How Humans Change the Atmosphere

This exercise is designed to introduce students to the idea that human activities can alter the chemistry or gaseous composition of the atmosphere, resulting in a variety of impacts on human health and the environment. Discussion topics include indoor pollution and local (point- or non-point source) pollution. Students will perform an activity in which they use an online resource from the Environnmental Protection Agency (EPA) to research point-source polluters in the area where they live. They will identify facility names, addresses, potential environmental concerns, generate maps showing the locations of these sources, and answer questions about the information they uncover. Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, High school

Toxic Chemicals (title provided or enhanced by cataloger)

This lesson introduces students to the concept of toxic chemicals. Topics include a definition of the term 'toxic', factors that can affect the potential for a chemical to be harmful, and a brief overview of federal agencies that have authority to regulate chemicals in the United States. The lesson includes a a five-part activity in which students use the internet to investigate various toxic chemicals, pollution issues (releases), and some studies on the effects of chemical pollutants in the human body. They will also use data from their household inventories made in the previous exercise (Home Chemicals) to research less hazardous alternatives for each of the products they listed. Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, High school

The Atmosphere

This exercise is intended to reinforce the importance of Earth's atmosphere to living organisms. Topics include our bodies' interactions with the atmosphere; its composition and structure; and natural changes in the atmosphere (weather). Students will perform an actvity in which they are asked to observe and record weather conditions for four days, answer questions about their observations, and respond to a series of questions on general atmospheric characteristics. They will also learn how to convert temperature values from degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit. Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, High school

Acid Rain

Due to the presence of dissolved gases such as carbon dioxide, rainfall is naturally acidic. The release of other gases and chemicals such as sulfur dioxide during the combustion of coal and oil can cause rainfall to become even more acidic, sometimes to the point of toxicity. In this activity, students will measure the pH of local rainfall to see what effect these gases have in their region. They will also check an online resource to see how the releases of acid rain-causing chemicals have varied over the past 20 years, and answer questions about the information they uncover. Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, High school

Soil Composition

Soil is essential for life on Earth. It is needed for food, air, clothing and so much more. Discussion topics include the terms 'soil', 'dirt', and 'sediment', factors affecting the formation of soils, soil horizons, and the twelve orders of soils. In a hands-on activity, students will collect soil samples from three different locations, use online resources to determine texture and particle makeup, and record their observations. Educational levels: Undergraduate lower division, High school

Curry-Typed Semantics in Typed Predicate Logic

Various questions arise in semantic analysis concerning the nature of types. These questions include whether we need types in a semantic theory, and if so, whether some version of simple type theory (STT, Church, 1940) is adequate or whether a richer more flexible theory is required to capture our semantic intuitions. Propositions and propositional attitudes can be represented in an essentially untyped first-order language, provided a sufficiently rich language of terms is adopted. In the absence of rigid typing, care needs to be taken to avoid the paradoxes, for example by constraining what kinds of expressions are to be interpreted as propositions (Turner, 1992). But the notion of type is ontologically appealing. In some respects, STT seems overly restrictive for natural language semantics. For this reason it is appropriate to consider a system of types that is more flexible than STT, such as a Curry-style typing (Curry & Feys, 1958). Care then has to be taken to avoid the logical paradoxes. Here we show how such an account, based on the Property Theory with Curry Types (PTCT, Fox & Lappin, 2005), can be formalised within Typed Predicate Logic (TPL, Turner, 2009). This presentation provides a clear distinction between the classes of types that are being used to (i) avoid paradoxes (ii) allow predicative polymorphic types. TPL itself provides a means of expressing PTCT in a uniform language

Both symbolic and embodied representations contribute to spatial language processing: Evidence from younger and older adults

Building on earlier neuropsychological work, we adopted a novel individual differences approach to examine the relationship between spatial language and a wide range of both verbal and nonverbal abilities. Three new measures were developed for the assessment of spatial language processing: spatial naming, spatial verbal memory, and verbal comprehension in spatial perspective taking. Results from a sample of young adults revealed significant correlations between performance on the spatial language tasks and performance on both the analogous (non-spatial) verbal measures as well as on the (non-verbal) visual-spatial measures. Visual-spatial abilities, however, were more predictive of spatial language processing than verbal abilities. Furthermore, results from a sample of older adults revealed impairments in visual-spatial tasks and on spatial verbal memory. The results support dual process accounts of meaning, and provide further evidence of the close connection between the language of space and non-linguistic visual-spatial cognition