We take a look at sad news for the Kepler space telescope, wireless brain imaging, remote ancient water, cancer genes, sound imaging, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Kepler\’s Last Dance?

• NASA’s Kepler telescope lost its ability to precisely point toward stars when one of the reaction wheels –devices which enable the spacecraft to aim in different directions without firing thrusters – has failed
• Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission completed its 3.5-year planned run last year.it monitors some 150,000 sunlike stars in search of transiting planets
• Reaction Wheels
• Reaction wheels try to balance the forces from the solar pressure, that’s what forces a wheel to run
• Last year reaction wheel #2 failed, and now #4 has failed
• In July 2012 reaction wheel #2 failed, then earlier this year elevated friction was detected in reaction wheel #4, they saw some movement on the wheel but it went back quickly
• Extending Fuel Supplies
• They are currently using thrusters to stabilize the spacecraft, and in its current mode, the onboard fuel will last for several months
• They could extend the fuel to last a period of several years in a “Point Rest State,” where we can park the vehicle
• Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink
• The software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week
• There is the possibility of the wheel running in the opposite direction, but running the wheel backward would mean they would need to use more thruster fuel
• What Lies Ahead
• The spacecraft needs at least three reaction wheels to be able to point precisely enough to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars, but it might be possible to use the telescope for another purpose that does not require such precise pointing abilities
• They will continue to analyze the situation to try and get the telescope back online
• Even if the Kepler spacecraft is unable to make more observations, there are still terabytes of data to pore over with two years of data that has yet to be searched through
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Kepler Update on This Week @NASA | NASATelevision
• Further Reading / In the News
• Kepler mission may be over | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
• Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Suffers Major Failure, NASA Says | Space.com
• Kepler spacecraft\’s planet-hunting days may be over | Phys.org
• Malfunction Could Mark the End of NASA\’s Kepler Mission – ScienceInsider | ScienceMag.org
• Kepler Planet-Hunting Mission in Jeopardy | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Wireless Brain Imaging

• A new technology is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnosis of brain swelling or bleeding.
• The device analyzes data from low energy, electromagnetic waves, similar to the kind used to transmit radio and mobile signals
• It could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited
• The Prototype
• Engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants
• One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver
• The waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on
• The device\’s diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans
• Researchers take advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries
• For brain edema, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue and for brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.
• Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.
• Then computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.
• Prototype Testing
• The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army
• The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.
• The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling
• Why is it Important?
• Symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Wireless signals could transform brain trauma diagnostics | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Ancient Water Story

• A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life
• Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life
• The Water
• The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now
• Using ground-breaking techniques researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.
• The interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life
• Scientists say the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute yet don\’t yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life
• Hydrogen, Methane, and Life
• Researchers have analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada
• They have found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms – called isotopes – of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon
• The amount of hydrogen in the water is similar to that around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, where microbial life has been found
• The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water
• These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.
• What This Means On a Larger Scale
• The similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet\’s surface
• Further Reading / In the News
• Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars | Phys.org

Flipping Genes for Cancer

• Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a gene that, when repressed in tumor cells, puts a halt to cell growth and a range of processes needed for tumors to enlarge and spread to distant sites
• The work shows for the first time that switching this gene off in aggressive cancer cells dramatically changes their appearance and behavior
• The team applied the same techniques to several strains of human breast cancer cells in the laboratory, including the so-called triple negative cells
• Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
• Triple-negative breast cancer cells tend to behave aggressively and do not respond to many of our most effective breast cancer therapies
• Cells with suppressed HMGA1 grow very slowly and fail to migrate or invade new territory
• The team then implanted tumor cells into mice, the tumors with HMGA1 grew and spread to other areas, such as the lungs, while those with blocked HMGA1 did not grow well in the breast tissue or spread to distant sites.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Making cancer less cancerous: Blocking a single gene renders tumors less aggressive | MedicalXpress.com

Sound Pictures of Your Car

• Researchers have created a camera that creates a heat map-like view of machinery, or anything else
• 30 digital microphones and a high-res camera pick up on what\’s making noise, and an image shows the different levels of noise, organized by a color gradient with blue meaning a little noise, and red is the most extreme level.
• While this is not the first sound camera, at about 4 pounds it is one of the most portable
• Further Reading / In the News
• This Sound Camera Could Help You Fix Your Car | Popular Science

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Space Station Patch

• Peter Daintree / \”Korlus\” – Check This Out!
• Space Station ammonia Leak and Fix
• Answer
• Expedition 35 Flight Engineers inspected and replaced a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant
• Coolant Pump
• The device contains the mechanical systems that drive the cooling functions for the port truss.
• The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS
• While the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew was not in any danger
• The Fix
• The spacewalk is the 168th in support of the assembly and maintenance of the space
• While astronauts on the station prepared in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center used the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA
• A little more than 2 1/2 hours into the spacewalk removed the 260-pound pump controller box from the P6 truss and replaced it with a spare that had been stowed nearby
• What Happened in the \”Down Time\”
• All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, were transferred throughout the day to another channel
• The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Station Ammonia Leak Prompts Spacewalk Preps | ReelNASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA – Astronauts Complete Spacewalk to Repair Ammonia Leak, Station Changes Command | NASA.gov
• Emergency Spacewalk Likely for ‘Serious’ ISS Coolant Leak | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Opportunity’s Driving Marathon

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 79 | Multitasking & Tractor Beams – Opportunity rover still on the move [29 Jan, 2013]
• Marathon Driving
• Over the course of three days in December 1972 Apollo 17 astronauts drove their mission\’s Lunar Roving Vehicle 22.21 mi [19 nautical mi / 35.74 kilometers] holding the record for the farthest travelled NASA vehicle until recently
• Opportunity rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on May 15, bringing its total odometry on the Red Planet to 22.22 miles [35.768 km], beating Apollo 17\’s record
• The Mission
• The golf-cart-sized Opportunity and it\’s twin Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet
• Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later
• In the meantime Opportunity has been working at a section of the rim dubbed \”Cape York\” since the middle of 2011
• Now it has began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles (2.2 km) away
• The Future
• Opportunity still trails another robot for the international distance record, the Soviet Union\’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.
• Although Opportunity\’s handlers have said they\’d like to add this milestone to the rover\’s resume as well, though science remains the mission\’s top priority
• Multimedia
• IMAGE | Comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth\’s moon and Mars | Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nine-Year-Old Mars Rover Passes 40-Year-Old Record – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | JPL.NASA.gov
• Mars Rover Breaks U.S. Record for Off-Planet Driving | Scientific American
• Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks US Record for Off-Planet Driving | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Second Drilling Location
• The first drilling location was at a target called \”John Klein\” three months ago
• The new target Cumberland resembles John Klein and lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) farther west
• On May 19th Curiosity drilled a hole into Cumberland about an 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) deep
• Preliminary findings from analysis of the first site, \”John Klein,\” indicate that the location long ago had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life
• The science team expects to use analysis of the new material from Cumberland to check against those results
• ”Blinking Image”
• Before-and-After Blink of \’Cumberland\’ Drilling | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
• This pair of images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the rock target \”Cumberland\” before and after Curiosity drilled into it to collect a sample for analysis
• The \”before\” image was taken during the 275th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity\’s work on Mars (May 15, 2013).
• Curiosity drilled into Cumberland on Sol 279 (May 19, 2013) and took the second image later that same sol.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (May 16, 2013): Rover Readies for Second Drilling | JPLNews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Drills Second Rock Target | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 27, 1931 : 82 years ago : Balloon Record : In 1931, Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man\’s first trip into the stratosphere when they rode their balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet (nearly 10 miles above the earth). This required the use of a pressurized cabin, which Piccard had designed. On-board experiments included the use of an electroscope to investigate cosmic rays

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Saturn | Twilight | In the SE with the blue giant star Spica to it\’s upper right
• Venus | Twilight | In the W-NW to the lower right of Jupiter
• Jupiter | Twilight | In the W-NW it is appearing lower and lower each day
• The Conjunction | When objects in the sky appear to be close from our perspective | As seen in the video, Jupiter and Venus are getting closer and closer in the W-NW about 40 min after sunset. They will be at their closest point May 28th, when they will only be 1 degree apart, or about the width of your pinky finger held at arms length

• YouTube | Conjunction Video | SkyandTelescope

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Kepler & Ancient Water | SciByte 94 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at multitasking abilities, red pens, tractor beams, bicycle airbags, tracking twitter, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Multitasking Proficiency

• The low down
• Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a new study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
• The Study
• The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department\’s subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
• The subjects were put through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
• Research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
• The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability \”was found to be significantly inflated
• The Results
• To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
• The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation where participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
• A simple example of a question: \”is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4×3=12.\” Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
• Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average, 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking
• Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
• Subjects also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
• Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
• Of Note
• The data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn\’t.
• In fact the people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
• People who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
• Study participants also reported spending 13 percent of their driving time talking on a cell phone, which Strayer says roughly squares with federal estimates that one in 10 drivers are on the phone at any given time
• Multimedia
• YouTube Automated Operation Span Tutorial | zupef
• Image Driving simulator they use in some research | David Strayer, University of Utah
• Further Reading / In the News
• Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones when driving | MedXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Attack of the red pens

• The low down
• 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
• The Study
• The two researchers enlisted the assistance of 199 undergraduate students – each was given four versions of an already graded essay by an unknown instructor
• The 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
• They were also asked how they felt about the instructor that had written the original remarks
• The Results
• 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
• When they disagreed; however, 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
• Of Note
• The researchers 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 being graded naturally feel a little bit abused and respond by growing angry or sad, which, they note, doesn\’t really promote the learning process
• The team suggest instructors stop using red pens and go with a shade of blue instead
• Further Reading / In the News
• Study shows red pen use by instructors leads to more negative response | phys.org

Tractor Beams a reality?

• Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects towards the light source, albeit at a microscopic level.
• What is it?
• Researchers have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light.
• The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples
• The team discovered a technique which will allow them to provide \’negative\’ force acting upon minuscule particles
• The technique
• Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons
• Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun
  Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.
• Scientists have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for biomedical photonics and other disciplines
• What does it mean to todays science?
• The occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition
• This allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device
• Optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising biomedical applications of optical manipulation allowing
• Scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the \”tractor\” beam force-field, rearranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger
• Multimedia
• Image Example of comet with two tails | SpacePlace.nasa.gov
• First video reveals working tractor beam in action | newscientist.com
• Further Reading / In the News
• Star Trek\’s \’tractor\’ beam created in miniature by researchers | phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Bicycle Airbags

• The low down
• In the United States, only 1 percent of trips are made by bicycle
• In the Netherlands, which has only 1/18 of the U.S.’s population, that number is close to 26 percent
• With so many bikes on the road, one Dutch company is working on a car airbag that deploys outside the vehicle to reduce bicyclist injuries
• Upon impact, the airbag, housed under the hood, inflates to cover parts of the windshield and cushion a biker
• In tests in November 2012, engineers drove a track-guided car into a dummy on a bike at 25 mph, the average speed of a crash
• Accelerometers in the dummy’s head and neck and pressure sensors embedded in its limbs indicated brain damage and broken bones
• Dummies in collisions with the airbag had fewer and less severe injuries up to 45 percent of the time
• Multimedia
• YouTube Clip | Assembly
• YouTube Clip | Setting up the Test
• YouTube Clip | Computer Model
• YouTube Clip | Test with out the airbags
• YouTube Clip | HIgh Speed Footage with Airbags
• YouTube Succesvolle demonstratie fietsersairbag | TNOReseach
• Further Reading / In the News
• Successful demonstration cyclists airbag | TNO.nl
• Megapixels: Car Airbags That Could Save A Cyclist\’s Life | Popular Science | PopSci.com

HIggs-Boson Twitter Rumors and Following

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 53 | Higgs Boson – To Higgs-Boson or not to Higgs-Boson | July 10, 2012
• The low down
• For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
• The model is based on the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
• The Data
• According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
• That means it was one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
• The research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
• What it means
• Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
• This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing, for example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
• Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people or keep the interest in the topic going
• Multimedia
• YouTube The Anatomy of a Scientific Gossip – World View | networkedsystemslab
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery | phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE —

Opportunity rover still on the move

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s – Opportunity, Driving Distance and life | September 4, 2012
• Nine Years of Service
• NASA\’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars the night of Jan. 24, 2004 PST (just after midnight EST on Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down
• Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend three months searching for evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet
• Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, after getting mired in soft sand and failing to maneuver into a position that would allow it to slant its solar panels toward the sun over the 2009-2010 Martian winter. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011 after 7 years of service
• Opportunity, after 9 years of service, is currently inspecting clay deposits along the rim of Mars\’ huge Endeavour Crater. Clays form in relatively neutral (as opposed to acidic or basic) water, so
• Rover road trips
• So far, robotic rovers have been to the moon and Mars, with astronauts actually driving a lunar car on the moon during NASA\’s Apollo program
• Soviet-era Lunakhod 2 : In the lead for total distance travelled the farthest is the the Soviet-era Lunakhod 2, which drove 23 miles (37 kilometers) during its 1973 mission
• NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover : The next rover with the most driving distance is NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven 22.3 miles (35.89 km) by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972
• Opportunity rover : Next, in a close third, is the Opportunity rover, which has been driving across the plains of Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet since 2004 and has driven more than 22.03 miles (35.46 km) and is still going today
• This means that Opportunity is a mere one third of a mile (0.4 km) to being the second farthest driven, and a little under a mile (1.5 km) to being the farthest
• I estimate, barring any delays for science or equipment and based on past mileage, that in the next 2 months it might overtake the distance travelled by Apollo 17 rover, and the distance by the Lunokhod in the next 6 months.
• The latest to enter the race is Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, which is just getting started with only 0.4 mile (0.7 km) traveled so far.
  the area may once have been capable of supporting primitive microbial life
• Multimedia
• Distances Driven on Other Worlds Infographic | Space.com
• Social Media
• Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
• Further Reading / In the News
• Distance Traveled, Extraterrestrial Vehicles | Wheeled Vehicles, Moon & Mars | Space.com
• NASA\’s Opportunity Rover Begins Year 10 on Mars | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Dyscalculia

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu – Dyscalculia | January 22, 2013
• James Lewis
• Suggests a concern that there is an overdiagnosis of \’labels\’
• Could simply be that you could learn differently
• Response
• Almost certainly “the system” can over-diagnose students
• Are you or were you “diagnosed”? If so learn what exemptions, etc, that you qualify for should you choose to utilize them
• Try different ways of learning outside the classroom that can help in the classroom or supplement

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Nighttime Imaging
• The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera is located on the tool turret at the end of Curiosity’s 7 foot (2.1 m) long robotic arm
• Curiosity’s high resolution robotic arm camera has just snapped the 1st set of night time images of a Martian rock of the now 5 1/2 month long mission – using illumination from ultraviolet and white light emitting LED’s.
• The Martian rock was illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) as part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the MAHLI camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity
• The image was taken on Jan. 22, 2013, after dark on Sol 165, and covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters
• The rock was then illuminated by ultraviolet LEDs
• The purpose of acquiring observations under ultraviolet illumination was to look for fluorescent minerals
• If something looked green, yellow, orange or red under the ultraviolet illumination, that’d be a more clear-cut indicator of fluorescence
• The close-up images of a rock target named “Sayunei” on Jan. 22 (Sol 165), located near the front-left wheel after the rover had driven over and scuffed the area to break up rocks in an effort to try and expose fresh material, free of obscuring dust
• Multimedia
• MAHLI\’s First Night Imaging of Martian Rock, White Lighting | photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
• MAHLI\’s First Night Imaging of Martian Rock Under Ultraviolet Lighting | photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
• View from Inside \’Yellowknife Bay\’ (Raw-color) | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• View from Inside \’Yellowknife Bay\’ | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Rover Curiosity Uses Arm Camera at Night | nasa.gov
• Curiosity\’s Robotic Arm Camera Snaps 1st Night Images | UniverseToday.com

THIS WEEK

• NASA – Day of Remembrance
• Apollo 1 | January 27, 1967 | Command Pilot Virgil \”Gus\” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee
• Challenger | January 28, 1986 | Francis R. Scobee – Mission Commander, Michael J. Smith – Pilot, Ellison S. Onizuka – Mission Specialist 1, Judith A. Resnik – Mission Specialist 2, Ronald E. McNair – Mission Specialist 3, Christa McAuliffe – Payload Specialist 1, Gregory B. Jarvis – Payload Specialist 2
• Columbia | February 1, 2003 | Rick Husband, Commander; William C. McCool, Pilot; Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander; David M. Brown, Mission Specialist 1; Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 2; Laurel Clark, Mission Specialist 4; and Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist 1

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Feb 01, 1972 : 40 years ago : Hand-held calculator : The first scientific handheld calculator was introduced for $395 by Hewlett- Packard, named the HP-35 for having 35 keys. It was the first handheld calculator able to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke. The red LED display could give scientific notation up to 10 digits mantissa and 2 digits exponent. The price was reduced several times, eventually to $195. By Feb 1975 (when production of the model was discontinued), 300,000 had been sold. The numbers and functions for calculations were entered in “Reverse Polish Notation”(RPN), which used an “ENTER” key but needed no parentheses or “=” key. It ran on rechargeable batteries and had electronics with several integrated circuits in a 3.1\” x 5.8\” x 1.4\” (79 ×147×34 mm) case.
• Image author : Seth Morabito | originally posted to Flickr as HP 35 Calculator

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Fri, Feb 1 | Twilight | The star Spica will be to the right of the Moon, with Saturn a bit farther away to the upper left of the Moon
• Sun, Feb 3 | Twilight | Now both Spica and Saturn are to the right of the Moon
• Venus | ~20 min before sunrise | Rise to the SE, getting lower each morning
• Mars | Fading Sunset | Low in the S-SW, the red Star Famalhunt is far to it\’s left
• Jupiter | after sunset | Appears high in the SE sky as the major object of the sky. The orange star Aldebaran is to it\’s lower or to the left, with Pleiades to the upper right

• Saturn | ~1 am | Is in the E-SE moving to the high Southern sky by dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at hiking in the Amazon, swimming robots, Lunar images, Martian weather, Apollo sites, Space Station precautions, viewer feedback, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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