Meryl Wieder, our ex-MSO, just received the following press release from a friend of hers at NASA and passed it on to your editor:

June 30. RELEASE: 09-151: SPACE STATION APPEARING NATIONWIDE OVER JULY 4 WEEKEND

HOUSTON -- As America celebrates its 233rd birthday this holiday weekend, there will be an extra light in the sky along with the fireworks. Across the country, Americans will be treated to spectacular views of the International Space Station as it orbits 220 miles above Earth. Many locations will have unusually long sighting opportunities of as much as five minutes, weather permitting, as the station flies almost directly overhead. To find out when to see the station from your city, visit: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings.

The largest spacecraft ever built, the station also is the most reflective. It will be brighter than most stars at dawn and dusk, appearing as a solid, glowing light, slowly traversing the predawn or evening sky. It is visible when lit by the sun while the ground below is not in full daylight. It moves across the sky too fast for conventional telescopes, but a good set of binoculars can enhance the viewing experience, even revealing some detail of the station's structure.

The station circles Earth every 90 minutes. It is 357 feet long, about the length of a football field including the end zones, and 45 feet tall. Its reflective solar arrays are 240 feet wide, a wingspan greater than that of a jumbo jet, and have a total surface area of more than 38,000 square feet. An international crew of six astronauts, including American flight engineer Michael Barratt, is aboard the complex conducting research and continuing its assembly. Other crew members are from Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. For more information about the station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station.

The Global Digital Elevation Map, the most complete map of the Earth's surface, was published on June 29 and is free to download and use. The map was created using nearly 1.3 million images collected by a Japanese camera (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER) on board NASA’s Terra satellite and covers 99 percent of the Earth's surface.

“Aster's accurate topographic data will be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design, firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a few areas,” according to the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Aster science team leader Mike Abrams. Previously, the most complete topographical map of the planet was created by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which only captured images of 80 percent of the planet's surface, between 60 degrees North latitude and 57 degrees South. The new image spans between 83 degrees North latitude and 83 degrees South, according to JPL.

“Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry (METI) and NASA announced the release of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) on June 29, 2009. The GDEM was created by stereo-correlating the 1.3 million scene ASTER VNIR archive, covering the Earth’s land surface between 83N and 83S latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 30 meter postings, and is formatted in 1 x 1 degree tiles as GeoTIFF files. Each GDEM file is accompanied by a Quality Assessment file, either giving the number of ASTER scenes used to calculate a pixel’s value, or indicating the source of external DEM data used to fill the ASTER voids. The GDEM is available for download from NASA’s EOS data archive (https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome/) and Japan’s Ground Data System (http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp/ ). This ASTER product is available at no charge for any user pursuant to an agreement between METI and NASA” (http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gdem.asp).

In the past 15 years, the top ranked International Journal of Geographical Information Science has grown from publishing six issues per year with a target length of 600 pages, to producing 12 issues a year with a target length of 1632 pages. According to its web site, “the aim of this interdisciplinary and international journal is to provide a forum for the exchange of original ideas, techniques, approaches and experiences in the rapidly growing fields of geographical information science (GISc) and geocomputation. It is intended to interest those who design, implement and use systems for monitoring, modeling, planning and policy-making. Published research covers innovative applications of geographic information in natural resources, social systems and the built environment, and developments in computer science, cartography, surveying, geography and engineering in both developed and developing countries.”

Brian G. Lees, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief and Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Physical, Environmental, & Mathematical Sciences at The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, recently contacted major contributors to the journal to say, “I am very pleased to be able to let you know that your article was amongst the Top-Twenty downloaded in 2008.” UCSB Geography was particularly well represented by Mike Goodchild, Keith Clarke, and Phaedon Kyriakidis. Mike had three articles in the top 20, and Keith and Phaedon each had one; Mike was also among the 10 Top Cited Authors, 2000-2008. The articles in question are Goodchild, Michael F., Yuan, May, & Cova, Thomas J.: “Towards a general theory of geographic representation in GIS”; Goodchild, M. F., & Hill, L. L.: “Introduction to digital gazetteer research”; Clarke, Keith C. & Gaydos, Leonard J.: “Loose-coupling a cellular automaton model and GIS: long-term urban growth prediction for San Francisco and Washington/Baltimore”; and Liu, X. H., Kyriakidis, P. C., & Goodchild, M. F.: “Population-density estimation using regression and area-to-point residual kriging.” Good on ya, mates!

“Ambivalence: the feeling you get as you watch your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new car.” I have the same feeling about our newsletter, UCSB Geography News, going “paperless.” While the former quip is decidedly not politically correct, using PC (or Apple) e-mail to go paperless sounds very PC. So why do I feel ambivalent about it?

It costs the Department of Geography about $1500 to print and mail each of our biannual newsletters. It also takes a few trees, despite our use of recycled paper, to create the 12 page project which is printed and mailed to 1,600 people. So, what’s wrong with saving about $3,000 a year, not to mention several trees? I guess it boils down to the human tendency to predict the answer in the premise of the question. The premise, in this case, is that we will save money by using e-mail instead of hard copy, and, incidentally save a lot of trees and reduce our carbon imprint.

As a Dartmouth College alumnus, I get the annual Dartmouth Alumni Magazine; “Dartmouth Life,” a newspaper for Dartmouth alumni and parents published five times yearly; and several telephone, postcard, and e-mail appeals for donations each year. To be honest, most of the magazines and newspapers go into my recycle bin, unopened and unread, the phone calls are hung up on, and the e-mails are deleted. It’s easy to delete an e-mail or hang up on a telephone solicitation. But, while it’s also easy to trash a magazine or a newspaper, the hard copy items have a longer shelf life. They “hang around,” on my desk or in my workshop, until I get around to putting them in the recycle bin. And, if a picture or headline catches my eye, I thumb through them on occasion. And, once in a great while, I feel guilty and actually sit down, write a check, and send a donation.

What I’m getting at is the fact that hard copy lasts longer, is less likely to be deleted or ignored, and is even likely to be read by more than one person. The distance between the e-mail on your computer screen and the checkbook in your desk drawer is enormous, especially compared to the distance between the newsletter on your desk and that coveted checkbook.

Of course, all of the above assumes that there is a real choice between paper and digital formats. Substantial numbers of people, including the disabled (especially the blind and visually disabled), the aged, and those without computer access or savvy, lack such a choice – a quandary that Professor Reginald Golledge used to refer to as “the digital divide.” Furthermore, while older people are less likely to rely on or cope with computers, they are the ones most likely to be able to afford donations.

The bottom line is that I doubt that we will save money by making Geography News paperless. To assume that we could is reminiscent of the economic theories of the 1950s which assumed certain theoretical models that were unverified by empirical reality. Sure, going paperless sounds PC. But I’ll bet that we’ll get a much better bang for our buck by sticking with hard copy.

Bill Norrington

Tom Pingel was one of four graduate students from The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science’s member institutions to receive a UCGIS Student Paper Award. Tom presented his paper at the UCGIS Summer Assembly this month, and it was selected for the Best Paper Award by Transactions in GIS, consisting of $200 and the fast-tracking of the paper into the peer-reviewed process for publication in the journal CaGIS. Jeremy Mennis and Tim Nyerges presented the Student Paper Award to Tom; E. Lynn Usery presented him with the Best Paper Award on behalf of CaGIS.

Tom’s paper, “Modeling slope as a contributor to route selection in mountainous areas,” describes a road finding program he created that takes information about a person or a group's known tracks and uses that to find routes or paths they might take between places: “The original idea for this, by the way, came from Tobler's 1993 NCGIA paper ‘Non-isotropic geographic modeling.’ His transformation of slope to speed (and therefore time) has come to be known as Tobler's Hiking Function.”

Abstract of Tom’s paper:

Slope exerts a powerful influence on the route selection processes of humans. Attempts to model human movement in hilly and mountainous terrain that have largely focused on least-time route transformations can be improved by incorporating research that suggests humans systematically overestimate slopes. Such research suggests that cost functions derived from slope should be more expensive than time derivations alone would indicate. This paper presents a method that empirically estimates cost functions for slopes. The method is then used to predict routes and paths that are more likely to be selected by humans based on their perceptions of slope. We also evaluate that method and find it successfully predicts road, track and trail locations over a variety of conditions and distances

Congratulations, Tom--keep on "tracking"!

Would you like to own a piece of the moon? The New Scientist is sponsoring a competition for “lunatics,” with a piece of lunar meteorite as the prize. The competition celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, and the competition is simple to enter: “You will doubtless know the words spoken by Neil Armstrong when he stepped off Apollo 11's lunar module and onto the moon itself: ‘One small step for [a] man - one giant leap for mankind.’ Can you think of something else he might have said instead - something equally memorable, or perhaps something funny? Your entry should be no more than 75 characters long (including spaces).”

The competition closes on 29 June, and the results will be published in the 18 July issue of New Scientist, in anticipation of the anniversary of the landing. Entry terms and conditions, as well as the provenance and specifications of the meteorite, can be found at www.newscientist.com/article/dn17213. Thanks to Mark Probert for bringing this opportunity to our attention!

Editor’s note: According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the adjective "lunatic" dates back to c.1290 ("affected with periodic insanity, dependent on the changes of the moon," from O.Fr. lunatique "insane," from L. lunaticus "moon-struck," from luna "moon." Cf. O.E. monseoc "lunatic," lit. "moon-sick;" M.H.G. lune "humor, temper, mood, whim, fancy" (Ger. Laune), from L. luna. Cf. also N.T. Gk. seleniazomai "be epileptic," from selene "moon"). The noun meaning "lunatic person" is first recorded 1377. Lunatic fringe (1913) was apparently coined by U.S. politician Theodore Roosevelt. Lunatic soup (1933) was Australian slang for "alcoholic drink."

UCSB undergraduate Chris O’Connor has just finished a 6 month stint in Australia, thanks to the UCSB Education Abroad Program: “I’ve been here for one semester, 6 months. Going to Bali/Java, Indonesia after school is out. Been studying 2 science courses, Australian studies course, and a literature course on dreams and visions in lit and film. Australian studies was a class concerning Australian history and national identity. The whole point behind the class was that national identity is always changing, and is not fixed. Depending on who you are talking to (government, aboriginals, etc), everyone has a different story of what happened here. It was a pretty cool class.

I’m living with my roommate in Bulli, a suburb of Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales. We live next to a world class point break, Sandon Point. My routine is to go to church, surf, study, sleep. Ha - that's about it!

I will graduate in 2010. I am getting a BS in Physical Geography. My favorite teacher has been Professor Sweeney - I was in the honors class of the Geography of Surfing Class freshman year.”

Chris goes on to say:

“Originally, I was attracted to Australia because of the good waves I have seen in surf videos. I really wanted to surf the Superbank in the Gold Coast, but my school is about a 10 hour drive away from there. There are many awesome surf breaks around Wollongong. Right hand point breaks, left hand point breaks, reefs, and beach breaks galore. I love the pace of life out here, very laid back. My roommate is 47, and he surfs everyday with me. His name is Tim. What a good guy. I found him on the internet before I came out, and really feel sooo lucky that I happened to fall into a spot in his house. I live in a separate part of the house, kinda like a studio room (they call it a "Granny Flat"). When I’m not surfing, studying, or going to church/reading my Bible, I am whipping up good food. They love my guacamole out here - I often make it for "tea" (dinner).

After I graduate, I am thinking about possibly going to grad school for meteorology. Working for Surfline.com as the Rincon Dawn Patrol for the last 3 years has really motivated me to learn about wave formation. So, I figure I would like to become an expert in the subject. I definitely want to live by the ocean my whole life; I can’t imagine life away from it. I can see myself living in San Diego, or maybe even Hawaii someday. I will look to the Lord for guidance.”

Grad student Frank Davenport just completed a month of intensive classes and computer labs at the Spatial Econometrics Advanced Institute in Rome. The SEAI is organized yearly by the Spatial Econometrics Association. It aims at providing a solid background to Master, PhD students, and young researchers interested in the analysis of spatial data, with particular reference to economic applications; only 20-30 students with a strong background in mathematics are admitted each year. Frank gives us a glimpse behind the scenes in the following letter:

As most of you probably don’t know, I’ve been in Rome (the one in Italy) for the past month, dutifully taking notes at the Spatial Econometrics Advanced Institute (SEAI). What is Spatial Econometrics you ask? Contrary to popular opinion, it is not the study of space economics (Do Venutian import tariffs impact real wage rates on Mars?) - No, spatial econometrics is like normal econometrics, but more spatial…

Most of us know what spatial is, so what is econometrics? Econometrics is applying statistics to observational data with an almost maniacal focus on large sample theory. Large sample theory is a set of mathematical tools that helps us answer one convoluted question: If I observe a sample of n observations from a population of N individuals, will the conclusions I draw from the n observations still apply to all N individuals, and what degree of certainty can I have about those conclusions? The ‘spatial’ part is ‘special’ because a lot of the assumptions used in large sample theory, (and, hence, econometrics) don’t always apply to spatial data (i.e., counties, states, pixels, et cetera are not marbles randomly drawn from a bag), so we have to use every letter in the Greek alphabet to figure out how to fix it (to paraphrase Prof. Kyriakidis ‘it’s a smelly pile of spaghetti macaroni’). Most importantly, spatial econometrics uses lots of cool acronyms with extra relevance to anyone with basic knowledge of hip-hop culture (the ‘Wu’ matrix, the ‘SHAC’ estimator, ‘Spatial-J’ tests).

So what about the class? Well it’s 100 hours (70 of lecture, 30 of lab) over a 4-week period. It’s organized by the Spatial Econometrics Association, and held at the City University in Rome (which, with 130,000 students, is the 2nd largest university in the world). The course is intense, (I have not sat this still for that long since high-school), is taught by some of the premiere experts in the field, and focuses on a lot of very recent and exciting developments (Venutian import tariffs do impact Martian wage rates!!). It’s taught by economists for economists. Me and USCB geog alum Kat ‘K-dawg’ Grace, are the only geographers in the group.

As a geographer (which, as you know, is asymptotically superior to all other disciplines) I have an advantage in some areas (I know my way around a shapefile and a W matrix) and a disadvantage in others (a tad rusty on simultaneous equation models). That said, the course is great, and I can safely say, without hyperbole, that, when it is over, I will be the smartest person on the planet.

Okay, enough about spatial econometrics, what about Rome? Well, in the immortal words of the 19th Century British Poet Laureate—Lord Alfred Tennyson—‘It’s like Vegas, but more real’. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Ancient buildings, magnificent fountains, white-Vespas, tight-jeans, Rome’s got it all. There’s even a soccer stadium made of marble (but its’ kind of ruined)!!!

I’ve done the litany of tourist stuff-> Basilicas of St. Peter and Paul, Vatican Museum, Coliseum, Fioro Roman, Trevi-Fountains, Little Caesars, et cetera. It would be a literary injustice to say these places were simply ‘amazing’ or ‘cool’. Suffice it to say that they are really-super-amazingly-cool. But, of all the Roman monuments, museums, bars, and brothels I’ve visited, one in particular stands out as being truly super-amazingly-cool: The Gallery of Maps. Assembled in 1580 by Friar Iganzio Danti, the Gallery is a 120m long corridor featuring 40 wall sized murals, each one a detailed hand illustrated map of various regions of Italy. The corners of the maps feature detailed cross-sections of the various important cities in each of the regions. It’s like the entrance to Geography heaven! (We should get one for the department). To quote Pope Gregory the XIII (who commissioned the work): ‘It makes the Sistine Chapel look like a pile of puke’. That’s all folks. Hope you’re all doing well, see you in July! Ciao.

Links: Spatial Econometrics Advanced Institute: http://www.spatialeconometricsadvancedinstitute.org/admission.html; Spatial Econometrics Association: http://spatialeconometr.altervista.org/; Gallery of Maps: http://www.vaticanstate.va/EN/Monuments/The_Vatican_Museums/Gallery_of_Maps.htm

Editor’s note: Frank added the following addendum: “The course is now over, and Katie (my wife of 3 months) and I are taking our long overdue honeymoon: a 1 month trip through Croatia and Northern Italy.”

Geography event photos and other department related photos and artwork are included on our web site at http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/event-photos/. Currently, there are 35 photographs of Professor Reginald G. Golledge on the “Golledge Memorial” pages. The photos are random and cover a 25 year span, including shots of Reg in his early years at UCSB, photos of Reg trying out the Personal Guidance System that he helped to develop, pictures of Reg fishing, Reg with his family and academic friends, and, of course, Reg receiving some of his many honors and awards. We would like to expand this photo memorial, so, if anyone would like to share other photos of Reg, please send them to the editor, Bill Norrington, at billn@geog.ucsb.edu.

The “Event Photo” section of our web site is listed under the “news and events” heading on our home page. The section is chronological, back to 2005, and there is a link to an archived photo section of earlier items. The photo categories range from the Golledge Memorial, graduating senior receptions, and Geography barbecues to departmental parties, annual softball games, and historic posters. Archived categories include photos of the campus, Geography life, historic photos, the Santa Barbara area, and Geography artwork, including favorite posters and artwork by Geography personnel.

A special thank you is due to our Network Computer Technologist Jon Hall for setting up the Event Photo section. Jon is our web site programmer, and he creates and maintains Department web site architecture and content. He has BS degrees from UCSB in both Computer Science and Physics and has been involved in web design and coding since high school; currently, he’s also revamping the UCSB Sustainability web site.  Your editor is particularly indebted to Jon for making it possible for him to post articles without having to struggle with the intricacies and unforgiving nature of html!

Article by Bill Norrington

There are many different kinds of clouds, but there are only four main cloud types, and, to date, about 80 cloud varieties have been officially identified. Recently, some scientists have said that “asperatus” clouds, pictured at the right, cannot be described by the recognized varieties, and that they should have their own name. The name asperatus is from Latin, meaning ‘to make rough’ and refers to the turbulent and choppy undersides of the formations. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, calls it the "Jacques Cousteau cloud" because of its resemblance to a roiling ocean surface as seen from below. He has proposed a "formal," Latin name: Undulus asperatus--roughly, "a very turbulent, violent, chaotic form of undulation."

Margaret LeMone, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, considers asperatus a “likely” new cloud type. Jane Wiggins, an amateur photographer, is credited with the recent buzz about the cloud formations because of a picture of asperatus clouds she photographed from the window of a downtown office building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in June 2006. Pretor-Pinney came across the photograph in 2009 and enlisted the aid of the Royal Meteorological Society in determining if asperatus was, indeed, a new cloud variety. Wiggins’ photograph was posted on the National Geographic web site on June 3, 2009, and related news stories and photos quickly spread via the Internet.

The Royal Meteorological Society is currently gathering evidence of the type of weather patterns in which undulus asperatus clouds appear, in order to ascertain how they form and to decide whether they are distinct from other undulatus clouds and should be submitted to the World Meteorological Organization for recognition. The last “new” cloud formation recognized in the World Meteorological Organization’s official list of cloud formations was cirrus intortus, which was added to its International Cloud Atlas in 1951. The current, ubiquitous use of digital cameras and the relative rarity of asperatus formations are considered the main reasons for this “new” discovery.

Editor’s note: Most of the above is a synopsis of the Wikipedia and National Geographic web articles on the subject. A gallery of asperatus cloud photos from the Cloud Appreciation Society can be seen at http://www.cloudappreciationsociety.org/gallery/index.php?x=browse&category=52&pagenum=1

Article by Bill Norrington