Looking for something fun for the science lover on your list?
Dvice.com has a neat list of "11 Cheap Gifts Bound to Impress Science Geeks." From plushy microbes to Mars rocks, the list includes items for both adults and kids. My favorites are the Gallium samples and the Aerogel.
GALLIUM As described on dvice.com:
Gallium is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It's used in
semiconductors and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting
point, which is only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid
gallium crystal in your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly
melt into a silvery metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes
back into a solid.
This video from the Periodic Table of Videos shows how Gallium will melt in the hand, and features a cool experiment called "the beating heart" where the scientists use sulfuric acid to change the surface tension of a gallium sample. Sidenote: Video is also worth watching for the fantastic hair on Scientist #2.
AEROGEL
I had my first experience with Aerogel when I was at the NASA Social for the Mars Curiosity landing at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and we got to see a sample of it. You can get your very own piece of the world's lowesty density solid over at ThinkGeek.com. This QUEST Lab piece gives the basics on the substance, including a little blowtorch demo showing off its insulation properties.
SCI-JEWELRY
GeekSugar's gift suggestions trend more towards the scientific lifestyle, with suggestions ranging from Laboratory Beaker Mugs to the Hungry Scientist Handbook. I'm a girl who likes her jewelry, so I am partial to the DNA Ladder Earrings from NB Designs. The shop on Etsy has a whole bunch of science-themed pieces, including Petri Dish earrings and a Bacterium tie tac.
SCI-SLEEPOVER
If you're looking for something a bit more experiential, Business Insider's suggested gift list features a night at the American Museum of Natural History. Bring your sleeping bag and a flashlight, and get ready to frolic after-hours at the Museum before settling down to slumber beneath the big blue whale.
All I can think of is "Khan Khan Khan" when I watch this "announcement trailer" for the new Star Trek movie, but according to most of the press reviews of the first 9 minutes, we're going to have to wait to find out more about the villian of Into Darkness. The opening of the movie will be playing before IMAX screenings of The Hobbit starting on Friday, but if you just can't wait, io9.com has a round up of what the critics who were given a sneak peek have been saying.
EYE ON THE SKY
If you're a fan of meteor showers, you're in for a treat this week. The annual Geminids show lights up the sky, peaking on December 13th. As explained on Space.com, one of the reasons for the great show has to do with the origin of the shower.
The Geminids, unusually among meteor showers, are the leftovers of an asteroid (most
showers originate with comets). They are caused when rubble from the
asteroid hits Earth's atmosphere, lighting a path through the sky as it
burns up.
The fact that the Geminid-causing debris comes from an asteroid and not a
comet makes the particles denser and more durable than the typical
cometary particles that make up other showers, said NASA's Bill Cooke.
As many as 100-150 meteors may be visible during peak times in dark areas. Alas, Los Angeles is not exactly what I'd call prime viewing territory, so I'll be relying on others' pictures to get my meteor fix.
TIPS FOR WORKING IN THE ARTS
I stumbled across this gem of a list from horror/fantasy/sci fi writer Neil Gaiman, which is drawn from a speech he gave to the graduating class at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. As the year draws to a close and thoughts turn to year-end evaluations and resolutions, here are a few ideas to inspire you for 2013.
Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what
you’re doing. And don’t listen to anyone who says there are rules and
limits.
If you know your calling, go there. Stay on track. Keep moving
towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sacrifice.
Learn to accept failure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll probably feel like a fraud. It’s normal.
Make mistakes, glorious and fantastic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and trying things.
When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.
Make your own art, meaning the art that reflects your individuality and personal vision.
Now a practical tip. You get freelance work if your work is good, if
you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on deadline. Actually you
don’t need all three. Just two.
Enjoy the ride, don’t fret the whole way. Stephen King gave that piece of advice to Neil years ago.
Be wise and accomplish things in your career. If you have problems
getting started, pretend you’re someone who is wise, who can get things
done. It will help you along.
Leave the world more interesting than it was before.
If you've forgotten just how inspiring the Curiosity Rover and those responsible for her journey are, take 5 minutes to watch this lovely piece created by director/photojournalist Dan Winters, editor John Aldrich and sound designer/composer Shervin Shaeri. With narration from key members of the MSL team, including Adam Steltzner, Miguel San Martin, Ann Devereaux and Allen Chen detailing their personal feelings about the rover, it's a lovely, visual journey through the life of Curiosity thus far.
Here's my favorite quote from the piece, which encapsulates the sense of connection between the engineers and scientists who birthed Curiosity, but now only get the occasional phone call or pic from their kiddo far, far away:
"We get to see her in images that she takes of herself, but we won't ever touch again and we won't ever be able to fix her again."
NASA has a little problem...there are about 500,000 pieces of hazardous space junk orbiting the earth, and there's no trash collector scheduled for the route anytime in the near future! This debris includes spent rocket stages, defunct satellites and fragments from other spacecraft that are the result of erosion, explosion and collision, and it threatens current peacekeeping and combat satellites, as a collision between a piece of the space trash and a satellite could release more than 20,000 times the energy of a head-on auto collision at 65 mph.
So what's a government agency to do?
DARPA has created SpaceView, "a space debris tracking project that provides amateur astronomers with the means to make a difference....The vision behind the SpaceView program is to provide more diverse data to the Space Surveillance Network (SSN), a U.S. Air Force program charged with cataloguing and observing space objects to identify potential near-term collisions. SpaceView hopes to achieve that goal by engaging U.S. amateur astronomers by purchasing remote access to an already in-use telescope or by providing a telescope to selected astronomers. When a telescope that is provided by the program is not in use by the SpaceView program, DARPA will provide its use for astronomy and astrophotography."
So in other words, if you're located where they need you to be, you might get to time-share some equipment, qualify for some fancy upgraded hardware or even receive some minor financial compensation. And of course, there's that satisfying undercover-superhero-feeling that comes from quietly saving the Earth!
Interested astronomers may learn more about the program and sign up at www.spaceviewnetwork.com. Participants will be selected based on geographic location and access to a permanent site for a telescope, among other criteria.
So you may have noticed the posts grinding to a halt over the past several weeks. Alas, I've been spending far too much time with cardboard boxes instead of my computer. I found out mid-August that the woman who owns the house we were renting had decided to sell it, so we had to scramble to find a new place to live and then pack up all our stuff.
SCIENCE OF HOARDING Moving is always a pain the ass, but the fact that I'm a bit of a pack rat makes it even more challenging. And while I'm nowhere near being labeled a Hoarder, I've been known to keep a few too many nostalgic items that perhaps would be better left behind. As I was surveying the large pile of boxes now exiled to the garage at our new place for storage, it got me to thinking about why people hang onto things. Which led me to the following about the science of hoarding.
In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study done by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grantee David Tolin, Ph.D, and his colleagues at Hartford Hospital, Hartford, CT, parts of a decision-making brain circuit in patients with hoarding disorder over-activated when deciding whether to keep or throw away their own possessions, but had no such reaction when throwing away items belonging to others. From the NIMH press release:
In this case, the implicated brain areas are hubs of a salience network
that weighs the emotional significance of things and regulates emotional
responses and states. Hoarding patients’ severity of symptoms,
self-ratings of indecisiveness, and feeling of things being “not just
right” were correlated with the degree of aberrant activity in these
hubs. The results add to evidence of impaired decision-making in
hoarding disorder and may help to disentangle its brain workings from
those of OCD and depression.
EYE CANDY: BLOW IT UP Moving causes a lot of stress, so sometimes you just need to take a break and blow off some steam. Old Spice's "Explosion" is not scientific - it just made me laugh.
MOVING THE SHUTTLE We got a pretty big truck to move our stuff (did I mention I like to keep things?), but it was nothing compared to the rig that got the Space Shuttle Endeavour through the streets of Los Angeles on October 12th-13th as it traveled from LAX to its new permanent home at the California Science Center. Brandon Fibbs got some fantastic pics of the shuttle which you can see here in his photostream on Flickr, and here's a pretty amazing time lapse of the Shuttle's journey.
The Los Angeles Times. Video by Bryan Chan.
While the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, the future permanent home for Endeavour, is being built, the shuttle will be on display in the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion, opening on October 30, 2012.
I continue to be entralled by all things Curisoity, including the story of flight director Dr. David Oh's family. Oh, his wife and three kids have been living on "Mars time," shifting their daily routine to accommodate the extra 39 minutes necessary to stay in sync with the Martian day or "sol."
While those of us with busy schedules often yearn for an extra hour or two, the practical application of such added time is complicated. It's not like you just get an extra 40 minutes to take care of all the stuff on your To Do list that you haven't gotten to yet. As the day shifts, "morning "and "night" eventually flip-flop as clock time becomes untethered to sunrise and sunset. Day becomes night, and suddenly you're eating breakfast at 11:30 p.m.
Karen Thompson Walker's lovely YA novel THE AGE OF MIRACLES offers a fictional imagining of what it might be like if our days started extending (which I wrote about in this previous post). But for a real-life account, hop over to Braden Oh's MarsTimr blog, where the 13-year old chronicled his family's adventure as they spent about a month living on a rotating schedule.
Aug 3: Dr. David Oh gives the NASA Social a tour of Mission Control and tells us about what to expect the night of the Curiosity Landing
I loved reading about the details of figuring out how to configure economical blackout shades for sleeping during the day (Gorilla tape = key element), riding bikes in the middle of the night, and the fun of waking up at 3:30 p.m. And of course, the conundrum of deciding if a 3 a.m. meal at Denny's is dinner or breakfast (label-schmabel, pancakes work for any meal!). Oh's family even came up with some new timeshift terminology:
We’ve pretty much lost track of what day it is. Towards the beginning of the month we could say things like tomorrow, tonight, last night, tomorrow night, etc. Right now our day is split between two days, and we’ve resorted to calling our days “Sols.” Currently our Sol is split between two Earth days.
To tell what we’re talking about, we’ve been using terms like “Solmorrow” and “Yestersol.” This gets pretty weird when saying “Yestersol night” and “Solmorrow evening.”
But perhaps the coolest part of reading Braden's blog was seeing how well kids respond to innovative efforts to involve them in science. Dr. Oh could have just explained the change in time, shown his kids a few graphs and charts, and then disappeared into Mars Time with the rest of the Mission team. Instead, he and his wife gave their children a unique visceral experience. As Braden writes in his post as he shifts back to Earth time: “Dare mighty things!”
For more: -Check out the NPR story on the Oh family's experiment: -Rover updates: Follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter. -For another account of the landing weekend: Brad Snowder's writes in detail about the NASA Social experience on his blog Skywise Unlimited.
I stumbled across the Tumblr Science Chicks From History, which is pretty much exactly like it sounds: a blog dedicated to women from science history. Sweet and simple, each entry features a brief description of a lady scientist, usually partnered with an accompanying image. It serves as a lovely introduction to a group of scientists, mathematicians and technologists you may want to know more about.
I'm particulary intrigued by Aglaonike, cited as the first female astronomer in Greece, and Hypatia of Alexandria (350? - 415 AD), the first historically noted female mathematician. She sounds like a pretty cool chick:
She dressed in the clothes of a scholar instead of women’s clothes and drove her own chariot. Hypatia was murdered in the streets of Alexandria by a Christian mob after being accused of witchcraft and godlessness. Her writings were destroyed when the Library of Alexandria was burned.
As a member of a classical theater company, I've spent a lot of time in imagined worlds populated with ancient Greek gods and goddesses. But these women clearly had some real-world powers of their own which enabled them to perservere in learning and teaching at a time when science was truly a man's occupation.
Fire It Up! Curiosity's Laser Zaps Her First Target
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." GOLDFINGER
Ok, let's be honest - lasers are just cool! It's fun to watch stuff get blown up, plus they come in awfully handy when trying to destroy the world (yes, I watch a lot of superhero movies). Luckily, Curiosity is on a benevolent mission, so when the Mars rover fired up its laser for the first time on August 19th, she had the best of intentions. Her target for this first test? A fist-sized rock called "Coronation." Here's what went down:
The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.
The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.
The technique has been used in a variety of extreme environments here on Earth, including inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, but this is the first time it's been used to explore an object on another planet. ChemCam was developed, built and tested by the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
This composite image incorporates a Navigation Camera image taken prior to the test, with magnified insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the difference between images taken before and after the laser interrogation of the rock. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP
The Art of Botany: Call for Entries
The Canadian Botanical Association/L'Association Botanique du Canada (CBA/ABC) 49th Annual Meeting and Conference, which is being held June 2013 in Kamloops, BC, will feature an "Art of Botany" show highlighting how art supports botanical research and learning about plants. The idea for this exhibition grew out of a collaborative relationship between an art instructor Ila Crawford and a botany instructor Lyn Baldwin at Thompson Rivers University.
In this article by Baldwin and Crawford, which appeared in the March 2012 Edition of the CBA/ABC Bulletin, each gives her take on the relationship between art and science.
Here's the official submission information:
Art and Science: Drawing and Botany
Artists and Botanists are invited to submit work that responds to the assertion that “art inhabits the teaching and practice of botany, and conversely botanical subjects and scientific methods have a legitimate place in teaching and practicing art.” The exhibition, "Art and Science: Drawing and Botany," will present an array of work that facilitates discussion about integrating art with science and science with art. Specifically this exhibit will include work that explores questions about the perceived boundaries between art and science, and will add to a growing synergy between art and botany. Many scientists, and specifically botanists, incorporate art practices as part of their own research, and many artists explore the realm of botany in their practice.
Invited: Artists, botanists, and groups of artists and botanists working on special projects (10 or more individuals)
Submissions: Three maximum for individuals; one per member for group submissions. Only original work will be accepted, no reproductions. Sketchbooks will be accepted. Only digital images will be accepted for the jurying process.
Entry Fee: $10 per registration ($10 covers up to three works)
I stumbled across a review from John Cook on SkepticalScience.com for this new book written by physicist and Climate Progress blog editor Joe Romm. When the title of a book includes the phrase "Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln and Lady Gaga," you know there's something intriguing going on inside the covers (and no, I don't mean shenanigans between Lady G. and the three gentlemen).
LANGUAGE INTELLIGENCE is about rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion. Back in Shakespeare's day, rhetoric was a key part of an education. I've had the good fortune to study Elizabethan rhetoric with master teacher Armin Shimerman. It's amazing how once you start to explore the various rhetorical devices utilized by the Bard, his work comes to life in a completely new way. Incredibly useful for an actor.
While rhetoric is no longer required study, it makes complete sense that a blog dedicated to "getting skeptical about global warming skepticism" would find a book about persuasive communication to be an important read. Understanding how to, as Cook puts it, "[harness] the power of language to craft compelling, memorable and emotionally engaging communication," is a very useful skill. Cook's thoughts on how scientists might apply the information in the book to their work caught my eye, and that's what made me want to call attention to it on ScienceLush:
For science communicators, I believe the most important lesson is the use of metaphors. Scientists are trained to think in the abstract while in general, people think in metaphors. It’s a “Scientists are from Mars, people are from Venus” kind of thing. People conceptualize and make meaning of the world using analogies and metaphors, which transform the abstract into the concrete. Consequently, we take more notice of messages and remember them better when metaphors are used.
I'm a perfect example of an audience that's hungry for good science metaphors. As y'all know, I'm not a scientist, I'm just intensely interested in science, how it affects our understanding of the world around us, and the areas where science and creativity co-mingle. I love plays, art, music, etc. that have been inspired by scientific discovery, and I constantly find myself wanting to dig deeper, to really understand the theories behind the creative work. Therefore, I'm extremely grateful to those who can communicate about science using metaphors in such a way as to help me feel like I've cracked the code and gained some small measure of understanding about the topic at hand.
I'll be adding LANGUAGE INTELLIGENCE to my list o'books to read this summer. In addition to helping one decipher Shakespeare and rebut those who deny climate change, I have a feeling that a better understanding of rhetoric might come in awfully handy during a presidential election year...
Cartoons, Sex and Music
While I'm talking about science communication, I wanted to draw attention to this post from science illustrator Emily Coren on Nature.com's SoapboxScience guest blog. She writes about the connection between the public's understanding of science, their resulting support for it, and the key role that plays in the funding of the work. Her suggestion:
Use mass media to communicate science to the public. We have science research generating vast amounts of new information about our world, and an entertainment industry producing huge volumes of content that is consumed by the public collectively creating our culture. Why not start pairing them to work together?
She includes examples such as "Yakko's Universe" from ANIMANIACS and this totally nutty cartoon about Narwhals, and then calls for "science placement" in television shows, much like product placement. I'm excited about the organizations and creators who are already actively engaged in the fusion of science and entertainment, such as The Science & Entertainment Exchange, which is dedicated building a bridge between science and the Hollywood community. YouTube also provides an outlet for the meshing of science and entertainment, with channels such as SciShow and MinutePhysics.
Curiosity Update: Surface Operations Begin
This update on the Curiosity rover from MSL engineering operations team member Jessica Samuels uses a combination of animations and some of the amazing pictures that have come back to update us on what's gone down so far and what's up next for our favorite rover.
During my NASA Social adventure, Samuels spoke to us about what the first month or so of Curiosity's life on Mars might look like. The first priority would be making sure Curiosity was healthy and that all systems were in order, followed by loading the new software that would turn Curiosity from a flying machine into a surface chemist. Samuels anticipated that they'd really get into the science of the mission about a month after landing.
Samuels also talked with us about the team's plans here on Earth for coping with the sliding Martian day. For the first 90 days, aka "sols" of the mission, the team will be on Mars time, following the Red planet's 24 hour, 40 minute long day. This means that eventually their Earth days and nights will be reversed. In addition to coffee, survival mechanisms include heavy blackout curtains in the surface mission control area. And of course, there's an app to help keep track of the time! Alas, you won't find Mars Time in the iTunes store - it's only for internal mission use.
Dr. Randii Wessen kicks off the tour by using me as a planetary model to demonstrate different types of interplanetary missions, including flybys and landings.Good to know all that $$$ I spent on my theater degree from Northwestern was worth it! Photo credit: Tristam Sparks.
Mars Science Laboratory Flight Director Keith Comeaux gives me the scoop on what we can expect on Sunday night during entry, descent and landing (EDL), aka "7 minutes of terror." Photo credit: Tristam Sparks.
Space Camp's Kimberly Stockton sets up Peanut Luck. Photo credit: Brad Snowder.
A great night to raise your hands and be sure! Photo credit: Brad Snowder
Mohawk-stronaut Bob Fedowski stops to celebrate with the NASA Social team. Photo credit: Brad Snowder.
Now that we all know that Curiosity is officially safe on Mars, I wanted to share a few things I learned and experienced at JPL during the three days I spent there.
While I've never particularly enjoyed driving, maybe it's just because I never had the right vehicle. Don't get me wrong - I'm very fond of my zippy little Corolla. But I think I could finally get really, truly excited about a road trip if I were commanding my own rover.
During a panel over the weekend, Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada said that Curiosity has "Better suspension and more ground clearance than any car you can buy on the market. If we had to, we could drive over an obstacle the size of this table." Check out the shot below for reference.
Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, SAM Deputy Principal Investigator Pan Conrad and MAHLI Principal Investigator Ken Edgett
We didn't actually destroy any furniture while at JPL, but during our visit to the Mars Yard, we got to see the "Scarecrow," a stripped down version of Curiosity, go through its paces. Here's a quick video took of the Scarecrow showing off it's rock climbing skills.
The Yard is one of the two locations used for practice runs with the rover, helping the team understand more about both the hardware and the software used to command it. I talked with rover driver Matt Heverly, who gave us a quick Drivers Ed course. Thanks to Tristam Sparks for capturing a portion of it on video...
Heverly told us, "One of the things I love about this job is the fuzziness. The nature of exploration includes unknowns. We use both engineering data and intuition to decide if we can safely go where the scientists would like us to go."
In this closer look at the rover's wheels, you'll notice some holes. Heverly explained that just like on Earth, Martian sand dunes have no real features. Reference points are needed for the rover to orient itself, so Curiosity has to create it's own. And that's where the holes come in, leaving a pattern in the sand as Curiosity rolls over it.
Fun fact: The original version of the wheels had "JPL" stamped in them, but apparently NASA wasn't thrilled about leaving JPL tracks on Mars. However, if you know anything about Morse code, look closely at the pattern of dots and dashes...
[Need a hint? This post on Wikipedia spells it out for you. Pun intended.]
It's 11:21pm and I'm sitting in the media room at NASA JPL, watching the first post-landing press conference. When the team walked in, the room erupted into a prolonged round of applause. Rock stars have nothing on these guys!
JPL Director Dr. Charles Elachi kicked off the conference by telling us how about an hour and a half before landing, he went outside, looked up at the sky, saw Mars and said, "You're going to have a visitor soon."
Charlie Bolden then introduced John Holdren, the President's Science Advisor, who talked about the USA's dominance in space exploration. He said, "Even the longest of odds are no match for America's technical acumen and gusty determination," and then added that if anyone has been harboring doubts about the status of the USA's leadership in space exploration, there's a big ol' rover sitting on the surface of Mars that should quell those thoughts ("big ol' rover" would be my terminology, not his). He said the administration is committed to a strategy of Martian exploration and interplanetary exploration, and ended with "Long live American Curiosity!
Dr. Elachi that the landing is an "Amazing demonstration of what we can do!...Next week and next month and next year, we'll be bringing new discoveries to all of you. We're going to continue exploring not only Mars, but the solar system and the universe - because our Curiosity knows no limits."
John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, refuted the idea that the US space program is on the decline. "There are many out there who say NASA doesn't know how to explore and that we've lost our moxie. We know how to explore, and WE'RE ON MARS! While we welcome international collaboration, this is something only the US could do...and the rover is Made in the USA."
At this point, I started live tweeting the group's comments, so check out @tamarakrinsky for more great quotes from the night. Over the next few days, I'll be downloading pics and posting moments from the last three days at JPL. A huge thanks to the NASA Social team for having me as part of their program. The experience of being at mission control when a happy landing was confirmed is something I'll never forget.
Image: AMNH
