Robot Revolution

Children all around the world have a similar interest in robots. Check ePals.com to find schools in a wide variety of countries where students are eager to collaborate on robotic projects.

      The word "robot" was first used in Czechoslovakia by the playwright, Karel Capek, to describe human-looking machines that could do the same job over and over again. Nowadays, robots utilize software, computer chips, sensors, microphones, lasers, video screens, wireless communications, remote controls, solar power, nanotechnology, and gyroscopes. Robotic devices can replace injured body parts, like legs and arms; load and unload ships; install and weld parts on an assembly line and under water; work in outer space; operate on the human body; enter the body to fight disease and diagnose illnesses; carry supplies around offices and hospitals; perform dangerous tasks like checking for bombs and hunting for survivors buried in rubble after an earthquake; hit military targets; and create special effects for theme parks and movies. Now, they are about to work alongside people in electronics factories, too.

     Some robots are human-shaped, humanoids that move like persons; others look like machines. YoungExplorers.com, mindware.com, and Museumtour.com offer both varieties. With the help of a detailed manual, children can use the programmable rover they sell to make a robot that avoids obstacles and works for them.

     Usually, robots prefer perfectly predictable conditions. The Roomba robot, for example, can scoot around the floor sucking up dust and dirt, but, when we tried to use it in a women's clothing store, it would get stuck in the dressing rooms. Children can see if they can clean a floor with their own "Brush Robot" from mindware.com.

     Students (and adults) from all over the world who design their own robots enter competitions. Details about these events are available at robogames.net and robotbattles.com. A variety of websites offer free robot designs to get you started. Also, teens 13 to 18 can enter the annual Google Science Fair by going to googlesciencefair.com. Submissions this year are due by May 12, 2014.

     Scientists are trying to design robots with artificial intelligence that can think on their own and human cyborgs implanted with robotic parts connected to their nervous systems and the outside world. Some argue that a machine may have the appearance of having conscious understanding without actually having it. Creating an ethical and legal system to deal with artificial intelligence and cyborgs could be a job robots cannot handle.

     An article in Time magazine (September 9, 2013) noted three types of jobs that will not be replaced by robots: 1) solving unstructured problems (writing a persuasive legal brief or designing a corporate strategy); 2) working with new information (driving a truck in the fog on a rain slicked road); and 3) performing non-routine manual tasks (styling hair or fixing plumbing).

     One further note. In the October, 2013 issue of The Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society, Julie Carpenter, a researcher at the University of Washington, discusses the relationship between military personnel and the robots they use on the battlefield. Ms. Carpenter is concerned about the human, emotional attachment that can develop. She found that some soldiers name their robots for their girl friends. A soldier whose robot had saved his life may not want the robot to return to danger on the battlefield. And if a robot is damaged or fails to perform correctly, a soldier may get angry with it or think of it as a "poor little guy" that needs a proper funeral.

     To keep up with developments in the field of robotics, check the library for Clive Gifford's How to Build a Robot, Mark Beyer's Robotics, and later books. If you want to draw a robot, like I did for this post, pick up the book, You Can Draw It! Robots, by Maggie Rosier and illustrated by Steve Porter.

Dairy Cows on the Moove

From the newly opened "Millions of Milkshakes" in Bahrain to everyone's need for bone-building calcium, there is worldwide consumption of milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, skim milk powder, and whey products from dairy cows. Once prosperity led to better nutrition options in India, for example, current production of milk, formerly a scarce commodity, reached 132 million tons, compared to 22 million in 1970, according to TIME magazine (November 18, 2013). Members of dairy cooperatives, many with only one or two cows, have now made India the world's largest milk producer and a dairy exporter.

      Young 4H members, dairy farmers, and international dairy cow shippers, such as Dens Ocean Livestock Express (livestock@densocean.be) and the ones used by T.K.Exports (livestockgeneticsbytke.com), have a prosperous future. The U.S. has become the world's largest cheese exporter. And with more women working the decline in breastfeeding has led to a boom in baby milk powder sales. West Coast dairy processors in the U.S., as well as a companies, such as Mengniu in China, are taking advantage of this increased demand in China and other Asian countries. There also is a growing world market for whey-based ingredients used in infant formula and human and animal nutritional supplements that is offering new opportunities for dairy products.

     Just outside Harbin in Shuangcheng (northeast China), Nestle has invested in a $400 million Dairy Farming Institute. The aim is to train about 700 students annually to become the dairy farmers, managers, and agribusiness suppliers who will meet China's growing demand for milk in a sustainable manner. In the past, China's dairy industry, which had reported sales of $28 billion in 2014, has had tainted milk problems from poor sanitation and deaths from infant formula.

      In the United States, dairy farmers have an outstanding research facility at the University of Wisconsin's Babcock Center for Dairy Research, named for Dr. S.M. Babcock. The Center is  the largest dairy research institution in the United States. Along with studying how to increase milk production,  students learn how to be business competitors, not only with dairy farmers in Wisconsin, California, New York, Arizona, and Texas, but also in the world market. Since the Center has an outreach program, it provides technical support and information about findings that help dairies, suppliers, government regulatory agencies, and domestic and international dairy organizations.

     Profitability, in the dairy farming business, relies on forecasting demand and careful record keeping and analysis of the cost of the feed cows need to maintain their size and health and to produce milk before excess feed just becomes manure. New Zealand's dairy giant, Fonterra, for example, reported that although more milk was processed into milk powder which has a higher return, rising input costs caused a 53% six-month drop in net profits. The desire to control all aspects of raw material to final product, there is some cross-country vertical integration in the dairy industry. For example, the Chinese company, Pengxin, has acquired both dairy farms in New Zealand and corn farms in Bolivia. China's state-owned Bright Food Group also has controlling interests in dairy producers in New Zealand and in Israel's Tnuva.

    Wisconsin's Dept. of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection distributes $200,000 in annual grants to farmers to finance studies of dairy feed, housing, and other factors that improve milk production. By calling 855-943-2479, dairy farmers and processors can find out about resources and technical assistance available from the State of Wisconsin. Currently, the State also is offering a $50,000 "Grow Wisconsin Dairy Processor Grant" to a licensed Wisconsin dairy processing plant that writes a proposal that would benefit the industry. The application form, due by February 21, 2014, is available at GrowWisconsinDairy.wi.gov.

      In recognition of Dr. Babcock's contribution to the milk industry, he received awards from dairymen in New Zealand and the Wisconsin legislature. In the future, an award may be given to someone who solves the problem of reducing the climate changing greenhouse methane gas released by cow flatulence. Considering a cow, by chewing its cud, expels 4.42 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of milk it produces, methane is a serious concern. Phosphorus runoff from the cow manure that pollutes lake and other water sources also becomes a major problem when the number of big storms increases. But there also are uses for cow poop, check out the 251 facts in Dawn Cusick's kid's book, Get the Scoop on Animal Poop.

     The Financial Times (April 9, 2014) reported that the major impact of methane on global warming has motivated companies and research institutions, such as the following, to study ways to reduce methane emissions from cows:
     - The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy in Illinois
     - C-Lock Company in South Dakota
     - The National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding a $10 million, 5-year study to determine how the dairy industry can reduce greenhouse gas from methane 25% by 2020.Promising ideas about how to reduce cow-produced methane include: anti-methane grains and dietary supplements laced with basil or garlic, an improved digestive system for cows, scanners that monitor the gas content of cow burps, a strap-on-backpack connected to tubes that collect methane gas from cow stomachs, and a reduction in the world's cattle herd (In the U.S. there are 88 million cattle). To date, these ideas are too expensive to be practical. The Resources Defense Council did mention that methane from cows could power cars and refrigerators, if it could be harnessed.

     Methane is not the only cow-related problem. Phosphorus runoff from manure is a major contributor to water pollution, since it causes the growth of harmful blue-green algae. Limited phosphorus reduction is now achieved by digesters that use an anaerobic process to separate liquids from solids and then capture and burn off methane gas to generate electricity. Another machine that relies on a nutrient concentration system is also being used to remove excess phosphorus. Thus far, however, most raw manure remains untreated.

     It is interesting to note, according to Laurie Winn Carlson, in her book, Cattle: An Informal Social History, that Dr. Babcock never took out a patent on the machine he developed to measure the fat content of milk, because he believed it should be available to all. His invention prevented milk diluted by water to be sold for full price and enabled cows to be ranked not only by the quantity of milk they produced but also by the fat content of their milk. A cow that produces milk with a high fat content is doubly valuable because her eggs can be harvested and sold for artificial insemination. Cattle of the World by John Friend describes the process of harvesting fertilized eggs from dairy cows and freezing semen from bulls known to produce outstanding calves. In the frozen form, semen from desirable bulls can be exported to improve and/or provide cross-breeding with dairy cattle herds anywhere in the world.

     The variety of dairy cow characteristics John Pukite mentions in his book, A Field Guide to Cows: How to Identify and Appreciate America's 52 Breeds, suggests reasons why farmers import specific dairy breeds out of the world's approximately 920 different cow breeds. The Holstein-Friesian dairy cow, found in at least 125 countries, produces the largest amount of milk, but she feeds on a concentrated diet of grain/corn, lives in an environmentally controlled barn, and needs regular veterinary care. In contrast, quite a few dairy breeds, such as the Canadienne, Galloway, Jersey, and Brown Swiss, graze in pastures out-of-doors. The Brown Swiss, like the Jersey, Guernsey, Pinzgauer, and Ayrshire, produces milk with a high butterfat content and also is second only to the Holstein in terms of milk yield. Multipurpose breeds, such as the Maine-Anjou, MeuseRhineYssel, and Normande, are bred for both milk and beef throughout the world. The hides of the Galloway and Pinzgauer also are known for their good quality leather. All dairy cows are usually easy to handle. Some, like the Salers and Simmental, have good mothering instincts. The South Devon, Red Poll, and a few other breeds have long lifespans.

     Whereas, the ships that carried beef cattle across the Atlantic Ocean to England in the 1880s were overcrowded and filthy, health protocols now cover the ventilation, watering, feeding, and manure handling conditions of live animals when they are in transit by ship. Cargo planes also are specially fitted to ensure the safe, humane transit of livestock. At livestockexporters-usa.com,
the online newsletters of the Livestock Exporters Association (LEA) provide dairy cattle exporters with information about policies of the U.S.Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) regarding, among other information, the health certifications of livestock exports and insurance underwriting guidelines for ocean transit of animals, as well as information about new markets, such as Jordan and Iraq.

     Dairy cows are not just traded among agriculturally developed countries. Through the not-for-profit Heifer International organization, children, scout troops, schools, and parents can donate cows to impoverished families around the world. Just go to the heifer.org website to contribute the $500 it takes to donate a cow, or $50 for a share of a heifer, and see some of the happy recipients who have learned to care for their gifts. Since families who receive a cow from Heifer International agree to pass on the first calf offspring to another needy family, each donation is a part of an endless chain devoted to eliminating world hunger and poverty. In Kenya, Heifer International also holds a 40 percent share in a plant that cools and processes milk and seeks new markets for the 6000 households that gain a secure monthly income by bringing their milk to the plant.

Discover Africa

The African continent is three times the size of the United States and nearly three million square miles bigger than Europe, including the Asian portion of Russia. By 2100, the U.N. estimates Africa will have 3 billion more people than it has now. Future opportunities in this vast and growing continent need not be overlooked because of the world's somewhat warped historical viewpoint. A new guide, Emerging Africa, by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu dispels some of the assumptions about lack of development on the continent. And in 2015, one of the discussions in the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions program will feature "U.S. Policy Toward Africa."

    Headlines do not tell the whole story of what is happening in Africa. News reports rightly warned that the Ebola virus was out of control in West Africa. In April and May of 2014, the world heard that over 200 teenage girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. Since then, the group has taken additional girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers; young men and boys have been abducted to serve as soldiers. On January 15, 2019, al-Shabab terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda would kill at least 21 in an attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. In April, 2015, jihadis from al-Shabab killed 147 in a raid on a Kenyan university. Earlier,  terrorists attacked at a Kenyan mall.

     Europe's scramble to colonize the continent between 1876 and 1912 left independent African countries in the 1960s with an uneducated population, some leaders who exploited their people in imitation of former colonial administrators, disease, and transportation ties to Europe rather than each other. To this day, Fastjet is still having trouble launching its plan to provide affordable African flights.

     But just like Pablo Picasso in 1907, when he first saw the African artifacts that caused him to create a new form of art, young people are in a position to look at Africa in a new way. Beginning with the book Ashanti to Zulu, kids can learn the alphabet and 26 African traditions at the same time. With the help of ePals.com, classrooms can connect with African students in several languages by email, Skype, and project collaborations.

     Students need not see Africans only as impoverished children who can live on 50 cents per day donations. According to trendwatching.com, 65% of Africa's 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a mobile phone. In Gambia and Ghana, trendwatching.com reports entrepreneurs run solar-charging kiosks where the public can charge their mobile devices for a fee. In addition to social contacts, mobile devices are facilitating education and job-hunting in Africa. By 2060, trendwatching.com expects there will be 1.1 billion middle class Africans. Already, the SABMiller bottler and Coca-Cola have joined forces to profit from Africa's growing middle class.

    Africa's growth is attracting $24 billion in foreign investment this year. In fact, the Financial Times (April 4, 2014) reported that return from private equity investments in Africa is comparable to the return on investments in China and Latin America. No wonder the Rothschild Fund is looking to invest $530 million in African projects that have a long term social development aspect to them. And the Swedish risk capital firm, Swedfund, is investing in a partnership between the H&M retailer and Ethiopian textile firms that manufacture according to high social and environmental standards. (Also see the later blog post, "Never Too Young to Invest in the Future.")

    Forbes magazine listed 27 billionaires in Africa. Today's richest African is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, who makes his money from the cement used for construction throughout Africa. Recognizing the potential for African construction, Dubai has invested $300 million in Dangote Cement. Other riches have been made in areas, such as oil, sugar, flour, banking, media, telecommunications, luxury goods, diamonds, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals. Looking past the current drop in oil prices, Dangote increased his oil refinery investment from $9 billion to $11 billion in December, 2014. (Nonetheless, his estimated $21 billion fortune has taken a $5.4 billion hit due to sagging oil prices.) Stephen Saad of South Africa, founder of Aspen Pharmacare, is making his fortune by manufacturing generic drugs. Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire, a former head of Angola's state oil group, and the daughter of Angola's president, is a major player in the banking industry. She seeks to block Spain's CaixaBank's attempt to assume full control of the Portuguese bank, BPI, where she is the second largest investor. As an alternative, she has proposed a merger of BPI and Portugal's Millennium BCP bank to reinforce their presence in Africa's Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique. (As of President Joao Lourenco's election as President of Angola, Ms. dos Santos no longer heads Angola's national oil company and the former president's son has been charged with fraud for transferring $500 million out of the country.)  Bob Diamond's Atlas Mara, founded to invest in Sub-Saharan African financial institutions, continues to expand with its latest interest in a 45% stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda.

     African startups also are winning outside support. IBM's "Project Lucy" coordinates the work of local universities, development agencies, startups, and others who want to create ventures that solve key African issues. BiztechAfrica reports that, as part of its 4Afika Initiative, Microsoft has made five innovation grants to the following startups: Uganda's access.mobile, which facilitates information sharing in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, Kenya's Africa 118, a mobile directory service, and Kytabu, which rents textbooks on tablets (A US entrepreneur just found funding for a similar project on the TV show, "Shark Tank"), and Nigeria's Gamsole, which creates games for Windows, and Save & Buy, which facilitates e-commerce purchases.

     In a long entry in March, 2014, " trendwatching.com's African" described how African governments and developers are facilitating areas, like Ghana's Hope City, Nigeria's Eko Atlantic, and Kenya's Konga Techno, that invite entrepreneurs to set up shop. Better than being  unemployed, business-minded young adults are responding by using crowdfunding platforms, such as Globevestor; developing tech applications, such as Nigeria's bus travel website (bus.com.ng); entering competitions (South Africa's First National Bank holds an "Ideas Can Help" competition for inventors, Yola sponsors a build-your-own website contest, there's a Anzisha Prize and a TechCabal Battlefield prize); and formalizing Africa's informal economy of outdoor markets, street hawkers, and resellers. Kenya's e-commerce Soko platform, for example, now connects global shoppers with local jewelry artisans who use natural and upcycled materials. FirstBank Nigeria is one of the firms that facilitates secure online payments.

      Projects involving the rich history of Egypt are already a staple of school curricula. Tracing Mansa Musa's religious pilgrimage from Timbuktu, the West African city in Mali, to Mecca in 1324 introduces an African mogul who distributed gold on his journey and returned with an architect to build a great mosque and scholars who created the Sankore University. A video about Shaka Zulu can introduce students to a military genius.

     Looking back through previous blog posts, Africa is mentioned in a variety of contexts.

• There are T-shirt designs from Swaziland and a U.S. artist who studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa ("Global Drawing Power")
• Somali children were featured in Asad, the live action short nominated for a 2012 Academy Award ("See the World at the Movies")
• Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording incorporated the township rhythms of South Africa ("Music of the Sphere")
• Ghana's kente cloth was mentioned in "The World of Fashion" and Ghana's chocolates tempted taste buds in "Pizza, Plantains, and Moo Goo Guy Pan."
• In 2004 Wangari Maathai of Kenya won a Noble Prize for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees and launched the U.N. project to plant a billion trees around the world ("Hope for the Future" and "A Healthy Environment")The website, About.com African History, has a list and description of Africa's 25 Nobel Prize winners. 
• Students located the African countries that produced the products they found in their scavenger hunt bags ("Games Children Play")

Just like the missionary, David Livingston, who happened to come upon the African falls he named for Queen Victoria, Africa still is open for discovery. China has discovered Africa's many minerals, such as iron ore and copper, and is building railroads to transport them to ports for export. French-speaking Chinese students have followed Chinese companies to work for them in former French colonies. Oprah Winfrey has founded a school for girls in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set out to help eliminate malaria and HIV in Africa. George Clooney sent up a satellite to watch for atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And, like Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, there's still the possibility of finding riches by writing one of Africa's fascinating stories.

I'm A Little Airplane

Singing children running through fields with arms outstretched, kids flying kites, and youngsters folding paper airplanes all are following in the tradition of inventors around the world who looked up at birds and tried to imitate their ability to fly.

     We know the Greek myth of Icarus whose feather and wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. In Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, who designed an airplane but lacked an engine to fly it, had such respect for the birds his design mimicked that he bought the caged birds he saw in Florence in order to set them free.

     Birds have inspired the realistic drawings of John James Audubon and the new stylized paintings of Dutch artist, Jeroen Allart. Gardeners plant a mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, and flowers to attract a variety of bird species and to protect them while they feed. Guided by experts from World Birders (worldbirders.com) in the UK, bird watchers, known as birders, travel the globe to see as many species as possible, especially those that are endangered.

     Earthbound people have found ways for birds to help them. As far back as 2200 B.C. there is mention of the Chinese use of trained falcons. Marshaling their birds' speed to fly high, dive onto prey, and kill with beak and sharp talons, hunters have taken to the field with falcons and hawks to procure a wide variety of game birds, hares, and even small deer and wolves.

     During wars, soldiers have used the natural instinct of pigeons to return to a home loft to carry messages that deceived the enemy (Read Double Cross by Ben Macintyre). Today, drones (See The Art of Intelligence by Henry A. Crumpton) and the robotic spy drones that are shaped like hummingbirds seem somewhat like descendants of the homing pigeon.

     Nowadays, kids who send messages in helium-filled balloons follow in the tradition of the French Montgolfier brothers who showed people they could fly by filling a large silk bag with heated air in 1783. Flying balloons drifted at the mercy of wind and air currents until the Brazilian, Alberto Santos-Dumont, powered his dirigible, or airship, with a gasoline engine in 1898. Germans used dirigibles in World War I, and, when the war ended, airships began to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Famously, the Germans' hydrogen-filled Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937.

    The Pilot and the Little Prince by Peter Sis not only tells young readers 6 to 8 years old about the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, but also covers the early days of aviation. In the years following the brief flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903, military, passenger, mail, and freight use of airplanes and helicopters has expanded. There have been constant improvements in engines, pilot and flight attendant training, flame resistant plane interiors, safety regulations, and "black boxes" used to determine what went wrong in the case of crashes. All these areas present career opportunities for young people interested in aviation. (Those interested in a career in space, might enjoy my earlier post, "Space Explorers.")

     Understanding the broad appeal of flight, even to those whose career interests are not in aviation, filmmakers have tapped a variety of sources to make Superman movies, tie balloons to a chair to go Up, create a flying suit for Iron Man, and play on national stereotypes in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Disney/Pixar's film, Planes, has inspired a line of remote control planes, such as Mattel's Dusty Crophopper.

Master Math Skills with World Population Problems

Over the summer, students often forget some of their math skills. One way to keep up is to practice by solving the following problems.

     Which continent will add the most people in the next 88 years?______________

     Which continent will have the biggest population decline in the next 88 years?___________

     The world's 10.5 billion population projection in 2100 comes from the United Nations. The World Almanac provides the latest 2012 figure of 7 billion people in the world and includes the Caribbean in Latin America's population.

     By how much will the population increase or decrease between 2012 and 2100 on the following continents?

Asia

      4,710,000,000 (2100)
   -  4,220,000,000 (2012)

Africa

      4,180,000,000 (2100)
   -  1,070,000,000 (2012)

Europe

        740,000,000 (2012)
    -   639,000,000 (2100)

North America

        513,000,000 (2100)
    -   348,000,000 (2012)

South America

        596,000,000 (2012)
    -   467,000,000 (2100)

A challenging game requires players to arrange from highest to lowest populations a mixed up list of countries or major world cities, such as:

Countries                      2012 Populations

Argentina                        (53,511,274)
Bangladesh                     (250,155,274)
Netherlands                    (17,906,594)
Greenland                      (49,356)
Egypt                             (137,872522)

Cities                            2011 Populations

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil    (11,959,700)
Delhi, India                    (22,653,600)
Tokyo, Japan                 (37,217,400)
Beijing, China               (15,594,400)
Mexico City, Mexico    (20,445,800)






  



    

It Takes a World to Raise a Child

When I saw umbrollers in London over 40 years ago, I couldn't wait to get back to the U.S. to tell my sister who just had a baby how easy they were to maneuver and collapse compared to traditional strollers. Since then, many U.S. parents also have adopted the baby slings and wraps that working mothers have worn when they were taking care of babies in Mexico, Peru, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Japan, and elsewhere. And what mother with a new baby wouldn't want to visit one of Japan's cat cafes? There, she and her baby could be among the customers, many who can't have pets at home, who come to talk to, play with, and chill out among cats while they drink tea. Hillary Clinton once wrote that it takes a village to raise a child; perhaps it takes a world.

     As an international marketing student at American University in Washington, D.C., I had a professor who told us one of the benefits multinational corporations enjoy is access to new products and ideas in one country that they can adapt for use in other countries. In these days, even without world travel, mothers have online access to global innovations.  To give just two examples, there is Internet information on international adoption and crowdfunding websites that finance or even find volunteers for their projects.

     On trendwatching.com, I was reminded of how women have expanded the yard sale concept to become sellers on eBay, Amazon, and other platforms. Kids in Nigeria, like they could in other countries, now play local versions of Monopoly. According to trendwatching.com, the "City of Lagos" version has local locations and, to reflect Nigeria's challenges, chance cards that say things like, "Pay a fine for attempting to bribe a law enforcement agent."

     In my earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future," you may have seen how the Grameen Bank and Kiva have helped women start businesses to support their families and finance their children's educations by providing micro-loans. When I read on trendwatching.com that the idea of selling meals through Thuisafgehaald in the Netherlands is spreading to the US, UK, Germany, and Sweden, I realized, with or without a micro loan, that mothers who are good cooks have an opportunity to specialize in selling nutritious home-cooked, peanut- and gluten-free, birthday party, and other types of meals.

     Mothers who do volunteer work for child-centered, not-for-profit organizations, like the March of Dimes, might be able to adopt a version of what trendwatching.com reports "The Exchange" is doing in South Africa. Consumers only are allowed to shop for its clothes and accessories donated by designers if they first sign up with an Organ Donor Foundation.

     T-shirts proclaim the slogan, "Changing More Than Diapers," on mothers who visit momsrising.org. Though mainly focused on the United States, the site promotes activities mothers around the world could adapt to work for fair wages, flexible workplace schedules, maternity and paternity leave, better childcare, and environmental health.

     The site, vitalvoices.org, already identifies women's issues, works toward solutions, fosters connections across international boundaries, and awards progress. On vitalvoices.org, viewers can see how women in Africa increase the continent's economic potential, how Latin American women strive for gender equality, and how female leaders in Eurasia are combating human trafficking. Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who recovered from being shot in the head because she wants girls to attend school, currently is featured on the site.

     Making international connections that foster innovation in education is the aim of the WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) Educational Leadership Program in Qatar. The leaders in education from the more than 100 countries who attend WISE summits discuss ideas about funding, curricula, assessment, and improving the quality of education, ideas that could suggest new directions worth considering by parents, guardians, and teachers around the world.



    

The Bees and the Birds

The children catching and releasing fireflies this summer may know they are running after beetles rather than flies or gloworms, and they may be training to protect the world from disease-carrying insects or from dangerous insecticides. While some kids panic at the sight of bees, spiders, and cockroaches, others watch caterpillars walk up their arms and might become the inspectors who keep dangerous insects out of countries or observe, as Rachel Carson did, how deadly an insect repellent like DDT can be.

     Angela Banner, the UK author of the Ant and Bee little board book series, viewed insects as friends. Since the early 1960s, her books have taught children to read, count, and tell time; and to identify animals, colors, and shapes. In the book, Around the World With Ant and Bee, her insects are globe trotters.

     Of course, while some insects are friendly, others carry disease and cause crop damage around the world. As climate change and globalization spread tropical diseases that have become resistant to insecticides, British researchers now have developed genetically modified male mosquitoes that can kill the mosquito larvae of the unmodified females they mate with. To eliminate fungus-causing Dutch Elm disease, it has been necessary to cut down scores of elm trees infected by beetles. And history is filled with stories of the devastation caused by germ-carrying insects. In the Old Testament, the Book of Exodus tells of plagues of mosquitoes, gadflies, and locusts. When children hear about the Black death; the mosquitoes that spread malaria and yellow fever; typhus; the bubonic plague; the tsetse fly that carries sleeping sickness; and lyme disease from ticks, they may want to destroy every ant hill they see. It then may be time to watch The Ant Bully or ANTZ to gain insight into the life of an ant or A Bug's Life" in order to empathize with an ant colony's trouble with grasshoppers. The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins does what it can to gain respect for beetles.

     Kids can learn to respect the bees, moths, and butterflies that pollinate fruit trees and vegetable and nut plants by carrying the pollen that fertilizes the cells that produce plant seeds. Hives of 25,000 bees were valued at $83,000, when they were stolen in France in 2014. Consequently, it has been a serious problem ever since honey bees suddenly began to suffer colony-collapse disorder in 2006. Time magazine (June 1, 2015) reports that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies between April 2014 and April 2015.

     To find chemicals to replace the neonicotinoids that kill bees with alternative sprays that control crop damage from other insects has been a challenge. Since new research also suggests the glyphosate chemical in the Roundup herbicide that is an effective weed killer in corn and soy fields has the unfortunate side effect of killing the milkweed monarch butterflies feed on during their migrations to and from Mexico every year, the search for new ways to differentiate between the control of certain insects and weeds and the protection of other endangered insects goes on.

     With as much as almost a quarter of U.S. crops dependent on bee pollination, new hives have appeared in various locations, such as just off a path in the Obrich botanical garden in Madison, Wisconsin, and in the 84-acre campus arboretum at American University in Washington, D.C. In May, 2015 Washington issued a National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators that aims to restore seven million acres of the native flowers that nourish bees

      Normally, hives of honeybees that are native to Europe are rented to farmers when, for example, their apple and cherry crops are in full flower. To foster experimentation with different approaches, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given a five-year research grant to the Integrated Crop Pollination Project that coordinates the work of government agencies, not-for-profit associations, and private firms. At Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Kelly Garbach lists a number of projects being tried. As disease reduces the European honeybee population, native U.S. bee species might be able to pollinate certain crops, either on their own or in combination with traditional honeybees. A Time magazine article, "The Plight of the Honeybee" (August 19, 2013), told how researchers are trying to produce "a more resilient honeybee" by cross-breeding species. One of the reasons native bees have been overlooked is because they are very small, only half the size of European honeybees. Another reason for bee research is changing climate conditions. If bees could live full time in one location, it would be less costly and more advantageous than trying to figure the best time for beekeepers to provide them. Dr. Garbach plans to identify innovators who can mentor others who want to adopt successful new pollination practices.

       In addition to bees, other insects also perform good works. Insects feed birds, and, of course, for thousands of years, silk cloth has been made from the threads that caterpillars use to make their cocoons. Some insects and birds also kill harmful bugs that feed on crops and live stock. Nonetheless, flies, fleas, ticks, lice, and mites can bother and infect animals. Beetles eat fruit trees and potatoes, and in their form as grubs, beetles eat the roots of corn, pasture grass, and strawberries. Children even may have seen clothes that have been damaged by moths and carpet beetles that eat wool.

    Youngsters interested in discovering which insects are helpful and which are harmful can grow up to be the entomologists that control insect pests. Edward O. Wilson, a global expert on ants, has written the book, Letters to a Young Scientist, that will interest and inspire future entomologists. On National Public Radio, Wilson said that he had a childhood love of "creepy-crawly things" and a passion and persistence to be a scientist who studied them. All children who have seen how fast ants appear on picnic tables can make sure they don't attract flies and other disease-carrying insects by leaving food uncovered in the house. Outside, they can make sure to throw food away only in closed garbage bins.

      Farmers know vast fields planted with the same crop attract swarms of the insects that like to feed on that crop. During the early 20th century, boll weevils destroyed millions of dollars worth of the U.S. cotton crop. In their own gardens, youngsters can learn the benefit of cutting down on the attraction of insects by planting a variety of vegetables and flowers. They also might look for, or hope in the future to help develop, plants engineered to be pest-resistant. (For other innovative ideas related to crops, go to the earlier blog posts, "Back to the Land" and "A Healthy Environment.")

     Artists Hubert Duprat and Kathy Kyle know just how good some insects can be. They give little moth-like caddisfly larvae, that protect themselves by constructing armor by "gluing" together gravel, sand, twigs, and other debris, gold flakes, opal, turquoise, rubies, and pearls to make beads that can be strung together into one-of-a-kind necklaces, earrings, key chains, and zipper pulls.

     As a bit more practical matter, children can be on the lookout for standing water that should be drained to keep mosquitoes from breeding. Although only a handful of the world's 80,000 species of mosquitoes bite and transmit diseases, such as malaria, dengue (black bone fever), and chikungunya, these diseases are life threatening. When kids recognize the importance of protecting themselves from mosquito bites by using insect repellent when they go outside and by installing screens to keep mosquitoes out of their homes, they can start thinking about raising money to protect African children with mosquito nets. On the Internet, the key words, "mosquito nets" lead to a number of organizations that need funds to do this job. UNICEF, for example, has an "Inspired Gift" program to provide the world's poorest children with mosquito nets. Kids and adults can find details about this program at my earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future."