Tag: science

NASA Analyst in West Virginia on Jupiter Spacecraft Team

A West Virginia-based NASA analyst with expertise in software has contributed to the Juno spacecraft’s five-year, 1.8 billion-mile trip to Jupiter.

The solar-powered spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit Monday, last leg of a $1.1 billion mission to gather scientific data and photograph the giant planet.

Sam Brown, an analyst for NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation Facility in Fairmont, said he worked on the project while dividing his time between his West Virginia office and facilities in California and Colorado.

He told the Charleston Gazette-Mail Friday that he sought to find and fix any bugs with the spacecraft’s critical operating software.

“We find things that may be problems in the future, we point them out and they get fixed,” Brown told the paper.

Fairmont’s NASA facility opened in 1993.

How Will Climate Change be Taught in West Virginia Public Schools? Public Comment Period Draws Close

During January’s West Virginia Board of Education meeting, the Board voted to withdraw a controversial new policy that addresses how science teachers should teach climate change to public school students.

Folks have until 4:00 pm Tuesday February 17th, to weigh in on this new policy.

Last December, at the request of West Virginia Board of Education Member Wade Linger, the board proposed new language to its new science standards. That additional language seems to question whether or not climate change is actually happening, and whether humans are causing climate change-despite overwhelming evidence from climate scientists.

BOE member Wade Linger told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that coal miners stand to lose jobs as a result of how climate change is taught  in our public schools. He also stressed that the board did not remove any language regarding climate change, it merely added language to the science standards.

Suggested language alterations included:

1) S.6.ESS.6. The text: “Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.” was altered to: “Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise and fall in global temperatures over the past century.” 2) S.9.ESS.14. The text: “Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.” was altered to: “Analyze geoscience data and the predictions made by computer climate models to assess their credibility for predicting future impacts on the Earth System."

During January’s Board of Education meeting, seven people went on the record casting doubt about whether or not humans are causing climate change. About 12 environmentalists, on the other hand, argued that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found overwhelming evidence to support the Theory of Climate Change.

Two separate public events in Morgantown recently discussed ways that climate change could impact for the Mountain State. “Climate Change and Population Health” was the title of a recent discussion at West Virginia University held on February 6th.

The Allegheny Highlands Environmental Impacts Initiative hosted a public discussion February 12th about the risks that climate change could have for West Virginia’s biodiversity. The Allegheny Highlands Environmental Impacts Initiative is sponsored by the Friends of Blackwater.

To make a comment about how you feel climate change should be taught in West Virginia public schools, go to the state’s website:http://wvde.state.wv.us/policies/ . The policy regarding science standards is called 2520. 3C.

STEM Camp for Middle School – Age Girls

On Saturday, a STEM camp for middle school girls will be held at Shepherd University.

The camp is called, Seeding Your Future, and the organizers hope that the middle school-age girls who attend will be inspired to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math; better known as STEM.

Seeding Your Future will offer hands-on workshops that will teach scientific, technological, or mathematical lessons. The whole idea is to help the girls get energized about science and math.

“Research has traditionally shown that in middle school is where the sort of interest in math, science, technology, engineering, those sort of fields, tends to flag a little bit, and so this is an effort to help increase the interest, keep that going, so that maybe they want to go into a science or math, or STEM career,” said Dr. Jordan Mader, assistant professor of Chemistry at Shepherd.

Mader says there’s a growing need for more professionals in STEM fields, and now is a great opportunity for more young women to consider getting involved. She also says girls are often being discouraged when it comes to STEM careers.

She and fourteen other Shepherd faculty members, running the camp on Saturday, hope it helps change those girls’ perspectives.

South Charleston Students Test Launch Their Satellite

Students in teacher Joe Oliver’s computer science class at South Charleston High School have successfully conducted a test launch of the CubeSat. 

Watch the student made video here and see the satellite soar into the sky, transmit pictures and students recovering the satellite after it landed back on earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwQ4n0wvQDQ

Visit our original story about the student built satellite with pictures and video here:

http://wvpublic.org/post/students-south-charleston-use-stem-skills-build-satellite

South Charleston High School CubeSat Club has successfully launched a High Altitude Balloon from Xenia Ohio on April 19, 2014. The payload had traveled up 98,425 feet above the earth’s surface and descended safely back. We had recovered the payload where we had a weather station, Geiger counter, GPS locator and Two GoPro cameras. We have excellent video from the GoPro cameras where you can actually see the curvature of the earth. (Cool Stuff).
 
Post-Mission Statistics
 
•    Maximum Altitude: 98,425 feet Above Ground Level (AGL)
•    Time to Altitude: 74 minutes (approximately)
•    Re-Entry Time: 45 minutes (approximately)
•    Total Mission Time: 1 hour 59 minutes
•    Minimum Temperature: -62 degrees F

"Students met early Saturday morning and we drove up to Xenia Ohio, we deployed the equipment, ran     through our check list, and launched our satellite. We then drove to McDonalds, where we set up or command center, (typical high School Students) this is where we tracked our satellite through the GPS unit on the Internet. We got nervousness when we lost communication as the satellite rose above 60,000 feet, come to find out that our GPS shuts down above the 60,000 feet mark due to terrorism safety precautions.  We were holding our breath until our satellite came back on line as it dropped below 60,000 feet. Then the race was on, we were like storm chaser searching for our satellite as it was descending back to earth. It’s on the right, no no it’s on the left, there it is! WOW, joy and excitement filled the van as we successfully recovered the satellite."  – Joe Oliver, science teacher, So. Charleston High School.

•    The High Altitude Balloon Launch was a complete success.  Students are scheduling another launch sometime mid-June.

Wednesday is #pbsTHINKday

Join West Virginia PBS every week for “Think Wednesdays,” a primetime line-up of nature, science and technology programs.

http://youtu.be/srPcsbvXdtk

“Think Wednesday” launches at 8 p.m. on April 9 with PBS’ long-running series Nature, presenting the best in original, natural history filmmaking. New episodes highlight animal prosthetics, Japanese snow monkeys and wild mule deer.

At 9 p.m., NOVA, the highest-rated science series on television and the most-watched documentary series on public television, premieres the three-part “Inside Animal Minds,” which explores breakthroughs in the revolutionary science of animal cognition, focusing on three iconic creatures — birds, dogs and dolphins.

At 10 p.m., see the premiere of the new three-part series Your Inner Fish and discover how the human body became the complicated, quirky and amazing machine it is today. Hosted and based on the best-selling book by paleobiologist Neil Shubin.

#pbsTHINKday

Marshall University Anthropologist Uses 3-D Printer to Teach Human Evolution

    

Biological Anthropologist Paul Constantino has decided that a 3-Dimensional printer is the next step in teaching his students about human evolution.

Constantino and the department purchased the high tech 3-D printer to help with teaching about specimens that are so old they wouldn’t usually be able to touch them. Using the printer he’s able to give his students in human anatomy courses a chance to handle replicas of specimens they are studying. The machine is so new to the department they’re not sure what all they can do with it. Constantino said it just makes sense as the next step in learning for students.

“A lot of times you have 3-dimensional data on your computer and you can see it on your computer, but it’s still really hard to visualize how shapes change and two skulls for instance, how these two species may differentiate from each other, so we can actually print them off here and hold them in our hands and it’s much more intuitive for us not only as researchers, but for students to see the differences,” Constantino said.

The printer creates a model that fits the exact specifications of whatever is inputted into the system. Constantino said it’s a process that doesn’t take long and can make the classroom experience that much easier for students to see parts of the anatomy. He says the printer prints off about 20 millimeters per hour, so for a skull it takes 2-3 hours. From there they have to blow off excess powder and then use an epoxy to harden the object and make sure it’s durable. All told it takes 3-4 hours.

The anthropologist sees no limit to how the technology could be used all over campus, such as others in the science fields, but also others throughout the university, for a hands-on experience.

“We feel like there are teachers all over the university that could potentially benefit from it, we envision people that work on the molecular scale being able to print off scaled up versions of their molecules and show them to their students, so rather than trying to picture what it looks like in their head they can actually see in their hands a model of what this molecule might look like,” Constantino said.

He said professors will quickly see that’s one of the many things about the future of education that’s becoming much more interactive. He said 3-D printing as the future of hands-on education once it becomes cheaper and more people realize the benefit.

Constantino said the next step is to purchase a 3-D scanner to complement the printer. 

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