Researchers say bats in New York appear to be coming back from white-nose syndrome, a fungal infection that killed millions of the flying mammals in North America.

In a report from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, the number of little brown bats are on the rise in some of the hibernation caves where scientists first noticed the disease.

There are hopes this is an early sign that bats can adapt to a disease that has spread to 19 states and Canada. But scientists caution it’s far too early to tell if it is the start of a trend or a statistical blip.

White-nose, named for the sugary smudges found on affected bats’ snouts, prompts bats to wake from their winter hibernation and die when they fly into the winter landscape in a futile search for food. First detected in 2006, the fungal infection has killed more than 5.7 million bats as it spread from the Northeast. In recent weeks, the disease has shown up in Alabama and Missouri, marking its advance west of the Mississippi River.

Scientists fear the disease could push some species to extinction and dramatically reduce the population of an animal farmers depend on for natural pest control.

The survey found that New York’s losses of little browns, the most common bat species in the state before white-nose, remain at about 90 percent.

New York state bat biologist Carl Herzog said that while counts were up in the three caves west of Albany for little browns, bat-counters could have missed some in previous surveys and new bats coming to hibernate in the caves are a contributing factor.

But the possibility that bat populations could adapt to the fungus has long been the hope of scientists.

“That’s what the perfect scenario would be—that the area that was first hit would be the first to recover because they would have had more time to adapt to the pathogen,” said Beth Buckles, an anatomic pathologist at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University.

Catching bats: In an effort to track the long-term effect of white-nose, Herzog and a team of researchers caught bats outside one early-hit hibernation cave on a recent moonlit night. Bats that flew out for an insect snack hit filament lines and fell into a bag where they were snatched up to be swabbed and examined.

As bats chirped in protest, their wings were stretched flat on an ultraviolet light table about twice the size of a smartphone screen. When the purple light shined through the translucent wing, infected spots that can’t be seen with the naked eye became fluorescent orange.

Traveled from Europe: The infection patterns were photographed and will be compared with those of bats that succumbed to the disease years ago and with newly infected bats in Pennsylvania. They will also be compared with bats in the Czech Republic. Scientists recently confirmed that white-nose fungus hitchhiked from Europe, possibly on the boots or clothes of a well-traveled caver.

Based on observations so far, Herzog said bats from the long-exposed cave are dealing with the disease better.

But he said despite some good news from early-hit caves, there are still more questions than answers.

“This is not a widespread phenomenon,” Herzog said. “Hopefully it will be.”

Reported by MICHAEL HILL of the Associated Press from VOORHEESVILLE, N.Y.

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First there were feathers, then the “Hunger Games” braid took over. Now there’s a new hair trend just as easy to embrace — coloring strands with craft-store chalk. No stylist, no complicated instructions, no great expense.

Everyone from hipsters to children to Hollywood celebrities is embracing the runway fad for brightly colored hair, using soft pastel chalk.

“Hair stylists and colorists, they’re artists at their core, so they’re always fooling around with things from the arts-and-crafts store,” said Kristin Perrotta, Allure magazine’s executive editor. “Somewhere along the line a few of them realized there were soft pastels you could use to leave color on your hair.”

The advantage? The chalks wash out in the shower, allowing for temporary rocker style.

“There’s no commitment,” Perrotta said. “This is your opportunity to go crazy for whatever time you want. Even if you’re a super-preppy woman who works in a library, on the weekend you can have purple stripes in your hair.”

Conrad’s hairstylist, Kristin Ess, said beauty professionals have used the chalks to color hair for a while. She credits the proliferation of online beauty blogs for turning the tool into a trend.

“Usually it was secret, so top secret,” said Ess, who cofounded The Beauty Department with Conrad. “But now the way that things are, it’s so easy to get it out there.”

The steps aren’t complicated: Take a piece of chalk, run it along the strand of hair until it’s colored and if necessary pull the hair through a curling iron. If you have darker hair the chalk may stick easier if you dampen the strand first. It’s important to use soft pastel chalks — the kind artists use, not oil-based chalks or sidewalk chalks.

To remove, shake or brush your hair to dust out the chalk before getting into the shower. Then wash your hair. The chalk can get messy, so wear plastic gloves.

Kandee Johnson, a celebrity makeup artist and beauty and style blogger, posted a hair chalking how-to video on YouTube in February. So far it’s gotten more than 630,000 hits.  (See below!)

“People were sending me pictures from websites,” she said. “I didn’t think people were going to be that excited over it. I did not think it was going to be that popular at all.”

Johnson thinks the attraction comes because chalking is temporary and affordable — a whole set of chalks can cost between $6 and $8.

“It’s a fun idea if you have kids or you have a corporate job,” she said. “It will be really fun for summer because you can have fun ponytails.”

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HAIR CHALKING TIPS

• Use art soft pastel chalk. Oil-based chalk will stain your hair. Sidewalk chalk or chalkboard chalk won’t stick to your hair.
• No matter what color your hair, apply the chalk to dry hair first. If you have darker hair and the chalk isn’t showing up then dampen the hair before applying.
• Using a curling or flat iron after chalking can help seal your hair if needed.
• Blondes may have to shampoo a few times before the color fully rinses out.
• Shake or brush the chalk out of your hair before you wash it. Getting chalked hair wet could stain your hair.
• Protect your clothes and hands. Wear gloves and smock or towel to keep chalk from getting on you while you’re applying it. Chalk can flake off while it’s in your hair, so it’s a good idea not to wear light clothes.

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Online: Kandee Johnson’s “How to do the Hair Chalk Trend” video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ly4GhDia4k

The Beauty Department’s Hair Chalking post: http://thebeautydepartment.com/2012/01/chalk-it-up/

 

The chalking video: http://youtu.be/5ly4GhDia4k

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Dan the baboon sits in front of a computer screen. The letters BRRU pop up. With a quick and almost dismissive tap, the monkey signals it’s not a word. Correct. Next comes, ITCS. Again, not a word.

Finally KITE comes up.

He pauses and hits a green button to show it’s a word. In the space of just a few seconds, Dan has demonstrated a form of pre-reading and walks away rewarded with a treat of dried wheat.

Dan the baboon is part of new research that shows he and his kind are able to pick up the first step in reading — seeing patterns and understanding which four-letter combinations are words and which are just “gobbledygook.”

The study shows that reading’s early steps are far more instinctive than scientists first thought and it also suggests that non-human primates may be smarter than we give them credit for.

“They’ve got the hang of this thing,” said Jonathan Grainger, a French scientist and lead author of the research.

Baboons and other monkeys are good pattern finders and what they are doing may be what we first do in recognizing words.

It’s still a far cry from real reading, so no a monkey can’t read better than you. They don’t know what these words mean, and are just breaking them down into parts, said Grainger.

In 300,000 tests, the six baboons distinguished between real and fake words about three-out-of-four times, according to the study published in Thursday’s journal Science.

The 4-year-old Dan, the star of the bunch and about the equivalent age of a human teenager, got 80 percent of the words right and learned 308 four-letter words.

The baboons are rewarded with food when they press the right spot on the screen: A blue plus sign for bogus combos or a green oval for real words.

Even though the experiments were done in France, the researchers used English words because it is the language of science, Grainger said.

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Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

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Reported by SETH BORENSTEIN of the Associated Press from WASHINGTON, D.C. He can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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What do you get when you take a 9-year-old girl who loves cupcakes — and who helps other students in her New York City school solve their problems — and you add in her mom, a professional writer?

The answer: “Peace, Love and Cupcakes” by Sheryl Berk (the mom) and Carrie Berk (the 9-year-old).

The just-published book is the first of four planned for The Cupcake Club series.

We recently spoke to the mother-and-daughter team about how they came up with the idea for the book, what their writing process is like and — mostly — about cupcakes.

Q: So whose idea was this series of books?

Carrie: I was having a sleepover with my friend, and she was reading something and said, “Wouldn’t a cupcake book be good?” So I started to write down what the characters and the plot would be, and I showed it to my mom.

Q: Why are cupcakes so special?

Carrie: Cupcakes have the decoration, the frosting, the filling and the cake. Other desserts, like brownies, don’t have the other elements.

Q: This story is also about a serious topic for kids, bullying. How did you decide to write about that?

Carrie: In school, I’m a peer mediator, and I go around and talk to kids and see if they have problems. I learned the problems that kids have and wanted to use that in the book. . . . Bullying is one of the biggest problems that kids have. There are also friend problems, and in the second book (we get into that).

Sheryl: She’s taught to look for bullying (at school). She knows how to resolve conflict. This was something she really wanted to deal with in the book.

Q: So how does the writing work?

Carrie: We do a lot of talking about how the story’s going to go. Then I watch “Cupcake Wars,” and I write down all the crazy flavors so I can include them. (The books have recipes in them as well.) Mom writes a first draft, and then I get to read through it. I edit it. She takes my edits, and she adds them . . . then we’ll have a second draft.

Sheryl: This is what I do for a living; I collaborate with people on books. I wanted it to sound like her. She can spot fake dialogue a mile away. Even the things that I had the teacher say, she would correct and say, “My teacher would never say that.” We try to keep the book very true to her experiences, her friends. It’s very easy for us to come up with these stories because this is what she’s going through.

Q: So you study ballet, you write books — and a cupcake blog. What would you like to be when you grow up? A ballerina, a baker or a writer?

Carrie: A writer!

Q: And finally, you must tell us, what’s your favorite kind of cupcake?

Carrie: Definitely a red velvet cupcake. I just love cream cheese frosting.

Reported by Tracy Grant for Kidspost and the Washington Post. You can read Carrie Berk’s cupcake blog at carriescupcakecritique.shutterfly.com.

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After an entire century that included government investigations and countless books and movies, we’re still debating what really caused the Titanic to hit an iceberg and sink on that crystal-clear chilly night.

Maybe there’s more to blame than human folly and belief in an “unsinkable” ship. Maybe we can fault freak atmospheric conditions that caused a mirage or an even rarer astronomical event that sent icebergs into shipping lanes. Those are two of the newer theories being proposed by a Titanic author and a team of astronomers.

Such theories are important “but at its most basic what happened is they failed to heed warnings and they hit the iceberg because they were going too fast,” said James Delgado at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

With this week’s 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking, the interest in all things Titanic is steaming faster than the doomed cruise ship on its maiden voyage.

Mirage? One of the novel new theories says Titanic could have been the victim of a mirage that is similar to what people see in the desert. It’s the brainchild of Tim Maltin, a historian who has written three books about Titanic. The latest, an titled “A Very Deceiving Night” emphasizes how the atmosphere may have tricked the Titanic crew on a cloudless night.

“This was not avoidable human error,” Maltin said in a telephone interview from London. “It’s just about air density difference.”

Reports from the time said it was a beautiful clear night when the Titanic sank. But something else strange was happening, Maltin said. For a couple of days there had been something weird going on in the air over the North Atlantic, and it was reported by all sorts of ships, including the crew on Titanic, Maltin said.

What was so strange? The unusually cold sea air caused light to bend abnormally downward, Maltin said. The Titanic’s first officer, William McMaster Murdoch, saw what he described as a “haze on the horizon, and that iceberg came right out of the haze,” Maltin said, quoting from the surviving second officer’s testimony.

Other ships, including those rescuing survivors, reported similar strange visuals and had trouble navigating around the icebergs, he said.

British meteorologists later monitored the site for those freaky thermal inversions and said 60 percent of the time they checked, the inversions were present, Maltin said.

The same inversions could have made the Titanic’s rescue rockets appear lower in the sky, giving a rescue ship the impression that the Titanic was smaller and farther away, Maltin said.

Blame the moon? Physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher at Texas State University have another theory that fits nicely with Maltin’s. Olson — who often comes up with astronomical quirks linked to historical events — said that a few months earlier, the moon, sun and Earth lined up in a way that added extra pull on Earth’s tides. The Earth was closer to the moon than it had been in 1,400 years.

They based their work on historical and astronomical records and research in 1978 by a federal expert in tides.

The unusual tides caused glaciers to break and drop icebergs into the ocean on the coast of Greenland. Those southbound icebergs got stuck near Labrador and Newfoundland but then slowly moved south again, floating into the shipping currents just in time to greet the Titanic, the astronomers theorized. Maltin said the icebergs also added a snaking river of super-cold water that magnified the mirage effect.

Tides and mirages may have happened, but blaming them for Titanic’s sinking “misses the boat,” said Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University disaster expert.

“The basic facts of Titanic are not in dispute: The boat was going too fast in dangerous waters,” Clarke said. If Titanic had stopped for the night because of ice like the British steamship Californian did, “tides and mirages wouldn’t have mattered.”

Warnings issued: On April 14, the day it hit the iceberg, the Titanic received seven heavy ice warnings, including one from the Californian less than an hour before the fateful collision. The message said: “We are stopped and surrounded by ice.” Titanic sent back a message that said “Shut up. We are busy.”

Clarke said people keep looking for additional causes “because if it’s nature or God, then we’re off the hook, morally and practically.”

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Reported by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press from WASHINGTON, D.C. He can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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As a pediatrician, I spend a lot of time looking for bacteria that might be making my patients sick. Some well-known illnesses that are caused by bacteria include strep throat, ear infections, Lyme disease and conjunctivitis (pinkeye). Bacteria are also responsible for acne, cavities and body odor.

Bacteria can hurt you in two ways. Some attack cells directly. Others produce toxins (poisons) that make you sick. Either way, bacteria can rapidly damage or destroy cells.

While it’s true that some bacteria can make you sick, most species of bacteria are helpful. Bacteria can be found everywhere. They live in water, in the air and on land. Bacteria are among the smallest life forms on the planet. If you lined up 10,000 staph bacteria, they would fit on the head of a pin. (The same pin could hold 1 million cold viruses.)

Here are some cool facts about bacteria.

• Bacteria are essential to life on Earth. Along with fungi, they decompose, or break down, dead plants and animals to provide nutrients for plant life. Some bacteria turn nitrogen from the atmosphere into nitrates that plants need for growth.
• Bacteria help lots of animals digest food while producing vitamins for the host animal. Baby koalas ingest pap, a mucuslike substance that contains billions of bacteria, from their mother’s poop at six months of age. The pap allows them to digest eucalyptus leaves. Termites wouldn’t be able to digest wood fiber if it weren’t for certain bacteria that live in their intestinal tract.
• One type of bacteria “eats” oil and can be used to help clean up oil spills, including the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Sewage treatment plants use bacteria to help purify water.
• Bacteria are used to make food. They help turn milk into yogurt and cheese. The most expensive coffee in the world exists because of bacteria. There is a small, catlike animal in Indonesia that eats coffee beans as part of its diet. As the beans move through its intestine, bacteria remove some of the chemicals in the beans that make them bitter. When the animal poops, the beans are harvested, cleaned and made into coffee. (See if that doesn’t make your parents kick the caffeine habit!)

The reason you sometimes develop diarrhea after taking antibiotics is that the medicine kills the good bacteria in your intestinal tract as well as the bad ones that are making you sick. Killing the good bacteria hampers the way your large intestine works.

Eating good bacteria can help your digestion and treat diarrhea. Good bacteria are called probiotics. You can find them in certain yogurts and as food supplements.

So, yes, there are lots of “good” bacteria out there!

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Howard Bennett, a Washington pediatrician, is the author of “Harry Goes to the Hospital.”

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The discovery of a giant meat-eating dinosaur sporting a downy coat has some scientists changing the look of Tyrannosaurus rex.

With a killer jaw and sharp claws, T. rex is usually shown in movies and popular culture as having scaly skin. But the discovery of a T. rex relative suggests the king of dinosaurs may have had a softer side.

The evidence comes from a newfound tyrannosaur species in northeastern China that lived 60 million years before T. rex. The fossil record preserved remains of fluffy down, making it the largest feathered dinosaur ever found.

If a T. rex relative had feathers, why not T. rex? Scientists said the evidence is trending in that direction.

“People need to start changing their image of T. rex,” said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, who was not part of the discovery team.

Early finds: Much smaller dinosaurs with primitive feathers have been excavated in recent years, but this is the first direct sign of a huge, shaggy dinosaur. Scientists have long debated whether gigantic dinosaurs lost their feathers the bigger they got or were just not as extensively covered.

The new tyrannosaur species, Yutyrannus huali, is described in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Its name is a blend of Latin and Mandarin, which translates to “beautiful feathered tyrant.”

A team of Chinese and Canadian scientists analyzed three well-preserved fossil skeletons—an adult and two juveniles—recovered from a quarry in China’s Liaoning province by a private fossil dealer. Most striking were the remains of down-like feathers on the neck and arm. Though coverage was patchy, scientists suspected the species had feathers over much of its body.

It would have felt like touching “long, thick fur,” co-author Corwin Sullivan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said. Another scientist, Thomas Holtz Jr. at the University of Maryland, compared it to the feathers of an emu.

The creature lived about 125 million years ago. At 30 feet long and weighing a ton, Y. huali would have reached T. rex’s chest.

The dino-fuzz probably kept it warm, though camouflage or showing it off like a peacock could not be ruled out.

Since T. rex is related to this newfound feathery species, chances are good that T. rex was feathered as well, scientists said. Just don’t mistake fuzzy for cuddly. The predatory dinosaur would have been just as menacing.

Having feathers “doesn’t make it less threatening or less fearsome,” said Holtz, who had no role in the research.

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Online:

Journal: http://www.nature.com/nature

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Reported by Alicia Chang of the Associated Press from LOS ANGELES, Calif. Follow her coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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When did our ancestors first use fire? That’s been a long-standing question, and now a new study says that our anscestors were buring things 1 million years ago in a South African cave.

The ash and burnt bone samples found there suggest fires burned in that spot — not just one time, but lots of times, researchers said Monday.

The problem for scientists in figuring out when we started using fire is this: If you find evidence of an ancient blaze, how do you know it wasn’t just a wildfire?

The new research makes “a pretty strong case” for South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, said Francesco Berna of Boston University.

One expert said the Wonderwerk finding should be studied together with another discovery nearby, which dates back to the same time. Burnt bones also have been found in the Swartkrans cave, not far from the Wonderwerk site, and the combination makes a stronger case than either one alone, said Anne Skinner of Williams College.

Another expert unconnected with the work, Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University, said that while the new research does not provide “rock solid” evidence, it suggests our ancestors probably did use fire there.

Those people from long ago probably brought burning material from natural blazes into the cave to establish the fires, said Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto, a study author. Stone tools at the site suggest the ancestors were Homo erectus, a species known from as early as about 2 million years ago.

Berna said it’s unlikely the fires were simply natural blazes, such as from lightning strikes. That’s because the evidence shows repeated fires burned deep inside the cave, he said. The cave entrance is almost 100 feet away, he said.

The scientists also found no sign that the Wonderwerk cave fires were ignited by spontaneous combustion of bat poop, which they called a rare but documented event.

Fire for what? It’s not clear what the fires were used for. While the burnt bones suggest cooking, the ancestors might have eaten the meat raw and tossed the bones into the fire, Berna noted. Other possible uses might be warmth, light and protection from wild animals, he said.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Roebroeks and Paola Villa of the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Colorado Museum, said that while the new study probably demonstrates use of fire, they’d like to see signs of preparations like a hearth — a cooking area — to be sure.

In any case, they said, the work does not show that human ancestors were using fire regularly throughout their range that long ago. In a paper published last year, they traced such habitual use of fire to about 400,000 years ago.

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Online:

Journal website: http://www.pnas.org

Wonderwerk Cave information: http://bit.ly/H4sDS4

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Reported by MALCOLM RITTER of the Associated Press

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In Savannah, Ga., 100 years ago, Juliette Gordon Low gathered 18 girls who she thought would enjoy crafts, sports, the outdoors and just being together.

That may seem similar to what many of you do today, and it should: That was the first meeting of what would become the Girl Scouts of the USA. But life was very different in 1912: There were no computers, cellphones or even televisions. Women and girls wore more-formal clothes, and women were fighting for the right to vote in elections. But even though they lived in a different time, these early Girl Scouts were interested in doing community service, being part of a sisterhood and having fun, just as they are now.

Low, who was nicknamed “Daisy,” had grown up as a wealthy Southern belle. She enjoyed painting and performing in plays. Daisy loved animals and had many throughout her life, including dogs, cats and a parrot. She met and married a handsome young man named William Mackay Low, whom she called “Billow.” Together they moved to England in 1887, where Daisy met Queen Victoria and the couple lived an aristocratic life. But she also had some difficulties.

When she was in her 20s, Daisy became partially deaf in one ear when an infection wasn’t treated properly. Then, on her wedding day, a grain of rice became lodged in her other ear, which eventually caused her to lose most of the hearing in that ear as well. Later in life, Daisy would use her deafness to her advantage, often pretending to not understand people when they said they couldn’t volunteer or donate to her beloved Girl Scouts.

Daisy’s marriage started well but became unhappy. Billow wanted to divorce, but he died in 1905 before that happened.

After Billow died, Daisy was lost. They had no children, and she wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of her life. Then one day, she happened to be seated next to a charming man at a luncheon in London. He was Sir Robert Baden-Powell, whom everyone called “B-P,” and he had founded the Boy Scouts just a few years earlier. He had a problem: Girls — thousands of them — were trying to join the Boy Scouts. They showed up at a big rally with homemade uniforms and signed in with their initials. He wanted there to be a group for girls, but he needed help running it. As Daisy and B-P talked, Daisy, who was now in her early 50s, became interested in starting a scouting group for girls, not only in England but also in the United States.

When she returned to Georgia, Daisy telephoned her cousin and said: “Come right over! I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!”

The first Girl Scouts got to know Daisy personally, and they thought of her as a quirky, funny fairy godmother type of person who would stand on her head at meetings and tell spooky stories around the campfire. Daisy liked to ask the girls what they thought and what they wanted to do, rather than telling them.

From the beginning, Daisy wanted the Girl Scouts to be inclusive, meaning that it would be open to girls of any race, background or financial situation. The girls would be encouraged to be independent, to make their own choices and to develop their talents and skills. They would also be challenged to learn new things. Daisy thought it was important for the girls to spend time outdoors, so camping, swimming and playing sports such as basketball were early activities.

Some of the first Girl Scout badges show that the girls also worked on learning first aid, cooking, map-reading and knot-tying. Badges were created to show that a girl was proficient in a skill or subject, meaning she had learned a lot about it and had become good at it. Badges — there are 136 of them now — are then sewn or ironed on a Girl Scout uniform.

Around 1917, the girls started selling cookies, which has become an important fundraiser for troops and the whole organization as well, as a real-life lesson in how money is earned.

Just as Daisy had discovered herself by founding the Girl Scouts, she helped the girls develop into stronger young women. Since that first meeting in Georgia, 50 million girls have become scouts. Daisy died in 1927, but the group she started 100 years ago means that she will always be remembered.

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Reported by Shannon Henry Kleiber, a former Washington Post reporter, is a Girl Scout leader for her daughter’s troop. Her book, “On My Honor: Real Life Lessons From America’s First Girl Scout,” will be published in March by Sourcebooks.

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GIRL SCOUT FACTS

Founded: March 12, 1912, by Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low in Georgia.

Headquarters: New York

Active Girl Scouts: 3.2 million

Famous people who once were Girl Scouts include Olympic figure skater Dorothy Hamill, comedian Lucille Ball and news anchor Katie Couric; more than two-thirds of women currently in Congress were Girl Scouts

Best-selling Girl Scout cookie: Thin Mint (which also is the third-best-selling cookie of any sort in the country).

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GIRL SCOUT TIMELINE

October 31, 1860: Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon, nicknamed “Daisy,” is born in Savannah, Ga.

• 1882: Daisy goes on her first trip to Europe.
• 1886: Daisy marries William Mackay Low, “Billow,” in Savannah.
• 1887: Daisy and Billow move to England.
• 1905: Billow dies.
• 1911: Daisy meets Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts.
• 1912: Daisy gathers the first American Girl Scouts for a meeting in Savannah.
• 1915: Daisy is named as the first president of the Girl Scouts.
• 1927: On Jan. 17, in Savannah, Daisy dies from breast cancer. She was 66.
• 1948: A U.S. postage stamp featuring Daisy’s picture is issued.
• 1953: The Girl Scouts buy and restore Daisy’s childhood home.
• 1979: Daisy is inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
• 2005: Daisy is honored with a medallion on “The Extra Mile Points of Light Volunteer Pathway” near the White House.
• 2012: Girl Scouts of the USA celebrates 100 years since its founding by Juliette Gordon Low.

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HEY KIDS!

What’s your favorite Girl Scout cookie? Leave a comment below and let us know!

 

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Have you ever come to the end of a book and felt as if you could be friends with one of the characters? Or maybe you’ve come to the end of a book and felt as if you could be one of the characters? Authors, even ones who make up stories, often write about what they know and who they know, and sometimes they make up characters who are just like themselves.

Madeleine L’Engle wrote “A Wrinkle in Time” more than 50 years ago about a girl named Meg Murry, who is smart and strong but who feels that she doesn’t fit in. Meg travels with her brother, Charles Wallace, and a friend, Calvin, to a planet called Camazotz to find her scientist father, who has disappeared. There she has to figure out how to use her unique talents to survive.

This year is the 50th anniversary of “A Wrinkle in Time” winning the Newbery Medal, an award for the best kids books. L’Engle died in 2007 at age 88, but L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis, 42, is using the anniversary to talk about what L’Engle was like.

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