Professor Cummings In The News

One of Alycia's colleagues has grade school aged children, who in exchange for being subjects for Alycia asked that she attend their most recent Science Club meeting.  The event was covered by the local newspaper - The Grand Forks Herald.  Even though she mentioned that news photographers took many photos of her, sadly none of them made it to the paper.  This article ran on the front of the B section - City and Region

Here's the article in its entirely.  You can also (hopefully) read the article through this link.

On the same wavelength

St. Michael’s Elementary Science Club studies sound 
 

About two dozen third- through sixth-grade students at St. Michael’s Elementary School in Grand Forks put their voices and ears to good use Thursday afternoon.

The members of the school’s Science Club donned electro caps and headphones, tapped and blew into glass bottles filled with water and made noises into microphones and plastic tubes, each exercise with one subject in mind.

“The idea I want you to get used to is waves,” said Sarah Robinson, professor at UND’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. She and fellow professor Alycia Cummings have been studying children’s brain and sound waves in their research models. On Thursday, they were joined by eight UND students to bring a little of their classroom to St. Mike’s.

The Science Club kids took turns wearing the “biosemi hats,” which look like swim caps with 64 connections for electrodes plugged in to record brain waves. Students are shown and asked to identify images. Their responses are measured in waves from parts of the brain that deal with vision, memory and comprehension.

“There’s all sorts of activity going on in your brain,” Cummings said. “We’re trying to learn how your brain is coming up with that word. How do you think brain waves get smaller?”

“You don’t need to think about it as much,” came a quick answer.

The students learned how their vocal folds, facial muscles and scalp muscles all assist in making and changing sounds and their frequencies.

Nicole Lee is the organizer of the club, which has been meeting every third Thursday since September. She said Father Gerard Braun has tasked the club with monitoring a crack in the choir loft of St. Michael’s Church. She said she wouldn’t be surprised to see the kids correlate the impact of sound waves on the crack.

“They create their own experiments and come up with results you wouldn’t expect,” Lee said. “I don’t have to give them much guidance.”

Vocabulary Day

We're gonna learn some new vocabulary today.  Are you ready?  We learned in the paper yesterday that the cool, frozen fog that painted the trees with delicate white frost is actually called hoarfrost (suppress your juvenile jokes children).  You can see the definition for hoarfrost here.

Our other vocabulary word is an odd weather condition called graupel.  Graupel exists in the strange nether world between hail and snow, it's soft hail, not quite fully formed snow.  Since it's neither hail or snow, it gets it own special word.  You can see the definition for graupel here. 

The odd thing about the word graupel is that I've never heard it before in my life, but today I read it twice, within an hour of one another, from two totally different sources - The San Diego Union Tribune and the Grand Forks Herald.  It turns out that the weather conditions in both San Diego and Grand Forks actually have the possibility for this odd weather phenomenon.  Weird.   

Now that you've learned something, here's your reward.  More cool pictures from the hoarfrost the other day.  Admittedly these are a day late, but I have an excuse, I've been fixing the snowblower in preparation for this weekends big storm, another foot or so of snow is on the way, and I gotta be ready. 

Here's a picture of the Riverside Park near our house.  

Another picture from the park. 

My intrepid photojournalist sidekick in her lovely brown cardigan.  I don't claim to be a mind reader (in fact I frequently make statements to the contrary) but I think that look is the "Uhhhh when can we go running again?" look.  Soon enough, soon enough. 

Pictures of the Freezing Fog Aftermath

Got your attention there, didn't I?  Was it the freezing fog?  Aftermath?  The promise of pictures instead of poring through my tedious prose?  

Starting at midday yesterday the whole Red River Valley (which includes Grand Forks - this is your geography lesson for the day) was under a dense fog advisory.  The last week or so has seen very mild temperatures, and yesterday we had some "warmer" southern winds that crept up and created the dense fog.  During the day this was cool, and quite odd since that type of fog is rare around here, but at night the temperatures dropped well below freezing again, meaning that whatever the fog touched, it stuck to.

We woke up in the morning to a scene even more dramatic than after a big snowstorm.  In stead of white snow everywhere, everything was coated in fine white frost, the trees look like they have bright white leaves, it looked very cool indeed.  A world that had been turned into Frosted Mini-Wheat Land.   

In following my standard opearting procedure, I waited until the normal job-having folks left for work before I ambled out in my own yard and snapped pictures like a tourist.  I feel as though this is a good policy to have in order to help the acclimation process and so Alycia and I don't look like, well, like folks who fell off the proverbial turnip truck from California. Unfortunately I stepped out the front door and who's standing on the sidewalk, but our neighbor from across the street.  Luckily he was taking pictures too and said that he'd never seen anything like this before, which made me feel better about snapping pictures on my own sidewalk. 
   
Here's a picture looking down our street to the west, taken from the front sidewalk. 

The other street, pointing north with some frosty trees. 

This is the view from the balcony, towards the southwest over the driveway.  It's hard to believe, but that huge pile of snow to the left of the tree is my garden area.  Seriously, in a few months there's gonna be all manner of green things growing there.  Hopefully.

 More frosty treetops.

I'm gonna wrangle up the pooch in a bit and walk out to the park for a National Geographic-esque photo expedition.  The trees are denser there and should have some more dramatic pictures.  Now you'll have to come back tomorrow and see what photo journalistic excellence I have captured. 

A Day of Mourning

Howdy faithful blog readers.  I don't have a lot to say today, feeling sad and mopey after the Chargers utter and complete playoff debacle yesterday.  With very little hope for the Padres for the next two to four years, all my hopes were pinned on the Chargers, and as usual they disappointed yet again.  I'll leave it at that and just wallow around like a sad panda today.  :(

Class War - How Public Servants Became Our Masters

How about some fun reading for a Thursday?  I challenge you to read this article without feeling sick to your stomach.  Not in the gross, dead body kind of way, but in the "I understand now why our cities are being flushed down the toilet in California".  I read it and immediately wanted to go and hug a Libertarian....


Class War - How Public Servants Became Our Masters

Loose Ends

I realized today that I never wrapped up our pre-Christmas poll, sorry there faithful readers.  I dropped the ball on this one.  But the poll results did give me a measure of great satisfaction knowing that I'm preaching to like minded souls.  More than half of the poll respondents need their cup of coffe ASAP, even though it's Christmas morning and there are presents to open and festivities to enjoy.   On a certain level it's good to know that my readers are also cafeine junkies.

I'll also try to come up with a new poll today to both dazzle and astound y'all.  

Alycia and I had an evening out on the town yesterday, went out for a delicious dinner at one of our favorite restaurants downtown - The Toasted Frog, then to purchase some cross country skis.  Yeah it's a bit of an extravagance, but we're going to use them for years to come, and if they help us look forward to winter by having a fun winter time activity, it's worth the expense.  And in my opinion anything that encourages physical activity and exercise out in nature is a good thing. 

So cross country skiing might take the place of running for me during the winter.  I think I can manage two to three days a week of moseying around on skis through the park just a couple of blocks from the house.  Lot's of potential here.  I'm gonna venture out in a bit here, for some mid-week cross country skiing, it should be fun. 

Tiny Cupcake Giveaway

My blogging compatriot, and friend from San Diego, Sara over at Sweet Somethings is giving away free sweets.  Free tiny cupcakes to be exact, made through her Sarandipity website. They're delicious, though you must grapple with the guilt of destroying a baked creation so cute that it seems criminal.  But once you overcome your instincts not to destroy such a lovely creation, you'll be glad you did, as they are yummy. 

All you have to do is leave a comment on her blog or Facebook site to be entered into the contest. 

You can follow this link to the giveaway location.  Good luck.

Cross Country Skiing

Alycia and I have been discussing cross country skiing for quite a while now, thinking that a fun enjoyable outdoor activity will be just what we need to look forward to the snow and winter wonderland that is North Dakota for 5 months (approximately) out of every year.  We visited the local ski shop and looked at the bottom of the line cross country ski package, and it was pricey enough that we wanted to make sure that it was enjoyable enough before we dropped a few dollars on our own skis, poles, and boots. 

So on Sunday we went down to Lincoln Park where they check out cross country skis, ice skates, and sleds for free (awesome!!) and picked up some cross country skis.  Seriously, how awesome of a city is that rents this stuff for free in its local parks.  So we got geared up and set out on the trails, spent an hour and a half zipping around the huge park, and had a great time.  The temperature was in the pleasant range 15 above or so, but there was a stiff wind, which made it seem pretty chilly.  We were definitely done after an hour and half. 

As you can imagine, the whole town is geared for cross country skiing, snowmobiling, and other modes of frozen conveyance.  There are a ton of skiing routes (you can see them here) around town, and you can pretty much get from our house in Riverside Park on the north end, all the way down to downtown, and through Lincoln Park to the south end of town.  

Alycia had only been downhill skiing before, and not only had a great time, but took to it like a Presbyterian to rummage.  Considering that it's great exercise and very accessible (part of the trail starts right near our house in Riverside Park), there are very likely some skis in our future.  And next time, I promise we'll try to remember the camera so you can see how much fun you aren't having.