CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
$6 million CU-Boulder instrument to fly on Sept. 6 NASA mission to moon
Aug 29th
A $6 million University of Colorado Boulder instrument designed to study the behavior of lunar dust will be riding on a NASA mission to the moon now slated for launch on Friday, Sept. 6, from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The mission, known as the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, will orbit the moon to better understand its tenuous atmosphere and whether dust particles are being lofted high off its surface. The $280 million LADEE mission, designed, developed, integrated and tested at NASA’s AMES Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., will take about a month to reach the moon and another month to enter the proper elliptical orbit and to commission the instruments. A 100-day science effort will follow.
“We are ready and excited for launch,” said CU-Boulder physics Professor Mihaly Horanyi of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, principal investigator for the Lunar Dust Experiment, or LDEX. “We think our instrument can help answer some important questions related to the presence and transport of dust in the lunar atmosphere.”
One unanswered question since the days of the Apollo program is why astronauts saw a pre-sunrise glow above the lunar horizon, said Horanyi, who directs LASP’s Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies. “The glow has been suggested to be caused by dust particles that were electrically charged by solar ultraviolet light, causing them to lift off from the moon’s surface.”
About the size of a small toaster oven, the LDEX instrument will be able to chart the existence, size and individual velocities of tiny dust particles as small as 0.6 microns in diameter. For comparison, a standard sheet of paper is about 100 microns thick. A collision between a dust particle and a hemisphere-shaped target on LDEX generates a unique electrical signal inside the instrument to allow scientists to detect individual particles, said Horanyi.
Horanyi said clouds of dust specks seemingly observed by astronauts hovering over the moon likely weren’t clouds at all. “If you watch a cement truck on the highway, it seems to be carrying a dust cloud along with it. But what is actually happening is that every speck of dirt coming off the truck is falling onto the highway,” he said.
“The specks have very short lifespans, and the cloud that appears to surround the truck is actually a continual rain of dust from the vehicle to the pavement,” he said. “Similarly, the smallest lunar dust particles could also continually lift off and fall back onto the surface.”
Knowing more about the behavior of lunar dust could be of use for future human expeditions to the moon, including potential colonization efforts. Learning more about lunar dust also might help scientists better understand dust on other moons in the solar system — like Phobos and Deimos that orbit Mars – that have been suggested by some as possible initial landing posts for crewed missions headed to the Red Planet.
LADEE also is carrying an ultraviolet and visible light spectrometer, a neutral mass spectrometer and a lunar laser communications demonstration.
Astronauts walking on the moon sank into a shallow layer of dust, thought to be a product of millions of years of meteoric and interstellar particle bombardment, he said. “The beauty of physics is that we believe the same processes occur throughout the universe,” he said. “What we see on the moon may well apply to Mercury, Phobos, Deimos or asteroids, which all have very tenuous atmospheres.”
When the LADEE spacecraft is inserted into an elliptical orbit, its closest approach will be less than 20 miles from the lunar surface. “The closer we can get to the surface the better,” he said.
“This is a very exciting mission that will answer an almost 50-year-old question in space science,” said CU-Boulder graduate student Jamey Szalay, who is writing data analysis software for the mission that will allow the team to analyze science results immediately after data is received from the spacecraft. “Given the convenient duration of the mission and promising science return, I’m very fortunate to be a part of the science team — it’s a dream project for any graduate student in space sciences to be working on.”
Horanyi also is the principal investigator on CU-Boulder’s Student Dust Counter, a simpler instrument than LDEX flying on NASA’s New Horizons mission that was launched in 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a massive region beyond the planets containing icy objects left over from the formation of the solar system. The Student Dust Counter was designed, built, tested and operated entirely by students, primarily undergraduates, at LASP and has been collecting data for the past seven years. New Horizons is now more than 2.5 billion miles from Earth and will arrive at Pluto in two years.
CU-Boulder researcher David James, who now is working on LDEX, got his start helping to build SDC. “Although I was a student in a lab back then, it was almost like working in the private sector,” said James, who eventually received his doctorate from CU-Boulder. “We were building an instrument that was going to Pluto. It was an amazing experience with huge responsibilities, it pushed us to do our best, and it definitely shaped who I am today.”
The LDEX instrument, as well as many previous LASP instruments launched into space since the 1970s, will carry a laser engraving of the CU mascot, Ralphie the Buffalo, as well as the names of all university people who participated in the project, from students and scientists to engineers and administrative support staff. “It’s like adding a touch of history to the mission, perhaps for good luck and pride,” said Horanyi. “After all, this is the University of Colorado.”
-CU-
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Buff Classic “epic” bike ride aiming higher
Aug 27th
higher for CU-Boulder scholarships Sept. 8
If the distance and difficulty of Colorado’s many organized bicycling events is any indication, a flat, 100-mile bicycle ride is not, for many riders, quite tough enough.
That’s one reason the 11th annual Buffalo Bicycle Classic’s longest route will go farther and climb higher than any of the event’s courses so far. The “Buff Epic” will span 110 miles and ascend a total of 6,250 feet. It retraces much of the most mountainous section of Stage 6 of the 2012 USA Pro Cycling Challenge.
The Elevations Credit Union Buffalo Bicycle Classic is scheduled for Sept. 8 and is expected to draw more than 2,000 participants. The event raises scholarship funds for high-performing University of Colorado Boulder students who qualify for financial aid.
The epic century ride will start on campus, ascend Boulder Canyon to Nederland, follow the Peak to Peak Highway past Ward, descend St. Vrain Canyon to Lyons, head north to Carter Lake and turn south to return to Boulder.
During the Buff Epic, Boulder Canyon’s westbound lane will be closed to traffic from 7 a.m. to approximately 9:30 a.m. Male and female riders in five age groups will compete for polka-dotted jerseys, signifying their climbing prowess. They will be judged by their times on the ascent of a 13.5-mile section from the base of Boulder Canyon to Barker Reservoir.
Times will be measured by individual riders’ GPS devices and recorded on Strava.com. While there is the canyon competition, ride organizers emphasize that the Buffalo Bicycle Classic is not a race but a ride for those of all strength and ability levels.
The 2013 Buffalo Bicycle Classic includes its traditional courses that cater to all cycling abilities: These courses include the 70-mile, 50-mile, 35-mile and 14-mile Little Buff family-friendly community ride.
“The Buffalo Bicycle Classic accommodates riders of every ability,” said Todd Gleeson, former dean of the CU-Boulder College of Arts and Sciences and one of the ride’s founders. Gleeson, a professor of integrative physiology, directs CU-Boulder’s new Health Professions Residential Academic Program.
“The Buffalo Bicycle Classic combines two things close to our hearts: access to higher education and the love of bicycling,” Gleeson said. “An event that combines both improves town-gown relations, heightens riders’ physical fitness and, most importantly, lowers one barrier to higher education.”
Since 2003, the Buffalo Bicycle Classic has raised more than $1.8 million for scholarships and funded about 800 scholarships.
Chris Kerns, who graduated cum laude in anthropology from CU-Boulder in 2005, is one of those scholarship recipients. He is now finishing a Ph.D. in archaeology at the University of Southampton, England, and figures he’s one of a relative few scholarship recipients who have completed a Buff Bike Classic century ride.
“Any opportunity to support deserving students in their academic endeavors is absolutely worth it. Great young minds can achieve amazing things as long as they get the support necessary to further their goals,” Kerns said. “The scholarship from the Buffalo Bicycle Classic is one way in which to support and inspire students to succeed and accomplish amazing things.”
Scholarship recipients are selected based on grade-point average and financial need. They cannot apply for the scholarship and don’t know they are being considered until they learn they have won. All net proceeds go toward scholarships, and a portion of the registration fee is tax-deductible.
For more information on the Buffalo Bicycle Classic visit http://www.buffalobicycleclassic.com. To see a 2012 CU Foundation video of scholarship recipients discussing what the scholarship meant to them visit http://youtu.be/Pj1l_ihaA8w.
-CU-
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CU study: Conservation efforts might encourage some to hunt lions
Aug 26th
Further, some conservation initiatives including those designed to save lions from being hunted have either failed to work or in some cases appear to have incited Maasai to hunt more lions as a form of political protest, the researchers report.
Such nuances are important, because it’s harder to control the hunting of lions unless society knows precisely why lions are hunted, the researchers contend.
Many populations of Panthera leo—African lions—are falling, and the species is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ Red List.
Lion hunting is outlawed in Kenya and in Tanzania is limited to mostly tourists hunting with permits, unless the hunt is to eliminate a lion in defense of life or livestock. Still, lion hunting regularly occurs in both countries, usually without the hunters’ following the law.
“We saw an inaccurate representation of the exact reasons for why Maasai hunt lions, and we had a lot of ethnographic background to correct that,” said Mara J. Goldman, the assistant professor of geography at CU-Boulder who led the study.
Goldman collaborated with Joana Roque de Pinho, a postdoctoral researcher at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Sociais e Politicas (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal), and Jennifer Perry, a CU-Boulder geography alumna now studying law at the university.
Goldman and her fellow researchers conducted 246 in-depth interviews of Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai between 2004 and 2008. They found that Maasai hunt lions for multiple overlapping reasons, some relating to predation on livestock and some not.
In some cases, Maasai said they hunted lions to prevent the potential killing of livestock, especially by lions that had killed livestock before, rather than just as retaliation.
And while Maasai still celebrate successful lion hunts and the prowess of the warriors who hunt, that cultural tradition can be less of a motivation to hunt than political discontent.
In Kenya, for instance, conservation programs aim to curb Maasai lion hunting by financially compensating Maasai for livestock killed by lions. In Tanzania, suggestions have been made by some to start such ‘compensation’ programs, but the Maasai themselves explain why this strategy has limitations:
“We cannot agree (to compensation) because we do not have cattle to be killed every day,” an elder Maasai told the researchers. “If they pay money today, then tomorrow, they will pay every day because the lion will keep coming back to eat cattle until all the cattle are gone. And then what will we do with the money?”
These sentiments were expressed in a village bordering the Manyara Ranch, a Tanzanian conservation trust on which hunting is prohibited but over which Maasai from neighboring villages are meant to share governance. In the beginning, the elders kept the warriors from hunting lions, the researchers found.
But after Maasai representation in ranch governance was diminished, the Maasai felt disenfranchised. Lion hunting increased in frequency and severity and was no longer discouraged by elders, the researchers said.
“We have no reason to follow the rules,” one elder told the researchers.
Goldman researches human-environment relations with the Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai, one of the most recognizable ethnic groups in Africa, known for their distinctive, colorful dress and social customs, and most recently for their lion-hunting practices.
Although the primary motivations for lion hunting differed somewhat between Tanzania and Kenya, the researchers emphasize that Maasai have multiple, overlapping reasons to hunt lions: to reaffirm the protective role of young warriors, to help select brave leaders among warrior groups, to allow individual warriors to gain prestige, to eliminate lions that prey on livestock and to prevent lions from becoming habituated to eating livestock and sometimes harming people.
The multiple reasons illustrate the limitations of explaining Maasai lion hunting “as either a cultural manhood ritual or a retaliatory act,” the researchers write.
“Participatory conservation interventions that respect Maasai knowledge and promote full engagement with management processes are likely to have far better success in persuading Maasai to change or moderate such behaviors themselves,” the research team states, adding that “lion conservation projects rarely address such complex politics.”
Goldman, also a faculty research associate at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science, is the first author on the study that was recently published online in the journal Oryx and is scheduled to appear in the journal’s October print edition. The study is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0030605312000907.
For more on this story, see Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine.
-CU-