Tag Archives: US National Aeronautics and Aerospace Administration

EuroScience Open Forum in Toulouse, France from July 9 to July 14, 2018

A March 22, 2018 EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2018 announcement (received via email) trumpets some of the latest news for this event being held July 9 to July 14, 2018 in Toulouse, France. (Located in the south in the region known as the Occitanie, it’s the fourth largest city in France. Toulouse is situated on the River Garonne. See more in its Wikipedia entry.) Here’s the latest from the announcement,

ESOF 2018 Plenary Sessions

Top speakers and hot topics confirmed for the Plenary Sessions at ESOF 2018

Lorna Hughes, Professor at the University of Glasgow, Chair of the Europeana Research Advisory Board, will give a plenary keynote on “Digital humanities”. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University, famous for his PLoS Medicine paper on “Why most Published Research Findings are False”, will talk about “Reproducibility”. A third plenary will involve Marìa Teresa Ruiz, a Chilean astronomer and the 2017 L’Oreal UNESCO award for Women in Science: she will talk about exoplanets.

 

ESOF under the spotlights

French President’s high patronage: ESOF is at the top of the institutional agendas in 2018.

“Sharing science”. But also putting science at the highest level making it a real political and societal issue in a changing world. ESOF 2018 has officially received the “High Patronage” from the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron. ESOF 2018 has also been listed by the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs among the 27 priority events for France.

A constellation of satellites around the ESOF planet!

Second focus on Satellite events:
4th GEO Blue Planet Symposium organised 4-6 July by Mercator Ocean.
ECSJ 2018, 5th European Conference of Science Journalists, co-organised by the French Association of Science Journalists in the News Press (AJSPI) and the Union of European Science Journalists’ Associations (EUSJA) on 8 July.
– Esprit de Découvertes (Discovery spirit) organised by the Académie des Sciences, Inscriptions et Belles Lettres de Toulouse on 8 July.

More Satellite events to come! Don’t forget to stay long enough in order to participate in these focused Satellite Events and … to discover the city.

The programme for ESOF 2018 can be found here.

Science meets poetry

As has become usual, there is a European City of Science event being held in Toulouse in concert (more or less) with and in celebration of the ESOF event. The City of Science event is being held from July 7 – July 16, 2018.

Organizers have not announced much in the way of programming for the City of Science other than a ‘Science meets Poetry’ meeting,

A unique feature of ESOF is the Science meets Poetry day, which is held at every Forum and brings poets and scientists together.

Indeed, there is today a real artistic movement of poets connected with ESOF. Famous participants from earlier meetings include contributors such as the late Seamus Heaney, Roald Hoffmann [sic] Jean-Pierre Luminet and Prince Henrik of Denmark, but many young and aspiring poets are also involved.

The meeting is in two parts:

  • lectures on subjects involving science with poetry
  • a poster session for contributed poems

There are competitions associated with the event and every Science meets Poetry day gives rise to the publication of Proceedings in book form.

In Toulouse, the event will be staged by EuroScience in collaboration with the Académie des Jeux Floraux of Toulouse, the Société des Poètes Français and the European Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters, under patronage of UNESCO. The full programme will be announced later, but includes such themes as a celebration of the number 7 in honour of the seven Troubadours of Toulouse, who held the first Jeux Floraux in the year 1323, Space Travel and the first poets and scientists who wrote about it (including Cyrano de Bergerac and Johannes Kepler), from Metrodorus and Diophantes of Alexandria to Fermat’s Last Theorem, the Poetry of Ecology, Lafayette’s ship the Hermione seen from America and many other thought-provoking subjects.

The meeting will be held in the Hôtel d’Assézat, one of the finest old buildings of the ancient city of Toulouse.

Exceptionally, it will be open to registered participants from ESOF and also to some members of the public within the limits of available space.

Tentative Programme for the Science meets Poetry day on the 12th of July 2018

(some Speakers are still to be confirmed)

  • 09:00 – 09:30 A welcome for the poets : The legendary Troubadours of Toulouse and the poetry of the number 7 (Philippe Dazet-Brun, Académie des Jeux Floraux)
  • 09:30 – 10:00 The science and the poetry of violets from Toulouse (Marie-Thérèse Esquerré-Tugayé  Laboratoire de Recherche en Sciences Végétales, Université Toulouse III-CNRS)
  • 10:00 –10:30  The true Cyrano de Bergerac, gascon poet, and his celebrated travels to the Moon (Jean-Charles Dorge, Société des Poètes Français)
  • 10:30 – 11:00  Coffee Break (with poems as posters)
  • 11:00 – 11:30 Kepler the author and the imaginary travels of the famous astronomer to the Moon. (Uli Rothfuss, die Kogge International Society of German-language authors )
  • 11:30 – 12:00  Spoutnik and Space in Russian Literature (Alla-Valeria Mikhalevitch, Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences  Saint-Petersburg)
  • 12:00 – 12:30  Poems for the planet Mars (James Philip Kotsybar, the ‘Bard of Mars’, California and NASA USA)
  • 12:30 – 14:00  Lunch and meetings of the Juries of poetry competitions
  • 14:00 – 14:30  The voyage of the Hermione and « Lafayette, here we come ! » seen by an American poet (Nick Norwood, University of Columbus Ohio)
  • 14:30 –  15:00 Alexandria, Toulouse and Oxford : the poem rendered by Eutrope and Fermat’s Last Theorem (Chaunes [Jean-Patrick Connerade], European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, UNESCO)
  • 15:00 –15:30  How biology is celebrated in contemporary poetry (Assumpcio Forcada, biologist and poet from Barcelona)
  • 15:30 – 16:00  A book of poems around ecology : a central subject in modern poetry (Sam Illingworth, Metropolitan University of Manchester)
  • 16:00 – 16:30  Coffee break (with poems as posters)
  • 16:30 – 17:00 Toulouse and Europe : poetry at the crossroads of European Languages (Stefka Hrusanova (Bulgarian Academy and Linguaggi-Di-Versi)
  • 17:00 – 17:30 Round Table : seven poets from Toulouse give their views on the theme : Languages, invisible frontiers within both science and poetry
  • 17:30 – 18:00 The winners of the poetry competitions are announced
  • 18:00 – 18:15 Chaunes. Closing remarks

I’m fascinated as in all the years I’ve covered the European City of Science events I’ve never before tripped across a ‘Science meets Poetry’ meeting. Sadly, there’s no contact information for those organizers. However, you can sign up for a newsletter and there are contacts for the larger event, European City of Science or as they are calling it in Toulouse, the Science in the City Festival,

Contact

Camille Rossignol (Toulouse Métropole)

camille.rossignol@toulouse-metropole.fr

+33 (0)5 36 25 27 83

François Lafont (ESOF 2018 / So Toulouse)

francois.lafont@toulouse2018.esof.eu

+33 (0)5 61 14 58 47

Travel grants for media types

One last note and this is for journalists. It’s still possible to apply for a travel grant, which helps ease but not remove the pain of travel expenses. From the ESOF 2018 Media Travel Grants webpage,

ESOF 2018 – ECSJ 2018 Travel Grants

The 5th European Conference of Science Journalists (ECSJ2018) is offering 50 travel + accommodation grants of up to 400€ to international journalists interested in attending ECSJ and ESOF.

We are looking for active professional journalists who cover science or science policy regularly (not necessarily exclusively), with an interest in reflecting on their professional practices and ethics. Applicants can be freelancers or staff, and can work for print, web, or broadcast media.

More information

ESOF 2018 Nature Travel Grants

Springer Nature is a leading research, educational and professional publisher, providing quality content to its communities through a range of innovative platforms, products and services and is home of trusted brands including Nature Research.

Nature Research has supported ESOF since its very first meeting in 2004 and is funding the Nature Travel Grant Scheme for journalists to attend ESOF2018 with the aim of increasing the impact of ESOF. The Nature Travel Grant Scheme offers a lump sum of £400 for journalists based in Europe and £800 for journalists based outside of Europe, to help cover the costs of travel and accommodation to attend ESOF2018.

More information

Good luck!

(My previous posting about this ESOF 2018 was Sept. 4, 2017 [scroll down about 50% of the way] should you be curious.)

The US National Aeronautics and Aerospace Administration’s outreach: an introductory nanotechnology video and a talk in Washington, DC

The US National Aeronautics and Aerospace Administration or NASA, as it’s popularly known, has released a Nanotechnology video as part of its NASA Edge series of videos. As it runs for approximately 29 mins. 31 secs. (I won’t be embedding it here where I usually draw the line at approximately 5 mins. running time.)

It is a good introductory video aimed at people who are interested in space exploration and nanotechnology but not inclined to listen to much scientific detail. There is a transcript if you want to get a sense of how much information is needed to watch this program with enjoyment,

CHRIS: Welcome to NASA EDGE

FRANKLIN:  An inside and outside look…

BLAIR:  …at all things NASA.

CHRIS: On today’s show we’re going to be talking about nanotechnology.

BLAIR:  Which is technology that’s really small or as I like to say, co-host sized technology.

FRANKLIN: I think it’s a little bit smaller than cohost.  Maybe like the G.I. Joe with kung fu grip or maybe Antman size small.

BLAIR:  Alright, Antman I’ll buy but it’s probably even smaller than that, probably deeply embedded in wearables for Antman.

CHRIS: On today’s show, we going to look at nano sensors, nano wires, nano tubes, and composite over wrapped [sic] pressure vessels.

FRANKLIN: Or COPV’s

BLAIR: Which is really what’s interesting to me about the technology, it’s not a single technology with a single use.  It’s a technology that’s being applied all across industry in a lot of different areas and even across NASA.

FRANKLIN: And speaking of COPV’s, we are going to have Mia Siochi on the show today and she’s going to talk to us about how NASA is using nanotechnology in some upcoming tests.

CHRIS: But first up, I had a chance to talk with Steve Gaddis, who is going to give us the broad picture of nanotechnology.

CHRIS: We are here with Steve Gaddis the manager for the Game Changing Development program office. Steve, how are you doing?

STEVE: Doing good.

CHRIS: Steve, we had this whole technology campaign where the theme is Technology Drives Exploration.

STEVE: Absolutely, and I believe it.

CHRIS: What’s that mean Technology Drives Exploration?

STEVE: It means if you want to do these cool things that we haven’t done before, we have to develop the technologies to go do them. We can’t simply just keep doing what we’ve already done in the past, right? We have done some cool things but we want new missions. We want to go farther than we’ve been. We want to drill down. We want to bring things back. So, we need these new technologies.

CHRIS: Now with Game Changing you’re sort of a subset of the Space Technology Mission directorate at NASA headquarters.

STEVE: Right.

CHRIS:  What’s the focus on Game Changing as opposed to other technology subprograms?

STEVE:  We’re the disruptive program, we’re the DARPA like program at out of the nine.  However, all the programs, they’re looking for revolutionary and incremental developments in technology.  Our associate administrator really wants us to take some risk. He expects a certain amount of failure in the activities that were pursuing; the high pay off, high-risk type activities.  So he’d like to see the risk take place with us instead of maybe some of our sister programs where we’re demonstrating on orbit or we’re demonstrating on the International Space Station or we’re demonstrating on a ride with another government agency or the commercial crew type folks.

MEYYA: Nano sensors are a product of nanoscience and nanotechnology. When materials go to that small scale their properties are fundamentally different from bulk materials. So scientists all around the world have been working very hard trying to take advantage of this difference in properties between the bulk scale and the nano scale. And trying to make useful things, which are devices, systems, architectures, and materials for a wide variety of applications; touching upon every economic sector, which is electronics, computing, materials manufacturing, health, medicine, national security, transportation, energy storage, and I don’t want to leave out space exploration.

BLAIR: That’s a lot of stuff anyway. You mentioned space exploration, so I’m wondering; how are nanosensors being used by NASA?

MEYYA: The nanosensors are being developed to replace bulky instruments NASA has been using. No matter what you want to measure, whether you want to measure a composition of gas or vapor or if you want to measure radiation, historically we have always taken bulky instruments. Remember every pound of anything that we lift to near earth orbit it costs us about $10,000 a pound. The same 1-pound of anything would cost roughly about $100,000 a pound for Mars or other missions. So we have an incentive actually to miniaturize the size of the payload. So that’s why we want to move from bulky instruments to sensors. That’s one reason. The second reason is no matter where we go, okay, we don’t have utility companies sitting there waiting for us.  We have to generate our own power and we have to be very wise how we use that power.  The sensors not only are they small in size but they also consume very low power. That’s why over the last decade or so we’ve been working on developing nano-based chemical sensors, biosensors and radiation sensors.

CHRIS: When you are looking at these biosensors, are we looking primarily for crew health safety? What would they be used for?

JESSICA: What are the applications? We’ve developed them for crew health and diagnostic purposes. That’s our most recent project that we worked with the Game Changing Technology office on.  For that project, we developed this sensor to look at a variety of different protein biomarkers for cardiac health. When you’re in microgravity, there’s a lot of strain that’s placed on the heart, so, to monitor the health of the heart for our astronaut crew is critical.  That is the most recent technology we developed for them. We’ve also worked on this sensor looking at microbial contaminants in the water supply.  This is an environmental application for NASA to make sure that the water that the astronauts are drinking is actually safe to drink.

The scientists featured on the video podcast are:

Featuring:

Game Changing Nanotechnology
– Steve Gaddis
– Meyya Meyyappan
– Jim Gaier
– Azlin Biaggi​
– Tiffany Williams
– John Thesken
– Mia Siochi

Enjoy!

The second outreach project is billed as a NASA event but it’s more of a science event being hosted by the Wilson Center (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) Science and Technology Innovation Program. From the July 1, 2015 Wilson Center announcement,

NASA’s New Horizons: Innovation, Collaboration and Accomplishment in Science and Technology

With the NASA New Horizons spacecraft on its final approach to its primary target – the icy dwarf planet Pluto – now is the perfect time to reflect on some of the knowledge we’ve already gained from the mission, and to anticipate the new discoveries that are waiting to be made!

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to a series of short talks inspired by the mission. These talks will cover a number of topics including:

NASA’s and New Horizon’s impact within the world of research

How the Mendeley product suite aims to make life easier for researchers

The importance of open science and the impact it has on major scientific achievements

How a culture of ‘hacking’ can help to foster innovation and creativity

The benefits of making data available for public usage and its societal impact

Mendeley loves science. We help researchers to manage their reference materials, collaborate with their colleagues and discover new research. We’re excited about the possibilities that our work can help to unlock and we want to talk to other people who are excited about the same things.

Logistics are two tiered, first there are the talks and then are the refreshments,

Wednesday, July 15th, 2015
4:00pm – 6:00pm

6th Floor Board Room

Wilson Center
Ronald Reagan Building and
International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania, Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20004

Phone: 202.691.4000

Followed by drinks and conversation at The Laughing Man Tavern, 1306 G St NW, Washington, DC 20005 from 6:30pm to 9:30pm.

Complimentary drinks will be served from 6:30 until 7:30. Each ticket holder will also receive drinks tickets for later use. This event is on a first come, first served basis. All guests must be 21 years of age or older.

You can find more information about the event here and you can register here.  As for Mendeley, free reference manager and academic social network, it seems to be a sponsor for this event and you can find out more about the company here.