If there was ever a type of musical expression that needed to be combined with robots, it’s beatboxing. At their October performance, you’ll see human beatbox Adam Matta laying down beats for the ‘bots of LEMUR, as well as Ethan Ham and his instrument that replicates vocal input with slide whistles. Completing the lineup is Shawn Trail, mannin’ up on the mallets with a Lobi-inspired style. Also on hand are Christopher McDonald and Gertrude, his machine that “uses a multicolor LED to draw dramatic color images captured by long exposure photography.”

Date: Thursday October 9
Time: 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Place: Place: LEMUR, 461 3rd Ave. bet. 9th and 10th St., Brooklyn
Price: Price: $5

Nightlife at the AMNH

Start your weekend off right at the smartest party in town, hosted by the American Museum of Natural History. At the Rose Center for Earth and Space, you’ll be able to drink and dance under dynamic visuals accompanied by the explosive beats of live bands and DJs. This month’s party features Mattie Safer of The Rapture and DJ Mehdi, a French hip-hop and electronic producer known for bridging the gap between these two dance music genres. For the price of the ticket, you get entrance to the party, a complimentary screening of the Space Show Cosmic Collisions, and a free pass to the Museum for future use.

Date: Friday October 10
Time: 9:00 PM – 1:00 AM
Place: American Museum of Natural History, 81st St. between Columbus Ave. and Central Park W.
Price: $20

Science Smashes Urban Legends

Alligators in the sewers? Mob victims buried under Yankee Stadium? New Yorkers love urban legends, and, as it turns out, so do scientists, albeit slightly less morbid ones. Find out the real truth about whether or not glass is a liquid by joining Columbia University’s monthly Cafe Science meeting. Physical chemist Laura J. Kaufman’s speech, “Is Glass a Liquid? The Science Behind the Urban Legend,” addresses the liquid and solid characteristics of glass and how materials of this type can be used in applications as diverse as oil delivery and cryopreservation.

Date: Monday October 13
Time: 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Place: Picnic Café, 2665 Broadway, between 101st St. and 102nd St.
Price: $10, includes one drink

Science Teacher Institute at Cornell University

Cornell University invites elementary and middle school teachers to participate in the Cornell Science Sample Series, a collaboration between Cornell’s research centers and departments to provide professional development in science, engineering, math, and technology. Available workshops include Electricity, FOSS Forces and Motion Kit, Probability and Measurement and Bird Sleuth.

To apply, visit www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/teachers/csss.html.

Date: Saturday, October 18
Time: 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Place: Sloan-Kettering Institute, Room M107 (1275 York Avenue, Manhattan)
Price: All applications must be accompanied by a check for $20 made out to Cornell University. Upon completion of the program, all checks will be returned and participants will receive an additional check for $20 to cover travel costs.
Notes: Space is limited to 80 teachers. The application deadline is October 15.

Using Video Interactively in the Classroom Workshop

An overview of teaching strategies using video clips from Channel Thirteen?s Web site in biology, chemistry, physics and Earth science.

For further information, call 212-598-7772.

Date: Friday, October 17
Time: 7:15 p.m.
Place: New York University, Silver Center Room 207, 32 Waverly Place, Manhattan.
Security at NYU requires that you show a picture ID to enter the building.
Price: Free
Guest Speaker: Christopher Ward, Hommocks School

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

Upcoming Science Events – Week of 10/06/2008

When Mariner 10 flew past Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975, the probe imaged less than half the planet. In January, during MESSENGER’s first flyby, its cameras returned images of about 20 percent of the planet’s surface missed by Mariner 10. Yesterday, at 4:40 am EDT, MESSENGER successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury, and its cameras captured more than 1,200 high-resolution and color images of the planet – unveiling another 30 percent of Mercury’s surface that had never before been seen by spacecraft.

The spectacular image shown here is one of the first to be returned and shows a WAC image of the departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the spacecraft’s closest approach to Mercury. The bright crater just south of the center of the image is Kuiper, identified on images from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s. For most of the terrain east of Kuiper, toward the limb (edge) of the planet, the departing images are the first spacecraft views of that portion of Mercury’s surface. A striking characteristic of this newly imaged area is the large pattern of rays that extend from the northern region of Mercury to regions south of Kuiper. This extensive ray system appears to emanate from a relatively young crater newly imaged by MESSENGER, providing a view of the planet distinctly unique from that obtained during MESSENGER’s first flyby. This young, extensively rayed crater, along with the prominent rayed crater to the southeast of Kuiper, near the limb of the planet, were both seen in Earth-based radar images of Mercury but not previously imaged by spacecraft.

Visit NASA’s MESSENGER site for more images.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

New Images of Mercury Taken by Spacecraft

NYC Teaching Fellow Michael Doig wins a $54,000 technology grant

Michael Doig, a Cohort 12 NYC Teaching Fellow, has won a $54,000 grant from the City Council of New York for computer lab and classroom technology at Bedford-Stuyvesant Preparatory High School in Brooklyn. By providing students the ability to learn computer skills in high school or sooner, they can be better prepared for the future.
Michael intends to use the funds toward computer literacy education. He also intends to engage his students in several long-term science projects, including weather tracking, seismology, videos, podcasts, and more.

To secure the grant, Michael located his Council Member and submitted a proposal for the grant. If you’re interested in securing a grant, you may start by using the DOE’s Financial Accounting Management Systems (FAMIS) to create a list of supplies that you would like to obtain through capital funding. You should also include a detailed explanation of how your school intends to use the new equipment. To be successfully funded, all proposals need to be as specific as possible.

Please join the NYC Teaching Fellows as we congratulate Michael on narrowing the achievement gap through this remarkable opportunity!

Thank you Alissa.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

In the Fellow Spotlight

This is not the first time I have found a species I thought was tropical living in and around New York. I spotted Parrots nesting in Brooklyn back in March.

Check out the cool “pincher” on the back of it. Defense, mating, or for grasping while climbing?

I was so excited to have found a stick bug that I forgot to switch my camera into macro mode, so the video is a little out-of-focus.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

Stick Insects in New Jersey?

Imagine Science Films has gathered an eclectic selection of films to present at the Imagine Science Film Festival

The Imagine Science Film Festival (ISFF) is full-fledge New York Science Film Festival. ISFF 2008 is in mid-October from 16-25 and will include screenings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The objective of the festival is to showcase films, especially fiction films, that effectively incorporate science into a compelling narrative while maintaining credible scientific groundings.

ISFF is the first science film festival in New York. It an environment where filmmakers, artists, scientists and the public can meet. It will be a place where science is exciting and accessible to everyone, regardless of their background. At ISFF, the public will join scientists in learning and imagining science through visual storytelling.

From ImagineScienceFilms.com

Opening Night

Thursday October 16th, 7-9pm
New York Academy of Sciences
7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St.
40th Floor, New York

This event will take place on October 16, 2008 beginning at 7pm.
Tickets for the kick- off event are $25 for non NYAS members and $15
for members.

Register TODAY to reserve your spot at http://www.nyas.org/filmfest.

Ira Flatow from NPR’s Science Friday is moderating the Festival opening celebration, ‘Science in Fiction’, a discussion on the relationship between science and fiction in cinema. This will be held at the impressive headquarters of the New York Academy of Sciences at 7 World Trade Center, 40th Floor and is a catered event.

Panelists include:
Ari Handel, neuroscientist, screenwriter of The Fountain, and president, Protozoa Pictures
Darcy Kelley, neuroscience professor, Columbia University, and scientific advisor, Tribeca Film Festival
Sidney Perkowitz, physics professor, Emory University, and author of Hollywood Science
Billy Shebar, screenwriter, Dark Matter

ISFF 2008 Trailer (Films Montage) from Imagine Science Films on Vimeo.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

Imagine Science Film Festival, NYC – October 16-25

Posting a job is as easy as 1-2-3…

Step 1 – Visit ScienceBoom Jobs.
Step 2 – Click on the Post a Job link in the upper right corner.
Step 3 – Fill out the Job listing form and submit it. Done!

Post your opening today, it is only $45 for 30 days.

Use the following coupon code and save 25% from now until October 31, 2008.

Enter the code sblaunch when you checkout.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

ScienceBoom Job Board Launched

If you drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. A group of researchers led by Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University are putting the same accelerometer chip to an intriguing new use: detecting earthquakes. They plan to create a network of volunteer laptops that can map out future quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers manage.

Seismometers are large, expensive beasts, costing $10,000 or more apiece. They are designed to be exquisitely sensitive to the sort of vibrations an earthquake produces, which means they can pick up tremors that began halfway around the world. By contrast, the accelerometer chips in laptops, which have evolved from those used to detect when a car is in a collision and thus trigger the release of the airbags, are rather crude devices. They are, however, ubiquitous. Almost all modern laptops have them and they are even finding their way into mobile phones. The iPhone, for example, uses such a chip to detect its orientation so that it can rotate its display and thus make it easily readable.

On its own, an accelerometer chip in a laptop is not very useful for earthquake-detection, as it cannot distinguish between a quake and all sorts of other vibrations—the user tapping away at the keyboard, for example. But if lots of these chips are connected to a central server via the internet, their responses can be compared. And if a large number in a particular place register a vibration at almost the same time, it is more likely to be an earthquake than a bunch of users all hitting their space bars. To exploit this group effect, Dr Lawrence’s Quake-Catcher Network (QCN) employs the same software that is used by the SETI@home project, which aggregates computing power from hundreds of thousands of volunteer computers around the world to analyse radio-telescope signals for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence…

From the Economist.com

Join the Quake-Catcher network to participate in the future of science.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

Detect Earthquakes Using Your Laptop

Unfortunately, that was a false promise. Even at the height of the Shuttle program, a student had a better chance of becoming an NBA basketball player than a NASA astronaut. No wonder today’s students show more interest in athletics than math and science.

What if we could turn that around and show students that they have a real chance for a future in space?

The Space Frontier Foundation wants to show students that they have a chance of going to space. And the best way to show students is to send astronaut teachers into American schools to share their spaceflight experience.

Every journey begins with a single step. The Pathfinder program is the first step in the journey toward the goal of putting a thousand astronaut teachers into American classrooms.

Pathfinders will be the first astronaut teachers to fly in space and return to the classroom. These Pathfinders will not only fly in space, they will also help design the three-week training course for the large number of teachers who follow. Pathfinders will also be invited to return each summer to help teach the course.

The project, which has a budget of $20 million, will eventually enable the Space Frontier Foundation to send 200 teachers a year — four from every U.S. state — into space.

Due to the high degree of interest, the deadline for applications is extended to December 4, 2008, but please don’t wait until the last minute. If two candidates whose applications are given identical weighting by the selection committee, preference may be given to the application received first, so do not delay.

You can download an application at the Teachers in Space site.

See you in orbit!

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

Have You Ever Dreamt of Going Into Space?

Watch on: YouTube | Revver | Download

Host: Michael Doig
Duration: 4:19

Materials

• Chalk
• Paper Clip
• Vinegar
• Eye Dropper
• 250ml Beaker

Weathering Fast Facts

• Weathering is the mechanical and chemical breakdown of rocks and minerals, eventually creating soils.
• Chemical weathering reactions include carbonation, hydrolysis, oxidation, solution and hydration reactions.
• Biologically produced chemicals, such as those produced by lichens and mosses, can also break down rocks.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

ScienceBoom Episode #4 – Chemical Weathering

Most noticeably, they went with a spiffy blue color scheme. The year is now broken up into two terms, with each term shown on separate sheets. The right hand column in each unit represents the Major Understandings taken from the New York State Core Curriculum, Standard 4. This addition finally bridges the gap between the Scope and Sequence and the State Standards. It has made aligning objectives with the State Standards a lot more straight forward.

Do yourself a favor and download a copy if you haven’t already. Look at the Scope and Sequence and the State Standards side-by-side and you will see what an improvement this is over the previous version.

Download your copy of our book "101 Science Misconceptions" provided by ScienceBoom.

New York High School Regents Scope and Sequence Updated