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Mars Base

Working alone won't get you good grades, study finds - 0 views

phys.org/...2013-01-wont-good-grades.html

scibyte80 Learning

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Students who work together and interact online are more likely to be successful in their college classes, according to a study
  • 80,000 interactions between 290 students in a collaborative learning environment for college courses
  • major finding was that a higher number of online interactions was usually an indicator of a higher score in the class
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • High achievers also were more likely to form strong connections with other students and to exchange information in more complex ways
  • tended to form cliques, shutting out low-performing students from their interactions
  • Students who found themselves shut out were not only more likely to have lower grades; they were also more likely to drop out of the class entirely.
  • Elite groups of highly connected individuals formed in the first days of the course
  • "For the first time, we showed that there is a very strong correspondence between social interaction and exchange of information - a 72 percent correlation
  • almost equally interesting is the fact that these high-performing students form 'rich-clubs', which shield themselves from low-performing students, despite the significant efforts by these lower-ranking students to join them.
  • weaker students try hard to engage with the elite group intensively, but can't. This ends up having a marked correlation with their dropout rates
  • might better identify patterns in the classroom that can trigger early dropout alarms
  • allowing more time for educators to help the student and, ideally, reduce those rates through appropriate social network interventions.
  • work is part of
  • wider research effort at the intersection of the computer and social sciences
  • enhance our understanding of the ways in which people share information and how this impacts areas of national significance, such as the spread of health-related or political behavior.
Mars Base

SpaceX Launching Student Experiments & Emblems on ISS Flight | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/aunch-student-experiments.html

scibyte47 SpaceX dragon iss PrivateSpaceTravel

shared by Mars Base on 17 May 12 - No Cached
  • then the 15 experiments comprising "Aquarius"
  • will be among the first payloads delivered to the station on a commercial cargo craft.
  • competition among students to fly experiments
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • to design their mission patches
  • A total of 779 student teams submitted proposals for the 15 science slots and nearly 5,000 students offered 2,299 insignia ideas from which just 22 were chosen.
  • Ironically, none of the almost two dozen student mission patches that were selected to fly depict the vehicle that their experiments are riding on.
  • The designs, which range from crayon-colored creations to computer-assisted drawings, also include representations of the Earth, moon and Mars and the American flag.
  • Aquarius, which utilizes liquid mixing tube assemblies that function similar to commercial glow sticks
  • two similar student flight opportunities
  • on NASA's final two space shuttle missions
  • was first slated to fly on a Soyuz spacecraft.
  • When the students' experiments were re-manifested, they went from launching on the Russian rocket to the SpaceX Dragon.
  • The Aquarius package will stay in space for just under six weeks before coming back to Earth on Soyuz TMA-03M, the same spacecraft returning three ISS crew members on July 1.
  • The students' patches will also make the round trip, and will be embossed with a certification stating that they flew in space.
Mars Base

Study shows red pen use by instructors leads to more negative response - 0 views

phys.org/...ructors-negative-response.html

scibyte79 RedPen

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Sociologists
  • claim in a paper they've had published
  • that when teachers use a red pen to add comments to student papers, students perceive them more negatively than if they use another color pen
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the two researchers enlisted the assistance of 199 undergraduate students – each was given four versions of an already graded essay by an unknown instructor
  • graded remarks were deemed as high or low in quality with some written in red, others in blue
  • students were asked to read the essay and the remarks given by the instructor and then to rate how they felt about what the instructor had written and to suggest what grade they would have given the essay
  • also asked how they felt about the instructor that had written the original remarks
  • After they'd finished with their opinions, each was also given a questionnaire designed to provide the researchers with more concrete data.
  • the researchers found that the student volunteers didn't seem to be impacted one way or another by pen color when they agreed with the instructor's comments and grade
  • But when they disagreed, there were definitely some differences – mainly negative
  • When the instructors' comments were written in red versus blue the volunteers judged them more harshly and as a result, rated them lower in "bedside manner."
  • the volunteers didn't seem to judge the quality of the comments any differently – their negative feelings were aimed at the person that had written the remarks when they wrote in red ink
  • theorize that red ink is akin to using all caps when writing e-mail or text messages – it's like shouting at a person
  • those on the other end quite naturally feel a little bit abused and respond by growing angry or sad, which, they note, doesn't really promote the learning process
  • suggest instructors stop using red pens and go with a shade of blue instead
Mars Base

Students: Asteroid 1999 RQ36 Needs a New Name! - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...oid-1999-rq36-needs-a-new-name

scibyte62 Asteroid

shared by Mars Base on 06 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • NASA and the Planetary Society are giving students worldwide the opportunity to name an asteroid
  • an upcoming NASA mission will return samples of this asteroid to Earth
  • Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) will be heading to an asteroid, currently named (101955) 1999 RQ36
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Scheduled to launch in 2016
  • NASA also is planning a crewed mission to an asteroid by 2025
  • competition is open to students under age 18 from anywhere in the world
  • Each contestant can submit one name, up to 16 characters long
  • must include a short explanation and rationale for the name
  • Submissions must be made by an adult on behalf of the student. The contest deadline is Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012
  • sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington; and the University of Arizona in Tucson
  • A panel will review proposed asteroid names. First prize will be awarded to the student who recommends a name that is approved by the International Astronomical Union Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature
  • asteroid was discovered in 1999
  • received its designation of (101955) 1999 RQ36 from the Minor Planet Center, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Mars Base

Asteroid Flyby: How Students Helped World See Giant Space Rock 2005 YU55 | Near-Earth O... - 0 views

www.space.com/yu55-earth-flyby-students.html

students giant space rock scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • asteroid 2005 YU55
  • The Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Mass., tracked 2005 YU55 with its 25-inch
  • webcast the resulting images live around the world
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • three high school kids from Brookline's Dexter School were in charge of making it happen
  • There are some advisers who are helping us if we run into any problems. But overall, it is student-based and student-run
Mars Base

High-School Student Finds Bumpy-Headed Baby Dino | LiveScience - 0 views

www.livescience.com/2-baby-dinosaur-discovery.html

scibyte107 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A dinosaur skeleton discovered by
  • d high-school student turns out to be the smallest, youngest and most complete duck-billed dinosaur of its kind ever found.
  • This Cretaceous-era herbivore, Parasaurolophus, walked the Earth some 75 million years ago.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • dinosaurs in this genus are best known for their impressive tube-shaped head crests, which may have been used for display or perhaps to amplify the animals' calls
  • specimen
  • was so young that its crest was a mere bump on its head.
  • Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif
  • is affiliated with The Webb Schools, a private high-school campus outside of Los Angeles
  • The students at the schools participate in paleontology fieldwork as part of their coursework
  • in 2009
  • a group of students were prospecting for fossils in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, surveying ground
  • already covered
  • spotted a little sliver of bone sticking out from under a boulder and alerted
  • thought it looked like a piece of dinosaur rib — nice, but not really worth the trouble of excavating.
  • the other side of the boulder
  • what looked like a large cobblestone
  • . A dinosaur skull
  • The team had to line up permits to excavate on the public land
  • returned in 2010 to dig the bones from the ground
  • 800-pound (363 kilograms) armor of rock, the bones had to be airlifted out of the rugged backcountry by helicopter
  • After 1,300 painstaking hours of cleaning, chiseling and picking, technicians revealed the fossil buried in all that stone
  • paleontologists realized they had an amazing example of a baby Parasaurolophus
  • they were able to sample the baby's leg bone. As dinosaur bones grow, they develop ring patterns, much like trees
  • didn't have any rings at all
  • that this animal was under a year old when it died
  • The infant dinosaur was already 6 feet (1.8 meters) long
  • duck-billed dinos hatched at about the same size as a human infant
  • "Joe" was already sprouting a crest bump so young suggests that Parasaurolophus started growing its crest earlier than other duck-billed dinosaurs.
  • "Joe" will go on display at the Alf museum beginning
  • Oct. 22
  • A digital exploration of the skeleton will also be available at dinosaurjoe.com.
  • the student who found the little duck-bill,
  • now in college, studying geology
  • understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development
Mars Base

ESTCube-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/ESTCube-1

scibyte86 ESTCube

shared by Mars Base on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • scheduled to be launched to orbit in second half of 2013
  • Student Satellite is an educational project that university and high school students can participate in
  • The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1, resulting in a 10x10x11.35 cm cube, with a volume of 1 liter and a mass of 1.048 kg.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • According to the CubeSat standard there are three different sized CubeSats corresponding to size 1U, 2U and 3U. Base side lengths are the same but height is 2 to 3 times bigger than 1U CubeSats
  • Mass is also set in CubeSat standard, the highest possible mass for 1U CubeSat is 1300 grams, 2U CubeSat 2600 grams and 3U CubeSat 4000 grams
  • CubeSat base side length must be 100.0±0.1 millimeters and satellite height must be 113.5±0.1 mm
  • the Estonian satellite
  • a 1U CubeSat
  • Although
  • its main purpose was to educate students, the satellite does have a scientific purpose.
  • On board of the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was created by a Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen
  • it is the first real experimentation of the e-sail
  • 10 meters of e-sail 50 to 20 micrometers thick wire of high-technology structure so-called Heytether will be deployed from the satellite.
  • The deployment of the Heytether can be detected by decrease of the satellite's speed of rotation or by a on-board camera
  • To control the loaded solar wind sail elements interaction with the plasma surrounding the earth and the effect it has on the spacecraft spinning speed the spacecraft has two on-board nanotechnologic electron emitters/gun
  • The electron emitters are connected to the e-sail element and by shooting out electrons it loads the e-sail element positively to 500 volts
  • The positive ions in the plasma push the e-sail element and have an influence on the satellites rotation speed
  • The effect of the e-sail is measured by the change in rotation speed
  • The camera is used to take a picture of Earth and the successfully deployed Heytether. [edit]
  • ESTCube-1 will be sent to orbit by the European Space Agency's rocket Vega in spring of 2013
  • Start in spring of 2013
  • Half an hour after the satellites deployment from the start capsule satellites antennas will be opened and radio transmitter and important subsystems will be switched on
  • First days or weeks will be used to test the satellite and set it to work on full capacity.
  • Orienting the satellite so the on-board camera will be faced to earth
  • trying to take a picture of Estonia
  • Rotating the satellite on an axis with a speed of 1 revolution per second
  • E-sail element deployment from the satellite by a centrifugal force and confirming the deployment via the on-board camera
  • Activating the electron emitter and loading the e-sail
  • Measuring the e-sails and Lorentz force by satellites revolutions per second
  • If possible using the negatively charged e-sail to take the satellite off orbit and burn it in the earths atmosphere
  • If everything goes perfect the mission can be completed within a few weeks to a month
  • Lifespan of the satellite
  • Measurements and weight
  • Scientific purpose
  • Communicating with the satellite
  • held by two International Amateur Radio Unions three registered frequencies
  • Periodic but very slow communication is done on a telegraphic signal on a frequency of 437.250 MHz
  • the most important satellite parameters are transmitted every 3 to 5 minutes
  • For fast connections FSK-modulation radio signal on a frequency of 437.505 MHz with a 9600 baud connection speed and AX.25 standard is used.
  • Somewhat slow connection speed is caused by the usage of amateur radio frequencies which allow a maximum of 25 kiloherz bandwidth
  • Fast connection is used only when the satellite has been given a specific
  • Using the GFSK-modulation maximum possible connection speed is 19,200 bits per second
  • Software
  • FreeRTOS on the satellite's Command and Data Handling System and camera module
  • TinyOS on the satellite's communication module
  • Financing and costs
  • Cheapest possibility to send a satellite onto orbit is offered by European Space Agency. Because Estonia is an associated member of ESA most of the launch expenses (about 70,000 euros) will be covered from Estonian member fee for educational expenses. With the launch total expenses for the project are approximately 100,000 euros.
Mars Base

Google Glass adaptation opens the universe to deaf students - 0 views

news.byu.edu/archive14-may-signglasses.aspx

scibyte133 SignLanguage

shared by Mars Base on 02 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • the only two deaf students to ever take Professor Jones’ computer science class
  • signed up just as the National Science Foundation funded Jones’ signglasses research
  • “Having a group of students who are fluent in sign language here at the university has been huge,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Professor Mike Jones
  • Jones
  • Jones will publish the full results of their research in June at Interaction Design and Children
Mars Base

Numbers Games Devised to Aid People with "Dyscalculia": Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte78 Dyscalculia

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Three months on, Christopher seems to be faring better at the number-line game, going so quickly that Babtie asks him to slow down and explain his reasoning for each move
  • dyscalculic children tend to learn much more quickly when they talk through what they do
  • also believes that Christopher's maths anxiety, a near-universal trait of child and adult dyscalculics, is fading
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Tetris-like game called Numberbonds, in which bars of different lengths fall down the screen
  • select a block of the correct size to fill out a row
  • emphasizes spatial relationships, which some dyscalculics also struggle with.
  • The Number Sense games, including a snazzy-looking iPhone version of Numberbonds, are intended to nurture the abilities that
  • contends, are the root of numerical cognition and the core deficit of dyscalculia — manipulating precise quantities.
  • In a game called Dots to Track, for example, children must ascribe an Arabic numeral to a pattern of dots, similar to those on dice.
  • When they enter the wrong value — and they often do — the game asks the children to add or remove dots to achieve the correct answer.
  • Other students are improving more slowly, but it is not easy to say why
  • Dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder are common among dyscalculics, and it can be difficult to untangle these problems,
  • with the right practice and attention from teachers and parents, dyscalculic children can thrive,
  • computer games are a supplement, not a replacement, for one-on-one tutoring.
  • in 2009 that Number Race, a game his group developed, modestly improved the ability of 15 dyscalculic kindergarten children to discern the larger of two numbers, but that it had no effect on their arithmetic or counting
  • a Swiss team reported in 2011 that a game that involves placing a spaceship on a number line helped eight- to ten-year-old dyscalculics with arithmetic
  • studied the children in an fMRI scanner during a task that involved arranging numbers.
  • one month after training, the children showed increased activation in the intraparietal sulcus and reduced neural activation elsewhere in the parietal lobes — a hint that their improvements in arithmetic were related to changes involving brain areas that respond to number.
  • hopes to monitor the brains of students such as Christopher as they practice Number Sense, to see if their parietal lobes are indeed changing
  • turned down by every funding source he has applied to
  • dyscalculia, like other learning disabilities, takes a toll on productivity
  • it doesn't attract much attention or money
  • In the United States, for example, the National Institutes of Health spent $2 million studying dyscalculia between 2000 and 2011, compared with more than $107 million on dyslexia.
Mars Base

Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...3-05-bilinguals-languages.html

scibyte95

shared by Mars Base on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate "sound systems" for each language, according to new research
  • The research
  • addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • "A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how,"
  • lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona
  • two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages—they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language
  • Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
  • Gonzales's research supports the first view—that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems
  • The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8.
  • Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard
  • 'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly
  • 'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips
  • Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.'
  • English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish
  • most people think about differences between languages
  • different words and they have different grammars
  • at their base languages use different sounds
  • One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different
  • someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual
  • For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English
  • Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words—bafri and pafri—which are not real words in either language
  • Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation
  • Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'
  • when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers
  • hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context
  • When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing
  • that lack of an effect
  • provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals
  • true primarily for those who learn two languages very young
  • If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent
Mars Base

Another tiny miracle: Graphene oxide soaks up radioactive waste - 0 views

phys.org/...raphene-oxide-radioactive.html

scibyte77

shared by Mars Base on 09 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Graphene oxide has a remarkable ability to quickly remove radioactive material from contaminated water
  • A collaborative effort by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour and the Moscow lab of chemist Stepan Kalmykov
  • microscopic, atom-thick flakes of graphene oxide bind quickly to natural and human-made radionuclides and condense them into solids
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • flakes are soluble in liquids and easily produced in bulk
  • The discovery
  • could be a boon in the cleanup of contaminated sites like the Fukushima nuclear plants
  • could also cut the cost of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for oil and gas recovery and help reboot American mining of rare earth metals
  • Graphene oxide's large surface area defines its capacity to adsorb toxins
  • high retention properties are not surprising
  • What is astonishing is the very fast kinetics of sorption, which is key
  • the collaboration took root when
  • a graduate student
  • graduate student in Kalmykov's group, met at a conference several years ago.
  • researchers focused on removing radioactive isotopes of the actinides and lanthanides – the 30 rare earth elements in the periodic table – from liquids, rather than solids or gases
  • Naturally occurring radionuclides are also unwelcome in fracking fluids that bring them to the surface in drilling operations
  • When groundwater comes out of a well and it's radioactive above a certain level, they can't put it back into the ground
  • Companies have to ship contaminated water to repository sites around the country at very large expense
  • The ability to quickly filter out contaminants on-site would save a great deal of money
  • even greater potential benefits for the mining industry
  • Environmental requirements have "essentially shut down U.S. mining of rare earth metals, which are needed for cell phones
  • China owns the market because they're not subject to the same environmental standards
  • this technology offers the chance to revive mining here, it could be huge
  • capturing radionuclides does not make them less radioactive, just easier to handle
  • Where you have huge pools of radioactive material, like at Fukushima, you add graphene oxide and get back a solid material from what were just ions in a solution
  • Then you can skim it off and burn it
  • Graphene oxide burns very rapidly and leaves a cake of radioactive material you can then reuse
  • The low cost and biodegradable qualities of graphene oxide should make it appropriate for use in permeable reactive barriers, a fairly new technology for in situ groundwater remediation,
Mars Base

Eyeglasses read to the blind (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...2013-04-eyeglasses-video.html

scibyte90 HandicapAids

shared by Mars Base on 13 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The Eyetalk
  • initially conceived for a student competition in social entrepreneurship, has been hailed by venture investors as a potentially breakthrough product that could make a difference for disabled people worldwide
  • By using a pair of eyeglasses and lightweight components, Eyetalk will allow a blind user to access printed material while walking around a store or library, which now requires bulkier, more expensive equipment
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Eyetalk
  • is designed to be portable, affordable, and operate without requiring an Internet connection
  • Future versions of Eyetalk will target a global market and enable users to hear information aloud in one of many languages.
  • early prototype, known as the FreedomLens, was one of 16 semi-finalists chosen from 29 nations to present at the 2013 Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC), February 25-30 at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business in Seattle
  • The project began with a challenge issued by
  • faculty member Seema Pissaris, a successful entrepreneur who founded Games Trader
  • Last fall, Pissaris urged students in several of her classes to think about developing a social entrepreneurship project
Mars Base

Online Game on How Earth's Moon Formed Nabs Honors | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/oon-formation-online-game.html

scibyte80 LunarGame

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • An online game that allows players to build their own moon and sculpt its features has won big praise in science art competition
  • "Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME,"
  • measures how and when players learn as they discover more about how the Earth's moon formed
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • by extension, the solar system.
  • received an honorable mention in the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge
  • When they look at the moon, players are seeing what actually created those features
  • It makes moon observations more meaningful
  • Named for the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene works in two parts
  • In the first round, players aim asteroids of varying sizes, densities, and radiations so that they collide with one an
  • Too much force, and the rocks ricochet off one another
  • even if you overshoot your target, the gravity of the growing moon may tug just enough to pull the new piece into the pack
  • participants a chance to watch accretion in action
  • developing moon is constantly compared to the real-life one, and players strive to make as close a match as possible
  • After all of the small asteroids have melted together to form a smooth new moon, it's time to scratch up the surface
  • Players can aim asteroids of varying sizes at the body, and select areas where lava breaks through the crust
  • Because the accretion and surface-sculpting processes for the moon echo that of the rest of the planets, players also develop an understanding of how the early solar system formed
  • kids ages nine and up engage in the game, they build concrete knowledge that can be applied into any learning environment that they later experience, a process that serves to make learning more intuitive
  • Though the game is effective for high school and college students, and slanted to match the national standards for those age ranges
  • was more attractive to middle school students
  • One of the primary goals of Selene is to allow
  • team to analyze the learning process
  • means the game requires a login, and for minors, parental permission must be given.
  • analyzation takes time
  • able to provide a quick overview of my game play
  • can tell from looking at your data what your experiences were
  • That under-the-hood ability to study learning is why the project was so attractive in terms of funding to NASA and the National Science Foundation
  • d a prototype of the game was developed by CyGaMEs in May of 2007.
  • first version was released in 2010. But the game is constantly being improved as the understanding of the learning process grows
  • also looking at expanding it to mobile platforms in the near future.
  • recognition is of course a great honor and encouragement — but more importantly, may drive more players to the website so that we can collect more data
  • More players, of course, means more information that can be gathered about how participants learn
  • At the same time, more people can learn about how the moon formed, growing their understanding of the nearest celestial body.
  • http://selene.cet.edu/
Mars Base

Student's flashlight works by body heat, not batteries - 0 views

phys.org/...flashlight-body-batteries.html

scibyte100 StudentDesign

shared by Mars Base on 02 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • her flashlight has got her into the finalist ranks for the Google Science Fair
  • Ann Makosinski from Victoria, British Columbia, has an LED flashlight powered by body heat
  • the Hollow Flashlight, which works according to the thermoelectric effect—creating electric voltage out of temperature difference
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • a Grade 10 student
  • designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts
  • and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness
  • Using four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air
  • bought Peltier tiles and tested them to see if they could produce sufficient power to light an LED
  • power was no problem but getting the needed voltage was, as the tiles did not generate enough of the voltage needed
  • some changes to the circuit design
  • used the Internet for information, experimented with different circuits
  • finding an energy-harvesting article
  • that made note of a circuit that could provide enough voltage when used with a recommended transformer
  • The final design included mounting the Peltiers on a hollow aluminum tube which was inserted in a larger PVC pipe with an opening that allowed ambient air to cool the tube
  • The palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe and warmed the tiles.
  • The result was a bright light at 5 degree Celcius [sic] of Peltier differential
  • Materials for the flashlight project cost her $26
  • The top winner gets a $50,000 scholarship and trip to the Galapagos Islands
  • The prize ceremony takes place in September. Winners will be chosen in different age categories—13-14, 15-16, 17-18.
Mars Base

Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 "Doomsday" Myth - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...-calendar-end-of-world-science

scibyte46 MayanCalender

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • last known largely unexcavated Maya megacity, archaeologists have uncovered the only known mural adorning an ancient Maya house
  • still vibrant scene of a king and his retinue
  • walls are rife with calculations that helped ancient scribes track vast amounts of time
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future
  • Perhaps most important, the otherwise humble chamber offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Maya society
  • in today's Xultún
  • just 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of jungle floor—it's a wonder Saturno's team found the artwork at all
  • At the Guatemalan site in 2010 the Boston University archaeologist and Ph.D. student Franco Rossi were inspecting a looters' tunnel, where an undergraduate student had noticed the faintest traces of paint on a thin stucco wall.
  • began cleaning off 1,200-year-old mud and suddenly a little more red paint appeared.
  • What the team found, after a full excavation in 2011, is likely the ancient workroom of a Maya scribe, a record-keeper of Xultún.
  • this was a workspace. People were seated on this bench" painting books that have long since disintegrated
  • The books would have been filled with elaborate calculations intended to predict the city's fortunes. The numbers on the wall were "fixed tabulations that they can then refer to—tables more or less like those in the back of your chemistry book," he added.
  • Undoubtedly this type of room exists at every Maya site in the Late Classic [period] and probably earlier, but it's our only example thus far."
  • Maya civilization spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region. Around A.D. 900 the Classic Maya centers, including Xultún, collapsed after a series of droughts and perhaps political conflicts
  • The apparent desperation of those final years may have played out on the walls of the newly revealed room—the only major excavation so far in Xultún.
  • Despite past looting, the interior of the newfound room is nearly perfectly preserved.
  • Among the artworks on the three intact walls is a detailed orange painting of a man wearing white disks on his head and chest—likely the scribe himself
  • the researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched along the east and north walls of the room
  • One is a lunar table, and the other is a "ring number"—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles
  • Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.
  • The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future
  • The Maya at Xultún were likely less concerned with the end of the world than the end of their world
  • Sadly, we may never understand the full context of the workroom. Many of the glyphs are badly faded. Worse, the entire city of Xultún was looted clean during the 70s, leaving very little other writing or antiquities.
  • Because of this, and despite Xultún's obvious prominence in the Maya world, many archaeologists had written off the
Mars Base

Nevermind the Apocalypse: Earliest Mayan Calendar Found : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...discovery-doomsday-120511.html

scibyte46 MayanCalender

shared by Mars Base on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • This monumental finding supports the fact that the Maya used cyclical calendars.
  • But it wasn't these mathematical notations that first caught the archeologists' eye
  • an archaeologist from Boston University, was mapping the ancient Maya city of Xultun in northeast Guatemala in 2010 when one of his undergraduate students peered into an old trench dug by looters and reported seeing traces of ancient paint.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information
  • The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about
  • felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.
  • shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him.
  • Another figure peeks out from behind him
  • On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses
  • ext to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian
  • small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room
  • calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed
  • almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference
  • captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian,"
  • calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus,
  • Most likely
  • the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away
  • The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.
  • This is clearly a space where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space," Stuart said. "It's a great illustration of how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society
  • Unfortunately, the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost.
  • Xultun was first discovered in 1915, less than 0.1 percent has been explored
  • Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s
  • much of historical significance has been lost. But archaeologists still don't even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.
Mars Base

NASA - Meals, Equipment Top Cargo List for Dragon - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...spacex_cargopreview.html

scibyte47 SpaceX dragon iss

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 12 - No Cached
  • about 1,200 pounds of cargo
  • including commemorative patches and pins, 162 meals and a collection of student experiments
  • Most of the cargo's weight, 674 pounds, is in food and crew provisions, including the meals, crew clothing and batteries and other pantry items. A laptop and its accompanying accessories will also make the journey.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Tucked inside the Dragon capsule are two NanoRacks dedicated to student experiments that will study a range of microgravity-related areas from microbial growth to water purification.
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