Bookmarks for January 11th

When I’m not blogging, I’m browsing. Here are sites and pages that I bookmarked on January 11th:

  • Changing the Future: Kahu Danny Akaka officially opened the Energy Lab at Hawaii Preparatory Academy with a blessing ceremony on Tuesday, January 5, 2010. Students, faculty members, administrators, and project team members attended the event.
  • Astronomers spot ‘super-Earth’ 80 light years away: US astronomers have detected the second smallest exoplanet ever discovered with a mass just four times heavier than the Earth, adding to a growing number of low-mass planets dubbed “super-Earths.”
  • Small scopes reach beyond solar system: Giant land-based telescopes and space missions gobble up most of the money available each year for astronomical exploration. But innovative astronomers are proving that you don’t need a multibillion-dollar orbiting telescope to find planets or even save the world.
  • Spotting planets for lower prices: Bakos has now found 13 planets — mostly big balls of gas. Some demonstrate novel properties. Bakos’ program, now at sites in Arizona and Hawaii, is called HATnet.
  • Energy efficiency pays off: Cash for clunkers may be over, but there’s still cash available for purchases of energy-efficient appliances for residents of Oahu. The Hawaii Energy Efficiency Program is still offering anywhere from $40 to $110 in rebates to Oahu residents.
  • Destructive alga uses toxins to become a vicious predator rather than helpless prey: A team of researchers have uncovered new information about a toxic alga that shows it to be a vicious, venom-producing predator rather than merely a helpless sun-loving microbe.
  • Hawaii High School Seniors to Apply for National Youth Science Camp: Governor Linda Lingle announced today that two students from Hawai‘i will be selected to represent the state in the prestigious National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest this summer.
  • PISCES to hold moon mission tests on Big Island: PISCES will bring together teams from NASA and the German and Canadian space agencies Jan. 15-Feb. 11 on Hawaii’s volcanic soil to test a variety of new technology that will help astronauts survive on the moon and live off the land.
  • Hawaii Group Receives Grant to Promote Koa Wood: New strategies are being put into place to broaden the public’s awareness of, desire for and appreciation of koa. More than 20,000 acres of koa trees are now being grown commercially.
  • Cal Grad Is Changing Hawaii’s History – With Chocolate: On eighteen acres hugging Oahu’s north shore, a region better known for its incomparable surf, a UC Berkeley graduate is doing his part to rescue Hawaiian agriculture.
  • On The Fringe: A sky survey called Pan-STARRS will feature the world’s largest digital cameras attached to each of four small telescopes on Haleakala. It is poised to do the head count required to gauge Neptune’s migration speed.
  • Gone: a look at extinction over the past decade: Like the Yangtze river system, the Hawaiian islands—famous for unique birdlife—is an extinction hotspot. In 2002 the ‘Alala, also known as the Hawaiian crow, went extinct in the wild when the last two known individuals vanished.
  • Britain might withdraw 1 Mauna Kea telescope: The United Kingdom’s Science and Technology Facilities Council has come up with a five-year program that includes a “managed withdrawal” from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope
  • Hawaii life sciences center may finally break ground: A Kamehameha Schools facility catering to life sciences companies is expected to break ground this year, five years after the Kakaako project was announced.
  • Bringing orchids down to earth: Growers in Hawaii filed an injunction against allowing a change in the rule that bars the import into the United States of plants in any state but bare root from most countries. But six years ago, the USDA sided with Taiwan.

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