Keystone Weekly
volume 3, issue 13        December 17, 2001

This week's Key Points: *Web Pick of the Week,* *The Wonders of Cocoa,* and *Darwin Day*
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Web Pick of the Week
http://www.kidsgardening.com/

Even though it's wintry and cold, it's never too soon to begin thinking about gardens. This lovely site, KidsGardening.com, offers tremendous educational resources and activities that can lend themselves easily to classroom study. Visit the Teacher's Resource Room, which currently features an article about applying math skills to gardening, complete with links to other math and gardening sites. There are other excellent features as well, covering topics such as classroom hydroponics (great if you don't have access to outdoor space) and insect-plant interactions.

If you create a garden, you can register it (as thousands of other schools have done) here, so you can get in touch with other classroom gardeners and share ideas. Lacking money and resources? Be sure to look at the Grants and Resources section that helps you gain "funds, freebies, seeds, books, web links, and technical support."

Do you have a garden already, or want to start? Through this site, the National Gardening Association offers a web-based professional development course for K-8 educators who already incorporate botany and gardening into their curriculum, and for educators who would like to do so. Also, if you've got (or had) a garden, why not enter it in the Kids Gardening Photo Contest going on now? The application deadline is February 28, 2002.

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The Wonders of Cocoa
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2001/chocolateldl.html

Are you looking for a reason to justify chocolate consumption at this time of year? Well, the kind scientists at Penn State University may be able to help you out.

A recent study found that a diet high in flavonoid-rich cocoa powder and dark chocolate had favorable effects on LDL ('bad' cholesterol). In order to measure the effects of cocoa in this study, test subjects excluded other flavonoid sources such as tea, coffee, wine, onions, apples, beans, soybeans, and orange and grape juices, and then switched to a diet featuring cocoa powder and dark chocolate.

Scientists believe that oxidation of LDLs plays an important role in the development of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Increasing LDL's resistance to oxidation is thought to possibly delay the progression of the disease. Flavonoids, which are present in a wide variety of plants, have long been known to inhibit LDL oxidation. In subjects who ate the cocoa- and chocolate-containing diet, oxidation occurred about 8 percent slower compared to when they ate the experimental average American diet.

This doesn't mean that you can turn up your nose at vegetables. The study leader, Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, says, "Cocoa and chocolate are `fun foods' and I think these results show that they can contribute to a healthy diet-especially if they are used in forms that don't include large amounts of fat and sugar. However, cocoa and chocolate shouldn't be considered significant sources of flavonoids in the same category with fruits and vegetables which also have fiber, vitamins, and minerals."

For more information about this study, see the link above.

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Darwin Day
http://darwin.ws/day/

February 12 is Darwin Day! The Darwin Day program "provides the opportunity to bring people together in an effort to improve the public's understanding of science and champion our shared humanity."

Check out the events happening in Pennsylvania on the calendar page and add your own event or lesson plan.

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Happy Holidays!

The Weekly will be on vacation for two weeks while we pause to celebrate the year-end holidays. The staff of the Keystone Science Network wishes you a wonderful holiday break, filled with fun and happiness. Check your email box on January 7 for the next issue of The Weekly.

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9819641.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

webteam@keystone.fi.edu

© 2003. All rights reserved.