Tokyo Electric Power is putting remote controlled machinery to use at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan. Helicopters mounted with cameras can safely survey the damaged reactors to give clean up crews a clear view of the mess without exposing them to dangerous radiation, following the 9.0 mega thrust earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
To prevent a worse nuclear disaster, power plant workers allowed several hydrogen explosions to release pressure building inside the disabled nuclear reactors. Now workers nearby are relying on remote-controlled bulldozers, dump trucks and other heavy equipment to drive the clean up process while radiation levels are still too high for humans to be in the area for any length of time.
Why Not Robots?
Japan is known for being on the leading technological edge, with its earthquake early warning system and automatic seismic shutoff system at nuclear power plants. It’s also known for mechanizing the manufacturing process by employing robots do the work of humans, much more efficiently.
So it stands to reason that the now crippled nation would want to send robots to the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi power plant. But there are no robots to handle that kind of a job — yet.
The father of industrial robotics says that it is impossible to anticipate a disaster like this which would make programming a robot for this clean up task equally as impossible. But, Joseph Engelberger also says that now that Japan understands what job a robot could do under these conditions, it should be fairly easy to develop a series of commands to allow the robot to react in specific ways under specific circumstances.
The remote-controlled power plant clean up operation uses humans to control machines, also known as teleoperation. Robots act based on code that creates parameters under which they can operate while teleoperators rely on human-driven decision-making.
So until the robots can be made radiation resistant and get to the Japanese power plant we’ll just have to appreciate their aesthetic value as baby robots dance.
French company Aldebaran Robotics makes Nao human-like robots. Nao in Chinese means brain. These five sychronized robots recently performed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
The company just opened its first U.S. subsidiary office in Boston this month.
Now, we just need to get them to Japan to sift through radiation-contaminated debris.
]]>Imagine waking from a long nap — a little disoriented and still groggy — only to find the world you left when you went to sleep is totally different. A mother polar bear had that very Rip Van Winkle experience on a man-island off the coast of Alaska.
When she emerged from her den after hibernation, the new mother polar bear soon realized her bleary eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. she awoke in the middle of an oil field.
Once the bear and its newborn cub were spotted, the drilling station was evacuated until the bears left the den and started to head off the island and onto the sea ice.
Bruce Woods with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the mother bear spotted and empty Spy Island before oil drilling equipment and the ice road were even built. She settled into her den for a long winter’s nap. When she emerged last month, the island was full of equipment, activity and an entire oil operation.
]]>“Must have been a shock for her because when she went into the den it was an empty island, and when she came out there was quite a lot going on.” — Bruce Woods
Update: Shuttles heading to Washington D.C, New York, Florida and California
After 30 years and 135 flights into space, the US space shuttle is coming to an end. With just two more flights left, NASA is retiring the space shuttle program. Now, the AP’s Lee Powell says the familiar black-and-white crafts are becoming sought-after museum pieces.
While NASA is donating the shuttles free of charge to three lucky museums, each contending museum must raise about $28 million to have the decommissioned space orbiters shipped to their new homes. With only three remaining shuttles looking for new landing pads, a new space race has begun.
For the last year, about a dozen space, science and flight museums have been wooing NASA to get a hold of space shuttles Endeavour, Discovery and Atlantis. There is a fourth shuttle — Enterprise — which was an early prototype for the other shuttles but never flew into space.
The Smithsonian Institution will acquire Discovery and ship Enterprise to New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum while Kennedy Space Center will acquire Atlantis. The California Science Center in Los Angeles will claim the last shuttle Endeavour.
NASA Live Stream here:
Free video streaming by Ustream
Washington state Governor Chris Gregoire says she is disappointed that Seattle lost the bid to get one of the shuttles. As the home to modern flight, Seattle would have been a perfect fit.
]]>“While the Museum of Flight was in the top running, I’m disappointed that NASA did not choose them. However, the full fuselage trainer, that every astronaut including Bonnie Dunbar has been trained on, will soon call the Museum of Flight home. The largest of the trainers, this addition will allow visitors to actually climb aboard the trainer and experience the hands-on training that astronauts get. Visitors will not be allowed in the other shuttles and this trainer is a true win for our dynamic museum. It will help inspire young people to the adventure of space and to the excitement of a career in science, technology, engineering and math.”
One month after the deadly 9.0 Japanese earthquake, the rescue workers and government took a moment of silence to remember the disaster that leveled portions of northeastern Japan after the quake triggered a large tsunami.
But even after a month, the ground hasn’t stopped shaking. Last week a large 7.4 aftershock triggered another tsunami warning and exactly two hours and thirty minutes after Japan marked the one-month anniversary three strong aftershocks rattled fragile nerves. First, a 6.6 aftershock hit at 5:16 p.m. local time, followed a minute later by a 6.0 and nine minutes after that by a 5.6 aftershock.
Even though the quake was devastating enough, the size and location created a nuclear emergency that still isn’t over. On the one-month anniversary Japanese officials extended the boundary of the evacuation zone around the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shortly after the quake and radiation leaks began, everyone within a 12-mile radius was evacuated.
The environmental group Greenpeace found high levels of radiation outside the evacuation area last week. Since then it has been pushing for the evacuation zone to be expanded. International pressure is prompting the Japanese government to increase the contamination area to prevent people from eating food that has absorbed radiation. This, the group says, will minimize long term health effects caused by radiation, including cancer years from now.
Greenpeace radiation expert Rianne Teule says it is the only way to safeguard the Japanese people.
While most of the world is rightfully focused on the ongoing nuclear disaster that resulted because of the great quake, some scientists are watching the ground beneath Japan and looking for clues as to why the ground is shaking.
The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami was a giant underwater mega-thrust quake that started almost 20 miles below the ocean’s surface (relatively shallow in seismic terms) when a large amount of pressure that had been building quickly released as the Pacific tectonic plate subducted beneath one of the Japanese plates — scientists are still arguing over which plate.
That seismic event, as geologists call it, created a 310-mile rupture which is very unusual given the nature of the fault line. Generally big quakes are associated with long straight faults but this fault line is not straight and scientists before this quake didn’t think it could generate a quake larger than an 8.5 on the Richter scale.
When the mammoth quake — now known to be one of the top five in recorded history — struck it released a surface energy nearly double that of the 2004 Indonesian earthquake which killed 230,000 people. Although over 25,000 people perished, Japan is the most earthquake-prepared nation. Its early warning system gave people a one-minute head start and surely saved thousands of lives.
Since the quake first struck a month ago, over 900 aftershocks have been felt, including over 60 registering above a 6.0 magnitude and three higher than a 7.0 magnitude.
The initial quake actually pushed Japan’s Honshu island about eight feet closer to North America. 250 miles of Japanese coastline dropped two feet, helping the tsunami that resulted travel further inland. As a result Japan will need to recalibrate its global positioning system to reflect the new topography. The earthquake also shifted the Earth’s axis by ten inches. And that change caused some minor planetary changes.
The sudden redistribution of the Earth’s mass sped up our rotation, which in turn shortened the day by 1.8 microseconds, an imperceptible amount. It also changed the Earth’s axis by a slight margin.
Many geologists are looking at the direct effects of the big quake and a few are a little concerned by what they are finding.
Just a week after the quake, Brian Atwater at the US Geological Survey said it looked like the big quake piled pressure onto adjacent sections of the fault line, adding new strain closer to Tokyo, Japan’s largest city, which houses 35 million people. Since then other seismologists and geologists have agreed that the faults near the part of the Japan Trench that ruptured now have added stress.
But that doesn’t mean that Tokyo is in line for a major quake because of it. While the added fault stress is interesting from a scientific standpoint it shouldn’t raise undue concern.
USGS researcher Susan Hough says, “Big earthquakes don’t cascade like dominoes, bang bang bang. At least not commonly. So I think the maps showing bright red bull’s eyes of increased stress may be more alarming than they should be.”
Ross Stein, another USGS scientist says, “The watchword in Tokyo should be long-term vigilance. Nobody should think this should go away in a few weeks or a few months.” He believes the aftershocks will likely continue for as much as ten years.
But Japan does sit in a seismic bullseye within the ring of fire, a 25,000-mile stretch of earthquake and volcano rich territory. This area which rings the Pacific Ocean is prone to big quakes as the giant Pacific tectonic plate pushes and grinds against smaller plates.
]]>Workers in Japan have started dumping more than three million gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric officials spent about two days dumping out all that water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, following the devastating March 11 earthquake. That water contains unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium but it is a necessary move to make room to store more radioactive water used to cool superheated fuel rods after the quake.
The water will disperse in the ocean and become less radioactive as it decays. Since the most common form of radioactive iodine loses half of its potency in just eight days radioactive water heading toward Hawaii and the U.S. mainland will be so diluted by the time it reaches the shores it likely won’t pose any risk.
Some concerned residents in Hawaii have stopped eating seafood and stopped drinking bottled water. Scientists say that is unnecessary at this point because it will take weeks or months — depending on ocean currents — for any radioactive water to reach detectable levels near the islands.
A physicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has already begun monitoring water off Waikiki Beach for any signs of radioactivity. So far, nothing has been observed. Henrieta Dulaiova expects some radioactive material to be detectable in Hawaiian waters in the coming weeks but she is not concerned about seafood or water contamination.
The three million gallons of water dumped from the Fukushima Daichi power plant is about enough to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The Pacific Ocean holds enough water to fill about three trillion of those same pools. In other words, the size of the ocean will make radioactive water less of a threat to fish and people.
The Food and Drug Administration is carefully watching all fish and food imported to the U.S. from Japan, looking for any signs of radioactivity.
In Japan, radioactive food is unfortunately inevitable, but very manageable.
James Acton says the first radioactive fish has been found with unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium. But he says radioactive contamination is a manageable problem because strict monitoring will keep dangerous food off of people’s tables.
The Carnegie Endowment nuclear physicist says that radioactive material released into the water and atmosphere is becoming so diluted already that even twenty miles away from the nuclear power plant, radiation levels are undetectable.
For those of us part way around the world, the risk of radioactive contamination is very low. On the west coast of the U.S. iodine-131 has been detected in milk but experts and public health officials haven’t raised any warnings that those amounts present any risk whatsoever. Several experts have been equating the amount of radiation in the air and in food to being about the same dose any airline passenger receives when going on a trip.
]]>Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s SmartBird — the avian robot. German engineers claim they have succeeded in unlocking the secrets of bird flight.
For centuries man has tried to imitate nature by mimicking flight. Capturing the energy efficiency and subtlety of bird flight has proven to be tricky — until now. The German company Festo has created a bionic network where it takes what nature does best and tries to find automated applications, ranging from an elephant trunk-inspired handling assistant to jellyfish undulation and now the SmartBird.
From the company’s Bionic Learning Network engineers were able to solve the mystery of bird flight.
The herring seagull inspired the SmartBird, which not only can take off and land without any additional drive unit but it can flap its wings up and down. But the real breakthrough is an active articulated torsional drive unit that allows for extreme agility by letting the bird’s wings twist at specific angles while flapping up and down. This helps to maximize airflow around the bird and optimize the efficiency of its flight.
]]>“In my estimation SmartBird is far more efficient and reliable than anything else ever before built in this field.” — Wolfgang Send, theoretical physicist, flight expert and scientist on the SmartBird project.
Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson announced plans to travel to the deepest parts of the world’s oceans in a single-person submarine this week.
Sir Richard will pilot the one-manned Virgin Oceanic sub as he dives the Puerto Rico trench, located just off the coast of Puerto Rico, sometime in the next 24 months.
Fellow adventurer Chris Welch will act as his back up pilot and be the first human in 50 years to plumb the depths of the Marianas Trench, which plunges 36,000 feet below the surface of the South Pacific.
To date, no manned submersible vehicle has traveled more than 21,000 feet. Branson’s new sub, which was unveiled in Newport Beach, California this week can safely dive to 37,000 feet and operate unaided for up to 24 hours, according to the Virgin Oceanic website.
While Branson is hot to help commercialize space and is probably already planning tours to the bottom of the planet, there is a lot of science that this pioneering effort will generate.
He is working with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego to collect water and animal samples associated with the deep dives. Scripps Institution department professor Doug Bartlett is an expert on microbial life in extreme environments and his knowledge will guide Branson’s team to collect samples during their five deep ocean dives.
Landers that will accompany Branson on his dive will be outfitted with science equipment to collect water and bottom sediment as well as film the deepwater submarine as it passes by. A day after the dives the sub will rendezvous with the landers and gather the data for analysis.
The Scripps team will then study all the samples brought back from the depths and look for any novel organisms as well as potentially beneficial enzymes or genes.
Scientists from University of Southern California, the University of Hawaii and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are also partnering with Virgin Oceanic on this unprecedented expedition of science and adventure.
Branson says that the sub will be pressure tested over the course of the next three months before the mission begins later this year. The sub is specially designed to withstand the 1,000 atmospheres of pressure found at the bottom of the deepest places on Earth, approximately 1,500 times the pressure of an airplane.
5 Dives 5 Oceans
1. Chris Welch dives the Marianas Trench — 7 miles down and the deepest spot on Earth.
2. Sir Richard Branson dives the Puerto Rico Trench — 5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean
3. Human pilot to the Molloy Deep — 3.5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Arctic Ocean
4. Human pilot to the Diamantina Deep– 5 miles down and the deepest spot in the Indian Ocean
5. Human pilot to the South Sandwich Trench — 4 miles down and the deepest spot in the Southern Ocean
]]>“We will unlock the wonders of the oceans still unknown to humankind or science.” — Sir Richard Branson
NASA engineers in California are working around the clock to put the finishing touches on the new Mars mega-rover before shipping it off to Florida for launch later this year. Wearing his clean suit, AP’s John Mone got an inside look at the vehicle named Curiosity.
After launch to the red planet at the end of 2011, Curiosity will be lowered on cables from a descent vehicle to explore Mars. Part of its mission is to determine if Mars ever housed life. The SUV-sized rover is better equipped than it’s two predecessors and even includes remote sensing equipment to analyze a soil sample with a laser from up to 30 feet away.
The much smaller Opportunity and Spirit ended their five-month exploratory mission of Mars’ surface years ago. First landing on opposite sides of the red planet in 2004, NASA lost communication with Spirit just over a year ago after it lost power in a Martian sand trap. Now hope is fading that the rover will power itself up and continue on its extended mission.
Arizona State University astronomer Jim Bell says the loss of Spirit’s communication came at exactly the wrong time because it was doing some very valuable science, even though it was immobile and tilting away from the sun.
Opportunity continues chugging away, feeding off the solar power that drives them during the Martian spring and summer. During the winter, the rovers hibernate and NASA engineers hope they will be able to re-establish communication when they awake.
Though Spirit’s odometer is stuck at 4.8 miles, Opportunity fully explored one crater and is on its way to another, having logged over 16 miles.
Curiosity is more than a remote controlled rover. It’s a roving science laboratory. The Mars Science Laboratory has four goals: determine if life ever arose on Mars, characterize the climate of Mars, characterize the geology of Mars, and prepare for human exploration.
This latest mission is part of a multi-decade series of missions to send probes to Mars. The data collected will eventually lead to a manned mission to Mars where a settlement could be established.
Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech
]]>The national snake hunt is now hissstory! After a six-day search for an Egyptian cobra, the director of the Bronx Zoo told a relieved city that the snake was found in a non-public area of the zoo’s reptile house.
The poisonous snake disappeared from a Bronx Zoo exhibit and caught the nation’s attention as it spent nearly a week on the lam. One clever snake fan even created a fake Twitter account and posted dispatches from the runaway reptile.
Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny says the snake was found right where zookeepers expected — still inside the reptile house, coiled in a dark corner. During the time of her disappearance, keepers searched for the 20-inch snake three times a day. Breheny says patience was the zoo’s greatest tool. During a press conference last Thursday, he said once she felt comfortable to explore her environment he knew they’d find her.
Now that the celebrity snake has made a name for herself she needs a name. The as yet unnamed cobra may be called Houdini for her surprising escape or perhaps Cleopatra.
This is not the first great snake escape. Vanity Fair lists a few others in recent memory.
Dan Malone, a herpetologist at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan told Mlive.com that snakes are natural escape artists. Even though every zoo has strict venomous snake handling policies, the Bronx Zoo hasn’t yet said how the sneaky cobra escaped.
Because she is so small — weighing only 3 ounces — the pencil-thin snake could have slipped between panes of glass in her enclosure, slithered through a grate or screen cover or just taken advantage of human error.
]]>The consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest wants to ban all artificial color from foods. At the very least the organization wants the Food and Drug Administration to put warning labels on foods containing some dyes, like Yellow 5 and Red 40, which have been linked to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children already prone to it.
CSPI executive director Michael Jacobsen says, “Getting rid of food dyes is not going to solve the hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder problem. But it would reduce the problem.”
Advisors to the FDA met this week in a meeting to discuss the science behind artificial colors in food and whether they lead to hyperactivity in children. At the end of the two-day meeting, the FDA decided not to require labels on foods containing artificial colors.
FDA advisers examined how the problem was reduced when Great Britain banned several artificial colors. Most companies did. Strawberry bars purchased in the U.K. are made with paprika extract for color. In the U.S. the same product is made with Red 40.
The Grocery Manufacturers of America issued a statement saying there’s no clear link between artificial food colors and hyperactivity among children, and that “we are always producing the safest possible product for our consumers.”
Experts say the use of artificial colors in the U.S. has increased by half in the past 20 years, and a fresh look at their effect is overdue. Georgetown University’s Dr. Laura Anderko says, “The regulation hasn’t kept up with our consuming habits.”
Frito-Lay recently announced it will switch to using natural colors like beets and carrots in half of its snacks by the end of the year. The FDA advisers recommended further study of the link between artificial food coloring and ADHD but voted 8 to 6 against putting warning labels on food products.
The FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of this panel of advisers but it often does.
]]>After a six-and-a-half-year and 93-million-mile journey the Messenger spacecraft has reached its target — Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.
After a tricky maneuver to use gravitational force to enter into the fast-spinning orbit of Mercury the probe began sending back the clearest and closest pictures of the little planet.
Messenger now begins a one-year mission of snapping about 75,000 pictures of Mercury’s surface, which is hot enough to melt iron but may contain ice in permanently shadowed craters that dot its exterior.
The only other time we’ve seen images from Mercury was 30 years ago, when another probe — Mariner — did a brief flyby. Then only blurry, low-resolution pictures captured a tiny bit of the planet’s surface.
Messenger’s second look at the first planet from the sun will be much more detailed and give scientists a treasure trove of new information to better understand Mercury and other planets in our solar system and beyond.
“We are already seeing Mercury with a new eyes and with eight sets of eyes.” — Eric Finnegan, Applied Physics Lab, John Hopkins University
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The earth’s climate is getting a checkup thanks to NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge. It’s a six year mission to study the earth’s polar region from on board an airplane. NASA scientist Tom Wagner explains the mission from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
While the space agency is known for it’s work in outer space, in recent years it has used satellites and other tools to monitor what is happening here on Earth. After Earth-pointing satellites first noticed a major shift at the poles, NASA has been tracking those changes.
Now, planes outfitted with a number of scientific instruments and sensors will begin measuring the height of ice to determine its thickness in the polar regions. Radar will be used to measure the seabed under the ice to see how fast it’s flowing into the ocean.
A gravimeter will measure the shape of seawater-filled cavities at the edge of some major fast-moving major glaciers while a
magetometer will help to see the shape of Earth’s crust and how oceans interact with the ice.
This six-year study will monitor the dramatic changes occurring at the poles, which are also causing changes and affecting climate around the world.
“We’re having an interesting experiment happen on Earth as these places melt.” — Dr. Tom Wagner, NASA Goddard Flight Center
Climate Fact: Greenland is able to grow broccoli for the first time.
]]>India’s latest tiger census shows an increase in the numbers of the endangered big cat, but threats to their roaming territory could reverse those gains, officials said on Monday.
At a three-day tiger conference in New Delhi(PDF) Indian officials released the latest tiger census. The news appeared to be good. The tiger population in the 17 Indian states where they roam is on the rise, up 300 from the 2007 census. But the report was tempered with a warning — that the habitat where tigers are allowed to roam is shrinking thanks to development, roads and mining.
This conference is a follow-up to the Global Tiger Recovery Program Meeting(PDF) held last year in Russia to try to save the endangered big cats from extinction. While the numbers of Indian tigers rose to just over 1,700 since the last census that is still remarkably lower than the 3,600 tigers estimated from the 2002 census.
This meeting is all part of a global effort by 13 Asian countries where tigers live to double the global population by 2022. Poaching, hunting and habitat loss decimated the tiger population in the 20th Century. Only about seven percent of that population remains.
The Indian tiger census used hidden cameras and DNA testing to determine the number of cats in the wild and officials believe it is the most accurate count to date. The foundation of the tiger recovery program is scientific monitoring of tigers, prey and habitat.
during the 20th century the Javan, Bali, and Caspian tigers became extinct. A fourth, the South China tiger, has not been seen in the wild for more than 25 years and is assumed to have gone extinct during the 1990s.
]]>A new membership-based, do-it-yourself fabrication and manufacturing space allows engineers and inventors to work on their gadgets using the latest in high-tech equipment. Tech Shop has opened facilities in California with plans to expand across the country.
It’s like your father’s workshop but better. The two shops–in San Jose and in San Francisco–have all the latest in technological assistance combined with typical fabrication equipment.
Tech Shop allows inventors, entrepreneurs and curious dabblers to try their hand at creating something without having to invest in all the equipment.
Community science labs, creative craft studios and now tech shops are dotting the landscape of major cities, filling a gap that opens when curious dreamers run headlong into reality.
Tech Shop is spreading to Detroit where it is advertising itself as a hands on way to fix the auto industry.
]]>It looks like a giant hamster ball but it’s doing far more than exercising its occupants. The Virtusphere, which first rolled onto the scene during the reality television show Shark Tank in 2009, takes virtual reality to a whole new level.
For science, it gives the opportunity to walk through the bloodstream or to soar through the cosmos and understand spaces in a whole new way. Data that scientists have collected can finally be put to use in a meaningful way that gives depth and dimension to some hard to imagine worlds.
Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is only one of four institutions that has one of these giant balls of science. The Virtusphere was also a part of the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington D.C. last fall.
It has applications from training military personnel in a virtual environment and it can even be used to enhance video games. But get inside this ball and scientists can finally walk into the worlds they study, which will allow us all to better understand what’s going on all around us.
]]>British astronomer Brian Cox explains the rotation of the moon. With all the talk lately about the effects of the full moon and the recent supermoon, a lot of people are asking some pretty lunar questions lately.
Many want to know why we can only see one side of the moon and if there is a dark side of the moon.
These answers come from part of the BBC Wonders of the Universe series.
]]>Call them operabots. In a marriage of music and media, a team at the MIT Media Lab has infused an opera with robotic technology.
In Death and the Powers, a new opera by Media Lab professor Tod Machover, the main character wishes to leave the physical world, but remain there digitally. He downloads himself into The System and continues to interact with the audience and other characters through robots using a technique Machover invented, called disembodied performance.
On stage the operabots appear more like podiums (podia?) than humans as they roll across the stage. But their movement and artificial emotion is controlled by sensors attached to the main actor who spends most of the show in a concealed booth in the orchestra pit.
His movement, heart rate, and other information is sent on stage to the robots who convey what he is experiencing below.
Known as America’s most wired composer, Machover has been trying to get audiences to see and feel sound for over 30 years.
]]>Mireya Mayor explores remote areas of the world is search of elusive and endangered species. The wildlife expert and anthropologist also educates students and parents about the importance of conservation wherever she goes.
After watching the movie Gorillas in the Mist before practice one day, the former Miami Dolphins cheerleader decided to devote her life to science.
Now she is being called the real life Indiana Jones and is the author of the new book, Pink Boots and the Machete.
She is also part of the National Geographic program Find Your Footprint and Proctor and Gamble’s Future Friendly project.
]]>A hip-hop science tour is helping kids dance to a different beat — science. To get more middle school students interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects FMA Live — named after Sir Isaac Newton’s second law, Force Equals Mass Times Acceleration — combines science and fun.
Newton is famous for discovering gravity. But he is known in science circles for his three laws about motion related to gravity. The first law is the law of inertia, where an object in motion — like an apple falling on someone’s head — stays in motion until an equal or opposing force — like someone’s head — stops it.
His second law and the law for which FMA Live is named states that force equals mass times acceleration. In other words, the amount of force something has depends on how big it is and how fast it is traveling. That is the primary reason why dropping a feather off the top of the Empire State Building greatly preferred to dropping a penny — especially if you are walking on the sidewalk below.
Newton’s third law says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you push on something, it pushes back with equal force. This the primary reason we can’t stick our hands through walls.
The group FMA was started in 2004 by engineering company Honeywell and NASA. It travels the country, delivering an upbeat message about science. This Florida stop is part of the current 20-week tour. Are they stopping by a city near you?
]]>The fabled lost city of Atlantis has been found — again. This time the ringed city made famous in the writings of Plato 2,700 years ago is located in southern Spain.
A new National Geographic special believes there is sufficient evidence to show that Atlantis existed and is buried in a marshy area near the city of Cadiz. Further evidence of Atlantis can be found stretching 150 miles away from the presumed site in towns that resemble the early descriptions of the city.
That archaeological evidence is said to have been left by Atlantean refugees who fled the city after a devastating tsunami destroyed and submerged their advanced civilization. Those few who would have survived would have moved inland and tried to rebuild using the a familiar style.
A team of scientists, led by Richard Freund, believe that gives credence to their argument that Atlantis has been found.
The lost city of Atlantis has been supposedly found numerous times, including a recent sighting off the west coast of Africa where some ocean floor geography looked suspiciously like a city grid.
The island of Santorini and numerous Mediterranean Sea sites as well as several places in the Caribbean have all been candidates for the lost city. So far, none has passed all the tests to qualify. Will the the site at Cadiz prevail? Only time will tell.
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One thing is for sure. Science doesn’t do certainty. No matter how close a researcher gets to complete certainty there is always room to know more. Therefore uncertainty is a scientific fact. And we need to get comfortable with it.
From taxonomic tussles over classifying the giant panda to more controversial science like climate change and genetics, uncertainty is a driving force pushing science forward and opening up the opportunity for insight and breakthrough discoveries.
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The hit ABC television drama Grey’s Anatomy revolves around the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital and follows the lives of surgical residents. Portland, Oregon medical correspondent and author Andrew Holtz wondered where the line between fact and fiction is being drawn when it comes to training future surgeons.
His new book, The Real Grey’s Anatomy follows a group of Oregon Health and Science University surgical residents through their rotations and helps to separate fact from fiction.
Holtz visited Seattle last week and at an appearance sponsored by the Northwest Science Writers Association and the Pacific Science Center, he shared some of those secrets, complete with clips from the TV show.
Here’s what he had to say.
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Composite image of Pluto, courtesy Eliot Young (SwRI) et al., NASA
For three years, Pluto–the ninth planet–has been given the cold shoulder by the astronomy community, which demoted it to dwarf planet in 2006.
What is it about Pluto that tugs at our heartstrings?
MSNBC.com Science Editor Alan Boyle explores our fascination with Pluto in his new book, The Case for Pluto.
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Visualization of a river bed created using VisTrails, a system developed by University of Utah computer scientists Photo by: Juliana Freire and Claudio Silva, University of Utah
A two-year experiment to build a framework to analyze the massive amount of data scientists are collecting will push research to better understand our planet, our bodies and the limits of the Internet.
The National Science Foundation initiative called Cluster Exploratory or the CLuE program is a partnership between I.B.M. and Google to put scientists to work solving the problem of how to deal with so much information.
The answer? Cloud computing. Using virtual locations online to cope with the large data stream will allow science to answer some big and complex questions.
Top 8 in the Science Cloud:
Sloan Digital Sky Survey–obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.
Visible Human–is an anatomical data set licensed from the National Library of Medicine, Visible Human Project.
IRIS Seismology Database–allows you to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, visit seismic stations around the world, and search the web for earthquake or region-related information.
Protein Data Bank–contains information about experimentally-determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies.
Linguistic Data Consortium–supports language-related education, research and technology development by creating and sharing linguistic resources.
TerraFly–View images and data anywhere in the United States and in much of the World.
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope–A large aperture, wide field survey telescope and 3200 Megapixel camera to image faint astronomical objects across the sky.
Open Topography–provides integrated access to high-resolution topographic data and web-based processing tools as well as enables its user community to share knowledge, resources and build science collaborations.
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After months of speculation and waiting for the vaccine to grow, the new swine flu virus killer is ready and rolling out across the country this week.
The CDC hopes that at least 150 million Americans will get the shot or nasal spray to fight the H1N1 flu virus that began its worldwide rampage in April.
Some are worried about side effects. But the CDC and other research groups are teaming up to monitor people who get the vaccine. Others are worried about a preservative in the vaccine. If you want a thimerasol-free vaccine, just ask.
This is slated to be the biggest voluntary vaccination program in U.S. history. And if the demand calls for it the federal government is prepared to vaccinate the entire population in the next few months.
But public opinion surveys show only about 40% will definitely get their vaccination when it is made available.
Some want to get both seasonal vaccine and the new H1N1 flu vaccine. Is that advisable? The CDC says, Yes. But a new Canadian report finds an unexpected link among those who got the seasonal flu vaccine last year and those who fell ill with swine flu.
To prevent the flu, the CDC recommends:
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Washing your hands–with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Cover you mouth–when you cough and sneeze.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth–that’s how germs spread easily.
Stay home if you feel sick–don’t go to school or work and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
For more information, go to www.flu.gov.
]]>As the school year begins, many Freshmen dorm rooms will have the perennial lava lamp gracing a bookcase or desk. With more students tightening their budgets here is an easy and cost-effective way to build your own lava lamp.
See the world’s biggest lava lamp in Soap Lake, Washington.
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Cotton-top Tamarin, courtesy of University of Wisconsin, photo by Bryce Richter
Music is an important part and key ingredient of our culture. But it might also extend to the animal kingdom.
New research by University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Charles Snowdon has found that while monkeys don’t respond to the likes of human Top 40, they do prefer hearing their own vocalizations.
Story written and produced by Michelle Ma.
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Hwang Woo Suk's Fake Cloned Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Scientific papers are the hallmark of any scientist’s career and achievements. And having a published paper retracted spells trouble.
Do rising retraction rates hurt the public trust in science? Or does closer scrutiny signal improved safeguards against fraudulent science?
A new study shows that 106 papers were retracted between January and July this year, setting a 20-year record for most retractions in one year. And the year has months to go.
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Just as we have to monitor our own health, now we have to be more aware of our computer’s health. While high cholesterol and blood pressure aren’t issues for our machines, keeping them free of viruses and worms are.
A new piece of malware, known as the Conficker worm, that has been worming its way into millions of computers for the better part of a year is self-replicating–just like a human virus. And, it is raising new security concerns from experts in law enforcment, science and government.
It’s time for a new sub-discipline of computer science–computer virology.
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Urban geologist David Williams is a big stone kinda guy. He is not one to shy away from a nice chunk of gneiss. Nor will he wilt at the sight of weathered brownstone–one of his favorites.
Now, the author of Stories in Stone: Travels in Urban Geology, Williams shares his passion for rocks–from travertine to pop–in his new book that gets at the heart of Earth.
It’s a tour-de-force through plate tectonics, dinosaurs and even the possibility of life on other planets but the stories that stones tell are firmly rooted in our cultural and economic lives.
REALscience sat down with Williams and discovered why he is so passionate about these rocks.
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The the most famous hominid ever found just returned to her home in Ethiopia after a two-year trip to the U.S. She spent five months at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, where she wowed over 100,000 visitors with her tiny size and bipedal nature.
She left many scratching their heads, wondering if she is more chimpanzee than human.
But a group of middle school students from Moses Lake, WA turned a lackluster showing for a science exhibit into a big win for the science center’s mission–to inspire lifelong interest in science.
For 3.2 million years she lay in wait, entombed in stone, biding her time. Then in 1974, Lucy became the world’s most famous fossil, filling in a crucial gap in the timeline of human evolution and answering important questions about our biology over millions of years.
Listen here.
The United States is in a recession. The signs are all around. But how is an official recession calculated or determined? The National Bureau of Economic Research announced that a recession began in December 2007. It took a year of housing foreclosures, bank failures and massive layoffs to slow economic growth after a long 15-year run.
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The United States is in a recession. The signs are all around. But how is an official recession calculated or determined? The National Bureau of Economic Research announced that a recession began in December 2007.
It took a year of housing foreclosures, bank failures and massive layoffs to slow economic growth after a long 15-year run.
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Bruce Edwards Ivins was the man behind the anthrax terror scare in 2001, according to an FBI task force. The agency, working for seven years with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, says the evidence shows that Dr. Ivins, a respected government microbiologist acted alone when he mailed the deadly substance to members of the media and to politicians.
After Dr. Ivins killed himself, possibly due to the pressure the FBI was placing on him, the task force release some of the accumulated documents, pointing to Dr. Ivins as the anthrax mailer, who injured 17 and killed 5.
Scientists who worked with Dr. Ivins and those in the same field think the evidence is not as airtight as the government would have us believe.
REALscience will stay with this story and follow the science leads to try to answer the big questions in this case.
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Some of the top scientific minds met at University of Washington last spring. Their purpose–to discuss the future of personal genomics.
They met on the eve of the passage of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act.
MIT biology professor Eric Lander, The Wellcome Trust’s Dr. Leena Peltonen, Bill Gates III, and Harvard Geneticist George Church discussed the state of the science.
Dr. Maynard Olson moderated the panel as they discussed the implications of knowing genetic predispositions for disease, talked about ways to get the public more engaged and, they shared whether or not they each had their genome sequenced or would if the chance arose.
Bill Gates, through his foundation, is trying to find cures to what ails us. He’s taking on malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that kill millions every year. With better understanding of genes and our whole genetic map–our genomes–he says we can eradicate these global killers.
Eric Lander Background (26 minutes)
eric-lander-biology-background.mp3
Discussion moderated by Maynard Olson (37 minutes)
moderated-discussion-with-maynard-olson.mp3
Bill Gates comments (8 minutes)
bill-gates-on-personalized-genome.mp3
New York Times science writer and author, Carl Zimmer shows how important bacteria can be. That little bug that makes people sick from undercooked meat is an elegant and very useful little creature. In his new book, Microcosm, Zimmer explains how E. coli has been aiding science for a hundred years.
E. Coli is also held up as an example for a deliberately designed world, viewed by some as being too complex to have evolved over time. Zimmer lets scientists studying the tiny bacteria who know it best tell the story of evolution using E. coli. He even talks about research coming out this week that demonstrates a one-in-a-trillion example of rapid evolution in E. coli.
The Cosmic Log over at MSNBC.com has a story about Carl Zimmer and E. coli, too.
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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) national meeting invited the major presidential candidates to participate in a forum on science policy. The event happened spontaneously and because of the short time frame only two campaigns sent advisers to tell the scientists how they would treat science in a new administration.
Senator Hillary Clinton sent her science policy adviser Tom Kalil while Senator Barack Obama sent his science and technology adviser Alec Ross. Governor Mike Huckabee’s campaign and Ron Paul’s campaign did not respond to the request. Senator John McCain’s campaign said it didn’t have enough notice to get anyone to Boston in time for the forum.
Listen to the full audio recording below. (It’s an hour and seven minutes long.) Each campaign does an eight-minute introduction, outlining his candidate’s position on science and technology. The discussion is moderated by New York Times science writer Claudia Dreifus.
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This year, February 29 appears on the calendar. That’s because 2008 is a leap year. It’s just an easy way to keep our calendars clear and consistent.
Why do we get an extra day every four years? The answer is in the way the Earth moves around the Sun.
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First the polar bears and now the Pacific Walrus are being squeezed off the melting ice and onto the brink of extinction. Could listing the walrus under the Endangered Species Act save the tusked mammal or is global warming making it too hot for the walrus to handle?
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Taking a page out of a science fiction story, a group of scientistshave successfully flown the first environmentally powered robotic vehicle through the ocean.
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Soon the greasy goodness of fat might make low-fat foods taste a lot better without adding calories. Researchers have pioneered a new technique for wrapping fats so the body can’t digest them as easily. This may have applications for drug delivery systems as well.
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Cycles of booms and busts have plagued the fishing industry forever. Fish suddenly disappear in one area and turn up in another. Now scientists think they have figured out part of the mystery — at least when it comes to sardines and anchovies.
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bathtub. Rubber ducks could contain a toxin that interferes with reproduction. New research also finds that these chemicals called pthalates is found in many popular baby products.
]]>Everybody has 23 pairs of chromosomes. It’s just part of our genetic makeup. We get half from our mothers and half from our fathers. And that combination of genes outlines our natural abilities, our appearance and even what diseases we could develop. Now a company in California is trying to make decoding individual genome’s as common as a basic medical test.
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Dr. Quentin Wheeler is legitimately the bug guy at Arizona State University but he has become famous for his clever naming of the insects rather than for his discoveries.
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In science, engineers do the heavy lifting. And building. They are constructing special devices to likely do something entirely new. This means they start with an idea and try to create a reality. Some of these folks have dream jobs that would make any of us jealous.
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The crown of thorns starfish is not your garden variety sea predator. This spiny starfish is eating its way across vast coral reefs, threatening a delicate ecosystem.
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Within the next fifty years NASA intends to return to the moon where astronauts will live off the land for up to six months. Then, we’re off to Mars. Administrators believe that the innovation that put us on the moon in 1969 will drive the new efforts despite the staggering price tag.
**Note: the audio for Shana Dale and Jeff Hanley sounds like they are speaking from space.
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Brazilian ministers are holding an emergency meeting to figure out how to slow a sudden increase in deforestation. What’s to blame? Brazil’s new four-letter word, S-O-Y-A.
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