Doctors Refusing to Treat Patients Who Won't Vaccinate Their Kids

Article: Some doctors in LA are refusing to treat patients whose parents won't let them get vaccinated for measles, rubella and other contagious and easily vaccinated diseases. The vast majority of parents get their kids vaccinated and thus stop them from getting potentially deadly diseases. But some parents refuse the immunization because they believe that vaccinations could cause their kids to get other diseases, like autism. The medical establishment has totally debunked the theory that vaccinations lead to autism; parents who continue to believe this are thought to be misinformed. The risk posed to kids who do not get vaccinated is thought to be far greater. Therefore, doctors are starting to refuse to treat patients who refuse the vaccine. Other doctors say this isn't a good idea because they then lose the opportunity to convince parents to change their minds. This has become increasingly important lately with the outbreak of measles. What do you think is the best approach for doctors?

Israel: Bringing Clean Water

Article: Engineering students at Tel Aviv University decided to build a system that would provide hundreds of students in a Tanzanian high school with clean drinking water. Find Tanzania on a map. Recently, the students visited Tanzania to build the system, led by the student club, Engineers without Borders. Here's the background:

In Northern Tanzania, the local drinking water is contaminated with extremely high levels of fluoride, causing the local children to have skeletal deformities and severe dental problems. The Israeli students built and installed a rainwater harvesting and  filtration system that allows 400 students and staff members at the local high school to drink and cook with clean, safe water. They also trained school officials and volunteers on how to operate and maintain the system, and they kept in touch with local residents to ensure that any problems would be worked out. The team created the system with the help of Israeli rainwater harvesting expert Amir Yechieli. The school's principal wrote the team a letter of thanks, saying,"Thanks to this project, we are now one family with you. Let us maintain our relationship more and more.” In this way, the Tel Aviv students were not only ambassadors for Israel in Africa, but saving lives! The team plans to return to build another filter for the village's medical center and to install solar panels.

See this video on the topic.  

What would you design to help people? How would you build it? 

Climbing Yosemite Without Ropes

Watch this video, a great follow up to our current event about Israel winning the Innovation Award for the robo printer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH3jMSchI90

Article: Quite recently, two men broke the record as being the first ever to climb to the tip of Yosemite's granite El Capitan, 3,000 feet above its base, without ropes to catch their fall. If they had slipped and fallen, they would have died. The climb was straight up, on stone as smooth as glass and as a straight as your bedroom wall. It is the hardest rock climb in the world. It took them years to train and weeks to scale. They even slept on the wall! At the end, the two climbers said that their hands would take weeks to recover. Their skin was so worn down, they had used glue to keep the skin on. Click here for pictures.

Israeli Robo-Printer Wins International Prize

Article: a Jerusalem start-up company has won the top technology prize for its robo printer, beating out industry giants and thousands of other products at the Las Vegas electronics show. The Israeli portable, palm-sized printer works by running across a page and printing out text exactly like a regular printer would do. But instead of loading paper into a feed, the content is loaded directly onto the paper. It prints in about the same time as a regular printer--about 40 seconds. It has a rechargeable battery with an off-on switch, can be connected to a computer and can print on any size piece of paper. 

The Innovation Award is extremely coveted in the industry. The Israeli company can now put a sticker on its products which says it is the winner of the Innovation Award. This is especially exciting for the small Israeli start-up. It was expensive for them to come to the contest--they had to rent a booth, buy plane tickets and hotels, hire PR, etc. When asked about the award, one of the Israelis said, "Beyond the honor this award brings to the Israeli electronics industry, it also helps out the other Israeli companies at CES by drawing attention to Israeli innovation, and to Israel as an advanced, technologically advanced, country.” What do you think? How is this good for spreading Israel's story? How is this product good for people in general? 

Watch a video about it here. 

When Is A Good Age to Get Married?

Article: In Nepal, there is a custom for parents to marry off their boys around age 9. The law says you cannot get married before age 18, but the law is not always followed, particularly for Hindus who are of the lowest caste. The marry off their children young because they cannot afford to take care of them and the dowries are lower the younger the child. What is a dowry? What are types of dowries we see in the Western world? (Bride's family pays for wedding? Wedding gifts?) Often kids around age 9 will get married, then go back to live with their families. When they are around 12, the girls go to live with the boy's family, often serving as servants for the mother-in-law. The boys drop out of school and start working. When you ask the kids, they say they don't want to get married so young but do not have a choice. This has been the tradition for generations. What do you think of this? Does your family have any traditions that you do not like? If so, how would you try to change them?

Drones and Satellites Monitoring Old Jewish Cemetaries

Today is a crazy busy day at work, so instead of writing out a synopsis of an article, I'm going to provide an article to discuss that isn't too long for you to read on your own. It is about how using drones and satellites, we can now monitor Jewish cemeteries in lands that no longer have any Jews. 

Ask your kids: what would you want to monitor (the condition of the cemetery, changes to the cemetery, etc.); how are cemeteries important ways to learn about history? What can you discover from reading tombstones and visiting graves? How do Jews mark a grave they have visited? (with a rock) Why?  

Who's a Better Teacher: A Person or a Computer?

Article: A classroom in New York is experimenting with a computer being the teacher! In the 6th grade math class at Boody High School in Brooklyn, classrooms are blended. This means computers choose which students sit together, figure out what the children know and how well they know it, choose what problems the children should work on and give teachers which lesson to teach next.

Here's how it works: When 6th graders arrive in class, they log onto their laptop or check a computer at the front of the room. It tells them where to sit and what kind of lesson they'll do. A computer voice "teaches" them at their various stations. However the students do answering questions decides where they will sit and what they will learn the next day.

So far researchers don't know if this makes students learn math better. Some say it only works if the teacher and computer work together. But some teachers are letting the computers do all the work, and so the kids aren't learning. Teachers like that it reduces their workload, especially for grading papers and deciding homework. But others say it reduces creativity. What do you think of this style of teaching?