Canada’s first astronaut, who became an overnight sensation with his stunning space photography and educational ‘how to’ videos, will be visiting the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre (SRC) and the National Space Centre on Friday 13 December.
It is a shared interest in observing the Earth from space, and the inspiration of the next generation of scientists and engineers, that brings Colonel Chris Hadfield, a Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot who joined Canada’s Astronaut programme in 1992, to Leicester.
Colonel Hadfield first flew in space on the Russian Space station MIR and then in April 2001, made his first visit to the International Space Station (ISS) to install its ‘robot arm’, CanadaArm2. More recently, he was flight engineer on ISS expedition 34 and the first Canadian Commander of the ISS on expedition 35 from December 2012 to May 2013. It was during his time on the ISS that he captivated the world’s social media by tweeting his breathtaking photographs of the Earth from space.
Dr Harjinder Sembhi of the University of Leicester’s SRC’s Earth Observation Science group praises Colonel Hadfield for what he describes as a "fantastic job" of raising the public awareness of space science to a whole new level.
During his visit to the University, Colonel Hadfield, who has recently accepted the position of Professor of Aviation at the University of Waterloo, Canada, will meet a number of Physics and Astronomy students who will share their research with him through displays and demonstrations. He will then take part in a Q&A session at the National Space Centre with school and college students from around Leicestershire.
Colonel Hadfield will be visiting Leicester as part of an international book tour for his memoirs, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. The new publication provides an insight into the wisdom he has learnt from spending ‘a lifetime making the impossible a reality’ and teaches us all ‘how to think like an astronaut’.
Living (or otherwise) without the Internet
Creative advertising and marketing agency, Mother London says it is going to make a documentary on addiction - in this case, 'Digital Addiction' or, to be more precise, 'Internet Deprivation'.
The agency has deprived five ‘digital natives’ of their narcotic of choice for five days and recorded the consequences. The objective is to discover the impact of internet deprivation on the subjects’ behaviour in their personal and professional lives. Will the outcomes be positive? Or will it drive our subjects to distraction?
Under the watchful eye of psychotherapist Sarah Hirigoyen, the five participants had all access to the internet restricted for the five days of internet week (November 11-15). Their smarthpones were replaced by old ‘brick’ phones, and every password from their social media and internet lives taken away and changed. They were asked to monitor their mood and mental health throughout the experiment. The five participants were:
James Brown, media legend and editor, Sabotage Times @jamesjamesbrown
Emily Hare, managing editor, Contagious @em2345
Katie MacKay, advertising executive and founder of www.whatkatiewore.com @whatkatiewore
Maria Pizzeria, fashion blogger and social media ‘freak’ @mariapizzeria
Sophie, a teenager (she’s 13)
The final film is expected to be released a week after the end of the experiment.
A history lesson in data storage
Data recovery specialist, Kroll Ontrack has created a fascinating infographic called: ‘The History of Data Storage & Commercial Data Recovery’.
Taking the user from Charles Babbage’s work on the first computer in 1834 through to this year’s announcement that scientists have managed to store data in DNA, it provides an historic timeline on the subject with embedded YouTube videos focused on data storage and recovery.
Coming at time when storage is shifting from individual drives to the cloud. it charts changes from the consumerisation of cloud storage with the launch of Dropbox in 2008 to the fact that virtualisation is now a mainstay in enterprise - with 84 percent of organisations now taking advantage of it for storage.
You can access the infographic here.
Les Hunt
Editor