I could pack into a small space and I did the camping routine because it was the only way
And when the sun comes out it is pleasant to lie on your belly in the meadow to refresh your memory of grass and of the tiny flowers that bloom in microscopia.
#John Steinbeck's 1966 Plea To Create A NASA For The Oceansthree years before the first humans landed on the moon Nobel-prize winning author John Steinbeck published a passionate plea in Popular Science for equal
efforts to explore inner space. In an open letter to editor-in-chief Ernest Heyn Steinbeck argued that the investigation of Earth's oceans was critical to the success of humanity
and deserved the same funding and organization as space exploration. You can read this letter as it originally appeared in the September 1966 issue of Popular Science.
or a hundred of the same is too high a price for a round-trip ticket to the moon.
I set my clock for two a m. recently to watch a crazy scarecrow-like structure settle gently on the moon a job of such intricacy as to stagger the imagination.
The budget for getting two Americans on the moon is $21 billion and it will necessarily come to much more.
If you ask an American why we want to get to the moon he will usually say To get there before the Russians
But while the lifeless rubbled surface of the inconstant moon becomes increasingly littered with the burnt-out bones of vehicles the bathyscaphe has visited the deep and unknown places of the earth only a few times.
There is never much argument about appropriations for space shots but a recent request for money to explore map
Two men with their pockets full of moon rocks will not solve the situation. On the other hand the planning computing minds which so gently laid that crazy-looking scarecrow on the moon could easily design the means not only for exploring our watery world
but for placing whole producing cities on the sea bottom. If our inventive minds were given the money
Surely all this should have at least equal backing with space. Yoursjohn Steinbeck h
#The Disquieting Delights Of Salt-Rising Breadas befits a nasty pathogen Clostridium perfringens grows aggressively. Its cells can divide every ten minutes a handful turning into trillions of hydrogen makers overnight.
High-tech Lettucein an empty space in its former factory in Fukushima Prefecture Japan electronics-maker Fujitsu is now developing an unusual product:
What Would People Eat in A Permanent Space Colony? Once settled on another planet colonists would likely start with hydroponic farming using small-stature
or dwarf cultivars that can be packed tightly together. It would make the most sense to plant fast-cycle salad crops first says Jean Hunter a professor at Cornell who studies food-processing and waste-management systems for long-term living away
Space scientists would need to figure out how to make foods that can last for four or five years inside sealed pouches.
At the NASA-funded Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation which ended last August Hunter
At fault was a fungus that continues its march around the planet. In recent years it has spread across Asia and Australia devastating plants there that bear the signature yellow supermarket fruit.
A Prettier Greenhouse For Growing Veggies In Spacethe latest design for growing vegetables in space is a bit prettier than its predecessors.
This new growing unit will be the largest ever put into space so astronauts can try growing more and larger vegetables.
Demographers predict that the planet s urban citizenry will double in 36 years increasing the demand for ever-taller structures in ever-denser cities.
Our industry leads all others in terms of its impact on the planet and human health Waugh says.
The boards are cut to custom specification incorporating spaces for windows and utilities using 3-D files sent by the architects
A globe stretching to the furthest fixed star would very soon be covered. I cannot even grapple with the idea even with races of dogs cattle pigeons or fowls;
#Space-Grown Vegetables Are Safe To Eat, Scientists Announcepotluck time! Russian scientists have verified that several plants grown aboard the International Space station are safe to eat Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports.
The space-grown edibles include peas dwarf wheat and Japanese leafy greens. They look great
and has worked on studies of food grown in space. Space crop programs aim to learn
if people would be able to grow some of their own food for longer stays in space.
Space agencies hope the fresh vegetables will feed not only astronauts'bodies but their spirits as well. Caring for a plant every day provides vital psychological relief giving astronauts a small remembrance of Earth NASA project scientist Howard Levine told Modern Farmer in a 2013 feature about space veggies.
Produce in the International Space station grow in a greenhouse named Lada after the Russian goddess of spring.
and bell peppers none of which have been grown in space before. Rice has a special advantage: Its genome has been sequenced fully so scientists will be able to compare space rice with Earth rice to see
if space affects which genes the staple expresses RIA Novosti reports. Updated February 3: Added comments from Bruce Bugbee c
Recently satellite companies and engineers from Google have provided Academy researchers with high-resolution satellite images of some of the least explored areas of Madagascar.
The researchers based their analysis on a satellite-derived map of current carbon being stored in vegetation.
Stacy Jupiter of the Wildlife Conservation Society; and Matthew Watts and Hugh Possingham of the University of Queensland.
We're pleased that the results of our study confirm that the forests that the committee was considering for protection can offer significant downstream benefits to coral reefs said Dr. Stacy Jupiter Fiji Country Program Director
Robert J. Moon a researcher from the U s. Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory; and Zavattieri.
which they were extracted Moon said. They have the potential to be processed at industrial-scale quantities
so we could just add another process to use the leftover cellulose to make a composite material Moon said.
so that it behaves differently with its environment Moon said. Zavattieri plans to extend his research to study the properties of alpha-chitin a material from the shells of organisms including lobsters crabs mollusks and insects.
when the highly flammable vapors rise into confined spaces where they can accumulate. He said flux chambers have been used to measure methane in such spaces
but they don't account for building effects like typically lower interior pressure that would draw vapors in through cracked foundations.
Continuing increases in population and radical reductions in household size put more and more pressure on space.
This would enable the native forest to be introduced within a short space of time. Story Source:
but it's actually quite dramatic compared to other areas of the planet explained Terry Wilson professor of earth sciences at Ohio State.
Wilson said that such extreme differences in mantle properties are seen not elsewhere on the planet where glacial rebound is occurring.
whether soot emitted by human activities in central and southern Europe plays a role--perhaps by darkening the surface of the glacier absorbing the sun's heat and melting ice.
Within the first results of the Project are that in Mexico city's conservation floor the oyamel harness the sun more efficiently in its leafs
Graphene-based electronics promise advances such as faster internet speeds cheaper solar cells novel sensors space suits spun from graphene yarn and more.
if trees are left standing in some regions according to a Dartmouth College study that for the first time puts a dollar value on snow's ability to reflect the sun's energy.
or deforestation may better serve our planet and pocketbooks in high latitude areas where snowfall is common
So it's a great resource for understanding insect evolutionary history and the distribution of insects across the planet in the past.
more detailed forecasting of Europe's climatethe new simulations confirm the projections published last September 3 for the whole planet while providing a far more accurate picture for Europe.
and carry out a simulation exercise of past and future climate covering the entire planet: CMIP5.
Moreover if culling increases movement due to freeing up space or disturbance-mediated dispersal culling could perversely have the opposite of the intended effect on rabies transmission.
Find a comfy space where you can talk to others at the party. The focus of the holiday is family faith and friendship.
and forest lossthe most detailed range-wide assessment of the bonobo (formerly known as the pygmy chimpanzee) ever conducted has revealed that this poorly known and endangered great ape is quickly losing space in a world with growing human populations.
This is the first sequenced genome of arbuscular mycorrhizae the type that is dominant on the planet said Igor Grigoriev one of the senior authors on the paper and lead for the Fungal Genomics Program at the DOE JGI.
Laid out on the same design as those above it the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the nativity story of The buddha himself.
Coningham and his colleagues postulate that the open space in the center of the most ancient timber shrine may have accommodated a tree.
Brick temples built later above the timber shrine also were arranged around the central space which was unroofed.
and exhibited extensive collinearity across the gene space species-specific genes involved in stress tolerance such as ion transport ATPASE activity transcript factor activity
The study was supported by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs with additional support from the Oregon National aeronautics and space administration (NASA) Space Grant Consortium.
While the word thanks is included in our country's favorite holiday's name we all know the real star of the day is the food.
Silman who has spent his career conducting research in the tropics said data is collected currently via remote satellite sensing or manually from the ground or a crane.
and unroll the bale in the space between adjacent rows of plastic explained Wilhoit and Coolong.
#Algorithm identifies individual grains in planetary regolithinstruments on the Curiosity Mars rover not only measure the chemistry of rocks elemental abundances of soils
The researchers are exploring the use of this algorithm to quantify grain sizes in the images from the Mars Exploration Rovers Microscopic Imager (MI) as well as Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI.
and water supplies but until now there has not been a way to get detailed accurate satellite-based
#Meteor Raspberry Pi cluster used to teach parallel computingresearchers at the San diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San diego have built a Linux cluster using 16 Raspberry Pi computers as part of a program to teach children
The system named Meteor to complement Comet-a new supercomputer to be deployed in early 2015 as the result of a recent $12 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)--will be demonstrated at SC13 the annual conference
SDSC staff will hold a friendly gaming competition using Meteor which will be connected to a large tiled display wall of LCD panels during the show's exhibit hours in the SDSC display space (booth#3313).
The goal of Meteor is to educate kids and adults about parallel computing by providing an easy-to understand tangible model of how computers can work together said Rick Wagner SDSC's manager for high-performance computing (HPC).
One way we achieve this is by using Meteor as a presentation tool for demonstrations with all of its components laid out in front of the audience.
More importantly we present Meteor in a fun informal learning environment where students can try their hands at gaming competition while learning about the benefits of parallel programming.
Like Comet Meteor is all about high-performance computing for the 99 percent said SDSC Director Michael Norman.
Meteor and its Raspberry Pis provide us with a platform to develop methods that prepare middle
and with UC San diego undergraduates on projects supported by Meteor with students creating games that operate across the cluster.
and computing course using Meteor to help visualize data generated by SDSC's HPC systems.
Meteor could then serve as a stage for students to present their work or test it on a larger scale.
To view more images of Meteor and learn about some projects being done using the cluster please visit Rick Wagner's photo gallery 1
and photo gallery 2. The Meteor project complements other educational programs at UC San diego using Raspberry Pi computers.
in spite of the dark cold snowy winters of Northern Sweden the cyanobacteria there fix nitrogen at rates similar to those living the life in the toasty sun-warmed Florida Everglades.
Initially a rapid star-forming period formed the mass at the center of these galaxies followed later by a star-forming phase in the outer regions.
Eventually the galaxies stop making stars and become quiescent said Sara Petty of Virginia Tech Blacksburg Va. lead author of a paper appearing in the October 2013 issue of the Astronomical Journal.
This later star-forming phase could have been caused by minor mergers with gas-rich neighbors which provide the fuel for new stars.
The discovery may also solve a mystery of elderly galaxies. The galaxies in the study known as red and dead for their red color and lack of new star births have a surprising amount of ultraviolet light emanating from the outer regions.
Often ultraviolet light is generated by hot young stars but these galaxies were considered too old to host such a young population.
The solution to the puzzle is likely hot old stars. Petty and colleagues used a new multi-wavelength approach to show that the unexplained ultraviolet light appears to be coming from a late phase in the lives of older stars
when they blow off their outer layers and heat up. GALEX and WISE turned out to be the ideal duo for the study.
GALEX was sensitive to the ultraviolet light whereas WISE sees the infrared light coming from older stars.
GALEX is no longer operating but WISE was reactivated recently to hunt asteroids a project called NEOWISE (see http://www. jpl. nasa. gov/news/news. php?
release=2013-257. Both telescopes have large fields of view allowing them to easily capture images of entire galaxies.
The synergy between GALEX and WISE produces a very sensitive measurement of where the hot older stars reside in these red-and-dead galaxies said Don Neill co-author of the paper from the California Institute of technology Pasadena.
The WISE mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md.
The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder Colo.
The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt Md.
The Mid Pleistocene Transition is a most important and enigmatic time interval in the more recent climate history of our planet says Fischer.
Seventy years later T. reesei is a star in the world of biofuels because of its ability to churn out enzymes that chew through molecules like complex sugars.
These three occupation groups often work in settings that are covered either not by the law such as outdoor space or private homes or in
CLASLITE differs from other satellite mapping methods. It uses algorithms to detect changes to the forest in areas as small as 10 square meters about 100 square feet allowing scientists to find small-scale disturbances that cannot be detected by traditional satellite methods.
This particular ant is one of the most widely distributed found in nearly every tropical and subtropical location on the planet due to accidental human transport
A land sea and space-grant university UNH is the state's flagship public institution enrolling 12300 undergraduate and 2200 graduate students.
and to visualize how that has changed across space and time Carter said. It's a simple way to assess how different policies
Just like physicists'models tell them that dark matter accounts for much of the universe our models tell us that species too rare to find account for much of the planet's biodiversity.
#Suns magnetic field going to flip soon: 11-year solar cycle wimpy, but peakingin a 3-meter diameter hollow aluminum sphere Cary Forest a University of Wisconsin-Madison physics professor is stirring and heating plasmas to 500000 degrees Fahrenheit
to experimentally mimic the magnetic field-inducing cosmic dynamos at the heart of planets stars and other celestial bodies.
Ninety-three million miles away the Sun's magnetic field--and presumably its dynamo--is churning
and undulating as the star experiences the height of the so-called solar maximum where the sun's magnetic field contorts and eventually flips.
Solar max as scientists call it is an 11-year cycle where the sun's magnetic field reverses polarity typically spawning sunspots flares auroras
and geomagnetic storms that if large enough can disrupt satellites and fry power grids On earth. Over a period of about two years the sun's magnetic field switches directions and we know that
because the polarity of the sunspots changes explains Forest an expert on cosmic dynamos and the magnetic fields they generate in planets stars and other objects.
Sunspots are just magnetic fields emerging from the sun. They are the diagnostic feature of what's happening deep inside the sun. Flowing streams of electrons
and protons are what create the magnetic fields deep in the sun's interior. Those surging fields generate sunspots
which can sometimes erupt and release vast amounts of energy in the form of solar flares or hiccups of material known as coronal mass ejections.
Unlike Earth's magnetic field which moves up or down as a familiar dipole the sun's huge magnetic field oscillates
and is less evident at the poles of the sun than at its midsection where sunspots typically occur.
The sun has an AC rather than a DC dynamo says Forest. Although solar max usually gives rise to numerous sunspots as well as big solar flares
and storms the current edition is characterized by tranquil inactivity. There are few sunspots and no massive storms to speak of says Forest.
Although this cycle of sun activity is so far relatively wimpy past episodes of the solar maximum have been quite violent
In 1859 a solar superstorm known as the Carrington Event after The british astronomer who was the first to observe a massive flare on the sun created auroras that were so bright that people could read by their light
We see these events on stars all the time he says. From our sun he adds superflares would likely cause serious problems disrupting power grids satellites
and other system we depend on. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Wisconsin-Madison.
#Without plants, Earth would cook under billions of tons of additional carbonenhanced growth of Earth's leafy greens during the 20th century has slowed significantly the planet's transition to being red-hot according to the first study to specify the extent to which plants have prevented climate change
Researchers based at Princeton university found that land ecosystems have kept the planet cooler by absorbing billions of tons of carbon especially during the past 60 years.
The planet's land-based carbon sink--or carbon-storage capacity--has kept 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere
The planet has warmed by only 0. 74 degrees Celsius (1. 3 degrees Fahrenheit) since the early 1900s and the point at
#Maximizing broccolis cancer-fighting potentialspraying a plant hormone on broccoli--already one of the planet's most nutritious foods--boosts its cancer-fighting potential
and remains a widespread vector-borne infectious disease sickening almost half a billion people every year around the planet.
They take almost no space at all. Lead authors are Rice postdoctoral researcher Zheng Liu and graduate student Yongji Gong.
hydrogenfor astrophysicists the interplay of hydrogen--the most common molecule in the universe--and the vast clouds of dust that fill the voids of interstellar space has been an intractable puzzle of stellar evolution.
The dust astronomers believe is a key phase in the life cycle of stars which are formed in dusty nurseries throughout the cosmos.
and is oriented by the magnetic fields in deep space has proved a six-decade-long theoretical challenge.
The theory describes how dust grains in interstellar space like soldiers in lock-drill formation spin
The effort promises to untangle a theoretical logjam about key elements of the interstellar medium and underpin novel observational tactics to probe magnetic fields in space.
The new observations conducted by a team led by B-G Andersson of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA)
and their theoretical implications are to be reported in the Oct 1 2013 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
and structure of magnetic fields in interstellar space a notoriously difficult phenomenon to measure quantitatively. Interstellar magnetic fields are ubiquitous in spiral galaxies like our Milky way
and are believed to be essential regulators of star formation and the evolution of proto-planetary disks.
and the space-based Planck Telescope--are poised to build on the new results. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The above story is provided based on materials by The Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR.
Trees and shrubs have added the benefit of providing shade from hot sun and shelter from rain.
and the fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas those spaces are becoming smaller in geography
Researchers at Aarhus University have reached this conclusion by making use of the rapidly increasing amount of data from satellites that monitor the global environment with a high level of detail.
into the interstellar medium of our galaxy. Most surprising to the scientists is why a dramatic shift in the magnetic field that they had modeled
and were expecting after the craft left the dominant influence of the Sun's heliosphere did not occur
In the case of the Voyager 1 crossing the heliopause separates material created by the sun from material that surrounds the stars throughout the galaxy.
Because the sun is moving through the interstellar medium it creates a bow wave as well. Outside the heliosphere there is a 40-fold increase in plasma density.
Recently NASA announced that measurements of the effects on Voyager 1 of a March 2012 coronal mass ejection indicated that it had ventured beyond the heliopause to begin its venture out into interstellar space.
and plasma created by other stars. When Voyager 1 will be completely beyond the influence of the sun is unknown.
The milestone means the craft has become the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.
It's now about 12 billion miles from the sun in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble.
As modeled and expected the density data from Voyager 1 did show a density change
Based on work by Doyle T. Hall in 1992 Dr. Fayock has created a model that describes how light is reflected by neutral hydrogen atoms coming from the interstellar medium and drifting through the heliosphere.
Neutral particles from space travel through the electrons and ions in the solar boundary and swap electrons with the plasma inside the boundary to generate another highly energized hydrogen atom called an energetic neutral atom (ENA.
As the model gets farther from the sun things start to change based on the location of the heliopause he said.
His models extend out 900 astronomical units from the sun and so far 40 astronomical units have been compared to collected data.
The impact of the work Brian is doing is said significant Dr. Gary Zank heliophysics professor and director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronautic Research (CSPAR.
It's the IBEX satellite that's the hawk mapping the whole of space from its Earth orbit based on energetic neutral particles that stream in to it from outer space.
and the ability to use them to probe the physics of the very local interstellar medium and its magnetic field.
and blasting them out at a staggering 23 watts for a trip that NASA says now begins in interstellar space.
Thing is almost nobody On earth is learning from the old codger launched Sept. 5 1977 during the Saturday night fever disco dancing era primarily to study the planets.
Yet news from the geezer satellite keeps intriguing scientists. NASA expects it to send data through at least 2020
He paints a picture of a spacecraft constructed entirely of materials made by the sun even put together by people made of stuff made by the sun. It's a package totally of solar origin that scientists with a great degree of certainty say has shed itself of its creator
So when the sun burns out a few billion years from now and Earth ceases to exist
It's amazing that here we have endangered an species that's almost gone from the planet yet there's still so much we have yet to learn from it.
#Interstellar winds buffeting our solar system have shifted directionscientists including University of New hampshire astrophysicists involved in NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission have discovered that the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space have changed likely direction over the last 40 years.
The finding helps scientists map our location within the Milky way galaxy and is crucial for understanding our place in the cosmos through the vast sweep of time--where we've come from where we're currently located
and nature of our sun's heliosphere--the gigantic bubble that surrounds our solar system and helps shield us from dangerous incoming galactic radiation.
The data from the IBEX spacecraft show that neutral interstellar atoms are flowing into the solar system from a different direction than previously observed.
Interstellar atoms flow past Earth as the interstellar cloud surrounding the solar system passes the sun at 23 kilometers per second (50000 miles per hour.
IBEX and Ulysses directly measured neutral helium atoms as they coursed through the inner solar system.
while Ulysses'measurements were taken between 1. 3 and 2 times further from the sun. In the final analysis the direction of the wind obtained most recently by IBEX data differs from the direction obtained from the earlier measurements
we are moving through a changing interstellar medium. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of New hampshire.
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