Yikes

From the National Weather Service:

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 PM CDT SATURDAY.

A MIX OF LIGHT FREEZING DRIZZLE...SLEET AND SNOW WILL REDEVELOP ACROSS THE AREA THIS AFTERNOON...AND CONTINUE INTO THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. ICE OR SLEET ACCUMULATIONS OF UP TO A QUARTER INCH ARE POSSIBLE...MAINLY THIS EVENING AND INTO THE OVERNIGHT HOURS.

CONCERNS REMAIN THAT PRECIPITATION MAY FALL AS FREEZING RAIN...AND THE SITUATION WILL BE MONITORED IF ANY UPDATES ARE NEEDED FOR POSSIBLE ICE ACCUMULATIONS. ANY ICE ACCUMULATIONS WILL COMBINE WITH STRONG WINDS AND WOULD QUICKLY BECOME A CONCERN.

THE PRECIPITATION TYPE WILL TRANSITION TO ALL SNOW SATURDAY MORNING. TOTAL SNOWFALL AMOUNTS OF 6 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE THROUGH EARLY SATURDAY EVENING...WITH SOME SLEET ACCUMULATION EXPECTED IN THIS TOTAL. IN ADDITION...GUSTY NORTH WINDS SATURDAY WILL BLOW AROUND THE FALLING SNOW...WHICH MAY SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE VISIBILITIES TO LESS THAN ONE HALF OF A MILE.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT...FOOD...AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

Umm...I guess there's a chance we'll be spending an extra night in Nebraska...

M-Squared on the Road

Blogging today from Omaha, Nebraska...home of Creighton University, Warren Buffet, Union Pacific Railroad, the College World Series, and about half a million of the world's best people.

I'm up here attending the annual Mid-American Athletic Trainers' Association (MAATA) annual meeting and symposium. Certified athletic trainers (ATC's) are required to complete 20 hours of continuing education each year, and a total of 80 every three years. So here I am...trying to learn something.

In honor of that, any chance to play a Counting Crows tune is a good thing:

Discovery prepares to come home

The photo above was taken by the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery as the orbiter separated from the international space station. The two spacecraft closed their hatches and undocked yesterday afternoon.

The crew of Discovery spent today inspecting the orbiter for damage that could cause problems on re-entry. The are scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday afternoon.

Every morning, Mission Control wakes the astronauts up with music. And what tune did they wake up to this morning? Enter Sandman, by Metallica. Rock on!

Daily Recap: Thursday, 3/26

Anatomy and Physiology:
We're still working on the rats. You should probably be at least starting the "external anatomy" section, and should also be ready to get your rat at any time. You'll want to make sure that you stay caught up on the grading as we go through this.

Several of you have decided to complete all of the written work before you begin the dissection. While I leave it up to you to decide how you want to tackle this project, I would highly recommend that you dissect as you go. The purpose of the written work is to prepare you for the dissection, and then to help you debrief and review afterwords. I don't think you'll get as much out of the project if you do all of the written work first.

Biology:
Lab day! We started working on the classification lab, giving you a chance to practice naming and putting things into groups. In the first part you organized and classified a group of 10 different shapes. In the second part, you are to classify your classmates in the same way that you did the shapes.

I'll be gone tomorrow...see you on Monday.

Evolution in Texas

In January, the Texas State Board of Education took a preliminary vote on a new set of science standards that will govern how science is taught for the next 10 years in the Lone Star State. I wrote about it here. As with most science-standards debates, most of the discussion centered around evolution. For the past 20 years, the Texas standards have included this language:

The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.

The new standards will take out this "strengths and weaknesses" language and replace it with:

The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing.

The revised standards eliminate the "back door" approach to creationism that is the intent of "strengths and weaknesses" language, and have been endorsed by dozens of scientific and professional organizations. On January 23, the Texas board of education gave preliminary approval to the revised standards after an amendment to re-insert the "strengths and weaknesses" language failed on a split 7-7 vote.

Final action on these standards was scheduled for today and tomorrow, following a public hearing date on Wednesday. Earlier today, evolution opponents again failed to pass an amendment restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" language on a split 7-7 vote.

A last-ditch effort by social conservatives to require that Texas teachers cover the "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution in science classes was rejected by the State Board of Education Thursday in a split vote.

Board members deadlocked 7-7 on a motion to restore a long-time curriculum rule that "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories – notably Charles Darwin's theory of evolution – be taught in science classes and covered in textbooks for those subjects.
[...]
The tie vote upheld a tentative decision by the board in January to delete the strengths-and-weaknesses rule in the new curriculum standards for science classes that will be in force for the next decade.

Those standards spell out not only how evolution is to be covered, but also what is supposed to be taught in all science classes in elementary and secondary schools, as well as providing the material for state tests and textbooks.

A final vote is scheduled for tomorrow, but the results are expected to be the same. Proponents of science education claim this as a major victory in their struggle to keep creationism out of science classes, since the Texas standards typically have a large influence on what textbook publishers include in their books.

Traumatizing my son

I picked my 3-year-old son up from daycare yesterday afternoon and had one of my "I'm the best Daddy in the world" ideas. Since the bloodmobile was at the high school, I figured I'd take him up there and let him watch people donating blood. He gets a kick out of medical stuff, and enjoys playing with his little doctor's kit. Plus, he's been learning about the heart in his preschool class. I thought this would be a great opportunity for him...

...so we get to the school, and everything's fine for awhile. There's a student in one of the chairs getting prepped for his donation. We talk about how the "nurse" will poke him with a needle, and then they'll fill a bag up with his blood so that they can take it to the hospital and give to somebody who's sick. He was fine with all of this...

...so then we went around to the other side of the donation area to where one of my co-workers was in the middle of a donation. As soon as he saw that there was actually blood coming out of her arm and filling up the little bag hanging below her, he went completely catatonic. The technician who was monitoring the donation reassured my son that she wasn't hurting the donor. The donor did her best to show how healthy and happy she was, and that it didn't really even hurt. And I kept reminding him that the blood would be used to help somebody who's sick at the hospital. None of this worked...he just stared blankly at the whole process...lady...nurse...blood...needle...bag...blood...needle...blood...arm...BLOOD...NEEDLE...barely able to respond with simple nods when I asked him a question...

...so I think I've traumatized him for life. He'll probably never give blood, and may even grow up to start some sort of "anti-blood donation" activist group. A career in health care is probably WAY out of the question at this point. Even though he eventually rallied* and snapped out of his semi-comatose state, I'm afraid the damage may be irreversible.

*His rally was due, in large part, to the ALYX machine** that was on site. Surely something that fancy looking had a jet engine attached to it somewhere...

**Actually, it was probably the cookies that we cobbed from the "hydration station" that saved the day more than anything else. Nothing wards off permanent psychological damage like NutterButters and Oreos.

Jurassic Lark

Scientists in China recently published a report in Nature that details their study of a newly discovered fossilized dinosaur species. What makes this new species (which they plan to name Tianyulong confuciusi) interesting is that it appears to have had structures on its skin that resemble feathers. From The Economist:

That birds are the descendants of dinosaurs is now accepted by almost all evolutionary biologists. The clinching discovery was of animals that were clearly dinosaurs, and clearly could not fly, but which had feathers. That did raise the question, though, of why one twig of the great dinosaur tree had developed such strange outer vestments, even before it developed wings.

This isn't the first time that a feathered dinosaur fossil was discovered. What's noteworthy about this particular fossil, though, is that it's from a group of dinosaurs that aren't "supposed" to have feathers based on our current understanding of dinosaur evolution.

The new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called the Ornithischia. This group, which includes such famous names as Stegosaurus and Triceratops, is one of the two clades into which the dinosaurs are divided. The other is the Saurischia, whose famous members include Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus. The Saurischia also include all the immediate ancestors of birds.
[...]
Such “protofeathers” have been found on other dinosaurs, but until now those species have, like those that sport true feathers, all belonged to a part of the Saurischia that includes the birds. Yet the split between Ornithischia and Saurischia goes back to the very beginning of the dinosaurs, 80m years before the first birds and about 100m years before T. confuciusi. So if the feather-like structures of T. confuciusi really have the same origin as feathers, then such structures must have been there from the outset, and be characteristic of dinosaurs as a whole.

To illustrate this, draw a capital "Y". The stem of the "Y" represents an ancestor common to all dinosaurs. The arms of the "Y" represent the two groups of dinosaurs that evolved from that common ancestor. Until now, all known feathered dinosaurs have belonged to the group on one arm of the Y. This has led scientists to the conclusion that birds evolved from this group of dinosaurs (the Saurichia). This new fossil (T. confuciusi), however, belongs to the group of dinosaurs on the OTHER arm (the Ornithischia). This leaves us with a few possibilities:
1. Feathers evolved independently in both groups of dinosaurs, or
2. Feathers were a characteristic of the ancestral species, or
3. The current model for dinosaur evolution and classification is completely wrong.

The simplest of the explanations is that early feathers were present in the ancestral group, and these early feathers were passed on, through evolution, to both the Saurichia and the Ornithischia. Most dinosaur species in each group evolved to be featherless, but one or a few species in each group also apparently retained the early feathers. The trait of feathers eventually died out on one arm of the "Y" (the Ornithischia). On the other arm (the Saurischia), the feathered species of dinosaurs were the earliest ancestors of modern birds.

This conclusion does lead to a problem with classification: instead of thinking of birds as dinosaurs, it may become necessary to start thinking of dinosaurs as specialized birds:

Taxonomically, the very definition of a bird was until recently an animal that has feathers. Now, taxonomists argue that since birds are descended from dinosaurs they should be classified merely as a subgroup of the Dinosauria. But if feathers truly are the diagnostic criterion, then perhaps things should be the other way round, and Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus and their kin should no longer be thought of as terrible lizards, but as overweight, flightless birds.

Daily Recap: Wednesday, 3/25

Anatomy and Physiology:
Day 3 of the rat unit...you should probably be getting close to finishing the skeletal system work if you haven't already. Your rats are available and can be picked up whenever you want them.

Biology:
We took a few notes over classification and taxonomy. Your assignment is to pick an animal and look up the groups (K,P,C,O,F,G,S) that it is classified into.

Daily Recap: Tuesday, 3/24

Investigating Technologies:
First interval, first harbor, fourth suite rotation.

Anatomy and Physiology:
Day two of the rat project. Students should be finished with the "introduction" section and moving on to the skeletal system. The skeletal system will not actually involve work with the rat. Instead, we will use a model rat's skeleton and compare it to what we learned about the human skeleton.

Biology:
since it's Tuesday, we had our normally-scheduled reading day. Students were to read section 17.1 in their textbook, and complete their "choice" of reading strategy. A new Bio-Bulletin was passed out...it's the same one that was passed out the last week of the third quarter.

March Madness

March madness is in the air, and for a K-Stater like me, it means something all together different: it's March and I'm mad. And I'm mad because my Wildcats are, once again, watching the action from the comfort of their couches. I wouldn't say I'm disappointed as much as I am frustrated with what's become the status quo.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the tournament as much as the next person, and look forward to it each year. I enjoy the big wins, the amazing individual performances (I'm talking to you, Cole Aldrich), the upsets and all of the hoopla surrounding it. I also enjoy the quirky little stories that come out every year, like this one that was posted last week on 60-Second Science:

The NCAA men's basketball "March Madness" tournament may have just tipped off, but one academic is already thinking about the later rounds. Once the "Elite Eight" teams emerge, says Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science and the director of the simulation and optimization laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, throw out a team's initial seeding—it's no better than flipping a coin to figure out their chances of winning.

So, statistically, once a team reaches the quarterfinals, each one has basically the same chance of winning it all. The basic idea here is that seeding matters when you're comparing 15 or 16 seeds to 1 or 2 seeds, but for the top three seeds in each region, there's not really a statistical difference in terms of who has the best chance to win it all. Other researchers, though, have devised models based on probability that attempt to make predictions with a remarkable amount of success:

The tournament's notorious unpredictability didn't stop Joel Sokol, a Georgia Tech operations research professor whose statistical model correctly selected last year's Final Four, championship game and overall tournament winner (the University of Kansas Jayhawks), from developing his own computer program. His picks? The University of North Carolina Tar Heels, University of Pittsburgh Panthers, University of Louisville Cardinals, and University of Memphis Tigers will make the Final Four [...](Michigan State and Oklahoma are ranked too high and due for an upset, statistically speaking, he added.)

So the good news (according to Jacobson) for all you Hawk fans is that KU, with one more win, has (statistically) as good a shot as anybody else to win it all (again) this year, and that Michigan State is (according to Sokol) evidently ripe for an upset. The bad news is Sokol's predicted national champion...the Tar Heels of North Carolina.

Mount Redoubt Erupts

Mount Redoubt, a 10,000 foot active volcano in Alaska, erupted late Sunday evening, sending a column of ash 50,000 feet into the air. Geologists have been predicting an eruption there for several months, and have been watching Redoubt very closely.

Redoubt is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, which is Alaska's largest city and contains about 40% of the total population of the state. Besides the ash in the air, there doesn't seem to be a great risk posed to people by this eruption right now, although scientists are monitoring for the possibility of mudslides or flooding causes by melted glaciers.

Redoubt last erupted over a 5 month period between 1989 and 1990.

I have a confession to make...

I tried to resist. I really did. But somewhere in the middle of spring break I caved and bought it.

Two of my favorite people

Bruce Springsteen performing Working on a Dream last Thursday on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

That's not TANG they're drinking

The crew of Space Shuttle Discovery has just finished their 8th day in orbit. The highlight of the day was a completion of the mission's 3rd spacewalk, which had two astronauts outside of the shuttle for 6.5 hours.

One of the snags that this mission to the International Space Station has encountered has to do with the station's Urine Processor Assembly:

Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth puts you a long way from the nearest kitchen tap. And at $15,000 a pint, the cost of shipping fresh water aboard the space shuttle is, well, astronomical.

So astronauts on the International Space Station have to recapture every possible drop. That includes water evaporated from showers, shaving, tooth brushing and hand washing, plus perspiration and water vapor that collects within the astronauts' space suits. They even transfer water from the fuel cells that provide electric power to the space shuttle.

And, since last November, they are able to tap a previously unused source of water: the astronauts' own urine.

The Water Recovery System...can transform ordinary pee into water so pure it rivals the cleanest on Earth.
[...]
Under the new system, urine undergoes an initial distillation process and then joins the rest of the recovered fluids in the water processor. The processor filters out solids such as hair and lint and then sends the wastewater through a series of multifiltration beds, in which contaminants are removed through adsorption and ion exchange.

"What's left over in the water are a few non adsorbing organics and solvents, like nail polish remover, and they go into a reactor that breaks them all down to carbon dioxide, water and a few ions," said [David] Hand, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

After a final check for microbes, the water is again clean and ready to drink.

According to a post from yesterday on NASA's shuttle mission blog:

International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke just replaced a filter assembly in the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA). Mission Control hopes this will increase the rate of urine flowing into the UPA, after a slower-than-expected rate was noted earlier today. This issue is not related to the newly-installed Distillation Assembly.

Fincke is filling the UPA with urine and, if all goes well, will begin to process a sample. It takes four to five hours to process a complete sample.

Apparently the processor was experiencing a slower-than-expected output a few days ago. Hopefully Mr. Fincke will get the thing filled (in whatever manner he and NASA deem is appropriate) and output levels will be better. And we can all marvel at the wonders of space age technology. Now let's just hope that the good folks at Dasani don't get ahold of this technology.

(And, for those of you keeping score, this is now the second time this blog has made reference to peeing astronauts...I think I might need counseling.)

Daily Recap: Monday, 3/23

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable spring break...

Investigating Technologies:
Today was the first day in our last Suite rotation of the school year. We should have interval one finished by the middle part of next week.

Anatomy and Physiology:
Today was the first day for the rat lab. We spent most of the periods going over introductory information. There was some time at the end of class to begin the "Introduction" unit. Don't forget that everything you need to complete the rat activities (with the exception of the dissection manuals) is available on the course website. This includes answer keys. Also, don't forget to check out the introductory podcast for this unit. We will be working on the rats for the next several weeks.

Biology:
We began our unit covering taxonomy and classification by discussing why classification is important in biology. We also gave some examples of things that are classified by people on a daily basis. There was time at the end of the period to begin working on tomorrow's assignment, which is to read textbook section 17.1. The reading strategy is students' choice.

Update on Discovery

The crews of Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station have both been busy since Sunday's launch. Discovery's primary mission is to deliver the last set of solar panels to the space station. This will increase the amount of power available up there for scientific experiments. They are about halfway through their two-week mission, and here's a short recap of what's been going on:

Sunday evening: launch

Monday: One of the biggest jobs on Monday was to use specialized cameras mounted on the shuttle's robotic arm to inspect the exterior of the shuttle for any damage that was sustained during launch.

Tuesday: On Tuesday Discovery docked with the International Space Station. The two crews exchanged personnel...one astronaut will be leaving the ISS after several months in orbit and returning to earth aboard Discovery. One member of Discovery's crew will stay aboard the ISS when Discovery departs. (It's like a space version of "Red Rover".)

Wednesday: The shuttle and space station worked together to unload a "truss" which will support the new solar panels.

Thursday: Two astronauts performed a 6-hour spacewalk to install the truss that was deployed on Wednesday.

Friday: The new solar wings were deployed on Friday. They will be installed during later spacewalks.

Saturday: A second spacewalk, this time lasting 6.5 hours. The objectives of this one appeared to be some work in preparation for later missions to the ISS.

Sunday: The shuttle and space station performed a maneuver today that slowed down their combined orbit slightly. This was important to allow them to "dodge" a 4-inch piece of space debris. The third and final scheduled spacewalk will happen tomorrow.

NASA's website has a ton of great information and pictures of this (and other) missions. It's definitely worth taking some time to check it out. Also, if you're really interested in this stuff, there's a 45 minute animated video on YouTube that details the entire mission.

That voice you keep hearing...

One of my biggest accomplishments over spring break was to finish up a class I've been taking called "Podcasting in the Classroom." There were basically two parts to it. In the first part, we looked at what podcasts are (duh) and how they can be used as a part of our daily "stuff" of teaching. Pretty basic, but I found a ton of really cool science podcasts that I'll be sharing with you as time goes on.

The second part was a lot of fun. It focused around creating, editing, and publishing a podcast that could be used in class. For my project, I created a 9 minute podcast to introduce the rat unit to my anatomy classes. You can find it under the "Rat" section of the class website, or direct link to it here. I don't think it turned out too bad...

This is Bizarre...

No comment...

And so it ends...

Here we are...Sunday night. Spring Break has come and gone for another year, and I'm setting here trying to get mentally prepared to get back into the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go back. Spring is definitely my favorite time of the school year, and there's a lot of really cool stuff going on between now and the end of the year. Not to mention that we've got some AWESOME stuff planned for class during the last quarter. But it still takes me some time to mentally get out of the "break" frame of mind and back into the "school" frame.

I meant for this to be a "how I spent my break" magnum post, but instead I think I'll give you the details with a series of smaller posts over the next few days. There's a lot to cover...