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Presentation of Ital

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Sindy (sindy.baumgartner@hak-steyr.at)
Edina (edinabuzas@freemail.hu)
Pavlina (HilliJov@t-online.de)
Yesica (yesica.yca@gmail.com)
Sabrina (sabrina.sophia@live.it)
Peter (morawiecki.piotrek@gmail.com)
Laura (cerquetella.l@gmail.com)
Malgosia (madamek@autograf.pl)
Beata (b.stepniewska@gazeta.pl)
ed.russell@elc-brighton.co.uk
eva.bokk@t-online.hu
Ildiko(ilakatos2@gmail.com)

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Today's Ed Tech session - for review / catch up

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by Éva Kovácsné Bokk

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10 Hours of Infinite Fractal and Falling Shepard's Tone

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Over 1.1 billion simulations delivered

160interactive simulations

97language translations

3001teacher-submitted lessons

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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by Peter and Pavlina
Other resources used:
https://phet.colorado.edu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VMfdG873E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUwEIt9ez7M

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A picture says a thousand words

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Pub Pokemon-GO!

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IMPORTANT!!! Rubric for project / lesson / presentation 

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IMPORTANT!!! Rubric for project / lesson / presentation 

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You may want to have a look at this tonight, or before the afternoon session tomorrow

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When I was a graduate student in art history, I read many explanations of abstract art, but they were invariably inadequate and misleading. So after completing my PhD, I went on to learn the history of biology, physics, and astronomy, and to publish a book detailing how modern art is an expression of the scientific worldview.

Yet many artworks also express the mathematics and technology of their times. To research Math and Art I had to learn maths concepts like calculus, group theory and predicate logic. As a novice struggling to understand these ideas, I was struck with the poor quality and confusing content of illustrations in most educational books. So I vowed to create for my book a set of cogent math diagrams that are crystal-clear visualizations of the abstract concepts.

As a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, I wrote this book for my students, such as Maria, who told me she was never good at history because she couldn't remember dates, and for Jin Sug, who failed high school algebra because he couldn't memorize formulae. I hope they will read this book and discover that history is a storybook and that math is about captivating ideas.
Here are ten images followed by descriptions:
Throughout history, scientists have discovered mathematical patterns in nature, such as the paths taken by electrons as they flow over the hills and valleys of tiny "landscapes" that are measured in microns (one micron equals one millionth of a meter). Paths of electrons in this digital print were recorded by Eric J. Heller, who studies rogue waves (freak waves, killer waves) on large and small scales. When a wave of electrons flows through a computer, a freak wave in a semiconductor can suddenly threaten the smooth functioning of the device.

Western mathematics proceeds by increasing abstraction and generalization. In the Renaissance the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi invented linear perspective, a method to project geometric objects onto a "picture plane" from a given viewpoint. Three centuries later the French mathematician Jean-Victor Poncelet generalized perspective into projective geometry for planes that are tipped or rotated. Then in the early twentieth century the Dutchman L.E.J. Brouwer generalized Poncelet's projective geometry to projections onto surfaces that are stretched or distorted into any shape-so-called rubber-sheet geometry-provided that the plane remains continuous (with no holes or tears), which is the subject of this photograph. The contemporary artist Jim Sanborn created it by projecting a pattern of concentric circles onto a large rock formation at night from about 1/2 mile away. He then took this photograph with a long exposure at moonrise.

Knowledge of ancient Greek mathematics, such as Euclid and Ptolemy, was lost to the medieval West, but Islamic scholars preserved their writings in Arabic translations. In the ninth century, caliphs established the House of Wisdom in Baghdad as a place for scholars to acquire and translate foreign texts in mathematics and philosophy. Ptolemy's thirteen-volume work is known today by the name they gave it, Almagest (Arabic for "the greatest").

Two contemporary mathematicians, Reza Sarhangi and Robert Fathauer, pay homage to the Islamic mathematician Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (AD 940¬-98), who worked at the House of Wisdom, where he wrote a practical text, On Those Parts of Geometry Needed by Craftsmen. He showed how to construct a regular heptagon (a polygon with seven equal sides and angles), which is in the center portion of this print. Around the perimeter of the heptagon Sarhangi and Fathauer wrote Buzjani's name seven times in Farsi, the language of Persia (modern Iran).

With the development of railroads in the nineteenth century, the topic of finding an optimal route for a journey was of practical interest. The topic entered the mathematics literature in 1930, when the Viennese mathematician Karl Menger described it as the "messenger problem" ( das Botenproblem) of finding an optimal delivery route. It was soon dubbed the "travelling salesman's problem": given a list of cities and the distances between each pair, find the shortest route that visits each city once and returns to the city of origin

The American mathematician Robert Bosch drew this continuous line based on the solution to a 5000-city instance of the travelling salesman problem. From a distance, the print appears to depict a black cord against a grey background in the form of a Celtic knot. But on close inspection the apparent "grey" is actually a continuous white line moving on top of a black background. The white line never crosses over itself-it is a network rather than a knot-and so the punny answer to the title is "Not."

In 1905, Albert Einstein discovered the symmetry of mass and energy-mass can be converted into energy, and vice versa (E = mc2). Then in the early decades of the twentieth century, physicists and mathematicians, including Einstein, gathered in Zurich and employed group theory in their exploration of the symmetry of nature.

Swiss artists such as Gerstner created patterns that resonate with these mathematical descriptions of nature in terms of symmetry. Like the mathematicians, these artists established basic aesthetic building-blocks-units of color and form-and arranged them using rules that preserve proportion and balance.

In 1956 Gerstner devised a modular system-a movable palette with 196 hues in 28 groups-for experimenting with progressions that link form with color. Gerstner's palette of 196 squares has 28 groups with 7 squares each. Shown here are four of myriad possible arrangements, which the artist describes using the mathematician's terms: groups, permutations, algorithms, and invariance.

Scientific insights into the deepest levels of the natural world are explanations based on symmetry, which the artist Karl Gerstner symbolizes with this circular "icon" for the secular age of science and technology. The most symmetrical geometric form is a sphere (all points equidistant from a point in three-dimensional space). In the late twentieth century, scientists concluded that the universe began in perfect symmetry as a point that exploded into a sphere of plasma. As the infant universe expanded, the primordial sphere cooled, and matter condensed from the plasma to form the first particles, then atoms, gas clouds, and stars. At some point the original symmetry of the universe was broken; the resulting asymmetries appear to be the result of random shifts analogous to mutations during evolution. Today physicists are recreating samples of this primordial spherical plasma to determine the degree to which the universe retains traces of its original symmetry.

Simon Thomas is a young British artist whose work, such as this sculpture, is a visualization of a mathematical formula. He studied visual arts at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1980s and went on to create sculpture with striking geometric patterns, serving as artist-in-residence at the University of Bristol, both in the department of physics (1993-95) and mathematics (2002).
Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History by Lynn Gamwell is out now. This is a guest post on Alex Bellos's maths blog. Alex's most recent book is a mathematical colouring book, called Snowflake Seashell Star in the UK and Patterns of the Universe in the US.

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Why the history of maths is also the history of art

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In her new book Mathematics and Art, historian Lyn Gamwell explores how artists have for thousands of years used mathematical concepts - such as infinity, number and form - in their work. Here she choses ten stunning images from the book that reveal connections between maths and art.

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Mandelbrot Set -- from Wolfram MathWorld

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The term Mandelbrot set is used to refer both to a general class of fractal sets and to a particular instance of such a set. In general, a Mandelbrot set marks the set of points in the complex plane such that the corresponding Julia set is connected and not computable.

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Civilisation

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Arundel Castle is a restored medieval castle and stately home in Arundel, West Sussex, England.

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It's that night of the year again; the night when dinner party guests across the nation spit halloumi fritters over the table at each other as they argue out which neo soul chipmunk should face off against which post-jazz quartet - and Radiohead, obviously - for the Mercury Music Prize. We'll have a bit of that action, so on the eve of the shortlist being announced, here's the result of a frantic straw poll of the NME office to decide which albums we'd like to see included this year. And yes, we know we haven't put Radiohead in there, but we had trouble narrowing it down so consider them a gimme.

David Bowie - 'Blackstar'

What we said: "As we speak, Bowieologists are furiously trying to crack 'Blackstar''s code. What could an album that references Norse history, Jacobean drama and Atlanta trap possibly all mean? Tellingly, its final song is a serene, lilting number called 'I Can't Give Everything Away'. In other words, even if there is an overarching concept - and it's hard to see how there could be, given the number of disparate elements in play - then Bowie's not going to tell you what it is. Because where's the fun in that?"

The 1975 - 'I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It'

What we said: "Matt Healy says the band wanted to make this album a true representation of themselves and their generation's "non-linear consumption of music"... what's more exciting than a band who've got the bark and the bite?"

PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project

What we said: "The songs, recorded in front of an audience at Somerset House last year (Harvey the observer, in turn allowing herself to be observed), strive for a cool distance, fitting to the self-appointed role of 'official war musician' she assumed on 2011's 'Let England Shake'."

Savages - Adore Life

What we said: For the most part, this is an album of love songs: not in the trite, wishy-washy sense of the word but as an elemental and all-consuming force - "Suffering, straight from the gods," as the ferocious 'T.I.W.Y.G.' memorably puts it. "I want to know the come and go, the mechanics and all the tricks of love," sings Jehnny on spartan closing track 'Mechanics', while Thompson's guitar whistles past her like tumbleweed. Like 'Adore Life' itself, the answer seems as simple as it does mystifying: pleasure and pain, submission and control, a box of matches you can't help playing with."

Skepta - Konnichiwa

What we said: "'Konnichiwa' is a landmark in British street music, a record good enough to take on the world without having to compromise one inch in the process."

Shura - 'Nothing's Real'

What we said: "[An album of] vitality and personality - precious commodities in pop, but ones Shura appears to have in spades."

Nao - 'For All We Know'

What we said: "Nao's style has been dubbed 'avant-soul', but her music is far more mainstream than that would suggest. It exists in a modern musical landscape that's had its foundations laid down by south London's dubstep wizard Burial and The xx's breakaway boy Jamie xx, whose wobbly party tunes template is now the rule rather than the exception."

Michael Kiwanuka - 'Love & Hate'

What we said: "Four years since the pleasant Bill Withers-balladeering of his debut 'Home Again', Kiwanuka has brought in the production heft of Danger Mouse, as well as up-and-comer Inflo, to seriously up the ante. This is an album that's not dicking around."

Bat For Lashes - 'The Bride'

What we said: "This fourth album - her most ambitious yet - finds her pairing the filmic qualities of her first two (2006's 'Fur And Gold', 2009's 'Two Suns') with the stark maturity of 2012's 'The Haunted Man'. Khan refuses to yield crossover hits like 2009's 'Daniel' (only the frenetic rhythms of 'Sunday Love' come close) opting instead for a slow style of storytelling that rewards the patient listener."

Real Lies - 'Real Lies'

What we said: "Frontman Kev Kharas, singer/producer Tom Watson and loops/samples man Pat King plug into the urban ennui and drifting modern malaise The Streets did on 2002 debut 'Original Pirate Material'. 'Real Life' is the late night sound of the fringes of the city as filtered through baggy, happy house and rave. "

LUH - 'Spiritual Songs For Lovers To Sing'

What we said: "If there's one band to guide us out from under the dark cloud of modern society, it's LUH."

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Mercury Prize 2016: The Albums That Should Make The Shortlist

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It's that night of the year again; the night when dinner party guests across the nation spit halloumi fritters over the table at each other as they argue out which neo soul chipmunk should face off against which post-jazz quartet - and Radiohead, obviously - for the Mercury Music Prize.

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http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/teeth.html

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Treatment of depression through Mindfulness

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Depression is not only the most common mental illness, it's also one of the most tenacious. Up to 80 percent of people who experience a major depressive episode may relapse. Drugs may lose their effectiveness over time, if they work at all.

But a growing body of research is pointing to an intervention that appears to help prevent relapse by altering thought patterns without side effects: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT.

A new study on the approach to be published in a forthcoming issue of The Lancet found that MBCT helped prevent depression recurrence as effectively as maintenance antidepressant medication did. The study also found that MBCT had a larger effect on people with histories of more severe childhood abuse, which has been associated with a greater risk of relapse, than on participants overall. An "Evidence Map of Mindfulness" prepared for the Department of Veterans Affairs on all types of mindfulness interventions found the most consistent effect on depression versus other health conditions ( Evidence-based Synthesis Program Center, 2014).

"People at risk for depression are dealing with a lot of negative thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves and this can easily slide into a depressive relapse," says the Lancet study's lead author, Willem Kuyken, PhD, a professor at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "MBCT helps them to recognize that's happening, engage with it in a different way and respond to it with equanimity and compassion."

Growing evidence

The simplest definition of mindfulness is paying attention to one's experience in the present moment. It involves observing thoughts and emotions from moment to moment without judging or becoming caught up in them. During a practice session, when the mind wanders, the meditator ideally takes note of where it goes, and calmly returns to the moment at hand, perhaps focusing on breath, bodily sensations or a simple yoga move.

Over a decade ago, three psychologists - Zindel Segal, PhD, J. Mark G. Williams, DPhil, and John Teasdale, PhD - developed MBCT. In particular, MBCT seeks to teach people to disengage from the deeply ingrained dysfunctional thoughts that are common with depression.

As currently designed, MBCT is an eight-week, group-based program that incorporates mindfulness exercises including yoga, body awareness and daily homework, such as eating or doing household chores, with full attention to what one is doing, moment by moment. The protocol derives from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction curriculum, and includes elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) targeted to people with prior histories of depression.

Segal and colleagues studied 84 people in remission and found that MBCT could help prevent recurring depressive episodes as well as medication and better than placebo (JAMA Psychiatry, 2010). A review Madhav Goyal, MD, of The Johns Hopkins University wrote for JAMA Internal Medicine (2014) looked at different types of mindfulness meditation among 47 studies, finding that it had the same moderate effect on treating depression as medication, and had moderate effects on anxiety and pain as well.

Evidence also suggests that MBCT may be of more help to patients most vulnerable to relapse: People with a greater number of prior episodes or who had residual depressive symptoms. In a 2011 meta-analysis by Jacob Piet, PhD, and Esben Hougaard, PhD, of the University of Aarhus in Denmark in Clinical Psychology Review, MBCT was more effective in preventing relapse among people with three or more episodes, reducing risk by 43 percent versus 34 percent for participants overall.

In another study, Williams and colleagues found that participants who had depression at earlier ages, or who had more adversity or abuse in childhood, were more likely to benefit from MBCT (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2014). Kuyken, who led the Lancet study, speculates that these patients may be more motivated and invested in the treatment.

"They've been depressed more, they've had all these unpleasant things happening to them and they've often tried antidepressants and other kinds of therapy, so they're willing to meditate 40 minutes a day and to do something quite different in terms of mindfulness practices like mindful movement," he says. "Those who do best are those ready to engage fully."

While evidence suggests mindfulness works to help prevent depression relapse, researchers don't yet know how.

"It may be that mindfulness leads to an increase in self-compassion and a decrease in experiential avoidance," says Stuart Eisendrath, MD, professor and head of the Depression Center at the University of California, San Francisco. "It may be selective attention - if you focus on your breath, you have less bandwidth to ruminate. There are a lot of factors that are operative and we're just beginning to tease out and deconstruct them. It's like tasting a soup with 10 spices. Is there one main ingredient or is the flavor a combination of things?"

For example, one characteristic of depression is a habit of thinking negatively about experience, one's self or the future. Mindfulness trains people to be more aware of these thoughts and to stand back and simply observe their thoughts passing through their minds - 'Oh, there I go again, calling myself an idiot' - instead of trying to control their emotions. Or, in the case of people who have recovered from depression, blaming themselves for feeling down again or worrying about a relapse.

MBCT's emphasis on cultivating awareness and acceptance of the present moment also seeks to harness ruminating and mind wandering, both of which are implicated in depression, says Stefan Hofmann, PhD, a Boston University professor whose lab studies anxiety and related disorders.

"Why worry about the future and ruminate about the past?" says Hofmann. "Live for the here and now. It's comfortable. It's the joyful experience of being alive."

Researchers also mention that the group aspect of MBCT may help clients breach the wall of solitary shame and guilt that depression can build.

"By practicing with others, people realize that the way their minds generate depressive and ruminative thoughts is really no different from others, like that builder over there, or my neighbor. These are just thoughts - not facts in my life," Kuyken says.

A benevolent therapy

Among MBCT's strengths is its lack of side effects, and that it can be used as an adjunct therapy.

"For people with residual symptoms, or who have treatment-resistant depression, MBCT can be sequenced with antidepressant medication and with cognitive-behavioral therapy to help prevent the recurrence of relapse," Segal says.

Eisendrath is analyzing data from a large randomized trial of people with treatment-resistant depression that compared MBCT to an active control incorporating movement, music therapy and nutritional advice.

"It was said people with active depression couldn't concentrate, but we didn't find that at all. They practiced it pretty actively. They're often interested in getting treatment other than more medications, too. [Mindfulness] may give them a greater sense of self-efficacy," he says.

Women at high risk of depression who may want to avoid taking drugs during pregnancy may also benefit. Sona Dimidjian, PhD, associate professor at the University of Colorado, studied MBCT for pregnant women with a history of depression, finding significant improvement in self-reported depression symptoms and an 18 percent relapse rate six months postpartum, which compares favorably to the 30 percent found in an earlier study by collaborator Sherryl Goodman, PhD, professor at Emory University (Archives of Women's Mental Health, 2014). The women in her study were interested in learning mindfulness techniques and enjoyed the practice, she says, an attitude that may boost its success.

Mindfulness may also be helpful for children and adolescents. In a study by Filip Raes, PhD, of the University of Leuven and colleagues, 408 13- to 20-year-olds participated in a school-based MBCT program in Belgium. Of these, 16 percent reported some symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress six months post-training, versus 31 percent in a control group (Mindfulness, 2014). Randye Semple, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Southern California, who developed a modified MBCT protocol for children, says they have no problem mastering its concepts.

"The kids get it," Semple says. "They understand the activities, practice and talk about them; the group format is excellent for that."

Although her program doesn't involve sitting still for long periods, children are able to make mindfulness part of their lives, she says, in the same way adults can. "It doesn't take additional time to do it; it's just doing things in a different way."

Training issues

One issue limiting the growth of MBCT is access to training for clinicians. This is particularly true outside of urban areas, Segal says. In response, he and Dimidjian have developed a Web-based adaptation of the protocol called Mindful Mood Balance, which launched last fall. It includes a lesson on the "3-Minute Breathing Space," a compressed mindfulness practice. And, while studies on MBCT are promising, experts agree that more research is needed to determine, for example, how often and for how long people need to practice MBCT to reap its benefits, and how the practice plays out in people's daily activities.

"We also need to study the neural bases for mindfulness and clearly the field has been hampered by not having behavioral measures," says Richard Davidson, PhD, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. To the latter, he and a team of researchers at the center have come up with a new way to measure how well people learn mindfulness - not with brain scans, but in a person's skill in counting his or her own breaths, which he found was associated with more meta-awareness, less mind wandering and a better mood (Frontiers in Psychology, 2014).

Psychology can expect many more answers - and questions - given the growing popularity of mindfulness among researchers and the public. That increased attention may be a backlash against what Segal calls "the 500-channel universe" of constant distractions that's part of modern society. Mindfulness offers an oasis of peace.

"Meditation has penetrated our culture in a way that would have been inconceivable 20 years ago when I started to investigate it [as a potential treatment] for mood disorders," he says. "It resonates with people's desires to find a way of slowing down and returning to an inner psychological reality that is not as easily perturbed."

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Mindfulness holds promise for treating depression

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Depression is not only the most common mental illness, it's also one of the most tenacious. Up to 80 percent of people who experience a major depressive episode may relapse. Drugs may lose their effectiveness over time, if they work at all.

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Mindfulness meditations

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The Free Mindfulness Project - Free Resources

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Thank you to those who have collaborated with the Free Mindfulness Project by allowing us to share these resources. The focus of this site is mindfulness as practiced in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and other closely related approaches. All

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Researchers have found evidence that the brains of middle-aged, overweight people have the same amount of white matter - the connective tissue that allows the brain to communicate - as a lean person 10 years older.

If confirmed, the results suggest that obesity could play a role in how fast a person's brain ages, causing it to shrink faster than a lean person's would.

"As our brains age, they naturally shrink in size, but it isn't clear why people who are overweight have a greater reduction in the amount of white matter," said one of the team, Lisa Ronan from the University of Cambridge in the UK. "We can only speculate on whether obesity might in some way cause these changes or whether obesity is a consequence of brain changes."

The team examined the amount of white matter in 527 individuals between the ages of 20 and 87. They divided this data into groups depending on if the person was lean or overweight, based on their BMIs.

Comparing the amount of white matter for each group, the researchers found that the brains of the overweight individuals were roughly 10 years older than their lean counterparts. In other words, a 50-year-old overweight person had the same amount of white matter as a 60-year-old lean person.

The good news is that despite the drop in white matter, the researchers didn't find any signs of cognitive decline in the overweight group, which they analysed using a standard IQ test.

They also mention that the drop in white matter only occurred in middle-aged individuals - not younger - but they don't yet understand why.

"We're living in an ageing population, with increasing levels of obesity, so it's essential that we establish how these two factors might interact, since the consequences for health are potentially serious," said one of the team Paul Fletcher.

"The fact that we only saw these differences from middle-age onwards raises the possibility that we may be particularly vulnerable at this age. It will also be important to find out whether these changes could be reversible with weight loss, which may well be the case."

The results will need to be backed up by additional studies before we can figure out how obesity might be linked to the reduction of white matter in middle-aged brains, and there are some serious problems with BMI that could skew them slightly.

But this isn't the only study that reveals how lifestyle choices might have a negative impact on our brains after a certain age. Last month, an international team of researchers found that the typical 40-hour work week could cause cognitive decline in people over 40-years-old.

Interestingly, they also found that working less than 25 hours had a similarly negative mental impact, suggesting that each person has a 'sweet spot' between 25 and 30 hours where cognition is best.

Hopefully, as scanning technology gets more advanced, researchers will one day be able to understand how lifestyle affects our brains on both a cognitive and physical level.

The findings have been published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

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Brains of Overweight People Look 10 Years Older Than Those of Lean People

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Researchers have found evidence that the brains of middle-aged, overweight people have the same amount of white matter - the connective tissue that allows the brain to communicate - as a lean person 10 years older. If confirmed, the results suggest that obesity could play a role in how fast a person's brain ages, causing it to shrink faster than a lean person's would.

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Jupiter's Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the Solar System. Located in Jupiter's lower atmosphere, this storm is so big that you could fit two or three Earths inside of it. And this 'perpetual hurricane' has been raging for centuries.

Now, a team of scientists at Boston University believe that it might just offer an explanation for one of the biggest mysteries about Jupiter.

The temperature of Jupiter's upper atmosphere is a curious thing. Based on Jupiter's distance from the Sun and what we know about how the Sun heats planets, it should only be about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).

But regions of Jupiter's atmosphere can range from 800 to 1340 degrees Fahrenheit (427 to 727 degrees Celsius). And though scientists know that Jupiter's giant auroras could boost the temperature a little, these glowing swirls of electrically charged particles aren't enough to explain the heat and how it's distributed across the planet.

And Jupiter isn't the only planet with mysterious heat. Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all experience unusually high temperatures in their atmospheres.

"We call this the energy crisis nowadays, because it's been unresolved since the 1970s," James O'Donoghue told National Geographic.
The great red hotspot
Using the NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility in Hawaii, the team of scientists located a hot spot conveniently lingering above the Great Red Spot.

They studied light emitted by a form of hydrogen called H3+ in the upper reaches of Jupiter's atmosphere to figure out the temperature of the area around it.

"We could see almost immediately that our maximum temperatures at high altitudes were above the Great Red Spot far below - a weird coincidence or a major clue?" O'Donoghue said in a Boston University press release.

About 500 miles (804 km) above the Great Red Spot, temperatures rise above 2400 degrees Fahrenheit (1315 degrees Celsius), which is hotter than the hottest lava on Earth.

The team believes that acoustic (sound) waves rising from the storm are crashing into Jupiter's upper atmosphere, shaking its atoms and heating it up in the process.

"A good analogy for this is it's pretty much like stirring a cup of coffee with a spoon," O'Donoghue told the Verge. "If you're stirring it clockwise, but then you suddenly stir it anti-clockwise, there will be a lot of sloshing around... And that sloshing around, you can actually hear that. It indicates there are actually some sound waves coming from that sloshing."

Because it's unlikely that the Great Red Spot is warming the entire planet, this wouldn't entirely solve the mystery of Jupiter's heat. And Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Centre told NPR that although these observations are intriguing, they should be viewed with caution since methane can produce similar signals to that of the H3+ molecules.
Back on Earth
But if these scientists are right, what we learn can teach us a lot about other planets - including our own.

According to the National Geographic, similar processes happen on Earth. The atmosphere above hurricanes and tsunamis here can be slightly warmer. Air moving over large mountain ranges like the Andes mountains might crash into rocks, sending acoustic waves into the upper atmosphere and heating it up.

"Jupiter is like a giant laboratory for extreme physics," O'Donoghue said. "It's teaching us how storms interact with the upper atmosphere in a way that is difficult to measure on Earth."

And with NASA's Juno spacecraft venturing closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft before it, scientists expect to get an even better look at the Great Red Spot, possibly getting a better idea of what caused the storm in the first place.

The results were published in the journal .
This article was originally published by Business Insider. More from Business Insider:

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Jupiter's Great Red Spot Could Help Us Solve One of The Biggest Mysteries of The Solar System

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Jupiter's Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the Solar System. Located in Jupiter's lower atmosphere, this storm is so big that you could fit two or three Earths inside of it. And this 'perpetual hurricane' has been raging for centuries.

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BIOS may refer to any of the following:

1. Short for Basic Input/Output System, the BIOS (pronounced bye-oss) is a ROM chip found on motherboards that allows you to access and set up your computer system at the most basic level. In the picture below, is an example of what a BIOS chip may look like on your computer motherboard. In this case, this is a picture of an early AMIBIOS, a type of BIOS manufactured by AMI.

The BIOS includes instructions on how to load basic computer hardware and includes a test referred to as a POST (Power On Self Test) that helps verify the computer meets requirements to boot up properly. If the computer does not pass the POST, you will receive a combination of beeps indicating what is malfunctioning within the computer.

The four main functions of a PC BIOS

POST - Test the computer hardware and make sure no errors exist before loading the operating system. Additional information on the POST can be found on our POST and Beep Codes page.

Bootstrap Loader - Locate the operating system. If a capable operating system is located, the BIOS will pass control to it.

BIOS drivers - Low-level drivers that give the computer basic operational control over your computer's hardware.

BIOS or CMOS Setup - Configuration program that allows you to configure hardware settings including system settings such as computer passwords, time, and date.

2. When referring to a person BIO, BIO's is short for biography and is a term used to describe a brief description of a person. A short biography or description of people who have affected the computer industry can be found on our computer people section.

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What is BIOS (Basic Input/Output System)?

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BIOS may refer to any of the following: 1. Short for Basic Input/Output System, the BIOS (pronounced bye-oss) is a ROM chip found on motherboards that allows you to access and set up your computer system at the most basic level.

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Here at National Geographic Kids, we love fur-ocious felines! So get ready to roar with these TEN tiger facts - they're fierce!
Article continues below...

Tiger facts

1) Tigers are the largest wild cats in the world. Adults can weigh up to 363kg - that's about the same as ten ten year olds! - and measure up to 3.3m!

2) Tigers are carnivores, eating only meat. They mainly feed on large mammals such as deer, wild pigs, antelope and buffalo.

Did you know that we have a FREE downloadable tiger primary resource? Great for teachers, homeschoolers and parents alike!

3) Tigers are solitary hunters, and generally search for food alone at night. They quietly stalk their prey until they are close enough to pounce - then they kill their victim with a bite to the neck or back of the head. Ouch!

4) Unlike most members of the cat family, tigers like water. They are good swimmers and often cool off in pools or streams.

5) When a tiger wants to be heard, you'll know about it, gang - because their roar can be heard as far as three kilometres away.

6) They may be big and heavy, but tigers are by no means slow movers. In fact, at full speed they can reach up to 65km/h!

7) These fierce felines have walked the earth for a long time. Fossil remains of tigers found in parts of China are believed to be 2 million years old. Yikes!

8) Every tiger in the world is unique - no two tigers have the same pattern of stripes.

9) Today, there are five subspecies of tiger: Bengal, South China, Indochinese, Sumatran and Siberian. Sadly, three subspecies of tiger have become extinct - Caspian, Bali and Javan.

10) Less than 100 years ago, tigers could be found throughout Asia. Sadly, hunting and habitat loss have put populations at risk, and today their range has been reduced to around 7% of its former size. That's why we need to do all we can to protect these beautiful beasts!

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES UK

You can check out some roarsome animal artworks - including one of a majestic tiger - at Tate Kids - you might even pick up some animal facts, too!

Love our tiger facts? Let us know by leaving a comment, below!

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10 tiger facts! | National Geographic Kids

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Here at National Geographic Kids, we love fur-ocious felines! So get ready to roar with these TEN tiger facts - they're fierce! Article continues below... 1) Tigers are the largest wild cats in the world. Adults can weigh up to 363kg - that's about the same as ten ten year olds!

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BBC Europe correspondent Matthew Price has been exploring the corridors of power in Brussels, and here he explains what each EU institution does. Come on a video tour with him.

European Commission

There are 28 EU commissioners - one from each member state - and each one focuses on a policy area, for example justice and home affairs, or the EU internal market.

The Commission's job is to draft EU laws and act as "guardian of the treaties". It enforces EU rules, and if a member state delays enacting an agreed policy, or simply refuses to comply, then the Commission will warn them and if necessary pursue them at the EU Court of Justice. The Commission can levy fines or suspend EU funding.

New EU laws, or revisions to existing ones, come about usually after requests from governments, Euro MPs or lobby groups. There is often pressure from all three areas for the Commission to take action.

The Commission has a staff of about 33,000. The new Commission President is former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.

Council of Ministers

Usually this institution is simply called "the Council". It represents the governments of the member states; the ministers meet regularly according to their policy area.

EU laws become part of national legislation after detailed negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament. They examine draft laws from the Commission and make recommendations, so the final text is a compromise - often the result of numerous amendments.

Voting in the Council is weighted according to a country's size and economic power, so for example Germany has a bigger weight than Luxembourg. It is called qualified majority voting (QMV). Germany, France, Italy and the UK have 29 votes each, while Malta has three.

But for taxation or foreign policy issues, such as trade agreements or sanctions, unanimity is required.

EU summits are meetings of a separate institution - the "European Council" - that is, when all the heads of government meet. It is their job to set the EU's main priorities and overall policy direction. Their chairman is European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who took office in 2009 and will step down in December 2014.

European Parliament

The Lisbon Treaty, signed in 2007, gave the European Parliament more powers than it had previously.

It is the only directly elected EU institution, and Europe's biggest elections yet took place in May 2014.

The parliament has grown because 13 countries - mostly ex-communist states in Central and Eastern Europe - have joined since 2004.

There are 751 MEPs. Germany has the most - 96, France 74, the UK and Italy 73 each, and the three smallest countries - Estonia, Luxembourg and Malta - have six each.

A majority of MEPs want the parliament to be permanently based in Brussels, to stop the expensive monthly shuttle to Strasbourg, where the full "plenary" sessions are held. But France wants to keep the Strasbourg sessions and switching to a "single seat" in Brussels would require treaty change.

MEPs now have "co-decision" powers in nearly all policy areas, meaning that they shape EU laws on an equal basis with the Council. Before the Lisbon Treaty they had little influence over agriculture, fisheries or the EU budget.

European External Action Service

The EU's new diplomatic service was one of the key innovations under the Lisbon Treaty, intended to give the EU "one voice" internationally.

The EEAS is led by Baroness Ashton from the UK, a Labour Party peer, who will step down in December 2014.

In 2012 the budget for the service was 489m euros (£422m; $649m), and it has a staff of 3,500 (1,500 in HQ and 2,000 in delegations).

There is much dispute about whether the EEAS has made EU foreign policy any more coherent. A European Parliament report this year called the service top-heavy and slow to react to crises. But Catherine Ashton's office argues that the EEAS has responded efficiently to emergencies in Africa and has achieved successes elsewhere, such as the April 2013 Serbia-Kosovo deal, reached after long, gruelling talks.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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The BBC's Europe correspondent Matthew Price looks behind the scenes at EU institutions in Brussels and explains how they work.

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magic maths imagination

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Four Dimensional Maths: Things to See and Hear in the Fourth Dimension - with Matt Parker

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It's what I said.Am i walking the talk?

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content and language integrated learning

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Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): Definition.

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CLIL is Content and Language Integrated Learning. This is a teacher training course for teachers of English and other subjects who might be transitioning from teaching in one language to teaching in two languages in English language schools.

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Maybe this link could be interesting to the maths teachers:

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Maybe this link could be interesting to the maths teachers:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopJEsKcUoU

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CLIL Glossary

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Networking session your questions