What’s Your Dog Thinking? Harvard Scientists Want to Know

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What’s Going on…?

Daylight savings as begun and I am beginning to ’spring forward’ towards summer and my upcoming new job that starts in the Fall. So here’s some things that have been going on…

In February I began my student teaching at a middle school in Lincoln, NE. The school is very diverse in it’s character and student abilities. I love working with other teachers and learning different skills from each one. In the mornings I teach 8th grade science and in the afternoons I teach 7th grade social sciences with a different teacher. My cooperating teachers are great, both are going to help me immensely. I’m acquiring a lot of skills that I will use in August which moves me to the next thing…

I have a classroom in August. In mid February I had a very good experience at a middle school just outside Omaha and they extended me a job offer. I accepted and am excited and relieved I have a job in this troubled time of finding employment. 1 Interview, 1 Job. Can’t get any better than that.

I’ve got some other things going on, but I want to dedicate those to separate posts. Cheers!

Would You Go to Space?

I want to offer a question I was discussing with my friends the other day. It seemed to me like a straightforward question, but I guess it has a lot of implications.

So the question is: If  the mission director of NASA walked up to you, while at work or in class, and told you, “we have an astronaut spot open on a mission to orbit the Moon and return back to Earth. We know you will pass all health and physical tests. Although, we cannot gurantee your safety but NASA will be behind you the entire way. We need to know if you will go.”

I think everyone knows what I would say. But I thought I had my friends figured out. Most were picking apart the question to implicate the cost to the nation of sending someone severely under qualified into space, the mission having no significance and going just to go. If they’re going to ask these question I will respond. You are chosen to go because they need more weight in the spaceship, and it needs to be a human because its more efficient than just weighing the ship down. You have no significance. We need to choose somebody and will, just thought we’d ask.

Cool scenario because I would steal the first car I found and drive to the launchpad at NASA and wait…

Meteor Over Edmonton, Canada

I apologize for the back-to-back videos, like to keep things varied at lbacker, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw this video. Filmed at 5:30PM on November 30th from Peace Officer Adam Baxter in Saskatchewan, he noticed the incoming fireball and turned his vehicle down the street to begin filming. 

“What started out looking like a shooting star suddenly erupted into a ball of flame and shot across the sky, disappearing behind the tree line,” he said.

Geologists and local residents have yet to locate the meteor and remain concerned that if they do not find it before the snow melts in the spring, their chances of locating it at all, are very slim. The Edmonton Sun has more on the event and what local residents are saying.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2008/11/21/7494091.html

How to Stop Fire Ants in the Southwest…

Nature is amazing. This video is about how this certain fly, attacks a fire ant and proceeds to destroy the ant by some graphic means. According to the video, the Southwestern Fire Ant has spread dramatically across suburban and urban areas in the continental US, Sanford Porter, research entomologist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Gainesville, FL has found an innovation in nature than can help us cease the rapid growth of fire ants. I don’t want to give away how the flies, which are only the size of a fire ants head, destroy the ants. But watch the video and be amazed.

Planet HD 189733b

 

Water vapor has been found 63 light-years from Earth

Carl Grillmair of the California Institute of Technology and his team of scientists have detected water vapor in the atmosphere of a planet 63 light-years away from earth. 

The planet, HD 189733b, is what’s called a “Hot Jupiter” — a boiling, gigantic gas planet more akin to our own Jupiter or Saturn than to a terrestrial planet like Earth. It’s not a good candidate itself for alien life, but the successful detection of water vapor here, in the location and quantities that theorists predicted, bodes well for further studies of more promising locales for extraterrestrial life.

WIRED.com

 According to the article, it’s not of large significane that water vapor has been found on another planet other than Earth, our own Jupiter has water vapor, the signifcance is that a planet so distant from our solar system has been identified with having water vapor in it’s atmosphere.

I think whats most significant is that we can detect this from 63 light-years away. Burrows, a lead scientest on the project,

“The data we have is the best spectrum ever taken of a planet outside the solar system.”WIRED.com

Truly an achievement for modern science, can’t wait to see what we detect next. ET?!

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/embargoed—wat.html

The Many Types of Snow Flakes

Kenneth Libbrecht of Caltech has produced some very intersting microscopic photos of snowflakes. Gathering flakes that fell from Alsaska, Ontario and several other states, Libbrecht used a photomicroscope to identify 13 types of snowflakes. Very beutiful to see the frailty of each snowflake yet it falls from the clouds 5,000 feet to the ground. My favorite the Stellar #5 Snowflake, looks much like a traditional snowflake we all make in elementary school but with such intricate detail.

Leads me to question if all snowflakes in one particular area are similar? Or, do the snowflakes all come from the same cloud and it’s just temperature or altitude differences that produce the type of flake. Beautiful and interesting!

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16170-snowflakes

Photos of Large Hadron Collider Damage

I wrote an entry a few months back about the Large Hadron Collider’s damage, and now we have some photos to see exactly what happened. Not that we can tell much from the photos other than a complicated mess of destruction, but its interesting to see the destruction. The damage is supposed to set back use of the collider for a significant amount of time.

I think about this and wonder if this set back has been planned for? In my previous post I got a quote from one of the scientests that said these sorts of problems happen, “there is a break in time.” He surely couldn’t have suggested this… 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10120215-76.html?part=rss

 

The most severe damage

California Emission Standards, Leading the Way

In 1994, California put into the books a stringent automobile emission policy that would create a cleaner and greener state. Automobile emissions regulate the amount of hazardous gases (NOx, SOx, CO) and soot released from tailpipes off all automobiles including cars trucks and busses. All of these regulations are enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Today, most cars and light trucks are certified to two standards, one California and one Federal. This allows automakers to sell their vehicles nationwide and still comply with both sets of emissions regulations. However, the legal requirements for vehicle certification are complex, and in some instances, vehicles can be certified to a single Federal standard nationwide, or to a single California standard sold only in limited areas. In the latter case, these vehicles are most often PZEVs sold either only in California, or to California and the “clean car states” that have adopted California’s vehicle regulations.

The emission policy in california began in 1994 with tier 1 emissions, which made California automobiles 10-15% cleaner than other US states. Tier 1 emissions are no longer in use. Tier 2 emissions were put into place during the spring of 2004, cutting emmisions further to 25% of all other US states. 

California has become a leader in cutting emissions. Since 2004, twelve states have adopted these standards and will have them in place by 2009. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has led this green ship across the US and was recently interviewed about the future of automobile emmisions.

Breaking News: Sea Based X-Band Radar is Enormous

 

Sea-Based X-Band Radar is a floating, self-propelled, mobile radar station designed to operate in high winds and heavy seas.

This massive piece of equipment is  a part of the defense of United States of America against missile from and across the waters that surround America. It however, appears to be an east target to destroy if some nation wanted to safely launch an attack on the county, but disabling this large device would be more than unplugging it from the wall. This photo is taken when the X-Band needed to come in for general maintenance. Comparing the ship to the man standing in the foreground gives a good sense of how large the floating radar really is.