2006 Annual Coalition Directors Meeting

The Spring 2006 NASSMC Annual Coalition Directors Meeting will be held March 27-29 at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, VA. The event will feature presentations from the National Governor's Association, the U.S. Department of Education, the International Technology Education Association, the Business Round Table, and NASA.

This year's conference will overlap the Triangle Coalition's Capitol Hill Conference which will be held in the same hotel, March 29 through 31. Wednesday the 29th will be a joint session with the Triangle Coalition attendees.

NASSMC representatives may attend both conferences but must register separately for each. As in the past, NASSMC will cover travel expenses and lodging for the NASSMC Conference for one representative per coalition.

Look for detailed information to be posted online soon.

GrantSeeker Opportunities

The GrantSeeker page has been updated with information about opportunities from:

• National Security Agency (NSA)
• Waksman Foundation for Microbiology
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• American Association of University Women
• Mathematical Association of America
• The Fluor Foundation

Visit www.nassmc.org/grant_seeker/gsintro.html for details and deadlines.

Intelligent Design: A Hypothesis That's Not Testable

While discovery after discovery came in 2005 that further enhance understanding of the processes of evolution, advocates of intelligent design (I.D.) tried and failed to force I.D. to be recognized as a viable scientific alternative to evolution.

According to Don Kennedy, editor in chief of the Journal Science, intelligent design is "a hypothesis that's not testable and one of the important recognition factors for science and scientific ideas is the notion of testability, that you can go out and do an experiment and learn from it and change your idea. That's just not possible with a notion that's as much a belief in spirituality as intelligent design is."

In his ruling on Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Judge John E. Jones III said:

"The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

"Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator."

Read the LiveScience.com four-part special report: Evolution & Intelligent Design.

AAAS: Evolution on the Front Lines

2006 NASSMC Solicitations

Look for new program solicitations to be made available in 2006 for the Linking Leaders for Systemic Improvement Program, the NASA Explorer Schools (NES) Partnerships for Sustainability Program, and the NASSMC State Summits Implementation Program (NSSIP). Linking Leaders and NES Partnerships for Sustainability are funded in full by NASA; NSSIP is funded by both NASA and the U.S. Department of Education.

Getting to Know the Periodic Table of Elements: Fluorine, Neon, and Sodium

Fluorine
Etymology: From Latin and French fluere: flow or flux)

What it is: Fluorine is the most electronegative and reactive of all elements. It is a corrosive gas, which reacts with most organic and inorganic substances. Finely divided metals, glass, ceramics, carbon, and even water burn in fluorine with a bright flame.

How and when it was first isolated: Known in 1529, the element was only isolated in 1866.

Why it is important to your teeth: In very small amounts fluoride helps prevent dental cavities. However, the presence of fluorine in drinking water to the extent of 2 ppm may cause mottled tooth enamel in children acquiring their permanent teeth.

Good for your teeth but...: Elemental fluorine and the fluoride ion are highly toxic. The recommended maximum allowable concentration for a daily 8-hour time-weighted exposure is 1 ppm. And? Elemental fluorine has been studied as a rocket propellant.

Atomic Number: 9
Atomic Symbol: F
Atomic Mass: 19

Neon
Etymology: From the Greek neos: new

What it is: Discovered in 1898. Neon is a rare gaseous element present in the atmosphere to the extent of 1 part in 65,000 of air. It is obtained by liquefaction of air and separated from the other gases by fractional distillation. In a vacuum discharge tube, neon glows reddish orange. Of all the rare gases, the discharge of neon is the most intense at ordinary voltages and currents.

What it is used for: Although neon advertising signs account for the bulk of its use, neon also functions in high-voltage indicators, lightning arrestors, wave meter tubes, and TV tubes. Neon and helium are used in making gas lasers.

Why it makes a good refrigerant: It has over 40 times more refrigerating capacity per unit volume than liquid helium and more than three times that of liquid hydrogen. It is compact, inert, and is less expensive than helium when it meets refrigeration requirements.

Atomic Number: 10
Atomic Symbol: Ne
Atomic Mass: ~20

Sodium
Etymology: English, soda; Medieval Latin, sodanum: a headache remedy

What it is: Long recognized in compounds, sodium was first isolated in 1807 by electrolysis of caustic soda.

How it is obtained: Sodium is present in fair abundance in the sun and stars. The D lines of sodium are among the most prominent in the solar spectrum. Sodium is the fourth most abundant element on Earth, comprising about 2.6% of the Earth's crust; it is the most abundant of the alkali group of metals. It is now obtained commercially by the electrolysis of absolutely dry fused sodium chloride. This method is much cheaper than that of electrolyzing sodium hydroxide, as was used several years ago.

Please pass the salt: The most common compound is sodium chloride (table salt), but it occurs in many other minerals, such as soda niter, cryolite, amphibole, zeolite, etc. Beginning thousands of years ago and until about 200 years ago, salt was taxed, used as a form of currency, and the cause of more than one battle. Roman legionnaires were paid in salt - a salarium (hence, the word salary).

Atomic Number: 11
Atomic Symbol: Na
Atomic Mass: ~23

Of Interest...

+ Europe Launches Galileo Satellite: A new era in satellite navigation has begun with the launch of Giove-A. The 600kg spacecraft was lofted into orbit on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, at 1119 (0519GMT). Giove-A will demonstrate key technologies needed for Galileo, the satellite navigation system Europe hopes to deploy by 2010. The new network will give EU states guaranteed access to a space-borne precise timing and location service independent of the United States.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555298.stm

+ Cache of Dodo Bird Bones Found: Scientists said they likely have found a complete skeleton of the long-extinct Dodo bird. The Dodo was native to Mauritius when no humans lived there but its numbers rapidly dwindled after the arrival of Portuguese and Dutch sailors in the 1500s. The last recorded sighting of a live bird was in 1663. An international team of researchers said they found the bones of the bird on a sugar cane plantation on the island of Mauritius off the east coast of Madagascar, and presented their findings at the National Museum of Natural History in the Dutch city of Leiden.
www.livescience.com/animalworld/ap_051224_dodo.html

+ The Left Brain May View the World Through the Prism of Language: Our perception of colours can depend on whether we view them from the left or the right, scientists have found. They say this demonstrates how language can alter the way we see the world.
www.nature.com/news/2005/051219/full/051219-18.html

+ Spiral Proof: Researchers have proven the existence of a structure that until now, wasn’t even thought to be mathematically possible. The new shape looks like a traditional helicoid—the spiral shape that results if a flat plane is twisted an infinite number of times—but with one exception: in the middle, there is a coffee-mug-like “handle.” The new structure is called a “genus one helicoid,” and its existence has been debated since the early 1990s.
www.livescience.com/imageoftheday/siod_051226.html

+ Hubble Finds Additional Moons and Rings Around Uranus: The Hubble Space Telescope photographed a new pair of rings around Uranus and two new, small moons orbiting the planet. The largest ring is twice the diameter of the planet's previously known rings; the rings are so far from the planet that they are being called Uranus' "second ring system." One of the new moons shares its orbit with one of the rings. Analysis of the Hubble data also reveals the orbits of Uranus' family of inner moons have changed significantly over the past decade.
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/Uranus_ring.html

+ New "Fluid" State of Matter: Using nothing more than a container of loosely packed sand and a falling marble, a research team led by University of Chicago physicist Heinrich Jaeger has discovered a new state of fluid matter. This new matter takes the form of a large, sharply focused jet of sand shooting upward from the impact point.
www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105662&org;=NSF&from;=news