NASA/JPL Cassini with Huygens probe intact

Have you been keeping up with Cassini?  Today (April 27th Pacific and April 28th UTC) it’s scheduled to make a flyby of Enceladus, passing as close as 60 miles above the surface of the moon.  According to the mission counter, the closest point in the flyby will be at about 7pm CDT, April 27th – United States.

NASA/JPL artist's conception of Enceladus flyby

Cassini will fly through the water-rich plumes over the moon’s south polar region.  In addition, Cassini scientists will be conducting gravity studies on this flyby which will help determine what lies beneath the ice crust on the surface of Enceladus.

NASA/JPL South Pole of Enceladus

All the data we have up to this point indicates there is an ocean of liquid water under the ice crust.  Because of this, Enceladus looks very likely to be a source of life.

NASA/JPL Close-up of South Pole region of Enceladus

I would really, REALLY like to get a sample from those plumes under my microscope.

Can I look? Oh-please-oh-please-oh-please!

I have to say, this made me smile. And even laugh.

True enough, Hubble got me. I can’t even complain that it’s the Bubble Nebula, not galaxy. Even I’m not that picky.

An observational study of consumer use of fast-food restaurant drive-through lanes: implications for menu labelling policy. "OBJECTIVE: ... The present study was designed to quantify the number of customers who purchase fast food through drive-in windows as a means of informing legislative labelling efforts. DESIGN: This was an observational study. SETTING: The study took place at two McDonald's and Burger King restaurants, and single Dairy Queen, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Wendy's restaurants. SUBJECTS: The number of customers entering the chain restaurants and purchasing food via the drive-through lane were recorded. A total of 3549 patrons were observed. RESULTS: The percentage of customers who made their purchases at drive-throughs was fifty-seven. The overall average (57 %) is likely a conservative estimate because some fast-food restaurants have late-night hours when only the drive-throughs are open. CONCLUSIONS: Since nearly six in ten customers purchase food via the drive-through lanes, menu labelling legislation should mandate the inclusion of menu labels on drive-through menu boards to maximise the impact of this public health intervention." Photo: flickr/s2art Related content:
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Some vaccine news I missed in the past few days…

1) A pertussis outbreak in California has already killed two infants. This event resonates with what happened in Australia a year ago; vaccination rates are low, and the victims are too young to be vaccinated themselves. With herd immunities compromised, the littlest and most defenseless reap the effects. This is not necessarily caused by the antivaxxers, but it’s worth noting.

2) There is apparently a small outbreak of polio in Tajikistan. Vaccinations are critical, but so is sanitation.

3) PBS airs a documentary called "The Vaccine Wars" tonight. It’s about what you think it’s about. Check your local listings.

4) H1N1 is still out there, and still hurting and killing kids.

5) A bunch of kids got pretty sick after vaccinations in Australia. It’s unclear what happened, and officials are investigating it.

6) The good news? At least for Finland, it’s good: 97% of kids there are vaccinated. For everything. Amazing.

Tip o’ the needle to Antti Säämänen, Doug Troy, William Mount, and Greg Stitz.

A handful of fun things that shouldn’t pass unremarked:

• Natalie Wolchover, an aspiring science writer, has started a fun blog called Facto Diem. For those of you who didn’t attend Catholic school, that’s Latin for “Fact of the Day.” (Or a close enough facsimile.) I didn’t even know there were that many facts in the world!
• In the more venerable sections of the blogosphere, Chad Orzel is running a poll concerning the most amazing application of lasers. Considering that “death ray” is not among the options, it’s a pretty good list.
• We should also link to Scientia Pro Publica #27, over at Melliferax. (Clearly Latin is the lingua franca of the science blogosphere.) Most of the posts involve living things in some way or another, but they should nevertheless be of interest to those of us with more inorganic inclinations.

When it comes to the relationship between bees and African elephants, size does not matter. The massive pachyderms are terrified of bees, which can painfully sting elephants around their eyes and inside their trunks. Baby elephants are the most vulnerable to bee stings, as their skin isn’t thick enough to ward off the insects. And researchers have now found that the elephants have developed a special strategy to help them avoid these bees that scare the bejesus out of them.

When an elephant takes note of a swarm of bees, it emits a distinct rumbling call. This bee alarm, which the scientists termed a “bee rumble,” helps draw the herd’s attention to the bees and allows them to run off unharmed, the researchers write in the journal PloS ONE. What’s more, they respond to an audio recording of the bee rumble as if it were the real thing, giving farmers a tool they could potentially use to fend off unwanted elephants.

This is the first time that an alarm call for a specific threat has been identified in elephants. Lead researcher Lucy King of the University of Oxford believes that such calls may be an “emotional response” to a threat and a way to co-ordinate group movements. Ms King explained: “We discovered elephants not only flee from the buzzing sound, but make a unique rumbling call, as well as shaking their heads” [BBC]. The head-shaking looked like an attempt to fend off or dislodge the bees that the elephants assumed were buzzing around, King says.

For the study, King and her team played the recordings of the bee rumble vocalization to 10 elephant families. Six of the families immediately got up and fled, despite the fact that they had neither seen nor heard any bees. When the scientists tweaked the vocalization a bit to remove a key acoustical feature found in bee rumbles, the elephants stayed put. The researchers suggest that elephants may also have warning calls to alert their fellows to humans and lions—much like Diana monkeys in West Africa can call out a leopard alarm or eagle alarm, depending on which predator they spot [ScienceNOW].

King hopes that recordings of the bee rumble can be used by farmers to chase away elephants and keep them from trampling fields. As agriculture expands in Africa, elephants have been squeezed into tighter habitats–causing them to stray across fields and damage crops. “Farmers will do anything to keep their crops and families safe from damage, and unfortunately records of shootings, spearings, and poisonings of elephants are on the increase,” Ms King wrote on the University of Oxford’s website [BBC]. King hopes that playing back the bee rumble around fields could serve as a low-tech, humane deterrent to elephants, who will then be sent packing back into the woods.

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Image: Lucy King/Oxford University

It was a big week for experimental military aircraft, with the Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane and the Navy’s biofuel-powered “Green Hornet” both achieving successful test flights. But the most ambitious—the HTV-2 hypersonic glider under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—lost contact with its operators during its run.

Launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. on April 22, the unmanned HTV-2 was planned to cross the Pacific and impact the ocean north of Kwajalein Atoll in the first of two flights to demonstrate technology for a prompt global strike weapon [Aviation Week]. It successfully achieved separation from its booster rocket high in the atmosphere; however, nine minutes into the test the glider lost communication. Now the military is studying the test flight telemetry to figure out where the HTV-2 would have crashed down.

Thursday’s mission was the first of two planned in the HTV-2 program, which uses Minotaur 4 boosters developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. from decommissioned Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. military is trying to develop technology to respond to threats around the globe at speeds of Mach 20 or greater, according to DARPA [AP]. DARPA is being fairly tight-lipped about possible uses for the HTV-2, but it’s not hard to see why the military would be excited about an aircraft that travels about 13,000 miles per hour and can strike on the other side of the world with “little or no advanced warning,” as the agency says.

Program manager Paul Erbland says the key to HTV-2 flying at such speed and height is its carbon shell, which is capable of withstanding extreme heat and pressure. It doesn’t burn off material to get rid of heat. The vehicle is designed to fly at a low angle of attack relative to other hypersonic vehicles. “Shuttle and similar vehicles fly at roughly 40°; HTV-2 is substantially below that,” he said [Aviation Week]. As for the communications failure, DARPA has some time to address the problem before the craft’s second planned test flight next March.

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Image: DARPA