Cosmos Mag Autumn 2017_3

Well I am pleased to report that I finally nabbed some malware and my computer is singing along.

There are a series of article here the School space camera on the international space station is a pretty amazing out reach by NASA. What got me is how close the clouds are to earth and basically how unbelievably thin the atmosphere and biosphere is. Another thing that came to mind was linking this with earlier cube sat article that has really opened up space science but was aimed at being something achievable in an undergraduate semester. Both examples of education really interacting with science.

The story on the bird dinosaur that experimented about becoming a bat seems to have so many threads and require fairly careful reading to unpick them. China has all the rare earths and is also blessed with super geology to preserve fossils on a scale the world is yet to really come to grips with. I feel there are two human stories here, one that gets told of the evolving science and scientist and this is a conflict with the farmer turned fossil fossicer that track into key sites. There is also the private collectors. It really does my head in. I really don't think we are being smart enough here: There are two paradigms here of ownership and access. Ownership is a social construct, while access is a science idea. I think you could get the idea of ethical collectors that cooperate with scientists and support communities and education. I think untrained amateurs no doubt are doing damage as was seen in this one fossil, however we don't have a handle on the impact of this damage.

The malaria article when in on the 4WD angle and missed unpacking the seven year old who was diagnosed in seconds as having malaria. I think this article needed work with maps, and tables to sort out the 4 types. There is a lot to store in your head about which ones kill, which ones are in PNG, which ones are recurrent. I would also like a time line of sorts and some random facts that has more entry points into the article. There is also the human interest element here of a scientist growing a family, and having two kids in the area. I just feel this is a dimension that allows us to relate our world of PNG which if you get past conceit has a highly insightful deconstruction of what we hold dear to our own western society.

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