Crew selected for eight-month Mars simulation

The six astronaut-like crew members of the third Hawai‘i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission has been selected. Starting 15 October 2014, the participants will be isolated in their dome habitat at the site on the slopes of Mauna Loa on Hawai‘i Island for eight months. This mission is studying group cohesion and factors that affect team performance. “Astronauts are stoic,” said Kim Binsted, associate professor at UH and a project principal investigator. “You ask them how they’re doing and they’ll say ‘fine.’ It’s quite difficult to get at some of the warnings that you might want to detect of conflict or a crew losing coherence. One of the ideas behind the HI-SEAS study is that forewarned is forearmed.”

Read more about it and watch the videos at KITV4 and Space Safety Magazine; read more about it at West Hawaii Today and in the UH System New.

Navy, HNEI partner on $2.5 million power grid study

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has contracted with the Applied Research Laboratory at the University of Hawai‘i (ARL/UH) for a $2.5 million energy research project to be conducted by the Hawai‘i Natural Energy Institute’s (HNEI) GridSTART (Grid System Technologies Advanced Research Team), an HNEI research team focused on the integration and analysis of energy technologies and power systems, including smart grid and micro grid applications. The objective of this research is to develop a power grid modernization strategy and action plan to meet the future needs of the Navy in Hawai‘i, with a special focus on the reliability and power quality demands of electrical service to the shipyard.

Read more about it in the UH System News, Pacific Business News, and Kaunānā.

Can modern technology be used to divert Madame Pele?

As lava advances slowly toward homes and ranches in Kaohe Homesteads on Hawai‘i Island, past attempts at changing the direction of lava flows in an effort to protect property were reviewed. Geology & Geophysics (G&G) professor Michael Garcia explained what happened when Gen. George Patton bombed a lava flow in 1935, trying to keep it from Hilo’s water supply. “He sent out his bombers and unfortunately they weren’t very successful. The bombs either hit the lava flows and bounced off or they exploded within the lava flows and had no effect.” Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) professor Patty Fryer explains some of the challenges the slopping terrain poses: “A low terrain and lava or water or whatever liquid you have is going to move downhill and that’s the thing that’s the most difficult.”

Read more about it and watch the video at Hawaii News Now; read more about it at National Geographic. A link to a West Hawaii Today article quoting Bruce Houghton, Gordon A. Macdonald Professor of Volcanology in the department of G&G and science director for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at UH Mānoa, on the impact of the flow on the Puna community was added on 10-07-14. Image from US Army file footage.

Students finish internships at volcano observatory

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) bids aloha to interns Pua Pali and Greg Javar, who gained first-hand experience monitoring volcanoes and earthquakes by working with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists this summer. Pali graduated from Konawaena High School before moving to O‘ahu, where she is now a UH Mānoa senior majoring in geology and geophysics (G&G). Javar, a Ka‘u High School graduate, is a UH Mānoa sophomore pursuing a degree in civil engineering. They were funded by USGS through the Native Hawaiian Science and Engineering Mentorship Program (NHSEMP), which provides opportunities for students to excel in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Read more about it in the West Hawaii Today.

The Great Pacific Race aids in data collection

The Great Pacific Race — a 2,400-mile adventure that started in Monterey, California, and ended almost two months later in Honolulu — support boat Captain Rod Mayer took water samples at various points along the course as directed by the University of Hawai‘i and Project Kaisei, contributing to the study of the effects of Fukushima Disaster radiation. These samples were delivered to Geology and Geophysics (G&G) assistant professor Henrietta Dulaiova. Since 2009, Project Kaisei/Ocean Voyages Institute has also been a source of information for senior researcher Nikolai Maximenko and scientific computer programmer Jan Hafner of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), particularly regarding tsunami debris distribution.

Read more about it and watch the video at PRWeb.

HIGP scientists on Mars 2020 Rover instrument teams

NASA has announced the selection of seven science instruments for the Mars 2020 rover chosen from a field of 58 proposals received from researchers and engineers worldwide. Among the selections are the Mastcam-Z, an advanced camera system, with team volcanologist Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP)’s Sarah Fagents who will work with the team’s principal investigator Jim Bell (School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University). Also selected is the SuperCam instrument, with Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy experts HIGP’s Shiv Sharma and Anupam Misra who will work with the team’s principal investigator Roger Wiens (Los Alamos National Laboratory).

Read more about it and watch the video at KITV4, in Kaunānā and the UH System News.

Is Hawai‘i prepared for the impacts of climate change?

A new report titled Climate Change Impacts in Hawai‘i: A summary of climate change and its impacts to Hawai‘i’s ecosystems and communities (PDF) produced by the UH Sea Grant College Program with funding from the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA), helps answer questions such as, “What can we expect with regard to climate change in the future, and how can we best prepare? What does climate change look like? What is the current state of scientific knowledge regarding climate change globally, and how does it relate to Hawai‘i specifically?” Dolan Eversole, coordinator of the NOAA Sea Grant Coastal Storms Program for the Pacific Islands Region, is lead author of the report.

Read more about it in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required), West Hawaii Today, Hawaii News Now, Insurance Journal, PhysOrg and Kaunānā.

Symbiotic survival

One of the most diverse families in the ocean today—marine bivalve mollusks known as Lucinidae (or lucinids)—originated more than 400 million years ago in the Silurian period, with adaptations and life habits like those of its modern members. Publishing in Geology, Geology & Geophysics (G&G) researcher Steven Stanley tracks the remarkable evolutionary expansion of the lucinids through significant symbiotic relationships. The Lucinidae remained at very low diversity until the rise of mangroves and seagrasses near the end of the Cretaceous. Especially important in their diversification was the lucinids’ development of a symbiotic relationship with seagrasses where they took advantage of the oxygen-poor, sulfide-rich sediments below roots and rhizomes.

Moon rocks!

During the “supermoon” of Sunday 10 August the moon was 221,765 miles from Earth, measured center to center, which is the closest the moon will get to our planet this year. Katie Robinson gets a lot closer than that, in a way: she studies moon rocks as a graduate assistant at the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP). UH has about 120 grams of moon rocks brought here in 1990 for study, and Robinson is investigating the presence of apatite, a mineral that contains water, in the sample. “You get used to working on these tiny little samples …,” she said. “And then you go outside and you look up and you go, ‘Wow, my rocks are from there. My samples are from there. I’m holding moon rocks!’ You kind of remember why you got into it in the first place.”

Read more about it in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required) and see the archived news item “Water in Moon rocks provides clues and questions.”

Atlantic warming source of recent Pacific climate trends

International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) researchers Axel Timmermann and Yoshimitsu Chikamoto partnered with colleagues at the University of New South Wales and University of Hawai‘i to solve the puzzle of why, contrary to climate model projections, observations show that in recent years the Pacific trade winds have strengthened, the eastern Pacific has cooled, and sea level has risen in the western Pacific. The source of these trends, they have found, is rapid warming of the Atlantic Ocean. Their findings from observations and modeling experiments are published in an online issue of Nature Climate Change.

Read more about it in Hawaii System News, Science 2.0, and Ars Technica.