Merry Christmas!

This is just a short post to wish you all a happy holiday and to repeat what I said in class yesterday. Have a good rest over Christmas and then get stuck into your work! There are only a few weeks before prelims begin in early February.


It's not much of a present I'm afraid but as promised, I have uploaded a copy of the Holiday Homework sheet issued yesterday . Click here to access it.

As school is now officially 'out', I'm going to give the blog a rest for a week. I'll get posting again after New Year.


Merry Christmas!

Stopping malaria before the bite

You have recently started to look at malaria as an example of a disease affecting LEDCs. When you start to look at strategies for controlling the disease, one of the things which Mrs W will be emphasising is that there is, as yet, no vaccine which will offer protection from contracting the disease.There are, however, reports today of a vaccine which, when administered to people living in affected areas, will kill the parasite within the mosquitoes who injest the blood of vaccinated victims. You have to think about this! What this means is that there would be no benefit to vaccinated individuals (they might still contract the disease) but there could be long term benefits for their community. The snag is....... how many people will agree to be vaccinated if there is no benefit to their own health? You can read about this new development in the fight against malaria by clicking on the image above.

You might also like to have a look over the holidays at the Roll Back Malaria website which contains a wealth of material which is relevant to this section of the Development and Health unit.

International Migrants Day

For most of us the 18th of December means Christmas Day minus one week. The UN, however, have it earmarked as International Migrants Day and in recognition of that, the BBC News website is featuring a series of reports on migration entitled 'World on the Move'.Today's article, which you can link to by clicking the diagram above, is entitled 'Migration in Figures' and contains a lot of very useful data.

Brits abroad

This interactive resource on migration (click image to link) has recently been brought to my attention....

The tabs on the world map provide detailed information by region. You can get deeper into the data by clicking on the named countries on each map or by using the drop down menu. However, as well as providing information on migration of Brits overseas (check out the proportional maps as well as the standard ones), it is also possible to look at immigration from almost every country in the world to the UK and to look at maps showing the distribution of migrants within the UK. When examining data for individual countries, use the link called 'how many people from this country live in Britain' and you will obtain maps like this one...

Think of how you might use this wealth of information so support the work you have done on migration.

Birth rate harms poverty goals

In an article (click on the image to link) which is reminiscent of many of the views on population which prevailed in the 50s and 60s, there was an interesting article (another one!) on the BBC website last Friday.

A UK parliamentary group is maintaining that the Millennium Development Goals relating to poverty reduction cannot be met without curbing current population growth in LEDCs.

They draw attention to Africa in particular, where the BR remains high, population numbers are rising rapidly and where the numbers of people living in extreme poverty has increased by 140 million in just over ten years.

If you read the article, you should be able to make a list of what it cites as the consequences of a high BR. There is also another link to follow to an associated and interesting article on the BBC's Green Room pages.

Size matters!

The things you find on the BBC website......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6161691.stm

A couple of issues relevant to geography are raised by this article
a) what connection might there be with the slowing down of the BR decline in India?
b) what are the implications for a country which already has the highest rates of HIV infections?

River erosion processes

With the Environmental Interactions NAB behind us, we now have to focus on completing the Hydrosphere unit before the end of term. As we move into examining fluvial landforms, you might like to revise the work we did earlier in the week on river erosion processes. You should be able to look at the following images and describe and explain the variety of erosion processes which have produced the landforms shown.

The first is a small stream on Ben Lawers in Perthshire.

The second shows exposed river bed at a time when the river (top left) was low. It is flowing over Carboniferous Limestone in the Yorkshire Dales.

The third shows High Force waterfall on the River Tees.

You might like to consider copying the images (right click the image and 'copy') then pasting them into a Word document onto which you can add annotations. File beside your river erosion notes in your folder!

On a slightly different tack and for those of you who find the concept of pools and riffles hard to imagine....

Problem solved ......

Says it all really!

Click here to find out how to make to make your own animated scrolling text LED sign.

The week ahead

If you link to the department blog , you can read why postings seem a little 'bare' at present!

However, the dearth of images doesn't close down communication so here are a few pointers for the week ahead.....

1) Your main priority this week is the unit assessment on Friday. Too many of you seem to be a bit vague about what this will entail. Please read the last posting on the Higher Geog Blog below for details and if you are still in any doubt, see me as a matter of urgency!

2) Remember that you are going on Thurday afternoon to the University Geography department's Christmas lecture on aspects of migration. Mrs W will give you further details early in the week.

3) The Higher course continues around these events and in the Hydrosphere unit we will be turning our attention this week to fluvial (river) landforms and, in particular, the change in the characteristics of a river and its valley between source and mouth. You could back up what we will be doing in class by checking out some of these links
http://www.cleo.net.uk/resources/index.php?ks=3&cur=10
http://www.georesources.co.uk/darentintro.htm
http://www.geobytesgcse.blogspot.com (postings for November 10th - 12th)