News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings Everyone,

Make sure you go outside tonight (26 March) and have a look at the western sky after sunset. The sliver thin crescent Moon will be almost exactly between Venus and Jupiter. Unfortunately, no smiley face, but it will be pretty cool looking anyway!

If you go out at 8:44 p.m., all three of them will still be above the western horizon, and if your sky is clear, you just might see a moving object rocket out of the ocean and pass very close to Jupiter on its way up and to the left. No, it’s too dim for the International Space Station; it’s the Hubble Space Telescope. Get a time hack for your watch today at www.time.gov, and enjoy the show!

Next month is going to be astounding for skywatchers for a number of reasons. You’re going to get more than one e-mail in April!

Pam

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

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! Well, it’s been a long time since we peered into the medical file and since the drawer is bulging, it’s way past time. So, I leafed through and decided on some healthy lifestyle stories, particularly concerning what you eat.

Our first story is aimed specifically at women. A consortium of researchers from several institutions did a study that showed that the risk of developing heart failure is lower for postmenopausal women who frequently ate baked or broiled fish, but higher for those who ate more fried fish. In a large-scale analysis involving over 80,000 women, the researchers discovered that women who ate the most baked or broiled fish (five or more servings a week) had a 30 percent lower risk of heart failure compared to women who seldom ate it (less than one serving/month).

Previous research has found that the fatty acids (omega-3) in fish may lower risk of cardiovascular disease by decreasing inflammation, resisting oxidative stress and improving blood pressure, cardiac and blood vessel function. This study showed that the type of fish and cooking method may affect heart failure risk. The researchers also found that dark fish (salmon, mackerel and bluefish) were associated with a significantly greater risk reduction than either tuna or white fish (sole, snapper and cod).

Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, the study’s senior author said “Not all fish are equal, and how you prepare it really matters. When you fry fish, you not only lose a lot of the benefits, you likely add some things related to the cooking process that are harmful.”

Most whole fish served at fiestas is baked so we have a leg up with this one. The more fish you eat, the healthier you are, as long as you bake it!

Our next story apparently proves a very old adage. Researchers at the University of Iowa were trying to discover a way to prevent the muscle wasting that comes with illness and aging and they’ve found a natural compound that might just do the trick. They have identified a component of apple peels as a promising new drug candidate for the widespread and debilitating condition that affects nearly everyone at one time or another.

Muscle wasting is a frequent companion of illness and aging according to Christopher Adams the lead investigator. It prolongs hospitalization, delays recovery and in some cases prevents people from going back home. It isn’t well understood and there is no medicine for it.

They discovered 63 genes that change in response to fasting in both people and mice and another 29 that shift their expression in the muscles of both people who are fasting and those with spinal cord injury. They discovered that a compound called ursolic acid has effects that might counteract those of atrophy.

The researchers gave ursolic acid to mice that hadn’t been fed in a while and found that it protected against muscle weakening as they had predicted. When they added ursolic acid to the food of normal mice for a period of weeks, their muscles grew.

Animals given ursolic acid also became leaner and had lower blood levels of glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides. The findings therefore suggest that ursolic acid may be responsible for some of the overall benefits of healthy eating. Dr. Adams said “We know if you eat a balanced diet like mom told us to eat you get ursolic acid. People who eat junk food don’t get this.”

So . . . all together now . . . . . “An apple a day keeps the doctor away!”

Researchers have identified a component of apple peels that helps prevent muscle weakening in mice. (Credit: © Anyka / Fotolia)

MISSIONS TO MARS

By Pam Eastlick

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

It’s been a long time since I dipped into the space file and since that’s the file that’s really near and dear to my heart, it’s time. I am honored to be a Solar System Ambassador. One of the things I do is participate in their wonderful webinars and pass that direct information on to you. Last week, we learned about the latest rover mission to Mars, and the astounding way they plan to land it.

Our Mars rovers just keep getting bigger and bigger. Sojourner, the first Mars rover, launched in the ‘90’s, was about two feet across. Spirit and Opportunity, the next pair of explorers, have decks the size of card tables and although Spirit stopped phoning home two years ago, Opportunity is still going strong. Spirit and Opportunity landed in (are you ready?) 2004! for a one-year mission. I think both these rovers deserve a round of applause!

The next rover is called Curiosity and it’s already on its way to Mars. This one isn’t card table-sized, it’s car-sized and the folks at JPL have come up with a novel way to land all that weight. Spirit and Opportunity were encased in air bags and they bounced their way to a safe landing. Curiosity is far too heavy for balloons, so they’re bringing her down with rockets.

The landing spacecraft will first deploy a parachute. After that slows the free fall a bit, the engines on board the descent stage will fire and fly the rover down to within a mile of the surface. The rover will then be lowered from the bottom of the descent stage on three ropes called a ‘bridle’. The configuration is called the ‘sky crane’.

When the sky crane senses that the rover has touched down, the bridle is cut and the sky crane flies a safe distance from the rover before it crash lands.

The sky crane flies the rover to its destination (Artist drawing courtesy NASA)

Unfortunately, I can see a lot of places where this could go wrong and I wish NASA the best of luck when touchdown occurs next August. This rover is set up to do a lot of complex science and I’ll be rooting for Curiosity all the way.

Curiosity on Mars (Artist drawing courtesy NASA)

You may remember that the Russians also launched a Mars mission at the same time that Curiosity went up last fall. You may also remember that Phobos Grunt (gotta love those Russian names!) failed to leave orbit and eventually reentered Earth’s atmosphere and burned.

What you probably don’t know is that Phobos Grunt went directly over Guam about half an hour before it augured into the southern Pacific off the coast of South America. It happened on the morning of 16 January, so if you saw a bright streak of light in the sky sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m., guess what it was?

And there’s other interesting news about Spirit and Opportunity. They both have rock drilling tools just like Curiosity does and there’s an interesting story about the collars that protect the drill cables. In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building the grinding tools for Spirit and Opportunity. And of course, we all remember what happened in Manhattan in September of 2001.

The aluminum cuffs that serve as cable shields on each of the rock abrasion tools on Spirit and Opportunity were made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers. The metal bears the image of an American flag and is a fitting tribute to the people who died on 9/11. One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environment of Mars, the onboard memorials to victims of the Sept. 11 attack could remain in good condition for millions of years.

News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings Everyone!

Tonight’s the night! Venus and Jupiter make their closest point of approach and will look like two eyes above the western horizon after sunset. By tomorrow night, Venus will be above Jupiter and they won’t look quite so much like eyes. But the show will be worth watching for the rest of the month.

There’s also a very bright pass of the International Space Station, but you’ll have to get up tomorrow morning (15 March) before sunrise to see it. It will be an interesting one because it will magically appear near the planet Saturn as it leaves the Earth’s shadow and heads east toward the rising Sun.

To see it, set your alarm for 5:15 a.m. or so and go outside and find the Big Dipper in the northern sky. Arc off the Dipper’s handle and you’ll come to a bright red star. That’s Arcturus, the fourth brightest star.

The really bright red one close to the western horizon and about to set is Mars.

If you keep following the arc, you come to two bright stars less than a fist-width apart. The upper, brighter one isn’t a star; it’s Saturn. If you watch this area, at 5:26 a.m. you should see a very bright moving star magically appear. That’s definitely not a star; it’s the International Space Station flying into the Sun’s light so you can see it.

The ISS will arc up and toward the north and will disappear above the northeastern horizon at 5:30 a.m. It will shine at -3.3 and it will be a really lovely sight.

Planets and the International Space Station. ENJOY!

PETS AND PLAY

By Pam Eastlick

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

I had kind of a depressing weekend and I decided that what we really needed on the run up to the coming weekend was some good news. So I avoided all the global warming stories and the “fill-in-the-blank’ is bad for you” stories and the other downers and decided to give you some good animal stories.

We all know that play is good for us humans and that other animals also play, particularly as juveniles. Now a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee says that play isn’t just confined to juveniles and it isn’t confined just to mammals. Other animals also need a little play time.

Gary Burghardt says that he had an epiphany when he saw a Nile softshell turtle, batting a basketball around at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. That was when he realized that reptiles play too.

Dr. Burghardt has developed five different things that he thinks constitute ‘play’ and sums them up in this sentence. “Play is repeated behavior that is incompletely functional in the context or at the age in which it is performed and is initiated voluntarily when the animal or person is in a relaxed or low-stress setting.”

Dr. Burghardt feels that by more accurately characterizing play and observing it throughout the entire animal kingdom, we humans may better understand ourselves. According to Dr. Burghardt, “Play is an integral part of life and may make a life worth living.”

And if play is good for just about everybody, it turns out that animals in general are good for people when they’re kept as pets. Although we’ve heard a lot about the importance of pets to people who are challenged in various ways, a recent study by psychologists at Miami University and Saint Louis University conducted three experiments to examine the potential benefits of pet ownership among what they called ‘everyday people’ not just individuals facing significant health challenges.

In the first experiment, the researchers discovered that pet owners had greater self-esteem, were more physically fit, tended to be less lonely, were more conscientious, were more extraverted, tended to be less fearful and tended to be less preoccupied than non-owners.

A second experiment, involving 56 dog owners examined whether pet owners benefit more when their pet is perceived to fulfill their social needs. This study found greater well-being among owners whose dogs increased their feelings of belonging, self-esteem and meaningful existence.

The last study looked at 97 undergraduates with an average age of 19 and found that pets can make people feel better after experiencing rejection. Subjects were asked to write about a time when they felt excluded. Then they were asked to write about their favorite pet, or to write about their favorite friend, or to draw a map of their campus. The researchers found that writing about pets was just as effective as writing about a friend when it came to staving off feelings of rejection.

The authors say that their study “establishes that there are many positive consequences for everyday people who own pets.’

Pets benefit the lives of their owners, both psychologically and physically, new research shows. (Credit: © Alena Ozerova / Fotolia)

I know that my cat Pelenor and my two dogs Kezzie and Rascal have helped me a lot. If you don’t have a pet, perhaps you should get one and by all means play with it!