Schadenfreude

Do you know what Schadenfreude means?  This is a German word that has entered English language meaning "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."  It appears to be closely related to experiencing feelings of envy and jealously, when emphathy is replaced by Schadenfreude.

I learned this from my friend Pedram who made a program about it for Radio College Park in Persian.  The link for that program and the related Scientific American article it was based on are listed under references.

Here are some suggestions for its English translation.  One listener suggested the word glee.  Among friends, we thought it is close to  "دل خنك شدن"  in Persian.

References:
http://www.radiocp.com/?p=249
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=schadenfreude-why-the-news-corp-pho-2011-07-19

First Arab Astronaut

Did you know that the first Arab astronaut flew on shuttle Discovery in June 1985? and that he was officially representing ARABSAT of Saudi Arabia? This is an important part of history, especially for the Arab countries.  Why do not we hear about such history and accomplishments of theirs?

Reference:
http://onelessonaday.blogspot.com/2011/07/wise-eyes.html

WISE Eye!

WISE eyes have observed the first Trojan asteroid sharing Earth's orbit!
What is a Trojan asteroid? "asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet."

While the news is amazing, it tells me how little we humans know! We are still finding things in our own orbit! Yet, we expect discovering all sorts of things around Mars, Jupiter, Pluto! We have a lot to explore, to learn, to discover!

"Asteroid 2010 TK7 is circled in green, in this single frame taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The majority of the other dots are stars or galaxies far beyond our solar system."   Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA.

Reference:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20110727.html

Pleasure and pain

The mind is its own place,
and in itself,
Can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven
John Milton.

Paul Bloom argued how the same experience can feel more pleasurable or painful to us based on how we think about it and perceive it in this Ted talk.

Helium again!

Apparently, there is a Helium crisis and there is only a limited amount of it available! Helium is often used for cryogenics, "the study of very low temperatures (colder than any place on Earth), how to produce and exploit them, and how materials behave at those temperatures."*. Many scientists and engineers need to test their devices in cryogenics conditions. For example, for satellites or instruments, which will have to operate under those cold temperatures. To simulate those conditions, they cool down a closed system using Helium. Those experiments are time consuming and expensive. Now, this piece of information, makes it way more crucial to perform these experiments wisely and correctly; It is not just time, manpower, and good data that is lost if these engineering or scientific cryogenics experiments are not conducted correctly, but a scarce resource that cannot be obtained again.

p. s. I wish I knew this when I was performing analysis on hundreds of images obtained at cryogenics condition. I wonder how much that project contributed to this crisis!

* http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/magnetacademy/cryogenics/

Sleep

At least forty million Americans suffer from long term sleep disorder. There are millions of dollars spent on health related issues that sleep deprivation causes, not to mention the lost productivity at work.* Tonight, ABC News had a story about the effect's of sleep deprivation on memory and our brain cells. If you hardly get enough sleep or always wake up during your deep stage of your sleep, before having gone through a complete sleep cycle, say by an alarm for work or a crying baby, or both, it affects how your brain cells work. Specially, it affects your memory. You won't remember things as well as you could or used to, and it can get worse. This is just one of the side affects. I was going to search for the full story online, which led me to discovering ABC's Sleep Center! They have a whole website dedicated to this cause and supporting people with sleep disorder, emphasizing sleep's importance, and raising awareness. Take advantage of its guidelines and support.

Sleep well! It is important.

* According to ABC News' Sleep Center site, and they say according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Eggplant!

One cannot talk about kashk, or whey as we know now, without mentioning its companion baademjaan or eggplant. There is this delicious Iranian meal I like a lot, kashk-e-bademjaan, and also a delicious gourmet served with rice that is made with eggplants and peas. Anyways, this past weekend my dear friend made me this delicious meal. We were admiring all the good stuff one can make with eggplant, that the inevitable question came to mind: "Eggplant! What is it good for anyways?" My friend claimed probably nothing.

I did not like that idea, nor did I want to ruin my lovely eggplant experiences. So, my dear friends, here is the final verdict: it is good for you!

Eggplant is a good source of fiber, protein, potassium, vitamin B, magnesium, and phosphorus! If that is not good enough, it is low in calories too, and good to add to your diet for weight loss. Just be careful, as you know eggplants are famous for soaking in all the oil during cooking. So, if you just boil it or fry it on the pan without any oil, that is the best. Actually my friend had fried the eggplant without any oil and it did turn out very well.

Enjoy!

p.s. Have you noticed that during and around weekends, all posts are somehow food related? By the time we get to Friday, I will be all into the latest space and science news, no worries. Mondays are hard!

هندوانه

هوا بسى گرم بود و دور هم جمع بوديم و هندوانه ميخورديم جاى شما خالى و بسى شيرين و آبدار بود و چسبيد. به تعريف از هندوانه پرداختيم كه خانم عموى من گفتند كه اوايل كه آمده بودند آمريكا، در اين ديار هنوانه در سوپر ماركت ها اصلا نبوده، و مردمان بر اين باور بودند كه هندوانه متعلق به سياهپوستان است و بس. نكته جالبى بود از تاريخ نه چندان دور آمريكا.

Kashk!

Today, I learned the answer to the question I had posted before.
The translation of the Farsi word pronounced kashk to English is whey.

The Largest and Farthest Ever Detected Reservoir of Water in Universe!!

Where do you think the largest ever detected reservoir of water exists? On our home planet, dear Earth? After all, that is what makes it habitable for us, and that is what we have been searching for everywhere. We got thrilled when we found buckets of water on moon, or some ice on Mars. But now we have found water "equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away."

Think about those amounts and distances. Now, only if we could send a probe there! But wait, it says it is close to "a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns." Attractive and unattainable? Maybe so!

Reference:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html

Neural connections!

Apparently, there are more neural connections in a milli-meter cube of our brains than there are stars in the milky way!*, **

* According to David Eagleman, author of Incognito on Colbert Report tonight!

** Do you know how many stars are there in the milky way? This many! Now, does David Eagleman know this? How is it possible to have so many connections in such a little space? I cannot grasp neither the greatness of the milky way nor the brain!

Yet another Moon!

Today's lesson of the day is a no-brainer! Pluto's fourth moon is discovered!

Pluto is becoming more and more interesting! It was only in 1930 that Pluto itself was discovered! I let you entertain yourself to the story of what led to that discovery! The first and biggest moon of Pluto, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by astronomer James Christy.

For decades we grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet in our solar system, a planet with a big moon, just like our home planet! Until 2005, when two new moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra, were discovered, and later verified with 2006 HST observations. This discovery made Pluto lose its planet status and be classified as a dwarf planet! I let you hear about this discovery's story from the person who made it, Max Mutchler!

Just as textbooks were changed and teachers and the general public were adjusting to Pluto not being a planet and having three moons, here comes today's discovery! Ironically during a time when many eyes are on Vesta and working hard to find a moon of it! Pluto comes and steals the show :-) New Horizon mission will have a lot to visit and learn about during its Pluto fly-by in 2015!

Now I wonder if this 4th moon appeared in 2005/2006 HST Pluto images and was undetected/missed or that it was somewhere else in its orbit and not in those frames. If it was missed before, we, especially the Dawn team, have to learn how and why it happened before it is too late.

---------------------------------------------------------------
p.s. Can you imagine how exciting 2015 will be? We see Pluto and its moons from New Horizon's eyes, and we see Ceres and all it has to offer via Dawn mission! We are going to see so many new worlds for the first time, and soon later in 2016 Juno reveals Jupiter to us!

Juno!

Juno is the name of another cool mission scheduled to launch between August 5-26, 2011 to go on a five year cruise to Jupiter! Arriving there on July 2016! (yes, another eventful July). It will then orbit Jupiter for a year. To learn more about Juno click here.

Vesta, the word; Or maybe back to the rock!

So, what does Vesta mean anyways? The word does remind me of the Zoroastrian's Holy book, Avesta. Today, a good friend of mine confirmed my intuition. She said Vesta is a girl's name among Zoroastrians, derived from the word Avesta. Yet, I do not know its Persian meaning. Do you?

In English, Vesta is related to the name of a Roman Goddess of the hearth! Considering that fire is holy in Zoroastrianism, the connection to Avesta makes sense. So does the complete definition: the goddess of hearth is worshiped in a temple with a sacred fire that is kept burning by vestal virgins! Similarly, Zoroastrian temples in Iran have fireplaces that have been kept burning for hundreds of years! So, where do Romans come into the picture?! It is so interesting.

Back to the Vesta of the skies now! Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As of Saturday (July 16, 2011), Dawn became the first spacecraft orbiting such a body. Look at its image only 9500 miles away from Vesta's surface!*

Compare it to the July 9th, 2011 image! It is amazing going for a ride on Dawn, millions of miles, all the way to the Vesta!

* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110718.html

What does it take to become an Aussie?

Yesterday I learned from a friend that in Australia the citizenship test includes questions on cricket, its Australian team players over the years, results of important games, ...! Just imagine if all permanent residents in the U.S. were tested on NFL football, its rules and players, when applying for the U.S. citizenship!

Vesta Fiesta!

Asteroid Vesta was discovered on March 29, 1807 by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers [1]. Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. How large is it? 530 kilometers wide. How far is it? 211 million kilometers (131 million miles) from Earth when Hubble observed it [2]. For the first time since its discovery 204 years ago, we are able to see it so clearly via Dawn mission. Here is an image from July 9th, 2011 observation of Vesta from Dawn [3]:

It took Dawn four years to get to Vesta, on a slow and steady approach [2,5]. Dawn will enter Vesta's orbit on July 15, 2011 [4] (July 16th EST) and stays there for about a year to study this asteroid. Then, it will leave Vesta's orbit for its next destination Ceres, a dwarf planet. Ceres is in the same class of celestial bodies as Pluto! Most people note that Pluto got demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet because of the discovery of two of its moons, Nix and Hydra. However, this new classification implies to astronomers and planetary scientists that so many other celestial bodies, such as Ceres, got promoted to the same class as Pluto! Whether or not Vesta has moons, will also imply different things about our solar system and creation. Stay tuned!


[1] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/29mar_vesta/
[2] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/pia13428.html
[3] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/multimedia/dawn-image-070911.html
[4] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110714.html
[5] http://dawn.ucla.edu/dawn/mission.html

Helium

Do you know how Helium was discovered? It is so interesting!

"An unknown yellow spectral line signature in sunlight was first observed from a solar eclipse in 1868 by French astronomer Jules Janssen. Janssen is jointly credited with the discovery of the element with Norman Lockyer, who observed the same eclipse and was the first to propose that the line was due to a new element which he named helium. In 1903, large reserves of helium were found in the natural gas fields in parts of the United States, which is by far the largest supplier of the gas." *

So, there are several key points here:

1) Each element has its own unique way of reflecting light at different wavelengths of the light's spectrum. That is how in fact scientists observe and identify water, fire, soil,... via remotely sensed data of airplanes, satellites, etc. They have spectral signatures/models of different matter and fit the observed data to those models. In this case, what they saw, did not match the spectrum of any known element. So, they declared discovery of a new element.

2) If it was not for the moon, there would not be a solar eclipse, and we would not learn about the Sun's composition, nor could we discover Helium. Helium was discovered because of the moon!


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium

Boz Ghormeh

Today's lesson is on the important subject of Boz Ghormeh! Thanks to a dear friend, Mohammad, for today's lesson and its picture:

What is the lesson you wonder? Well,

1- There exist a soup with such a name (I did not know about its existence till yesterday).
2- It is originally from Kerman, Iran.
3- It is made of goat, chickpeas, onion, garlic, and Kashk.
4- For English speaking readers: "boz" means "goat", and "ghormeh" means "stew" in Persian.

Yes, I know. Kashk is a Persian word too, and I do not know its English translation and am too lazy to look it up now. Well, not really: here is a chance for you Farsi speaking readers to let us know its English name and provide the fifth lesson:

5- The translation of Kashk to English is : .....

Which makes us reach our final boz-ghormeh lesson:

6- There are many lessons that one can learn from anything! That is the main motivation behind this blog. Keep observing, exploring, learning, and sharing!

There are signs everywhere!

It is possible to discover a moon of a celestial body by first observing its shadow on that body.

Number one natural killer!

According to tonight's meteorologist on CNN, extreme heat has killed more people than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, lightening, .... combined in the last ten years in the U.S. Stay cool and hydrated!

Related:
http://www.weather.gov/om/heat/index.shtml

مير و ميرزا

دوستان امشب ميگفتند كه "مير" يعنى كسى كه پدرش سيد است و "ميرزا" كسى كه مادرش سيد است. هيچ وقت به معناى اين دو واژه خيلى فكر نكرده بودم و برايم جالب بود.

Goddard's Network Integration Center

With the launch of shuttle Atlantis, the final shuttle mission, we are closing a chapter in man's space exploration in lower Earth orbit and graduating from the Shuttle program. It was only today, and embarrassingly so late, that I learned that the Goddard Space Flight Center has been responsible for all communications to and from the shuttles for every single shuttle that was launched for more than thirty years, and also for communications of the Apollo program thanks to the Goddard's Network Integration Center. Below are some pictures and a video from how the Goddard community observed the final space shuttle launch.

"We all know the words, “One small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind,” but no one on Earth would have heard Neil Armstrong say them on July 21, 1969, if not for Goddard."
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_goddard/sets/72157627147772740/

"We aren't ending a journey, we are completing a chapter of a journey that will never end" - Commander of Atlantis before today's launch.

Hiatus

Do you know what hiatus means? I did not till today, when I saw it in an email. Yes, English is my second language and there are many words I do not know and keep learning as time passes by. To see what it means and how it is pronounced click here.

What have you learned today?

Hubble Space Telescope: One in a Million!

Did you know that Hubble Space Telescope (HST) made its One Millionth observation yesterday? I learned this today! Considering that for each observation, scientists write proposals asking for Hubble time and resources, some people review those proposals, some analyze the data, report the results, publish papers, ... can you imagine how much work, scientific discovery and exploration Hubble has contributed to? Hubble is One in a Million indeed! The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has high standards to compete with. Here are 200 of those spectacular images:



Here is the one-millionth scientific observation of the HST.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/millionth.html

Reference:
http://geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=7104

Maturity

At what stage in our lives, do you think, our contemporary evolved brains are fully developed?  At age 2, 5, during puberty?  Did you know that the most advanced and evolved part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, is not fully developed until age 23-25?  This is the part of our brain that executes commands and controls impulses.  Prefrontal cortex starts developing early on, but it is not fully developed till age 23-25.  Now imagine a society where individuals are physically mature, have high sexual drives, very little experience, and an undeveloped prefrontal cortex. They can drive, marry, have kids, have important responsibilities with little training or experience for today's fast paced and complex world.  They function with poor judgement, not enough empathy, nor self control.  Their prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for judgement, self-control, and empathy, is not fully developed.  In fact, researchers have linked high rates of car accidents among teenagers and young adults to this fact.  How would our world be different if we were all aware of this fact and considered it in different aspects of our society, such as education, rules and regulations?

That is what I learned today and thought about.  What did you learn today?

What have we learned today?

What have I learned today?  What have you learned today?  Let's learn at least one lesson a day from each other here.  Be it the meaning of a word, a fact, a new way of looking at a previously learned idea, a newly discovered feeling and appreciation within us, whatever it is, let's share it with each other.  Let's Learn!

من امروز چى ياد گرفتم؟  تو امروز چى ياد گرفتى؟  بيايد حداقل يه چيز از هم امروز اينجا ياد بگيريم.

p.s. The background image of this blog is "Earth at Night", courtesy of NASA.