2018 7:14 pm

This analysis is by Phil Plait, Mar 9, 2017

Global warming GIF

I will ask you to indulge me for a moment in a thought experiment. It’s not hard, and it leads to a startlingly simple yet powerful conclusion, one I think you may find both important and terribly useful.

Still, it starts with a big ask, so forgive me. And that is: Let’s make an assumption, one you’ve heard many times before. Let’s say that global warming is a hoax.

I know, I know. But go with this, here. So, yes, let’s say that climate change deniers —people like House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith, Senator James Inhofe, and even Donald Trump himself— are right. Whatever the reasons (Chinese hoax, climatologist cabal clamoring colossal cash, carbon dioxide isn’t a powerful greenhouse gas, or just a liberal conspiracy), let’s say that the Earth is not warming up.

In that case, the temperatures we see today on average should be much like the ones we saw, say, 20 years ago. Or 50. Sure, you’d see fluctuations. In a given spot on a given day the temperature in 1968 might have been a degree warmer than it was in 1974, or three degrees cooler than in 2010. But what you’d expect is that over time, a graph showing the temperature would be pretty much flat, with lots of short-term spikes up and down.

Now, statistically speaking, you expect some records to be broken every now and again. Over time, every few years for a given day you’d get a record high, and every few years a record low. The details will change from place to place and time to time, but again, if the average temperature trend is flat, unchanging, then you would expect to see just as many record cold days as record warm days. There might be small deviations, like, say, a handful of more cool than warm days, but the difference would be very small depending on how many days you look at.

It’s like flipping a coin. On average, you should get a 50/50 split between heads and tails. But if you flip it 10 times, say, you wouldn’t be shocked to see seven heads and three tails. But if you flip it a thousand times, you’d really expect to see a very even split. Seeing 700 heads and 300 tails would be truly extraordinary.

So, if we remind ourselves of our basic assumption —global warming isn’t real— then we expect there to be as many record high days as there are record lows. Simple statistics.

So, what do we see?

Guy Walton, a meteorologist in Georgia, took a look at the data from the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Whenever a weather station in the US breaks a record, high or low, it’s catalogued (Walton has more info on this at the link above). He found something astonishing: For February 2017, the number of record highs across the US recorded was 6,201.

The number of record lows? 128.

That’s a ratio of over 48:1. In just one month.

Again, if temperatures were flat over time, and record highs and lows were random fluctuations, you’d expect a ratio much closer to 1:1. In other words, out of 6329 records set in total, you’d expect there to be about 3165 record highs, and 3165 record lows.

For fans of statistics, with a total of 6329 records broken, one standard deviation is the square root of that, or about 80. So, sure, something like 3265 highs and 3064 lows wouldn’t be too unusual. If you start to see more of an imbalance than that, it would be weird.

Seeing 6201 record highs to 128 lows is very, very, very weird. Like, zero chance of that happening by accident.

Now, Phil, I can hear you thinking, that’s just for the US (2% of the planet) over one month. And you’ve told us before that weather isn’t climate; weather is what you expect now, climate is what you expect over long periods of time. So, maybe this is a fluke?

Walton notes that, if you look at records in the US going back to the 1920s, the six highest ratios of record highs to lows all occur since the 1990s. Huh.

And making this more global, a pair of Australian scientists looked at their country’s data, and found that their ratios were about even…until the 1960s. After that, highs always outnumber lows. From 2000-2014, record highs outnumbered lows there by 12:1.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research collated data from 1800 stations across the US and binned the data by decade — by decade, which is a huge sample; any deviation from a 1:1 ratio would be extraordinary over that timescale.

They found this:

This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Each bar shows the proportion of record highs (red) to record lows (blue) for each decade. The 1960s and 1970s saw slightly more record daily lows than highs, but in the last 30 years record highs have increasingly predominated, with the ratio now about two-to-one for the 48 states as a whole. (©UCAR, graphic by Mike Shibao.)

Source of the above image: RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURES FAR OUTPACE RECORD LOWS ACROSS U.S. The National Center for Atmospheric Research/UCAR, Nov 12, 2009

We are seeing far more record high temperatures than record lows in the US… and in other countries, too. Credit: UCAR

Huh. Not only are there more record highs than lows, the ratio between the two is getting higher with time.

So, looking back at our initial assumption — the Earth isn’t warming, and temperatures are flat— there’s a conclusion these data are screaming at us: That assumption is completely and utterly wrong.

And of course, all the evidence backs this up. All of it. Earth’s temperature is increasing. That’s because of the 40 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere every year (the amount we will see this year, expected to top 410 parts per million, has never been seen before in history as long as humans have walked the Earth). This CO2 allows sunlight to warm the Earth, but prevents all of it from escaping so that a little bit of extra heat remains behind, and that’s warming our planet.

Over time, we’re getting hotter. 2014 was a record hot year, beaten by 2015, itself beaten by 2016. In fact, 15 of the 16 hottest years ever recorded have been from 2001 – 2016. That’s exactly what you’d expect if we were getting warmer, and that means our initial assumption of hoaxery was dead wrong.

The science on this is so basic, the evidence of this so overwhelming, that “not a single national science academy disputes or denies the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change”, and also the overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate do, too.

Maybe you should listen to them, and not politicians who seem ideologically opposed to the science.

Or, you could flip a coin. But if it comes up science dozens of times more often than anti-science, well —and forgive me if I sound like a broken record— the conclusion is obvious.

___________________________

Fair use: This website is educational. Materials within it are being used in accord with the Fair Use doctrine, as defined by United States law.

§107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phone records or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use, the factors to be considered shall include: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (added pub. l 94-553, Title I, 101, Oct 19, 1976, 90 Stat 2546)

Healthy meal generator

March 9, 2018 2:31 pm

The ingredients can be combined in hundreds of ways to make a delicious dinner.

It often takes just 15 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cooking.

photo by Anna Ivanova

Start – pick one protein

Chicken breast or thigh meat, cut into pieces

Vegan chik’n (e.g. Trader Joe’s or Gardein Chik’n)

Beef strips/tips

Vegan beef (e.g. Trader Joe’s or Gardein Beef-less tips)

Tofu (firm)

Tempeh

Any other favorite protein source

Pick a carbohydrate

Cook these in a separate pot. Lay this down as the base for your meal. The vegetables, proteins and sauce go aside or over this.

Brown rice
Farro
Quinoa
Spaghetti or angel hair pasta
Mung bean vermicelli
Rice pasta

Pick a few veggies

Have a different combination each time!

Broccoli
Red bell peppers, green bell peppers, yellow or orange bell peppers
Yellow onions, vidalia onions
Summer squash
Carrots
Snow pea pods
Bamboo shoots
Miniature corn
Water chestnuts

If you like, add nuts

peanuts, cashews, etc.

Stir fry sauce

Kung Pao sauce
Red curry sauce and coconut milk
Teriyaki sauce
Sesame ginger sauce
Thai Peanut Satay
Orange Sauce
Szechuan sauce
Island Mango

Instructions

Dice your meat/protein source into small pieces, like the size of pieces you see at those food court restaurants at the shopping mall.

Add a small amount of oil to the wok. Usually peanut oil, but can be olive oil or any other favorite cooking oil.

In a separate pot, boil water. When boiling add your carb/pasta/grains.

Drop the meat (or faux meat) into the wok. Rotate and move all the pieces so that each is covered in oil.

Cook on a medium flame for a few minutes.

If you use real meat you must stir-fry this first; it takes more time to fully and safely cook.

Once the meat is cooked you then add in all of the other ingredients into the wok.

At this point continue cooking until all of the ingredients are done to your liking.

Our related articles

Nutrients

Organic food and farming

Meaningless words in food science

What we need to know about healthy diets

Healthy meal generator

Boston and sea levels

March 5, 2018 3:10 pm

How can we protect Boston from rising sea levels? Various proposals

Build a dike around the harbor

The dikelands proposal – A 14-mile dike could protect Greater Boston from sea level rise.

It would run from Cohasset to Swampscott

…The metropolitan Boston estuary is uniquely different from many others around the nation. It is protected on its flanks by the shoulder highlands of Swampscott and Cohasset. It takes advantage of the estuary’s unique geological characteristics.

Metro Boston Dikelands Dike

We propose building a 14-mile dike barrier between the shoulder highlands of Cohasset and Swampscott.

Would be located some eight miles out from Deer Island, complete with residential and commercial developments, windmills, solar collector farms, and recreational areas.

A simple dike barrier with a 200-foot-wide top and reaching 120 feet from seafloor to storm-surge top would require some 246 million cubic yards of material.

Bi-directional locks could provide access for all crafts, protecting Boston’s commercial activity and its waterfront integrity.

The new dike system will prevent storm tides from inundating the entire metropolitan estuary while allowing rivers to discharge their water into a harbor reservoir capable of holding more than 10 billion gallons of river-fed water…

By lowering the reservoir level to half the current tidal range, the cherished Boston Harbor Islands and their recreational potential would be protected.

At a cost of $100 per cubic yard, with two bi-directional shipping locks of $500 million each (plus soft and contingency costs), this macro-engineering and macro-economic project would probably cost between $30 billion and $50 billion.

The 200-foot wide top of the 14-mile stretch would create 68 acres of new dike lands, which in turn would need to be supported by a complete infrastructure system of water, sewer, electricity, and transportation …

The project could help pay for itself if the newly-created, flat-top area of the dike, amounting to some 68 acres, was sold as waterfront property at between $3 and $7 million per acre. That would raise between $100 billion and $400 billion (after return on invested capital)

Source: 14-mile dike could protect Greater Boston from sea level rise, Commonwealth Magazine, Jan 2018, Peter Papesch, Franziska Amacher and A. Vernon Woodworth, members of the Boston Society of Architects

Plan details Metro-Boston-Dike-Barrier.pdf

Climate Ready Boston: Planning

The team, led by Paul Kirshen, a professor of climate adaptation at UMass’ School for the Environment, is weighing three harbor barrier configurations. The barrier study was recommended in the city’s Climate Ready Boston report.

The smallest would connect Logan Airport in East Boston with Castle Island in South Boston, protecting the city’s inner harbor and downtown from tidal flooding.

The medium-sized solution is a barrier from Deer Island, in the harbor, to Quincy, which would wall off all of Boston’s neighborhoods.

The largest of the proposed harbor barriers would protect not just Boston, but also Weymouth, Hingham, Quincy and Hull.

Boston Harbor Dike barrier proposals

III. Resilient Boston Harbor

We want to protect Boston’s neighborhoods from sea level rise and flooding due to climate change.

Adapted infrastructure: Elevated roadways, strengthened seawalls, and flood barriers.

Protective Waterfront parks: Waterfronts include living shorelines, beaches, elevated parks, and access to water transportation.

Boston protective waterfront parks sea level

Elevated harborwalks:

By improving elevation and access, we can use our harborwalk system to protect against floods.

Boston sea level elevated Harborwalks

Make parts of Boston a city of canals

From the Urban Land Institute of Boston/New England’s “The Urban Implications of Living with Water”

Boston: The urban implications of living with water. Urban land institute

The goal is to provide for current urban linkages across the district without limiting the ability to accommodate future needs.

Such needs could take the form of green infrastructure or surface channels to move water safely and quickly back to the ocean.

We could build canals through Boston’s Back Bay

Canals in Boston Back Bay

A street view of what this could look like

Boston canal Michael Wang, Arlen Stawasz, and Dennis Carlberg

Report offers ideas for a Boston beset by rising seas Envisions canals, fortifications. Boston Globe, 2014

Literally raise the level of parts of Boston

Can lessons from Boston’s landfill, 250 years ago, help Boston deal with sea level rise today?

Alex Wilson, in A Bold Idea for Addressing Sea Level Rise, writes

… I was struck by the realization that 250 years ago Boston was an island, connected by just a single land-bridge …there must have been a fairly massive effort to build the current land base of Boston.

Might strategic land-building be an option for us as we are forced over the next century to address sea level rise as global warming melts the huge ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica?

…Rising seas are making life increasingly difficult in low-lying portions of dozens of U.S. cities today. The journal Nature Climate Change published a paper projecting the number of people in coastal regions of the U.S. who would be affected by sea level rise of 0.9 meters (3 feet) and 1.8 meters (5 feet). Unlike previous assessments of impact, this study considered not only current populations, but also projected population growth in these regions.

Sea level rise impact by state
Populations in U.S. states that would be affected by 0.9 and 1.8 meter sea level rise.

Source: Nature Climate Change paper, “Millions Projected To Be At Risk From Sea-Level Rise in the Continental United States,” by Matthew Hauer, et. al., published online March 14, 2016.

By the year 2100, U.S. residents affected by 0.9 m and 1.8 m sea level rise would total 1.46 million and 3.85 million, respectively. Factoring in projected population growth in these regions, however, the number of people affected increases to 4.31 million and 13.1 million, respectively.

Can lessons from Boston’s landfill, 250 years ago, help with sea level rise today?

The comprehensive book, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston, by Nancy S. Seasholes, describes more than three centuries of effort to the Boston area to create new land and raise the elevation of existing land.

Beginning fairly early in Boston’s history—certainly by the 1700s—there was a massive effort to fill in the tidal flats around Boston. These efforts ultimately created some 5,250 acres of new land in Boston, East Boston, and Charlestown.

In other areas, the land was significantly raised with fill. The original peninsula of Boston, known as Shawmut by the Native Americans, was just 487 acres. Today, merged with surrounding land, it is many times that size.

…Boston’s well-known Back Bay region was originally the back bay of the Charles River—an extensive estuary on the western side of the Shawmut Peninsula.

The Fenway and Fenway Park (the Boston Red Sox’s home stadium) get their names from the fens or bogs in the area. It was only after extensive filling that building here was possible.

Logan Airport was open water in the 1930s. Today it is part of the extensive new land in East Boston.

I haven’t seen estimates of the amount of fill been used in Greater Boston over the last three centuries. If one assumes an average fill of six feet over the 5,250 acres of made land, that would total roughly 1.4 billion cubic feet or 50 million cubic yards.

I was particularly intrigued to learn in Gaining Ground that not only was new land made on the tidal flats of Boston, but in some places the elevation of existing land was raised. In the Church Street and Suffolk Street Districts (new Bay Village and Castle Square), sewage back-up was a problem in the mid-1800s, because there wasn’t enough pitch to the sewers (which no doubt dumped into the Bay).

The solution was to elevate the land and the buildings that were located there. In the 1860s, the City decided to raise the grade of the entire District. They would fill basements and abandon them, elevate buildings on cribbing and build new foundations beneath them.

On Church Street, starting in July 1868, the City hired contractors to bring in more than 150,000 cubic yards of fill and elevate 296 brick buildings by as much as 14 feet and 56 wooden buildings by as much as 17 feet.

Remarkably (by today’s standards), this work was virtually completed by October 1869—ahead of schedule and under budget.

Church Street elevating 1868 Boston_Public_Library

A similar project was carried out in the Suffolk Street District starting in July 1870 and being completed by the end of 1872. Nearly 250,000 yards of fill were brought in, and 600 buildings were elevated—also under budget.

Boston isn’t alone in having seen extensive landmaking over the centuries. In Manhattan, several thousand acres of land were created using fill, and more than 3,000 acres were created in Chicago.

But nowhere in the U.S. has the landmaking been as extensive as in Boston.

What this suggests about our long-term response to rising sea levels is that we shouldn’t rule out the idea of raising the grade in our most important cities. I was astounded to learn just how significant the earthmoving was centuries ago; with today’s equipment and engineering prowess, one can imagine raising a low-lying city by tens of feet.

Of course, there would be huge challenges and tremendous costs with such an initiative, not to mention environmental risks. Our buildings are bigger than those in Boston were in the 1860s; they are closer together and more complex.

Our infrastructure—streets and highways, bridges, sewers, power grids, pipelines—are tremendously complex. And, we’re much more conscious of ecological damage today than we were 150 years ago.

But consider the alternative. Are we ready to abandon cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charlestown? It could well be easier to raise a city than to move it. And we will have to figure this out before the end of this century. I don’t know if raising the elevation of our low-lying cities will make sense, but I think we should begin that discussion.

We can start by looking at past experience, and Gaining Ground provides a good starting point in doing so. In some cases, it may be possible to fill in basements, compacting the fill to equalize the pressure on the outside of those walls, and turn first floors into basements—essentially eliminating an occupied floor of a building.

In other cases, entire buildings may have to be elevated and new foundations built on compacted fill 15 or 20 feet higher. Streets would have to be covered and rebuilt on fill.

Very challenging will be the need for such modifications to be coordinated on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. You can’t raise one building 20 feet and not do anything with the building next door.

This would be an extraordinarily complex process in terms of phasing, implementation, and environmental protection. But it’s time to take sea level rise seriously and begin looking at our options. Raising land mass may be one such option.

Source: Alex Wilson, Resilientdesign.org, A bold idea for addressing sea level rise, Mar 28, 2016

Apps

Boston underwater: How the rising sea levels will affect the city

Underwater: How the rising sea levels will affect various cities

Massachusetts Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Viewer

http://climateactiontool.org: Sea level rise Massachusetts

– and Intro: Massachusetts Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Viewer

Sea Level Rise Viewer NOAA Office for Coastal Management

Surging Seas RISK ZONE MAP

Explore the spatial data used in Climate Ready Boston – This app allows you to learn more about the data layers used in the Climate Ready Boston recommendations for protecting our City from a changing climate, and helps you better understand how projections are influencing resiliency solutions. Read the introduction to this interactive tool.

Articles

How Boston’s Preparing For Rising Sea Levels By Anaridis Rodriguez, WBZ-TV

Climate Ready Boston is an initiative to develop resilient solutions to prepare our City for climate change.

Greenovate Boston: Carbon Free Boston is an initiative to prepare the City to go carbon neutral by 2050.

Sasaki : Sea Change Boston. Designing in the Face of Climate Change– Sasaki is a global design firm specializing in architecture, planning, urban design, landscape architecture.

Wall to protect Boston from flooding would cost up to $12 billion to build. MassLive.com

A much-anticipated new report on how best to protect the Seaport District and other Boston neighborhoods from the effects of climate change finds that the cost to build a massive, multibillion-dollar wall in Boston Harbor is not worth the benefits.

Instead, it finds that the city of Boston and other coastal cities and towns should focus on more localized projects to counteract the flooding and higher sea levels wrought by global warming, said the report… “Right now, it doesn’t make sense for the city to consider any kind of harborwide barrier system,” said the report’s lead investigator, Paul Kirshen of UMass Boston’s Sustainable Solutions Lab. “It doesn’t make sense for decades, if not ever.” The report was sponsored by the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, a coalition of business and civic leaders formed more than a decade ago to help the city address climate change

… Either barrier could cut down on coastal flooding without significantly disrupting shipping or the environment, according to the report. But “shore-based” solutions, as the researchers call them, can provide the same level of protection at a cost of just $1 billion to $2 billion, with additional benefits to boot, Kershen told reporters Tuesday. Shore-based systems could include flood walls on a much smaller scale than a harborwide barrier, changes to zoning laws, and the raising of land using berms, among other projects.

Data articles

Boston Sea Level data

Sea Level Rise has Accelerated

Learning Standards

2016 Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework

HS-ESS2-6. Use a model to describe cycling of carbon through the ocean, atmosphere, soil, and biosphere and how increases in carbon dioxide concentrations due to human activity have resulted in atmospheric and climate changes.

HS-ESS3-1. Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of key natural resources and changes due to variations in climate have influenced human activity.

HS-LS2-7. Analyze direct and indirect effects of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem health, specifically habitat fragmentation, introduction of non-native or invasive species, overharvesting, pollution, and climate change. Evaluate and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecosystem health.*

High School Technology/Engineering

HS-ETS1-1. Analyze a major global challenge to specify a design problem that can be improved. Determine necessary qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for
solutions, including any requirements set by society.*

HS-ETS1-2. Break a complex real-world problem into smaller, more manageable problems that each can be solved using scientific and engineering principles.*

HS-ETS1-3. Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, aesthetics, and maintenance, as well as social, cultural, and environmental impacts.*

Evolutionary Origin of the Turtle Shell

March 3, 2018 2:41 pm

This intro is lightly adapted from thelogicofscience.com

Many people mistakenly believe that there are two fundamentally different types of evolution: microevolution and macroevolution. They argue that microevolution does actually occur, but only produces small changes within a species or “kind” of animal.

For example, they’re okay with the concept that all finches evolved from a common ancestor, all crows evolved from a common ancestor, all ducks evolved from a common ancestor, etc.

However, they draw the line roughly at the taxonomic level of family (e.g., ducks are in the Anatidae family), and they argue that evolution beyond that level (what they call macroevolution) is impossible and has never and can never happen. Thus, they dismiss the notion that finches, crows, and ducks all share a common ancestor.

However, this distinction is completely arbitrary and meaningless: the exact same evolutionary mechanisms that caused the evolution of finch species could (and indeed did) cause the evolution of all birds. In other words, macroevolution is simply the accumulation of microevolutionary steps, and one inherently leads to the other.

Here is a visual explanation. The image below shows a hypothetical pathway through which turtles could have evolved from their lizard-like ancestors.

Several of these images are renderings of actual fossils: B6 = Milleretta, A15 = Eunotosaurus, C22 = Odontochelys, B30 = Proganochelys, D37 = Chelydra [modern turtles]; these are just screen shots from Dr. Tyler Lyson’s excellent video.

This full progression is, of course, what creationists would consider to be macroevolution, and creationists are adamant that today’s turtle families were uniquely created and did not evolve from a lizard-like ancestor. However, because they accept microevolution, most creationists would have no problem with any particular pair of images, and they would accept that A1 could evolve into B1, B1 could evolve into C1, etc.

In other words, each pair of images shows “microevolution” (which creationists almost universally accept), but when we string all of those steps together, we get “macroevolution” (which they say is impossible).

You can probably see where I am going with this, but just to be sure, I will state it explicitly. If you are going to say that macroevolution is impossible and turtles could not have evolved from lizard-like ancestors, then which step do you think is impossible?

Please show me which step could not have occurred, and justify that claim. Additionally, please explain the obvious transitional fossils.

Remember, B6, A15, C22, B30, and D37 are actual fossils, and they perfectly match the expectations for what a transitional fossil should look like (details here).

So, if turtles and their lizard like ancestors were uniquely created kinds, then at what point in this progression do lizard-like reptiles end and turtles begin?

Image from “Evolutionary Origin of the Turtle Shell” by Tyler Lyson

GraphicalAbstract-final

Step-by-step

And here is the amazing video

Continued from “The Logic of Science”

Some people will likely be inclined to ignore my questions and harp instead on the fact that this pathway is hypothetical, but that argument completely misses the point in several ways.

First, this pathway is only partially hypothetical because B6, A15, C22, B30, and D37 are actual fossils that we have found.

Additionally, of course the pathway is partially hypothetical. We will never find every single one of these steps, and we don’t need to:

Evolution is very much like the visible light spectrum. Each color gradually fades into the next color without a clear breaking point.

In other words, there is a point along the spectrum that is clearly red, and there is a point that is clearly blue, and there is a point that is clearly violet, but there is a spectrum of change in between those points – and it is not possible to pick an exact point where the blue ends and violet begins, just as you cannot pinpoint the exact step at which the reptile becomes a turtle as we know it.

Reference

Evolutionary Origin of the Turtle Shell, By Tyler R. Lyson, Gabe S. Bever, Torsten M. Scheyer, Allison Y. Hsiang, Jacques A. Gauthier
Current Biology, Published Online: May 30, 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.05.003

Articles by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham

February 28, 2018 6:55 pm

Articles by cognitive scientists Daniel Willingham

Cognitive Processes

How to allocate study time
Why transfer is hard
Why students remember or forget
Why students think they understand when they don’t

Why practice is important

Why people love and remember stories

Why knowledge is important

How to teach critical thinking

Why reading comprehension strategies are less useful than most people think

What will improve a student’s memory?

What goes into mathematical thinking?

Motivation–role of praise Motivation–role of rewards

Has technology changed how students think?

Can teachers increase students self-control?

Why does family wealth affect student outcomes?

The role of sleep in schooling and learning

Excerpt of Raising Kids Who Read

Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?

How Do Manipulatives Help Students Learn?

Evaluation of Theories

Teacher education and the need for a mental model of the learner

Visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners

Brain-based learning

Using neuroscientific data in education theories

Multiple Intelligences

Developmentally appropriate practice

Mel Levine’s A Mind at a Time

How should we think about student differences?

21st century skills

Grit

Healthy diets

February 27, 2018 12:24 pm

How to construct a healthy diet

Vegan sources of protein

Vegan Protein nuts vegetables

Healthy plant-based diets – “A diet based on fruits, vegetables, tubers, whole grains, and legumes; and it excludes or minimizes meat (including chicken and fish), dairy products, and eggs, as well as highly refined foods like bleached flour, refined sugar, and oil.”

Forksoverknives.com/plant-based-primer-beginners-guide-starting-plant-based-diet

https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=48602

Changes to the American diet over the last century

Old American diet

* Near the start of the 20th century, Americans each ate about 120 lbs if meat per year. By 2007, we ate about 222 lbs.

* About 1913, Americans ate about 40 lbs of processed sugar per person. By 1999, it had increased to 147 lbs per person.

* About 1909, Americans ate about 294 lbs of dairy products per person. By 2006, that number was over double…605 lbs of dairy per person!!

* This information came from the companion book to Forks Over Knives.

Write about health effects due to these changes

http://veggiesforme.com/2011/09/14/shocking-rate-of-increase-of-consumption-of-meat-dairy-and-sugar/

How lose weight and stay healthy

Plant-based diet

This is not the same as vegan or vegetarian!

Give meals flavor with spices, not fats, oils, or sugar.

Think of high calorie density foods (nuts, avocado, oils) as condiments. So can you have a slice of avocado on a bean and rice burrito? Sure! But don’t sit down with guacamole and a bag of corn chips.

Calorie dilution allows people to fill their stomach with fewer calories.

caloric density of foods Calorie dilution.png

The China Study

The China Study, T. Colin Campbell, 2005

The China Study examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products (including dairy) and chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and bowel cancer. The authors conclude that people who eat a predominantly whole-food, plant-based diet—avoiding animal products as a main source of nutrition, including beef, pork, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, and milk, and reducing their intake of processed foods and refined carbohydrates—will escape, reduce, or reverse the development of numerous diseases.

The book is loosely based on the China–Cornell–Oxford Project, a 20-year study—described by The New York Times as “the Grand Prix of epidemiology”—conducted by the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Cornell University, and the University of Oxford. (Wikipedia)

Dean Ornish Diet – tba

Ornish is known for his lifestyle-driven approach to the control of coronary artery disease (CAD) and other chronic diseases. He promotes lifestyle changes including a whole foods, plant-based diet, smoking cessation, moderate exercise, stress management techniques including yoga and meditation, and psychosocial support. Ornish does not follow a strict vegetarian diet and recommends fish oil supplements; the program additionally allows for the occasional consumption of other animal products. (Wikipedia)

The Engine 2 Diet/Rip Esselstyn

– Details tba

Jeff Novick diet

The Five Pillars of Healthy Eating: “A Common Sense Approach To Nutrition”

1) Plant-Centered – Center your plate and your diet around minimally processed plant foods (fruits, vegetables, starchy vegetables, roots/tubers, intact whole grains, and legumes (beans, peas & lentils).

2) Minimally Processed – Enjoy foods as close to “as grown in nature” with minimal processing that does not detract from the nutritional value &/or add in any harmful components.

3) Calorie Dilute – Follow the principles of calorie density choosing foods that are calorie adequate, satiating and nutrient sufficient.

4) Low S-O-S – Avoid/minimize the use of added Salts/sodium, Oils/Fats and Sugars/sweeteners

5) Variety – Consume a variety of foods in each of the recommended food groups.

from The Healthy Eating Placemat A Visual Guide To Healthy Eating

Also see

Jeff Novick A Common Sense Approach To Sound Nutrition

Dilution Solution Jeff Novick Calorie Density

This excerpt from an interview summarizes Jeff Novick’s view:

Consume a variety of foods in each of the recommended food groups. Now, if there were ten of us in the room, we could each implement these pillars slightly differently and still each have a healthy diet and great health results. That’s because when we look at the research evidence, there’s no one specific diet that is “best.”

Instead, there are common denominators across healthy diets that combine to make up a healthy dietary pattern, and these are reflected in my five guidelines/principles of healthy eating.

What foods do you recommend that people incorporate into their diets? The healthiest foods are minimally processed fruits, vegetables, starchy vegetables, roots/tubers, intact whole grains, and legumes. These should make up most—if not all—of our daily calories. I recommend that people start right where they are and just keep adding in more of these foods each day.

It seems today that the topic of nutrition and health has become a war with sides drawn and no discussion. I am disappointed in the conversation I see happening on social media because a lot of it is very judgmental, confrontational, and elitist.

The message out there seems to be that if the food you eat is not fresh, organic, local, shade-grown, GMO-free, and picked yourself or picked up at a local farmer’s market or purchased from some elite health food store, then all blended together in some expensive hi-tech blender, you are not doing well enough. And, if you buy any frozen or canned foods, you might as well be eating bacon and cheeseburgers.

We need to have compassion, not only for the animals and the environment, but also for our fellow humans, particularly in the way we treat each other, especially those who may not follow the exact same dietary pattern we do.

source: An interview with healthy eating expert Jeff Novick, posted on Jewishfoodherocom, Dec. 2015

Jeff Novick’s Healthy Eating Placemat

Do vegetarians need to engage in protein combining?

Protein combining is a dietary theory for protein nutrition that purports to optimize the biological value of protein intake. According to the theory, vegetarian and vegan diets provide insufficient content of essential amino acids, making protein combining necessary. The theory has been roundly discredited by major health organizations. Studies on essential amino acid contents in plant proteins has shown that vegetarian and vegans in fact do not need to complement plant proteins in each meal to reach the desired level of essential amino acids as long as their diets are varied. The terms complete and incomplete are misleading in relation to plant protein. Protein from a variety of plant foods, eaten during the course of a day, supplies enough of all essential amino acids when caloric requirements are met.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_combining

Do humans need meat? Is veganism safe?

Studies are clearly honing in on the idea that the typical American diet is harmful, and that plant-based diets are much healthier. Just remember that this isn’t the same as being vegan or vegetarian. Plant-based diets allow for a small amount of meat on a regular basis (red meat, fowl, seafood, etc.)

From this BBC article, Zaria Gorvett writes

Recent concern about the nutritional gaps in plant-based diets has led to a number of alarming headlines, including a warning that they can stunt brain development and cause irreversible damage to a person’s nervous system.

Back in 2016, the German Society for Nutrition went so far as to categorically state that – for children, pregnant or nursing women, and adolescents – vegan diets are not recommended, which has been backed up by a 2018 review of the research.

… there are several important brain nutrients that simply do not exist in plants or fungi. Creatine, carnosine, taurine, EPA and DHA omega-3 (the third kind can be found in plants), haem iron and vitamins B12 and D3 generally only occur naturally in foods derived from animal products, though they can be synthesised in the lab or extracted from non-animal sources such as algae, bacteria or lichen, and added to supplements.

Others are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb).

… though the body can make some of these vital brain compounds from other ingredients in our diets, this ability isn’t usually enough to make up for these dietary cracks. For all of the nutrients listed above, vegetarians and vegans have been shown to have lower quantities in their bodies. In some cases, deficiency isn’t the exception – it’s completely normal.

For now, the impact these shortcomings are having on the lives of vegans is largely a mystery. But a trickle of recent studies have provided some clues – and they make for unsettling reading.

“I think there are some real repercussions to the fact that plant-based diets are taking off,” says Taylor Wallace, a food scientist and CEO of the nutrition consulting firm Think Healthy Group. “It’s not that plant-based is inherently bad, but I don’t think we’re educating people enough on, you know, the nutrients that are mostly derived from animal products.”

How a vegan diet could affect your intelligence, BBC, Future

Is cheese bad for us? Is dairy bad for us?

Every food group is okay in moderation.

Great News, America: Cheese Isn’t Bad for You, Gilad Edelman, Wired magazine, 2/22/2021

The best evidence for the benign impact of cheese comes from long-term cohort studies that tracked the health and eating habits of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. A 2011 paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzed three cohorts that together tracked 120,877 US adults over several decades.

The authors found that foods like potatoes, processed meats, and refined grains were associated with weight gain over time, while yogurt, fruit, and nuts were associated with weight loss. Cheese was right in the middle: On average, eating more or less of it had essentially no effect on weight.

That finding has held up in more recent research. A 2018 analysis of a study of 2,512 men in Wales, for example, showed a mild inverse relationship between cheese consumption and body mass after five years, meaning eating cheese was associated with weight loss, though that effect faded at the 10-year mark.

A meta-analysis of 37 randomized clinical trials found that increased dairy consumption overall led to increased lean muscle mass and decreased body fat.

“There’s almost no evidence that cheese causes weight gain—and in fact, there’s evidence that it’s neutral at worst,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, the lead author of the 2011 paper and dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Nutrients

Organic food and farming

Meaningless words in food science

What we need to know about healthy diets

Healthy meal generator

External related articles

Low-Fat Vegan Diets By Sharon Palmer, RDN Today’s Dietitian

Lack of exercise is a major cause of chronic diseases

Learning Standards

Massachusetts Health Framework

Students will gain the knowledge and skills to select a diet that supports health and reduces the risk of illness and future chronic diseases. PreK–12 Standard 4

Through the study of Improving Nutrition students will
3.1 Identify the key nutrients in food that support healthy body systems (skeletal, circulatory) and recognize that the amount of food needed changes as the body grows Healthy meal food dinner cutting board vegetables meat
3.2 Use the USDA Food Guide Pyramid and its three major concepts of balance, variety, and moderation to plan healthy meals and snacks
3.3 Recognize hunger and satiety cues and how to make food decisions based upon these cues.
3.8 List the functions of key nutrients and describe how the United States Dietary Guidelines relate to health and the prevention of chronic disease throughout the life span.
3.9 Describe a healthy diet and adequate physical activity during the adolescent growth spurt.
3.20 Identify and analyze dietary plans, costs, and long-term outcomes of weight management programs.
3.21 Identify how social and cultural messages about food and eating influence nutrition choices.

Benchmarks for Science Literacy, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Increased knowledge about nutrition has led to the development of diets containing the variety of foods that can help people live longer and healthier lives. 8F/M7** (SFAA)

2016 Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework

HS-LS1-2. Develop and use a model to illustrate the key functions of animal body systems, including (a) food digestion, nutrient uptake, and transport through the body; (b) exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide; (c) removal of wastes; and (d) regulation of
body processes.

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Start here

There are many ways to take notes: Note journaling, Cornell notes, Guided notes, Harvard notes, one-pagers, etc. No one system is always best.

Highlighting/taking notes in (printed) textbook or workbook

I often highlight passages in a book, or make notes. Note that studying with a highlighter doesn’t replace taking your own notesduring class.

Highlighting/taking notes – online textbook or workbook

You can make any OpenStax book yours with digital highlighting and notetaking.

Use a traditional lined notebook

This example is from Mr. Logue’s Middle School Science Lab.

One pagers, sketch notes

Some students take the time to create inspired & artistic versions of notes. These are called sketch notes or one-pagers:

After the class day is over you can put together your notes and thoughts to create something like

Or like this

For details see One-page notes/posters and

Cornell Notes

Notes from a class are written in the note-taking column; they consist of the main ideas; long ideas are paraphrased. Long sentences are avoided; symbols or abbreviations are used instead.

To assist with future reviews, relevant questions (which should be recorded as soon as possible so that the lecture and questions will be fresh in the student’s mind) or key words are written in the key word column.

Within 24 hours of taking the notes, the student must revise and write questions, and then write a brief summary in the bottom five to seven lines of the page. This helps to increase understanding of the topic.

When reviewing the material, the student can cover the note-taking (right) column while attempting to answer the questions/keywords in the key word or cue (left) column. _ Wikipedia

Guided Notes

This format provides students with a framework, yet requires active listening (as opposed to providing copies of powerpoint slides in their entirety). Research has shown that guided notes improve students’ recording of critical points in lecture as well as their quiz scores on related content.”

– Wikipedia

Example of guided notes for a biology class:

Harvard Notes

This is an organized, common system. When taking notes from a book or lecture:

 Write down the main idea of at least every other paragraph.

 Use phrases, not complete sentences

 Where you have a I, you have to have a II; where you have an A, you have to have a B

 You don’t need sub ideas

Example

Here is a example from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Center for College and Student Success, note-taking methods.

Related articles

This analysis is by Phil Plait, Mar 9, 2017

The ingredients can be combined in hundreds of ways to make a delicious dinner.

It often takes just 15 minutes of prep and 15 minutes of cooking.

Start – pick one protein

Chicken breast or thigh meat, cut into pieces

Vegan chik’n (e.g. Trader Joe’s or Gardein Chik’n)

Beef strips/tips

Vegan beef (e.g. Trader Joe’s or Gardein Beef-less tips)

Tofu (firm)

Tempeh

Any other favorite protein source

Pick a carbohydrate

Cook these in a separate pot. Lay this down as the base for your meal. The vegetables, proteins and sauce go aside or over this.

Brown rice Farro Quinoa Spaghetti or angel hair pasta Mung bean vermicelli Rice pasta

Pick a few veggies

Have a different combination each time!

Broccoli Red bell peppers, green bell peppers, yellow or orange bell peppers Yellow onions, vidalia onions Summer squash Carrots Snow pea pods Bamboo shoots Miniature corn Water chestnuts

If you like, add nuts

peanuts, cashews, etc.

Stir fry sauce

Kung Pao sauce Red curry sauce and coconut milk Teriyaki sauce Sesame ginger sauce Thai Peanut Satay Orange Sauce Szechuan sauce Island Mango

Instructions

Dice your meat/protein source into small pieces, like the size of pieces you see at those food court restaurants at the shopping mall.

Add a small amount of oil to the wok. Usually peanut oil, but can be olive oil or any other favorite cooking oil.

In a separate pot, boil water. When boiling add your carb/pasta/grains.

Drop the meat (or faux meat) into the wok. Rotate and move all the pieces so that each is covered in oil.

Cook on a medium flame for a few minutes.

If you use real meat you must stir-fry this first; it takes more time to fully and safely cook.

Once the meat is cooked you then add in all of the other ingredients into the wok.

At this point continue cooking until all of the ingredients are done to your liking.

Our related articles

How can we protect Boston from rising sea levels? Various proposals

Build a dike around the harbor

The dikelands proposal – A 14-mile dike could protect Greater Boston from sea level rise.

It would run from Cohasset to Swampscott

…The metropolitan Boston estuary is uniquely different from many others around the nation. It is protected on its flanks by the shoulder highlands of Swampscott and Cohasset. It takes advantage of the estuary’s unique geological characteristics.

We propose building a 14-mile dike barrier between the shoulder highlands of Cohasset and Swampscott.

Would be located some eight miles out from Deer Island, complete with residential and commercial developments, windmills, solar collector farms, and recreational areas.

A simple dike barrier with a 200-foot-wide top and reaching 120 feet from seafloor to storm-surge top would require some 246 million cubic yards of material.

Bi-directional locks could provide access for all crafts, protecting Boston’s commercial activity and its waterfront integrity.

The new dike system will prevent storm tides from inundating the entire metropolitan estuary while allowing rivers to discharge their water into a harbor reservoir capable of holding more than 10 billion gallons of river-fed water…

By lowering the reservoir level to half the current tidal range, the cherished Boston Harbor Islands and their recreational potential would be protected.

At a cost of $100 per cubic yard, with two bi-directional shipping locks of $500 million each (plus soft and contingency costs), this macro-engineering and macro-economic project would probably cost between $30 billion and $50 billion.

The 200-foot wide top of the 14-mile stretch would create 68 acres of new dike lands, which in turn would need to be supported by a complete infrastructure system of water, sewer, electricity, and transportation …

The project could help pay for itself if the newly-created, flat-top area of the dike, amounting to some 68 acres, was sold as waterfront property at between $3 and $7 million per acre. That would raise between $100 billion and $400 billion (after return on invested capital)

Source: 14-mile dike could protect Greater Boston from sea level rise, Commonwealth Magazine, Jan 2018, Peter Papesch, Franziska Amacher and A. Vernon Woodworth, members of the Boston Society of Architects

Plan details Metro-Boston-Dike-Barrier.pdf

Climate Ready Boston: Planning

The team, led by Paul Kirshen, a professor of climate adaptation at UMass’ School for the Environment, is weighing three harbor barrier configurations. The barrier study was recommended in the city’s Climate Ready Boston report.

When reviewing the material, the student can cover the note-taking (right) column while attempting to answer the questions/keywords in the key word or cue (left) column.
_ Wikipedia

Brown rice
Farro
Quinoa
Spaghetti or angel hair pasta
Mung bean vermicelli
Rice pasta

Broccoli
Red bell peppers, green bell peppers, yellow or orange bell peppers
Yellow onions, vidalia onions
Summer squash
Carrots
Snow pea pods
Bamboo shoots
Miniature corn
Water chestnuts

Kung Pao sauce
Red curry sauce and coconut milk
Teriyaki sauce
Sesame ginger sauce
Thai Peanut Satay
Orange Sauce
Szechuan sauce
Island Mango