The Beat Goes On

CERTIFIED: Wednesday morning we headed north early to get to Queen Anne in time for a very important class. 

Here's CJ to tell you more about it. ...

Wednesday, I visited the Cascade Parent Partnership Program campus to attend a two-hour class on how to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). CPR is a technique generally used to restore breathing to a person who has suffered a cardiac arrest or a heart attack.

The instructor set up dummies on stage, to practice CPR techniques on. Alongside the dummies present on stage, the instructor began playing a video depicting a man collapsing, and showing the proper things to do in an event where you need to administer CPR:

1 - Look around you and make sure the place you are in is safe. If so, proceed to the next step. If not, call 911. 

2 - Slap the shoulders of the victim, and ask "Are you okay?" If they respond, then they are conscious. If they do not respond. proceed to the next step.

3 - Yell for help. If one person arrives, tell them to call 911. If multiple people arrive, tell one to call 911, and another to retrieve an automated external defibrillator (AED). If nobody arrives, call 911 while retrieving an AED to the victim.

4 - Begin administration of CPR. Remove all clothing from the victim's chest area. Firmly press down on the "CPR spot" (the spot where the line between the victim's nipples and the line down from the center of their head cross) using both hands at 100 to 120 presses per minute.

If you get an AED, unpack the device and follow the instructions that you will hear from the device. Do not make contact with the victim while the shock from the AED is being given.

Continue to administer CPR. If police arrive due to the aforementioned 911 call, let them take over the emergency handling.

After the end of the class, cards that certified us in CPR administration were given to class attendees. The certifications are valid for two years.

Annabelle was in on the training, too. Here's her take. ...

Standard CPR practices have been renewed every 5 years, allowing the American Heart Association to continue developing the method that gives the best chance of survival. A representative from the American Heart Association came to our school to teach adult CPR. She mentioned that, for the purposes of CPR or AED usage, anyone 8 years old or older is considered an adult.

The AED is a unit in most work buildings that, when the pads are placed correctly on the body, will deliver an electric shock to the heart if needed. You have to be careful to not place the electric pads over a pacemaker, though. The AED will give you instructions on what to do and say out loud when you need to stay clear and not touch the victim in case of shock.

When performing CPR, there are multiple steps that must be followed in order: First, check the area to make sure it’s safe. If it isn’t, you may risk becoming a second victim. Second, tap the person on the shoulders and loudly ask if they are OK. If they respond, you may not have to perform CPR. Third, call for help, and have whoever arrives call 911 and grab the AED. Tell the operator your emergency, address, and that you know CPR. Keep the 911 operator on speaker so they can give you instructions while performing the CPR. Check for breathing by holding your ear to their face and watching their chest for rising and falling motions.

Begin the CPR by drawing a line in the middle of the torso and on the nipple line; this is where the heart is located. Place the heel of your dominant hand on that spot and clasp it with your other hand, locking your elbows and leaning over the body. Begin pressing at least 2 inches down at a rhythm of 100-120 beats per minute. A good way to remember this is to stick to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Allow the chest to rise to its normal height before pressing again. A good rule of thumb is that if you hear cracking sounds, it’s a sign you are pressing hard enough. Continue doing this until help arrives. Knowing all this can help save someone’s life!

LAST CALL: If you want to visit the sun, well, at least in name, April 27 is your last chance! 

We're on board, in the form of our names on a microchip that's on the Parker Solar Probe.

When the probe launches, we'll all eventually plunge through the Sun's atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it. It's bound to get brutally hot, and radiation will be immense. The mission will provide humanity with the first-ever close-up view of a star.

(Illustration from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)

To get in on the fun, just go to this website and register: http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/The-Mission/Name-to-Sun/

You'll get a nifty ticket after you register!

https://youtu.be/QvrQCmnKsL0

HBD, Hubble

(Image: NASA, ESA, and STScI)
GREAT 28: Time to take a moment out of your April 24th to say, "Happy Birthday, Hubble!"

That's right, NASA's Hubble Telescope turned 28 today.

Back on April 24, 1990, Hubble launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The space telescope was deployed into Earth orbit a day later.

Since then, the telescope has been providing we Earthlings with amazing images of our universe.

Originally spec'ed to last a dozen years, Hubble has done more than double that amount! In fact, it continues to produce stunning images like the one above, of the incredible Lagoon Nebula.

To date, Hubble has logged over 163,000 orbits around our planet and has captured and transmitted over a million photos.

Of course, anyone who follows NASA news knows that Hubble's history came with some drama.  In June of 1990, Ed Weiler, the chief scientist with the Hubble Space Telescope program, had the inenviable task of telling a room full of reporters that NASA's new  $1.5 billion observatory's 94.5-inch primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape, rendering it unable to bring starlight to a crisp focus. Oops. 

Due to an oversight during fabrication, the concave shape of Hubble's primary mirror was too shallow toward its outer edges by 2 microns, a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair. As a result, starlight was not brought to a focus at the same point, resulting in blurry images. These three images show the same star as viewed from a ground-based telescope, left, and from Hubble's uncorrected mirror, center. The corrected image, after a space shuttle repair mission in 1993, is seen on the right. NASA


However, the setback turned into a tremendous story of ingenuity and perseverance, as engineers precisely mapped the mirror's shape, and discovered it was misshapen due to a rather simple math error. Fortunately, fixes were developed in rather rapid fashion, and on a subsequent shuttle mission, some new hardware was delivered and some space walking astronauts installed it, and the rest is history.

Above, NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, with the Hubble Space Telescope at his back, holds onto the shuttle’s robotic arm while working on the space telescope's repairs.

A while back, PBS aired "Invisible Universe Revealed," all about the Hubble. You can find it on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/GMhXPqUuqnM

For the Record

BIRTHDAY BOY: On Friday, CJ turned 15. That meant a fun-filled day driven by his desires was mostly in store.

Our first stop was a 9 a.m. trip to iconic Easy Street Records in West Seattle.

A rather recent collector of vinyl record albums, CJ had been wanting to go to Easy Street for some time. However, his desire was dually-driven by the search for records AND the knowledge that Easy Street has a quirky onsite restaurant that's a bustling breakfast spot.  (The photo at the top of the post features a few of their breakfast specialties.)

I loved the store, because they love Bowie. :)

And now, here's Annabelle to tell you a little bit more about our visit on Friday. ...  

The Easy Street Café is inside Easy Street Records, a record store in West Seattle. The Café is open from 7 AM to 3 PM most days. We visisted the café for breakfast on my brother’s birthday, April 20.

Most of the menu options are puns on famous songs or artists, such as the “Eddie Feta” and “Notorious B&G”. When we ordered, our waitress made sure to get down any special requests we had for the chef. Speaking of the chef, our food took much longer than it should have to be done. Peeking into the window, we also noticed that he didn’t seem to be wearing a beard cap to prevent the hair from going in the food. Despite these complaints the food was delicious for everyone, although the steak was well-done and the eggs were over medium rather than over easy.

The waitress came around the café to fill coffees, which although helpful and courteous, was a bit annoying if you didn’t want more or had already added as much sugar and cream as you wanted. Overall, the main draw for the café is the food and the record store it’s attached to. If you’re in the area, I’d only recommend visiting if you have the time or are very interested in Easy Street Record’s selection.

Annabelle's right, it was a looong wait for breakfast. Fortunately, there was lots to look at as we waited.

We were a party of six, thanks to Rick and Rachel being able to join us, and the meals we ordered were all different. Christian said his Horton Heat Hash (named after the band Rev. Horton Heat) had some good heat. CJ's "Bluberry Hill Hotcakes" looked amazing. My Greek-flavored Eddie Feta scramble was tasty (and supposedly Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder's own recipe).

All in all, it was a fun way to start CJ's birthday.

Later that day, we went to his favorite lunch/dinner spot, Wing Dome. And afterward, he got some complimentary birthday cake ice cream at Chuck's, another favorite spot of his.

That evening, big brother Kennedy took CJ and Annabelle to the 8-bit Arcade, where they beat a couple of vintage arcade games. So all in all, it was a standout fifteenth birthday!

ON THE HUNT: Saturday, we were up at 6 a.m. to make sure we were in Sodo, outside yet another record store, Silver Platters, by 7 a.m.

Why on Earth start our Saturday that way? Because it was national Record Store Day, a big darn deal if you're a record collector.

The day is full of very limited release issues of special recordings on different media (often colored vinyl, picture discs, special posters, etc.).

CJ is a huge Pink Floyd fan, and there was a special Record Store Day issue set for release: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It was Pink Floyd's debut album, and their one and only completed with the band's original vocalist and guitarist, Syd Barrett. Definitely psychedelic, the original recording is in mono and we suspected it was sure to be in BIG demand on Record Store Day 2018. Only 6,000 copies were pressed for U.S. distribution.  

While waiting in line, we studied what the cover looked like, so that we'd know it when we saw it if we were lucky enough to find it once inside the store.

We weighed our options and decided our best bet would be to try to find the title at Silver Platters, in Sodo.

And that's just what we did. We about 12th in line, I believe, when we took up our spot on the pavement in the morning cold. We were happy it wasn't raining, however. 

Below, CJ tells you more about the experience. 

Record Store Day is an event at bricks-and-mortar record stores across the country on 21 April each year. For each year's Record Store Day, there are several releases distributed to the bricks-and-mortar stores, often produced in limited quantities.

For this year's Record Store Day, I woke up earlier than I usually do to be in line at 7 A.M, waiting for our store of choice to open at 9 A.M. While my mother and I were waiting in line, the manager of Silver Platters (the record store we went to) gave instructions to the various people in line on where various sought-after Record Store Day releases were.

The release I was looking forward to the most was Pink Floyd's 1967 debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the band's only album with Syd Barrett as the frontman (and without guitarist David Gilmour). This year's reissue of Piper was in mono (Syd Barrett reportedly dismissed stereo sound as a gimmick), and included an extra exterior sleeve and a poster.

Another release we got was David Bowie's posthumous live album Welcome to the Blackout, recorded in London, England on 30 June and 1 July of 1978. Blackout is a sequel to last Record Store Day's Cracked Actor, and, like its predecessor, is on a whopping three discs.

While it wasn't technically a Record Store Day release (it came out the day prior for its forty-fifth anniversary), one record we got was a reissue of David Bowie's Aladdin Sane on silver-colored vinyl. My mother spotted Aladdin Sane after we got the above two records, and immediately decided to bring it with us.

Lastly, we quickly decided to get an abnormally-shaped 10" 33 1/3 rotations per minute (RPM) record shaped like a Porg from the film Star Wars - The Last Jedi. The Porg featured two songs from The Last Jedi's soundtrack.

In addition to the albums, CJ got a cool swag bag with some Record Store Day giveaways.

If you want a taste of what Record Store Day looks like, check out this video posted by Easy Street of their event. (Easy Street is where we went on Friday, for CJ's birthday.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=94&v=saLo0REbJhE

All in all, our Record Store Day was a complete success, and we went home very happy with our treasures!

ON EARTH DAY: Google shared this message from Dr. Jane Goodall on Earth Day. I thought I'd share it with MPA readers.
https://youtu.be/q8v9MvManKE

At the Old Ball Game

SHINE ON: Thursday afternoon was a delight. There's nothing quite like sneaking away for baseball matinee on a weekday. You feel like you're cheating the work a day world. It's a mini vacation, especially when it's warm and sunny in April! 

After just a couple of hours in the spring sunshine, CJ's freckles had bloomed. It was warm enough that vendors were selling ice cream and strawberry kebabs.

The only bummer was that the Astros are terrific and the Mariner are significantly less loaded, shall we saw.

Above, Kyle Seager fails to reach base. He also had an uncharacteristically shaky day in the field.

Seen fouling off a ball below, Robinson Cano reached base yesterday, but he couldn't overcome an 8-run deficit on his own.

The Ms' starter, Gonzales, did OK against the 2017 World Champions. His 'reliever' Altavilla was really awful, however. 

Since CJ got his braces off the day before, he was able to have Cracker Jack for the first time in a couple of seasons. 

 The disappointing prize was as crappy sticker. #Lame

The kids and I decided this guy has one of the best jobs in the world. He's paid to watch baseball!

Did I mention the sun was out yesterday? I about went blind trying to catch this plane flying in front of our star. My camera froze up, unfortunately.

Check out this cool post-game photo of a solar halo.

It's caused by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in Earth's atmosphere. Per Wikipedia, "Halos can have many forms, ranging from colored or white rings to arcs and spots in the sky."

On & Off

BRACE YOURSELF: Interesting day for the MPA student body. This morning, Annabelle got her 'braces,' and this afternoon, CJ was freed from his after nearly two years.

CJ has been a real trouper regarding his braces. Let's hope he's as great about wearing and keeping track of his retainer.

Lucky for her, Annabelle's braces are not the traditional metal wires and brackets set up. She was a candidate for Invisalign treatment, which uses a series of slip-over-your-teeth molds that get your teeth going in the right direction. The cool thing is you can remove them to brush, floss, and eat things like corn on the cob and caramel corn. ;) Oh, and caramel apples.

I don't think either of the kids has ever had a caramel apple, so to celebrate the day, we made some.

We bought some gummies, some peanuts, some Starburst, some Corn Nuts, and some M&Ms. We also bought some Caramel wraps, and once home, melted them around apples and the kids made their treats.

A day to remember, for sure!

REBOOT: This afternoon, at 3:51 Pacific time, NASA's TESS spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, after a two-day delay. The original launch time was called off April 16 to allow scientists to conduct more guidance navigation and control analysis of the rocket, NASA officials wrote on Twitter.

Below is a replay of the whole broadcast about the launch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY-0uBIYYKk


If you skip ahead to the 19 minute mark, you'll see the actual launch. And if you skip ahead to about the 28 minute mark, you'll see the first stage of the rocket landing. SO COOL!!!! It landed on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.

It's also worth checking out TESS deploying at the 1:09 mark. History in the making!

Over the next couple of weeks, TESS will maneuver into an oblong-shaped orbit around Earth, circling twice for each orbit of the moon.

From there, the observatory will scan the skies, looking for the darkening of stars as planets pass in front of, or transit, them. TESS will build on the body of work of the Kepler space telescope and it team, which found exoplanets in a similar way (watching for transits). However, Kepler circled the sun, rather than Earth, and was focused on one small patch of the sky for its first mission, whereas TESS is set to scan 85 percent of our skies. (FYI, Kepler identified 2,650 exoplanets to date, which is more than 70 percent of all known, alien worlds.)

Ups and Downs

Photo: Ben Cooper

GOS AND NOS: We've had our eyes on the skies this past weekend. 

Saturday afternoon, we watched a launch, an Atlas 5 that roared off the pad with a satellite,  AFSPC-11m for the US Air Force (ULA). 

The launch on Saturday had five solid rocket boosters, and was super pretty lifting off. (That's important for a rocket launch, right?)

Monday, we were all about TESS, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is expected to discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky. 

TESS is planned for a two-year survey of the solar neighborhood, monitoring more than 200,000 stars for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. The spaceborne transit survey is expected to cover about 85 percent of our skies, and will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, around a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances. 

We watched multiple press conferences about the launch and its mission on Monday morning. 
https://youtu.be/ZsPStvGgNuk


In the end, today's TESS launch was a no go. SpaceX, the vehicle sending the observatory skyward, tweeted that they'd be performing more analysis of the launch guidance, navigation and control and that they were targeting Wednesday for another attempt.

So eyes on the skies on Wednesday, as well!

PARKING LOTS: Mark your calendard - National Park Week kicks off on April 21, and to celebration all national parks will offer free admission on Saturday, 4/21.  (www.sharetheexperience.org).

Of Time and TESS

SKUNKY: Pretty recently, we here at MPA discovered the Skunk Bear series. I sure wish we'd found it sooner!

A project of National Public Radio, Skunk uses film, animation, music and science to answer questions about the world. (People can submit questions on Skunk Bear's webpage: https://www.npr.org/series/462045954/skunk-bear .)

We were introduced to Skunk Bear during a class where the history of Earth was being discussed. A parent had written out a timeline that stretched 3/4 of the way around the classroom, and students were using Post-It Notes to denote events in our planet's history. It gave a good visual representation of how far apart certain events actually were.

The students were also shown a Skunk Bear video about the history of Earth, filmed on a football field. In it, yard lines were used to map out our planet's past (and humanity's tiny moment in it). In all, four and a half billion years were played out on the football field, every inch representing 1.3 million years.

You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/M8V_glRW1hA


Oh, and in case you're wondering (I know we were), Skunk Bear's name was chosen because it's one nickname for the fearsome, ravenous wolverine, "And NPR's little tumblr has an insatiable appetite for all kinds of science stories — big and small," per their explanation.

You might want to check out their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/skunkbear .
I know we'll be hanging out there more in the future!

TESS-ting: On Monday, April 16, 2018, NASA is set to launch its next exoplanet hunter. Transit Exoplanet Survey Satellite(TESS) has been sealed into the payload faring inside a Kennedy Space Center facility, and will be launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 40 at 3:32 p.m. West Coast time. SpaceX plans to re-land the rocket's first stage on a drone ship after launch.

If everything goes as planned, about 60 days after launch, TESS will navigate to its final Earth orbit, and then start canning the skies for signs of planets passing in front of around 200,000 stars. For the first year of operation, TESS will survey the Southern Hemisphere's skies, before switching focus to the Northern Hemisphere in the second year. 

Today, we watched this video about TESS, in order to learn more about the mission. https://youtu.be/Q4KjvPIbgMI


If you want to watch the launch live, check out the NASA TV or SpaceX websites Monday around 3 p.m. for pre-launch coverage.