Archive - June 8, 2018

  The Office of the Inspector General of the Peace Corps is mandated to report to Congress on a semi-annual basis. Here is the report for the period,October 1, 2017  to March 31, 2018. https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.peacecorps.gov/documents/inspector-general/SARC_OCT17-MAR18_for_web.pdf It is not our task to summarize the report.  We would like to call attention to  some sections of the Report which may be of special interest to the RPCV community. The Inspector General continues its Review of the Peace Corps Information Security Program.  This statement  is from that Review: “We contracted with accounting and management consulting firm Williams, Adley & Company-DC to assess the Peace Corps’ compliance with the provisions of FISMA. The objective of this review was to perform an independent assessment of the Peace Corps’ information security program, including testing the effectiveness of security controls for a subset of systems as required, for FY 2017. The review found that the Peace Corps . . .

  Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from  Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) • The energy within undereducated girls must be unleashed by Lia Einstein (Guinea) From Scientific American May 1, 2018   The question on the physics quiz seemed simple enough: “What is the smallest piece of matter that makes up everything in the universe?” Binta’s response: “Binta.” I laughed out loud. You would too if you saw tiny Binta, who is one of my smartest seventh graders. Surely she knew the correct answer is “atom.” Yet, I mused, a famous equation governing atoms could also apply to her. E = mc2. The equation says that under the right conditions, mass can become energy, and vice versa. Because light moves so fast, an atom at rest—even with a small mass—contains a great deal of energy. A walnut has enough energy locked in it to power a small city. Mass from the sun radiates . . .