Turmoil at College for Deaf Reflects Broader Debate

Turmoil at College for Deaf Reflects Broader Debate
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, The New York Times, October 21, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 — Ask Joshua Walker, a sophomore at Gallaudet University here, about technology like cochlear implants that helps many deaf people hear, and he is dismissive.

“In some way, you’re saying deaf people are not good enough, they need to be fixed,” signed Mr. Walker, 20. “I don’t need to be fixed. My brain works fine.”

Protests over the selection of a new president, Jane K. Fernandes, have thrown Gallaudet, the nation’s only liberal arts university for the deaf, into turmoil. But the clash is also illuminating differences over the future of deaf culture writ large, and focusing attention on a politically charged debate about what it means to be deaf in the 21st century.
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Climate Models

Expect a Warmer, Wetter World this Century, Computer Models Agree
National Center for Atmospheric Research, October 19, 2006

Recent episodes of deadly heat in the United States and Europe, long dry spells across the U.S. West, and heavy bursts of rain and snow across much of North America and Eurasia hint at longer-term changes to come, according to a new study based on several of the world's most advanced climate models. Much of the world will face an enhanced risk of heat waves, intense precipitation, and other weather extremes, conclude scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Texas Tech University, and Australia's Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre.

The new study, "Going to the Extremes," will appear in the December issue of the journal Climatic Change.

Many previous studies have looked at how average temperature or rainfall might change in the next century as greenhouse gases increase. However, the new research looks more specifically at how weather extremes could change.
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Vermont Island Features Oldest Coral Reef

Vermont Island Features Oldest Coral Reef
By WILSON RING, Associated Press, October 21, 2006

To the uninitiated, the flat rock slabs found across the center of this island at the northern end of Lake Champlain appear to be nothing more than giant stones.

But the rocks offer a history of the last half billion years of this area, which was washed by a warm equatorial sea and saw long-extinct plants and animals congregate in what is believed to be the earliest ancestor of modern coral reefs.
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