Ross Lydall - Prince Charles and Jamie Oliver tell other schools to ...

A school where pupils tend chickens and grow their own food was today hailed by Prince Charles as a role model for boosting education.

He was joined by chef Jamie Oliver at Carshalton Boys Sports College, where standards have risen dramatically since healthy eating was put at the heart of the curriculum.

Pupils are taught cooking in a classroom modelled on the Masterchef kitchen, using vegetables they grow in the playground and eggs laid by the school?s 12 chickens.

School dinners have been revolutionised by professional chef Dave Holdsworth, who serves up 1,100 hot meals a day to 90 per cent of the pupils - up from 20 per cent.
Lunches cost ?1.90 for a main course and vegetables, dessert and drink, while 200 pupils arrive early for a ?1 breakfast. Those staying on to study or take part in sport after school get a free curry at 4.30pm.

The school, located in one of the biggest council estates in Europe, has seen results improve from four per cent a decade ago to 100 per cent of pupils getting five GCSEs at grades A-C for the last three years.

Headteacher Simon Barber said: ?If you want them to achieve, you have got to keep them happy. Good food means that students are happy and it makes them work even better.
?We are a non-selective school in a selective borough. All around us are grammar schools. Everyone who is left, we pick up. We have massively improved achievement. Now we are massively oversubscribed.?

Pupils gather ingredients and find their own recipes on iPads. They are encouraged to pass on their cooking skills to their fathers at ?lads and dads? classes.

Mr Barber said the garden had transformed the boys? knowledge of food. ?They would make a chicken wrap but pick out the salad, saying ?We want fresh salad from the packets we get at Tesco?.?

Pupil James Needham, 14, said: ?I have grown red currants, strawberries, courgettes, broccoli, carrots and pumpkins in the last six months and they taste great because they are so fresh and organic.?

Restaurant critic Giles Coren visited the school canteen and said the salmon with chilli and coriander was something that ?wouldn?t disgrace a high street brasserie at something like ?10.95, but available here for ?1.65?.

Oliver, whose campaign to transform the quality of school food began in 2005, will come face to face with a lookalike scarecrow built by the pupils.

He wants the Carshalton model to be replicated in schools and workplaces across Britain but has criticised Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove for exempting new academies from nutritional standards.

Myles Bremner, chief executive of the prince?s Garden Organic charity, said: ?Carshalton offers great inspiration for any school out there that feels encouraging its pupils to eat healthy food is an impossible challenge.?

* You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RossLydall

Source: http://lydall.standard.co.uk/2012/11/prince-charles-and-jamie-oliver-tell-other-schools-to-count-their-chickens.html

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Richard Stearns: Living as an Authentic Christian in a Non-Christian World

After the election, I published an article in this space that struck a chord with many Christians. I suggested that engaging in a bitter 'culture war' in order to preserve America's formerly dominant Christian culture has been largely a failed strategy. We cannot win in the courts and at the ballot box that which we have lost in the court of public opinion. Instead, I argued, we should embrace the strategy that has successfully attracted people to Jesus for two thousand years - authentic Christianity.

What if we simply stuck to what Jesus commanded us to do: love our neighbors as ourselves, care for the poor and the sick and the brokenhearted, stand up for the oppressed, be generous with our time and our money, and live winsome lives filled with grace and gentleness?

Christians have always lived, and often thrived, in cultures where they are minorities. Christianity began in a Jewish culture and thrived in a pagan Roman one. The apostle Paul, writer of nearly half the New Testament, actually offers advice to the church in Corinth which lived in the midst of a very pagan society. His words should guide us today.

In I Corinthians 5:9, Paul encourages the Christians to clean up their own affairs. The church was in a mess with sexual shenanigans, internal bickering, and a deep division between rich and poor. Paul gives them some advice, but he also says Christians shouldn't worry about whether others follow Christian moral teaching.

"I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn't make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn't mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with crooks, whether blue- or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You'd have to leave the world entirely to do that! ... I'm not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don't we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house. (I Cor. 5:9-13, The Message)

Paul's point is this: Be strict with yourselves, expecting fellow Christians to obey the demands of Jesus. But don't hold others to the same rules.

I think these verses can show Christians the way forward in today's America. We need to find a way to live in a pluralistic society without engaging in an arms race with those who are not Christians.

I recently saw a beautiful example of how Christians can love their neighbors, offering a compelling invitation to the kingdom of God at a banquet for a Christian homeless ministry, the Bread of Life Mission in Seattle.

A man spoke to those present that night about his life of the streets and the addiction that cost him his job, his family, and his self respect. "I was on drugs, sleeping under the bridge," he said. Just eight months ago, he visited the mission in order to get a free wool hat. He decided to accept the offer to help him get off the streets. Next he wheeled in the shopping cart that once carried all of his belongings, and he held up a cardboard sign. On it, he had written, "I don't live here anymore." He was about to graduate from the Bread of Life discipleship program and would soon be living on his own with his own roof over his head. He showed us a picture of himself while he lived on the street. "I gave my life to Christ," he said. "The man you see here tonight is a different person altogether."

What I witnessed at the Bread of Life Mission is a perfect example of Jesus' calling for Christians today. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that those who enter his kingdom will be people who feed the hungry, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoners.

In his book, UnChristian, David Kinnaman cites a Barna Research study that asked non-Christians whether they viewed the role of Christians in American society in a favorable or unfavorable way. In 1996, 85% viewed Christians favorably. Ten years later, that approval rating had dropped to just 15%. When people were asked to describe Christians, adjectives like, judgmental, hypocritical, close-minded, insensitive, too critical and too political were most often cited. We might contrast this list with what the Apostle Paul in Galatians listed as the 'fruits of the Spirit': "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

"Against such things," Paul exhorted, "there is no law."

There isn't any question that American culture is in a transition from a dominantly Christian culture to a dominantly secular culture. We can no longer expect America society to uniformly embrace Christian values or morality. How the Christian community chooses to respond to this will be critical. Angry rhetoric, and bitterly contested lawsuits and elections create adversaries, but no one ever made an enemy by offering the hand of friendship, helping the down and out, mentoring kids, giving generously to others or helping people after a hurricane get their lives back together. Paul was right - "against such things, there is no law".

Click through the slideshow to see most and least Christian states in the United States:

• Utah

  78,438 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Parowan_Utah_Church.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• North Dakota

  66,950 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Catholic_Church_in_Warsaw,_North_Dakota.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Alabama

  62,467 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:16th_Street_Baptist_Church.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Louisiana

  59,598 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St._Stephens_Episcopal_Church_(Innis,_Louisiana).jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Oklahoma

  58,598 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Catesby_Oklahoma_Church.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Mississippi

  58,342 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_Church.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• South Dakota

  58,212 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Methodist_Episcopal_Church_Pierre_South_Dakota.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Minnesota

  55,280 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Church_near_Flom,_Minnesota.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Massachusetts

  55,023 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sandwich_Church,_Massachusetts.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Arkansas

  54,985 Christian adherents per 100,000 people. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Our_Lady_of_Perpetual_Help_Church_silhouette_altus_arkansas.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Nebraska

  54,776 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Visitation_Church_%28O'Connor%2C_Nebraska%29_church_from_S.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Tennessee

  54,764 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/First_Baptist_Church_Donelson_Tennessee_04032012.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Rhode Island

  53,576 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Texas

  53,525 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Iowa

  53,403 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Wisconsin

  52,863 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Pennsylvania

  51,883 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Illinois

  51,442 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• South Carolina

  51,374 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Kentucky

  51,055 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Idaho

  50,695 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• District of Columbia

  49,903 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Kansas

  49,666 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• New Jersey

  49,575 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Georgia

  49,374 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_(Georgia)_Presbyterian_Church.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Connecticut

  49,096 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• New Mexico

  49,044 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Missouri

  48,436 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• North Carolina

  46,737 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carolina_Baptist_Church.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• New York

  44,488 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. <br> Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Church_in_Rye,_New_York.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Indiana

  43,788 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Ohio

  42,744 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• California

  42,430 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Virginia

  41,304 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Michigan

  40,186 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Delaware

  39,575 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_Church,_Dover,_Delaware.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Wyoming

  39,341 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Maryland

  39,214 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Montana

  37,824 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Florida

  37,104 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Colorado

  36,461 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Hawaii

  36,103 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Arizona

  35,842 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• West Virginia

  35,211 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• New Hampshire

  34,617 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Nevada

  33,395 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/StJoanofArcCatholicChurch_in_Las_Vegas_founded_1910.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Washington

  33,065 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Methodist_Church_at_Historic_Washington_State_Park_IMG_1467.JPG" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Vermont

  32,954 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Alaska

  32,810 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons. Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original photo <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Orthodox_church_in_Seldovia%2C_Alaska.jpg" target="_hplink">here</a>.

• Oregon

  30,101 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

• Maine

  27,098 Christian adherents per 100,000 persons.

?

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stearns/living-as-an-authentic-christian-in-a-non-christian-world_b_2171648.html

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Skills crisis: Government tells students to target skill shortages | Y ...

High percentages of students in their final year of study are planning to seek employment in industries where there are already too many workers and not enough jobs.

The Government says their expectations need to be adjusted if we want to avoid growing the demand for skilled workers in areas such as engineering and IT.

Direction shouldn?t be left up to the ?all-knowing career advisers? to influence students and their families, according to the Minister for Tertiary Education, skills and employment, Steven Joyce.

The Graduate Longitudinal Study asked students from New Zealand?s eight universities what areas they would seek employment in if doing so within the next two years.

The top two industries were education and training, 21.9 per cent, and health care and medical, 16 per cent ? areas where there is a strong demand for skilled workers, according to Immigration New Zealand?s Long Term Skill Shortage List.

But also in the top 10 were marketing and communications, 8.8 per cent, environment and conservation, 7.5 per cent, community services and development, 7.4 per cent, and the arts, 6.8 per cent ? fields where there is an abundance of talent but not enough jobs. ?We have to adjust some of those expectations and aspirations,? Mr Joyce said.

?Frankly, that?s not just a Government thing, that?s a societal thing.?

Engineering, an area crying out for more workers as Christchurch undergoes a city rebuild and other regions undergo major projects, only had 4.4 per cent interest.

IT, hospitality, farming and transport also sparked lesser interest but were industries featured on the Government skills shortage list.

Professor Richie Poulton, lead researcher on the study, said the same students would be surveyed next year ? two years after graduation ? to see whether they were employed in their field of study. They would be followed up in five and 10 years? time.

The study replaced data collected by Universities New Zealand ? Te Pokai Tara ? which is responsible for university programmes ? after it stopped collecting employment outcomes for recent graduates in 2008 because of low response rates.

It is carried out by the National Centre for Lifecourse Research, a multi-university group headquartered at the University of Otago, and commissioned by Universities NZ with funding from the Government?s Tertiary Education Commission.

Most universities spoken to by the?Herald said they did not hold data on student employment outcomes after graduation.

Iran warns Turkey not to deploy Patriot missiles

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said Turkey's plans to deploy Patriot defensive missiles near its border with Syria would add to the region's problems, as fears grow of the Syrian civil war spilling across frontiers.

Turkey asked NATO for the Patriot system, designed to intercept aircraft or missiles, last week after talks about how to shore up security on its 900-km (560-mile) border.

"The installation of such systems in the region has negative effects and will intensify problems in the region," Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on returning from a trip to Syria, Lebanon and Turkey on Saturday evening, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA.

Ramin Mehmanparast, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, told the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) on Sunday that deploying the Patriot system "will not only not help solve the situation in Syria, it will actually make the situation more difficult and complicated as well".

Syria has called Turkey's request for the Patriot missiles "provocative", and Russia said the move could increase risks in the conflict.

Iran has steadfastly supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the 20-month-old uprising against his rule.

Turkey's missile request may have riled Damascus because it could be seen as a first step toward implementing a no-fly zone over Syrian airspace.

Syrian rebels have been requesting a no-fly zone to help them hold territory against a government with overwhelming firepower from the air, but most foreign governments are reluctant to get sucked into the conflict.

Turkey fears security on its border may crumble as the Syrian army fights harder against the rebels, some of whom have enjoyed sanctuary in Turkey.

Heavy fighting has often erupted along Syria's border with Turkey. Ankara has scrambled fighter jets and returned fire after stray Syrian shells and mortar bombs landed in its territory.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Sunday no one should be concerned by the use of Patriots.

"These systems are solely defensive mechanisms, and will not become active unless there is a direct threat to our country's security," Davutoglu said, speaking to CNN Turk.

"The aim of this action is to protect Turkey's borders as much as possible at a time of crisis. The Patriots will be sent back when the risks to Turkey's security disappear."

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai, additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-missile-deployment-turkey-increase-tensions-091708975.html

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How To Build A Revolutionary Political Social Network

Editor's note: Lucas Dailey is the Founder and CEO of political social network Our Ballot Box, a designer, and a local politico. You can follow Lucas on Twitter. Regardless of your views on our recent election one thing generally agreed upon is that our political system is broken. There are myriad contributors to our malaise--not least of which is the voting system on which it?s all based--but apart from the intractable structural problems there is one area which we in the web world are tantalizingly close to ameliorating: constituent opinion.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_FJi5Mc5Bhc/

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Video: Blind patient reads words stimulated directly onto the retina

Friday, November 23, 2012

For the very first time researchers have streamed braille patterns directly into a blind patient's retina, allowing him to read four-letter words accurately and quickly with an ocular neuroprosthetic device. The device, the Argus II, has been implanted in over 50 patients, many of who can now see color, movement and objects. It uses a small camera mounted on a pair of glasses, a portable processor to translate the signal from the camera into electrical stimulation, and a microchip with electrodes implanted directly on the retina. The study was authored by researchers at Second Sight, the company who developed the device, and has been published in Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics on the 22nd of November.

"In this clinical test with a single blind patient, we bypassed the camera that is the usual input for the implant and directly stimulated the retina. Instead of feeling the braille on the tips of his fingers, the patient could see the patterns we projected and then read individual letters in less than a second with up to 89% accuracy," explains researcher Thomas Lauritzen, lead author of the paper.

Similar in concept to successful cochlear implants, the visual implant uses a grid of 60 electrodes?attached to the retina?to stimulate patterns directly onto the nerve cells. For this study, the researchers at Second Sight used a computer to stimulate six of these points on the grid to project the braille letters. A series of tests were conducted with single letters as well as words ranging in length from two letters up to four. The patient was shown each letter for half a second and had up to 80% accuracy for short words.

In this video, a patient reads words with the Argus II setup using the camera and not the direct braille stimulation. Credit: Second Sight

"There was no input except the electrode stimulation and the patient recognized the braille letters easily. This proves that the patient has good spatial resolution because he could easily distinguish between signals on different, individual electrodes." says Lauritzen.

According to Silvestro Micera at EPFL's Center for Neuroprosthetics and scientific reviewer for the article, "this study is a proof of concept that points to the importance of clinical experiments involving new neuroprosthetic devices to improve the technology and innovate adaptable solutions."

Primarily for sufferers of the genetic disease Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), the implant Argus II has been shown to restore limited reading capability of large conventional letters and short words when used with the camera. While reading should improve with future iterations of the Argus II, the current study shows how the Argus II could be adapted to provide an alternative and potentially faster method of text reading with the addition of letter recognition software. This ability to perform image processing in software prior to sending the signal to the implant is a unique advantage of Argus II.

###

Frontiers: http://www.frontiersin.org

Thanks to Frontiers for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125440/Video__Blind_patient_reads_words_stimulated_directly_onto_the_retina

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UK circus owner found guilty of elephant cruelty

LONDON (Reuters) - A British circus owner was given a conditional discharge on Friday for causing unnecessary suffering to an Asian elephant by keeping her chained up and allowing a handler to beat her.

Bobby Roberts, 69, was convicted of three counts of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.

Northampton Crown Court heard that Anne, an arthritic, 58-year-old elephant was kept tethered to the ground by one front leg and one back leg at all times.

Roberts failed to give Anne her arthritis medicine and to prevent a handler from repeatedly beating the animal. Roberts told the court he would never have condoned the beatings.

Secret film of the beatings taken by rights group Animal Defenders International (ADI) formed a key part of the prosecution case.

Roberts's wife Moira, 75, was cleared of the same three charges following a five-day trial. Both she and her husband had denied the charges.

The Press Association reported that District Judge David Chinnery told Bobby Roberts he recognized that he had not directly inflicted the suffering, adding that he had cared for animals "for the greater part of your 70 years without criticism from any quarter.

"No cruelty was administered by your own hand. The chaining I regard as serious but the real cruelty it seems to me was inflicted by your groom, a man whom you had entrusted with the care of Anne, behind your back and without your knowledge."

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) issued a statement after the verdict.

"Today should serve as a warning that those who mistreat animals can expect to face prosecution," it said.

But ADI was disappointed with the sentence.

"Despite the considerable suffering caused to Anne the elephant, the sentencing meted out to Mr Roberts is derisory and provides no faith that the Animal Welfare Act can protect animals in circuses," ADI Chief Executive Jan Creamer said in a statement.

In April 2011, as a result of the secret filming, Anne was taken away from the Super Circus in Polebrook, Northamptonshire owned by Roberts, and re-homed at a safari park.

She was born in the wild in Sri Lanka in 1954, the ADI website said. In 2001 her offspring Janie and Beverly died suddenly, leaving Anne alone, the website added.

(Reporting By Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-circus-owner-found-guilty-elephant-cruelty-172853080.html

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