Planning For Alternate Ways To Get to ISS

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NASA ARC Solicitation: Rodent Habitat Systems for Manned Space Flight Opportunities

"NASA is investigating the availability and feasibility of options for expanding its capability to provide in-space habitation systems for rodents (rats & mice) for scientific research on the International Space Station (ISS). NASA seeks the following information about any existing concepts/designs or hardware for rodent habitat systems for spaceflight: ... Vehicle accommodations - Describe any space transportation and in-space interface capabilities of the design or hardware. (i.e. Shuttle Middeck, ATV, HTV, ISS EXPRESS, DRAGON, etc.)"

How to Play LAWGAMES

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No law, no precedent, no damages, no crime, no jurisdiction, no evidence, no proof?

No problem!

For Law is the Strange Game of Kings, who worry not about trifles like these, as the winning move is not to play, but he loses least survives the most to play, and play again!

Shall we play a game?


EXECUTE LAWGAMES

10: PROMPT: Are you a King? If True, GOTO 20; else GOTO 30;

20: Do whatever you want. It's not your time, money, or problem. GOTO 100;

30: PROMPT: Are you a Minion? If True, GOTO 40; else GOTO 60;

40: PROMPT: Do you have a legitimate, documented legal grievance with a clear cause of action and the jurisdiction to pursue? If True, GOTO 50, else GOTO 50;

50: Spread rumors in the guise of dispassionate bureaucratic proceedings to defame and distress the opposing party. Constantly demand an "ongoing discussion" at the opposing party's expense in a context you control. Cobble together obscure, irrelevant details which often you yourself manipulated into existence into some complaint only vaguely related to the actual grievance but with consequences so dire and reasoning so abstruse that the opposition cannot ignore you. Continue to reap the well-deserved fruit of your laborious and highly specialized administrative career by surfing Google for obscure bureaucratic material to fight for people you don't know over matters you don't understand ---nor would ever want to. Swallow your tears and grind out that last extra hour in document review like the fired hardened rockstar that you are as you reminisce about that one time your date didn't return your calls after you slipped into that impassioned soliloquy about the Cost Savings Initiatives (CSI) you championed in the Big TPS Coversheet Section 13 Article 43 Debacle at the office. Secretly hope that the opposition simply disappears. Think about your cat. GOTO 100;

60: GOTO 100;

100: LAWGAMES CONCLUDED. WINNER: NONE

The Red Edge | Cosmic Variance

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We had a great time last night at a panel discussion on extrasolar planets, right here at my very own institution of Caltech, sponsored by our very own Discover magazine, and hosted by our very own Bad Astronomer. The panelists included Gibor Basri, John Johnson, Sara Seager, and Tori Hoehler. They did a great job at getting across the most important message: this is a field that has taken a tremendous leap forward in the past ten years, and is poised to make comparable strides in the years to come. A lot of the excitement right now centers on the Kepler satellite, which is on track to find hundreds of extrasolar planets. You can get an idea of recent progress from a graph of extrasolar planets discovered over the years.

Extrasolar Planets by the Bushel

From the perspective of the person on the street, planets are pretty cool — but life on other planets is what’s really cool. (Or would be, if we found it.) And frankly, it’s not even the prospect of life that gets people going; it’s the idea of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Tori mentioned that he was slightly surprised, some years ago when there was a report (later discredited) that we had found evidence for life on meteorites from Antarctica, that people didn’t make a big deal out of it — it was exciting, but not Earth-shattering. I suspect that microbes, no matter where they’re from, aren’t going to shatter most people’s Earths; that will take some sort of greeting, friendly or otherwise.

Still, it’s amazing what has been done, and the prospects for doing more are pretty breathtaking. Here’s one idea that I find pretty clever: searching for the Red Edge. You know how plants appear to be really bright in infrared photographs? That’s because they reflect a lot of infrared light, but tend to absorb regular visible red light. In a spectrum, where we decompose the reflected light into different wavelengths, this phenomenon shows up as a sharp “edge” as you go from infrared (on the right here) to red light. The idea would be that something similar should happen even for very different kinds of life — so if you found a planet whose spectrum featured the red edge, that would be a promising place to hope for finding life.

The Red Edge

I have no way of judging how feasible this technique really is — in particular, I’m always skeptical of claims that rely on alien forms of life resembling ours in any way. (The authors do emphasize that an extraterrestrial red edge might not be at the same wavelength as ours.) But I like it because it relies on an underlying truth of which I am quite fond — the fact that life relies on the increase of entropy. The specific wavelengths at which different kinds of life might reflect light can undoubtedly be very different from biosphere to biosphere; but what won’t change is the general idea that a planet full of life will re-radiate energy with a much higher entropy than what it absorbs. That’s the deep principle underlying the red edge; plants absorb visible light, and radiate at longer wavelengths with higher entropy. If we eventually find life on other planets, I’d personally be pleased if entropy were at the bottom of it all.


NCBI ROFL: And the April “No sh*t, Sherlock” award goes to… | Discoblog

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restroom-in-chinaDo women spend more time in the restroom than men?

“The stereotype that women spend more time in the restroom than men was examined, with the expectation of a small magnitude difference. Method.—Men and women (N = 120, 60 each sex) were observed entering and exiting the restroom in a college library. Participants were of various ages and ethnicities. Data were collected during 4 days in 2 wk. for 1 or 2 hours at different times in the afternoon, evening, and night. The number of stalls, urinals, and sinks and proximity to convenient and discrete observation posts were similar. Time spent in the restroom was measured in seconds using the online U.S. government clock (www.time.gov) set to Eastern Standard Time at a library computer terminal. For purposes of interrater reliability, two observers timed each participant and retained the data only if the observers agreed within a margin of 2.0 sec.

Results and discussion.—An independent samples t test indicated that women (M = 178.9 sec., SD = 96.6) spent significantly more time in the restroom than did men (M = 118.4 sec., SD = 102.6; t118 = –3.33, p = .001; d = .34). The average difference was 61.5 sec. Johnson, Sholcosky, Gabello, Ragni, and Ogonosky (2003) found that women were nearly twice as likely as men to wash their hands after using a public restroom. This act of routine hygiene by itself could substantially account for the additional time women spent in the restroom in our study. Participants were not observed while inside the restroom and results are based on students in a university library. The results support the belief that small, real gender differences have been exaggerated in common lore.”

restroom

Photo: Engrish.com

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: And September’s “No shit, Sherlock” award goes to…
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: And the March “No s**t, Sherlock” award goes to…
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: duh

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!


Borneo’s Wild New Species: A “Ninja Slug,” the World’s Longest Bug, & More | 80beats

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A flying frog that changes colors, a stick insect that’s a foot and a half long, and a “ninja slug” that shoots “love darts.” These are among the 120 new species discovered or described over the past three years on the lush island of Borneo–the Southeast Asia island divided between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

On Earth Day, the conservation group WWF released a report on some of the recent discoveries in a 54-million-acre nature preserve known as the Heart of Borneo. WWF ecologist Adam Tomasek says that on an average, three new species were found every month.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Slugs?

borneo-ninja-slug_19337_600

This colorful green and yellow slug species, named Ibycus rachelae, was discovered atop high mountains in the Malaysian section of Borneo. The slug has a tail three times the length of its head, and it wraps the tail around itself when it is resting. From the Ariophantidae family, this unusual species makes use of so-called ‘love darts’ in courtship. Made of calcium carbonate, the love dart is harpoon-like which pierces and injects a hormone into a mate, and may play a role in increasing the chances of reproduction [Guardian].

Image: Peter Koomen / WWF


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Earth Day, Earth Week and an Oil Rig Explodes

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Happy Earth Day — today is Earth Day’s 40th anniversary.  Go to earthday.org to look up Earth Week events, if you haven’t already.

It will not be a really “Happy” Earth day as long as oil rigs remain in our oceans and we continue to burn coal and use fossil fuels.  See the photo below?  Not happy.  In fact, a disaster.

On Earth Day, Americans are reminded that they live on a planet that contains living things besides themselves that deserve protection.    It’s a shock to be reminded of this, for some.  Americans have gotten very divorced from nature, especially those that live in large cities.  What is our government doing for the Earth besides Obama’s recent announcements of new offshore drilling and continuing the use of coal?

Carol Browner, the director of the White House Office on energy and climate change, recently told Politico that if Congress doesn’t act to regulate greenhouse gases and curb carbon emissions, the White House will.  Browner said, “We’re not going to ignore a Supreme Court decision” that gives the EPA the authority to treat greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.  “We take the Court’s decision very, very seriously,” said Browner.  In other words, if cap and trade fails in Congress, (and it probably will) then the EPA will go ahead and put caps on carbon dioxide itself.  Browner gave a long interview to Politico and a small excerpt is on the end of this post with a link to the whole thing.  It’s hard to tell if she is serious about climate change or not.   She spends a lot of  time concerned with protecting business.

Here is Earth Day information  from True Majority.

“Forty years ago today, 20 million Americans took to the streets as part of the first Earth Day and launched the modern environmental movement.   That day in 1970 helped drive Congress to pass major regulations that remain the backbone of U.S. environmental law — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and more.

Four decades later, we need another groundswell of support to push lawmakers to address the biggest challenge now facing the Earth and humanity: climate change.  Congress is debating major [weak and bad] legislation right now. But the bill has stalled in the Senate and needs a big, public push if it’s going to help solve the climate crisis.

This bill is not going to be effective in stopping climate change, and might do more harm than good, so it does not deserve a push.   Senator Maria Cantwell’s bill would be somewhat better than what John Kerry is putting together.   In any case, I would not recommend fighting for a cap and trade bill that allows for the use of coal and offshore drilling, especially not after the explosion and disaster on an oil rig over the last two days.  Today the entire oil rig sank, and this proves to be yet another fossil fuel environmental disaster. Today cable TV news [...]

Aral Sea Shows Signs of Recovery, While the Dead Sea Needs a Lifeline | 80beats

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Aral-SeaThere are few more dramatic examples of humanity’s careless treatment of the earth than the Aral Sea.

The Aral’s precipitous decline began in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union began using river water to irrigate the mega-farms it established on the arid steppe. As the river water flowing into the sea slowed to a trickle, the Aral began drying up.

Once a colossal geographic feature—at 26,000 square miles (67,300 square kilometers), it was the fourth largest inland water body on earth in terms of surface area—the Aral shrank to hold just one-tenth of its original volume, becoming a tragic shadow of itself [National Geographic]. Fisheries collapsed, people moved away, towns were abandoned, and the Aral became famous primarily for its ghostly landscapes, with rusting ships lying on sand dunes.

But now scientists report that the northern sector of the Aral is making a recovery, due to a concerted effort from the Kazakh government, the World Bank, and scientists. A dam completed in 2005 raised water levels and decreased salinity, and increased the North Aral’s span by 20 percent. Soon native plants, stifled for years by the saltwater, began to sprout, and migrating birds like pelicans, flamingos, and ducks again began to visit the Aral. Nowadays, “It’s a paradise for birds,” says Russian Academy of Sciences zoologist Nick Aladin, who has been studying the Aral since the 1970s. “It’s a place for pleasure, and it’s an enormous victory” [National Geographic]. Freshwater fish have also returned, leading to hopes of a resuscitated fishing industry. And while the South Aral remains in dire straits, researchers say the tentative revival of the North Aral gives them hope.

Another sea, another headache. Over in the Middle East, several countries are weighing a proposal that could give new life to the dwindling Dead Sea–but that may cause environmental problems of its own.

In the past century, the Dead Sea’s surface area has shrunk by almost a third. The Jordan River, which once fed the super-salty lake, has been tapped for irrigating and drinking water by Israel, Syria, and Jordan; shore-side factories that evaporate the water to extract minerals have exacerbated the problem. Without action, the Dead Sea will continue to shrink. But a proposal being evaluated by the World Bank could revive the lake with a 180-kilometre-long conduit carrying water from the Red Sea 400 metres downhill to the Dead Sea through a canal, pipeline or some combination of the two. The water’s flow would generate electricity to run a desalination plant, providing drinking water for local people [Nature News].

But environmentalists are questioning the wisdom of a so-called Red-Dead connector. Drawing vast quantities of water from the Red Sea could damage the fish and coral there, according to Friends of the Earth Middle East. Green advocates also worry that the Red Sea water will change the chemistry of the salty Dead Sea, making life harder for the sea’s salt-tolerant microorganisms and encouraging blooms of algae that thrive in less salty water. They argue that intensive water conservation programs could improve the flow of the Jordan River and render the expensive Red-Dead canal unnecessary.

Israeli geologist Ittai Gavrieli, who is studying the impacts of the proposed conduit, says the region has a tough decision to make. If nothing is done, the situation will only get worse, but a Red–Dead conduit would carry with it some real risks. The decision to stop the sea’s decline, says Gavrieli, “is a matter of choosing between bad and worse. But the question is, what is bad and what is worse?” [Nature News]

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Return of the Aral Sea offers an in-depth look at the dam that’s helping the North Aral
DISCOVER: Life in the Dead Sea explains how microbes survive in the salty water
DISCOVER: Better Med (or Red) than Dead describes an earlier push for the Red-Dead canal
80beats: Saudi to Use Plentiful Resource (Sunlight) to Produce Scarce Resource (Fresh Water)

Image: NASA, showing the Aral Sea


Do Your Engineering Ethics Conflict With Management?

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Does management focus on product development costs and delivery schedules? Does management have little/lots of interest in design integrity? Is it all about product cost and delivery schedules? Will your company ship a product with known problems? Do you confront management when you think they are m

Muhammad not in a bear suit is censored | Gene Expression

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Perhaps. Matt Stone & Trey Parker have put out a statement. I watched it online yesterday and I thought the bleeps were part of the “in joke.” I’ll spoil the episode for you by noting that it wasn’t even Muhammad in the bear a suit. Additionally I don’t get why people are that that scared, the threats were made by a group that’s very close to literally being in a basement. On the other hand, remember during the Salman Rushdie affair that translators were killed, so perhaps there’s reason that a corporation would want to stay on the safe side (one could imagine civil lawsuits if someone did get hurt against the corporation).

On final thing, the South Park episode in question depicted Moses as a dull artificial intelligence, Buddha as a cocaine junkie and Jesus as a habitual viewer of internet pornography (at least that’s Buddha’s accusation, which Jesus does not deny, rather, he minimizes its equivalence with a drug habit. I think Jesus’ logic is spot on, and am leaning toward Brit Hume’s dismissal of Buddhism on account of this interaction). There are of course Jewish,* Christian and Buddhist extremists in world. But most people judge that Jews, Christians and Buddhist are less liable to take violent action to defend the dignity of their faith than extremist Muslims. I think that’s probably a valid assessment, and I think that points to the fact that not all religions can be made equivalent in the nature and numbers of violent radicals. Why that is is a different question.

* Because Judaism is operationally coterminous with an ethnicity, at least by self-conception, I have seen some attempts to accuse those who have anti-Jewish religious views as anti-Semites. In general anti-Semites have anti-Jewish attitudes in regards to the religion, but the inverse is not always so. Some Muslims have started imitating that strategy, accusing plain anti-religious folk like Richard Dawkins of being an Islamophobe as if he is racist.

Gear Pump Versus Rotary Vane Pump

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I have set up a filtering system for used motor oil to which we heat it up and run it systematically through several different micron filters till it hits the end of the line. I recently purchased an oil centrifuge to use to polish the oil before we use it. The information sheet recommends a gear

Career Oppurtunities

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I have worked in the field of Vacuum Plastic Manufacturing for over 7 years. Currently, I am layed-off and looking for work. Living in Washington Twp. MI (29 & VanDyke) Do you have any openings in my area for this type of work?