News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings All,

It’s going to be a fantastic month for star and planet gazers. To begin with, for all you Uranus watchers out there (and you know who you are!), Uranus and Venus will be in the same binocular field for about half the month. Read more about it below!

Also, during the last week in February, you’ll be able to see to see SIX planets. Five of them will be in the sky and well, you’ll have to look down to see the other one! I’ll be sending out a special e-mail to tell you all about it.

And of course, public shows are next week. Don’t know much about the Milky Way? We’ll fix that in February’s public shows. Just scroll down to read all about it!

It’s a grand month for sky watching! Indulge yourself this week!

Pam

1. February’s Public Planetarium shows

2. It’s easy to see GREEN

1. Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy

9, 10 and 11 February 2012

6:30 and 7:00 p.m.

We’re lucky here on Guam. If you have a dark clear sky and not too many streetlights, you may see a band of clouds high in the eastern sky at one hour after sunset. After a while, you’ll notice they aren’t moving and that they form a arc that goes completely across the sky from northwest to southeast. Those clouds aren’t made of water, they’re made of stars and they are your galactic home, the Milky Way.

Most of us don’t know much about the galaxy we live in but we aim to change that with February’s public show, "Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy". At 6:30 p.m. we’ll sail ‘Out to the Edge’, where you’ll discover where we’re located in our star city, and see what lies beyond. At 7:00 we go ‘Into the Core’ and learn about the giant black hole at the galaxy’s center. We’ll see star factories and stellar graveyards and learn what the galaxy and every housewife have in common.

"Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy" will be presented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 9th, 10th and 11th.

It’s everything you always wanted to know about the galaxy. The doors open at 6:00 p.m. Don’t miss it!

2. It’s easy to see GREEN!

From the third through the fifteenth of February, Venus and Uranus will be in the same 7X50 binocular field. Since that’s almost two weeks, there’s little question that you’ll be able to spot Uranus even if it’s cloudy part of the time.

So . . . would you like to join the select ranks of Uranus watchers? Just take your binoculars outside and face west where the Sun disappeared.

That incredibly bright star about two fist-widths above the western horizon at one hour after sunset isn’t a star; it’s Venus. Aim your binoculars at Venus any time after Friday the 3rd and look above her. You should see Uranus, and Venus will get closer to Uranus every night.

So how will you know you’ve found Uranus? Oh, that’s simple. Uranus will look like all the other small stars in your binocular field with a stunning exception. It will be the color of pistachio ice cream. They don’t call it “the lime-green planet” for nothing! Become a Uranus watcher this month! And don’t forget to find Jupiter four fist-widths above Venus at one hour after sunset and use your binoculars to spot its four big moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Have fun!

THE COLDEST CASE

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone! I thought I’d dip into the animal files this week and see what’s new with the other critters that share our planet with us. And it turns out that the first story isn’t about what’s new but about what’s old. Researchers based in Pisa, Italy have used the latest forensic techniques to discover how a dolphin died. Admirable, you say, but hardly news. Well it is, if the corpse is over 4 million years old!

The team has done careful forensic analysis of the bite marks on the fossilized skeleton of a 9-foot long dolphin discovered in northern Italy and reconstructed the events that led to the dolphin’s death. They’ve also determined the probable identity of the killer: a 12-foot long shark that goes by the improbable name of Cosmopolitodus hastalis.

The edges of the bite marks are smooth which ruled out several species of sharks that have serrated teeth. The researchers looked at the mouths of fossilized shark specimens and compared the size and shape of the teeth with the marks on the dolphin’s ribs. This allowed them to narrow the list of suspects to Cosmopolitodus hastalis. It also helped that old Cosmo and his buddies were common in the waters where the dolphin swam.

Detailed analysis of the bite pattern allowed the researchers to go even further. The deepest and clearest incisions are on the dolphin’s ribs. This indicates that the shark attacked from below and probably took out a big part of the unfortunate Flipper’s abdomen by shaking its head violently. After the dolphin died, it rolled over on its back where the shark bit again, close to the fleshy dorsal fin.

The researchers say the study is significant because it demonstrates ‘fossilized behavior’ and gives us a glimpse of the ecological interactions between organisms in prehistoric seas. Fossil remains of prey species with shark bite marks provide direct evidence of what prehistoric sharks ate and how they behaved.

I must confess that it sounds to me like shark behavior hasn’t changed much in four million years!

Skeleton of the dolphin, preserved for 4 million years with the bite marks across its ribs from the shark attack the killed it. (Credit: Giovanni Bianucci)

And for a story a little closer to home in both time and space, have you ever wondered why so many spider webs have those ‘X’s’ on them? A study by researchers at the University of Melbourne has discovered that the white silk crosses are used by orb-weaving spiders to protect their webs from damage.

The team collected a group of orb-weaving spiders and left them to build their webs in the laboratory. Some of the completed webs were severely damaged, others lightly damaged and the remainder left alone. The response of the spiders was then observed.

The team found that orb-weaving spiders respond to severe damage to their webs by building bigger silk crosses, but if the damage is mild they don’t bother adding extra decoration.

The researchers think the dense crosses help make webs more visible to larger animals that might accidentally walk or fly into them and they are not unlike the tape we humans put on a glass door. The spider’s normal prey is small insects who apparently don’t notice the crosses until it’s far too late!

Decorative white silk crosses are an ingenious tactic used by orb-weaving spiders to protect their webs from damage. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Melbourne)

CASINO GAMES

By Pam Eastlick

Casino games provide a venue for players to gamble casino chips on various possible random outcomes or combinations of outcomes in games of chance.  The tree major types of casino games are those played on a table, electronic games and random number games.  All of these can be found in their online variety.

Casino games, both traditional and their online cousins, provide for a predictable long-term advantage to the Casino or “house”.  Players accept this for the possibility of a large short-term payout.  While some games do involve an element of skill, it is extremely rare for a player to possess the skill (or luck) necessary to beat the house advantage.

Some popular casino game machines and online casino games are:  Video Poker, Video Lottery, Pachinko and the ever popular slot machine.  These will typically have a house edge or players disadvantage of 15 – 25 percent. 

The definition of the “players disadvantage” is the ratio of the average loss to the initial bet, not the ratio of money lost to total money wagered in a session.  This happens because the casino does not issue winning wagers according to the game’s "true odds" (payouts based on the exact odds of a wager either winning or losing). To illustrate, if a wager is made on the result that would come from the roll of one die, “true” odds would be 5 times the amount wagered since there six sides, however, the casino will likely pay some factor less than the amount wagered on the winning bet.

In some games such as in Caribbean stud poker, blackjack and let it ride, the wager is cumulative as the player may increase their bet when the odds favor doing so. Since the additional money wagered is not figured into the average loss to the initial bet which regulates the house advantage, the measure of risk is increased.  All of these factors should be considered when developing your strategy to “beat the house!”.

SNAKES AND GECKOS, OH MY!

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone, I thought we’d dip into the animal file today for a couple of stories that have local implications. Our first one is about those legless creatures that no one’s fond of: snakes. We all know that most poisonous snakes are ‘pit vipers’ which means they have hollow fangs that work just like hypodermic needles to inject the venom. This is one of the reasons the brown tree snake isn’t considered dangerous, because it isn’t a pit viper. Scientists have done some research however, and discovered that what we all ‘know’ just may be wrong! Read on!

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts have discovered that only about one seventh of all venomous snakes rely on the trick with the hollow fang. A typical representative of this group is the rattlesnake that uses its twin fangs to punch holes in the skin of its victims and injects the venom through the holes. But it turns out most snake species have discovered a groovier solution. Their fangs have a groove on the outside that allows venom to flow into the wound.

But this makes no sense when you realize that fur or bird feathers should simply prevent the venom from flowing into the wound. So how do they do it? The answer seems to be that snake venom is amazingly viscous, with a surface tension about the same as that of water. As a result, the surface energy pulls the venom into the fang grooves, where it then flows into the wound. Snakes that prey on birds developed deeper grooves to keep the viscous venom from being brushed away by bird feathers.

When a snake attacks, the fang grooves and the surrounding tissue form a canal. Just like blotting paper, the tissue sucks the venom through this canal. Snake venom also has a very special property to facilitate this effect. You shake the ketchup bottle to make it more liquid so it will come out of the bottle, and in a similar fashion, the shear forces that arise from the suction cause the venom to become less viscous, allowing it to flow through the canal quickly.

Scientists refer to substances with these characteristics as non-Newtonian fluids. These have a very practical consequence for snakes: As long as there is no prey in sight, the venom in the groove remains viscous and sticky. When the snake strikes, the venom becomes more liquid and it flows along the groove and into the wound, where the venom takes its lethal effect.

Having been bitten several times by brown tree snakes, I can testify that their venom is fast-acting and painful. And since they’re bird predators, although I’ve never peered into the mouth of one, I suspect their teeth have those tell-tale nasty little grooves!

The groove in a snake fang (Credit: Bruce A. Young, University of Massachusetts, Lowell)

And in another story with local implications; researchers at the University of Iowa have discovered a bacterium with an unusual appetite. It uses caffeine for food. It’s called Pseudomonas putida and it breaks caffeine down into carbon dioxide and ammonia.

Caffeine contains carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all necessary for bacterial cell growth. This is important because tests show that compounds formed during the bacterial breakdown of caffeine are natural building blocks for drugs used to treat asthma, improve blood flow and stabilize heart arrhythmias. Another potential application is the decaffeination of coffee and tea as an alternative to the harsh chemicals currently used.

So why does this have local implications? Well, I’m not sure about the bacteria, but there are at least three geckos in my bedroom that are crazy about caffeine in the form of the spilled coffee in my saucer. So it isn’t just the humans and the bacteria that are addicted to caffeine!

WIFE BEATING AND SOAP?

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, I looked in all the files, and didn’t see anything that really grabbed my interest this week until I wandered into the last one: the miscellaneous file. You know, the one where stuff goes that simply doesn’t fit anywhere else. So prepare for a slightly . . . stranger ride than normal.

Our first story is quite timely since we’re heading into the Super Bowl showdowns. So what happens when your favorite team has an upset? Do you get upset too? Well, according to a paper published the Quarterly Journal of Economics you just may get upset enough to beat your wife or girlfriend.

The paper’s authors analyzed the police reports following 900 regular-season National Football League games and discovered that calls reporting men’s assaults on their wives or intimate partners rose 10 percent in areas where the local NFL team lost a game they were favored to win.

The researchers report that the overall rise in violence between the intimate partners they studied was driven entirely by losses in games that matter most to fans. The timing of the calls to police also indicated that violence occurred within a narrow window roughly corresponding to the final hour of a game and the two hours after.

The authors compared the pre-game betting odds to the game results of regular-season games for six NFL teams — the Carolina Panthers, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs and Tennessee Titans — between 1995 and 2006. This information was matched to records collected from 763 jurisdictions in the relevant states from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a database of local police reports.

In one-third of the games they tracked, the local team was expected to win by four or more points. When the favored team lost, however, analysis revealed a spike in reports of violence by men against a female partner at home, as compared to weeks the home team didn’t have a game.

So . . . guys, here’s my new mantra for all you sports freaks out there. “It’s only a game. It’s only a game! It’s only a GAME!”

And now, as promised, something completely different! We all remember the news stories about how restaurants pouring oil and grease down their drains caused some big problems in Tumon, but I wondered at the time how slippery grease could block the drains. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered something totally unexpected. Apparently, the fat, oil and grease (FOG) turns into soap!

I’m from far enough back in the sticks that my great-grandmother still made soap and I know that it’s made from FOG (in her soap it was pork fat) and sodium hydroxide, better known as lye. You can also make soap with calcium hydroxide, better known as slaked lime and that’s what’s happening in our sewers.

The researchers say that the FOG must be broken down into its constituent parts: glycerol and fatty acids. The fatty acids then react with calcium in the sewage collection system to form the hardened deposits.

Give the amount of calcium in Guam’s water system; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the sewers of Tumon are full of hardened soap. I wonder if we could turn it into a tourist attraction?