With $1.36 billion in worldwide receipts after last weekend, Avatar topped LOTR: Return of the King and is now the second highest grossing film of all time. Next up? Titanic. Its record is just $500 million away. [BusinessWeek]
From Newlaunches.com:
Now a sport doesn't always have to be played fair, no? Or does it? Well, as long as we have some smart chaps coming up with ideas like the Smart Bowling Ball, you really cannot make an excuse to play fair. Designed by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technolog
As regular Intersection readers know, I’ve long been interested in energy. Today I’m flying to Texas to join Michael Webber’s three day energy technology and policy course at UTAustin. Here is the description:
Dr. Michael Webber, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Associate Director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, will share his insights and candid views about the best and worst of US energy practice. His fast-paced and information-packed lectures will include real-world examples, entertaining anecdotes, engineering fundamentals, historical perspectives, and an outlook for the future of energy. This crash course is perfect for people who want an energy credential or a graduate class in energy, but only have a few days to spare.
With lectures covering transportation, biofuels, climate, security, and food, I can’t wait. So expect some energy related posts this week as I have time to blog.
From Yahoo! News: Science News:
When a migraine hits, many sufferers hide out in a dark room, away from the painful light. Now scientists think they know why light makes migraines worse. New research on humans and rats has revealed a visual pathway in the brain that underlies th
From Yahoo! News: Science News:
Shipwreck hunters have captured the first underwater footage of an Australian World War II hospital ship that sank in 1943 and left 268 people dead. A search team led by U.S. shipwreck hunter David Mearns sent a submarine robot more than 6,500 fee
As if streets didn't have enough pandemonium, Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki has created a White Noise Machine. He put it in a street in Delhi, India, and this is what happened.
The White Noise Generator analyzes the sound coming into it, and spits it back at you as gibberish. Sometimes I believe that Times Square does this on its own, out of pure acoustics. [Designboom]
So the other day I go to pick up my oldest and the businesswoman who runs the show said to me "I have a question" I quickly see her Time Magazine with the cover which asks "Can we change our genes"
If someone woke me out of a sound sleep and forced me at gunpoint to say which is my favorite camera in the solar system, they’d probably have to shoot me. But I think that HiRISE onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would be in the top three. And it’s pictures like this one that put it there:
[Click to get to greatly embiggened pictures.]
That is not a closeup of my chin before I shave. It’s Mars, a dune field in the far north; at latitude 83.5° to be precise, less than 400 km (240 miles) from the north pole. The eternal Martian wind blows the heavy sand into dunes, and you can see the hummocks and ripples from this across the image. The sand on Mars is from basalt, which is a darkish gray color. The red comes from much smaller dust particles which settle everywhere.
But what are those weird tendril thingies?
In the Martian winter, carbon dioxide freezes out of the air (and you thought it was cold where you are). In the summer, that CO2 sublimates; that is, turns directly from a solid to a gas. When that happens the sand gets disturbed, and falls down the slopes in little channels, which spreads out when it hits the bottom. But this disturbs the red dust, too, which flows with the sand. When it’s all done, you get those feathery tendrils. Note that at the tendril tips, you see blotches of red; that’s probably from the lighter dust billowing a bit before settling down.
Now, you might think I’m making this all up. How do we know this stuff is flowing downhill like that? Ah, because in this picture we’ve caught it in the act! In this image, a closeup of a region just to the left of center of the big image, you can actually see the cloud of dust from an avalanche as it occurs.
Oh, baby. The cloud is only a few dozen meters across, and can’t be more than a few seconds old.
I love stuff like this. I tend to think of Mars as a stiff, still, unchanging place, but then HiRISE goes and slaps me in the face with something like this. Mind you, this is an avalanche. On another planet. Caught as it happened.
Awe. Some.
We’ve seen this before on Mars, but it’s still shocking and amazing. I can imagine some future settlers on the Red Planet, dealing with the lack of air, bitter cold, dust in all the machinery, radiation hazards from the Sun. And, apparently, they’ll have to dodge landslides too. It’ll be a tough life for sure… but then, I look at pictures like this and think it would be worth it, just to stand on the surface of another world and be able to simply look around.
If we can see this kind of thing from space, with robotic probes, what will humans see when they go there and can kick over some rocks?
Dale Turner on the value of forgiving others for small infractions.
The darker transgressions of our digital lives are sometimes left better unmeasured. [9Gag via TheNextWeb]
For those who can't afford clear OLED laptops, this acrylic concept by designers at PEGA may be the next best thing...if you enjoy squinting at those sitting across from you through a tiny port between your keyboard and screen.
It's pretty, but as soon as this machine leaves its studio photography session, it'll be covered in a layer of irremovable human grease. [PEGA via designboom via Unplggd]
I’ve been meaning to blog this radio segment, on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning program, in which renowned physicist Lawrence Krauss and myself discuss the scientific year in review–with particular emphasis on the changing of the guard in the Obama administration, the climate conundrum, and even the battle over science and religion (where I differ with Krauss maybe 5 %). You can listen here:
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First New York City required restaurants to cut out trans fat. Then it made restaurant chains post calorie counts on their menus. Now it wants to protect people from another health scourge: salt.
On Monday, the Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a broad new health initiative aimed at encouraging food manufacturers and restaurant chains across the country to curtail the amount of salt in their products.
The new plan is said to be voluntary and involves no new legislation. Does anyone believe it will stay that way?
A person who becomes part of the NASA team never knows where the journey may lead, from a spacecraft in orbit to an underwater habitat to Earth's extreme environments.For Malcom Phelps, his experience with NASA led to Baghdad. There, in the war-torn capital of Iraq, he is part of a team involved in improving education infrastructure.
Specifically, Phelps is working with the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team, or PRT. The team is a project of the United States government to work with Iraqi leaders to help rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq. Provincial Reconstruction Teams include members of the U.S. military and civilian specialists from the U.S. government who offer their expertise to assist local leaders. These teams have been key to improvements in security and governance in Iraq, and their success is now being replicated in Afghanistan.
Phelps, a NASA education official, is the senior education advisor for the Baghdad team. He joined NASA as the chief of education technology in 1991; he was promoted to associate director of the education division in 1995. He joined the Provincial Reconstruction Team in April 2008 and accepted a request to extend his tour for one year.
"I became interested in the team's work because of a desire to contribute to our country's effort to rebuild Iraq," Phelps said. "So many Americans made sacrifices, and I thought I could help. Many of our young soldiers have endured multiple combat tours, so the separation from family, the risk and the austerity have seemed like a relatively small sacrifice for me in comparison."
To join the team, Phelps contacted the U.S. Department of State, which accepted him as a member of the Provincial Reconstruction Team education team. When he was accepted, NASA, and its Office of Education, agreed to assign Phelps to work with the team in Iraq.
He said that he was proud to be representing the agency as a part of the PRT. "The NASA Education Office is therefore making a significant contribution to the U.S. reconstruction mission in Iraq," Phelps said. Education is an important focus for NASA, and domestically the agency works to attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines and to strengthen its and the nation's future workforce.
When Phelps arrived in Iraq, the emphasis was on school reconstruction and supplies. Working with the Iraqi Ministry of Education, he supervised more than $20 million worth of school refurbishments. More than 200 schools were returned to service after they had been damaged in combat. Schools were the favored bases for the violent insurgency. Restoring them has provided the population with a tangible sign of progress while engaging young people in productive activity where they are less susceptible to propaganda. Phelps is especially proud of the reopening of a girls' school in rural Tarmiya. When he arrived in 2008, it had just been cleared of explosives, and there was a 4-foot hole in the wall of the principal's office made by an artillery round. The school now educates 500 girls and is the pride of the town.
Since being asked to lead the education effort in Baghdad, where four of Iraq's major universities are located, Phelps' focus has been on higher education. The team has worked to support a laboratory at Iraq's major engineering school that was the scene of destruction and looting only two years ago. He also has arranged for the U.S. engineering accreditation board to travel to Baghdad for an assessment to guide further progress. While numerous other projects are underway, such as training for English teachers, he is especially proud of being asked by the U.S. Embassy to plan and implement a program for Iraqi faculty that is preparing 200 of them to advise students about how to study in the U.S. "The students who are educated in the U.S. will return to Iraq and contribute to economic development and a hopeful future," Phelps said. With the improved security, collaborations with U.S. universities are now possible, and it's even conceivable that some can be facilitated through NASA programs such as the Space Grant consortium, he said.
When people think about NASA, places like the moon and Mars come to mind far more commonly than Baghdad. But Malcom Phelps' contribution in education to the reconstruction team is just one more way that the agency is improving life here on Earth and helping people to reach for the stars.
On the Web:
Expedition 22 Crew Members Salute the Troops ?
NASA Education
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DIME and WING challenge students to design and build a microgravity science experiment that is tested in a 2.2 second drop tower at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. While in free fall, the students' experiments will experience microgravity conditions, as if they were on the International Space Station.
Four high school student teams were selected in the nationwide DIME competition. NASA will provide funding for up to four students and one adult advisor from each team to come to Glenn in April 2010 to conduct its experiment and review the results with Glenn engineers and scientists. While at the center, they will tour Glenn facilities and participate in workshops. Teams were selected from the following high schools:
- Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Ill.
- Plattsburgh High School in Plattsburgh, N.Y.
- St. Ursula Academy in Toledo, Ohio
- Tualatin High School in Tualatin, Ore.
Additional high school student teams selected in the DIME competition will ship their science experiments to NASA to be tested in the drop tower. The experiments and the resulting data will be returned to the teams so they can prepare reports about their findings. Additional DIME teams were selected from the following high schools:
Columbus High School in Columbus, Ga.
Emerson Preparatory School in Washington
Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Ill.
Northbrook High School in Houston
Troy Athens High School in Troy, Mich. (4 teams)
Student teams in sixth through ninth grades were selected for the WING competition. Each team will ship its experiment to Glenn for testing. The experiments and the resulting data will be returned to the teams so they can analyze the experiment results and submit a written report back to NASA. One student team not affiliated with a school was selected from within the community of Basking Ridge, N.J. Additional teams were selected from the following schools:
Crestwood Middle School in Mountaintop, Pa. (2 teams)
Dunstan Middle School in Littleton, Colo.
Gate of Heaven School in Dallas, Pa. (2 teams)
Good Shepherd Academy from the Diocese of Scranton in Kingston, Pa.
Hanover Area School District in Hanover Township., Pa. (2 teams)
Hazleton Area School District in Drums, Pa. (2 teams)
Lake-Lehman School District in Lehman, Pa.
Northwood Elementary School in Mooresville, Ind.
Smith Middle School in Troy, Mich.
Tunkhannock Area Middle School in Tunkhannock, Pa.
Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa.
Wyoming Valley West School District in Kingston, Pa. (2 teams)
These and other NASA educational programs help the agency attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, disciplines critical to space exploration. The Teaching from Space Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston funds the DIME and WING competitions.
For information about NASA's DIME and WING student competitions, visit:
http://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/DIME.html
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Commander Charlie Hobaugh, Pilot Barry Wilmore, Mission Specialists Leland Melvin, Randy Bresnik, Mike Foreman and Bobby Satcher will share mission highlights with NASA employees, school children, college students and the general public while in the nation's capital. Reporters interested in covering the events or interviewing a crew member should contact NASA Public Affairs at 202-358-1100.
To kick off their visit, the crew will give a postflight presentation to NASA employees, their families and reporters at 10 a.m. EST, Monday, at NASA Headquarters' James E. Webb Auditorium, 300 E. Street, S.W. The crew's presentation will air live on NASA Television's education channel.
On Tuesday, Melvin and Satcher will present mission highlights from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Howard University School of Science and Mathematics on campus. For more information, please contact 2nd Lt. Janay Wilson at 202-806-6789.
The crew also will attend the Washington Wizards game against the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday at the Verizon Center. They will participate in pregame activities and view the game, which is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. The astronauts will bring with them an NBA jersey that was flown on their shuttle flight. The jersey is expected to be returned to the NBA during the All-Star game in Dallas.
Wilmore, Foreman, Bresnik and Melvin will give a public presentation about their spaceflight from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Thursday at the National Air and Space Museum's new "Moving Beyond Earth" exhibit. The audience will consist of 250 students (grades 6th through 12th), visitors, employees and invited guests.
The STS-129 shuttle mission included three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the International Space Station's truss, or backbone. The platforms hold large spare parts to sustain station operations after the shuttles are retired. The shuttle crew delivered about 30,000 pounds of replacement parts for systems that provide power to the station, keep it from overheating, and maintain a proper orientation in space.
For NASA TV schedule information and links to streaming video, visit:
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Io is notable for its active volcanism, which New Horizons studied extensively. On the other hand, Europa's smooth, icy surface likely conceals an ocean of liquid water. New Horizons obtained data on Europa's surface composition and imaged subtle surface features, and analysis of these data may provide new information about the ocean and the icy shell that covers it.
New Horizons spied Ganymede from 2.2 million miles away. Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, has a dirty ice surface cut by fractures and peppered by impact craters. New Horizons' infrared observations may provide insight into the composition of the moon's surface and interior.
Scientists are using the infrared spectra New Horizons gathered of Callisto's ancient, cratered surface to calibrate spectral analysis techniques that will help them to understand the surfaces of Pluto and its moon Charon when New Horizons passes them in 2015.
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