Tucked away with my elementary school report cards and other papers were some yellowed form letters from The College Board declaring my SAT scores. I took the college admissions test twice as a high school student in the late 1980s, prepped only with the practice tests that my school offered.

My SAT scores might have remained a bit of trivia had I not become an education reporter. But my career has given me a reason to think a lot about testing, and what seems to be an intractable test-score gap between black students (as well as Hispanic and American Indian and Alaska Native students) and white and Asian students.

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Teachers have one of the closest views of student performance, and Education Week recently asked them what they believe are the factors that explain why white students, overall, perform better academically than black students. (The survey respondents were predominantly white, like the teaching population as a whole, with 20 to 30 years in the classroom.) The teachers were given a number of factors to choose from: genetics, discrimination, school quality, student motivation, parenting, income levels, home environments, and neighborhood environments.

A notable minority, about 29 percent, said that genetics are somewhat to extremely significant in explaining academic gaps between black students and white students. (An even higher percentage of respondents, 38 percent, said genetics are a significant reason why Asian students in the aggregate have better academic outcomes than their white peers.)

But I have to acknowledge some truth in what these teachers are saying. Yes, it mattered that my parents were middle-class, college-educated folks who filled my childhood home with books. Yes, it mattered that they were able to show me, through their lives, the rewards that can come from a good education. But it also mattered that they were able to work the system well enough to steer me into well-resourced schools in a well-resourced school district.

And there are specific policy decisions that amplify the corrosive effects of poverty. Right now, majority-minority school districts get $23 billion less in funding nationally than majority-white school districts, according to EdBuild, a nonprofit organization working to overhaul school finance systems.

Brown widow spiders are seeking out and killing their black widow relatives, a surprising twist in the natural relationship between species of spiders known for their venomous bites, according to a new study.

Brown widow spiders are believed to be native to Africa, but have been introduced on all continents except Antarctica. Black widow spiders are native to North America and comprise two closely related species: the western black widow and the southern black widow.

Coticchio, who spent the first part of his career as a zookeeper specializing in venomous animals in California before returning to Florida to earn a degree in biology, began collecting wild spiders in Florida for a research project. In doing so, he noticed brown widows displacing black widows but not other related species.

An aspect of the study placed brown widows in proximity with black widows and other spider species. When brown and black widow sub-adult females were paired, the brown widows killed and consumed the black widows in 80 percent of pairings, compared to just 40 percent of predation killings with red house spiders and 10 percent with triangulate cobweb spiders. In pairings of adults, black widows were killed in 40 percent of trials, while they defensively killed brown widows 30 percent of the time.

Measuring only 12 to 15 cm from bill-tip to tail-tip, the Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapilla is greenish-grey above with a white underside shading to light brownish buff along its flanks. Its long, dark-grey tail looks like a handle. A black cap, well drawn over sparkling eyes, covers its head from cone-like bill to nape, or back of the neck. Pure white cheek patches and a triangular black throat patch complete its most conspicuous markings. Because chickadees inhabit such a wide variety of climates and habitats, birds from different populations may vary somewhat in size and plumage. 

A number of chickadee species resemble the Black-capped Chickadee. The Mountain Chickadee Poecile gambeli is distinguished from the Black-capped by a white line over the eye. In Canada, it lives only in the mountains of British Columbia and Alberta. The Mountain Chickadee is closely related to the Black-capped, and the two species hybridize, or interbreed, occasionally. 

The Gray-headed Chickadee Poecile cincta is widely distributed across Asia and Europe. In North America, this brownish-grey chickadee is found in a small corner of the northwestern Yukon and eastern Alaska, where it lives in the willow and spruce woods bordering the treeline. 

The Boreal Chickadee Poecile hudsonica has a seal-brown cap, greyish-brown above and dusky white or light grey below with rust-coloured sides. Its cheek patches are often dusky white and the throat patch is black. Like the Black-capped, it lives right across Canada, but resides in the belt of coniferous forest that extends to the northern treeline. Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees overlap at the edges of their breeding ranges, but do not hybridize.

In fall and winter, Black-capped Chickadees live in loose flocks of four to 12 birds. Each flock consists of mated pairs that bred locally the preceding summer, plus unrelated juveniles that have immigrated from surrounding populations. 

From October to March, the flock flits from tree to tree over an area of 8 to 20 ha, meandering through long-established forest paths at a rate of about half a kilometre an hour. The birds keep in touch with each other by means of soft notes, sit-sit, uttered at intervals. Each flock defends its home range from other flocks using vocalizations and aggressive behaviour. 

In the north, the chickadees usually roost in dense evergreen groves sheltered from the wind and snow. At roosting time, some of them disappear into any available hole where they spend the night, one bird to a hole. Others roost in the top branches of evergreens or low down in bushy young spruces. Night after night, the flock may use the same roosting place. 

To keep warm the chickadee erects its soft, thick feathers to trap warm air close to its body. This serves as good insulation against the cold. 

In early spring, the flock begins to break up, with paired birds spending daylight hours vigorously defending breeding territories from their former flockmates. During this period birds may still roost at night with their flock, especially during cold weather. Once breeding commences, a chickadee rarely strays from the 3 to 7 ha around its nest.

For a variety of reasons, including its rarity, scientists know very little about this rather large animal. For example, there is little data on the longevity of Right Whales, but photo identification on living whales and the analysis of ear bones and eyes on dead individuals can be used to estimate age. It is believed that they live at least 70 years, maybe even over 100 years, since closely related species can live as long. 

Unique characteristics

It is a long, slender fish that can grow longer than one metre in length and 7.5 kilograms in weight. Males tend to be smaller than females, reaching a size of about 0.4 m. With its small pectoral fins right behind its gills, absence of pelvic fins, long dorsal and ventral fins and the thin coat of mucus on its tiny scales, the adult eel slightly resembles a slimy snake but are in fact true fish. Adult eels vary in coloration, from olive green and brown to greenish-yellow, with a light gray or white belly. Females are lighter in colour than males. Large females turn dark grey or silver when they mature.

The American Eel is the only representative of its genus (or group of related species) in North America, but it does have a close relative which shares the same spawning area: the European Eel. Both have similar lifecycles but different distributions in freshwater systems except in Iceland, where both (and hybrids of both species) can be found.

To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestrymust be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? Thenation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black isany person with any known African black ancestry. This definitionreflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation.In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a singledrop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "oneblack ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule,"and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that raciallymixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. Thisdefinition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition,generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. As weshall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted asreadily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it isby Ku Klux Klansmen.

Let us not he confused by terminology. At present the usual statement of theone-drop rule is in terms of "black blood" or black ancestry, while not so longago it referred to "Negro blood" or ancestry. The term "black" rapidly replaced"Negro" in general usage in the United States as the black power movementpeaked at the end of the 1960s, but the black and Negro populations are thesame. The term "black" is used in this book for persons with any black Africanlineage, not just for unmixed members of populations from sub-Saharan Africa.The term "Negro," which is used in certain historical contexts, means the samething. Terms such as "African black," "unmixed Negro," and "all black" are usedhere to refer to unmixed blacks descended from African populations. 152ee80cbc

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