Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Microbes Are Us - 1,000 Trillion Bacteria Cells with each 100 Trillion Cells Of A Person

Microbes Are US
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=6111&Section=Vitamins

The State Journal-Register Springfield, IL

11-15-07

Each of us is a singular crowd - a walking, talking, air- breathing, waste-producing assemblage of microbial organisms.

Your body consists of 100 trillion cells, give or take, but they're in the minority. Each human also is home to, among other things, an estimated 1,000 trillion individual bacteria, or 10 times more microbes than human cells. What does this mean?

Well, for one thing, it means that you're not alone. Ever. But more importantly, it means you're alive - and well.

"People like to think of themselves as exclusively human," said Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, a molecular biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, "but we're really a composite of many species, an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. To fully understand what it means to be human, we need to embrace, explore and explain what microbes mean to us."

Because they cause disease and bodily harm, bacterial pathogens such as Vibrio cholerae and Mycobacterium tuberculosis tend to grab most of our attention. But there are many more bacteria species that pose no threat to humans, and quite a few that are, in fact, symbiotic or mutually beneficial.

"These microbes provide humans with features we haven't had to evolve on our own, such as breaking down otherwise indigestible foods, detoxifying carcinogens, educating our immune system and generally keeping bad bugs out," Gordon said.

Bacterial symbionts tend to be found in and on specific parts of our bodies. The average person's mouth, for example, contains perhaps 25 species of bacteria, with a quarter-teaspoon of saliva holding up to 40 million individual cells.

But it's the intestines that are the real microbial zoo. Gordon says the human gut is the densest bacterial ecosystem known, home to perhaps 500 species and 10 trillion to 100 trillion individual microbes. That works out to about 4 pounds of bugs in an adult, but you don't want to lose the weight.

Besides breaking down otherwise indigestible carbohydrates and helping absorb minerals like copper and iron, intestinal bacteria produce vital nutrients like vitamin K (necessary for clotting blood) and folic acid.

When you upset them by, say, taking antibiotics that can kill good bacteria along with the bad, intestinal microbes could cause you to be, well, upset, too.

In the womb, human babies are essentially germ-free, but that soon changes. Newborns pick up their first bugs passing through Mom's birth canal, then spend the rest of their lives acquiring more and different bacterial residents and visitors.

Doing so may, in fact, be a factor in how long you live. A 2003 study by Caltech scientists found that fruit flies exposed to bacteria in the first week of life lived 30 percent longer than flies exposed to bacteria at midlife or not exposed at all. Some researchers suggest something similar may happen with people.

"Microbes in the human body is no accident," says Dr. Martin Blaser, a professor of internal medicine and microbiology at the New York University Medical Center. "They've been with us a long time. They've co-evolved with us. They've been naturally selected because they help keep us alive. They are indisputably important."

How important isn't completely understood. It's not known, for example, exactly how many types of bacteria inhabit humans. And the full nature of our symbiotic relationship with bacteria is even more mysterious, not the least because it's so incredibly complicated. Bacteria that are benign in one person may be pathogenic in another. They might be beneficial - or at least harmless - in one part of the body, but problematic somewhere else.

Lactobacillus bacteria, for example, helps break down foods in the intestines (and helps make foods like yogurt, cheese and pickles), but in the mouth, the bacteria converts sugars into plaque, promoting dental caries or cavities.

Escherichia coli 0157:H7 is a notorious food-borne strain of bacteria that causes illness and even death. But other E. coli strains are commonly found in the human gut, where they quietly go about their business and may, according to some research, confer increased resistance to urinary tract infections.

Blaser's fear, which Gordon and others echo, is that humans are permanently altering ages-old, evolved microbial relationships without really knowing what the consequences might be. Or what might be lost. The concern is similar to that voiced by environmentalists who contend unknown numbers and types of beneficial plants and organisms are going extinct, some before they've even been discovered.

Microbiologists like Blaser and Gordon are pushing for a national and international effort to map the human microbiome akin to the Human Genome Project.

Humans harbor an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 bacteria species. Each bacterium has its own genome. Microbial genes in the large intestine alone outnumber human genes 100 to 1. The majority of bacteria species have yet to be fully described or sequenced. And in combination, they form ecosystems that probably are unique to their hosts.

Understanding how these organisms live and work together and with us, said Gordon, presents incredible possibilities: "Microbes might be telltale signs, biomarkers of changes in ourselves and in other ecosystems. We might be able to learn how to intentionally manipulate microbiomes to improve health."

On the Web

www.microbeworld.org: A comprehensive site with articles, images, video and podcasts featuring news and information about bacteriaviruses, fungi and more.

adoptamicrobe.blogspot.com: Blogger Emily Lurie loves Salvador Dali, Pez dispensers and bacteria. Each day, she highlights a particular bug and why you should (or shouldn't) love it, too.



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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Learning Cooperative Participation For Better Ecology

This article comes from a competitive, capture, take, win perspective. It assumes compromise is workable and that it is practical environmentalism to further fragment nature.

What has been created here can be looked at another way from a cooperative, participative, common purpose to nurture better ecology. The brackets use words with the focus on cooperation for the common purpose.

With a common purpose to nurture better ecology little if any of nature would be destroyed or fragmented. In fact it may have been found it would be better to remove buildings etc to further unfragment nature and much more.

The came of Go can certainly be used to learn and practice cooperation - especially in Japan where Go is popular game. The popular game is highly competitive. The Zen Go sets aside competition for cooperation. By having the players take turns playing both sides for a common purpose through cooperation much can be learned.

The idea of having players 'switch' sides with a common purpose can be done with many other games kids know well.

The seldom nurtured idea of cooperation for common purpose can make all the difference in the world.
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Sacred & Mundane

Zen and the Art of Compromise

by Ginger Strand

"A rare wetland ecosystem is in immediate danger of development,” the wall in a small, square room at the Queens Museum of Art declares. “Help prevent environmental degradation by playing until both sides capture [create] territory [better ecology].” In front of the wall is a giant game board, black lines dividing it into thirty-six squares. White and black plate-sized disks are stacked beside it. Japanese visitors, math majors, and computer nerds will immediately recognize the game as a supersized version of Go.

“Go is a perfect metaphor,” artist Lillian Ball says of the exhibit. “You cannot win [nurture] until both sides win [have] territory.[better ecology]

Go fans will immediately object that this is not true. In fact, Go is a strategic and often aggressive game in which opponents seek to surround territory by hemming in and capturing each other’s stones. But Ball’s installation, called GO ECO, uses a variant called Zen Go—reportedly developed by monks—in which an uneven number of players take turns playing both colors. The idea is that by cooperating both sides can capture [create] territory [better ecology] and thus win together. As a metaphor for community-driven environmental preservation, Zen Go is straightforward: compromise [cooperation] is the name of the game.

Compromise [cooperation] was achieved in the Southold, New York, wetlands preservation project the installation references. Southold is on Long Island’s bucolic North Fork, long neglected by developers in favor of the South Fork, home to the glitzy Hamptons. Lately, this has changed, and North Forkers have begun to fear a deluge of malls and McMansions. Ball got involved when Southold granted a developer a permit to build homes on a local cranberry bog. Convinced the bog should be preserved, she brought in a biologist, who confirmed that the bog ecosystem was not only locally significant but globally rare. Ball set out to save it.

The GO ECO installation grew directly out of Ball’s experience in Southold. In community preservation, she says, “it’s not helpful to say these are the good guys and these are the bad guys; it was a long process for me to learn how to be effective.” Effectiveness in this case meant, not filing lawsuits, but crafting a solution acceptable to all parties. Eventually, a coalition of eighty donors purchased the property—and earned tax credits—through the Peconic Land Trust. The town of Southold contributed $50,000 and set aside the land as a preserve after being offered a sanitary flow credit in exchange for it—in essence, a free pass to build homes somewhere else. The outcome was hailed as a win for all involved.

The Zen Go game reproduces this process: as players make their moves, they trigger video clips in one of four quadrants on an adjacent wall. Labeled GOVERNMENT, NEIGHBORS, BUILDERS, and SCIENTISTS, the quadrants alternately light up with views of the endangered ecosystem accompanied by voiceovers from each stakeholder’s point of view. Through a series of gorgeous and supersaturated video clips, players learn about the wetland, its importance, and the complicated give-and-take of preserving it. They must play the game not to claim the most territory, but to ensure that both sides win some territory, no matter how small.

“What’s the point of playing a game if no one wins?” a thirteen year old asked recently. It’s not surprising the teenager felt a bit disappointed. In game play, what you really want is to deliver a crushing defeat. Then again, that might be nice when it comes to saving wetlands, too. Games rarely embrace compromise [cooperation]. Environmentalism today—for better or for worse—does. 
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Thursday, December 6, 2007

Omaha, Columbine ... Prescribed Mind Altering Drugs in These and Many More Killings

Omaha, Columbine ... Prescribed Mind Altering Drugs in These and Many More Killings

Drug companies benefiting from the prescriptions of ritalin (speed - an amphetimine) to millions of school children ...

Watch this award winning feature film here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3609599239524875493

===

The Drugging Of Our Children

http://www.ostrowandcompany.com/film_detail.php?film=The%20Drugging%20Of%20Our%20Children

The Drugging Of Our ChildrenOVERVIEW


Genre: Feature Documentary
Language: English
Country of Origin: USA
Running Time: 102 minutes

View Movie Trailer

CAST & CREW

Director: Gary Null
Co-Directed by: Manette Loudon
Producer: Manette Loudon, David Chmura
Associate Producer & Legal Affairs: David Slater
Co-producer: Page Ostrow
Editor: David Chmura
Cinematographer: Derek Ramsey, David Chmura
Writer: Gary Null
Producer's Representative: Ostrow and Company

SYNOPSIS

How are large drug companies benefiting from the latest trend of selling powerful psychoactive drugs to America's children? Do these drugs really help our children cure symptoms of supposed mental illness, or do they tend to increase depression, violence, and suicide? Are we really treating the root causes of mental illness, or are we just eliminating annoying symptoms?

This feature-length documentary examines the alarming growth in the prescription of powerful psychotropic drugs for adolescents and children. Leading experts, as well as Neil Bush, Michael Moore and Gary Null, provide insightful commentary about the growing trend to pathologize the behavior of children, and then require them to take mind-altering pharmaceutical drugs as a "cure." The documentary recounts the national tragedy of Columbine and focuses on the largely unknown fact that teenage shooter Eric Harris was on the psychotropic drug Luvox at the time he and Dylan Klebold took the lives of 13 other students at their high school. Violence and aggression, precipitated by prescribed drug use, is also explored in an unprecedented discussion between Mark Taylor, the first shooting victim in the Columbine tragedy, and Cory Baadsgard, a teenager on Paxil and Effexor who, in another violent incident, took his teacher and 23 students hostage at gunpoint in his Washington high school. The film proceeds to show the dangerous links between psychotropic drugs like Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Prozac – commonly prescribed to adolescents for anxiety, depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - and the increased incidents of violence, suicide and psychotic behavior often observed in those children and adolescents who are taking the drugs. The film also provides compelling personal accounts, including a mother going to prison and losing her son to government authorities because she refused to give her son psychiatric drugs. Leading medical authorities and mental health professionals speak the unvarnished truth about current increased diagnoses of recently devised mental illnesses and the unprecedented prescription of a host of very powerful psychoactive drugs to "treat" them. Finally, this documentary explores safer, alternative methods for treating childhood mental illness.



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The Drugging of Our Children 

By Gary Null 
http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/drugging_our_children/

All of a sudden, it seems, millions of American children are said to be afflicted with mental illnesses. And they’re being put on strong medications—over periods of years—as treatment. Isn’t it time we stopped and looked at what the mental health establishment is getting us to do to our children?


Overview

As we navigate our way into the 21st century, there is an ominous trend that, strangely, doesn't seem to concern people as much as it should: Millions of children are now taking psychotropic drugs. And they're not doing it illegally, but by prescription. In fact, the medical and educational establishments are conducting a skyrocketing campaign to get kids, and their parents, to “just say yes” to brain-altering pharmaceuticals, with the drug of choice being Ritalin. In 1970, when approximately 150,000 students were on Ritalin, America was alarmed enough to get the Drug Enforcement Agency to classify Ritalin and other amphetamine-type drugs as Class II substances, a category that includes cocaine and one that indicates significant risk of abuse. Despite this apparent safeguard, the number of children taking psychiatric stimulants today has risen over 40-fold; current estimates are that between 6 and 7 million children are taking them.[i] The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that as many as 3.8 million school children, mostly boys, are currently diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and that at least a million children take Ritalin, a figure that many regard as a gross underestimate. And it is not just schoolchildren who are being dosed with psychotropics: Even preschoolers—those aged 2 to 4—experienced a tripling of such prescriptions in a recent five-year period.[ii]

Exactly why is all this juvenile pill-popping a problem? Well, for one thing, Ritalin is a drug that has a more potent effect on the brain than cocaine.[iii] And we’re supposed to be a country that eschews the use of such mind-altering substances, certainly for children. For another, Ritalin’s side effects can range from unwelcome personality changes to cardiovascular problems to death. Plus there’s the very real issue of whether the “diseases” for which this powerful medicine is prescribed are in fact real diseases at all.

The problem becomes further complicated when you consider that, in addition to the Ritalin explosion, increasing numbers of children are also being prescribed antidepressants, and that these are drugs originally designed and tested for adults. (A fact not generally publicized is that it’s legal to prescribe drugs “off label,” that is, for conditions or populations that they weren’t originally designed for.) So in 1996, over 700,000 children and adolescents were taking Prozac and similar antidepressants in the SSRI group, an 80-percent increase from just two years earlier. It’s not that the SSRI’s have been proven effective in battling childhood and adolescent depression. They haven’t.[iv] Nevertheless, today, the number of these prescriptions has surpassed one million. Psychiatrist Peter Breggin estimates that, each year, 10 percent of the school-age population will take one or more psychiatric drugs.[v] Some children are prescribed several at once. And the phenomenon continues to grow despite disturbing evidence of severe drug-induced personality changes, manic reactions, and psychotic behavior.

Medication advocates would argue that those children who are prescribed psychotropic drugs do in fact need them. Children with affective disturbances or attention deficits can focus better, and thus learn better when medicated, they say. Opponents protest that the efficacy and safety of these drugs have not been proven, and some, further, believe that many psychiatric “conditions” exist only as labels in the minds of psychologists. Whether or not these conditions are real, one must agree that the exceedingly high numbers of prescriptions written for children in recent years are a cause for grave concern. And they’re of concern not just to the children and parents directly touched by individual diagnoses, but to society at large. Consider the Columbine massacre and the rash of other school shootings that have rocked this country recently. As the Washington Times Insight Magazine reports, “the common link in the high school shootings may be psychotropic drugs like Ritalin and Prozac.” For example, in 1998, 14-year-old Kip Kinkle killed his parents and then went on a shooting spree at his Springfield, Oregon, high school, killing two and injuring 22. He was being treated with Ritalin and Prozac. Then there was the15-year-old taking Ritalin who in 1999 wounded six classmates in Heritage High School in Georgia, and the 18-year-old who raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl in 1997, one week after starting to take Dexedrine. One can’t help but ask whether psychotropic drugs are dangerous not just to those taking them, but also, in some cases, to “innocent bystanders.”

And there are some other basic questions people are beginning to ask as well: Do all these children need to be taking all these drugs? Are they really sick? 

Is Attention Deficit Disorder a Real Disease?

By far, the overwhelming majority of psychotropic prescriptions for children are given for attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In some instances, taking medicine is a prerequisite for attending school, with refusal to comply considered grounds for dismissal, or worse, removal of the child from the home by the state. This outrages Dr. Fred Baughman, a board-certified child neurologist trained at New York University and Mount Sinai, and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. Baughman feels that it’s one thing for a court to intervene and take over as legal guardian in a case where a child’s life is truly at risk, but quite another thing when psychotropic drugs are forced on children who don’t fit into the mold.

...

Full article:
http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/bin/white_papers-articles/drugging_our_children/


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Sunday, December 2, 2007

Learning Through Practice, Nurturing & Encourage Learning NOT Test Scores, IQ ...

[This article might read more accurately by substituting the word 'practice' or 'persistence' for the article's use of the phrase 'hard work'. 'Ever earing mind set' could also be substituted for 'growth mind set'.  (Whether the practice of learning something is hard or not, or if it is work or play, or fun is not the essence of learning most anything. The practice so that levels of mastery are achieved is what is important. The point is continual learning of skills, better ways not growth or accumulation of facts, figures, knowledge. It is the ability to apply what is and has been learned. It is the multiple times, the practice of skills that increases the webs of neuron for each skill to develop.)]
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http://www.edutopia.org/tell-students-feed-their-brains
  • Teach students to think of their brain as a muscle that strengthens with use, and have them visualize the brain forming new connections every time they learn.
  • When they teach study skills, convey to students that using these methods will help their brains learn better.
  • Discourage use of labels ("smart," "dumb," and so on) that convey intelligence as a fixed entity.
  • Praise students' effort, strategies, and progress, not their intelligence. Praising intelligence leads to students to fear challenges and makes them feel stupid and discouraged when they have difficulty.
  • Give students challenging work. Teach them that challenging activities are fun and that mistakes help them learn.
This summary of the long article below is from:

The George Lucas Educational Foundation

http://www.edutopia.org/aboutus

[When governments fail to fund learning in schools, thank goodness for 'Star Wars' helping out.]


VIDEO: About The George Lucas
Education Foundation

http://www.edutopia.org/about-george-lucas-education-foundation

Running Time: 4 min.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) was founded in 1991 as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools. Since that time, we have been documenting, disseminating, and advocating for exemplary programs in K-12 public schools to help these practices spread nationwide.

We publish the stories of innovative teaching and learning through a variety of media -- a magazine, e-newsletters, DVDs, books, and this Web site. Here, you'll find detailed articles, in-depth case studies, research summaries, short documentary segments, expert interviews, and links to hundreds of relevant resources. You'll also be able to participate as a member of an online community of people actively working to reinvent schools for the twenty-first century.

To understand more about why we are passionate about our work, see our Big Ideas for Better Schools and what our founder and chairman, George Lucas, has to say about education.
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challenges
remedy shortcomings.

striving to learn [is] important
confidence and motivation [for] when the work is no longer easy for them.

encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent,
helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.

how people persevere after setbacks
remains passive even when it can affect change—a state they called learned helplessness.

continue to strive and learn
keep trying when the problems got tough
solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty
focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

persistent students do not ruminate about their own failure
think of mistakes as problems to be solved
focused on fixing errors and honing their skills

Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.

mastery-oriented
intelligence
can be developed through education and hard work.
want to learn above all else.
Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating
opportunities to learn.
growth mind-set

beliefs about
aspects of learning
growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important

held hard work in high regard
more you labored
the better you would become at it.

admit to errors
confront and remedy their deficiencies

need feedback to improve
mentor
willing to coach
gave more useful advice
.

quality and longevity of personal relationships
willingness
to deal with difficulties
growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them

Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

transmit a growth mind-set to our children
telling stories about achievements that result from hard work
descriptions of great[s]
who fell in love with [learning, a passion for, an interest in ...]
and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set

commended others for their effort:
pats on the back for effort

challenging assignment
wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.

praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions
their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

providing explicit instruction regarding
learning machine.
learned about the growth mind-set
how to apply it


growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.”

taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use

learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections
agents of their own brain development

“You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

significant motivational changes
stayed up late to finish an assignment early

replicated
results

enjoy [learning] more, value it more highly
as a result of training that fostered a growth mind-set.

interactive computer program called “Brain­ology,”
http://www.edutopia.org/tell-students-feed-their-brains 

teach students about the brainwhat it does and how to make it work betterclick on brain regions to determine their functions or on nerve endings to see how connections form when people learn
there are connections and they keep growing
picture them when I’m in school.

great accomplishment
genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift.

not simply born with talent
cultivated it through
sustained effort

hard work and discipline contribute much more to school achievement than IQ does.

foster a growth mind-set
we will give our children the tools to succeed in their pursuits
+++




The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life

By Carol S. Dweck

Scientific American Mind - November 28, 2007
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true

A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.

The Opportunity of Defeat
I first began to investigate the underpinnings of human motivation—and how people persevere after setbacks—as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists Martin Seligman, Steven Maier and Richard Solomon of the University of Pennsylvania had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the researchers found, an animal often remains passive even when it can affect change—a state they called learned helplessness.

People can learn to be helpless, too, but not everyone reacts to setbacks this way. I wondered: Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.

In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easy problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

Subsequent studies revealed that the most persistent students do not ruminate about their own failure much at all but instead think of mistakes as problems to be solved. At the University of Illinois in the 1970s I, along with my then graduate student Carol Diener, asked 60 fifth graders to think out loud while they solved very difficult pattern-recognition problems. Some students reacted defensively to mistakes, denigrating their skills with comments such as “I never did have a good rememory,” and their problem-solving strategies deteriorated.

Others, meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One advised himself: “I should slow down and try to figure this out.” Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, “I love a challenge!” The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, “I was hoping this would be informative!” Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.

Two Views of Intelligence
Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. Like Jonathan, such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.

The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that. Because slipups stem from a lack of effort, not ability, they can be remedied by more effort. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating; they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set, we predicted, were destined for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.

We validated these expectations in a study published in early 2007. Psychologists Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University and Kali H. Trzes­niewski of Stanford University and I monitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school, when the work gets more difficult and the grading more stringent, to determine how their mind-sets might affect their math grades. At the beginning of seventh grade, we assessed the students’ mind-sets by asking them to agree or disagree with statements such as “Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t really change.” We then assessed their beliefs about other aspects of learning and looked to see what happened to their grades.

As we had predicted, the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.

The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.

Such divergent outlooks had a dramatic impact on performance. At the start of junior high, the math achievement test scores of the students with a growth mind-set were comparable to those of students who displayed a fixed mind-set. But as the work became more difficult, the students with a growth mind-set showed greater persistence. As a result, their math grades overtook those of the other students by the end of the first semester—and the gap between the two groups continued to widen during the two years we followed them.

Along with Columbia psychologist Heidi Grant, I found a similar relation between mind-set and achievement in a 2003 study of 128 Columbia freshman premed students who were enrolled in a challenging general chemistry course. Although all the students cared about grades, the ones who earned the best grades were those who placed a high premium on learning rather than on showing that they were smart in chemistry. The focus on learning strategies, effort and persistence paid off for these students.

Confronting Deficiencies
A belief in fixed intelligence also makes people less willing to admit to errors or to confront and remedy their deficiencies in school, at work and in their social relationships. In a study published in 1999 of 168 freshmen entering the University of Hong Kong, where all instruction and coursework are in English, three Hong Kong colleagues and I found that students with a growth mind-set who scored poorly on their English proficiency exam were far more inclined to take a remedial English course than were low-scoring students with a fixed mind-set. The students with a stagnant view of intelligence were presumably unwilling to admit to their deficit and thus passed up the opportunity to correct it.

A fixed mind-set can similarly hamper communication and progress in the workplace by leading managers and employees to discourage or ignore constructive criticism and advice. Research by psychologists Peter Heslin and Don VandeWalle of Southern Methodist University and Gary Latham of the University of Toronto shows that managers who have a fixed mind-set are less likely to seek or welcome feedback from their employees than are managers with a growth mind-set. Presumably, managers with a growth mind-set see themselves as works-in-progress and understand that they need feedback to improve, whereas bosses with a fixed mind-set are more likely to see criticism as reflecting their underlying level of competence. Assuming that other people are not capable of changing either, executives with a fixed mind-set are also less likely to mentor their underlings. But after Heslin, VandeWalle and Latham gave managers a tutorial on the value and principles of the growth mind-set, supervisors became more willing to coach their employees and gave more useful advice.

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people’s willingness—or unwillingness—to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them, according to a 2006 study I conducted with psychologist Lara Kammrath of Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

Proper Praise
How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him  or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”

We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

Making Up Your Mind-set
In addition to encouraging a growth mind-set through praise for effort, parents and teachers can help children by providing explicit instruction regarding the mind as a learning machine. Blackwell, Trzesniewski and I recently designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

As the semester progressed, the math grades of the kids who learned only study skills continued to decline, whereas those of the students given the growth-mind-set training stopped falling and began to bounce back to their former levels. Despite being unaware that there were two types of instruction, teachers reported noticing significant motivational changes in 27 percent of the children in the growth mind-set workshop as compared with only 9 percent of students in the control group. One teacher wrote: “Your workshop has already had an effect. L [our unruly male student], who never puts in any extra effort and often doesn’t turn in homework on time, actually stayed up late to finish an assignment early so I could review it and give him a chance to revise it. He earned a B+. (He had been getting Cs and lower.)”

Other researchers have replicated our results. Psychologists Catherine Good, then at Columbia, and Joshua Aronson and Michael Inzlicht of New York University reported in 2003 that a growth mind-set workshop raised the math and English achievement test scores of seventh graders. In a 2002 study Aronson, Good (then a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin) and their colleagues found that college students began to enjoy their schoolwork more, value it more highly and get better grades as a result of training that fostered a growth mind-set.

We have now encapsulated such instruction in an interactive computer program called “Brain­ology,”
http://www.edutopia.org/tell-students-feed-their-brains 

which should be more widely available by mid-2008. Its six modules teach students about the brainwhat it does and how to make it work better. In a virtual brain lab, users can click on brain regions to determine their functions or on nerve endings to see how connections form when people learn. Users can also advise virtual students with problems as a way of practicing how to handle schoolwork difficulties; additionally, users keep an online journal of their study practices.

New York City seventh graders who tested a pilot version of Brainology told us that the program had changed their view of learning and how to promote it. One wrote: “My favorite thing from Brainology is the neurons part where when u [sic] learn something there are connections and they keep growing. I always picture them when I’m in school.” A teacher said of the students who used the program: “They offer to practice, study, take notes, or pay attention to ensure that connections will be made.”

Teaching children such information is not just a ploy to get them to study. People do differ in intelligence, talent and ability. And yet research is converging on the conclusion that great accomplishment, and even what we call genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift.

Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort. Similarly, hard work and discipline contribute much more to school achievement than IQ does.

Such lessons apply to almost every human endeavor. For instance, many young athletes value talent more than hard work and have consequently become unteachable. Similarly, many people accomplish little in their jobs without constant praise and encouragement to maintain their motivation. If we foster a growth mind-set in our homes and schools, however, we will give our children the tools to succeed in their pursuits and to become responsible employees and citizens.


Labels: Learning, Practice, Neurons, Brain
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Saturday, December 1, 2007

Belief System Population's Of The World

Belief System Population's Of  The World
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_religions

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion, 33%
2. Islam: 1.5 billion, 20 %
3. Atheist, agnostics, humanists and other secularists: 1.1 billion, 14%
4. Hinduism: 900 million, 13%
5. Buddhism: 376 million, 6%
Total - 6 billion, 86%
---

Tribal Religions, 300 million, 4%
---

All the rest

Including:
Sikhs, 19 million, .39%
Jews, 14 million, .23%, 6.2 million in USA, 5.6 in Israel, 800,000 in Russia, 600,000 in France, in USA 42% Reform, 7% Orthodox;
                          http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/history/jewishbranches.htm
Spiritists, 13 million, .20%
Bahiais, 6 million, .12%
Confucianists, 5 million, .10%
Jains, 5 million, .07%
Shintoists, 3 million, .04%
Taoists, 3 million, .04%
Zoroastrians, 3 million .04%
Total - 71 million, less than 1%
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Mormans 13 million, 5.6 million in the USA, 50+% outside the USA, in 162 countries (62,000 missionaries in these countries)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_statistics#Africa
- 8 million English speakers
- 3.2 million Spanish speakers
- 800,000 Portugese
- 1.3 million speak languages other than English, Spanish & Portuguese

Major religious groups as a percentage of the world population in 2005 (Encyclopaedia Britannica).  In summary, religious adherence of the world's population is as follows: "Abrahamic": 53.5%, "Indian": 19.7%, irreligious: 14.3%, "Far Eastern": 6.5%, tribal religions: 4.0%, new religious movements: 2.0%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_religions
Predominant religions of the world, mapped by state

===

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

More Than 1 Billion Trees Planted in 2007 - UN

More Than 1 Billion Trees Planted in 2007 - UN
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NORWAY: November 29, 2007
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45614/story.htm


OSLO - The world has surpassed a UN goal of planting 1 billion trees in 2007 to help slow climate change, led by huge forestry projects in Ethiopia and Mexico, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Wednesday.


The global tree-planting drive, inspired by Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, is meant to counter deforestation from logging and the burning of forests to create farmland.

"An initiative to catalyze the pledging and the planting of one billion trees has achieved and indeed surpassed its mark," UNEP head Achim Steiner said in a statement on plantings by governments, companies and individuals.

"It is a further sign of the breathtaking momentum witnessed this year on the challenge for this generation -- climate change." Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for stoking global warming, as they grow.

UNEP said Ethiopia appeared to be the runaway leader with 700 million trees planted in a national reforestation drive. Only 3 percent of Ethiopia is now forested, down from 40 percent centuries ago.

Other top planters were Mexico with 217 million trees, Turkey 150 million, Kenya 100 million, Cuba 96.5 million, Rwanda 50 million, South Korea 43 million, Tunisia 21 million, Morocco 20 million, Myanmar 20 million and Brazil 16 million, it said.

The billion-tree target was set in Nairobi in November despite criticism that it would be impossible to verify. It was declared passed less than a week before the start of a Dec 3-14 meeting of the world's environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia.

"You responded beyond our dreams," said Maathai. "Now we must keep the pressure on and continue the good work for the planet. Plant another tree today in celebration."

China, Guatemala and Spain were expected soon to announce new plantings of millions of trees, UNEP said.

Indonesia plans to plant 80 million trees in one day before the Bali conference, which is meant to launch two years of talks to work out a new international deal to fight global warming.

UNEP says it checks planting pledges, which now cover 1.5 billion trees, to see if they sound credible but does not ensure all are planted. It said the totals were still being collated.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Robert Woodward, Reuters messaging:


Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

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Extinction Of More Than 1/4 of US Bird Species Threatened



The problems of urban sprawl and the resulting loss of habitat are critical
the human relationship with the environment is off-kilter
The sea level rise caused by global warming puts pressure on bird populations
+++

[Notice - This issue is caused by people not the birds. This and many other nature & people issues can be directly influenced for the better by better policies and actions by individuals and the various decision makers in corporations, governments and other groups.

Today's decisions are being tested by the birds and others. Further testing of these decisions will get similar disastrous results. Adjusting decisions that are no longer working for the better can help. The birds would be much happier to test better decisions.

This issue like many is a local issue that can not be solved locally.

These issues can only be resolved at the global level.

This too can be tested. The birds show the current results of decision making using thinking with artificial borders and boundaries - nations, markets, states, counties, religions, ideologies, isms and all the rest. Even the USA Audubon Society all to often uses the constricted focus of artificial borders. Birds can never recognized these artificial borders. Border free decision making for the better can certainly help the birds.]

Links:
The 2007 Audubon WatchList
http://web1.audubon.org/science/species/watchlist/browseWatchlist.php

The 2007 Audubon WatchList
http://web1.audubon.org/science/species/watchlist/
===


More Than 1/4 of US Birds Threatened - Report

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45599/story.htm
US: November 29, 2007


WASHINGTON - More than a quarter of all US bird species are vulnerable to extinction, according to a comprehensive list compiled by two conservation groups released on Wednesday. Global warming may be partially to blame.


The new WatchList 2007, compiled by the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy, found 178 species in the continental United States and 39 in Hawaii in danger.

Of those, 98 are on the "red list" of greatest concern, and 119 in the "yellow" category, indicating their numbers are seriously declining or the species is rare.

Global warming, the loss of habitat due to urban and suburban sprawl and the current US administration's policies on endangered species are all to blame, a co-author of the list said in a telephone interview.

"It's a sign that basically the human relationship with the environment is off-kilter and these are some of the species that are suffering from that," said Gregory Butcher of the National Audubon Society.

The sea level rise caused by global warming puts pressure on bird populations, Butcher said.

Coastal bird habitats of species like the seaside sparrow and the piping plover are likely to be inundated, he said.

"And because there's so many people living close to the oceans, we're not sure that the natural habitats at the edge of the sea will continue to exist in the face of sea level rise," Butcher said.


'LOOMING THREAT'

Arctic birds that breed in Canada and Alaska, such as the puff-breasted sandpiper and the snowy owl, are losing their tundra habitat as the planet warms. "We're very concerned about those species due to global warming," Butcher said.

David Pashley, a co-author from the American Bird Conservancy, agreed that global warming was a "looming threat" but said, "This is not something the bird conservation community can tackle."

The problems of urban sprawl and the resulting loss of habitat are critical, Pashley said by telephone.

Both authors said the Bush administration's policies on endangered species had not helped.

"Unfortunately we've been seven years in an administration that really doesn't believe in the Endangered Species Act, so they've sort of been looking for excuses not to list species that should be added to the act," Butcher said.

Some of the "most imperiled" birds on the WatchList are not protected under the Endangered Species Act, the two groups said in a statement.

These include the Gunnison sage-grouse, whose numbers have been reduced by drought and habitat destruction in Colorado and Utah; the lesser prairie-chicken, which has isolated populations from Kansas to New Mexico; the ashy storm-petrel, whose breeding populations are restricted to the West Coast; and the Kittlitz murrelet, whose breeding and feeding habitat appears linked to Alaska's tidewater glaciers.
===

The 2007 Audubon WatchList
http://web1.audubon.org/science/species/watchlist/browseWatchlist.php

You can view information about the natural history and conservation status of each species on the WatchList as well as the threats to each of these species. Species are grouped by family and listed taxonomically within each group. To select a species, first click on the family from the options below. The color before the species name will indicate if the species is on the red list or yellow list. 

Family Groups

Swans, Geese, Ducks Crane
Gallinaceous Birds Plovers
Loons, Grebes Snipe, Sandpipers, Phalaropes, allies
Albatrosses Gulls, Terns, Skimmers
Shearwaters, Fulmars, Petrels Auks, Murres, Puffins, Guillemots
Storm-Petrels Pigeons, Doves
Boobies, Gannets Parrots
Cormorants Cuckoos
Frigatebirds Owls, Nightjars
Herons, Bitterns, Egrets Swifts, Hummingbirds, Trogon
Condor Woodpeckers
Hawks, Kites, Osprey, Eagles Songbirds
Coots, Rails  

  

 

Swans, Geese, Ducks 

Emperor Goose 
Trumpeter Swan
Mottled Duck
Steller's Eider
Spectacled Eider
Hawaiian Duck 
Hawaiian Goose
Laysan Duck

Back to top

Gallinaceous Birds 

  Greater Sage-Grouse
  Gunnison Sage-Grouse
  Sooty Grouse
  Greater Prairie-Chicken
  Lesser Prairie-Chicken
  Mountain Quail
  Scaled Quail
  Montezuma Quail

Back to top


Loons, Grebes 
  Yellow-billed Loon
  Clark's Grebe

 
Albatrosses 
  Laysan Albatross
  Black-footed Albatross
  Short-tailed Albatross

Back to top


Shearwaters, Fulmars, Petrels
  Bermuda Petrel
  Black-capped Petrel
  Hawaiian Petrel
  Cory's Shearwater
  Pink-footed Shearwater
  Greater Shearwater
  Buller's Shearwater
  Sooty Shearwater
  Manx Shearwater
  Newell's Shearwater
  Black-vented Shearwater
  Audubon's Shearwater

Back to top


Storm-Petrels
  Ashy Storm-Petrel
  Band-rumped Storm-Petrel
  Black Storm-Petrel
  Tristram's Storm-Petrel
  Least Storm-Petrel

Back to top

Boobies, Gannets
  Masked Booby


Cormorants
  Red-faced Cormorant


Frigatebirds
  Magnificent Frigatebird

Herons, Bitterns, Egrets 
  Reddish Egret


Condor
  California Condor

Back to top


Hawks, Kites, Osprey, Eagles
  Swallow-tailed Kite
  Swainson's Hawk
  Hawaiian Hawk

 

Back to top

 Coots, Rails
  Yellow Rail
  Black Rail
  Clapper Rail
  King Rail
  Hawaiian Coot

Back to top

 Cranes

  Whooping Crane

Plovers
  American Golden-Plover
  Snowy Plover
  Wilson's Plover
  Piping Plover
  Mountain Plover

Back to top


Snipe, Sandpipers, Phalaropes, allies
  Wandering Tattler
  Eskimo Curlew
  Bristle-thighed Curlew
  Long-billed Curlew
  Hudsonian Godwit
  Bar-tailed Godwit
  Marbled Godwit
  Black Turnstone
  Surfbird
  Red Knot
  Sanderling
  Semipalmated Sandpiper
  Western Sandpiper
  White-rumped Sandpiper
  Rock Sandpiper
  Stilt Sandpiper
  Buff-breasted Sandpiper

Back to top


Gulls, Terns, Skimmers
  Heermann's Gull
  Thayer's Gull
  Iceland Gull
  Yellow-footed Gull
  Red-legged Kittiwake
  Ross's Gull
  Ivory Gull
  Gull-billed Tern
  Elegant Tern
  Roseate Tern
  Least Tern
  Aleutian Tern
  Bridled Tern
  Black Skimmer

Back to top


Auks, Murres, Puffins, Guillemots
  Razorbill
  Marbled Murrelet
  Kittlitz's Murrelet
  Xantus's Murrelet
  Craveri's Murrelet
  Ancient Murrelet
  Whiskered Auklet


Back to top

Pigeons, Doves

   White-crowned Pigeon

Back to top

Parrots

  Green Parakeet
  Thick-billed Parrot
  Red-crowned Parrot

Back to top

Cuckoos, Anis

  Mangrove Cuckoo


Owls, Nightjars

  Flammulated Owl
  Elf Owl
  Spotted Owl
  Short-eared Owl
  Antillean Nighthawk

Back to top

Swifts, Hummingbirds, Trogon

  Black Swift
  Blue-throated Hummingbird
  Costa's Hummingbird
  Calliope Hummingbird
  Allen's Hummingbird
  Elegant Trogon

Back to top

Woodpeckers

  Lewis's Woodpecker
  Red-headed Woodpecker
  Williamson's Sapsucker
  Nuttall's Woodpecker
  Arizona Woodpecker
  Red-cockaded Woodpecker
  White-headed Woodpecker
  Gilded Flicker
  Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Back to top

Songbirds
  Olive-sided Flycatcher
  Willow Flycatcher
  Thick-billed Kingbird
  Bell's Vireo
  Gray Vireo
  Black-capped Vireo
  Florida Scrub-Jay
  Island Scrub-Jay
  Pinyon Jay
  Yellow-billed Magpie
  Hawaiian Crow
  Elepaio
  Mexican Chickadee
  Oak Titmouse
  Millerbird
  California Gnatcatcher
  Kamao
  Olomao
  Omao
  Puaiohi
  Bicknell's Thrush 
  Wood Thrush
  Varied Thrush
  Wrentit
  Bendire's Thrasher
  California Thrasher
  Le Conte's Thrasher
  Sprague's Pipit
  Bachman's Warbler
  Blue-winged Warbler
  Golden-winged Warbler
  Virginia's Warbler
  Colima Warbler
  Lucy's Warbler
  Bay-breasted Warbler
  Golden-cheeked Warbler
  Hermit Warbler
  Grace's Warbler
  Kirtland's Warbler
  Prairie Warbler
  Cerulean Warbler
  Prothonotary Warbler
  Swainson's Warbler
  Kentucky Warbler
  Canada Warbler
  Red-faced  Warbler
  Abert's Towhee
  Rufous-winged Sparrow
  Bachman's Sparrow
  Five-striped Sparrow
  Brewer's Sparrow
  Black-chinned Sparrow
  Sage Sparrow
  Lark Bunting
  Baird's Sparrow
  Henslow's Sparrow
  Le Conte's Sparrow
  Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow
  Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow
  Seaside Sparrow
  Smith's Longspur
  Chestnut-collared Longspur
   McKay's Bunting
  Varied Bunting
  Painted Bunting
  Tricolored Blackbird
  Rusty Blackbird
  Audubon's Oriole
  Black Rosy-Finch
  Brown-capped Rosy-Finch
  Lawrence's Goldfinch
  Laysan Finch
  Nihoa Finch 
  Ou
  Palila
  Maui Parrotbill
  Oahu Amakihi
  Kauai Amakihi
  Anianiau
  Nukupuu
  Akiapolaau
  Akikiki
  Hawaii Creeper
  Oahu Alauahio
  Maui Alauahio
  Akekee
  Akepa
  Iiwi
  Akohekohe
  Poo-uli


Story by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
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