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Health and tackling the rising tide of NCDs

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I wandered in near the end of a panel presentation at the national health summit. I was only there to pick up a participant in the summit. As I waited  I heard the challenges of deciding where to focus health sector funding and efforts - whether to focus limited funding on primary care, tertiary care. or nutrition to tackle the rising Non-Communicable Disease crisis.  Since attending health meetings over two decades ago I never hear the need to promote and fund aerobic exercise, the single most effective long term NCD prevention strategy. Twenty years of speakers calling for nutrition education and training more nutritionists has not stemmed the rising tide of NCDs. Nutrition is obviously important but has not been a solution.  The complication is that exercising in public is culturally problematic for many here. Including my culturally traditional wife. After twenty years of encouraging her to workout, ten years ago she began working out: at an indoor fitness center. She was never com
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Botany lab 14 Thin Layer Chromatography

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This laboratory was based on a Carolina kit with future plans to substitute local solvents based on what the kit provides. The lab launched on two videos and a presentation. In retrospect the presentation was confusing and not helpful. From all appearances, the xanthophyll travelled further than the carotene, as least by color. Even if that were not true - suppose that lighter yellow was carotene and the orange was xanthophyll, that would be confusing as the students were taught xanthophylls are yellow and cartonoids tend to be more orange-yellow.  Lacking pencils, I opted for crayons. These worked far better than expected. Crayons are softer than pencils and do not damage the gel layer. The crayons did not appear to affect the chromatography and their dyes did not appear to bleed into the gel layer. Added to the leaves prior to grinding was a dash of calcium carbonate and acetone. Calcium carbonate is widely available on island. Bags of lime are sold to accom
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Floral litmus solutions

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The one week crash and dash through chemistry began with the periodic table. I have learned to move slowly into this material, lingering up front with the basic concepts: the students either never encountered or have mostly forgotten everything about atoms. This term one student came up with proton and neutron, no one remembered the electron. But then electrons are inconsequentially small. Plus I cover the reason the atomic mass is not a whole number, isotopes, there only being two spin directions.  Wrapped up Monday with the geometry of the second period orbitals in three dimensions. Still not accurate, but conceptually easier to wrap ones mind around. Wednesday I launched into bonding. At the end of class I added the floral notes at the bottom explaining to students as to what to bring. This actually helps: many brought red hibiscus and some brought red coleus, both of which perform well. Spathoglottis plicata still performs superbly.  This
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Botany lab 13: Floral morphology and smartphone apps

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Laboratory thirteen had twin goals. One was to familiarize students with the botanical parts of a flower. Two was for students to learn how to label an image and put the image into a slide deck using only their smartphone. The second skill set will be the one students working for a state government, national government, or non-governmental organization as a natural resources and agriculture managers will put to more use.  Before the lab class mets, students were told to have photos already on their phone of the front and back of complete flowers showing all four whorls.  In the lab session students learned to use app tech to generate labelled images and put these images in a presentation. This is a follow-on lab to an earlier lab that covered the use of Snapseed to reduce image sizes and then use those images to produce a vegetative morphology quiz in Google Forms. There will need to be multiple labelled images prepared in order to handle the labels. The parts to be labelled include:
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Snapseed and Google Slides: Labeling images for use in a presentation

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Walking across campus this rainy morning every single student I saw had their heads down, staring at a rectangle of plastic and glass. I see fewer and fewer students heading to class clutching an opened laptop computer. Watching students thumb type with speeds equivalent to my own touch typing speed, thanks in part to autocomplete, I am more convinced than ever that smartphone productivity apps are the future for which graduates must be prepared. The end of the laptop program for students means fewer students have a laptop. Yet the vast majority of students have smartphones. Despite owning smartphones, the students' ability to use their phone as a productivity tool is surprisingly limited. This week in my botany course students will again use the image editing app Snapseed. Snapseed is available for both Android and iOS. The students will learn to label flower parts in images, and then use those images in a presentation .  This exercise will also reinforce the students' knowled
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Ohm's Law

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The unit in electricity began on the Friday of optics week with the first 50 minutes of shock and awe. On Monday Power comes in many forms. Wednesday deployed a new presentation on electrical appliances.  The lab on Thursday used the simplified single meter Ohn's law lab. This forces the students to continuously change their connections from across the load to in the circuit, reinforcing that voltage is across a load, current is measured in the circuit. If the circuit is preset with two meters the students do not have the physical interaction of the change from measuring current to voltage.  As a future recommendation, preset the rigs. Less chaos and disorder. This term I kept the rig as simplified as possible.  One group had not seen snaps before. They had no idea that one pushes them together to connect. Shirlyann records data, Brenda reads data values, Harriet prepares equipment Margarette recording data, Lo
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