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+ - Poll: How much Astronomy were you taught in school?->

Submitted by Balrogg
Balrogg writes "I've been a lifelong amateur astronomer, and space enthusiast; in recent years, I've been doing increasing amounts of astronomy outreach. Wherever I setup my telescopes, I find that a majority of the people had NEVER looked through a telescope.

There's no reason in the world, you should go through school, never having looked through a telescope.

Every time I ask people about how much astronomy they covered during their schooling, they tell it was either: not covered at all, covered for a few days, or maybe for a single quarter. This includes people of ALL ages, but most disturbingly, people in their teens and twenties.

If students are fortunate enough to have a teacher like my wife, who actually knows (and likes) astronomy, they'll get a LOT of good information crammed into whatever brief time she's allotted to cover astronomy. But even as amazing a teacher as my wife is, that time is simply not sufficient anymore Within the subject of astronomy, there's too much that should be taught.

It has been my experience that ignorance of astronomy is at near epidemic proportions. It is my very firm conviction that EVERY student in this country (and planet, really) should be taught and experience astronomy during their school years. It needs to start earlier, around the 3rd or 4th grade, and be taught not just for one single quarter — but over the course of several years, integrated with Physics, Chemistry, Math, and History.

Carl Sagan once said that learning about astronomy is a humbling and character building experience; I can attest to that fact. Astronomy is a subject that inspires you to branch out to other scientific disciplines: geology, chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, math, etc. Neil deGrasse Tyson frequently talks about how NASAs Moon missions inspired a generation to dream about tomorrow — it certainly did for me. We need a return to this type of thinking, to inspire students and young adults to become engineers and scientists."
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+ - Help the OED Find a Lost Book

Submitted by imlepid
imlepid writes "The Oxford English Dictionary is currently undergoing a complete overhaul which includes a reexamination of the 300,000+ entries and citations for those entries. Understandably for a work witch is over 150 years old, some of the sources have become hard to find. One such example is a book titled "Meanderings of Memory" by Nightlark, which is cited 49 times in the OED, including for some rare words. The OED's editorial team has appealed to the public, 'Have you seen a copy of this book?'"

+ - Girl Receives Synthetic Trachea Made With Her Stem Cells->

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes "A toddler born without a trachea has received the first completely fabricated trachea that utilizes stem cells enabling her to live a normal life. Previously, related implants relied on a donor trachea that would act as a scaffold for the patient's stem cells. In this case, the scaffold is synthetic and made from nonabsorbable nanofibers, while the stem cells were harvested from the girl's bone marrow."
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+ - DEP Says Fracking Not to Blame for Flammable Water->

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes "The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection declared on Monday that fracking is not to blame for methane in water in Susquehanna County. Their 16-month investigation concluded the methane was naturally occurring, not from hydraulic fracturing wells nearby. Last year, the EPA declared flammable sink water in Dimock, Pennsylvania, was not contaminating, after it was made famous by the documentary film, "Gasland.""
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+ - Why iTunes is dying->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "As the iTunes Store celebrates the 10th anniversary of a very successful run, it may have fallen too far behind competing services to survive in the next 10 years. Currently, iTunes’ share of online music sales stands at 63%, its lowest figure since 2006 and a steep drop from its peak of 69% in 2010, according to market researchers at the NPD Group. And while Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go and all the other competitors keep signing up new customers, only rumors have emerged about an Apple streaming service, and they aren't very flattering.

Apple will reportedly use a streaming service to drive sales of songs on iTunes, and will use advertisements to help boost revenues even further. That may appease content providers, but consumers who can pay for unlimited access to Spotify's library without advertisements wouldn't even consider it.

By the time Apple does get its streaming service off the ground, customers will be too entrenched in competing services to be swayed by another that doesn't offer any advantage. As the concept of "owning" content becomes more outdated, so will iTunes."
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+ - Elon Musk hates 405 Freeway traffic, offers money to speed widening->

Submitted by S810
S810 writes "Elon Musk, one of the main people behind PayPal, Space Exploration Technologies and Tesla Motors, has paid $50,000 to help Los Angeles speed up construction of the 405 Freeway, making it better and says that he will pay more if needed.

From the article: Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." — Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne.

For those who aren't familiar with this issue, the 405 Freeway runs from the northern end of the San Fernando Valley all the way down to El Torro and runs by LAX. Residents are getting frustrated that this widening project is over budget and well over the anticipated timeframe that it was supposed to completed by."
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Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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