National Get Outdoors Day June 13

‘Get Outdoors! Wisconsin’ has events planned all summer long

As a consortium of federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and the recreation industry gear up for National Get Outdoors Day 2009 on June 13, visitors to Wisconsin State Parks, Forests and Trails can look forward to a full summer of “Get Outdoors! Wisconsin” events being held around the state.

The Wisconsin State Park System has launched a “Get Outdoors! Wisconsin” initiative with events scheduled throughout the summer at state parks, forests, trails and recreation areas. The events are indicated by a “Get Outdoors! Wisconsin” insignia on the Upcoming Events at Wisconsin State Parks, Forests and Trails Web page of the DNR Web site.

“Both National Get Outdoors Day and Get Outdoors! Wisconsin are aimed at getting children and families to spend more time outdoors with nature,” says Dan Schuller, director of the Wisconsin State Parks program.

Schuller says "Get Outdoors! Wisconsin" addresses a growing problem that author Richard Louv has termed “nature deficit disorder,” which has come about as children spend more time watching television and playing computer and video games. Many health professionals believe this has contributed to an increase in childhood obesity rates, which have risen four-fold for children ages 6 through 11 since 1971.

“Nature is good for kids. Research has shown that children who interact regularly with nature have better cognitive and creative skills and a better ability to deal with stress,” Schuller says.

Schuller notes that a “Top 10” list of reasons for a National Get Outdoors Day identifies many of the same reasons the State Parks program started its Get Outdoors! Wisconsin initiative.

More than a dozen “Get Outdoors! Wisconsin” events were scheduled this past weekend as part of National Trails Day on Saturday, June 6 and State Parks Open House Day yesterday, June 7.

More information on the national effort and specific events can be found at [www.nationalgetoutdoorsday.org] and Get Outdoors! Wisconsin.

Top 10 Reasons for National Get Outdoors Day

10) A smaller and smaller portion of the nation is deriving physical, mental and spiritual benefits from time on their lands, and use is especially low for America’s poor, our urban dwellers, and minority Americans.

9) Today’s American kids are less connected to the outdoors than any previous generation. 6.5 hours a day spent watching screens. Six times more likely to play a computer game than ride a bike. Four times more likely to be obese than previous generation. And now facing shorter lives – a decline of 2-5 years in average length of life from parents’ life expectation.

8) America’s youth tell us that we are not reaching them with invitations to be active outdoors because we are not using the communications channels they utilize most: social networking sites including YouTube and MySpace and text messaging and photo-sharing from phone to phone. They tell us they are interested in the outdoors but need "triggers," and National Get Outdoors Day intends to be a trigger.

7) Americans are overwhelmed with information over the Internet. Information on what to do and where to do it is available – but we need to help Americans find it!

6) Americans who volunteer are also likely to be healthier. There are abundant opportunities to get healthy by volunteering on public lands.

5) America’s public lands and water agencies and the recreation community need to work as a team to compete for the hearts and minds of 21st Century Americans. We aren’t talking about choices between biking and fishing for most Americans, but between malls and home-based technologies and the outdoors.

4) The future of America's public lands will be determined by the extent to which Americans care about the Great Outdoors -- and if fewer people directly benefit from time outdoors, the prognosis is not good.

3) Americans have a growing problem that can be addressed with more physical activity – an increase in the percentage of Americans who are overweight and obese. This trend carries with it big costs – in dollars and quality of life. Some $160 billion in direct public spending. 7 in 10 deaths now attributable to largely preventable chronic illnesses – and 3 out of every 4 dollars in our healthcare spending is similarly directed at largely preventable chronic illnesses.

2) Combating stress: About to Burst: Handling Stress and Ending Violence by Rebecca Radcliffe. Teenagers live in a world that is more stressed than ever before. They get overloaded with pressure at school, conflicts at home, relationship problems, and career choices. Many have to deal with divorce, moves, financial struggles, jobs, and blended families. When stress builds up, teens cope however they can. They may drink, drive aggressively, get high, overeat, go shopping, spend hours on the computer or playing video games, or take out their frustration on others. This is why we see increased bullying, isolation, depression, obesity, eating disorders, inappropriate sexual activity, violent outbursts, cutting, intolerance and hate crimes, suicide, and many other destructive choices. Kids need new and better choices. They need help unwinding and handling pressure in positive ways. Recreation is a powerful antidote to stress.

1) American families, American communities and the nation need the connectivity and unity that results from family and friends enjoying time in the outdoors.

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Polaris and Local Dealers Provide RANGERs

Polaris Industries announced the company is working with West Virginia Dealers, Keefer’s and Route 119 Powersports, to provide two RANGER Side-by-Side vehicles to EMS and other rescue services so they can carry water and help families affected by the flooding. Pennsylvania dealership, Hernley’s, also has joined the cause and sent a group of people with relief packages to help with the clean up.

“What has happened in southern West Virginia is a great tragedy,” said Daniel Storm, district sales manager for Polaris. “The dealerships are happy to help support an area who has been highly supportive of the sport of ATV riding. We hope the efforts can help this community get back on their feet quicker.”

One of the hardest areas hit was Gilbert, WV, home of the Hatfield McCoy National Trailfest. The flood was the largest natural disaster in the history of the town with approximately 4000 homes sustaining significant damage or completely destroyed in the county. Four other counties in both West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky also sustained significant dwelling & business losses.

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Short Moon

The full Moon scoots across the sky tonight. It is known as the Flower Moon, Rose Moon, or Strawberry Moon. But another good name might be the Short Moon, because it's in the sky for less time than any other full Moon of the year -- only about eight or nine hours from most of the Lower 48 states.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Wood stoves reduce heating bill

Forest fires have burned naturally in this area for millions of years, long before humans ever lived in the area.
When I burn wood in my stove it means that my family is warm and safe no matter what happens. I am not directly dependent on the power grid, natural gas or oil to survive the cold weather. The next time you want to put in a complaint about wood stoves, think about where you would go in the middle of the winter if the power went out for a long period of time. My guess is that you would eventually be huddled up next to a fire somewhere.
The alternative heat sources Canadians have at this point do much more damage to our environment. If someone was to knock on my door and ask me to put out my wood stove, my response would be this: "Are you going to pay my heating bills?"
Jeramie Geensen
Prince George

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News From The Observatory

I haven't done much night sky observing or astrophotography lately. It gets dark too late now. Soon the days will be getting shorter again and by then the Summer Milky Way will be up in a good spot too. While I was letting the dogs out last night around midnight, a really bright meteor happened to go overhead. It was one of those that goes clear across the sky and almost to the horizon on the other side. It was throwing sparks and slowly broke up into a beautiful shower before fading away.

Normally the last day for the woodstove fire is on Memorial Day Weekend. Not this year though. I've still had a fire in it almost every night. By the sound of the forecast I might have a fire during the day this weekend too! I've been cutting a little wood, and keeping up with firewood customers. Seems like every time I go somewhere, I come home and have to haul more firewood in the dark to replenish my "for sale firewood". Karen sells all that I have for sale when I'm gone! Excellent.

Despite the unusually cool weather, my garden is doing well. We've been eating winter onions and the radishes are about ready to start harvesting. I gave everything a shot of fertilizer the other day and weeded it completely. Looking good, barring any acts of "god".

The other morning when I was milking the cows my back started hurting (also nothing unusual for me, that and headaches). No big deal, I just have to keep moving and working. If I set around it hurts more! I decided to complete a project to keep my mind off of it. Awhile ago we bought a rotator for our TV antenna. We've never had one. I thought it might be nice to see what stations we can get from more directions than one now that they have all those new digital channels. I set out to do that yesterday. My plan was to use all the existing equipment, antenna etc., and just put up the rotator.

I took it down and got it all set up just like I wanted it. I cleaned all the old connections on the antennas (I had two, one for UHF and one for VFH) and was all ready to put it back up. The antennas were mounted on a couple old pieces of water pipe, with a pipe coupler in the middle instead of regular antenna mast. Normally if Karen had been home I would have had her stand on the ground and steady the mast while I was on the roof and walked it up into position.

Well, I don't have many helpers and I am so used to doing things myself that sometimes shit happens. Karen was at work, but the pipe/antenna/rotator assembly didn't seem too heavy. I stood on the ground and started walking the antenna up, with the pipe sliding on the drip edge of the roof as I went along. The pipe coupling got to the edge of the roof and .............. IT SNAPPED! The coupling was rusted and thin and it snapped clean! The antennas, rotator, the whole works came crashing down on the rooftop and hung over the house on the other side. Smashed everything all to hell! Both antennas were totally destroyed, the preamplifier was mangled, even broke the top off the new fresh out of the box $100 rotator! I guess I should have left well enough alone.

Anyway, I made a mad dash to the Lake Delton Radio Shack in my old jalopy of a truck and had to buy new everything. In the process of looking at new antenna mast, I hooked my finger on a sharp edge and bled all over their store. Fortunately I had a handkerchief in my pocket, but I didn't even know I had cut my finger until I noticed the salesman wiping blood off of things! Oops, sorry.

Anyway, to make an already long story longer, when I got home from Radio Shack it was time to milk FB's cows. After that, I finished putting up my $448 worth of new antenna stuff just past midnight last night. Now since I can rotate the antenna I get channels that I had never even heard of! I guess it was well worth the investment, even if it didn't turn out the way I had originally planned it (certainly way more expensive than the original plan). It's still cheaper in the long run.

Now, there is a couple trees branches that are a little too close for comfort to the antenna. I'm going out to take care of those right now, or attempt to. Money and help are so hard for me to come by that I don't want to take any chances of the wind whipping those branches into my new antenna and damaging it. Unfortunately I can't reach them with my pole saw, even when standing on my ladder. I will either shoot them off with my shotgun (yep, real redneck here), throw a rope over them and rip them down with my Polaris Hawkeye ATV (more redneck), or maybe I can at least pull them down far enough to reach with the pole saw.

Wish me luck!

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

Packing more digital images, music, and other data onto silicon chips in USB drives and smart phones is like squeezing more strawberries into the same size supermarket carton. The denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today's memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years. And the electronics industry needs much greater data densities for tomorrow's iPods, smart phones, and other devices.

Scientists are reporting an advance toward remedying this situation with a new computer memory device that can store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years. Their discovery is scheduled for publication in the June 10 issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Alex Zettl and colleagues note in the new study that some of today's highest-density experimental storage media can retain ultra-dense data for only a fraction of a second. They note that William the Conqueror's Doomsday Book, written on vellum in 1086 AD, has survived 900 years. However, the medium used for a digital version of the book, encoded in 1986, failed within 20 years.

The researchers describe development of an experimental memory device consisting of an iron nanoparticle (1/50,000 the width of a human hair) enclosed in a hollow carbon nanotube. In the presence of electricity, the nanoparticle can be shuttled back and forth with great precision. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware. In lab and theoretical studies, the researchers showed that the device had a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch (a trillion bits of information) and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years.

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ROSWELL DEBRIS CONFIRMED AS EXTRATERRESTRIAL: Lab Located, Scientists Named

Newly discovered documents reveal that in the months immediately following the purported 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, secret government studies began on a material that was previously unknown to science. The "memory metal" that was studied precisely matches some of the debris material reported by several witnesses to the crash. Evidence shows that -under military direction- these unique metal studies were undertaken by a contracted laboratory that possessed advanced technical capabilities that the U.S. government itself did not have at the time. A former high-level scientist employed by the involved laboratory has offered a confession that he was tasked to study the crashed UFO material. Information provided by two U.S. Air Force Generals also offers direct support for this discovery.

The documents suggest that after the crash, the US government attempted to develop a unique material that is today referred to as memory metal. This shape-recovery alloy was reported by several witnesses to the Roswell crash in the summer of 1947. The lightweight "morphing" material was able to be crumpled or deformed and then return itself instantly and seamlessly to its original state. The metallurgical discoveries that resulted from these studies were then "seeded" for further technology development to other government agencies (including NASA) and through a series of military contracts to universities and industry.

The laboratory contracted by Wright Patterson Air Force Base to perform these studies was Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH. It has been credibly reported that Wright Patterson Air Force Base was the very base where the Roswell UFO debris was flown after the crash.

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Scientists Call Hubble a 'Whole New Telescope' After Repairs

The Hubble Space Telescope appears better than new as NASA puts the 19-year-old observatory through a battery of tests after its final facelift by an astronaut repair crew.

Ed Weiler, NASA's science missions chief, said Hubble is in the midst of meticulous systems and calibration checks following the successful upgrades and repairs by Atlantis shuttle astronauts.

The calibrations and electronics tests should run their course by the end of summer, with a new and improved Hubble once more ready for science observations in late August, Weiler said.

Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Scott Altman, the Atlantis astronauts launched toward Hubble on May 11 and performed a five-spacewalk marathon that left the iconic space observatory more powerful than ever before.

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The Sun’s Demise

After forming out of a cloud of gas and dust, a mid-sized star like our Sun sits nicely on the main sequence and burns hydrogen in its core for some 5 billion years. Then, the end begins.

* Stars on the main sequence fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, releasing heat and light for tens of millions to billions of years. Massive stars burn fast, hot, and blue; less massive stars burn slow, cool, and white or yellow or red. Eventually, all but the smallest stars run out of hydrogen, and that’s when they start burning heavier elements in the core and quickly evolve off the main sequence.

* After 5-10 billion years, when a mid-sized star like our Sun runs low on hydrogen, nuclear fusion in the core slows. With less light to push back against gravity, the star contracts and heats the helium-rich core, re-igniting a thin shell of hydrogen, which pushes out the star’s atmosphere.

* The star cools and swells by 50-100 times, becoming a red giant. Planets closest to the star may get swallowed up. This fate awaits Mercury and Venus. Earth may be spared, but the Sun will expand to fill much of our sky.

* In some cases, depending on the star’s mass, the helium core will be squeezed enough to suddenly ignite in what’s called the “helium flash“. This expels as much energy as 100,000,000 Suns. But the flash is brief, and the released energy does not disturb the outer layers of the star.

* After helium starts burning, the hydrogen shell around the core expands and cools, which means the outer layers of the star contract again. The star shrinks, but does not return to the main sequence.

* Helium burning is notoriously unstable, so the star begins to pulsate irregularly. Mira is an example of a star in this late phase of life. The outer layers are expelled as a planetary nebula. Once the helium is finished burning, the core becomes rich in carbon and oxygen. The core collapses again, but this time it doesn’t get hot enough to continue burning. What’s left of the core becomes a white dwarf.

* The sun has enough hydrogen fuel to burn for 5 billion more years before it enters the red giant stage. But here’s the kicker… as the hydrogen burns, the Sun slowly contracts and becomes too hot to comfortably sustain life on Earth. This will happen not in 5 billion years, but just 500 million years. So plan accordingly.

A little knowledge of star types will help you better understand what you see in the sky. For example, go out on a fine spring night and find Arcturus in the constellation Bootes. It’s a red giant star and it’s at this very moment burning a shell of hydrogen near its core; our Sun will look very much like this in some 6 -7 billion years. Now you know why.

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McGinnis Lake

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill