Month: February 2016

Back in 1978, excitement about the future of NASA, with the space shuttle soon to debut, was palpable. So when the space agency called for astronaut applications, a record 8,000 people responded. That number has stood as a record for applications until today, when the space agency announced that a whopping 18,300 people applied to join its 2017 astronaut class.

The agency's administrator, Charles Bolden, said the total number of applications reflects public approbation for NASA's Journey to Mars. “It’s not at all surprising to me that so many Americans from diverse backgrounds want to personally contribute to blazing the trail on our Journey to Mars,” the four-time astronaut said. “A few exceptionally talented men and women will become the astronauts chosen in this group who will once again launch to space from US soil on American-made spacecraft.”

NASA’s astronaut applications have surged even as its flight opportunities have fallen by about 90 percent. Back in the early 2000s during the peak of the space shuttle program, NASA had more than 150 active astronauts. That’s because the shuttle, with six to seven launches a year, afforded 40 to 50 annual flights into space. The number of active astronauts is now about one-third of that peak due to the shuttle's retirement in 2011.

Peace, love, unity, respect… and anti-cannibalism. Such a revised credo for ravers may follow a new study that found many ecstasy users are inadvertently ingesting novel psychoactive substances, known as “bath salts,” which in some cases trigger violent behavior.

Of 48 party-going, life-time ecstasy users that provided hair samples, half tested positive for bath salts (synthetic cathinones), researchers reported. Of the 34 people who said on a survey that they believed they had never taken bath salts, 14 (about 41 percent) tested positive for the psychoactive substances.

“While we cannot completely rule out dishonest responses (e.g., underreporting “bath salt” use), our results suggest that many ecstasy users are unintentionally or unknowingly using synthetic cathinones and/or other [novel psychoactive substances],” the authors wrote in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

That didn't take long. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), is backing off on trial-balloon legislation he floated Thursday that would criminalize Apple's or any other firm's refusal to assist the government's encryption efforts.

The change of heart comes on the heels of a whirlwind week surrounding the encryption debate—a week in which a federal judge ordered Apple to aid the authorities in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Soon after came Apple chief Tim Cook's angry response to the order alongside much public debate, and Burr's proposal followed on Thursday.

A Burr spokeswoman said on Friday, however, that the lawmaker is "studying" whether to "tighten rules about encryption."

Just before yesterday's vote to boost competition in the cable set-top box market, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler showed the audience a letter that cable lobbyists sent to the FCC in March 2010.

At the time, the FCC was preparing its National Broadband Plan, which among many other things recommended new rules "to ensure a competitive and innovation video set-top box market." The National Cable & Telecommunications Association wrote to then-Chairman Julius Genachowski urging him not to enact any such rules. Genachowski never did.

But what Wheeler pointed out is that the letter said customers should be able to watch their TV channels on set-top boxes that aren't rented to them by the cable company.

The idea behind standardized testing is that everyone gets the chance to perform on the same test in the same circumstances. In an ideal world, this should create a system where everyone’s test results are a good indicator of their skills, learning, and hard work.

The reality, of course, is different. Standardized testing faces a host of criticisms, some more valid than others. But even if we assume that everyone walks into a standardized test with the same background, when the test happens matters. The timing of the test itself can have a marked impact on student scores, according to a new paper in PNAS.

The paper found that the later in the day a standardized test was held, the lower the scores were. That’s an important finding, given how much rests on standardized test results. These tests not only form the basis of education policy in countries all over the world, but they're often also used to decide how funding should be distributed among schools. And, most obvious of all, a test score can determine the course of a student’s life.