NCS News

Centre for Human Ecology

Centre for Human Ecology graduate Helen Jeans has been running an exciting new project which needs participants! Would you like to get involved?

Helen writes: “The Open University is developing a new Internet site to support collaborative learning called SocialLearn. The pilot version of SocialLearn is focused on climate change as part of the Open University’s Learning to Live with Climate Change Programme which facilitates social learning processes as a way of building understanding, consensus and concerted action on climate change. Both SocialLearn and Learning to Live with Climate Change are global programmes.”

Learn more at the Centre for Human Ecology.

Former Education Secretary David Blunkett has come out in defence of the adult need for learning. Writing in the Guardian on Tuesday, Blunkett cites the positive influence of adult learning on performance in the workplace and in the performance of children of adult learners in school as powerful arguments for the support of adults in education. The benefits do not just come from vocational training as all education, even recreational learning, motivate and develop people throughout their lives.

The celebrations of forty years since the Apollo 11 moon landing are heating up and now we have a new moon mission on its way. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took off from Cape Canaveral on Thursday and will photograph the lunar surface in higher resolution than ever before. Images with a resolution of 1 m should be able to pick out equipment left behind at the old Apollo sites, including the LEM descent stages. The conspiracy theorists can work out their own version of these images we’re sure.

The LRO will also laser map the Moon and look for signs of water ice in permanently shadowed craters. A companion spacecraft, launched on the same booster, called LCROSS, will crash land in one of those craters in an attempt to kick up some of the buried ice that may be buried there.

There is more information and regular updates at the LRO website.

The first 6 strong crew of ISS

The International Space Station crew is awaiting the arrival of three new members that will usher in an era of six-person crews aboard the orbiting laboratory. Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft Wednesday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 

The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the station today. The trio will join station Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to form the Expedition 20 crew. It will mark the first time all five partner agencies are represented by astronauts on the station at the same time. 

The expanded crew of the International Space Station will discuss the start of six-person operations in a news conference on Monday. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the NASA Web site. 

For full reports on the International Space Station, visit the ISS site.

House History

You can learn all about researching your family history with Kathryn Senior on the NCS course Family History Begins at Home. Now, here’s another facet of your family’s history, researching the history of your house.

Using a combination of census records, old maps and other documents, you can find out all about the previous residents and owners of your house, adding more context and colour to your family history. More from the Liverpool Echo…

Apollo 10 is 40 today.

40 years ago today, Apollo 10 was launched into space. Commanded by Thomas P Stafford, this was the last pathfinder mission before Apollo 11 would land on the Moon two months later. This was a complete Apollo spacecraft with a command-service module called Charlie Brown flown by John W Young, and a lunar module called Snoopy flown by Eugene A Cernan. Gene Cernan was later to be the last man on the Moon when he commanded Apollo 17 and John Young would be the first shuttle commander.

Apollo 10 went to orbit the Moon where the astronauts tested the docking systems and flight characteristics of the lunar module. Lunar module Snoopy was flown down to an altitude of 15.6 km on 22nd May 1969. All the systems checked out and the go-ahead was given for Apollo 11 to make the first moon landing.

Apollo 10 returned safely to Earth on 26th May 1969, setting the speed record for a manned vehicle at 39,897 km/hr, unbroken to this day.

You can read more about the Apollo missions at NASA’s 40th anniversary site.

Adult Learners’ Week runs from 9th to 15th May this year and NCS is doing its bit to support it. You can try some course snippets and a complete free course over at the NCS ALW page. Try a course on Archaeology, Health Care or Herbology. It’s all free for Adult Learners’ Week.

Panama, site of the Darien colony

Scotland’s most valuable history award has been won by Dr Douglas Watt, author of “The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations.” The Hume Brown Prize commemorates Prof Peter Hume Brown, first incumbent of the Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography in the University of Edinburgh, and is worth £4000 to the winner.

You can read more at the Scottish History Society.

Maize with added nutrients

Researchers in Spain and Germany have developed a new type of maize that produces large amounts of beta carotene and precursors of vitamin C and folic acid. The team, centred on the University of Lleida, is trying to develop this as a food crop for people in sub-saharan Africa, where it could improve the basic diet for the very poor, providing around 20% of daily vitamin C and almost all required folic acid and vitamin A. Trials of the crop will begin in the US next year and animal tests to obtain efficacy and safety data will begin soon.

The human body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A which is an important nutrient for the skin, eyes, pregnant mothers and the immune system. Ascorbate is converted to vitamin C also necessary for healthy skin and a good immune system. The new maize would also provide higher levels of folic acid, important in the formation of red blood cells and foetal development.

Environmental campaigners are not so sure, claiming that the introduction of green plants to farmers in these areas would boost the local diet without having to introduce genetically modified crops. They cite the poor uptake of golden rice, modified to produce higher levels of vitamin A for communities in south-east Asia, as evidence that the basic idea is unsound. However, humanitarian aid organisations have yet to comment.

You can read more on the BBC News site. There is more information about the University of Lleida team and their work, including the development of maize that produces medicines, in Science Daily. Sacred Earth has a good ethnobotany article on maize. While there doesn’t appear to be a specific response to this result by an environmentalist group, Friends of the Earth has a general policy document on genetically modified foods. Opinions vary and the subject of genetic modification of food crops raises a lot of issues. Why not leave us a comment stating what you think?

60 Years Young

The older students of remote Australian island Tasmania have been served by Adult Education Tasmania since 1949. The organisation is rightly proud of this long-service in an age when the mature learner is often forgotten.

 This autumn they are providing courses in an enviable range of subjects from Arts and Crafts to Outdoors and Adventure, by way of Music, Dance and Drama and Parenting. So it looks like they are vigorous enough to do another sixty years.

Congratulations Adult Education Tasmania from the NCS.