Juneteenth Family Reunion

The 2022 Juneteenth Family Reunion will be SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 2022, at Eureka Park! If you would like to be a vendor or volunteer, please fill out an interest form and we will send you more information: https://linktr.ee/roanokeculturalcollective

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The 2022 Juneteenth Family Reunion is coming! Thank you to Lovelight Design Studio for this beautiful flyer! Spread the word!!

Once again, We are still accepting vendors and volunteers - please complete an interest form at https://linktr.ee/roanokeculturalcollective and more information will be sent to you. Thank you for your support!

Winter Coding Camp

Strokes of Genius X Science Museum of Western Virginia are excited to present the Winter Makey Makey Concert after our Winter Coding Camp for the holiday season. We hope to see you there. For more information, click the link below.

Did you know young women at Hollins University can attend tuition free?

Hollins University will begin offering tuition-free education to young women in the Roanoke region selected for a special program.

The Hope Scholar Program, which stands for Hollins Opportunity for Promise through Education, exists to alleviate the hardship of affording private college tuition for students with financial need, officials said.

“If you thought attending Hollins University was out of reach, we’ve got great news for you,” the university said on its website.

In choosing participants, the university will give preference to applicants from families with household adjusted gross income of $50,000 or less, said Ashley Browning, vice president of enrollment management. It is taking applications through Jan. 1 from interested women enrolled at a Virginia high school who live within 40 miles of the Hollins campus. Those selected will begin class in fall 2022.

Tuition at Hollins is currently $39,360 a year…..

Click here for more informatlion: Read Full Article by Jeff Sturgeon

How Do Kids Figure Out What Words Mean? New Computer Model Has Answers

Scientists are continually discovering more about how we pick up language from the earliest ages, and a new study looks specifically at how very young children integrate different sources of information to learn new words.

Those sources can be everything from whether or not they've seen an object before (which points to whether or not it has a name they've heard before) to what they might be chatting about with someone when a new word is introduced.

To figure out more about how these sources are combined, researchers put together a cognitive model, proposing a social inference approach where children use all the available information in front of them to infer the identity of a given object.

"You can think of this model as a little computer program," says developmental psychologist Michael Henry Tessler from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "We input children's sensitivity to different information, which we measure in separate experiments, and then the program simulates what should happen if those information sources are combined in a rational way."

"The model spits out predictions for what should happen in hypothetical new situations in which these information sources are all available."

The theoretical system researchers developed was informed by previous research in philosophy, developmental psychology, and linguistics. Data were also gathered from tests carried out with 148 kids aged between 2-5 years old to assess their sensitivity to different sources of information. The data were then plugged into the model.

Read Full Aritcle at: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-model-may-give-us-a-better-idea-of-how-kids-pick-up-new-words

The future of Origami and Technology

Today, we wanted to highlight some of the innovate ideas for the future through some of our most creative inventors. Listen as Jamie Paik details how we have integrated origami into technology! We hope you enjoy and remember that all great ideas begin with Strokes of Genius.

New Ocean Discovered!!

By Elizabeth Gamillo

smithsonianmag.com
June 14, 2021

Just in time for World Ocean Day on June 8, National Geographic cartographers declared the oceanic ring around Antarctica the world's fifth ocean.

Dubbed the Southern Ocean, the body of water's recognition by National Geographic aims to promote conservation and awareness to the fragile ecosystem where thousands of marine species like whales, seals, and penguins live, reports Sarah Gibbens for National Geographic.

The National Geographic Society has been making maps for over a century. Since the 1970s, they have had geographers oversee all modifications to every published map, reports the National Geographic. The decision to officially recognize the Southern Ocean came about after years of observing scientists and news sources using the term the Southern Ocean to describe waters near Antarctica, reports National Geographic.

"We've always labeled it, but we labeled it slightly differently [than other oceans]," Alex Tait, a National Geographic Society Geographer, tells National Geographic. "This change was taking the last step and saying we want to recognize it because of its ecological separation."

The Southern Ocean is defined by a swift undertow called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) that flows from west to east around Antarctica, reports Andrew Chamings for SFGate. The current extends out to 60 degrees south latitude and appeared about 34 million years ago when Antarctica separated from South America, per National Geographic. The oceanic ring acts as an invisible wall that encloses Antarctica in freezing, less salty waters than northern waters. This separation makes the continent and the Southern Ocean ecologically distinct, hosting countless diverse organisms.

The U.S. Board of Geographic Names, a federal program designed in 1890 to set in place uniform geographic name usage, already recognized the arctic waters, already recognizes the Southern Ocean, reports Adam Gabbat for the Guardian. Soon after, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recognized the body of water as the fifth ocean in 1999 after the Board of Geographic Names approved the title, "Southern Ocean," reports Paulina Firozi for the Washington Post.

Read More at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wave-hello-earths-newest-ocean-180977974/