Click here to view the embedded video.

It just wouldn’t be right not to put up a video of the last ascent of the shuttle Discovery.  It was a great launch, although I did see something hit the underside of the shuttle.  Apparently NASA is saying it was foam and probably not an issue because the impact occurred at a altitude where the atmosphere isn’t very dense.  No matter, today the thermal tile inspection begins and if there is a problem we will know soon enough.

Be back later. . .  Ok it was much later BUT, I’ve just been watching the video inspection and it seems everything is looking normal so that is great news.  That to the untrained eye, official results will come perhaps today.

Next big event is Docking and Hatch opening this afternoon.

Oh NASA TV is showing off and on the newly arrived Kepler ATV-2 (Automated Transfer Vehicle – 2), wow, I didn’t have an appreciation of how large that really was.

While we’re waiting for Discovery to launch it’s a good time to consider what’s next for the shuttle.

Every now and then we talk about the Russian shuttle Buran.  Oh yes for those of you who don’t know Russia did have a shuttle, they had a few different mock-ups actually.  One thing about the Russians, they had an amazing space program, they didn’t play second fiddle to anybody.  It’s no wonder they still have one of the best programs going although maybe not quite so diverse as it once was.

So what happens when they discontinue a program and might our shuttle fleet meet the same fate?  Have a look at this.

My friend Kostas sent me a Google Earth KML file of the Baikonur region, I couldn’t quite figure out how to link to it here, but if you open Google Earth and put “Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakstan” in the search box you can look around.  If you have Google Earth check it out, it’s pretty interesting.

Discovery Update:  Fueling is underway and so far there are no issues.

Mission/Orbiter:STS-133 / Discovery

Crew: Commander Steven Lindsey, Pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialists Alvin Drew, Michael Barratt, Steve Bowen and Nicole Stott. Bowen replaced astronaut Tim Kopra, who was injured in a bicycle accident in January. Crew bios here.

Note: This is the last flight of Discovery.

Primary Payload: 35th station flight (ULF5), EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4), Permanent Multi-Purpose Module (PMM)

Current Status: Go

Launch Date: Thursday February 24, 2011 at 16:50 EST (4:50 pm) – 10 minute window

Mission Duration: 11 Days

Odds of Launch: 80 percent.

Possible Issues?: No impact to the countdown or launch is expected from a leak that developed in a regulator in the reaction control system due to numerous redundancies and the leak is very small.

Launch Pad 39A — Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. East wind between 5 and 15 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live by noon or before, just be sure to refresh your browser to get the latest from that site.

You can catch the launch at NASA-TV

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

Another year already!  The time is here for the 6th GLOBE at Night campaign.  This is a FREE program where you can go out and observe your night sky and make an contribution to science.  Don’t worry IT’S EASY and a great activity for everybody in the family and I like to think an excellent opportunity for schools.  What?  You don’t know the night sky so well?  Like I said this campaign is done right and EVERYTHING you need to know you can find below, give it a try!

Last year I posted  the GAN 2010 results over in the side bar to the right, so you can compare this year to last.  Again, all the information you need is included below complements of GAN:

Less of Our Light for More Star Light

Join the 6th worldwide GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign: Feb. 21 – March 6

What: The Globe at Night Campaign

When: 8pm to 10pm local time, February 21 – March 6, 2011

Where: Everywhere

Who: Everyone

How: See http://www.globeatnight.org

GLOBE at Night encourages citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of the night sky. During 2 winter/spring weeks of moonless evenings, children and adults match the appearance of a constellation (Orion in February/March and Leo and Crux in March/April) with 7 star charts of progressively fainter stars found at http://www.globeatnight.org. They then submit their choice of star chart on-line with their date, time and location to help create a light pollution map worldwide.

The GLOBE at Night 2011 campaign dates are February 21 – March 6 (worldwide) and March 22 – April 4 (for the Northern Hemisphere) and March 24 – April 6 (for the Southern Hemisphere). 52,000 measurements have been contributed from more than 100 countries over the last 5 years of two-week campaigns, thanks to everyone who participated!

This year children and adults can submit their measurements in real time if they have a smart phone or tablet. To do this, you can use the web application at http://www.globeatnight.org/webapp/. With smart phones and tablets, the location, date and time are put in automatically. And if you do not have a smart phone or tablet, there are user-friendly tools on the GLOBE at Night report page to find latitude and longitude.

Through GLOBE at Night, students, teachers, parents and community members are amassing a data set from which they can explore the nature of light pollution locally and across the globe. Please make a difference and join our efforts in 2011. For activity packets, one-page flyers and postcards advertising the campaign, visit http://www.globeatnight.org/pdf/.

Come back!

Did that title scare you?  Precession (no, I’m not misspelling it) is a concept which looks confusing at first glance, but really isn’t.  It’s a bit bulky, but hang in there.

First, think of a spinning top that has a bit of a wobble on top… like this:

Precession of a gyroscope (spinning top)

Now, substitute in everyone’s favorite astronomical spinning top that has a bit of a wobble on top:

Precession of another gyroscope, image found at perceptions.couk.com

As the Earth wobbles around, making that cone shape, it changes its orientation to the stars; you can see how Magnetic North wobbles between Vega and Polaris during the cycle.  That’s precession; it’s the changing orientation of the Earth to the stars as it makes that wobble.  The Earth goes through a complete cycle about every 26,000 years (or 25,771.5, if you’re picky).  This is why there’s a difference in the tropical year and the sidereal year.  The tropical year is about 20 minutes shorter than the sidereal year.  Confused?  Don’t be.  A tropical year is one year measured from solstice to solstice (or equinox to equinox), and a sidereal year is one year measured from the Sun’s apparent position relative to a specific star, and back again.

Very nice image from Calgary.rasc.ca - posted to public domain - copyright, all rights reserved

This westward movement of the equinoxes along the ecliptic was historically called “Precession of the Equinoxes”.  Its discovery is credited to Hipparchos around 147-127 BCE.  He was a Greek astronomer and mathematician.   You can blame him for trigonometry.  Anyway, Hipparchos took very specific measurements of the lengths of the tropical year and the sidereal year, and because of the discrepancy (that 20 minute difference) he concluded that the equinoxes were moving (“precessing”) through the Zodiac.

Ptolemy, another astronomer and mathematician, compared his own work to that of Hipparchos (a 265-year difference), and confirmed precession of the equinoxes.  In his time, Ptolemy’s work was viewed with derision by many because he opined that a person’s environment and upbringing had more influence on their personality than the position of the stars and planets at the moment of their birth.  I think the word I’m searching for here is “heresy”.

Very nice image showing the cycle of the North Pole - image from my.execpc.com - all rights reserved

Some researchers believe the Babylonian astronomers were kicking around the idea of precession as early as 330 BCE.  The Babylonians were studying the position of the stars and constellations for their astronomical catalogs by the First Dynasty, ca. 1830 BCE.  I’m sure they noticed something was going on.

It’s not known for sure when the Ancient Egyptians became aware of precession, but it was probably fairly early on.  Likewise the Indian and Chinese astrologers.  The belief that the Mayan Long Count is calibrated against the precession is not backed up by most professional Mayan scholars.

In astronomy the word “precession” itself refers to several types of continuous, gravity-induced changes in a celestial body. The woods are full of precessions.  There is nodal precession, lunar precession, de Sitter precession, apsidal precession… well, you get the idea.  It’s bulky, but you’ve had the concept down cold since you were a child playing with a spinning top.

Isn’t it amazing how much you already know?

I’ve only become aware of “content farms” in any significant way over the past few days. Yes, I’m aware of Associated Content and eHow. I use Google! But I’ve always ignored them. But with Google’s turn against these websites I’ve become curious. This Wired piece from October 2009 is a gem. Here’s the part that caught my attention:

Plenty of other companies — About.com, Mahalo, Answers.com — have tried to corner the market in arcane online advice. But none has gone about it as aggressively, scientifically, and single-mindedly as Demand. Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.

In some ways “mainstream” websites also do this a bit, Nick Denton relies on fine-grained metrics for his Gawker Media properties. But obviously the sort of thing that content farms do, responding so specifically to the interests of the audience, take it to the next level. I started browsing some of the ...

Assessing Male Condom Failure and Incorrect Use.

“BACKGROUND: It has not been well established whether common indices of male condom failure are valid predictors of biologically meaningful exposure during condom use. METHODS: To address this gap, the authors compared self-reported condom malfunctions (i.e., breakage and slippage) and incorrect condom practices to 2 following objective measures of failure: prostate-specific antigen (PSA) detected in vaginal swabs collected after condom use and structural integrity of used condoms. The study, conducted in 2000-2001, evaluated 635 male condoms used by 77 women attending an outpatient, reproductive-health clinic in Birmingham, AL. Women reported breakage or slippage for 7.9% of condoms; 3.5% of postcoital swabs had moderate or high levels of PSA; and laboratory testing of used condoms revealed breaks (1.1%) and leaks (2.0%). Self-reported breakage and slippage was associated with moderate/high PSA concentrations in postcoital swabs only when the malfunctions were not accompanied by reports of corrective actions to reduce exposure (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 6.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8-26.2). Defects observed in postcoital laboratory testing were related to PSA detection (aOR, 8.0; 95% CI, 1.5-42.6). Incorrect practices defined on the condom label were frequent, but not ...

Long time reader Dragon Horse has been generating and collecting (top row images are from Dienekes) composite image of various classes of individuals for a while now. It’s really fun to just skim through and make your own assessments (the “global face” resembles darker skinned versions of Amerasians, whose fathers were white Americans and mothers Southeast Asian, to me).

The most well known composites are of nationalities, but he’s also generated and reposted composites of other classes. For example, the average Bollywood actress is Aishwarya Rai. Not literally, but the resemblance is jaw-dropping (compare to the average Indian woman). But most interesting to me were the comparisons of American film actors, male and female, then and now (“Golden Age” vs. contemporary). I’m pretty sure you can pick out which one is which if you’re American. There seem to be two correlated trends here: 1) more feminine features for both males and females, and 2) more youthful features for both males and females. Correlated, because neoteny and masculinization seemed to generally push in opposite directions of trait value. Projecting in the future I assume that the Global Human Celebrity ...

A study of an experimental drug from the company Vertex, called VX-770, successfully reduced lung problems in CF patients, and the company hopes to try for approval of the drug later this year. If all goes well, doctors may soon have their first drug to treat the cause of this devastating disease, instead of just combatting the symptoms.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that impairs lung and digestive function. In particular, the normally thin layer of mucus in the lungs thickens up and impairs breathing; this happens because patients have a faulty version of a protein that helps clear mucus.

About 1800 different mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene have been implicated in the disease. The gene encodes a molecular channel that shuttles chloride ions across cellular membranes, and people with two mutated copies develop mucus-filled lungs susceptible to infection. Few patients live to see their 30s. In 1989, CF became the first disease pinned to a specific gene mutation, without the benefit of knowing the protein first. [Nature]

This newest test was a Phase III trail of ...

The game may be the same, but the gear is different: This Saturday, as NFL prospects try to impress coaches at the Combine workouts, a few players will don smart shirts–souped-up sports attire that measures everything from players’ heart rates to g forces of acceleration.

Designed by Under Armour and Zephyr, this sophisticated shirt is called the Under Armour E39. It weighs less than 0.3 pounds and boasts a load of sensors that sit just below the athlete’s sternum; the sensors include a triaxial accelerometer, a heart-rate monitor, and a breathing-rate monitor. As an athlete practices, trainers can follow the player’s vital signs on their smartphones, laptops, or any other device that can receive Bluetooth data. As Wired explains:

“What we have is something very close to the body’s center of mass that’s measuring the accelerometry data from that center of mass,” Under Armour vice president Kevin Haley told Wired.com.

This smart shirt innovates trainers’ and coaches’ performance evaluation by allowing them to see exactly how runners accelerate–and whether a player’s stride can be improved to gain speed. It does this by separately measuring acceleration and direction change on the left and right sides of a player, ...

1) First, a post from the past: “Black” & white twins again.

2) Weird search query of the week: “buff chimpanzee.”

3) Comment of the week, in response to The evolution of man is no cartoon:

I think the confounding notion here is that changes to the DNA which don’t affect a protein’s amino acid sequence are selectively neutral. It’s endemic, and yet there are several very obvious counterexamples.

True. But as a first approximation, it is still a reasonable practice. For every 1000 amino acid changes one will find A LOT more functional effects than for every 1000 silent mutations. Keep in mind that your argument can be taken in reverse, too: there are some obvious examples where amino acid change does not result in a detectable change of properties.

4) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:

I really do have work to do. So I’m profoundly resentful (in the best way possible) that the World Science Festival has launched a video site called WSFtv. Here’s seven minutes of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi (subject of my recent New York Times profile) talking about his theory of consciousness. There is a lot more where that came from.

Two interesting court cases relevant to medical reality came up recently.

1) Yahoo news is reporting that a judge has thrown out a case where lawyers wanted to use religious and alt-med exemptions as an excuse to not get health care. People were claiming that they had faith that God would heal them in times of sickness, and that forcing them to get health care was an attack on that belief. There are a lot of things wrong with this — for example, they weren’t being forced to actually get health care, just insurance — and to be frank, this sort of thinking constitutes a major health risk to the population. It also smells very much like a fishing expedition on the part of people against universal health care, using religion as a "get out of critical responses free" card.

I’ve said this before: as an American I am not thrilled with the government telling me what I have to do or not do, but there are times when the greater good must be considered… and considered very carefully. Slippery slopes are treacherous. To some people "the greater good" is a phrase used to justify way too much, ...

Young. Old. Scalding hot. Icy cold. Terrestrial midgets. Gas giants. As the cavalcade of planets spotted beyond our solar system continues to grow, we get to see worlds of all sorts—and we get to speculate on the staggering number of exoplanets that might inhabit just our own galaxy.

Today’s first piece of otherworldly news involves baby exoplanets. Astronomer Christian Thalmann says his team may have spotted planets in the process of forming around three different stars, the first time scientists have spotted the process in action.

An infant star forms from a collapsing cloud of dust and gas and gathers a dense, flat disk of material that rotates with the star like a record album. The material in the disk will eventually clump up into nascent planets. Theoretical models of planet formation predicted that those protoplanets should suck up more gas and dust with their gravity, clearing a wide gap in the otherwise solid disk. [Wired]

Peering at young stars like T Chamaeleontis (T Cha) LkCa15 and AB Auriga, Thalmann and colleagues saw those telltale gaps in the dusty rings (their study is forthcoming in the

For NASA, this was a week of launches and lack of launches. The space shuttle Discovery successfully blasted off yesterday on its final mission, but NASA’s climate-watching Glory satellite, which was scheduled to launch on Wednesday, is still stuck on the ground.

With an estimated 40,000 viewers at the Kennedy Space Center, Discovery launched at 4:53:24 p.m. ET on Thursday. Its crew of six is bound for the International Space Station, after four months of delay due to fuel tank repairs.

“Discovery now making one last reach for the stars,” the Mission Control commentator said once the shuttle cleared the launch tower. [CBS News]

Also on board is the first ever space-bound humanoid robot: Robonaut 2, or R2. This robot resembles a human from the waist up, and may eventually take on tedious chores and complete station repairs that are too dangerous for humans. At it entered space the robot tweeted (via its earthly handlers): “I’m in space! HELLO UNIVERSE!!!”

Discovery will reach the space station Saturday, delivering a small chamber full of supplies and an experimental humanoid robot. “Look forward to having company here on ISS in a couple days,” station ...

It’s a sad day for aspiring kingpins and Mafia godfathers–it turns out that you can’t dissolve a corpse within minutes by dunking it in sulfuric acid. If that’s not bad enough, scientists have also shown that even if you wait days, acid alone cannot fully destroy “the evidence.”

This Mafia technique of disintegrating human flesh is known as a “white shotgun” (or “lupara bianca”) murder, a term that entered public parlance in the early 1980s when police in Palermo, Sicily, discovered vats of acid in a Mafia boss’s digs. The crime leader, Filippo Marchese, had his goons kill their victims and dissolve the bodies in a room known as “the chamber of death.” But violent people tend to meet violent deaths, and Marchese was himself dissolved in acid sometime in 1982.

At this week’s meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, researchers explained that they wanted to find out whether the Mafia’s claims about sulfuric acid’s extraordinary effectiveness were true. As the forensic researchers told Science News, Mafia informants make some big claims, such as: “We put the people in acid. In 15, 20 minutes ...

I’ve had a long-running email conversation with Randy Olson, a biologist-turned-film-maker, about what works and what fails when you are trying to convey science to the world at large. In his documentary Flock of Dodos, Randy looked at how creationists made inroads in his home state of Kansas. Randy argued in the movie that evolutionary biologists needed to learn how to do a better job of talking about their work to the public, especially when there’s a well-funded publicity machine operating on the other side. Otherwise, they end up sounding obtuse and high-handed.

Olson makes a similar point in his book, Don’t Be Such A Scientist. In one chapter he takes a close look at how his fellow ocean scientists worked long and hard on a massive report on the state of the oceans (it’s in a bad way), convinced that the sheer poundage of the report would send ripples through the country and lead to concrete actions to deal with the crisis. After the report made its great thunk, nothing of the sort happened. The scientists simply didn’t have any way of ...

From Ed Yong:

In 1996, a loggerhead turtle called Adelita swam across 9,000 miles from Mexico to Japan, crossing the entire Pacific on her way. Wallace J. Nichols tracked this epic journey with a satellite tag. But Adelita herself had no such technology at her disposal. How did she steer a route across two oceans to find her destination?

Nathan Putman has the answer. By testing hatchling turtles in a special tank, he has found that they can use the Earth’s magnetic field as their own Global Positioning System (GPS). By sensing the field, they can work out both their latitude and longitude and head in the right direction.

By testing turtle hatchlings in a tank surrounded by magnets he could control, Putman showed turtles could sense it if he reversed the magnetic field around them and would begin heading in the opposite direction.

For more about the experiment—and how turtles can travel so far at such high stakes with just magnetism to guide them—check out the rest of Ed’s post at Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Related Content:
Not Exactly Rocket Science:

The Athens Banner-Herald has a subtle but telling story about the Rep. Paul Broun, who is a climate denier, and those in his region who are worried about how climate change is already affecting them. The piece presents quite the contrast:

At the same time as Broun was speaking to constituents at a town hall meeting in Oglethorpe County, fishermen, conservationists, ecologists and environmental activists were meeting at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology to promote the idea of manmade climate change and talk about how to reverse the trend.

Broun, who became chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee’s subcommittee on investigation and oversight when Republicans took control of the House last month, said he plans to use hearings to show that manmade climate change is not settled science.

“We’re going to get all voices heard about the science of climate,” Broun said. “Right now the (Obama) administration turns a blind ear and eye to opposing views.”

The effects of manmade climate change are already apparent, said Oconee County activist Rich Rusk, who, like Broun, is a member of the fishing group Trout Unlimited.

“They’re already here, and they’ll be increasing,” Rusk said. “I suspect many people who are skeptical about climate change will live long enough to see the impacts and know how wrong they’ve been.”

Well, I don’t know that they’ll admit how wrong they’ve been, but the point is a good one. It’s the same story I just pointed out with Ralph Hall of Texas. They go to DC and fight the science, but doing so is not necessarily in the best interest of their constituents…