Creativity

"Every student and every teacher has immeasurable untapped reserves of competence and creativity." Mindshifts, Geoffrey Caine et al.
"An idea usually starts with an observation that is puzzling, with something you want to figure out rather than something you think you already understand."
Writing Analytically, David Rosenwasser & Jill Stephen

The concept of creativity has many proponents and champions in higher education, and just as many definitions of creativity and ideas on how to let it flourish. It has been defined as a single thing and as a complex set of behaviors, as an inborn knack or a fostered, developed talent, as something embedded in disciplinary knowledge and as an entity distinct from other kinds of thinking. Artists, psychologists, educational designers, and corporate trainers differ in their approach to and ideas about creativity. Nonetheless, over the past few decades some consensus has emerged regarding creativity. Most educators and theorists define creativity as a tendency, stronger in some individuals than in others, that can be learned and practiced as a skill.
Many writers on creativity and creative thought agree about several of the elements of creativity: motivation and self-awareness, flexible and original thinking, the tendency to take risks and ask questions, and the ability to imagine not just an alternative solution to a problem but a workable, achievable result.
Educators also agree that, while some of the elements of creativity may be inborn, creativity can and should be taught. Erica McWilliam, Professor of Education at Queensland University of Technology, argued in a recent talk, "Is Creativity Teachable? Conceptualizing the Creativity/Pedagogy Relationship in Higher Education," that creativity is certainly learnable and applicable to all disciplines. It is especially important to foster creativity now, when we urgently need solutions to social, scientific and cultural problems. Deborah Wince-Smith of the Council on Competitiveness calls creativity and innovation imperative for economic growth.
Explore these pages to learn more about creativity, how creative thinking might be and is being taught at Iowa State and elsewhere, and you can teach creatively and teach for creativity, whatever your discipline.

The Best Foods to Eat to Beat Diabetes & 5 to Avoid!

Have the disease, or simply want to lose weight? The following foods can help:

• Whole Grains: Not all carbs are bad. Foods made with whole grains, such as whole-wheat bread and brown rice, are sources of filling fiber (aiding weight loss, which can reduce your diabetes risk) and nutrients such as potassium, which helps the pancreas release insulin, the hormone that helps your cells use glucose for energy.

• Fish, Eggs, Poultry: Carnivores, rejoice: These foods (poultry without the skin) are fair game in a diabetes-friendly diet. Why? Because they're high in protein (result: full stomach) but typically low in fat (result: better weight management). Fatty fish also contains omega-3 fatty acids, which cut down on cardiovascular problems that can accompany diabetes.

Related: 12 Key Tips to Keep Your Diet on Track »

• Fruits: These sweet treats aren't forbidden. Although they do contain sugar, the rate at which it enters the bloodstream is slowed by fiber. Fruits with a red, blue or purple hue might be particularly beneficial, because they're loaded with anthocyanins, compounds that heighten your body's sensitivity to insulin.

• Nuts and Seeds: Craving a snack? Grab a handful of nuts. Even though they're high in calories, they're also packed with filling protein and healthy fat that can help keep your weight in check. If you're a fan of walnuts, you're especially in luck, because their high level of polyunsaturated fatty acids improves the body's sensitivity to insulin.

• Green Leafy Vegetables: Pretty much everyone, with or without diabetes, should eat a lot of veggies-ideally at least three servings per day-and green leafy types, including spinach, kale and such salad staples as romaine, should top the list. They have high fiber and water content that satiates your appetite on fewer calories, and they're an important source of magnesium, which improves the body's ability to turn glucose into energy and keep your metabolism humming (a process that is impaired in people with diabetes).

• Legumes: Beans, lentils and other legumes provide blood sugar-stabilizing fiber and are a great source of protein and other nutrients, including potassium. They also are very low in saturated fat, making them a good substitute for meat.

• Healthy Fats: Because diabetes raises your risk of heart disease, it's smart to avoid saturated fats (found in meat, butter and full-fat cheese and milk products) and trans fats (margarine), which raise your LDL cholesterol levels. Switching to heart-friendly monounsaturated fats (found in olive and canola oil and avocado) and polyunsaturated fats (corn oil, safflower oil) will lower your LDL cholesterol levels.

• Low-Fat Dairy Products: One eight-year study found that postmenopausal women who consumed the greatest amount of low-fat dairy were least likely to develop type 2 diabetes (full-fat dairy had no beneficial effect). Experts theorize that's due to the vitamin D and calcium, which improve sensitivity to insulin.

Plus: Reality Checked Diet: Healthy Snacks »

BONUS: 5 Foods to Avoid
Although no food is totally taboo, keep these five to a minimum.
• Red meat has long been associated with type 2 diabetes. A 2011 Harvard University study found that people who increased their red-meat intake by 3½ servings per week had a nearly 50 percent higher risk of developing the disease.
• Starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, corn and peas, are high in calories and carbs compared with the leafy variety. Add peas sparingly to a salad (instead of eating them solo) or eat just half a baked potato (including the skin, which contains fiber).
• Refined grains (found in white bread and most pastas) and concentrated sources of sugar (in sweets) are quickly converted into glucose, leading to a spike in blood sugar.
• Fruit juice has sugar but little or none of fruit's filling fiber, which slows the absorption of sugar into the body. The result? A sugar high that doesn't quell your appetite.
• Soda...both regular and diet. Numerous studies link consumption of artificially sweetened beverages to an increased diabetes risk

The distinctive markings on the underside of the female
Poecilotheria rajaei from northern Sri Lanka. 

New species of venomous spider discovered in Sri Lanka

A new species of venomous spider has been discovered in Sri Lanka - and it's about the size of a human face.

The tarantulas have a stomach-churning 20 cm leg-span, distinctive daffodil-yellow markings on their legs and a pink band around their bodies. They were found living in the old doctor’s quarters of a hospital in the war-torn northern province of 'Mankulam' by scientists from Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity Education and Research (BER) organisation.

The arachnids have been named Poecilotheria rajaei, in honour of Michael Rajakumar Purajah, a senior police official who led the research team through a hazardous stretch of jungle ravaged by civil unrest.

Male Poecilotheria rajaei which has a leg span of 20cm
 from northern Sri Lanka

As a group, the spiders are related to a class of South American tarantula that includes the Goliath bird-eater, the world’s largest. The species was first seen in October 2009 after villagers presented a male specimen that they had killed to BER co-founder Ranil Nanayakkara.  Nanayakkara immediately realised that the dead arachnid did not resemble known Poecilotheria in the area and put together a team to hunt down its living relatives. Eventually, the team found enough spiders, including the ones hiding in a hospital to assemble a detailed description of the new arachnids, releasing photographs after years of research.

Did Neil Armstrong land on moon??

ISSUE 1: Since the Moon has only one light source, the Sun, the shadows must be in line. But in this cases, it looks as if there are multiple light sources in moon, which is not possible.

ISSUE 2:
The foreground of many images of the astronauts on the Moon are filled in with light, while the shadows remain absolutely black, again proving that there are multiple light sources. 
ISSUE 3 : 
There are no stars in the background from pictures taken on the Moon.

ISSUE 4 :
In some images, a huge light source can be seen reflected in the astronaut's visors. This has to be a very bright, nearby source. There is no possibility of external light source in moon. 
ISSUE 5: 
How could NASA take TV images of the LM ascending on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 if there was no one on the Lunar surface to man the camera? 
ISSUE 6:
There can't be any pictures taken on the Moon because the film would melt in the 250°C temperatures. Any film exposed to 250°C would indeed melt at that temperature.     
ISSUE 7:                                                                                                                                
The LM engine was very powerful. How come it did not leave a crater below the spacecraft? Why didn't it kick up any dust when it landed? 

ISSUE 8: 

The footprints left by the astronauts are proof that the Moon landings are fake. This one is also essentially a two pronged argument. First, the Fox show charged that the LM engine was so powerful that the upper layer of dust should have been blown away around the LM, so there should not be any footprints. Others have charged that the footprints should not be there since in the absence of water as a bonding agent, they should not maintain coherent shapes and sharp outlines. 
ISSUE 9: There is no dust on LM foot pads. According to Kaysing and Fox, this is the strongest evidence that the Moon landings are faked. They allege that with the swirling dust from LM descent engine, the foot pads should be covered with dust. 

ISSUE 10 :
The pictures below show that flags are waving. And they never will. The flag was on the airless Moon, just as we all knew.

 
THERE ARE MANY MORE ISSUES ON THIS, BUT THOSE ARE TOO TECHNICAL FOR US. 
& NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO LAND ON MOON

Just watch this

A Complex Landscape of Genetic Interactions

A skyscape of white dots picks out a circle on a black background. Connecting the dots are faint wispy trails of webbing, and among the white are galactic clusters of blue, red, lime, teal, yellow, pink, and other lurid colors. But this is no night sky. The labels, colored like the galaxies they refer to, give that away: "Mitochondria," "Nuclear-cytoplasmic transport," "DNA replication & repair."

This picture—which would take considerably more than a thousand words to explore fully—is the centerpiece of the paper at #6 and shows, as the paper’s title has it, "the genetic landscape of a cell.
Charles Boone, at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research of the University of Toronto in Canada, and a large team compiled a detailed look at the interrelationships between thousands of genes of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) into a picture of the genetic landscape. What is both astonishing and humdrum about it is that the functional clusters picked out in color were not preselected. They emerged from what the authors call a "functionally unbiased genetic interaction map."
In a sense, that is to be expected. One might assume that genes that operate in concert as part of a complex function would interact more often than genes not linked in this way. The surprise is how clearly this shows up in the landscape map.
Yeast has about 6,000 genes. Boone and his group had systematically deleted single genes, and showed that very few—about 20%--are essential. The rest the organism can manage without, although it may take a fitness hit, reproducing more slowly than a normal yeast.
The team then turned its attention to double mutants; did they grow more or less slowly than one might expect based on the combined effect of the two mutations taken singly? A difference in the double mutant would indicate that the two genes interacted in some way. A pairwise screen of 1,712 genes, chosen at random, yielded about 5.4 million comparisons, among which were 170,000 significant interactions between pairs of genes.
Most were negative, where the absence of two genes had an even greater effect than expected from the absence of either one alone. Genes that are part of the same biological process tend to share similar genetic interactions, and this was the key to building the network of the landscape.
Each node on the network is a gene, its distance from other genes based on the similarity between its pattern of interactions and the overall pattern. Genes of known function clearly clustered together. Indeed, the team used the clusters to pin functions on previously uncharacteristic genes.
Taking a broader perspective, most of the genes had very few interactions, while a small number were highly connected as network hubs. Among the hubs, there were some that were much more likely to have negative interactions than positive, and a smaller number that were more likely to be positive than negative.
The two sets were functionally distinct. Negative interactions were common among genes responsible for the cell’s normal progress through the cycle of growth and cell division. This analysis thus confirms the notion of a series of checkpoints that keep cells healthy by blocking progress if anything is going wrong. Positive interactions were found among genes responsible for DNA translation and the processing of RNA which, the team says, "may suggest that defects in the translation machinery somehow mask phenotypes that would otherwise be expressed in normal cells."
Network hubs were interesting in other ways, too. There is a clear link between the degree to which a gene is connected and its impact on fitness as a single mutant. The more severe the fitness defect, the greater the number of positive and negative interactions. Hubs also exhibited pleiotropy; that is, they were connected to a greater number of distinct functional groups.
Looking across 23 different fungi related to yeast, network hub genes were more highly conserved than other genes. Zooming in, interactions among genes sometimes revealed bridges between different processes. Genes involved in secretion and vesicle transport were among the most highly connected, emphasizing their role as channels of communication.
These are just a few of the highlights from the paper, which is as rich as the landscape it pictures. The progress from studying the effect of single-gene mutations, to two-gene interactions, to the full constellation of interactions that defines the genetic landscape has confirmed in entirely new ways that cellular processes are highly organized and well buffered against disturbance.
Further advances are promised, for example in drug discovery and a deeper understanding of the complex routes from genotype to phenotype. One can only imagine the insights that will emerge from comparing the genetic landscapes of different organisms.

The Islamic Online University (IOU)

The Islamic Online University (IOU) is the brainchild of Dr. Bilal Philips. He envisioned an institution that would offer online intensive, undergraduate, and graduate courses in Islamic Studies completely tuition-free.

Dr. Bilal Philips, Founder and Dean, Islamic Online University

The IOU was launched in 2007 from Qatar with an offering of completely free diploma courses.

Alhamdulillah, although we began with 1,500 students in 2007, by the end of 2008, the number of registered students tripled, reaching 4,500. And now, as 2010 draws to a close, Allah has blessed the IOU with a student body of over 30,000 students from over 177 different countries.

In 2010 the IOU launched the world's first tuition-free, online Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Studies. This path-breaking initiative utilizes the worldwide presence of the Internet and advanced open source online learning technology to bring low-cost, university level Islamic education within reach of anyone on the planet who has access to a computer and the Internet.

Thus the IOU Now has two separate virtual campuses: the degree campus and the diploma campus. Each campus is hosted on its own dedicated server.

For more details http://www.islamiconlineuniversity.com/about-us.php

National Sceince Award

Alhamdhulillah

NSF web

Click on the globe above to see the list of award winners for popularizing science among school students.  Awarded by National Science Foundation.