complex

11Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE

A Complex Systems Scientist Explains: What Is Chaos?

Mitchell Newberry, University of Michigan Chaos evokes images of the dinosaurs running wild in Jurassic Park, or my friend’s toddler ravaging the living room. In a chaotic world, you never know what to expect. Stuff is happening all the time, driven by any kind of random impulse. But chaos has a deeper meaning in connection to physics and climate science, related to how certain systems – like the weather or the behavior of a toddler – are fundamentally unpredictable. Scientists define chaos as the amplified effects of tiny changes in the present moment that lead to long-term unpredictability. Picture two almost identical storylines. In one version, two people bump into each other in a train station; but in the other, the train arrives 10 seconds earlier and the meeting never happens. F...

The Stories Of New Teachers That Face Complex Cultural Challenges – 3 Latina Teachers In Their Toughest Moments

Gun control. Hallway decorations. Hairstyles. Those aren’t the things I expected to be stumbling blocks for three Latina educators that I helped prepare to become schoolteachers in recent years. But each situation came up in their classroom or in the course of their jobs at various elementary and middle schools in the state of Indiana, where I teach. Their situations are indicative of a time in our society when we are called to more closely pay attention to issues of racism and social justice. I’m tracking these former students – along with three others – as part of a study I am doing on the first-year experiences of Latina teachers. As an educator who helps prepare future school teachers, I believe these experiences help shine light on some of the expectations that students, parents and...

Deciding how and whether to reopen schools is complex – here’s how rocket scientists would develop a plan

Dealing with the social and economic upheaval from the coronavirus pandemic will require the skills and talents of many types of professions – medical personnel, public health experts, parents, students, educators, legislators, enforcement authorities and many others. Until now, though, the U.S. has struggled to mount a coordinated national response to effectively stamp out COVID-19, even as other countries in Europe and East Asia have shown that the disease can be controlled. In the past, the United States has successfully mobilized to address deeply complex challenges and I believe one of those – sending astronauts to the Moon – can be instructive today, even though a pandemic is a very different challenge. Twelve years after the famed Project Apollo to land men on the Moon in 1969, Ge...