The articles here are reproduced with kind permission by the ABC. They are available for use in the classroom. I have added useful activities which can be used with ability-appropriate children, regardless of year level.
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Rotary Club volunteers seek old bikes to make homemade wheelchairs for disabled children
By Thomas Mackenzie-Forbes
Photo: More than a dozen volunteers help convert old push-bikes into wheelchairs every Saturday on the Gold Coast. (ABC News)
Gold Coast volunteers who convert old bicycles into wheelchairs for disabled children overseas are feeling deflated as they struggle to source old bikes.
Members of the Surfers Sunrise Rotary Club said there was an unprecedented demand for their homemade wheelchairs in Third World countries.
Project organiser Daryl Sanderson said the 600 push-bikes donated to them last year were now gone.
“It takes two bikes to make one wheelchair so we are now desperate to get bikes and it’s a problem for us,” he said.
Every Saturday at a shed in Arundel, on the northern Gold Coast, more than a dozen volunteers convert old push-bikes into wheelchairs.
Rotary Club member Bob Harrison said the helpers enjoyed the work and the companionship.
“The volunteers that come here on Saturday morning, they just can’t get here quick enough and they don’t want to go home,” he said.
Photo: More than 550 people are involved in the international operation. (ABC News)
The program started 18 years ago when a Rotary Club member travelled to Fiji and saw children immobilised by their disability.
Since then more than 7,000 wheelchairs have been built and shipped to 31 countries including Vietnam, Vanuatu, Cambodia and Nigeria.
Mr Sanderson said he had seen first-hand the impact the wheelchairs had on peoples’ lives.
“Having been to quite a few countries and just seeing the look on the kids’ faces and they have nothing at all,” he said.
“So I get a lot of pleasure out of that.”
Prisoners lend a helping hand to the project
There are 550 people involved in the international operation, including prisoners from the Palen Creek Correctional Facility at Strathpine, who help build wheelchairs and source bicycles.
Mr Sanderson said their help was invaluable.
“They make 30 a month for us,” he said.
“They also came last week and brought us five bikes so they appreciate the problems we’ve had as well.”
The wheelchair design has changed over the years with air-filled tyres now replaced with foam tubing, which makes the chairs puncture proof.
The latest shipment of 208 wheelchairs recently left the Gold Coast in a container, bound for Sri Lanka.
Carol Spinney: the man behind Sesame Street’s Big Bird
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By: Wendy Zukerman and Jason Di Rosso
Image: Carol Spinney, left, has played Big Bird since Sesame Street began in 1969.
For over four decades, Carol Spinney has given life to the Big Bird character on Sesame Street. He spoke to The Final Cut about his continuing deep connection with the puppet and what life is like inside the suit.
‘He always wanted to make a big silly bird,’ says puppeteer Carol Spinney, referring to Jim Henson’s desire for Sesame Street‘s Big Bird to be ‘a big goofy guy’.
While Henson created the bird, Spinney has played him since the children’s show began in 1969. And as the show ‘unveiled itself to us’, Spinney says, he developed different ideas about who Big Bird would be. ‘I began to feel he shouldn’t be just a big goofy guy hanging around the kids. He should be a child who is just learning. He’s just big for his age.’
Spinney, who also plays Oscar the Grouch, is incredibly sentimental about the puppets, a fact highlighted in a new documentary about his life: I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story.
In one scene, Spinney sees his feathered costume in tatters on the ground and becomes distraught. Fans had tried to steal a keepsake and destroyed the puppet in the process. ‘I couldn’t believe they would destroy the thing just to get a few souvenirs,’ says Spinney. ‘It was like seeing your child ripped apart, fallen on the floor.
‘I never realised how I felt about him, until that moment,’ he says. ‘It was like, “Look what they’ve done to my little boy.” It was such a shock. I was so heart and crushed. And I burst into tears.’
Image: Carol Spinney with his grouchier character, Oscar the Grouch. (Supplied)
Spinney says his connection to Big Bird was more nuanced than the feeling most puppeteers have towards their puppets. ‘Most puppet shows are the same show done over and over at various venues.
‘In Big Bird’s case, each day he had a different new script and he was in almost every show, so I felt his development in my heart and mind. Therefore my feeling about him was far more internal.’
His sentimentality even surprised Henson. Spinney recalls filming a scene in the ‘early days of Sesame Street‘ with Henson—who played Burt, Ernie and Kermit, among others. Ernie was on the floor, right where Henson needed to stand.
‘So he kicked it to the side,’ remembers Spinney. ‘After the scene I picked Ernie up and said, “Are you alright after that bad man just kicked you?”‘As Spinney recalls, Henson replied, ‘Oh that’s funny, are you sentimental about the puppets?”I said, “Well yeah, they’re kind of real to me,” while Henson said, “To me they’re just tools.”
‘I don’t want to make him cold,’ says Spinney. ‘He was the most wonderful, lovely man. But I just see things very sentimentally. They’re all to me kind of real characters.’
Image: Carol Spinney as Big Bird on the set of Sesame Street with Snuffleupagus (Supplied)
Even when Sesame Street began over four decades ago, it was remarkably modern. As Professor Marsha Kinder wrote in her book on Kids Media Culture, ‘the show depended on up-to-date education research’ and used advanced technology such as computer animation to distinguish itself from cheap educational programs.
During the Cold War, some accused Sesame Street of perpetuating communist ideals. ‘The young mother who sits her child in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street might be better off hiring Fidel Castro as a baby sitter,’ wrote one author.
Only a few years ago Fox News accused Kermit of being a red frog in green clothing. ‘Some people thought we were communists,’ laughs Spinney. ‘I don’t know why!
‘When we first went on the air it was the first place where there was a community, a small village of Sesame Street, of any colour. Everybody was equal. Some people disliked that,’ he says.
Spinney, now 81, no longer plays Big Bird. ‘It’s very physically demanding,’ he says. One hand is raised in the bird’s head to work the mouth and eyes. ‘It’s like playing a whole basketball game physically, because we do an eight or nine hours a day.
‘Sometimes I’ll get in and out of the bird probably 18 times in a few hours.’
Still, he says that upon emerging from the costume, Big Bird ‘always looks to me more exhausted than I ever looked’.
These days, Spinney’s long time understudy, Matt Vogel, dons the feathers. Vogel has been waiting in the wings, quite literally, for nearly 20 years. ‘He’s a very patient man,’ says Spinney.
Still, he continues to voice Big Bird. ‘You can’t tell that I’m not doing it because it’s the same voice,’ he says. ‘I still am Big Bird.’
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31 July, 2015 12:33PM AWST
Catching honey possums in Torndirrup National Park
By Karla Arnall
Researchers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) are spending their mornings chasing down the tiny marsupials to study their sugary diets.
UWA researchers are 12 months into a five-year study of honey possums in the bushland surrounding Albany. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Starting at dawn, dozens of traps are checked for the marsupials. Despite their strong numbers, trapping the tiny creatures can prove challenging. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
UWA honours student Bianca Theyer checks a ‘honey possum hotel’ for temporary guests. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Feeding solely on nectar and pollen, honey possums play a crucial role in pollinating native plants in the south west. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
“They’re quite important for pollination, so we need to figure out what they’re feeding on and potentially pollinating within the park,” said Bianca. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Weighing in between 7 to 16 grams, honey possums consume around 7 ml of nectar a day. It’s equivalent to 50 litres of soft drink for a human. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Working quickly, researchers swab the marsupial’s long nose with glycerine jelly. The pollen samples collected reveal what plants they have been feeding on. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
“There are some plants out here that are known to be threatened. Honey possums could be extremely important to the ongoing survival of those plants,” said PHD student Dave Tunbridge. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
All trapped honey possums are recorded and have tiny tags affixed to their ears before being released back into the bush. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
They’re given a drink of sugar syrup for their trouble. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Honey possums react differently to being in the spotlight. Some are more perplexed than others. (ABC Great Southern: Karla Arnall)
Dr Peter Speldewinde is heading up the project at the UWA Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management.
Honey possums feed solely on nectar and pollen, an unusual diet for a marsupial.
“It is incredibly unusual. If you look at the face of a honey possum, it’s got a really long nose for digging into plants so they can get the nectar out,” saud Dr Speldewinde.
“You open up their mouths, they’ve got no teeth. It’s because they don’t need them.
“They’re licking nectar out of these plants and so they’ve got these really long noses so they can get in there,” he said.
Honey possums live in the biodiversity hotspot of south west WA, stretching south of Geraldton to Esperance.
Co-evolving alongside native flora, the marsupials favour feeding off banksia. Researchers are studying the full menu enjoyed by honey possums.
“The really amazing thing is that honey possums rely on plants for nectar, but the plants are really reliant on the honey possums,” said Dr Speldewinde.
“These things have co-evolved over millions of years.
“If you don’t have the honey possum, the plants might not get pollinated and if you don’t get the plants, the possums have got nothing to eat.
“So you’ve got to have them both. It is a symbiotic relationship.”
Astonishing Time-Lapse Captures the Development of Baby Honeybees
May 22, 2015 by Ellyn Kail
For Berkeley-based photographer Anand Varma, saving the planet’s bees means learning their stories from birth. He keeps a community of bees in the backyard of his own home, where he meticulously records them at astonishingly close range from their infancy as eggs through their development into larvae, pupils, and at last, adult insects. For this one-minute film, he encapsulates the initial three weeks of a bee’s lifetime to capture not only beauty but also the vulnerability of these creatures whose numbers are shrinking at an alarming rate.
When Varma was approached by National Geographic to tell the urgent tale of the honeybees, he committed himself entirely to understanding their anatomy, environment, and biological make-up. Working alongside the scientists at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at University of California, Davis, the photographer, who himself comes with a degree in integrative biology, set about chronicling the ways in which bees react to and suffer from the Varroa destructor, a parasitic mite that is now a major threat to honeybees, along with habitat destruction, pesticides, and disease.
Varma photographed his bees as they developed in their brood cells, nursing as larvae on royal jelly secreted by other bees. Soon, their legs and heads emerge, and finally, their eyes become pigmented and their skin compresses and grows a fuzzy layer of hair. It’s in these brood cells that the Varroa destructor appears, jumping from one to the next, feeding on the colony’s blood, and crippling the immune systems of its bees.
Since about thirty-tree percent of the crops we eat rely on pollination by bees, the future of the species in inextricably linked with our own. As we have domesticated the insects, we have in some ways failed our wild populations. Recently, researchers have begun to artificially inseminate queen bees to produce mite-resistant strains, but sadly, the bees bred through this method do not produce honey and lack the amiable and mellow personalities of most honeybees. The USDA has joined forces with a commercial beekeeper to discover a way of preserving bees that are mite-resistant while maintaining the invaluable characteristics of wild honeybees. For Varma, bees and humans can only survive if together we learn to work with and to understand one another.
What lies beneath:
This is a Landline story about some farms in SE South Australia that have beautiful underground caves and water, suitable for swimming and diving. This can be used in conjunction with my book “What’s under the City“.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-20/what-lies-beneath/6561688
Desert Walker: thanks to ABC website
Andrew Harper walks the Simpson desert to show researchers and tourists what’s really out there, without getting lost.
Students excavate Gold Coast Sea Wall: thanks to ABC radio
Some of the children are digging, some are sifting and others and testing the soil, but they’re involved in the history of their area.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/05/23/3765623.htm?site=goldcoasthttp://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/05/23/3765623.htm?site=goldcoast
Foods and farting: some people don’t have stinky farts
By Sharon Kennedy
Fart, fluff, blow off, trouser cough, flatulate, wind, bottom burp, taking fluffy for a walk, I think I can smell popcorn. Who decorated the air. We have lots of expressions for reverse expulsions.
Everybody does it and there’s a simple reason for flatulence says Jane Scott, an accredited dietician at Curtin University and regular food and diet expert on South West Mornings.
“The main trigger for flatulence is high fibre food,” she said. “It’s one of the consequences of eating a healthy diet.”
The reason is partly because the fibre is difficult for the body to digest. Once in the large intestine, the colon, gut bacteria ferment the fibre to break it down.
Gas is produced and also fatty acids which are good for keeping the lining of the colon healthy and for preventing colon cancer.
Farting is a sign of normal bowel health, says Jane. In hospital, post-operation, nurses will listen for bowel sounds.
“They want to hear some rumbling and some growling down there to know that your bowel is working.”
Gas and smell.
“There’s the food that causes the gas and there’s the food that causes the smell,” Jane pointed out.
“Interestingly, not everyone has smelly farts. It depends on the gut bacteria you have.”
Smelly foods contain sulphites, she explains. Those more likely to cause odiferous emanations are the brassicas: cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and alums which are onions, leeks and garlic.
“Any fibre in the food will contribute to gas but it seems to be beans and lentils that are notorious.
“They can be more volatile.”
Think Blazing Saddles.
Discomfort
Beans such as chick peas can cause cramps for some people, says Jane. If cooking with the raw beans, she suggests soaking them overnight, drain the water then cook them long and slowly.
“Drain again and rinse them and you get rid of the oligosaccharides which is what is in these foods that is making them hard for the body to digest.”
Canned beans are already soaked and Jane recommends rinse them two or three times to remove the starchy liquid that contains the oligosaccharides.
An alternative to whole chick peas could be hummus where the beans are ground and the fibre is broken down.
Any beans can be made into a dip, says Jane. “Butter beans make a lovely dip with lemon juice and olive oil.”
Avoid the sudden clean out
Suddenly adding a lot more fibre in your diet, will cause more flatulence until the body gets used to it. “Gradually increase the intake,” is Jane’s advice.
If the added fibre is still causing problems, cut back a little bit.
“Dried beans are a great source of fibre. Half a cup of chick peas can provide a third of our fibre needs for the day.
“A little goes a long way.”
Food intolerance can also cause excess bottom burps. Some people have problems with foods that contain sugar, either naturally or added, such as like fruit.
“They may not have enough enzymes that are needed to help digest those foods.”
Seasonal gorging on delicious fruit such as apricots or cherries will do the trick, says Jane.
Hang on or let go
Apart from cramps and feeling bloated and uncomfortable, gut gas isn’t going to harm you, says Jane.
“If you do get cramps, the release comes when you release the gas.”
Better out than in.
Commander Chris Hadfield records his version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity from the Space Station.
This is all about bees and how they develop. It’s from a story by Ellyn Kail about a lady called Anand Varma who works for National Geographic which is totally cool.
Sandra Watkins | Childrens Author 