NASA has renamed
the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft—humanity’s first mission to a star, which
will launch in 2018—as the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene
Parker. The announcement was made at a
ceremony at the University of Chicago, where Parker serves as the S.
Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy
and Astrophysics. In 1958, Parker—then a
young professor at the university’s Enrico Fermi Institute—published an article
in the Astrophysical Journal called “Dynamics of the interplanetary gas and
magnetic fields.” Parker believed there
was high speed matter and magnetism constantly escaping the sun, and that it
affected the planets and space throughout our solar system. This phenomenon, now known as the solar wind,
has been proven to exist repeatedly through direct observation. Parker’s work forms the basis for much of our
understanding about how stars interact with the worlds that orbit them. “This is the first time NASA has named a
spacecraft for a living individual,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator
for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “It’s a testament to the importance of his
body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own
research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further
understand every day. I’m very excited to be personally involved honoring
a great man and his unprecedented legacy.” “The solar probe is going to a
region of space that has never been explored before,” said Parker. “It’s very exciting that we’ll finally get a
look. One would like to have some more
detailed measurements of what’s going on in the solar wind. I’m sure that there will be some surprises. There always are.” In the 1950s, Parker proposed a number of
concepts about how stars—including our sun—give off energy. He called this cascade of energy the solar
wind, and he described an entire complex system of plasmas, magnetic fields and
energetic particles that make up this phenomenon. Parker also theorized an explanation for the
superheated solar atmosphere, the corona, which is—contrary to what was
expected by physics laws—hotter than the surface of the sun itself. Many NASA missions have continued to focus on
this complex space environment defined by our star—a field of research known as
heliophysics. Born on June 10, 1927, in
Michigan, Eugene Newman Parker received a Bachelor of Science in physics from
Michigan State University and a doctorate from Caltech. He then taught at the University of Utah, and
since 1955, Parker has held faculty positions at the University of Chicago and
at its Fermi Institute. He has received
numerous awards for his research, including the George Ellery Hale Prize, the
National Medal of Science, the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal
Astronomical Society, the Kyoto Prize, and the James Clerk Maxwell Prize. Parker Solar Probe is on track for launch
during a 20-day window that opens July 31, 2018. The mission is part of NASA’s Living With a
Star program to explore aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect
life and society. LWS is managed by the
agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science
Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
Johns Hopkins APL manages the mission for NASA and is designing and
building and will operate the spacecraft.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-renames-solar-probe-mission-to-honor-pioneering-physicist-eugene-parker
The first total solar eclipse over the U.S.
since 1979 will reach its point of greatest duration on August 21, 2017, just a
few miles south of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. On the main SIU Carbondale campus, totality
will happen at 1:21 p.m. CDT. Read news, events, and link to other sources at http://eclipse.siu.edu/
Disperse vs. Disburse by
Christopher Daly The more
commonly used (and far more commonly intended) word is disperse.
It means to distribute or, more often, to scatter, or sometimes to dispel or dilute to the point of disappearance. It comes ultimately from the Latin dispersus, which is a form of the verb dispergere, “to
scatter,” which is in turn created from the prefix dis- (“in different directions, away“) and spargere, “to
sprinkle.” As with many
words with Latin roots, it made its way out of French into English. It was in use no later than the early 16th
century (OED gives
a first use citation from 1503). The
adjective form of the word (now obsolete) goes back to the late 14th
century. Disburse–also a verb–has almost nothing in
common with disperse.
Just looking at the words (which should not be pronounced the same: if you use the same sound for both the “p”
and the “b” in these words, you’re being awfully sloppy) the dis- prefix
seems to be an obvious overlap. But it
isn’t, at least not exactly. According
to the OED, the way dis- is
used in these two cases is not the same.
We could go off into the weeds on an extended digression about this, but
the end result would be that dis- has
at least four distinct origins and five distinct definitions in English. The dis- in disburse,
says the OED, isn’t the “in different directions, away” dis- of disperse,
but is rather another prefix (still Latin) “implying
removal, aversion, negation, reversal of action.” The burse portion comes from bourse (Old French) and traces back to
the Latin bursa (“purse“). Together, the verb means to pay out or expend.
In broad terms, it’s a synonym for “to
spend.” If you’re someone
who suffers from bursitis and knows that the condition is an
inflammation of the bursa, and you
wonder if the terms are related, they are.
That bursa and the bursa that evolved into disburse are one and the same. They indicate different kinds of purses-–one
for money, one for lubrication between bones–-but purses (bursa) nonetheless.
One of my favorite usage guides, Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th
edition–yes, long-time readers, I’ve finally upgraded to the new edition, and
it’s as wonderful as ever), has an entry for disburse and disperse.
Garner being Garner, it doesn’t go deep into etymology, but it provides
solid usage examples and explanations of correct and incorrect usage, with
plenty of commentary, all of which support what I’ve written above. Garner’s also goes on to declare the form dispersement a nonword (use dispersal instead . . . please!). And, in a trifecta I’ve rarely observed in
this source, Garner’s pins all the variant misuses (disburse for disperse, dispersement for dispersal, and dispersement for disbursement) at “Stage 1” of their language change index: “rejected.” So
if you’re tempted, just . . . don’t. https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/disperse-vs-disburse/
glocalize (GLO-kuh-lyz) verb. tr.
To make a product or service available widely, but adapted for local
markets. A blend of global and
localize. Earliest documented use: 1989.
Feedback from
Henry Willis Subject: Texarkana When I practiced law in Arkansas, one of my
cases took me to Texarkana, the city you mentioned in your post on Monday. The federal courthouse there is a huge hollow
square, straddling the state line, with the Eastern District of Texas on the
west and the Western District of Arkansas on the east. This sort of cohabitation of two wholly
different district courts in different judicial circuits (an appeal from the
Eastern District of Texas would go to New Orleans, while an appeal from the
Western District of Arkansas would go to St. Louis) is unique and a little bit
disorienting to those of us used to living with the jurisdictional boundaries
that shape the law. There are other
metropolitan areas that are divided by a state line (Kansas City MO and Kansas
City KS being the biggest), but none that have embraced duality as enthusiastically
as Texarkana.
Ramen is arguably
the king of noodles in Japan, and worldwide, despite being the newest form of
Japanese noodle. These thin wheat
noodles are served in a variety of broths, from shio (salt) and shoyu (soy sauce) to tonkotsu (pork-bone) and the newest style
of ramen, miso. While a bowl of ramen can contain many different
ingredients, the secret ingredient of the noodle itself is a form of alkaline
water known as kansui, originally from the lakes of Inner Mongolia,
which is said to give the noodles a firmer texture than, say, yakisoba. Eggs
are often substituted for the kansui. Soba noodles
are made primarily (but not exclusively) of buckwheat (soba), which gives it a
different, stronger flavor. Various soba
dishes are zaru soba, kake soba, tempura soba, kitsune soba, and tororo soba. Be mindful:
The word soba is often used for all noodles, but soba noodles are a particular kind. Fortunately, they are very easy to
distinguish by their brown color and dense texture. Udon noodles are the most substantial of Japanese
noodles, thick and chewy. Made from
wheat flour, udon is served hot in the winter and cold in the summer,
varying as much as ramen and soba dishes. Yakisoba isn’t a
kind of buckwheat noodle, but is made with wheat flour. Like ramen,
it is a relatively recent creation, having first appeared in Japan (from China)
in the early 20th century. Read more and
see pictures at http://japanology.org/2016/07/5-types-of-noodles-udon-ramen-soba-yakisoba-and-somen/
PARAPHRASES from
Syndrome E, a
thriller by Franck Thilliez, translated from the French
by Mark Polizzotti A cop’s
equilibrium is fragile like a nutshell that slowly cracks open, with every tap
of a manhunt or crime scene. * In their handshake, she looped her thumb on top. She wanted to control the situation or express
a kind of spontaneous dominance. * Tattoos indicate a need to
create an identity for yourself.
Author and screenwriter
Franck Thilliez was born in 1973 in Annecy, who
lives today in the Pas-de-Calais.
Nothing predestined this enthusiast of cinema to writing, if not an
abundant imagination and the need to tell stories. A trained engineer and computer specialist,
he now devotes himself entirely to writing. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.franckthilliez.com/&prev=search
An eponym is
a word derived from the name of a real, fictional, mythical or spurious
character or person. There are thousands
of eponyms in everyday use in English.
Find many examples, for instance--diesel:
German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel
(1858-1913); gargantuan: gigantic king in the novel Gargantua by
Francois Rabelais (c.1494-1553); forsythia: British botanist William Forsyth (1737-1804) at http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/eponyms.htm German chocolate cake is named for
English-American chocolate maker Samuel German (1802-1888).
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1728 June
21, 2017 On this date in 2006, Pluto's newly discovered moons were officially named Nix and Hydra.
On this date in 2009, Greenland assumed self-rule.
Word of the Day midnight sun noun
The phenomenon occurring
when the Sun does not set but only approaches the horizon at midnight; it occurs near the summer solstice in
the polar regions.
June
Solstice 2017 was at 12:24 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, June 21.
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