Gosford City Learning Community

Dear Gosford City Learning Community,

Thank you all again for the privilege of letting me share my enthusiasm for #STEM, optimism for the future and appreciation for Australia’s free public education system with you as we prepare to launch into Term 3, 2016.

Wishing you all a very happy and fantastically productive Education Week, Book WeekNational Science Week.

Keep smiling and bye for now,

Ruben

Introduction and demonstrations

Droids, Drones and Robots National Science Week 2016

Bulldozer production line Red Viking Engineering

Robotic forklifts (Automatic Guided Vehicles) NDC Automation

Blue Horizon Rocket video of third flight on 2 April 2016

Curiosity Show YouTube Channel

Reminisce with Prof Julius Sumner Miller

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures®

When you lose weight where does the fat go? my paper published in The BMJ on 16 Dec 2014 (open access, free to download)

The mathematics of weight loss TEDx Talk my first attempt at explaining where the mass goes when you lose weight

Big Fat Myths Ebury Books in bookstores this September

Brian Schmidt donates $100k of his Nobel Prize money to Primary Connections

Optimism #1 – MORE PEACEFUL

The Better Angels of Our Nature  the book by Professor Steven Pinker (2011)

Steven Pinker’s 2015 Nobel Peace Forum Presentation with updates on some of the recent calamities

The surprising decline in violence Steven Pinker’s 20min TED Talk

Steven Pinker: A History of Violence 37min talk at the Singularity Summit

Violence Vanquished essay featuring the two graphs in my slides

The News: A User’s Manual Allain de Botton’s timely book about how to consume the news


 Optimism #2 – SMARTER: The Flynn Effect

The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to 1978 James Flynn (1984) Psychological Bulletin Vol. 95 No. 1

The Flynn Effect  summary of the hypotheses by Indiana University’s Dr Jonathan Plucker

Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents’ Prof James Flynn’s TED Talk


 Optimism #3 – NICER: The Bystander Effect

“The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies.” Fischer, P. et al. (2011) Psychological bulletin Vol. 137 No.4 *subscription required

Bystander Effect YouTube video (3min 35sec)

The Murder of Kitty Genovese Wikipedia page with good citations to further reading


Optimism #4 – RICHER

Retail Traded (Australian Bureau of Statistics) Lots of delicious data

Nail salons and massage parlours the new growth industries Weekend Financial Review article

Tattoos Catalyst story about the science of tattoos and tattoo removal


Optimism #5 – HEALTHIER

Life expectancy trends Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Control, elimination, eradication and re-emergence of infectious diseases: getting the message right 2006 WHO Bulletin editorial

Hans Rossling’s TED Talks amazing public health statistics


Optimism #6 – TECHNOLOGY: Better, faster, cheaper

Laser danger the danger of high powered laser pointers

NSW Laser pointer laws

Pop a balloon inside a balloon with a magnifying glass

Lasers in Medicine International Society for Optics and Photonics Open access article


 Optimism #7 – SCIENCE: Unsolved Mysteries

Here are just a few of Nature’s puzzles that are yet to be solved:

The Millennium Problems The Clay Mathematics Institute’s unsolved problems with a $1,000,000 prize

What is dark matter and dark energy? Cosmos Magazine article

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A thought-provoking book about cancer, ethics and why we die by Rebecca Skloot

Why do we sleep? BBC Article (18 March 2016)

Where is all the antimatter? ABC Science Online (23 June 2016)

The story of antimatter CERN Timelines

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