Single-cell organisms 21 deep in the earth, more than 9,000 feet below the surface. But until now, it was thought that the temperature, energy, oxygen and space constraints of the subsurface biosphere were too extreme for multicellular organisms. Now, Tullis Onstott, a geoscientist at Princeton University, and colleagues from Belgium, South Africa and the Netherlands report their discovery of a small multicellular worm that dwells at these depths. The worm, known as Halicephalobus mephisto, is tiny — 22 an inch at the longest — and belongs to the vast and diverse phylum of nematodes. The worm appears to tolerate temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 23 subsurface bacteria. The researchers studied soil and water samples from the mines to determine that 24 are uniquely subsurface organisms. The samples indicated that while the nematodes live in the deep fracture water of the mines, they do not inhabit the surface-level mining water. The researchers say their findings should be considered as scientists search for life in other extreme conditions — like 25 on Mars and other planets in the solar system. ---adapted from The New York Times---

Teachers and librarians need to be aware of the emotional, intellectual, and physical changes that young adults experience, and they need to give serious thought to how they can best accommodate such changes. Growing bodies need movement and exercise, but not just in ways that emphasize competition. Because they are adjusting to their new bodies and a whole host of new intellectual and emotional challenges, teenagers are especially self-conscious and need the reassurance that comes from achieving success and knowing that their accomplishments are admired by others. However, the typical teenage lifestyle is already filled with so much competition that it would be wise to plan activities in which there are more winners than losers; for example, publishing newsletters with many student-written book reviews, displaying student artwork, and sponsoring science fiction, fantasy, or other special interest book discussion clubs. A variety of small clubs can provide multiple opportunities for leadership as well as for practice in successful group dynamics. Making friends is extremely important to teenagers, and many shy students need the security of some kind of organization with a supportive adult barely visible in the background. In these activities, it is important to remember that young teens have short attention spans. A variety of activities should be organized so that participants can remain active as long as they want and then go on to something else without feeling guilty and without letting the other participants down. This does not mean that adults may accept irresponsibility. On the contrary, they can help students acquire a sense of commitment by planning for roles that are within their capabilities and their attention spans and by having clearly stated rules. Teenagers need limitations, but they also need the opportunity to help establish what these limits and expectations will be. Adults also need to realize that the goal of most adolescents is to leave childhood behind as they move into adulthood. This has implications for whether libraries treat young adult services as a branch of the children’s or the adults’ department. Few teenagers are going to want to sit on small children’s chairs or compete with nine and ten-year-olds when they pick books off the shelves. Neither are they going to be attracted to books that use the word children or picture preteens on the covers. Young adults want a variety of informational books about aspects of their lives that are new; for example, the physical development of their bodies, the new freedom they have to associate mainly with peers instead of family, and the added responsibilities they feel in deciding what kinds of adult roles they will fit.

  Ever fashionable, the Alessi brand has managed to transform from a metal utensil and dish designer to fully explore all kitchen and household options, incorporating the work of leading designers from Philippe Stark to Michael Graves and Aldo Rossi. Throughout its history Alessi has chosen direction based on the guidance of its designers and the development of the product itself. The brand vision appears to be to revel in design in all areas of life, to enjoy and celebrate the simplicity of everyday objects, and to take risks whether there exists a need for risk or not. Or put simply: No man should be forced to dine from a boring plate. 

  But how did Alessi acquire such a frivolously jubilant reputation? The year was 1921, the setting, a small town in the foothills of the Italian Alps, the founder Giovanni Alessi for whom the company is named was a metal expert working with a lathe to create workmanlike metal utensils and dishes. The result was a family-run brand that would continually adapt to set style in the kitchen and home using a variety of mediums from silver, bronze and stainless steel to porcelain, ceramic, and eventually, plastic. 

  Although Giovanni was an able craftsman, it wasn’t until his eldest son Carlo stepped up to the plate in the thirties and forties that the brand began to be associated with a style of design unique to the Alessi name. Carlo’s playfully flamboyant Bombe coffee and tea set is celebrated as creating a design sensibility in Italy that can still be seen as an influence in many of the products today. It was these early designs that encouraged ordinary Italians to view their kitchen as a living arthouse, where the salt and pepper shaker were more than just the functional sum of their parts. 

  Carlo’s eldest son Alberto continued along the path set by la famiglia and propelled the company into the international world of design. In the early nineties, on the advice of his designers, Alberto allowed the use of plastic to address a trend of “customers yearning for joyful, playful design,” as he put it. This change of direction for the brand, which prior to the advent of plastic, was becoming an clitist symbol of yuppie affluence, helped Alessi to break away from the harsh lines of the eighties and adjust to the more organic nineties. 

  And it is this advice from his designers that seems to inform Alberto’s approach to managing the brand’s direction. Rather than tracking the whims and desires of the market base, Alessi follows the suggestion of its designers in deciding where its next steps will be. This approach is a boon to designers who may wish to design free from the confines of the audience’s voice. In this manner the evolution of Alessi’s such that an elegant cup and saucer can reside next to a flamboyantly tentacled octopus whisk. 

  But for those aesthetes who worry that the brand is too accessible to the masses, Alessi has created a dual branding system to distinguish between its popular price point products and the more exclusive designs. There is the Alessi product, which is mass produced and easily accessed through department stores, and then a system of marks for designers dedicated to experimenting and manufactured in limited editions. These names include Officina Alessi, product designed solely in metal, Alessi Twergi, using only wood, and Alessi Tendentse, which uses porcelain and crystal glass. 

  Content for its products to be confined to the kitchen, the Alessi name in turn aspires to attain recognition within the design community. And the rest of the world obviously concurs as Alessi design can be found in museums throughout the world.

    Doctors often overlook or omit steps in the multitude of tasks we perform every day. As Atul Gawande argues in “The Checklist Manifesto,” these are situations where a simple to-do list could help. For example, a five-point checklist implemented in 2001 virtually eradicated central line infections in the intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital, preventing an estimated 43 infections and eight deaths over 27 months. Gawande notes that when it was later tested in I. C. U.’s in Michigan, the checklist decreased infections by 66 percent within three months and probably saved more than 1,500 lives within a year and a half. 

    Gawande, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a staff writer at The New Yorker, makes the case that checklists can help us manage the extreme complexity of the modern world. In medicine, he writes, the problem is “making sure we apply the knowledge we have consistently and correctly.” Failure, he argues, results not so much from ignorance (not knowing enough about what works) as from ineptitude (not properly applying what we know works). This is an important insight. Medicine has made great strides, but in many ways doctors have become victims of their own success. Taking care of patients is hard; there is often too much for one doctor to do. Medical care for common disorders like diabetes and pneumonia has been shown to meet national guidelines only slightly more than half the time. 

    Medicine is not the only complex profession where lives are on the line. In making his argument, Gawande deftly weaves in examples of checklist successes in diverse fields like aviation and skyscraper construction. He maintain; that checklists not only help pilots and builders get the stupid stuff right, but foster the communication required to deal with the unexpected. His discussion of aviation accidents, including the emergency landing on the Hudson River last January (during which the copilot simultaneously managed checklists for restarting the engine and ditching the plane), makes for fascinating reading. 

    But Gawande’s missionary zeal can give the book a slanted tone. For instance, there is almost no discussion of the unintended consequences of checklists. Today, insurers are rewarding doctors for using checklists to treat such conditions as heart failure and pneumonia. One item on the pneumonia checklist—that antibiotics be administered to patients within six hours or arrival at the hospital—has been especially problematic. Doctors often cannot diagnose pneumonia that quickly. But with money on the line, there is pressure on doctors to treat, even when the diagnosis isn’t firm. So more and more antibiotics are being used in emergency rooms today, despite the dangers of antibiotic—resistant bacteria and antibiotic-associated infections. 

    Even when doctors know what works, we don’t always know when to apply it. We know that heart failure should be treated with ACE inhibitor drugs, but codifying this recommendation in a checklist risks that these drugs will be prescribed to the wrong patient—a frail older patient with low blood pressure, for example. Checklists may work for managing individual disorders, but it isn’t at all clear what to do when several disorders coexist in the same patient, as is often the case with the elderly. And checklists lack flexibility. They might be useful for simple procedures like central line insertion, but they are hardly a panacea for the myriad ills of modern medicine. Patients are too varied their physiologies too diverse and our knowledge still too limited. 

   Gawande passingly notes that checklists could be used to improve weather prediction. But he doesn’t mention that weather is an inherently chaotic phenomenon small perturbations in initial conditions can result in big, unpredictable effects. When Gawand writes that an investment manager he knows believes a checklist can help him reliably beat the stock market, the case seems to have been pulsed too far. Yet despite its evangelical tone, “The Checklist Manifesto” is an essential primer on complexity in medicine. Doctors resist checklists because we want to believe our profession is as much an art as a science. When Gawande surveyed members of the staff at eight hospitals about a checklist developed by his research team that nearly halved the number of surgical deaths, 20 percent said they thought it wasn’t easy to use and did not improve safety But when asked whether they would want the checklist used if they were having an operation, 93 percent said yes.

  Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser. A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was recently hired as the high school’s head principal. 

  The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didn’t work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university. “There were some things that just didn’t quite add up,” Balthazor told The Washington Post. The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant. A few days after the release of the report, Robertson resigned. 

  “In light of the issues that arose, Dr. Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position,” Pittsburg Community Schools announced in a statement. The resignation thrust the student newspaper staff into local, state, and national news, with professional journalists nationwide applauding the students for asking tough questions and prompting change in their administration. “Everybody kept telling them, ‘stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong,'” newspaper adviser Emily Smith told The Post. But with the encouragement of the superintendent, the students persisted. “They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults,” Smith said. “We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” Balthazor said. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great moment for us.”           After graduation, Balthazor said, he hopes to pursue a degree in creative writing or filmmaking. Even though he doesn’t necessarily plan to stick with journalism, Balthazor said the past few weeks had been “surreal.” “Most high schoolers would never get even close to an opportunity to get to experience something like this,” he said.