Scientists Help Develop First Single Molecule Transistor

A scientist at the University of Liverpool has helped to create the world's smallest transistor - by proving that a single molecule can power electric circuits.

Dr Werner Hofer, from the University's Surface Science Research Centre, is one of an international team of scientists who have created a prototype that demonstrates a single charged atom on a silicon surface can regulate the conductivity of a nearby molecule. Computers and other technology based on this concept would require much less energy to power, would produce much less heat, and run much faster.

Currently, most electronic devices are based on silicon. There is, however, a limit to how many transistors can be packed into a given volume of silicon as the currents in these transistors are high and can overheat. By miniaturizing a transistor, the time during which an electron can pass through it is reduced and therefore the device can be operated with much higher frequencies and take up much less space.

Dr Hofer, a theorist, who worked in collaboration with colleagues from the National Institute for Nanotechnology of the National Research Council in Canada and the University of Alberta, provided the theoretical background in an experiment to examine the potential for electrical transistors on a much smaller, molecular scale. Their findings have been published in the journal, Nature.

Molecules are extremely small, on the scale of a nanometre (one billionth of a metre). The team tested the transistor potential of a molecule by using the electrostatic field emanating from a single atom to regulate the conductivity of a molecule, allowing an electric current to flow through the molecule. These effects were easily observed at room temperature, in contrast to previous molecular experiments that had to be conducted at temperatures close to absolute zero, and with much smaller current amplification. Dr Hofer explains: "Our experiments demonstrate that we can control the current through a single molecule by charging a single atom on a silicon surface, while all surrounding atoms remain neutral.

"Our research brings us a step nearer to using molecular electronics which would not only prove more efficient and cheaper than current devices, but would also have the potential to power green technology because of the biodegradable nature of the device."

He added: "Our prototype is a scientific breakthrough in molecular electronics. We have successfully shown the potential for devices of unheard-of smallness and unheard-of efficiency. This is the first time anyone has shown that a molecule is in fact a transistor."

Hutto Independent School District

By Ronnie Bredahl

Known as a "family oriented community of progress and growth", strong community support and involvement with the local school district are characteristics of life in the city of Hutto.

Located twenty-five miles northeast of Austin, Hutto is one of the fastest-growing cities in the state of Texas. Hutto has experienced incredible growth with its current population of 12,000 representing an almost 1000% increase since the year 2000.

Known to local residents as the "Center of the Universe" due to its easy access to all of Central Texas, Hutto maintains the small town charm for which it has become famous.

With its motto "Moving Forward, Reaching Potential", Hutto Independent School District strives to provide outstanding educational services to its students. Hutto ISD includes four elementary schools (Cottonwood Creek, Hutto, Johnson, and Ray), one middle school (Hutto Middle), and one high school (Hutto High). Hutto ISD added Ray Elementary in August 2007. Additional schools are in the planning stages. Hutto High is currently undergoing renovations to accommodate the rapid growth of the student population.

Known as the Hutto Hippos, Hutto High School has a 3A rating by UIL. The Hutto community strongly supports and participates in Hutto Hippo activities.

The tax rate for Hutto ISD is currently $1.41 per $100 valuation.
Hutto ISD earned on overall rating of Academically Acceptable on the Texas Education Agency Academic Excellence Indicator System for 2007.

TEA awarded Gold Performance Acknowledgments to Hutto Elementary for improvement in math and to Hutto Middle School for attendance, writing, and improvement in math.

Hutto High School was honored by The Texas ACT Council with a 2007 College Readiness Award. This award is given to high schools that have demonstrated significant improvement in the college readiness of their students as reflected by their scores on the ACT test for five consecutive years. Hutto High School was among only 79 schools in the state of Texas to be awarded this honor.

Hutto ISD and the Hutto community embrace the growth and expansion of the Hutto area and are dedicated to maintaining the strong sense of community and small town charm in this dynamic, rapidly growing city.

Families and Teachers on Public School Rankings

All parents want their children to receive a good-quality education and public school rankings are used as a tool to determine which schools are "best." They may even make choices about which neighborhood to move their family into based on the public school rankings information available. This information can easily be found.

Public School Rankings and Quality of Education

Typically rankings are based on test score results. One could assume that the schools that place highly on rankings lists have the best teachers and those schools who fare poorly are unable to attract and retain good-quality staff members. While the latter statement may have some validity, students and parents also need to do their part.

A teacher may have great lesson plans that present information in an interesting way. If the students are not motivated to learn, for whatever reason, this fact will be reflected on test scores. Some individuals have even gone so far as to suggest that teachers be financially rewarded for high public school rankings. This could be a mistake.

Pressure to Achieve and High Rankings

All students have the right to learn and to be given the opportunity to achieve. Having school funding paid out on the basis of test scores and rankings puts a lot of pressure on both the students and the teachers to perform well on that one task. The concern here is that the testing will become the sole focus of the school curriculum. Teachers may be tempted to teach only what will be on the test and not take the time to explore anything else.

Will students who don't perform well be penalized for bringing the public school rankings down? One would assume that all students would try their best on Test Day, but if they can't or won't, why should that reflect on the teacher or the school itself? The teacher has done his or her job in exposing the students to the information; the students have a responsibility for what they choose to do with that knowledge.

We should want the next generation to get excited about learning for its' own sake, not just to pass a standardized test. My fear is that if public school rankings are being used as the only criteria on which to base funding decisions or whether parents should send their children to a particular place of learning, we are being far too narrow in our view. Too many other factors, other than the skills and abilities of the teachers, go into standardized test results (and public school rankings).

When we think about rankings of schools, let's look at the big picture. The mark of a good school is based on more than just numbers.

Some Kindergartners May Have to Wait to Attend Memphis Schools

By Patricia Hawke
For lots of kids, all across the United States, turning 5 is a coming of age. They are now old enough to go to school! They can attend Kindergarten, and now, they are big kids! No more preschool, naptime, or blankies. It's the big time.

For future Memphis schools students, their first day of Kindergarten may just have to wait a bit. Legislators are considering a change in the necessary birth date a child must have in order to attend kindergarten at all Tennessee schools, including Memphis schools. Currently, the cutoff is September 30. The proposal would change that date to September 1.

While many children will be disappointed (as will there parents), it is a sound idea. Students attending Memphis schools have high standards to achieve, and starting school too early, in some cases, can actually set them back. They can struggle throughout their Memphis schools careers, and starting a little later, when they are more mature can make all the difference. This is especially true for students hoping to attend Memphis schools which mostly serve the urban area of Memphis, Tennessee. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have been proven to be less prepared for school than their richer counterparts. Their parents may be working two jobs, with little time or energy left to spend getting Junior ready to start a Kindergarten program in Memphis.

Whether or not this is applicable, it is a fact that kids who start out the school year at Memphis schools younger than their peers (For instance, Sally's birthday is September 28, when she will turn 5. She'll still be only 4 when school starts. Judy's birthday was January 28, and she's been 5 for over 6 months now.) can have a harder time learning to "school" than others who are older and more mature.

Emotional maturity is perhaps the most important thing to consider. A child who isn't ready to start Kindergarten at Memphis City may have a harder time adjusting to the new life of "school kid". Crying, separation anxiety, discipline or behavior problems and even toileting and shoe-tying ought to be considered for these future students of Memphis schools.

Of course, there are always exceptions to every rule, and there are four-year-olds out there who are vastly more mature than their five-year-old peers. This can be due to any number of things; gender, birth order, and their parents' level of completed education all contribute to a child's social and emotional maturity. Even the age of the parents as well as the influence of extended family can impact a child's maturity level.

It seems to me that the best solution for rising Kindergartners of Memphis schools would be to set an optional date. Perhaps students could be admitted to Kindergarten if they meet the September 1st birthday requirement, and a screening process could be instituted for those future students of Memphis schools that may be ready to enter Kindergarten in Memphis schools but have a later birthday in the month of September.

Demolishing Zimbabwe's education system teacher by teacher

The first to go was the English teacher. Six months later, the commerce teacher followed. The next year, 2005, the trickle turned into an exodus. By 2007, the departures from Mufakose 3 High School were like bricks in a collapsing building: math, science, accounting and many other teachers, all leaving their careers behind to work as cleaners, shop assistants, laborers in other countries.

Zimbabwe's education system, once the best in Africa, is being demolished teacher by teacher.

Some of the teachers at Mufakose 3, outside the capital, Harare, called in sick and were never seen at the school again. Others didn't bother to call and just disappeared.

"You'd come to school and someone's not there and next thing you hear, he's gone," said Knox Sonopai, 43, a history teacher at Mufakose 3.

In 2007, 25,000 teachers fled the country, according to the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe. In the first two months of this year, 8,000 more disappeared. A staggering 150,000 teaching vacancies can't be filled. The Education Ministry sends out high school graduates with no degree or experience to do the job.

In a country where the official inflation rate is 100,000%, teachers simply can't afford to teach.

Before last month's national elections, teachers went on strike to protest salaries of 500 million Zimbabwean dollars a month -- about $10. Their salaries went up 700% to end the strike (paid, perhaps not coincidentally, just before the vote) but the raise is being gobbled by hyperinflation.

"One hundred percent of teachers have resigned, mentally, even though they remain in schools," said the teachers union president, Takavafira Zhou. "They're no longer interested in teaching. They're just looking for somewhere to go.

"The education system is a vital hub of the country. It has a ripple effect. In the long term, the country will suffer very much."

Francis, a teacher at neighboring Mufakose 1 High School who declined to give his last name for fear of dismissal, said 60 of 110 teachers there left last year.

"Every holiday we lose more teachers," he said.

Last October, history teacher Sonopai and a colleague, Clever Mudadi, 33, gambled their lives crossing the crocodile-infested Limpopo River into South Africa. They tried to get work as teachers but ended up as laborers digging foundations for about $15 a week. In the end, humiliated by the work, they turned around and went home.

"It was bad," Mudadi said. "We lost a lot of weight. We felt hurt. I can't describe it."

"We never expected to do that kind of work, but we had to do it," Sonopai said. "We had no option. We were stranded."

Mudadi, whose first name, Clever, seems to have shaped him from birth to be a teacher, has a young, boyish face and pauses thoughtfully before putting anything into words. Sonopai's face is long and mournful. He is the more talkative of the two.

They're men with calm, cautious voices and soft hands used to chalk dust, not spades and blisters and days of toil. When the pair talk about their South African adventure, they seem almost pained by the memories. There are soft sighs. They stare vacantly. Teachers used to be some of the most respected people in Zimbabwean communities, but now "you are the laughingstock of the community," said primary school teacher Richard Tshuma, 35.

"When you are going to the shops because it is payday for teachers, people laugh at you and say it's better to be a street vendor selling vegetables. You'll make more money."

At rallies before the elections, which saw the ruling ZANU-PF party lose its parliamentary majority for the first time in 28 years of power, President Robert Mugabe made a point of giving out computers to teach children computer literacy.

At Mufakose 1 High School, 10 new computers were donated last year by the government. But only one is still working, and students never get to touch it. It's been taken over by school office workers for typing letters.

Cortines targets dropout rate at L.A. Unified

Dealing with its alarmingly high dropout rate should be a higher priority than test scores for the Los Angeles Unified School District, Ramon C. Cortines said in his first interview since being named senior deputy superintendent Tuesday.

Because students who drop out often are low achievers, he warned, keeping them in school could well impede -- at least initially -- a rise in test scores.

Indicating that he planned to shake up things, Cortines, 75, said he also would revisit the phonics-based reading program he helped install eight years ago, work to shrink and decentralize the district's much-criticized bureaucracy, improve science and arts instruction and increase student access to college-prep classes.

And he pledged greater openness, saying the district needed to acknowledge its failures as the prelude to addressing them.

"People in the district are afraid if it is bad news," Cortines said. "I'm not afraid. If we don't know what the facts are, how can we prescriptively design an instruction program that meets the needs of the kids?"

Cortines drew widespread praise in 2000 when he served as interim superintendent for six months after the Board of Education ousted then-Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

This time around, he said, his goal is to support Supt. David L. Brewer, who has faced nagging questions about his own performance and an impatient school board. Brewer, a retired vice admiral, had no background in K-12 education before his hiring 17 months ago.

Civic leaders and school board members praised Brewer for his willingness to hire a high-profile, plain-speaking independent as second in command. Cortines has vastly more education experience than his new boss, having headed school districts in New York City, San Francisco, San Jose and Pasadena.

"We needed someone with instruction expertise," board member Marlene Canter said. "This appointment shows that Supt. Brewer puts students' interests ahead of any other agenda."

Cortines says he is motivated by the education challenge alone and has no interest in overshadowing the superintendent. Cortines, who will make $250,000 a year, agreed to an at-will contract, meaning Brewer can dismiss him without notice.

Last year, at a public forum, Cortines complained about how the district's "damn bureaucracy" was withholding tallies of dropouts. Within days of applying public pressure, Cortines got the statistics he sought, but said he remained dissatisfied with the quality and coherence of information.

He said he would insist on getting an accurate picture of how many students drop out and why. Then he will enlist principals and their supervisors to address the problem -- and hold them accountable.

"You can't get to achievement if you don't try to keep the kids in school," he said

In a departure from the top-down structure favored by former Supt. Roy Romer, Cortines said he shared Brewer's desire to give more responsibility to regional administrators and principals: "They're going to have to rise to that. That means making decisions and taking risks."

He also said he would carefully evaluate the phonics-based Open Court reading program. In 2000, in concert with the school board, Cortines required nearly all elementary schools to adopt the program. Open Court was subsequently embraced by Romer, and its use corresponded with a substantial rise in elementary reading scores.

But Cortines always worried about whether the highly structured program was appropriate for students not yet fully proficient in English.

Research shows that these students need much more than skills in decoding words, said Cortines, who added: "I would've modified Open Court so you have managed instruction but more flexibility as it relates to language development."

During his earlier stint, Cortines developed a plan to dramatically shrink the district's central administration while granting sweeping authority to regional superintendents to bring decisions closer to schools and parents.

Now Cortines has another shot -- and a kindred thinker in Brewer. Slashing the central office may become a financial imperative given the state budget vise: The district must identify $460 million in possible cuts.

After leaving L.A. Unified, Cortines worked as a consultant -- often free of charge -- and served on boards, including that of J. Paul Getty Trust. He even tried "sitting by the pool and reading," but as he put it, "I've flunked retirement about five times."

As deputy mayor since August 2006, he was especially valuable to Villaraigosa because he maintained cordial relations with top school district officials and union leaders.

"His hiring will only enhance the partnership between the city of Los Angeles and L.A. Unified, and will accelerate the reforms and change we need now," Villaraigosa said Wednesday. "The timing couldn't be better. Ray brings a deep and profound sense of urgency that I think this school district needs right now."

Retired Long Beach Supt. Carl Cohn, widely regarded as a successful reformer, said Cortines' experience with Villaraigosa boded well for getting along with Brewer, a passionate education advocate who also wants to leave his mark.

In the mayor's office, "Cortines worked out an arrangement with another powerful, larger-than-life figure, and for a period of time, they worked well together," Cohn said. "I think the same thing could happen at the school district."

College rejection isn't the end of the world

With nearly perfect grades at a prestigious Los Angeles prep school and high SAT scores, Emily Podany should have nailed a spot at Stanford. But when she applied early to study astrophysics at her dream school, the Palo Alto university flat-out rejected her. Podany was crushed.

"When you see the small envelope, you just know it's not good news," said Podany, 18. "I just felt very sad for a couple days. Then that turned into anger at myself for not doing better."

Podany, now a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, is not unlike hundreds of thousands of high-achieving students who failed to get into their first-choice school in recent weeks. It's also the first time many of them have faced rejection, leaving them devastated, depressed and angry.

But today's high school seniors who received envelopes thick and thin this spring from the likes of Harvard, UC Berkeley and USC can learn a thing or two from their brothers and sisters in rejection.

Their worlds did not crumble, and their lives largely worked themselves out -- many grudgingly attended their second choices and surprised themselves by falling in love with campuses they once sneered at. Some immediately began plotting transfers to their first-choice school, and others, such as Meena Madan of Long Beach, decided to work hard for four years in hopes of attending their top choice for grad school.

Madan was obsessed with UC Berkeley because of its stand-out programs in geology and paleobiology. When she was rejected last spring, Madan was happy for one small solace -- she found out while she was alone.

"I hate crying in front of other people," she said. "It was absolutely awful. I was crying and crying. The first thing I did was call my sister [who attends Berkeley], and she was crying too. She felt so bad for me. I was miserable for so long. In the end, it took me a couple of months to stop feeling so bad."

As the fall approached, she girded herself to study earth-system science at UC Irvine.

"It can't be that bad," the freshman recalled telling herself. "This is other people's first choice; there must be something good about it."

The Orange County campus, affable classmates and smart professors grew on Madan. The 18-year-old plans to stay put until grad school.

"People in the dorm I'm living in are really wonderful," she said. "I like it a lot. The only thing that keeps me actually from thinking this school is absolutely amazing is the fact my major is not perfect here; it's more broad than what I wanted. But it's an extremely nice school."

Competition at elite schools such as Berkeley and Stanford has grown because more students than ever are vying for admission -- the population of high school graduates has ballooned and is projected to increase this year and next. Seniors are also applying to more colleges than ever. At Podany's alma mater, the all-girls Marlborough School in Hancock Park, guidance counselors recommend that seniors apply to about 10 colleges; some have been known to apply to two dozen or more.

All this means that universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, USC, UCLA and UC Berkeley received record-high numbers of applications this year. Meanwhile, the number of class seats has remained stable, so schools are reporting record-low acceptance rates. USC admitted 21% of 35,809 applicants this spring. Fifteen years ago, the school accepted 70%.

"We are not able to take, because of space limitations, students whom we love," said Jerry Lucido, USC's vice provost for enrollment policy and management.

Parents and students do not take rejection lightly. Online discussion forums are filled with student angst over denials, pleas for help in crafting appeals, and sympathetic posts aimed at soothing hurt feelings. One anonymous writer, who was accepted at Berkeley and Duke, asked fellow college confidential.com readers where he should enroll and what he could do to ease transfer to Stanford or MIT, both of which rejected him.

"Would I need to write a book, become president of my local chapter of Mensa, secure a patent?" he wrote.

Dennis Murray, 19, understands all too well. He thought he was a shoo-in at USC: The Thousand Oaks student had straight As, scored 1370 on his SATs (when the top score was 1600) and passed five Advanced Placement tests. The flourish on his resume? He was a legacy. His father graduated from USC, and he grew up cheering Trojans football.

So when Murray was rejected, he was confused and hurt.

"The toughest part was the end of senior year when people were talking about where they were going," he said. "I didn't."

Instead of attending one of the four-year institutions that accepted him, including UC San Diego and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Murray decided to attend Moorpark College, a two-year community college.

Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole

In Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins,” the protagonist, a doctor and an inventor, recites what he calls the scientist’s prayer. It goes like this:

“Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.”

Today we require more than prayers that a scientific experiment will not lead to the end of the world. We demand hard-headed calculations. But whom can we trust to do them?

That question has been raised by the impending start up of the Large Hadron Collider. It starts smashing protons together this summer at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, outside Geneva, in hopes of grabbing a piece of the primordial fire, forces and particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Critics have contended that the machine could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or something equally catastrophic.

To most physicists, this fear is more science fiction than science fact. At a recent open house weekend, 73,000 visitors, without pitchforks or torches, toured the collider without incident.

Nevertheless, some experts say too much hype and not enough candor on the part of scientists about the promises and perils of what they do could boomerang into a public relations disaster for science, opening the door for charlatans and demagogues.

In a paper published in 2000 with the title “Might a Laboratory Experiment Destroy Planet Earth?” Francesco Calogero, a nuclear physicist at the University of Rome and co-winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Pugwash conferences on arms control, deplored a tendency among his colleagues to promulgate a “leave it to the experts” attitude.

“Many, indeed most, of them,” he wrote, “seem to me to be more concerned with the public relations impact of what they, or others, say and write, than in making sure that the facts are presented with complete scientific objectivity.”

One problem is that society has never agreed on a standard of what is safe in these surreal realms when the odds of disaster might be tiny but the stakes are cosmically high. In such situations, probability estimates are often no more than “informed betting odds,” said Martin Rees, a Cambridge University cosmologist, the astronomer royal and the author of “Our Final Hour.” Adrian Kent, also of Cambridge, said in a paper in 2003 reviewing scientists’ failure to calculate adequately and characterize accurately risks to the public, that even the most basic question, “ ‘How improbable does a catastrophe have to be to justify proceeding with an experiment?’ seems never to have been seriously examined.”

Dr. Calogero commented, as did Dr. Kent, in 2000 after a very public battle on the safety of another accelerator, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or Rhic, at the Brook haven National Laboratory on Long Island. Dr. Calogero said he hoped to apply a gentle pressure on Cern to treat these issues with seriousness. “A crusade against it is a danger,” he said of the new collider. “It would not be based on rational argument.”

Fears about the Brookhaven collider first centered on black holes but soon shifted to the danger posed by weird hypothetical particles, strangelets, that critics said could transform the Earth almost instantly into a dead, dense lump. Ultimately, independent studies by two groups of physicists calculated that the chances of this catastrophe were negligible, based on astronomical evidence and assumptions about the physics of the strangelets. One report put the odds of a strangelet disaster at less than one in 50 million, less than a chance of winning some lottery jackpots. Dr. Kent, in a 2003 paper, used the standard insurance company method to calculate expected losses to explore how stringent this bound on danger was. He multiplied the disaster probability times the cost, in this case the loss of the global population, six billion. A result was that, in actuarial terms, the Rhic collider could kill up to 120 people in a decade of operation.

“Put this way, the bound seems far from adequately reassuring,” Dr. Kent wrote.

Alvaro de Rujula of Cern, who was involved in writing a safety report, said extending the insurance formula that way violated common sense. “Applied to all imaginable catastrophes, it would result in World Paralysis,” he wrote.

Besides, the random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons.

Doomsday from particle physics is part of the culture.

Next year will see the release of the film version of “Angels and Demons,” the prequel to Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code,” in which the bad guys use a Cern accelerator to gather antimatter for a bomb to blow up the Vatican, and it includes scenes at Cern.

In Douglas Preston’s “Blasphemy,” a best seller last winter, the operators of a giant particle collider in New Mexico find themselves talking to an entity that sounds like God before religious fanatics descend on the lab and destroy it.

Some physicists, who have been waiting 14 years for the new collider, have proclaimed in papers and press releases increasingly ambitious and unlikely hopes, including proving a long-shot version of string theory by producing microscopic black holes.

Inevitably, these black holes have taken center stage in the latest round of doomsday alarms. Most theorists will say the version of their theory that predicts black holes is extremely unlikely — though not impossible. But the chance that such a black hole would not instantly evaporate according to a theory famously propounded by Stephen Hawking in 1974 is even more weirdly unlikely, the theorists say.

Cern’s most recent safety report, in 2003, focused mostly on refuting the strangelet threat in the hadron collider and devoted just three pages to black holes, saying they “do not present a conceivable risk.” It gave no odds. An anonymous Cern committee is working on a final, more comprehensive report.

Neither Dr. Calogero nor Dr. Rees say they are losing sleep over the collider. Some risk is acceptable, even inevitable, in the pursuit of knowledge, they say, and they trust the physicists who have built it.

But it would be more reassuring in the long run, as Dr. Kent noted, if everybody agreed beforehand how much risk is acceptable, before spending billions of dollars and major political capital.

One popular option to determine acceptable risk is to demand that the chance of a man-made disaster be kept below the chance of a natural disaster like being obliterated by an asteroid. Astronomers estimate that chance as one in 50 million in any given year.

Of course, thanks to those pesky quantum laws, disaster could come anytime. Or not. It could happen that the scientist’s prayer will be answered and your discovery will indeed lead to knowledge, human happiness and a new killer ap for iPhones.

“As in all explorations of uncharted domains, there may be a risk,” Dr. Rees wrote, “but there is a hidden cost of saying no.”