How to Save Petrol and the Environment

We are all aware of the need to protect the environment but sometimes it's difficult for us to do the right thing. For example, if you're a motorist the convenience of jumping in the car to go somewhere is balanced against the knowledge of how harmful each journey can be. But did you know that making a few simple changes to your driving habits will not only do less damage to our world but will also save you money and could even be good for your health?

Do you really need to take the car?

Try making more use of public transport. If the service is frequent and reliable you'll soon get used to using buses and trains. In fact, for shorter journeys why not take the opportunity to get into shape and go on foot.

Share the journey

How often do you see cars with just one occupant with the driver making the same journey as others living nearby? Why not car share and half the cost of the journey? There are several websites where people can swap details and make arrangements to meet up.

Change your habits

When you must use the car plan your journey so you can go to all the places you need to visit rather taking the car out again and again. If you get caught in a traffic jam switch off the engine when you're stationary for a long time. Try not to brake too sharply or accelerate too quickly as this will lead to you using up more fuel. On cold mornings don't warm up the engine before you start your journey and when you next put fuel in your car think about whether you really need to fill up the tank. All that extra weight will put more pressure on the engine.

Servicing

Make sure you carry out basic maintenance like checking the tyre pressure regularly. Finally, keep your car regularly serviced so that it runs as efficiently as possible.

Steps like this will save you money and help you do your bit to protect the environment.

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Social networks

Business applications

Social networks connect people at low cost; this can be beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. These networks often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services. Companies can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads. Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier to keep in touch with contacts around the world.

Medical applications

Social networks are beginning to be adopted by healthcare professionals as a means to manage institutional knowledge, disseminate peer to peer knowledge and to highlight individual physicians and institutions. The advantage of using a dedicated medical social networking site is that all the members are screened against the state licensing board list of practitioners. The role of social networks is especially of interest to pharmaceutical companies who spend approximately "32 percent of their marketing dollars" attempting to influence the opinion leaders of social networks.

Languages, nationalities and academia

Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries. The popular site Facebook has been cloned for various countries and languages and some specializing in connecting students and faculty.

Social networks for social good

Several websites are beginning to tap into the power of the social networking model for social good. Such models may be highly successful for connecting otherwise fragmented industries and small organizations without the resources to reach a broader audience with interested and passionate users. Users benefit by interacting with a like-minded community and finding a channel for their energy and giving.

Business model

Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be because social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them has not been firmly established in customers' minds. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook sell online advertising on their site. Hence, they are seeking large memberships, and charging for membership would be counter productive. Some believe that the deeper information that the sites have on each user will allow much better targeted advertising than any other site can currently provide. Sites are also seeking other ways to make money, such as by creating an online marketplace or by selling professional information and social connections to businesses.

Privacy issues

On large social networking services, there have been growing concerns about users giving out too much personal information and the threat of sexual predators. Users of these services need to be aware of data theft or viruses. However, large services, such as MySpace, often work with law enforcement to try to prevent such incidents. In addition, there is a perceived privacy threat in relation to placing too much personal information in the hands of large corporations or governmental bodies, allowing a profile to be produced on an individual's behavior on which decisions, detrimental to an individual, may be taken.

Investigations

Social network services are increasingly being used in legal and criminal investigations. Information posted on sites such as MySpace and Facebook, has been used by police, probation, and university officials to prosecute users of said sites. In some situations, content posted on MySpace has been used in court.

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A Rash Promise

Six months ago I made a rash promise. The leader of the youth club in our village rang me in March saying, “We’re thinking of running a children’s playscheme for a day in October half-term. Would you be prepared to help?” My response was “Sure, why not?” In truth I was a little flattered to be asked, even though working as a care assistant with old people hardly qualified me for the role. Still, I duly put the date in my diary and of course I forgot all about it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but time has a habit of speeding along faster than a police car chasing a robber and, before I knew it, the day was dawning.

I arrived at the youth centre that morning feeling full of trepidation. There was a gang of 12 helpers including me and each pair had been allocated a particular age group. Mine was the 10 to 11 year olds. Even with the planning meeting I had attended the week before, I worried about whether I was up to the task. Why hadn’t I read through the copious lesson plans we were given beforehand? And wasn’t the average 10-year-old more interested in the latest Play Station game than making things with paper and glue?

All too quickly the children began arriving. The look of relief on parents’ faces as they handed their offspring over to us was quite comical. A handful of the children were already members of the club but the other forty five or so were from the local primary schools. Again I asked myself why I had elected to spend a day with all these ‘little monsters’ especially when I have two all of my own to contend with! I needn’t have worried of course as it turned out to be a marvellous day. We watched entertaining DVD clips, learned ‘action’ songs, made clay pyramids, decorated biscuits, played memory games and spent some time in quiet reflection. I say ‘we’ because I rediscovered my inner child and joined in all the activities.

The particular highlight for me was the final rendition of “He’s got the whole world in his hands” in the closing part of the day. The children knew the words and actions off by heart and sang so loudly it was almost enough to bring the roof down. It’s difficult to explain those moments; only that the body tingles with the pleasure of having witnessed something so magical.

Of course there were also moments of great poignancy. I found it difficult to stop thinking of one little girl, who mentioned oh-so-casually that her mum was in hospital and would be there for a long time. It’s easy for us adults to idealise childhood and forget that some children have their own burden of anxieties and concerns. When I got home utterly exhausted, still with modelling clay under my fingernails, I reflected on what a privilege it had been.

There was one disappointment for the children and that was that the playscheme was only running for a day, and not the whole week. As I said farewell to my group, one of the children turned and said “Can we do it again in the next holiday, Miss?” My response was, “Sure, why not?”

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An Online Learning Course

The boundaries between education and entertainment are beginning to blur, and a new type of learning, in which education merges with entertainment, is emerging – ‘edutainment’ TV shows have long launched spin-off products in the form of merchandise and video games. But now US television company AMC has teamed up with the University of California to produce an online course based on the TV show, The Walking Dead, which features a post-apocalyptic world ridden with zombies.

With an audience of 10 million, student numbers for the course are expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. If successful, the edutainment experiment could spawn a huge range of other TV show/university hybrid courses.

Academics from the University of California say that the online course will be a ‘legitimate educational experience’ and tackle serious issues from the fields of science, public health, nutrition, psychology and sociology. The course will consist of eight modules including a physics module on ‘the science of decay’, a public health module on the study of epidemics and a mathematics module on population dynamics. However, students will gain no formal qualifications or credits on successful completion of the course.

The University of California, which has a huge reputation to uphold, said that there had been no dumbing down in the design of the course. It insisted that all modules had been made as academically rigorous as those taught on the university grounds. One lecturer in social science stated that the university already used contemporary media examples to make theories more relevant to students, and this course was merely taking this concept one step further. ‘The curriculum is very real,’ says Josh Coates, head of Infrastructure and designer of the online platform. We have local apocalypses in our world today, in the form of earthquakes, hurricanes and terrorist attacks. ‘The fact that the context is this fictional world of an apocalypse is incidental. This course gives us the opportunity to educate people about the science of disasters.’

The market for massive open online courses, or MOOCs, is rapidly expanding. Millions of students sign up for online education courses each year. However, millions fail to complete the courses, suggesting that they pose a real challenge to online learners. Part of this experiment is to find out whether the power of television can reduce the high drop-out rate characteristic of MOOCS.

The university is taking this opportunity to hone the way it delivers online courses. Until now, online learning experiences have been able to deliver great videos and quizzes, but student interaction was minimal and the experience for learners has been impersonal. With the increasing demand for online courses, these are issues that universities looking to invest in online learning are increasingly having to face.

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