Ingles 1 The Mexican Absentee Voter Registration Failure.

Theres no denying it the process glistering Mexican citizens abroad to vote in the presidential elections in Mexico was a total failure. The numbers reflect shamefully on the Mexican congress (which devised a complicated and restrictive voting system abroad), the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) which organized the registration-by-mail, and the Mexican organization in the United States (which believed themselves to be more influential than they demonstrated). Everyone ended up on the losing end. Not even 1 percent of the potential 4 million voters applied In comparison the Dominican Republic, with a 9-millin population and one that is 11 times smaller than Mexicos 106 million, was able to register more voters abroad for its past elections 24,342, according to The New York Times than Mexico did for its upcoming elections in July. I dont suppose it occurred to anyone to ask the Dominicans how they managed it. Reason for this failure are many Congress imposed such huge limits for Mexicans abroad to vote that it gave the appearance it simply wanted to be done with the issue They had years to implement a working system. But, as usual, everything was left till the last minute, and finally on Junes 30/2005, a form for voting was passed with many restrictive clauses. Yes, it was a landmark decision. But it made the simple act of voting an awful ordeal. Absentee voters had to register by certified mail before the Jan. 15/2006, deadline, attach multiple copies of signed documents and pay $9 in postal charges. Very cumbersome for many Mexicans, who had lost, destroyed or left their voter ID behind before emigrating to the United States where most Mexican in exile reside. Thus they were unable to fulfill the main requirement for voting. I, myself, had to fly to Mexico City twice, in order to comply with voting requirements: the first time to fill out the form for my voter LD, and the second to pick it up weeks later, I am lucky enough to have a green card (American residency card) but those Mexicans who are undocumented or do not have the means to travel to Mexico were unfairly left out of the process. The stumbling blocks did not end there. Putting into effect the Mexican vote abroad surpassed the IFEs organizational capability. Campaign information was pitiful and late. Even now, I ask many Mexicans here whether they are going to vote in the Mexican presidential election and they do not know what I am talking about. Imagine the case of Mexicans in other areas of the United States where their numbers are smaller. The IFE is very good at organizing legitimate elections in Mexico but it certainly is not adept at campaign advertising abroad. It was given a huge responsibility but very little time. It just couldnt handle the job of promoting the vote. For whatever reason, the pathetically small numbers of registered voters reflect the failure of the process. As a consequence, both IFE and Congress are now playing the blame game.

Ingles 2 HOW CHILDREN LEARN We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teachers task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child. A central component of Piagets developmental theory of learning and thinking is that both involve the participation of the learner. Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. Piaget asserted that for a child to know and construct knowledge of the world, the child must act on objects; the mind organizes reality and acts upon it. The learner must be active: he is not a vessel to be filled with facts. Piagets approach to learning is a readiness approach. Readiness approaches in developmental psychology emphasize that children cannot learn something until maturation gives them certain prerequisites. The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to their stage of intellectual development. Children who are at a certain stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage. Intellectual growth involves there fundamental processes: assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Assimilation involves the incorporation of new events into preexisting cognitive structures. Accommodation means existing structures

changer to accommodate to the new information. This dual process, assimilation-accommodation, enables the child to form schema. Equilibration involves the person striking a balance between himself and the environment, between assimilation and accommodation. When a child experiences a new event, disequilibrium sets in until he is able to assimilate and accommodate the new information and thus attain equilibrium. There are many types of equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation that vary with the levels of development and the problems to be solved For Piaget, equilibration is the major factor in explaining why some children advance more quickly in the development of logical intelligence than do others. INGLES 3 Jojoba Farming Jojoba has distinction of being the first native plant since corm to be successfully domesticated. The methods used by jojoba farmers in the past have been varied, as there were no real records of the performance of cultivated plants in existence. Subsequent research, however, has led to a greater understanding of the classic farming requirements for jojoba. Native populations occur between 23 and 34 degrees north latitude. Jojoba will grow well wherever avocados do well and the days of full sun are greatest. Temperatures are critical but only in the low range. Temperatures in the high 20s will freeze the buds and new growth in mature populations. In juvenile plantations (three years old and younger) a very large number of plants will be killed; A very few may survive. In general the older the plant the less it will be damaged on a permanent basis by low temperatures. Jojoba handles heat very well. Soil texture is important as jojoba grows best in sandy or decomposed granite or rocky soil and slowest in heavy clay soils such as adobe. Even if the fertility of sell is marginal, jojoba is still able to produce well without the use of fertilizers. However, jojoba plants kept in containers seem to do better with some fertilization. Irrigation systems are a must when establishing jojoba plantations whether by planting seeds or seedlings. The plants seem to do well on their own after two years of intensive watering in early winter and spring when the jojoba plant maximally utilizes water for growth. This watering period is a plus for the jojoba farmer as jojobas water requirements will not conflict with the watering requirements for traditional crops. Under ideal conditions of soil, water and sun the tap root will grow an inch an day: within two years roots should reach the level of the aquifer thus enabling sufficient growth for seed production without supplemental watering. In the wild plants will produce a crop solely utilizing ground water and are also able to do so when in plantations assuming an underlying aquifer is available to the roots. If it is possible (and economically viable) watering should be continued every winter and spring as this will keep layers of water moving downward, thereby causing the root systems to develop at greater and grater depths each year. In this case, if the aquifer should drop because of over drafting, the plants will still have water each year for good seed production. Seedlings can be expected to flower after three years growth. The plants are wind pollinated as pollen travels hundreds of feet in a breeze. There are no known insect pollinators other than accidentals. The flowers form in the winter and after pollination grow until they are mature seed in July. The seed skin will dry, shrink and split, whence the slightest breeze will send hundreds of the seed to the soil below. Seed oil content may vary from 45% to 65%. The properties of the oil are constant regardless of geographical origin of the seed. Rodents collect the seeds but like humans have no enzymes to digest them: so they waste energy in eating them. The largest native plants are in areas around 1500 elevation, with rocky sandy soil, with 15 to 18 inches of rain a year and where abundant rain water drains into low lying local depressions where the plants grow. The smallest native plants are at about 4500 elevation even where precipitation is the same as precipitation in the large-plant areas. Jojoba tolerates salinity very well whether in the substrate (soil) or in the water. It has been observed doing well in brackish-water along the coast of California. It is grown successfully in Israel and is irrigated with water from the Dead Sea. In order to maximize production, it would seem advantageous to rooted cuttings from sexed plants which are known high producers or known to have seeds with high oil content. Rooting the cuttings takes a little bit of technical know but it would worthwhile to have a plantation with 90% to 95% female plants, leaving the 5% or 10% males to produce adequate pollen for all female flowers.

INGLES 4 PETROLEIO Many people are unaware of how many of the products we use every day come from petroleum and natural gas. In the United States each family of four uses more than two tons of petroleum products annually. That is almost 1200 lb of chemicals each year for every man, woman, and child in the United Sates a staggering total of 225 billion pounds of chemicals from petroleum, and to a lesser extent natural gas. Of the vast amount of petroleum and natural gas we consume, more than 90, percent is burned as fuels. Only about 5.5 percent used for the manufacture of petrochemicals by the chemical industry. These petrochemicals vary widely in 10 their functions and include such products as drugs, detergents, rubber, paints, fertilizers, dyes, perfumes, explosives, food preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and agricultural chemical. Finally, about 1.5 percent of the oil and natural gas is used as raw material for plastics. This small percentage translates into the production of billions of pounds of polymers that yield many different and useful 15. products. In post-world War II years, the United Sates was flooded with domestic and imported items of extremely low cost, low quality, and limited lifetime. This led to The image of cheap plastics with low durability. Today, however, the image of Plastics has changed. Plastics perform an extremely broad range of functions 20 From heart valves and artificial kidneys to ski boots, nonstick surfaces, super glues, and spacecraft parts and they compete with natural products in durability. No other material except plastics could perform all these different functions. Plastics are replacing more and more parts of your car. The use of 1 lb of plastic Can replace an average of 3.5 lb of metal in automobile. An automobile with 25 400 lb of plastic substituted for metal will weigh about 1000 lb lees, which Increases its gas mileage by about 3 / gal. The fuel savings are estimate to be About 160 million barrels of annually. That is more than the total amount used By de chemical industry as raw material to make the polymers. As another 30. example, synthetic polymer fibers are commonly used in fabrics for both Economical and practical reasons if the worlds synthetic fibers were replaced by Cotton, this would require an additional 40 millions acres of farmland. Certainly the use of polymer plastics will increase. One can expect to find more applications in home construction and furniture because of the unlimited design freedom of plastics. Plastics will be used more in drink containers and food 35. packaging. The 700 billion gallons of liquids consumed each year in the United States will find their way to the consumer more and more in plastic bottles. Diseased or malfunctioning parts of the body will be replaced by specialized Plastic components to a greater degree. We are indeed becoming a plastic society.

INGLES 5 ELDERLY OKINAWANS Prrafo 1.- Each day; Seiryu Touguchi, 103, of Motobu, Okinawa, wakes at 6 am, and opens the shutters. "It's a sign to my neighbors", he says, "that l am still alive". He does stretching 1 exercise along with a radio broadest, then cats breakfasts, whole-grain rice and miso soup with vegetables: He puts in two hours of picking weeds in his 1,000-sq-ft. fiekl whose crops are goya- a variety of bitter gourd a reddish-purple sweet potato called imo, and okra. A fellow has to make a living, so Toguchi buys rice and meat with the profits from his produce. Prrafo 2.- Since his wife kames death seven years ago, at 93, he has done all the housework himself. He rejected his childrens suggestions come to live with them because he explains, I enjoy my freedom Although his doctors insist

Toguchi is in excellent health the farmer takes no chances. If he feels that something is wrong says his daughter Sumiko Sakihara, 74, even in the middle of the night, he calls a taxi and goes to the hospital but he doesn`l want the other villagers to worry, so, she says, he writes a note explaining where he is and tapes it to the shutters, Prrafo 3.- At 12:30 Toguchi eats lunch: goya stir-try with egg and tofu. He naps for an hour or so, then spends two more hours in his field. After dinner he plays traditional songs - a favorite is spring When I Was 19-on the three- stringed sanshin and makes an entry in his diary, as he has every night for the past decade. This way, he says, "I, won't forget my Chinese characters. It's fun. It keeps my mind sharp". For a nightcap he may have a sip of the wine he makes from aloc, garlic and turmeric. And as he drifts off, he says, my head is filled with all the things I want to do tomorrow. Prrafo 4.- Scientists working for the US National Institutes of Health and Japan's Ministry of Health have been following oldsters like Toguchi since 1976 in the Okinawa Centenarian Study (OCS) and they ve learned that he is typical. Elderly Okinawas tend to get plenty of physical and mental exercise. Their diets, moreover, are exemplary low in fat and salt, and high in fruits and vegetables packed. With fiber and antioxidant substances that protect against cancer, hear disease and stroke. They consume more soy than any other population on earth: 60-120g a day compared to 30-50g for the average Japanese, 10 for Chinese and virtually 0g for the average American. Soy is rich in flavonoidsantioxidants strongly linked to low rates of cancer. This may be one of many reasons why the annual death rate from cancer in Okinawa is far below the US rate Prrafo 5.- But its not just what Okinawas eat; it's how mucho They practice a dietary philosophy known as hara hachi bu- literally, eight parts out of 10 full. Translation: they eat only to the point at which they are about 80% sated. That makes for a daily intake of no more than 1,800 calories, compared to the more than 2,500 that the average American man scarfs down. And as scientists have learned from lab animals, the simple act of calorie restriction can have significant effects on longevity. Prrafo 6.- Aging Okinawas also have a much lower incidence of dementia Alzheimer's or other forms of senility- than their US and European counterparts do. Part of that may also owe to diet; it's high in vitamin E, which seems to protect the brain. But perhaps just as important is a sense of belonging and purpose that provides a strong foundation for slaying mentally alert well into old age. Okinawas maintain a sense of community, ensuring that every member, from youngest to oldest, is paid proper respect and feels equally valued Elderly women, for. example, are considered the sacred keepers of a family's bond with the ancestors, maintaining the family altars and responsible for organizing festivals to honor them OCS data show that elderly Okinawans express a high level of satisfaction with life, something that is not as true in Western societies, where rates of suicide and depression are high among the elderly. Need