Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at Egypt\’s pyramids construction, infants with picture books, a USB charger in your shoes, a superspeedy star cluster, story updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

The Pyramids Stones Over Wet Sand

• Scientists have discovered that the ancient Egyptians moistened the sand over which the sledge moved to make it easier to transport heavy pyramid stones by sledge
• Building the Pyramids
• For the construction of the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians had to transport heavy blocks of stone and large statues across the desert
• The Egyptians therefore placed the heavy objects on a sledge that workers pulled over the sand
• Research has revealed that the Egyptians probably made the desert sand in front of the sledge wet
• Experiments have demonstrated that the correct amount of dampness in the sand halves the pulling force required
• Experiment
• Physicists placed a laboratory version of the Egyptian sledge in a tray of sand and determined both the required pulling force and the stiffness of the sand as a function of the quantity of water in the sand.
• To determine the stiffness they used a rheometer, which shows how much force is needed to deform a certain volume of sand
• Experiments revealed that the required pulling force decreased proportional to the stiffness of the sand
• Capillary bridges arise when water is added to the sand. These are small water droplets that bind the sand grains together
• In the presence of the correct quantity of water, wet desert sand is about twice as stiff as dry sand
• A sledge glides far more easily over firm desert sand simply because the sand does not pile up in front of the sledge as it does in the case of dry sand.
• A wall painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep clearly shows a person standing on the front of the pulled sledge and pouring water over the sand just in front of it.
• By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed
• Modern Day Applications
• The results are also interesting for modern-day applications because we still do not fully understand the behaviour of granular material like sand
• The research results could therefore be useful for examining how to optimise the transport and processing of granular material, which at present accounts for about ten percent of the worldwide energy consumption
• Further Reading / In the News
• Ancient Egyptians transported pyramid stones over wet sand | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Infants and Pictures

• Researchers have found that babies can learn about the connection between pictures and real objects, such as a toy from a photograph of it, by the time they are nine-months-old
• \”The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant,\” | Dr Jeanne Shinskey, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway
• Experiment
• To test an infants\’ simple object recognition researchers familiarized 30 eight and nine-month-olds with a life-sized photo of a toy for about a minute
• The babies were then placed before the toy in the picture and a different toy and researchers watched to see which one the babies reached for first.
• In one condition, the researchers tested infants\’ simple object recognition for the target toy by keeping both objects visible, drawing infants\’ attention to the toys and then placing the toys inside clear containers
• In another condition, they tested infants\’ ability to create a continued mental idea of the target toy by hiding both toys from view then drawing infants\’ attention to the toys and then placing the toys inside opaque containers
• Results
• When the toys were visible in clear containers, babies reached for the one that had not been in the picture, suggesting that they recognized the pictured toy and found it less interesting than the new toy because its novelty had worn off
• When the toys were hidden in opaque containers, babies showed the opposite preference and reached more often for the one that had been in the photo, suggesting that they had formed a continued mental idea of it.
• What This Means
• This demonstrates that experience with a picture of something can strengthen babies\’ ideas of an object so they can maintain it after the object disappears
• These findings suggest that, well before their first birthdays and their first words, babies are capable of learning about the real world indirectly realistic images like photographs or from picture books
• Further Reading / In the News
• Psychologists discover babies recognize real-life objects from pictures as early as nine months | ScienceDaily

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Power in Steps

• The impact of a hiker’s heel releases enough energy to illuminate a light bulb, an engineer and avid backpacker, Matt Stanton, created a shoe insole that stores it as electricity
• Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights.
• The result is a near standard–size removable insole that weighs less than five ounces, including a battery pack, and charges electronics via USB.
• The current version, to be released later this year, requires a lengthy 15-mile walk to charge a smartphone.
• The company is working toward a design that can charge an iPhone after less than five miles of hiking and withstand about 100 million footsteps of wear and tear.
• How It Works
• A drivetrain converts the energy of heel strikes into rotational energy, spinning magnetic rotors
• The motion of the rotors induces an electrical current within coils of wire
• Electricity travels along a wire and into a lithium-ion polymer battery pack on a wearer’s shoelaces
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Solepower – Power by Walking (HD) | PIXEL PLANET
• Further Reading / In the News
• SolePower Tech
• Invention Awards 2014: Charge Gadgets With Your Footsteps | Popular Science | PopSci.com

Runaway Star Cluster

• The Virgo Cluster galaxy, M87, has ejected an entire star cluster, throwing it toward us at more than two million miles per hour.
• Astronomers have found \”runaway stars\” before, but for the first time they have now found an entire star cluster
• Hypervelocity
• About one in a billion stars travel at a speed roughly three times greater than our Sun
  , these stars can easily escape the galaxy entirely, traveling rapidly throughout intergalactic space.
• At 220 km/s [137 mi/s] with respect to the galactic center this is the first time an entire star cluster has broken free
• Hypervelocity stars have puzzled astronomers for years, but by observing their speed and direction, astronomers can trace these stars backward, finding that some began moving quickly in the Galactic Center
• What Could Have Caused An Entire Star Cluster to Reach Hypervelocity
• An interaction with the supermassive black hole can kick a star away at an alarming speed
• Another option is that a supernova explosion propelled a nearby star to a huge speed
• Some astronomers think M87 might have two supermassive black holes at its center and that the star cluster wandered too close to the pair, which picked off many of the cluster’s outer stars while the inner core remained intact
• Then the black holes then acted like a slingshot, flinging the cluster away at a tremendous speed
• Further Reading / In the News
• \’Runaway\’ Star Cluster Breaks Free from Distant Galaxy | UniverseToday.com

— Updates —

Sealing GunShot Wounds

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 119 | Medical Tech & Martian Crater | February 11, 2014
• The Low Down
• When a soldier is shot on the battlefield a medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity
• A startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers are working on a better way to stop bleeding
• It has now won a Popular Science Invention Awards 2014
• XStat
• XStat is a modified syringe that injects specially coated sponges into wound faster and more efficiently than gauze.
• Early efforts were inspired by Fix-a-Flat foam for repairing tires
• After seeing early prototypes, the U.S. Army gave the team $5 million to develop a finished product
• The final material would need to be sterile, biocompatible, and fast-expanding
• The team settled on a sponge made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting, antimicrobial substance that comes from shrimp shells
• In just 15 seconds, they expand to fill the entire wound cavity, creating enough pressure to stop heavy bleeding
• A tricky part was getting the sponges into a wound, they needed a lightweight, compact way to get the sponges deep into an injury
• To ensure that no sponges would be left inside the body accidentally, they added X-shaped markers that make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.
• Applicator
• A 30 mm-diameter, [1.2 in] polycarbonate syringe that stores with the handle inside to save space
• To use the applicator, a medic pulls out the handle, inserts the cylinder into the wound, and then pushes the plunger back down to inject the sponges as close to the artery as possible.
• Three single-use XStat applicators would replace five bulky rolls of gauze in a medic’s kit
• RevMedx also designed a smaller version of the applicator, with a diameter of 12 mm, for narrower injuries
• Each XStat will likely cost about $100, Steinbaugh says, but the price may go down as RevMedx boosts manufacturing
• FDA Approval
• The pocket-sized XStat has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a first-of-its-kind medical dressing
• This means that the U.S. Army, which funded development of the sponge-filled syringe, can now purchase XStat to be carried by military medics
• The FDA says the sponges are safe to leave in the body for up to four hours, allowing enough time for a patient to get to an operating room
• What\’s Next?
• RevMedx, along with Oregon Health and Science University, is now developing a version of the device to stop postpartum bleeding
• Multimedia
• YouTube | USA: Revolutionary new dressing heals bullet wounds in seconds | RuptlyTV
• Further Reading / In the News
• RevMedx | XSTAT
• Simple Invention For Sealing Gunshot Wounds Gets FDA Approval | Popular Science
• Invention Awards 2014: Seal Combat Wounds In 15 Seconds | Popular Science

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Prepping for Drilling
• The rover used several tools to examine the candidate site, such as a wire-bristle brush (Dust Removal Tool) to clear away dust from a patch on the rock
• In the brushed spot, scientists could see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust and that some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures
• Before Curiosity can drill deeply enough for collection of rock-powder sample, scientists perform a \”mini-drill\” operation on the target, as a further check for readiness
• The \”mini-drill\” operation produced a hole about 0.8in (2 cm) deep, in a \”mini-drill\” operation, on Tuesday, April 29, on the rock target under consideration for the mission\’s third sample-collection drilling
• Curiosity\’s hammering drill collects powdered sample material from the interior of a rock, and then the rover prepares and delivers portions of the sample to laboratory instruments onboard
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Target on Mars Looks Good for NASA Rover Drilling – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 11, 868 : 1146 years ago : First Printed Book : In 868, The first known dated printed (not oldest) book was the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture. It was made as a 16-ft scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats.
  The sheets measured 12\” by 30\” and were pasted together. The date is known from a colophon at the end stating it was \”printed on 11 May 868, by Wang Chieh, for free general distribution\” and that it was dedicated to his parents. The scroll was one of about 1,130 bundles of manuscripts found a thousand years later, walled up in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Turkestan. It is now one of the great treasures in the British Library

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Look to the E before and during dawn
• Mars | High in the SE after dark, with Spica below it, both will be at their highest point around local 11pm DST moving towards the NE as dawn approaches. On Fri, May 9, and Sat, May 10, Mars and Spica will be to the left of the Moon.
• Jupiter | Twilight | High in the SW sinking towards the W horizon as the night progresses, setting around 1am

• Saturn | Early Evening | Rises in the SE, setting in the NW. Saturn will be at opposition on Sat, May 10

• 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 Pyramid Construction & Picturebooks | SciByte 129 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at 3-D printed ears, a tiny movie, a light pollution app, treating grey hair and vitiligo, picture books, corrections, 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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3D Printing Bionic Ears

• -Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can \”hear\” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability
• -The primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue
• Building Bionics
• -Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies that typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue
• -This new work suggests a new way to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format
• -Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months
• -This project is the team\’s first effort to create a fully functional organ: one that not only replicates a human ability, but extends it using embedded electronics
• Manufacturing Bionic Ears
• -Ear reconstruction \”remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery\” so this team turned to a manufacturing approach called 3D printing
• -Researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage
• -Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical \”cochlea\” – the part of the ear that senses sound which can connect to electrodes, the finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure,
• -This is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics
• The Future
• -Further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient
• -The ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing if electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient\’s nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid
• -The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds
• Multimedia
• -YouTube | 3D Printed Bionic Ears Listening to Beethoven in Stereo | McAlpineResearch
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Printable \’bionic\’ ear melds electronics and biology | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

It’s a Small, Small Movie

• -Scientists from IBM have released the world\’s smallest movie, made entirely of atoms
• The Instrumentation
• -In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
• -The Microscope weighs two tons, and operates at a temperature of negative -450 Fahrenheit / -268 Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
• -The IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
• -Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to \”feel\” atoms
• -Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
• -Moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it\’s actually moved
• The Movie
• -Named \”A Boy and His Atom,\” the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
• -Scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
• Also From the Team
• -Recently created the world\’s smallest magnetic bit, answering the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
• -It takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device, atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
• Multimedia
• -YouTube | A Boy And His Atom: The World\’s Smallest Movie | IBM
• -YouTube | IMB \’The Worlds Smallest Movie\’ Channel
• -Image | Star Trek Logo made of atoms
• Further Reading / In the News
• –IBM researchers make world\’s smallest movie using atoms | Phys.org
• –Tiny Bubbles: Star Trek Gets An Atomic Look | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Light Pollution App

• -Researchers from the German \”Loss of the Night\” project have developed an app for Android smart phones, which counts the number of visible stars in the sky
• The App
• -The smartphone app will be used by scientists to understand and evaluate sky brightness, also known as light pollution or skyglow, on a worldwide scale
• -Currently satellites that observe Earth at night measure the light that is radiating into the sky, not the brightness that is experienced by people and other organisms on the ground
• -The data can be used to map the distribution and changes in sky brightness, and will eventually allow scientists to investigate correlations with health, biodiversity, energy waste and other factors
• -With this app, people from around the world can collect data on skyglow without needing expensive equipment.
• -You simply use an interactive view of a portion of the night sky where you can adjust it so that it corresponds to the number of stars you see in the sky
• -Some of the testers found that without intending too they learned the names of several stars and constellations
• -Development of the app was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education, and is based on the widely used Google Sky Map application
• Website
• -GoolgePlay | Loss of the Night
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Twinkle, twinkle little star: New app measures sky brightness | Phys.org

Reversing Grey Hair and Vitiligo

• Grey Hair
• -People who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out
• -A new report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase)
• Vitiligo
• -The study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition vitiligo, a condition that causes depigmentation of sections of skin
• -To achieve this breakthrough, Schallreuter and colleagues analyzed an international group of 2,411 patients with vitiligo
• -They found that for the first time, patients who have a certain nerval distribution involving skin and eyelashes show the same oxidative stress as observed in the much more frequent type of vitiligo
• -The more common Vitiligo is associated with decreased antioxidant capacities including catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and the repair mechanisms methionine sulfoxide reductases
• –Further Reading / In the News
• –Gray hair and vitiligo reversed at the root | MedicalXPress

‘Reading’ Picture Books

• -Researchers have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book
• -Often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun
• -These findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear, especially as they transition to school
• Last time on the … FauxShow?
• –FauxShow 139 | Story Time | May 9 2013
• The Study
• -A graduate student, recorded 25 mothers while they read to their toddlers both a wordless picture storybook and a vocabulary book with pictures
• -Moms in the study used forms of complex talk when reading the picture storybook to their child more often than the picture vocabulary book
• -The team was especially interested in looking at the language mothers use when reading both wordless picture storybooks and picture vocabulary books
• -They paid close attention to see if parents provided extra information to children like relating the events of the story to the child\’s own experiences or asking their child to make predictions.
• What This Means
• -The results of the study are significant for both parents and educators because vocabulary books are often marketed as being more educational
• -This shows that even short wordless picture books provide children with exposure to the kinds of language that they will encounter at school and can lay the foundation for later reading development
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Reading wordless storybooks to toddlers may expose them to richer language | MedicalXpress.com

— CORRECTIONS —

Haiku to Mars Corrections

• Viewer Feedback – Check This Out
• -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes [May 7, 2013]
• -I mistakenly attributed this to Curiosity
• The Mission
• -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, to gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
• -The Mission launch window opens on November 18, 2013
• And Earthly DVD to Mars
• -The team wants to pack onboard a DVD containing the names of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will be on the DVD
• -The top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars on board the orbiting MAVEN spacecraft and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website
• Student Art Contest Timeline
• -Contest Ran from March 15-April 8, Public Voting was between April 16-May 6
• -Contest Winner Will Be Announced on May 20
• Send Your Name and Haiku to Mars
• -Submissions | May 1 – July 1
• -Public Voting | July 15 – July 29
• -Message Contest Winner Announced | August 8
• Haiku
• -A poem with three lines where the first and the last lines must have exactly five syllables, and the second line must have exactly seven syllables.
• Example
• Listening and learning, [5]
• and information gathering, [7]
• makes Happy Science [5]
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Going to Mars » Send your name & message to Mars!
• –NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science

— UPDATES —

Awesome Second-Hand Telescopes

• -A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions the middle of last year
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 51 | Talking Robots and Voyager 1 – Space Telescope Donations | June 19, 2012
• The Story of the Telescopes
• -The two spy scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture
• -Cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency
• -The cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year, which is not insignificant, but it\’s not something that\’s unmanageable
• -The telescopes\’ 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view
• -NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches
• Finding Ideas
• -When NASA asked scientists to suggest missions for the telescopes, more than 60 serious proposals came in, the most promising of which were presented in early February
• Seven Big Ideas
• -Mars-orbiting space telescope
• -Exoplanet observatory
• -General-purpose faint object explorer
• -Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope
• -Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)
• -Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)
• -Research of Earth\’s upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)
• The Future
• -Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch
• -There are currently no instruments on the two telescopes right now, just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures so it would take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure
• -The funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted, and there\’s no guarantee that it will be with current budgetary concerns
• Further Reading / In the News
• –NASA Mulling Missions for Donated Spy Telescopes | National Reconnaissance Office | Space.com

Reality TV on Mars [MarsOne]

• -By May 7th about 78,000 people applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22
• -78,000 applications in two weeks is a good start to their goal of half a million applicants
• -Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion
• -Plans are to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists\’ first years on the Red Planet.
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets and Diabetes – MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science | May 7, 2013
• –SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets and Eye’s – Martian Reality TV | September 4, 2012
• Application Process
• -The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply, by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler.
• -There is an application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on the wealth of the applicant\’s home country. United States citizens pay $38
• -Reviewers will pick 50 to 100 candidates from each of the 300 regions around the world that Mars One has identified
• -By 2015, this pool will be whittled down to a total of 28 to 40 candidates, then the core group will be split into groups of four, which will train for their one-way Mars mission for about seven years
• -Finally, an audience vote will pick one of these groups to be humanity\’s first visitors to the Red Planet.
• From All Over the World
• -People from more than 120 countries have already send in applications
• -As of May 7 the greatest number of submissions by country are the United States (17,324), China (10,241), and the United Kingdom (3,581)
• -Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India round out the top 10.
• Multimedia
• –Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
• -YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Mars Colony Project Gets 78,000 Applications in 2 Weeks | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

First Music Video in Space

• Nikki – Check It Out!
• YouTube Space Oddity | Chris Hadfield
• YouTube Music Monday with Chris Hadfield and students singing coast-to-coast | canadianspaceagency
• YouTube First recorded comments by Chris Hadfield after landing | canadianspaceagency

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• After Conjunction Updates
• -New software was uploaded what was developed and tested on Earth on the \’testbed\’ that will allow more autonomous navigation that will help Curiosity select safe routes by itself
• -Additional safety checks have been added to the onboard software for the ChemCam instrument to make sure it is never directly pointed at the sun for a long period of time
• Plans
• -Calibration data for the navigation cameras, to make sure the B-side computer navigation camera\’s are working properly before moving to a new location
• Second Drilling Location
• -The team operating NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days.
• -\”Cumberland,\” lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity\’s drill first touched Martian stone in February
• -Both rocks are flat, with pale veins and a bumpy surface. They are embedded in a layer of rock on the floor of a shallow depression called \”Yellowknife Bay.
• -This second drilling is intended to confirm results from the first drilling, which indicated the chemistry of the first powdered sample from John Klein was much less oxidizing than that of a soil sample the rover scooped up before it began drilling.
• -Cumberland and John Klein are very similar, Cumberland appears to have more of the erosion-resistant granules that cause the surface bumps, concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago
• -Mission engineers recently finished upgrading Curiosity\’s operating software following a four-week break rover continued monitoring the Martian atmosphere during the break, but the team did not send any new commands
• Multimedia
• -YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (May 9, 2013): \’Spring Break\’ Over: Commanding Resumes | JPL
• -Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• -Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Curiosity Rover Team Selects Second Drilling Target On Mars | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• –Mars Rover Curiosity Gears Up for Drilling, Epic Drive | Space.com
• –Bizarre Mars Mountain Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 20, 1901 : 112 years ago : 3D Projector : Claude Grivolas, one of Pathe\’s main shareholders in Paris, France, patented a projector for three-dimensional (stereoscopic) movies viewed wearing spectacles with one red and one blue lens (French patent No. 310,864). He received a British patent on 23 May 1901 (No. 10,695) For filming, he used a dual camera arrangement which photographed images alternately. He then created one composite master film with the left camera images alternated with the right camera image. His projector had a shutter with one red and one blue transparent sections, with opaque quadrants between them. Left-eye images were projected through the blue filter followed by right-eye images in red light. The movie appeared black and white when viewed using red/blue spectacles

Looking up this week

• –Keep an eye out for …
• -Fri | May 17 | Look above the Moon in the SW, above it you may see the backwards question mark of stars that are part of the constellation LEO (they are the head and shoulders)
• Planets
• -Venus | ~20 min after sunset | Look to the W-NW and you may be able to see Venus starting to appear
• -Jupiter | After sunset | It is the first \”star\” to appear, appearing a little lower each day and setting at the end of twilight
• -Saturn | After nightfall | Look to the SE, it is to the lower left of Spica and will be at it\’s highest point in the sky around midnight
• Coming Up

• -Venus, Jupiter, Mercury | Will be getting closer and closer this month with a conjunction on the 28th when Venus and Jupiter will only be 1*, about the width of your pinky finger at arms length

• 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 Bionic Ear & Atomic Movie | SciByte 93 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.