&#9828;&#9828;&#9828; A VUELO DE UN QUINDE&#174; , EL BLOG! &#9831;&#9831;&#9831;

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

NASA : Operation IceBridge Debuts Its Seventh Arctic Campaign .- Operación IceBridge estrena su séptima campaña al Ártico

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Agencia Espacial NASA en sus investigaciones del Ártico, que lleva a cabo con su nave: NASA's Operation IceBridge, cuyo avión NASA's C-130 aircraft: Ha desarrollado la Operación IceBridge de la NASA, un estudio aéreo de los hielos polares, completó con éxito su primer vuelo de investigación de Groenlandia 19 de marzo de 2015, lanzando así su séptima campaña del Ártico. Vuelos de ciencias de este año más de marino en el Ártico y el hielo terrestre continuarán hasta el 22 de mayo

NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, successfully completed its first Greenland research flight of 2015 on March 19, thus launching its seventh Arctic campaign. This year’s science flights over Arctic sea and land ice will continue until May 22.

The C-130 aircraft getting readied for pressurization tests on March 16, 2015 at Wallops.

NASA's C-130 aircraft getting readied for pressurization tests on March16, 2015 at Wallops Flight Facility, during preparation for the Arctic 2015 Operation IceBridge field campaign. The mission¹s usual research aircraft in the Arctic, a P-3, is currently getting new wings.

Image Credit:

NASA/Jefferson Beck

The mission of Operation IceBridge is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2017. Operation IceBridge, which began in in 2009, is currently funded until 2019. The planned two-year overlap with ICESat-2 will help scientists validate the satellite’s measurements.

The extensive data IceBridge has gathered over the Greenland ice sheet during its six years of operations have provided an improved picture of the surface, the bed and the internal structures of Greenland’s ice sheet and allowed scientists to create more accurate models of glacier contribution to sea level rise. As for sea ice, IceBridge’s measurements of the thickness of sea ice and its snow cover have assisted in improving forecasts for summertime melt, enhanced the understanding of variations in ice thickness distribution from year to year, and updated the climatology of the snow depth over sea ice.

The first part of the Arctic campaign, based in the Thule Air Base in northern Greenland and including a short deployment to Fairbanks, Alaska, will focus on the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland and in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas north of Alaska.

“As far as the sea ice flight lines go in the Arctic this year, the new thing is that we’re not changing things this year,” said Jackie Richter-Menge, IceBridge science team co-lead and sea ice researcher with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H. “We’ve achieved a pattern of survey flights that is doing its job: it provides good insight into what the thickness distribution of the Arctic cover looks like in the Western Arctic, late in the winter season. This coverage is good both for modelers that are looking to do a prediction of the seasonal extent of the ice cover through the following summer and it also pays a nice complement to the satellite coverage that we’re getting from ESA’s [European Space Agency] CryoSat-2 satellite.”

This year, one of IceBridge’s radar instruments, the Multi-Channel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS), which is operated by the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, will try for the first time to take direct measurements of sea ice thickness. Thickness is a key indicator of Arctic sea ice’s likelihood to survive the summer melt season, but remote measurements of this characteristic are largely indirect.

“It would really be a wonderful thing to get direct measurements of sea ice thickness because what we have now is an inferred measurement based on how much sea ice is floating above open water”, Richter-Menge said. “Direct measurements would increase the level of certainty in the data.”

Youtube Override:

NASA’s Operation IceBridge is back in the field, with a twist. Instead of using the P-3 or DC-8 aircraft from previous campaigns, they’ve outfitted a C-130 cargo plane for the trip. Science flights begin this week as the mission studies Arctic sea ice, ice caps, glaciers, and the Greenland Ice Sheet

Image Credit:

NASA/Goddard

Feature Link:

› Download video

The second part of the Operation IceBridge’s 2015 Arctic campaign will be based in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and it will focus on surveying ice surface elevation and thickness at several rapidly changing points of the Greenland ice sheet. Afterward, the team will return to Thule for the last phase of the field campaign.

This year, four areas have been added to the list of Operation IceBridge’s high priority missions. Among these are the Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland and its neighbor to the north, the 79 N or Nioghalvfjerdsbrae glacier. Both of these rivers of ice have rapidly increased the rates in which they drain land ice to the ocean in the past years.

“That part of Greenland is changing very rapidly and corresponds to a basin below sea level pretty far inland,” said Eric Rignot, IceBridge science team co-lead and glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “It’s a sector that we’re paying close attention to because it has the potential to change rapidly and it could have a significant implication for sea level rise in the coming decades.”

“As we do every year, we are sampling the four corners of Greenland and the interior regions to complete a rather extensive survey of the ice sheet,” Rignot said. “Recent results have shown that this type of survey is good enough to keep track of the total mass loss of the ice sheet from year to year, and also to get details on glaciers that are key players in driving the mass loss to higher values every year.”

Operation IceBridge is using a different research aircraft this year, an adapted C-130 Hercules former military plane. The mission’s usual ride in the Arctic, a P-3, is getting new wings. Despite both planes having similar sizes and capabilities, mounting IceBridge’s array of lasers and radars on an unfamiliar fuselage doesn’t come without challenges.

“Any time we install our very extensive suite of sensors, they have to be integrated in the aircraft, which means mechanically mounted in good, stiff mounts, and the radar antennas have to be embedded within the fuselage so that they function adequately without requiring time-consuming aerodynamic modifications to the aircraft,” said John Sonntag, Operation IceBridge’s Field Team Lead. “It takes a lot of time and mechanical work to get the sensors mounted on the aircraft and to get the electrical interfaces with the crew and the cockpit”.

As in previous years, Operation IceBridge will be collaborating with several international research initiatives. In Barrow, Alaska, the C-130 will overfly a sea ice experiment by the Naval Research Laboratory. In a remote outpost in the northeastern Greenland coast, IceBridge will take measurements overlapping those taken from the ground by researchers from the University of Manitoba, Canada. And, weather permitting, NASA’s airborne polar laboratory will fly over a drifting sea ice station in the Fram Strait, a passage between Greenland and Svalbard that is the primary region of sea ice export from the Arctic.

“The purpose of our cooperations with other research groups is to understand our own instruments better by comparison to the measurements they’re collecting on the ground, primarily snow depth and sea ice thickness,” Sonntag said. “ We use their detailed measurements collected on the ground to better understand the geographically much wider, but in some cases less detailed measurements we take from the air.”

The IceBridge project science office is based at Goddard. The C-130 research aircraft is based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. For more about Operation IceBridge and to follow this year's campaign, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

NASA : NASA Spacecraft Detects Aurora and Mysterious Dust Cloud around Mars.- NASA nave espacial Detecta Aurora y misteriosa nube de polvo alrededor de Marte

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido de la Agencia Espacial NASA, la información del descubrimiento de la NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, de ha

observado dos fenómenos inesperados en la atmósfera de Marte: una nube de polvo sin explicación a gran altitud y aurora que llega profundamente en la atmósfera marciana.

La presencia de polvo en altitudes orbitales de aproximadamente 93 millas (150 kilómetros) a 190 millas (300 kilómetros) por encima de la superficie no se predijo. Aunque se desconoce el origen y la composición del polvo, no hay peligro para MAVEN y otras naves espaciales en órbita alrededor de Marte.

Artist’s conception of MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) observing the “Christmas Lights Aurora" on Mars. MAVEN observations show that aurora on Mars is similar to Earth’s "Northern Lights" but has a different origin.

Image Credit:

University of Colorado

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.

The presence of the dust at orbital altitudes from about 93 miles (150 kilometers) to 190 miles (300 kilometers) above the surface was not predicted. Although the source and composition of the dust are unknown, there is no hazard to MAVEN and other spacecraft orbiting Mars.

"If the dust originates from the atmosphere, this suggests we are missing some fundamental process in the Martian atmosphere," said Laila Andersson of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospherics and Space Physics (CU LASP), Boulder, Colorado.

The cloud was detected by the spacecraft’s Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW) instrument, and has been present the whole time MAVEN has been in operation. It is unknown if the cloud is a temporary phenomenon or something long lasting. The cloud density is greatest at lower altitudes. However, even in the densest areas it is still very thin. So far, no indication of its presence has been seen in observations from any of the other MAVEN instruments.

Possible sources for the observed dust include dust wafted up from the atmosphere; dust coming from Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars; dust moving in the solar wind away from the sun; or debris orbiting the sun from comets. However, no known process on Mars can explain the appearance of dust in the observed locations from any of these sources.

A map of IUVS’s auroral detections in December 2014 overlaid on Mars’ surface. The map shows that the aurora was widespread in the northern hemisphere, not tied to any geographic location. The aurora was detected in all observations during a 5-day period.

Image Credit:

University of Colorado

MAVEN's Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) observed what scientists have named "Christmas lights." For five days just before Dec. 25, MAVEN saw a bright ultraviolet auroral glow spanning Mars' northern hemisphere. Aurora, known on Earth as northern or southern lights, are caused by energetic particles like electrons crashing down into the atmosphere and causing the gas to glow.

"What's especially surprising about the aurora we saw is how deep in the atmosphere it occurs - much deeper than at Earth or elsewhere on Mars,” said Arnaud Stiepen, IUVS team member at the University of Colorado. “The electrons producing it must be really energetic."

The source of the energetic particles appears to be the sun. MAVEN's Solar Energetic Particle instrument detected a huge surge in energetic electrons at the onset of the aurora. Billions of years ago, Mars lost a global protective magnetic field like Earth has, so solar particles can directly strike the atmosphere. The electrons producing the aurora have about 100 times more energy than you get from a spark of house current, so they can penetrate deeply in the atmosphere.

The findings are being presented at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

MAVEN was launched to Mars on Nov. 18, 2013, to help solve the mystery of how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere and much of its water. The spacecraft arrived at Mars on Sept. 21, and is four months into its one-Earth-year primary mission.

"The MAVEN science instruments all are performing nominally, and the data coming out of the mission are excellent," said Bruce Jakosky of CU LASP, Principal Investigator for the mission.

MAVEN is part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program, which includes the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft currently orbiting the planet.

NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for its journey to Mars or a future round-trip mission to the Red Planet in the 2030’s.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project. Partner institutions include Lockheed Martin, the University of California at Berkeley, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

For images related to the findings, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/maven

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

nsf.gov - National Science Foundation - Pioneering women in STEM .- Las mujeres pioneras en STEM

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia de los Estados Unidos; un post sobre el trabajo pionero de muchas mujeres; que por sexo o solo hecho se ser mujeres sufrieron discriminación, hay una larga lista de mujeres sobresalientes, Ciencia Breakthrough requiere pioneros. Las personas que combinan el brillo con valentía, incluso en la cara de la oposición de enormes proporciones. Las mujeres que han allanado el camino para la exploración científica moderna ejemplifican este espíritu; luchando no sólo con las preguntas fundamentales del universo, pero con la discriminación y las restricciones sociales que a menudo les despojaron de crédito científico. Usted puede conocer a algunos de esos nombres - Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace. Aquí hay 14 más, junto con la mujer contemporánea haciendo trabajo pionero en el mismo campo con el apoyo de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia. Esta lista no es de ninguna manera exhaustiva. Profundizar en alguna de estas historias, y encontrarás muchas mujeres más increíbles en STEM(science, technology, engineering y mathematics ).

Names you should know, in celebration of Women's History Month

Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu in 1963 at Columbia University, where she was a professor.
Credit and Larger Version

March 17, 2015

Breakthrough science requires pioneers. People who combine brilliance with courage, even in the face of daunting opposition. The women who paved the way for modern scientific exploration exemplify this spirit; grappling not only with fundamental questions of the universe, but with discrimination and societal constraints that often stripped them of scientific credit. You may know some of those names--Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace. Here are 14 more, paired with contemporary women doing trailblazing work in the same field with support from the National Science Foundation. This list is by no means comprehensive. Dig deeper into any of these stories, and you'll find many more amazing women in STEM.

Also known as the First Lady of Physics, Chieng-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop a process to produce bomb-grade uranium. Wu helped disprove a then widely accepted law of theoretical physics, called the Law of Conservation of Parity, which said that objects that are mirror images of each other behave the same. Wu led a team whose members experimented with photons, electrons and a particular type of cobalt atoms to disprove this theory. The experiment was proposed, but not carried out, by two male physicists. In 1957, they--not Wu--won a Nobel for the discovery. Today, Tanya Zelevinsky--who, like Wu in her time, teaches at Columbia--also uses photons, electrons and atoms to probe fundamental laws of physics.

Annie Jump Cannon cataloged around 350,000 stars in her lifetime, developed the modern stellar classification system, and did it all while working for about 25 cents a day. Cannon was one of many women employed at Harvard College Observatory in the late 1800s, hired under the direction of Observatory head Edward Pickering. He reportedly got so annoyed with his inefficient male assistant he said his maid could do a better job. Pickering then hired 24-year-old Scottish immigrant, graduate and mother Williamina Fleming, who became a celebrated astronomer. She recruited more than a dozen women to work at the observatory, including Cannon. Though generally considered assistants--with low pay and no room for advancement--many made significant contributions to astronomy. Cannon, who was almost completely deaf, was the first woman officer of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). University of Michigan astronomer Sally Oey was recently elected an AAS officer. She researches stellar properties and star formation.

Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes devoted much of her life to education. She was the first African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics and taught for nearly 50 years in the public school system of Washington, D.C., her hometown. She established the mathematics department at Miner's Teacher's College (now the University of the District of Columbia) and served on D.C.'s Board of Education in the 1960s, where she fought against racial and economic discrimination. The de facto segregation systems in D.C. schools were abolished while Haynes was school board president. Today, Melvina Jones continues this legacy of promoting science and mathematics education in D.C. Jones--winner of a Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching--is a STEM coordinator at D.C. Public Schools, where she works to encourage the next generation of scientists.

Sarah Frances Whiting "pushed open the doors of opportunity in the various departments of learning," wrote Annie Jump Cannon, one of Whiting's students at Wellesley College. Whiting established a physics lab at Wellesley, the second in the entire country and the first specifically for female students (and the first place X-ray photographs were made in America). She also created Wellesley's astronomy department. At Lowell Observatory in Arizona, astronomer and educator Deirdre Hunter works with teachers and students at Hopi and Navajo schools, inspiring these historically underserved populations to pursue science and engineering. She also involves students in her own research on star formation in dwarf galaxies.

Civil engineer Nora Stanton Blatch was an agitator. So said her first husband, engineer and inventor Lee de Forest, in a 1911 New York Times article headlined "Warns Wives of 'Careers,'" published in the midst of their divorce. De Forest wasn't using the term kindly--he was angry Blatch chose to continue working after she gave birth to their child--but the description fits her pioneering career. She was Cornell University's first female engineering graduate, worked for the American Bridge Company and the New York City Board of Water Supply, and was an active suffragette. The descendent of famed women's rights pioneers, Blatch once rode a horse across New York to campaign for a women's right to vote. In 1916, she sued the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for refusing to admit her as a full member, even though she met all requirements. At the time, women were only admitted as junior members. Blatch lost, and no woman became a full ASCE member for a decade. Like Blatch, Sara Wadia-Fascetti, of Northeastern University, is a civil engineer with experience in bridge design; today she researches technologies to better diagnose structural health. Wadia-Fascetti also works to inspire future engineers, especially women and minorities, through NSF-funded programs.

Beatrice Alice Hicks grew up in an engineering family--her father was an engineer and owner of the New Jersey-based metalworking firm Newark Controls Company. She studied engineering and became the first female engineer employed by Western Electric, an opportunity that presented itself when male employees left to fight in World War II. Hicks eventually ran the Newark Controls Company, where she developed environmental sensors later used by the U.S. space program. In 1952 she was named "Woman of the Year in Business" by Mademoiselle. Yet all this success showed Hicks how much of a minority she was. So in 1950, she helped found the Society for Women Engineers (SWE). Today the group has more than 27,000 members. A current SWE member, Veronica Santos, also studies sensor technology. She heads the University of California, Los Angeles Biomechatronics Lab, working to build highly-sensitive, controllable artificial hands. Her research could lead to better prosthetics and autonomous manipulators for use in harsh environments.

When Florence Bascom received her doctorate in geology from Johns Hopkins University, she had to get a special exception from university trustees, who adhered to an official policy against co-education (and emphasized Bascom did not set precedents for other women). She continued this exceptional trend through her career: she was the U.S. Geological Survey's first female employee, a long-time professor at Bryn Mawr College, and trained most of the important geologists in the country. Bascom's research focused on crystalline rocks in the Piedmont region, a stretch of the Eastern U.S. between the Atlantic and the Appalachians. Geologist Dorothy Merritts, an expert in environmental geology and geomorphology at Franklin and Marshall College, studies that same area today. Her research focuses on how human activities have transformed the eastern swath of North America since the time of European settlers. Understanding how humans have changed the landscape is crucial to make informed land-management decisions.

For much of the early 20th century, oceanography was--by law--a man's field. Women were not allowed on research vessels, for fear of disturbing ship camaraderie.

This was the world Margaret K. Robinson entered in the 1940s. A business school graduate and former teacher, she started work at California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography as a clerk, recording data on ocean temperatures. Robinson soon began taking classes at Scripps, moving up the ranks and contributing to oceanographic expeditions despite overt discouragement from the Scripps director, who once told her women will never be accepted as oceanographers. Teresa Chereskin is an oceanographer working at Scripps today, researching ocean circulation and temperature; her most recent NSF-funded project focuses on observations of the Drake Passage, which connects the Southern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Esther Lederberg is a bacterial genetics pioneer. She bucked expectations of Hunter College faculty to study biochemistry but was so poor, she later said, she had to take home the legs of the frogs she dissected to eat. She is known for discovering the lambda bacteriophage in 1951, the first recognized organism that can invade bacteria and live in its DNA. The breakthrough was important for studying similar viruses in animals. She was part of a research team that discovered that bacteria can mate and exchange genes, and came up with a technique that greatly simplified lab work in microbiology, allowing scientists to "copy" bacteria colonies. Doreen Ware, a computational biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, is a leader in modern genetics. She researches how staple crops evolve, which can help improve modern agriculture practices.

Barbara McClintock discovered something amazing about genes: they jump. Her research on South American maize uncovered "transposable elements," pieces of DNA that can move within a genome, controlling gene expression and resulting in mutations. She was so far ahead of her time a skeptical, even hostile scientific community rejected her theories. Concluding that other scientists would not accept her ideas, she continued her work--without publishing detailed papers--for decades. Her findings were validated within her lifetime, however, and in 1983 she won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Sue Wessler's work connects directly to McClintock's. The University of California, Riverside, biologist has spent decades trying to understand the contributions that transposable elements make to genome evolution. Her research program has developed software to identify and characterize transposable elements.

In 1946 a group of government scientists publicly revealed a breakthrough: the ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer, a 150-foot-long, 30-ton behemoth. ENIAC's software consisted of six women, employed as human "computers" calculating ballistics trajectory calculations during World War II. They were charged with developing most of the machine's programming, and harnessed ENIAC's power to perform ballistics calculations in seconds--thousands of times faster than any prior method. Betty Snyder Holberton, Jean Jennings Bartik, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Maryln Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence didn't receive due credit at the time--their names were left off official announcements and weren't identified in newspaper photographs. Today they have been recognized for their contributions to modern computing, and are inductees in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. Latanya Sweeney works to help make today's computing world safer. The head of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University, Sweeney has created tools to protect computer users' privacy, and developed the theory of "k-anonymity," which holds that "quasi-identifiers" such as birth date, postal code and gender can reveal the specific identities of most U.S. residents.

Annie J. Easley began her 34-year career as a mathematician for America's space agency after reading a newspaper article about sisters working at a nearby NACA (the precursor to NASA) lab. While working at NACA, she attended classes full-time at Cleveland State University, although she was denied access to tuition reimbursement male colleagues received. She worked in the Launch Vehicles Division, developing coding used in solar and wind energy experiments. Easley was one of a few African-Americans at the agency. Easley once said her strategy was to focus on the work: "I'm out here to do a job and I knew I had the ability to do it." Daniela Rus' research portfolio sounds like a glimpse into the future. The first female director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory leads projects to develop robots that fly, swim and bake cookies. Perhaps her most ambitious vision, however, involves tiny robots that could combine and configure into anything users want.

The "high priestess of monetarism," Anna Schwartz, is an American research economist regarded as one of history's greatest monetary scholars. She is probably best known for her co-authorship with Milton Friedman of "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960," a hugely influential book known for its conclusion that Federal Reserve Bank mistakes helped cause the Great Depression. That work led to a Nobel for Friedman, and many economists thought Schwartz should have shared the award. "Anna did all of the work, and I got most of the recognition," Friedman told The New York Times. She continued to work and publish for decades before her death in 2012, including providing commentary on the 2008 financial collapse. Stanford's Susan Athey is one of the most prominent voices in economics, focusing on how technology transforms markets of today and tomorrow--including the Internet, online advertising and digital currency.

In 1894 Margaret Floy Washburn became the first woman to earn a Ph. D. in American psychology (just after one of her contemporaries, Mary Whiton Calkins, was denied a degree because she was a woman). Washburn is known for her work on sensation, perception and animal behavior. In 1908 she published "The Animal Mind," the first book on animal cognition that discarded speculation and relied on experimental data. She is also known for her work linking conscious thought to body movement. As a Vassar professor, Washburn included her students as co-authors on papers, a rare opportunity for female students at the time. Washburn became the second female president of the American Psychological Association -- following Calkins. Marcia K. Johnson continues to delve deep into the workings of the human brain, focusing on cognition, memory and emotion. Johnson heads Yale University's Memory and Cognition Lab.

--	Jessica Arriens, (703) 292-2243 jarriens@nsf.gov
--	Robert J. Margetta, (703) 292-8070 rmargett@nsf.gov

Investigators Tanya Zelevinsky
Sally Oey
Deirdre Hunter
Sara Wadia-Fascetti
Veronica Santos
Dorothy Merritts
Teresa Chereskin
Doreen Ware
Susan Wessler
Latanya Sweeney
Daniela Rus
Susan Athey
Marcia Johnson

Civil engineer and suffragette Nora Stanton Blatch.
Credit and Larger Version

Oceanographer Margaret Robinson in 1953.
Credit and Larger Version

Annie Easley on the cover of a NASA publication.
Credit and Larger Version

Pioneering genetics researcher Esther Lederberg, in the lab in the 1950s.
Credit and Larger Version

Barbara McClintock in 1983, the year she won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Credit and Larger Versión

The National Science Foundation (NSF)

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

NASA : Groovy Rings of Saturn .- Anillos de Saturno Groovy

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Agencia Espacial NASA, sobre las últimas investigaciones de la Sonda Cassini en el Planeta Saturno que se dedica a la investigación de los Anillos: Desde lejos, los anillos de Saturno se ven como un sólido disco, homogénea del material. Pero un examen más detenido de la Cassini, vemos que hay estructuras variadas en los anillos en casi todas las escalas imaginables.

Las estructuras en los anillos pueden ser causados por muchas cosas, pero muchas veces de los muchos satélites de Saturno son los culpables. Las lagunas oscuras cerca del borde izquierdo del anillo A (el ancho, anillo exterior aquí) son causados por los satélites(Pan y Daphnis) incrustados en las lagunas, mientras que la división de Cassini más amplio (zona oscura entre el anillo B y un anillo aquí ) es creado por una resonancia con el satélite Mimas de tamaño mediano (que orbita bien fuera de los anillos). Prometeo es visto orbitando justo fuera del anillo A en el cuadrante inferior izquierdo de esta imagen; el anillo F puede ser ligeramente ve a la izquierda de Prometeo.

Back to Gallery

Groovy Rings of Saturn

From afar, Saturn's rings look like a solid, homogenous disk of material. But upon closer examination from Cassini, we see that there are varied structures in the rings at almost every scale imaginable.

Structures in the rings can be caused by many things, but often times Saturn's many moons are the culprits. The dark gaps near the left edge of the A ring (the broad, outermost ring here) are caused by the moons (Pan and Daphnis) embedded in the gaps, while the wider Cassini division (dark area between the B ring and A ring here) is created by a resonance with the medium-sized moon Mimas (which orbits well outside the rings). Prometheus is seen orbiting just outside the A ring in the lower left quadrant of this image; the F ring can be faintly seen to the left of Prometheus.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 15 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in red light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 8, 2015.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 566,000 miles (911,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 37 degrees. Image scale is 34 miles (54 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

The Cassini imaging team homepage is at

http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

nsf.gov - Nationa Science Foundation :Listen to the pulse of an erupting volcano: Chile's Villarrica.- Escuche el pulso de un volcán en erupción: Villarrica de Chile

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias de Los Estados Unidos, sobre las últimos erupciones del Volcán de Villarrica en Chile: El volcán, uno de los más activos de Chile, se eleva por encima de un lago y la ciudad del mismo nombre, 470 millas al sur de Santiago. Villarrica es el más occidental de los tres grandes volcanes que corren perpendiculares a la cadena montañosa de los Andes.

Scientists use infrasound instruments to record volcano's "circulation"

Geologist Jeff Johnson working in the inner crater of Villarrica, an active volcano in Chile.
Credit and Larger Version

March 13, 2015

This is the sixth part in a series on NSF's geosciences risk and resilience interest area. See parts one, two, three, four, five and seven.

Rucapillan--house of the spirit--it's called by indigenous Chileans known as the Mapuche. And what a spirit it has, this volcano in south-central Chile that's perhaps best known as Villarrica.

The volcano, one of Chile's most active, rises above a lake and town of the same name 470 miles south of Santiago. Villarrica is the westernmost of three large volcanoes that run perpendicular to the Andean mountain chain.

Along with Quetrupillan and the Chilean part of Lanin, Villarrica is protected in Villarrica National Park. The scene is usually tranquil, allowing guided ascents to Villarrica's summit, magnets for tourists from around the world.

Villarrica: far from quiet

But all in Villarrica National Park is not as it seems.

At 3 a.m. on March 3, 2015, Villarrica blew its top in a spectacular fire fountain. Its fit of temper was short-lived, but prompted evacuations of nearby communities and the establishment of a six-mile-radius exclusion zone.

After the fire and lava subsided, volcanic mudflows, or lahars, followed.

In the midst of it all was geologist Jeff Johnson of Boise State University.

Johnson is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to research what's called infrasound, the low-frequency and inaudible-to-human tones volcanoes produce. Some are akin to blood flowing through a human body.

"Based on the characteristics of sound waves transmitted through the atmosphere, scientists can monitor and study the evolution of volcanoes right up until eruptions--and from a safe distance," says program director Chungu Lu of NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which co-funded the research with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

Understates Johnson, "The capricious behavior of volcanoes can lead to many opportunities for new discoveries."

Normal life blown sky-high

Until the end of January, Johnson says, "everything was pretty much normal." He was able to set up infrasound instruments--monitors that listen to the sounds a rumbling volcano makes--on Villarrica's rim. Johnson has been conducting a study of the "passive activity" of the lava lake at the center of the volcano's crater.

By early February, however, the placid picture had begun to change.

"The volcano started throwing ‘bombs' of lava up and over the crater," says Johnson. Villarrica's rim was closed.

Then Villarrica went quiet. Sometimes. "Every so often it would heave incandescent balls of fire into the air," says Johnson. At night, the fireballs were visible from miles away.

Then on March 1st everything went downhill. Larger explosions happened. The next day, a red alert was declared by Chilean authorities.

"The warning proved extremely timely," says Johnson. "The volcano had entered a new phase of paroxysmal activity, including a 1,000-foot-high fire plume that ‘fountained' upward."

Ringside seat

March 3rd, 3 a.m. "The view from my house, which is relatively nearby, was of a fire fountain streaming upward from the summit," recalls Johnson. "It was spectacularly visible--from 10 miles away."

His first priority was to awaken his kids in case his family needed to move to an evacuation zone. Some 5,000 people were temporarily evacuated. Shops and schools were closed.

"My second priority was to set up cameras to chronicle the eruption and compare it to the infrasound installations deployed across the region," Johnson says.

By the next day, the eruption was over.

Show is far from done

If history is any indicator, however, Villarrica is far from finished.

Many Villarrica eruptive periods, including that of 1971 and 1984-85, began with explosions over the course of several months. Not far behind were lava flows.

Records of Villarrica eruptions preserved in lake sediments over the past 600 years show an average of 22 years of "repose" between awakenings. Then, explosions again.

"Clearly this volcano remains a very real hazard," says Johnson. "The red alert has been lifted, but it's more likely than not that activity will resume. Locals continue to be uneasy."

The sound of a volcano

Johnson had deployed eight infrasound instruments near the volcano's crater. Now they're gone, sacrificed to Villarrica. Another 22 instruments, placed farther from the summit, survived the eruption and recorded a unique data set.

"Serendipity is science's best friend," says Sonia Esperanca, program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences. "It's as if Villarrica waited for the instruments to be deployed before it decided to show its colors."

What did the infrasound instruments hear?

Gases bubbling, explosions and the back-and-forth movements of magma: Villarrica's erratic circulation. "'Popcorn' noises, which were the explosions, were followed by the roar of the fire fountain, then by movement, which was the lahar mudflow," says Johnson.

The infrasound measurements he obtained during Villarrica's eruption are a sequence: a volcano as it evolves from a passive vent with a stable lava lake, to one with heightened activity that increased over a few weeks--and ended in dramatic fire.

The information tells a story of an explosive event that at its peak lasted approximately 30 minutes. Then Villarrica went back to sleep, its crater filled with a pool of slowly cooling lava.

"Now I have a new science opportunity," says an intrepid Johnson, "to use infrasound to understand how a ‘passive' volcano transitions to a sustained explosive eruption."

Villarrica is returning to normal. On the surface. "What's happening beneath," says Johnson, "is anyone's guess."

--	Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov

Investigators Jeffrey Johnson

Related Institutions/Organizations Boise State University

Related Programs Petrology and Geochemistry
Physical and Dynamic Meteorology

Related Awards #1151662 CAREER: Volcano Acoustics: From Vent to Receiver
researchers working with volcanic rocks

View Video
"Circulation" of a volcano: infrasounds of erupting Villarrica volcano in Chile.
Credit and Larger Version

Scientists studying Villarrica witnessed spectacular fire fountains.
Credit and Larger Version

Photo of Villarrica taken from the east, shortly before the March 3, 2015, eruption.
Credit and Larger Version

Mudflow from the eruption; infrasound analysis reveals the mudflow's speed, duration and location.
Credit and Larger Version

An Araucaria tree near Villarrica, dotted with "lava rock," or scoria, from the eruption.
Credit and Larger Versión

the National Science Foundation (NSF)

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

NASA : New Desktop Application Has Potential to Increase Asteroid Detection, Now Available to Public .- Nueva aplicación de escritorio tiene potencial para aumentar la detección de asteroides, ya está disponible a Público

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido de la Agencia Espacial NASA, una información de : Una aplicación de software basada en un algoritmo creado por un desafío NASA tiene el potencial de aumentar el número de los nuevos descubrimientos de asteroides por astrónomos aficionados..................."

NASA's Asteroid Data Hunter contest series was part of NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, which is focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them.

Image Credit:

NASA

A software application based on an algorithm created by a NASA challenge has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by amateur astronomers.

Analysis of images taken of our solar system’s main belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter using the algorithm showed a 15 percent increase in positive identification of new asteroids.

During a panel Sunday at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, NASA representatives discussed how citizen scientists have made a difference in asteroid hunting. They also announced the release of a desktop software application developed by NASA in partnership with Planetary Resources, Inc., of Redmond, Washington. The application is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids. It’s a tool that can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists.

The Asteroid Data Hunter challenge was part of NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge. The data hunter contest series, which was conducted in partnership with Planetary Resources under a Space Act Agreement, was announced at the 2014 South by Southwest Festival and concluded in December. The series offered a total of $55,000 in awards for participants to develop significantly improved algorithms to identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes. The winning solutions of each piece of the contest combined to create an application using the best algorithm that increased the detection sensitivity, minimized the number of false positives, ignored imperfections in the data, and ran effectively on all computer systems.

“The Asteroid Grand Challenge is seeking non-traditional partnerships to bring the citizen science and space enthusiast community into NASA’s work,” said Jason Kessler, program executive for NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge. “The Asteroid Data Hunter challenge has been successful beyond our hopes, creating something that makes a tangible difference to asteroid hunting astronomers and highlights the possibility for more people to play a role in protecting our planet.”

The Big Dipper rising behind the Catalina Sky Survey 60" telescope.

Image Credit:

Catalina Sky Survey, University of Arizona

The data hunter challenge incorporated data provided by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and images provided by the Catalina Sky Survey, an astronomical survey project run by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and focused on the discovery and study of near-Earth asteroids and comets.

“We applaud all the participants in the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge. We are extremely encouraged by the algorithm created and it’s already making a difference. This increase in knowledge will help assess more quickly which asteroids are potential threats, human destinations or resource rich,” said Chris Lewicki, president and chief engineer at Planetary Resources. “It has been exciting for our team to work with NASA on this project, and we also look forward to future space-based systems leveraging these results.”

Astronomers find asteroids by taking images of the same place in the sky and looking for star-like objects that move between frames, an approach that has been used since before Pluto was discovered in 1930. With more telescopes scanning the sky, the ever-increasing volume of data makes it impossible for astronomers to verify each detection by hand. This new algorithm gives astronomers the ability to use computers to autonomously and rapidly check the images and determine which objects are suitable for follow up, which leads to finding more asteroids than previously possible.

“The beauty of such archives is that the data doesn't grow stale, and with novel approaches, techniques and algorithms, they can be harvested for new information. The participants of the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge did just that, probing observations of the night sky for new asteroids that might have slipped through the software cracks the first time the images were analyzed,” said Jose Luis Galache of the MPC. “Moreover, this software can now be used to analyze new images and is available to any observer who wants to use it. The Minor Planet Center applauds these efforts to provide superior tools to all, and looks forward to receiving new asteroid observations generated with them.”

The desktop software application is free and can be used on any basic desktop or laptop computer. Amateur astronomers may take images from their telescopes and analyze them with the application. The application will tell the user whether a matching asteroid record exists and offer a way to report new findings to the Minor Planet Center, which then confirms and archives new discoveries.

Through NASA's asteroid initiative, the agency seeks to enhance its ongoing work in the identification and characterization of near-Earth objects for further scientific investigation. This work includes locating potentially hazardous asteroids and identifying those viable for redirection to a stable lunar orbit for future exploration by astronauts using NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The Asteroid Grand Challenge, one part of the asteroid initiative, expands the agency's efforts beyond traditional boundaries and encourages partnerships and collaboration with a variety of organizations.

The algorithm contests were managed and executed by NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was established at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to advance NASA’s open innovation efforts and extend that expertise to other federal agencies. CoECI uses the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) for its advanced algorithmic and software development contests. Through its contract with the Crowd Innovation Lab at Harvard University, NTL uses Appirio’s Crowdsourcing platform powered by Topcoder to enable a community of more than 750,000 designers, developers and data scientists to create the most innovative, efficient and optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges faced by NASA. Data storage of the Catalina Sky Survey data was provided by Amazon Web Services.

The new asteroid hunting application can be downloaded at:

http://topcoder.com/asteroids

For information about NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

Inscríbete en el Foro del blog y participa : A Vuelo De Un Quinde - El Foro!

NASA : Experience NASA at the 2015 SXSW Interactive Festival.- La experiencia de la NASA en el 2015 SXSW Festival Interactivo

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido de la Agencia Espacial NASA, la información de que : NASA vuelve a la South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival Interactivo de marzo 13 a 18, en Austin, Texas, para compartir con los asistentes al festival cómo exploración unidades de tecnología, cómo estamos explorando la Tierra, el sistema solar y más allá, actualizaciones sobre el viaje a Marte, y cómo cualquier persona puede involucrarse con la NASA..................."

Image Credit:

NASA

NASA returns to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival March 13-18, in Austin, Texas to share with festival attendees how technology drives exploration, how we are exploring Earth, the solar system and beyond, updates on the journey to Mars, and how anyone can get involved with NASA.

Eleven sessions will feature NASA topics, including a look at life on the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope turning 25, and NASA prizes and challenges. For more information about NASA sessions at SXSW, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/sxsw

Several NASA-related events are happening on Sunday, March 15. At 12:30 p.m. CDT, astronaut Reid Wiseman, who recently returned from six-month flight on the International Space Station, will talk about his mission conducting science and gathering data from the orbiting laboratory.

At 3:30 p.m. at the “NASA Prizes: Dream It, Make It, Win It” panel, NASA will announce the results of the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge, which kicked off during last year’s SXSW festival. Panelists will highlight how amateur astronomers and citizen scientists everywhere can be an asteroid hunter.

The space community at SXSW will come together for a NASA Meet Up with fellow space enthusiasts and NASA engineers, scientists, astronauts, researchers, technicians, and more at 5 p.m. at the JW Marriott in Austin.

At 8 p.m., IMAX will provide a complimentary screening of Hubble 3-D at the Bob Bullock IMAX Theatre for members of the public. Following the screening, some of the team behind NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, including Dr. John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will discuss Hubble’s accomplishments in the last 25 years. The Bob Bullock IMAX Theatre is at 1800 N. Congress Avenue in Austin.

In addition to the sessions, participants at SXSW can visit the "Experience NASA" exhibit March 15-18 at the SXSW Tradeshow in the Austin Convention Center. Festival attendees can learn about how to collaborate with NASA on citizen science projects, participate in NASA prizes and challenges, and get the latest information on exciting NASA mission, which include exploring other planets, examining Earth, improving air travel and getting ready to launch humans to deep space.

The Northrop Grumman Corporation is highlighting NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in an exhibit at the SXSW Gaming Expo at the Palmer Events Center March 13-15. The Webb Telescope exhibit will feature touch screens to show science visualizations and other videos. Visitors can talk with scientists and engineers who will share how Webb will inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers to push the boundaries of science and technology.

Missions and programs presenting at SXSW will provide updates from their sessions via their mission social media accounts. Festival attendees are encouraged to share what they learn about NASA throughout the SXSW Interactive Festival by tagging social media posts, pictures and more with #NASASXSW.

Find NASA missions on social media at:

http://www.nasa.gov/socialmedia

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@Hotmail.com