More incentives for visually impaired students

by Ananda KANNANGARA

Zonal Education officials will carry out a survey on visually impaired children in their respective areas shortly on a directive of the Government.

"The objective is to provide adequate educational equipment, including braille books, white canes and specially manufactured sports equipment to these children," said the Minister of Education, Bandula Gunawardane commenting on the development of education for over 10,000 visually impaired children in the country.

According to current statistics, over 10,000 visually impaired children, between the ages of six to sixteen years are presently studying in Government schools.

Minister Gunawardane made these remarks at a function held at Meepe Central School in Homagama Educatioanal Zone. The function was organised by the Sri Lanka National Federation of Visually Handicapped (SLNFVH)

The Minister highlighted the importance of developing the education of the visually impaired children, since these children have special inborn abilities, talents and the courage to be partners in the country's development activities.

Minister Gunawardane said out of 9,500 Government schools in the country, six schools have been reserved to provide education for visually impaired children.

He also mentioned the invaluable service being rendered by the Ratmalana School for the Blind and said that this school has produced several important citizens to the country.

He said today they have been given an opportunity to continue their educational activities with other children in normal schools.

"This helps the visually impaired children to broaden their knowledge by interacting with other children".

SLNFVH, Senior President W.M.B. Ratnasekara who thanked the Education Minister for encouraging the visually impaired children in the country and ensuring their well-being said that a large number of educated visually impaired people are employed at Government and private sector institutions . The SLNFVH made cash donations of Rs. 3,500 each to some students on the occasion.

Mars' sand dunes are in motion

Images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars at dozens of locations and shifting up to several yards. These observations reveal the planet's sandy surface is more dynamic than previously thought.

"Mars either has more gusts of wind than we knew about before, or the winds are capable of transporting more sand," said Nathan Bridges, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of a paper on the finding published online in the journal Geology.

"We used to think of the sand on Mars as relatively immobile, so these new observations are changing our whole perspective."

While red dust is known to swirl all around Mars in storms and dust devils, the planet's dark sand grains are larger and harder to move.Less than a decade ago, scientists thought the dunes and ripples on Mars either did not budge or moved too slowly for detection.MRO was launched in 2005. Initial images from the spacecraft's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera documented only a few cases of shifting sand dunes and ripples, collectively called bedforms.

Now, after years of monitoring the Martian surface, the spacecraft has documented movements of a few yards (or meters) per year in dozens of locations across the planet.

The air on Mars is thin, so stronger gusts of wind are needed to push a grain of sand. Wind-tunnel experiments have shown that a patch of sand would take winds of about 80 mph (nearly 130 kilometres per hour) to move on Mars compared with only 10 mph (about 16 kilometers per hour) on Earth.

Measurements from the meteorology experiments on NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s and early 1980s, in addition to climate models, showed such winds should be rare on Mars. Not all of the sand on Mars is blowing in the wind. The study also identifies several areas where the bedforms did not move."The sand dunes where we didn't see movement today could have larger grains, or perhaps their surface layers are cemented together," said Bridges, who also is a member of the HiRISE team. "These studies show the benefit of long-term monitoring at high resolution

- ScienceDaily