Astronomy in Canada, May - Aug 2005

These are notices to Astronomy conventions, workshops and starparties which are scheduled to take place in Canada between May to August from the JPL Space calendar .

May 30-Jun 10 - Workshop: Astrobiology and the Origins of Life, Hamilton, Canada
Jun 05-08 - Planetary and Terrestrial Mining Sciences Symposium (PTMSS), Sudbury, Canada
Jun 12-17 - Conference: Solar Wind 11 / SOHO 16 - Connecting Sun and Heliosphere, Whistler, Canada
Jul 01-03 - Island Star Party 2005, Vancouver Island, Canada
Jul 08-10 -[May 25] Gateway to the Universe Star Party, Powassan, Ontario, Canada
Jul 08-10 -[May 26] Astro Festival, Mont-Megantic National Park, Canada
Jul 11-15 - Conference: Ultra-Relativistic Jets in Astrophysics, Banff, Canada
Jul 29-31 - 25th Annual Telescope Making Contest (CAFTA), St-Timothee, Canada
Jul 30-Aug 07- 22nd Annual Mount Kobau Star Party, near Osoyoos, Canada
Aug 02-06 - Conference: Neutron Stars at the Crossroads of Fundamental Physics, Vancouver, Canada
Aug 04-07 - Saskatchewan Summer Star Party, Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Canada
Aug 04-07 - Starfest 2005, Mount Forest, Canada
Aug 29-31 - 37th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Systems and Applications Meeting, Vancouver, Canada

Lancements projetés, mai - août 2005 en français

Lancements projetés pour le prochain quart pour Le Tricorder, le Fanzine de l'USS Magellan, du JPL Space Calendar et du Spaceflight Now Tracking Station. Ce sont les lancements projetés pour mai à août comme à 27/05/05

Mai 2005
Mai 27 - Egyptsat 1/ Saudisat 3/Saudicomsat 3-7/ AKS 1 & 2/N-Cube 1 Dnepr 1
May 31 - Foton M-2/Fotino Soyuz U
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Juin 2005
Juin ?? - Intelsat Americas 8 Zenit 3SL
Juin ?? - Compass 2 Shtil-N
Juin ?? - GPS 2RM F-1 Delta 2
Juin 17 - Progress M-53 Soyuz U (International Space Station 18P)
Juin 21 -[Mai 24] Cosmos 1 Volna (Solar Sail Mission)
Juin 21 -[Mai 23] Spaceway 2/ Telcom 2 Ariane 5ECA
Juin 23 - GOES-N Delta 4M
Juin 24 - Express AM-3 Proton K
Juin 26 -[Mai 23] Astro E-2/Cute 1.7 M-V
Juin 30 - Monitor E N1 Rokot KM
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Juillet 2005
Juillet ?? - Yamal 203/204 Proton K
Juillet ?? - FSW-21 CZ-2D (China)
Juillet ?? - STP R-1 Minotaur
Juillet ?? - TacSat 1/Celestis 5 Falcon 1 (Inaugural Test )
Juillet ?? - Resurs-DK1 N1 Soyuz U
Juillet ?? - Syracuse 3-A/ Galaxy 15 Ariane 5GS
Juillet 06 - Asteroid 9777 Enterprise Closest Approach To Earth (0.824 AU)
Juillet 10 - NROL-20 (B-26) Titan 4B (Final launch of the Titan 4B)
Juillet 10 - Galaxy 14 Soyuz FG-Fregat
Juillet 13 -[Mai 27] STS-114 "Return To Flight" , Space Shuttle Discovery, PCSat 2 (International Space Station LF-1)
Juillet 15 - TWINS-A Pegasus XL
Juillet 22 -[Mai 27] Cloudsat/ Calipso Delta 2
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Août 2005
Août ?? - Measat 3 Proton K
Août ?? - Inmarsat 4 F-2 Zenit 3SL
Août ?? - OICETS/INDEX Dnepr 1
Août ?? - Resurs O1 Zenit 2
Août ?? - Resurs F2 Soyuz U
Août ?? - Meteor-M-N1 Tsyklon 3
Août ?? - Topsat/ China DMC/ SSETI-Express/Mozhayets 5/N-Cube 2/Sinah 1 Cosmos 3M
Août 10 -[Mai 27] Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Atlas V
Août 23 -[Mai 23] Insat 4-A/ MSG-2 Ariane 5GS
Août 24 - Progress M-54 Soyuz FG (International Space Station 19P)
Août 30 -[Mai 27] NROL-22 Delta 4 Medium

Innovation Canada, Female achievers

Following the recent International Womens Day, this Issue (#15 March/April 2005) of Innovation Canada, the high quality electronic magazine of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, available in English or en français focusses on women innovators in Canadian Science.

"My career as an inventor" By Margaret Atwood - Guest writer

"Measuring the Success of Research" By Heather Munroe-Blum, McGill University - Inside Innovation article

"Fuelling Around" Asha Suppiah - Young Innovator of Hydrogen fuel cells.

"Location! Location! Location!" University of Calgary - Perfecting the science behind global positioning systems.

"Small World" McMaster University - Studying the smallest of sub-atomic particles

"All in the Genes" Toronto Centre for Phenogenomics - Mouse genes and how they can find lifesaving cures

"Wonder Weed" Wilfrid Laurier University - Helping cancer patients by mimicing marijuana

"Sea-ing is Believing" University of Victoria - Traveling to the deepest reaches of the ocean

"Canadian Women Pioneers" Special
- A series of exceptional women in science over the last several hundred years, trailblazers who broke new ground and paved the way for future generations.

Quebec Integrated Health Research Network - A new integrated electronic health record system.

"Superstars of Innovation" Writing Competition

NEXT ISSUE
In its May issue, InnovationCanada.ca will "launch" you into orbit. Find out how space research is leading to innovation that improves our lives.

Subscribe to a publication summary newsletter in English or français.

Chandra falls foul of peer review

The grinding wheels of peer review finally seem to have come around to a decision on the work of immunologist Ranjit Chandra and his 2001 paper which claimed a specific combination of vitamins and minerals significantly improved seniors' ability to think and reason. The prestigious scientific journal Nutrition this month printed a retraction citing significant statistical errors in the study as well as his 1992 study published in The Lancet.

There was also concern that "Chandra failed to declare that he holds a patent on the tested supplement formula and has a financial stake in it because the supplement was licensed to Javaan Corporation, a company founded by his daughter, that sells the supplement," Meguid wrote in the retraction. Chandra, now living in India, did not respond to E-mails seeking comment.

The paper was done when Chandra was working at Memorial University in Newfoundland and there have been sugestions that the university should do something although they say it is not their role. Spokesperson Jack Strawbridge told The Scientist. "Our point has been, all along, that we have a responsibility to create conditions that allow research to happen, but we don't vet it directly; we don't say that any piece of research done by any particular researcher should or should not be published. That's the role of the peers and the journal editors..."

A Levitating Liquid Lunar telescope!

The Bush initiative says it wants to send men back to the Moon and Mars. The Moon is a controversial choice - many say we should go straight to Mars - but a group of scientists from the U.S. and Canada think the Moon's north pole could be the perfect place for a Deep-Field Infrared Observatory to rival the work done by Hubble using a technique pioneered in Canada.

Universe Today has an article about Dr. Roger Angel of the University of Arizona who is heading a study under a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant to put a Liquid Mirror Telescope (LMT) on the Moon.

It happens that the world experts on making spinning liquid mirror telescopes are all in Canada, so it was kind of essential that if we’re thinking of doing that on the moon that we bring them in,” Angel said. “Luckily, they have come in on their own ticket, so to speak, and are excited by the project.”

The Canadian members of the team are Emanno Borra, from Laval University in Quebec, who has been researching and building LMTs since the early 1980’s, and Paul Hickson, from University of British Columbia, who, with Borra’s help, built the 6 meter LMT in Vancouver. Other collaborators include Ki Ma at the University of Texas at Houston who is an expert on the cryogenic bearings, Warren Davison from the University of Arizona who is a mechanical engineering expert in telescopes, and graduate student Suresh Sivanandam.

The idea for supporting and spinning the mirror is pretty cool as well (if you'll forgive the pun!) using cryogenic levitation bearings, similar to those used on MagLev trains to get a frictionless motion by using a magnetic field. One of the advantages of siting this on the Moon is that it is so cold they could do this with very little electrical power.

News From NINT

The National Institute for Nanotechnology is maintaining its' position in the forefront of the international Nanotech research community with a new one-of-a-kind transmission electron microscope (TEM), a Hitachi HF 3300 TEM equipped with a cold field emission gun - the first instrument of its kind in the world. More info on the microscopes can be found here.

In other news from NINT, Dr. Hicham Fenniri continues to push the boundaries of nanotube self-assembly. His team of Visiting Fellow Dr. Jose Raez and PhD candidate Jesus Moralez was able to align organic nanotubes using simple drop flow methods - the first time this has ever been done.
This accomplishment is a huge boost for the field of molecular electronics - the development of electronic devices based on components consisting of individual molecules rather than the continuous materials found in today's semiconductor devices.

'Alignment is a critical issue for molecular electronics,' explains Dr. Fenniri. 'The challenge is not only to make an electronic device from molecules; it is to put the molecules together in a configuration that takes advantage of their properties. We've shown this can be done using a very simple tool, there's no need for complex and expensive methods. This is a quantum leap.'

New microchip uses less energy

ABC Science Online again ...

Canadian engineers say they have designed a microchip that uses analog, rather than digital, processing to save energy ... said to be 100 times more energy efficient than conventional chips ...

The University of Alberta researchers said the chip used analog processing, rather than conventional digital methods, to handle incoming transmissions. They said this needed fewer transistors and so consumed less power.

If successful, the chip could one day find use in mobile or communications devices as an error control decoder, translating voice and data transmissions.

You better watch out ...

This is a serious safety problem, but I can't help but think that it reminds me of a "Simpsons" episode! ABC Science Online recently ran the following story that took place in Region 14 ...

The festive season can be a dangerous time for kids keen to explore and taste new things, like Christmas trees A child who inhaled part of a Christmas tree that got stuck in his lung has made medical history, Canadian doctors say.

The doctors, who described the first case of 'Christmas tree aspiration', warned of what could happen at a time of year when children explore and taste new things. They reported the case in the current issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The two-and-a-half-old boy had repeated bouts of pneumonia starting from when he was 10 months old, a few months after his first Christmas. He hadn't choked and there was nothing in the family's medical history that pointed to lung disease.

When doctors at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, x-rayed and performed CT scans of the boy's chest, they found a lump at the outer edge of his right lung. When they operated, they found part of a branch from an evergreen tree wedged there, 3 centimetres long and 0.5 centimetres round. This had blocked off part of the lung, causing the repeated bouts of pneumonia. Once the blockage was removed, the child made a full recovery."

That reminds me of a funny story about how we got the tradition of the Angel on the top of the Christmas tree *COUGHCYNDIJO*

Better luck next year, Arrow and da Vinci!

*sigh* Looks like Feeney has thrown in the towel for this year at least! According to CBC ...

Brian Feeney, the pilot of the da Vinci Project, said some of the support people involved in the project are tied up because of Christmas holidays. The Toronto-based team plans to continuing tests at an old quarry in southern Ontario. Test flights are now set to begin in the Prairie town in January.

One can't help but think that perhaps with the imperative gone - of getting at least one shot in before SpaceShipOne took out the X Prize - Feeney has decided to take more time over his preperations.

He has to realise though that a lack of results is going to loose him whatever credibility he ever had. With the X Prize finished I don't see how he can rationalise continuing the veil of secrecy that he has always had thrown over the da Vinci project.

With their re-location from London, ON, still up in the air, Canadian Arrow - our other X prize entrant - might also be contemplating their future. Geoff Sheerin in the past has made veiled hints that he will have to move to Windsor, Barrie or Sarnia. I wonder how rules 7 & 8 of the new "America’s Space Prize" will affect that decision?

7) The contestant must be domiciled in the United States of America.
8) The contestant must have its principal place of business in the United States of America.

Could he be lured away from Canada altogether?