NCS News

Can’t be bothered lifting that twenty kilo bestseller while basking in the sunshine? Why not listen to a good book instead? We’ve found a site which offers educational listening, too. This appeals to our lazier sides and makes us feel that the time lying in the sun is well spent, actually learning something. Check out LearnOutLoud.com and see if you like the idea too.

We like A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – one of the best popular science books of recent years. Or, if you prefer classic literature, what about A Tale Of Two Cities by Dickens or London’s South Sea Tales, especially good if you’re holidaying in the south seas?

In the wake of the release of a new film and book about the 1950 theft and subsequent recovery of the  Stone of Destiny, Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, has claimed that that particular Stone is a fake and that the original has been lost for 700 years.

The Stone, on which Scotland’s kings were traditionally crowned, was stolen from Scone Palace by England’s King Edward I, in 1296, and kept in Westminster Abbey until it was returned to Scotland in 1996. Even, then, the one returned to Westminster Abbey may have been a fake made by the Glasgow stonemason who repaired the stone which broke in two during the escapade.

Alex Salmond claims that ancient descriptions of the Stone describe a black shiny object, not the dull grey stone kept in Edinburgh Castle today.

More in the Times.

The fundamental science of quantum mechanics casts doubt on whether the world is real or just the way we see it. Scientists at the Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI) in Vienna have been trying to test whether this prediction of the theory is actually true, or just a consequence of the quantum model. Their answers to the question may be disturbing to many. So much so, that they are advertising for a philosopher to come and work with them to interpret the implications of their results. You can read more in Seed Magazine.

Musicologists are using the Internet to find Britain’s favourite chord. This will be used to create a new musical composition. Tested on small groups of people at the Royal Northern College of Music, Trinity College of Music and the University of Keele, the Musiclab may enhance our listening and performing skills.

You can take part in this musical experiment at the Feeling Sound Musiclab.

Just before 1am this morning (BST), NASA’s Phoenix lander successfully landed in the Arctic region of Mars. High on the list of exploration targets for Phoenix is the search for frozen water.

The photograph shows Phoenix parachuting down to its landing site and was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which was overhead at the time.

More from NASA.

We are proud to announce that our NCS Open Space is now open. Here you can try out a small range of course ’snippets,’ from Egyptian Archaeology, to astronomy. We are launching this as part of Adult Learners’ Week 2008, but NCS Open Space will remain open from now on.

The course snippets themselves will change, so it is well worth popping back from time to time to find out what has been added recently. Join our mailing list, and we’ll keep you posted of new additions to our course snippets, and our course catalogue.

Have fun

Peter Davies, principal of City Lit, is concerned that the Government’s desire to promote what it terms “informal adult learning” may herald the decline of traditional classes and leave many learners to study alone with little more than the support of the internet.

A consultation paper published in January by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills appears to focus heavily on the use of IT as a study aid and says little about the role of qualified teachers. Davies sees this as a potential erosion of quality. “The risk for us is that people will say there is so much going on through the internet that it’s no longer necessary to fund more expensive adult education classes,” he says.

Is the UK Government endorsing the New Curiosity Shop or is this just another spin on cost-cutting? More in the Independent…

Imagine yourself hip-to-hip, shoulder-to-shoulder, inside a room the size of a walk-in closet for eight hours with five people you just met. Does that make you sweat? Or maybe make your breathing a little more animated?

For three weeks, 23 volunteers dedicated time to do just that — sweat and breathe — inside a test chamber so NASA scientists at Johnson Space Center in Houston could measure the amount of moisture and carbon dioxide absorbed by a new system being developed for future space vehicles. The system is designed to control carbon dioxide and humidity inside a crew capsule to make air breathable and living space more comfortable.

The tests, which took place from April 14 to May 1, are some of the first to use human subjects in support of NASA’s Orion crew capsule, Altair lunar lander and lunar rovers.

Testing on the device began more than a year ago with machines used to create humidity and carbon dioxide in the test chamber. The tests proved the system worked well, but the machines could not generate the wide variety of metabolic loads — amounts of energy the body’s chemical reactions produce to maintain life — that humans create.

This series of tests put volunteers inside a test chamber scaled to be the size of the Orion crew capsule, about 570 cubic feet. The volunteers, who were selected and grouped to replicate a typical crew, were asked to sleep, eat and exercise during test sessions that lasted from a few hours to overnight.

“The air smelled a little artificial, like on a plane, and it was a little crowded,” said Aaron Hetherington, one of the volunteers and a director for the test. “But the air was fine; the temperature comfortable. My biggest observation is that it was unremarkable, which is good because that means the hardware was working.”

Video of the final test will be available on NASA Television’s Video File. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information,visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For photos from the test and more information about NASA’s Constellation Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

As part of our contribution to Adult Learners’ Week we are launching our NCS Open Space.

In the NCS Open Space you can try a sample of our courses - course snippets - and try a liitle light learning. Each snippet should take no more than around 15 minutes to complete.

To find out more visit our Adult Learners’ Week page

Literary Landscapes’ on www.ambaile.org.uk is a collaborative project between Am Baile and Highland Libraries. It uncovers authors inspired by the Highlands and was launched by award-winning novelist, poet and publisher James Robertson who features in the Literary Landscapes listings.

Literary Landscapes is an interactive map leading to biographical information, images, sound files and bibliographies of writers inspired by the landscapes of the Highlands and Islands. It currently covers over 30 authors, past and present, from Caithness to Kintyre and from Nairn to Portree and North Uist. It will continue to expand to include writers from Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles, Perthshire and Argyll.

The authors include poets, novelists and historians, who either live in the Highlands, come from the Highlands, write about the Highlands, or set their books in the Highlands. The entry for each author includes a booklist, with links to the Highland Libraries online catalogue.

Am Baile is a bilingual website which can be viewed in either Gaelic or English. An interactive map allows users to click on specific points to discover more about writers associated with a particular location.

A feature of Literary Landscapes is the inclusion of sound recordings which allow anyone to listen to authors reading passages from their own works. Typically this is a piece of descriptive text - it could be describing a mountain, a village, a journey, or local customs. Extracts from past authors are read by local school children and other local residents, in Gaelic or English.

Among the writers featured so far are Neil Gunn, Hugh Miller, Sir John Sinclair, Osgood Mackenzie, Clio Gray, Angus Peter Campbell, James Robertson and Katharine Stewart.