The Lady With the Lamp
National Nurses Week is May 6-12 ending on Florence Nightingale's birthday.
By ADVANCE staff
Test your knowledge about the founder of modern day nursing with some of these lesser known facts:
Nightingale's father was a pioneer in epidemiology and tutored Florence in mathematics/statistics, an area she excelled in later in her career.
A gifted statistician in her own right, Nightingale was fond of using pie charts when presenting her statistics.
Among many studies, Nightingale did a statistical analysis of sanitation in India.
Nightingale was the first female to be elected to Royal Statistical Society.
Florence Nightingale defied her extremely wealthy family and upper class conventions in choosing to become a nurse in 1845.
Nightingale not only fought for better medical care, but also championed social issues such as reform of the British Poor Laws.
Nightingale's first published work was on a German Lutheran religious community in 1851.
Most famous for her care of soldiers during the Crimean War, Nightingale entered Turkey in 1854 with 38 nurses she personally trained.
In Nightingale's first winter at Scutari in the Crimea, the death toll rose with more than 4,077 soldiers dying.
Nightingale's first evidence-based practice research involved collecting evidence that poor living conditions were the cause of most soldier deaths during the Crimean War.
The Times of London is widely considered responsible for labeling Nightingale "the lady with the lamp."
The U.S. government consulted Nightingale on setting up military hospitals during the Civil War.
As a woman, Nightingale could not serve on the British Royal Commission on the Health of the Army even though she played a critical role in its formation.
What is now the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, part of King's College London, was established by her to train nurses in 1860.
Notes on Nursing also sold well as a popular book in the 1860s.
In 1867, poet Henry Longfellow's poem "Santa Filomena" further ensured Nightingale's image with the lines, "Lo! In that hour of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom."
In the 1870s, Nightingale trained Linda Richards, the first formally trained American nurse.
Nightingale died in 1910, but her family declined to have her buried in Westminster Abbey with kings, queens and other English nobility. She is buried in the churchyard at St. Margaret's Church, East Wellow, Hampshire, England.
Nightingale's maternal grandfather was the British abolitionist Will Smith.
Nightingale is named after her birthplace, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Italy).
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Job Postings for Students and Graduates!
Don’t forget about the MSCTC Career & Placement Services website @ http://careers.minnesota.edu/!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Scientists on their "life-changing" books
From New Scientist:
Scientists on their "life-changing" books
By David Pescovitz on Book
I always enjoy hearing about the reading habits of people who are much smarter and more interesting than me. New Scientist has a feature package where seventeen big name scientists recommend books that they considered "life-changing." Here is the list of the scientists and the books they suggest, with each title linking to Amazon. Follow the link at the bottom of the post to the New Scientist article where you can read the scientists' thoughts on their picks. From New Scientist:
1. Farthest North - Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble - V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation - Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy - Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland - Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three... Infinity - Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science - Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions - Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist - Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician’s Apology - Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard - Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior - Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes - Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878-1910 - Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape - Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
17. King Solomon's Ring - Marion Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist
Link
Scientists on their "life-changing" books
By David Pescovitz on Book
I always enjoy hearing about the reading habits of people who are much smarter and more interesting than me. New Scientist has a feature package where seventeen big name scientists recommend books that they considered "life-changing." Here is the list of the scientists and the books they suggest, with each title linking to Amazon. Follow the link at the bottom of the post to the New Scientist article where you can read the scientists' thoughts on their picks. From New Scientist:
1. Farthest North - Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble - V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation - Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy - Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland - Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three... Infinity - Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science - Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions - Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist - Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician’s Apology - Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard - Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior - Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes - Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878-1910 - Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape - Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
17. King Solomon's Ring - Marion Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist
Link
Friday, April 18, 2008
Earth Day April 22
On April 22, 1970, 20 million people across America celebrated the first Earth Day. It was a time when cities were buried under their own smog and polluted rivers caught fire. Now Earth Day is celebrated annually around the globe. Through the combined efforts of the U.S. government, grassroots organizations, and citizens like you, what started as a day of national environmental recognition has evolved into a world-wide campaign to protect our global environment. Learn about the history of Earth Day and check out the ways EPA's Earth Day Web site which offers you many tips and fun ways to protect the environment and your health every day.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Historic U.S. trove goes digital
From C/NET.com Historic U.S. trove goes digital: Just in time for cherry blossom season in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress on Saturday plans to open a new exhibit, called the Library of Congress Experience, at its historic Thomas Jefferson Building--and online at a new Web site, MyLOC.gov.
At about two dozen touch-screen kiosks sprinkled throughout otherwise analog exhibits, visitors will be able to zoom in on pages from historic bibles, "flip" through books from Thomas Jefferson's vast library, learn about the ornate artwork that adorns the Library's Great Hall, and view how founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution morphed from draft to draft. (The dead-tree counterparts are on view, too, in dimly lit, protective cases.)
To be sure, interactive museum exhibits are nothing new, and the LOC has already crossed over into the digital world with efforts like uploading vintage photographs to Flickr. But Librarian of Congress James Billington told reporters this week that this exhibit is "unlike anything the Library of Congress has undertaken in the past," allowing visitors to see "stunning detail up close that we've only had a general idea of before."
At about two dozen touch-screen kiosks sprinkled throughout otherwise analog exhibits, visitors will be able to zoom in on pages from historic bibles, "flip" through books from Thomas Jefferson's vast library, learn about the ornate artwork that adorns the Library's Great Hall, and view how founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution morphed from draft to draft. (The dead-tree counterparts are on view, too, in dimly lit, protective cases.)
To be sure, interactive museum exhibits are nothing new, and the LOC has already crossed over into the digital world with efforts like uploading vintage photographs to Flickr. But Librarian of Congress James Billington told reporters this week that this exhibit is "unlike anything the Library of Congress has undertaken in the past," allowing visitors to see "stunning detail up close that we've only had a general idea of before."
Friday, April 4, 2008
April 4: 1968 : Dr. King is assassinated
From our Friends at the History Channel
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally
shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was
in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way
to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal
cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis
hospital. He was 39 years old.
In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became
increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in
America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue,
including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in
March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated
African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest
march led by King ended in violence and the death of an
African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in
early April to lead another demonstration.
On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've
got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me
now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go
up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised
Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight
that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."
Read the rest of the story and see the video at the History Channel
To read more about Civil Rights here are couple more links
Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement
Freedom Riders website chronology, extremely detailed
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally
shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was
in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way
to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal
cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis
hospital. He was 39 years old.
In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became
increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in
America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue,
including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in
March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated
African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest
march led by King ended in violence and the death of an
African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in
early April to lead another demonstration.
On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've
got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me
now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go
up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised
Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight
that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."
Read the rest of the story and see the video at the History Channel
To read more about Civil Rights here are couple more links
Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement
Freedom Riders website chronology, extremely detailed
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Search tomorrow’s web, today! A must see!!!!
About gDay™ technology
The core technology that powers gDay™ is MATE™ (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).
Using MATE’s™ machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques developed in Google’s Sydney offices, we can construct elements of the future.
Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.
We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow’s share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they’re written!
To rank these future pages in order of relevance, gDay™ uses a statistical extrapolation of a page’s future PageRank, called SageRank.
gDay™ and MATE™ were developed in Google’s Sydney R&D centre. Click here to apply for a job
Oh and Happy April's Fools Day
The core technology that powers gDay™ is MATE™ (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).
Using MATE’s™ machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques developed in Google’s Sydney offices, we can construct elements of the future.
Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.
We can use this technique to predict almost anything on the web – tomorrow’s share price movements, sports results or news events. Plus, using language regression analysis, Google can even predict the actual wording of blogs and newspaper columns, 24 hours before they’re written!
To rank these future pages in order of relevance, gDay™ uses a statistical extrapolation of a page’s future PageRank, called SageRank.
gDay™ and MATE™ were developed in Google’s Sydney R&D centre. Click here to apply for a job
Oh and Happy April's Fools Day
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