We Like: Backyard Greenhouse 33’L X 13’W X 7.5’H

With cooler weather just a couple moons away we may get one of these for the families winter garden. Assuming we may have to shore up and modify the cheaper looking structures for strength we may end up building a hothouse from material. Here is the leading candidate thus far. For $429.99, at a large length of 33 feet:

Large Heavy Duty Green House Walk in Hothouse 185 Pounds By DELTA Canopies.

Product Description

* High quality, heavy duty galvanized steel framework
* Rust Resistant
* Double zippered front and back doors
* 22 Screened Vents (Can also be closed)
* Reinforced Mesh Polyethylene cover to hold in heat,moisture and diffuse. It allows more sunlight to keep plants warm
* All necessary Hardware is included
* Instructions are easy to follow
Specifications:
Dimensions: 33’L x 13’W x 7.5’H
Frame Finish: Galvanized steel Frame
Cover Material: 180 gram Transparent Polyethylene with Mesh Reinforced
Color: Clear with green mesh
Weight: 185 pounds
Packing: Three carton
Please read:
The roofs are are not designed to hold the loads of standing water or snow.You must keep the roof material properly tight.
Note: ITEM NEEDS TO BE ANCHORED TO
GROUND TO HOLD AGAINST WIND. SELLER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WIND OR
STORM DAMAGE TO ITEM, REGARDLESS OF ANCHORING
METHODSTORM DAMAGE TO ITEM, REGARDLESS OF ANCHORING METHOD

Greenhouse 33’L X 13’W X 7.5’H – Large Heavy Duty Green House Walk in Hothouse 185 Pounds By DELTA Canopies

Get it here:

Or This fancy one on a patio?

Or this 20′ X 10′ Triangle Top for $229.99

Indigo Rose Tomato

Powerful Cancer fighting Antioxidant Anthocyanins in this new seasons tomato.

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a tomato high in the antioxidant that gives blueberries their color giving these tomatoes a dark plum-like hue.

Indigo Rose, a truly purple tomato, from OSU’s program to breed for high levels of antioxidants. (Photo by Tiffany Woods.)

“The “Indigo Rose” tomato steps out this year as the first “really” purple variety to come from a program at Oregon State University that is seeking to breed tomatoes with high levels of antioxidants, says the folks at Oregon State University.

Professor Jim Myers, in the OSU horticulture department says, “If you want a really, really purple tomato that can be as black as an eggplant, give Indigo Rose a try. Other so-called purple and black tomatoes have the green flesh gene, which prevents normal chlorophyll breakdown. A brown pigment called pheophytin accumulates and has a brownish color that makes a muddy purple when combined with carotenoids.”

Anthocyanins are in the class of flavonoids – compounds found in fruits, vegetables and beverages – that have aroused interest because of their potential health benefits.

Anthocyanins are glycosides of anthocyanidins, the basic chemical structure of which is shown here. Hope this helps.

Anthocyanins (from Greek: ἀνθός (anthos) = flower + κυανός (kyanos) = blue) are water-soluble vacuolar pigments that may appear red, purple, or blue depending on the pH. They belong to a parent class of molecules called flavonoids synthesized via the phenylpropanoid pathway; they are odorless and nearly flavorless, contributing to taste as a moderately astringent sensation. Anthocyanins occur in all tissues of higher plants, including leaves, stems, roots, flowers, and fruits. Anthoxanthinsare clear, white to yellow counterparts of anthocyanins occurring in plants. Anthocyanins are derived from anthocyanidins by adding sugars. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin)

Scientists Simulate the Space Environment During NASA’s New Horizons Flyby

The black lines in this movie show clouds of solar material – called coronal mass ejections or CMEs – on their months-long journey from the sun to the outer reaches of the solar system. The simulation helps show what space environment NASA’s New Horizons mission might experience during its flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015.

When destined to stay close to Earth, spacecraft often must withstand the hazards of our space environment. They can be exposed to regular radiation showers from the sun and – if the space weather is particularly intense, such as when the giant clouds of solar material that erupt off the sun called coronal mass ejections pass by – they can go into safe mode.

However, because there is less data available, we know less about what a spacecraft endures further away. So, as NASA’s New Horizons mission reaches a historical milestone on its journey to explore the outer solar system, scientists have an all new question: What is the space environment like at Pluto?

A few months before New Horizons was due to reach this icy dwarf planet, a community of scientists came together to determine just what kind of a environment the mission would experience during its historic flyby. While the simulations aren’t 100% conclusive, this first ever attempt to characterize space weather conditions so far from our own home opens the door to better protecting our spacecraft – and eventually humans — as we continue to explore the solar system and beyond.

To attempt to map what surges of particles are passing by Pluto, the Community Coordinated Modeling Center, or CCMC, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, sought input from space weather scientists around the nation. The CCMC houses numerous software models to help scientists with their research and also to enable improved space weather forecasting.

“Here at Goddard, we focus on the space environment near Earth,” said Peter MacNeice, who led the CCMC’s attempt to gather the models. “But past Earth, farther away from the sun, the environment changes quite a bit. So we reached out to teams all around the country for their expertise.”

Such characterizations of space rely on understanding an environment far different from the one we experience in our day-to-day lives on Earth. The particles in space are few and far between – though space is not, in fact, a perfect vacuum. A constant stream of particles from the sun, called the solar wind streams outward. This population of particles can also be enhanced by the coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that sometimes erupt from the sun. Various particles from outside our heliosphere can also make it into the solar system, adding to the mix. Once out past Jupiter, flows of hydrogen from outside our solar system can also be detected, flying upstream against the solar wind.

What’s more, many of these particles are electrically charged, creating a complex, constantly changing electromagnetic environment with magnetic fields traveling along for the journey. Consequently, assessing just what percentage of the particles in a region of space are neutral or charged is a crucial part of understanding how material moves through space. Close to the sun, the charged particles are in abundance; past Jupiter and Saturn, the neutrals dominate.

Taking such things into consideration, scientists modeled what temperature, density and wind speed could be expected around Pluto in mid-July 2015. One model that was updated to accommodate such differences in the outer solar system is called Enlil–named after the Sumerian god of the wind. Created by Dusan Odstrcil in the 1990s, Enlil is regularly used to simulate the movement of CMEs as they move through the inner solar system. For the New Horizons project, Odstrcil, a space weather scientist at Goddard, incorporated additional models and expanded the simulation to reach all the way out to Pluto.

“We set the simulation to start in January of 2015, because the particles passing Pluto in July 2015 took some six months to make the journey from the sun,” said Odstrcil. “During that time there were 120 separate CMEs.”

The new version of the model tracks these giant clouds of solar gas in a way never before done. Because of the way the sun spins, the solar wind and CMEs all end up leaving the sun radially and form a spiral pattern, looking – if viewed from above — a little like the swirls on a peppermint candy. This can be seen in normal Enlil simulations, but given the many months of travel time in the new simulation, the CMEs slow down and ultimately merge with other CMEs and with the solar wind to form even larger clouds. The shape of these merged regions changes, getting thinner and longer until they appear almost as semicircular tree rings around the sun — with some of the clouds ultimately being as long as the distance between the sun and Pluto itself. These CMEs end up looking very little like the balloon-shaped CMEs we see closer to home.

“Our simulation estimates that during the New Horizon approach, Pluto might be immersed in a region with very low solar wind densities, lasting for about one month,” said Odstrcil. “This will be followed by a large merged region which could significantly compress Pluto’s atmosphere.”

As this is the first time such a concerted effort has been made to simulate the space environment so far from Earth, the scientists who have worked on these models know that they are unlikely to be a perfect reflection of reality. Odstrcil, for example, says his model could be off by two to three weeks. However, comparing the models to real time measurements from New Horizons will help with calibration and making the simulations more sophisticated.

In combination, taking such steps opens up the door to better understand the space environment further away than ever before. Expanding models to incorporate the outer planets can help us protect our spacecraft – and ultimately human travelers – from the sun’s radiation.

Moreover, such research helps us understand the very evolution of the outer solar system. Space weather events near Venus, for example, are known to rip parts of the atmosphere off. What could similar eruptions have done farther out? Combining New Horizons data with the space weather models could well help us find out.

Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

Last Updated: July 14, 2015

Editor: Holly Zell

Tags: Goddard Space Flight Center, New Horizons, Pluto, Solar System, Space Weather

Credits: NASA\Odstrcil

NASA Celebrates New Horizons’ Closest Approach to Pluto

Guest and New Horizons team members countdown to the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Guests and New Horizons team members countdown to the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Additional mission information.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

via NASA Image of the Day http://ift.tt/1HtHJOE

Science Spies Martian Vortex

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA

Check it. Massive “Dust Devil” observed on the plains of Mars at the Northern DMZ. A massive 20 kilometer (12 mile) ‘dust devil’ was documented twirling about the desert in the Amazonis Planitia region of Mars.

Check it. Huge Martian Dust Devil Churns in New Photo
“A gigantic dust devil races across the surface of Mars in a stunning new photo snapped by a NASA spacecraft.” Space.com

Twirling Whirling 20km Dust Devil

Amazonis Planitia @24.8°N 196.0°E is one of the smoothest plains on Mars.

It is located in the DMZ between the Tharsis and Elysium provinces to the west of the disputed Olympus Mons, in the highly volatile Valles Marineris Province of the Memnonia quadrangle. With a lull in the fighting at Marineris, scientists were able to document this rare event on the Red Planet.

Amazonis planitia

Dust devils are strong, proper-formed spinning whirlwinds made visible by the dust particles and dirt they suck off the ground. Dust devils occur on Mars and Earth.

On the Martian surface, the dancing dirty djinn’s range from a half a metre wide and a few metres tall, to massive ones more than 100 metres wide and more than 20 kilometers tall. The primary vertical motion is upward.

They are comparable to tornadoes in that both are a weather phenomenon of a vertically oriented rotating column of air. Most tornadoes are associated with a larger parent circulation, the mesocyclone on the back of a supercell thunderstorm. Dust devils are usually harmless, compared to their coiling cousins, but can on rare occasions grow large enough to pose a threat to people, animals, mechs, and physical structures. Dust devils usually form as a swirling updraft under sunny conditions during clear weather, seldom coming close to the power of a tornado.

Check it. NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Bird Science

Bird photography is an aerial photography technique invented in 1917 by the Prussian avephile Julius Frankenbööner, who also used pigeons to deliver drugs for his elicit business. A homing stooge was fitted with an adamantium chest harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera was attached. Frankenbööner’s Prussian patent application was initially rejected, of course, for sheer craziness, but was granted in December 1918 after he produced authenticated photographs of the patent office manager, Heinrick Bolk, having an affair with his intern, one Mr. Heirnonomous Fleish, taken from the air by his birds. He publicized the technique at the 1919 Volksscheinner International Photographs of Crazy Sexual Intercourse by Voyeurs Exhibition, and sold many of these images as postcards at the Wolfhausen International Bird and Stuff Convention, as well as at the Prestigious 1920 and 1921 LaFayette Airbird and Pornography Shows.

Initially, the military potential of bird photography for aerial reconnaissance appeared very attractive. Battlefield tests in the Great World War provided encouraging results, but the shittiness of the technology made the camera too heavy and the birds also needed gas masks for the crazy fucking humans that actually gassed the shit out of each other.

Birdz and aerialz

Due to the rapid perfection of aeroplane and space technology during the war, military interest in Bird photography faded and Frankenbööner abandoned his experiments. The idea was briefly resurrected in the 1930s by a Swiss dildomaker, Heinz Glossweiss, and reportedly also by the American and Soviet militaries. Although war birds were deployed extensively during the Second Great World War, it is unclear to what extent, if any, birds were involved in aerial reconnaissance other than for spying domestically on crazy sexual acts.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), no stranger to weird, crazy and unethical experiments, later developed a battery-powered camera designed for espionage via bird and hamster photography; details of use, like the hamsters in the study, remain rectally classified.

Presently, some researchers, enthusiasts, geezers, nerds and artists employ small digital photo or video cameras with various species of wild or domestic animals or robots. Of course drones make this all moot and hysterical. The construction of sufficiently small and light cameras with a timer or remote activated mechanism, and the training and handling of birds to carry the necessary loads, present major challenges, as do the limited control over the birds’ position, orientation and speed, especially when there are disgusting, rotting food scraps on the ground, which distract the birds when photographs are supposed to be taken.

In 2010, the Thoragie Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) used miniature television cameras attached to goldfish to obtain live underwater footage, although most of the footage was murky due to the goldfish diet of dried White Castle pellets, which ends up clouding the water around the Cyprinidae, due to the leaky, runny diarrhea, which is a natural result of White Castle in any form.