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The PGA of Australia tour will be extended from this season with tournaments staged well into the new year, the governing body of professional golf in the country announced on Sunday.

Archives, Room Use Only - TK5123.V3515 1848

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UK sees notable reduction in seismic noise caused by human activity – experts  Aberdeen Evening Express

A new Smithsonian study that examines 10 million years of the evolution of tiny coral-like organisms called cupuladriid bryzoans has revealed that some species of this organism lingered on earth for more than one million years after the event that ultimately caused their extinction: the rising of the Isthmus of Panama.

The post Fossils of tiny cupuladriid colonies reveal extinction can lag more than one million years after its cause appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Killing of methane-producing megafauna may have caused cooling 13,000 years ago appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Coral bleaching event caused by warming ocean waters is documented in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Narwhal fluke design helps compensate for drag caused by tusk appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Earthquake causes minor damage to Smithsonian natural history collections appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Scientists discover long-beaked echidna may not be a thing of the past in Australia appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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In 2010 Dr. Rachel Collin visited her colleagues at the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia to collect some very special snails for her research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama.

The post Smithsonian biologist Rachel Collin visits the Universidad Austral de Chile to collect special snails for her research. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Starch grains found on Neandertal teeth debunks theory that dietary deficiencies caused their extinction appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

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The post Warming climate unlikely to cause near-term extinction of ancient Amazon trees, study says appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

(The Paypers) Menlo Security, a global enterprise cloud security provider, has entered the Australian...

UTLA says it is at an impasse with the Los Angeles Unified School District over a new contract for its 31,000 teachers. ; Credit: File photo by Letsdance Tonightaway/Flickr Creative Commons

The United Teachers Los Angeles declared an impasse Wednesday in its talks with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The action opens the way for a mediator to be brought in to help bring about a settlement.

Contract talks have been ongoing since July, UTLA said on its website.

"There is still a significant gap between the two sides on compensation," the union stated. UTLA is seeking an 8.5 percent, one-year increase; LAUSD has offered a 5 percent increase. 

The union said the district is "refusing to bargain in good faith on student learning conditions, and threatening educator layoffs as a scare tactic."

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said in a statement that the district agrees the talks are at an impasse.

"I've been disappointed and frustrated by the lack of progress toward an agreement," he said. "It's my hope that the appointment of a mediator will lead to an expeditious settlement that ultimately supports our students and the District at large."

UTLA represents 31,000 members, including teachers and health and human service professionals.

The differences between the two sides amount to more than $800 million, the district said in its statement. Cortines has maintained that the district is facing a deficit. The union insists the district has money.

Other issues dividing the two sides include class room size and teacher evaluations.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Parents of students at Miramonte Elementary School escort children out of school on Feb. 6, 2012.; Credit: Grant Slater/KPCC

A lawyer representing 58 students who settled a lawsuit related to the Miramonte sex abuse scandal two years ago said his clients are owed more money because another group of students who settled their lawsuit last fall for $139 million may be paid more, and that violates the terms of the first group's settlement. 

A total of more than 100 students and parents sued the district after former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt was charged with 23 counts of committing lewd acts, including feeding students cookies laced with semen. Berndt is serving 25 years in prison. 

Attorney Paul Kiesel's clients were among the first group of students who settled in 2013 for $470,000 each, a total of $30 million. In a claim submitted to the district on Feb. 6, Keisel argues that settlement prohibits other students from receiving more than his clients.

The settlement for Kiesel's group states that it is the intent of the parties that any future Miramonte-related settlements pay less per plaintiff than the $470,000 figure.  In the case of the suit that was settled for $139 million, a judge is deciding how much each plaintiff will receive; it is expected that some of the students will receive more than $470,000.

Kiesel's complaint seeks the difference between what his clients were paid and the highest amount awarded to students in the second group.

The $139 million settlement was the largest of its kind in Los Angeles Unified School District history. 

If Kiesel's clients prevail, the district's overall tab for the Miramonte case could significantly increase from the $170 million in settlements awarded so far. 

The school district has yet to respond to the claim and declined to comment for this story. 

Kiesel would not discuss the claim in greater detail, but attorney Raymond Boucher, who also represented students in the initial settlement, characterized its language limiting the size of future settlements as a "fairness clause.

"We are talking about a number of young children and you want to make sure they are all treated fairly and equally," Boucher told KPCC. 

Attorney Vince William Finaldi, who represented some of the students in the group that settled for $139 million last November, argued that the earlier settlement would need to include a "most favored nation clause" to prevail in court. 

"It needs to have two elements," Finaldi said. "The first element is a statement by the settling party that 'we agree not to pay anyone else more than X amount.' It also needs a second clause which states, 'in the event we do pay someone more than X amount, then we'll pay you Y amount," Finaldi said. 

The settlement for Kiesel and Boucher's clients does not include language stipulating what would happen if a future settlement pays out more money per plaintiff.

If L.A. Unified rejects Kiesel's claim, then he could ask a mediator or a court to resolve the dispute.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

At a recent LAUSD District 3 school board debate, teachers dressed as FBI agents in protest of board member Tamar Galatzan's support of the iPad program.; Credit: Annie Gilbertson/KPCC

As the city's March 3 primary election draws near, Los Angeles Unified school board candidates are blasting incumbents for the controversial iPad program.

Opponents sharply criticized the $1.3 billion bond-funded program at a debate Tuesday in West San Fernando Valley, where District 3 school board member Tamar Galatzan was elected in 2007.

"Galatzan said the district is going in the right direction," declared candidate Carl Petersen, a parent and businessman. "I don’t know how anyone can look at the events of the past year and come to that conclusion."

RELATED: LAUSD District 5 school board candidates face off in debate

The program attracted national attention last December when the FBI raided district offices and carted off 20 boxes of bids, evaluations and correspondences with executives at Apple and its subcontractor Pearson, the manufacturer of the learning software loaded on to each device. The investigation is ongoing.

At the debate, teachers dressed in dark windbreakers with FBI plastered on the back in protest to Galatzan's support of the program. (They have not held similar demonstrations at election events in East Los Angeles' District 5, where Bennett Kayser, a teacher union ally, is running for re-election.)

Tom Richards, a Granada Hills parent, said he considers the iPad program a central issue as he weighs candidates.

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous," Richards said. "I don't believe that's a good way to spend the money that they have. Looking at some really fundamental needs — we don't have a librarian, but we want to give iPads?" 

Galatzan was an early advocate for more technology in the classroom; it was her goal even before the iPad was on the market.

"There is a whole world out there that can be accessed through technology, and we need to take advantage of that," Galatzan told KPCC.

Her advocacy of technology hasn't always been controversial. Galatzan points to her 2010 initiative to fund school computer labs with a settlement from Microsoft.

The school board's support of the iPad program varied the first year, but waned in August after KPCC published a series of emails showing district administrators had close ties with Pearson, calling into question whether the bidding process was fair. Problems with the rollout of the devices and the effectiveness of the software they contained also eroded support for the program.

Still, school board members unanimously approved more iPad purchases after the FBI investigation came to light. Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the tablets were necessary for new digital state tests scheduled this spring and offered to purchase them under a different contract with Apple to avoid complications involving the federal probe.

If the candidates' positions are a measure of support for the program, it's unpopular at best.  All of Galatzan's opponents are against it. 

When asked in a KPCC election survey conducted if he supported the iPad program, Scott Schmerelson, a retired administrator and District 3 contender, responded: "Not when you are paying for them from LAUSD Bond Money! The taxpayers generously supported the bond issue with the belief that the money would be used to repair and modernize our schools." 

Candidate Ankur Patel said in his answer to the survey, "I oppose the LAUSD’s iPad program. Throughout the program, important questions were not asked enough, and when they were, they were not answered properly."

Filiberto Gonzalez, another Galatzan challenger, said of the iPad project: "It was a mistake and ill-conceived from the very beginning. As was noted in the report by the U.S. Department of Education last month, the Common Core Technology Project (iPad program) lacked 'established metrics of success' and 'was difficult to show the impact of the investment.'

Elizabeth Badger Bartels is also running for the District 3 seat, but did not respond to the survey by deadline.

For more information on the school board candidates' positions and their backgrounds, read KPCC's 2015 Los Angeles primary election guide.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

File: Los Angeles Unified 6th-grader Jack Spiewak performs as Macbeth at Eagle Rock Elementary School. District schools can now use a major source of federal funds to incorporate the arts into academics.; Credit: Maya Sugarman/KPCC

Los Angeles Unified School District officials have cleared the way for principals to tap into a major source of funding for arts programs targeting low-income students starting this fall.

Although state and federal officials previously said national Title I dollars, allocated to help disadvantaged students improve in academics, could be used for the arts instruction, some district officials had been reluctant to move ahead. The latest decision reverses the district's long-standing practice and opens the door for Title I-funded arts instruction that helps students improve their academic performance. 

"This has been a long time coming and this really is a day of rejoicing, quite frankly, in LAUSD," said Rory Pullens, the district's executive director of arts education. 

RELATED: For Pasadena school, arts plus math is really adding up

A two-page memo issued Thursday from Pullens, Deputy Superintendent Ruth Perez and Karen Ryback, executive director of Federal and State Education Programs, confirms the arts as a core subject and allows schools with high percentages of low-income students to use Title I funds for the arts.

Those schools "may utilize arts as an integration strategy to improve academic achievement," the directive reads. However, Title I funds are not allowed "to fund programs whose primary objective is arts education," according to the memo. As an example, the funds could be tapped to help students learn a character's point of view in a lesson that requires acting out a skit. 

Title I funding, developed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, has been used historically to increase students success in reading and math. The funds have paid for efforts like reading coaches or math tutors, supplemental software programs and professional development for teachers to improve low-performing students' test scores.

At $14 billion a year, the Title I funds make up the federal government's largest expenditure for grades K-12. The majority of LAUSD schools receive Title I dollars.

Arts advocates have long sought to get the second-largest district in the country to shift its stance on Title I arts funding, arguing that the arts have been shown in research to boost student academic performance. 

LAUSD joins just a handful of districts around the state that have committed to a district-wide Title I plan including the arts. San Diego Unified, Sacramento City Unified and Chula Vista Elementary School District are among them, according to Joe Landon, executive director of the California Alliance for Arts Education. 

Landon says beyond these districts, the decision to use Title I for the arts is largely playing out on a school-by-school basis. Some principals are using Title I funds for the arts, but they're doing so largely under the radar, some fearing that state monitors will say the funds were used incorrectly. 

"At each level, there are people that are afraid," Landon said. The reason: schools are accountable for how Title I dollars are spent and misuse could cause schools to lose a valuable funding source. Despite the state and federal directives on Title I allowing arts instruction in academics, school officials have been hesitant to make changes because Title I spending is monitored so closely. 

Landon explained that a decision to use Title I funds for the arts is momentous for schools.

"When districts begin to move," he said, "that really changes it."

Attention turns to principals, funding gatekeepers

When Los Angeles Unified brought on Pullens, attracting him from a well-known arts school in Washington, D.C., he took on the task of securing Title I funding in his early months on the job. He said budgeting would be a huge challenge in increasing access to the arts for more of the district's students. 

The deed now done, Pullens said: "This was clearly a very high priority of what we wanted to accomplish and we are just so thrilled that this has finally come to pass."

It'll now be up to school principals to decide how much of their Title I funding to allocate for arts instruction. Pullens said plans to train principals on the benefits of arts integration are underway.

While the Title I arts spending is not mandatory, he expects the new directive to free up significant funding for the district's arts efforts. He didn't have exact estimates, but pointed out that schools' Title I funds range anywhere from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per school. 

As KPCC reported in July, only about 70 of the district's more than 500 elementary schools were on track to provide all four art forms (dance, visual arts, music and theater) for the 2014-2015 school year — a legal requirement under the California education code. 

Cheryl Sattler, senior partner with the Florida-based consulting firm Ethica, has worked closely with about 100 school districts nationwide and estimates only two have used Title I funding for the arts.

“The urgency is to try to get kids to read," she said, "and if you have kids, for example, in the 10th grade who are reading at a 3rd or 4th-grade level, it’s really hard to think past that, because that’s the emergency.” The arts are often left out of the conversation, according to Sattler, which means they're left out of funding.

“I think the issue is that largely principals, and school improvement committees, and other folks who are worried about academic performance don’t always look to the arts and they don’t always know the research about how powerful arts can be,” she said. 

The LAUSD directive described examples of arts integration activities that schools might consider:

• Invite community members to demonstrate or share their talents with students as a prompt for a writing assignment.
• Have students create models that display mathematical data pertaining to each planet of the solar system: distance from the sun, length of day and night, length of year, and day and night surface temperatures.
• Ask students to create a small piece of dance/movement that models their understanding of geometric concepts.
• Encourage students to explore the science of sound by utilizing rubber bands, oatmeal containers, coffee cans, balloons, etc. to construct one or more of the four families of musical instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.
• Have students write and perform a short skit to illustrate a literary character’s point of view.
• Provide a lesson on utilizing a software program to create an animated film that highlights key historical events that occurred during the Civil War (In this instance, the cost of the software program would be an appropriate Title I expenditure). 

Supporting Title I Schoolwide Program 2-19-2015

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines commented Thursday on teacher contract talks that have been ongoing since July.; Credit: Benjamin Brayfield/KPCC

A budget deficit is preventing the Los Angeles Unified School District from offering teachers more than a 5 percent raise, Superintendent Ramon Cortines said Friday.

"I want some resolution," Cortines told reporters, but he said the district is now projecting a shortfall of $160 million heading into the next school year.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing 31,000 teachers, declared an impasse Thursday in the contract negotiations. The two sides have been bargaining since July.

The teachers haven't had a pay increase in eight years, and their salaries are below that of neighboring districts. 

"You are not going to recruit and retain the quality teachers you need," UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl told KPCC's AirTalk this week. The union is seeking an 8.5 percent raise as well as smaller class sizes, more counselors and nurses, and revised teacher evaluations.

Cortines said the district's pay raise offer of 5 percent, retroactive to July 2014, would help make salaries more competitive. But he said the projected deficit is why LAUSD can't afford more.

Projections for the deficit have changed over the months. Last October, it was $365 million; in January, $88 million; and this month, $160 million. 

Teachers union representatives said California schools are receiving more money this year than any time since the recession. Gov. Jerry Brown's Local Control Funding process, which gives local districts more resources for education, is projected to garner the district $240 million more next school year. 

Cortines said he hopes to reach an agreement and he cautioned against any walkout.

"You talk about a budget deficit? It will exacerbate the budget deficit, because parents have other options," Cortines said. "They can go to other schools, private, parochial schools, they can go to charter schools, etc."

Cortines said a mediator is being called into the talks to help resolve the impasse.

The superintendent also repeated his doubts that the district can currently afford to put a computer in the hands of every district student. The program, a key initiative of his predecessor, John Deasy, used bond funds to pay for iPads and other devices.

Cortines said a statement elaborating on his remarks to reporters that "as we are reviewing our lessons learned, there must be a balanced approach to spending bond dollars to buy technology when there are so many brick and mortar and other critical facility needs that must be met."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.