Tag Archives: Armory Square

Sweet Science Series – Is Forensic Science Infallible?

Posted on April 6, 2017 1:32 pm - - Leave a Comment

Thursday, 13 April 2017, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Milton J Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology – Syracuse, NY


View Larger Map

Michael Marciano, a research assistant professor and lead of the bioforensics laboratory at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute, will present Is Forensic Science Infallible?, a discussion about DNA and the evolution of forensic science, as part of the Technology Alliance of Central New York’s 2016-2017 Sweet Science Series.

People interested in learning more about forensic science are invited to attend the free Sweet Science Series presentation on Thursday, April 13, 2017, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Space Gallery meeting room of the Museum of Science & Technology in Syracuse’s Armory Square. Admission is free and open to the public. Light snacks will be served. Walk-ins are welcome, but we ask that people RSVP by emailing sweet.lecture@tacny.org by April 11. Parking is available on the street and in the lot behind the MOST.

Safety and freedom are among the two most fundamental values and rights we share as individuals. Since the late 19th Century, forensic science has played a significant and vital role in assuring these values are upheld. Modern advances in science and the cultural obsession with forensic science has caused the field to come under a high level of scrutiny. This scrutiny has both served to improve forensic science and slow the pace of adoption of new technologies; contrary to the rapid innovation observed in biotechnology. Using forensic DNA analysis as a guide, this talk will examine the current state of the science, discuss the impact of popular culture and explore future directions.

Presenters

Marciano is a Research Assistant Professor and lead of the Bioforensics laboratory in the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute. He previously spent 5.5 years employed as a Forensic DNA analyst at the Wallie Howard Jr. Onondaga County Center for Forensic Sciences. He later joined SRC Inc., a non-profit defense contractor, where he focused on research and development of DNA-based methods addressing human and non-human genetic identity and the exploitation of biologicals to aid in tagging, tracking, and locating targets. This research and development continues at Syracuse University, where he has helped secure over $700,000 in funding from the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and National Institute of Justice. He has developed several new methods and technologies and is an inventor on five pending patents. He currently teaches Forensic Analysis of Biological Evidence and Forensic DNA analysis. Michael is the recipient of the 2017 TACNY Celebration of Technology Project of the Year award!

TACNY John Edson Sweet Lecture Series

TACNY John Edson Sweet Lectures, a program founded in 1913, features discussions about topics in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an informal atmosphere. A minimum of six Sweet Lectures are held each year.

Technology Alliance of Central New York

Founded in 1903 as the Technology Club of Syracuse, the nonprofit Technology Alliance of Central New York’s mission is to facilitate community awareness, appreciation, and education of technology; and to collaborate with like-minded organizations across Central New York.

For more information about TACNY, visit www.tacny.org.

Posted in: TACNY - Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

CNYO Observing Log: Two Solar Highlights – International SUN-Day And A Space Science Morning At The MOST

Posted on August 31, 2014 11:43 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

A post to the CNYO Facebook Page by Pamela Shivak of International SUN-Day and the equally great Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project about the 2015 Int. SUN-Day reminded me that the CNYO event for 22 June 2014 hadn’t been posted yet. Ergo…

2014august31_sunday_and_most_5_small

Dave Wormuth and passers-by at Larry’s NMT. Click for a larger view.

There for the duration of CNY’s edition of the International SUN-Day 2014 were Larry Slosberg, Bob Piekiel, Dave Wormuth, George Wong, and myself, plus Larry’s Baader-ized 12″ New Moon Telescope Dob, Bob’s 60 mm Coronado SolarMax II, my trusty Coronado PST, and a few pairs of official Charlie Bates Solar Astro solar glasses direct from Stephen Ramsden’s lecture at NEAF 2014 (George demonstrating their usage below).

2014august31_sunday_and_most_4_small

George demonstrating proper technique. Click for a larger view.

The day was excellent for solar observing (made so by the presence of a few trees to provide a little shade) and our two hour session ended up hosting about 30 people, a few of whom definitely took their time to enjoy the view, then many who took a quick glance, then another out of surprise, then attempted the ritual smart phone documentation of the view. As one can see below, the Coronado PST lets in more than enough red light to saturate the iPhone CCD camera. Whereas your eye is insensitive enough to provide you some very nice surface and prominence detail, the image below just barely gives you a view of otherwise wispy visual prominences.

2014august31_sunday_and_most_2_small

The H-alpha’ed Sun saturating a CCD. Click for a larger view.

Only a few of the attendees knew in advance from the website, twitter feed, or Facebook page. The others were simply caught as passers-by taking in the Creekwalk and Armory Square. The busy weekend being what it was, I even managed a short music conversation with the tour manager for Don Felder (who’d played with Foreigner and Styx the night before), himself taking in a bike tour of the Creekwalk and greater Syracuse area. And, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get a couple of the leisurely strollers to veer our way to take in views. If you ever see us set up and observing, we hope you’ll line right up behind an eyepiece and take a look!

2014august31_sunday_and_most_1_small

Larry explaining everything. Click for a larger view.

Not too long after Int. SUN-Day, CNYO members received a request from Nancy Volk at The MOST to lend our solar scopes to a group of area 8th graders taking in a series of Space Science demos on the morning of 18 July 2014. Friday’s being what they are, I was left to sneak out on my own to run a mini solar session with just the Coronado PST and Bates Solar Glasses.

2014august31_sunday_and_most_3_small

The last of four outdoor sessions. Click for a larger view.

The morning session ended 3 hours later with no small amount of Armory Square drama unrelated to the session, the telling and re-telling of every solar fact I could come up with, and 70 enlightened students and teachers.

2014august31_sunday_and_most_6_small

Demonstrating the relative motions of the inner planets. Click for a larger view.

Instructive Demo Of The Day: Solar glasses and a +100 lumen flashlight are themselves an excellent combination in a pinch, as all can agree that the pre-filtered light is blindingly bright, while everyone around the glasses-wearing test subject gets a good laugh from seeing the flashlight waved within an inch of thin Baader film separating the wearer from a really bad case of temporary blindness.

We’ve now the official word on International SUN-Day 2015 – June 21st to be exact. Expect CNYO members to be somewhere (likely the Creekwalk again) hosting another session (weather-permitting, as usual)!

Posted in: Observing Logs - Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CNYO Observing Log: International Sidewalk Astronomy Night, 7 March 2014

Posted on March 29, 2014 8:03 pm - - 3 Comments

Greetings fellow astrophiles!

CNYO members Larry Slosberg and Michelle Marzynski, John Giroux, and I used the available clear skies of Friday, March 7th (and forecasts of far worse conditions on the official night of March 8th) to host the CNY branch of the International Sidewalk Astronomy Night (ISAN 7). ISAN 7 was made more significant to the amateur astronomy community with the passing of John Dobson on January 15th of this year (instead of reproducing more content about John Dobson in this post, I will instead refer you to the official announcement of our ISAN session. Needless to say, he left quite a legacy).

2014march29_isan7_1

Our session was held at our favorite downtown location – along the length of the Creekwalk between the MOST/Soundgarden and the Syracuse University Architecture School/Warehouse, on the same block as Walt the Loch West Monster. The location is definitely bright, but this limitation to observing can be overcome with the judicious selection of Messier Objects and planets (no galaxies!). The last two astronomy events held at this same location – the 2012 Transit of Venus and 2013’s NASA/MOST Climate Day, featured an easier target (the Sun), but also gave us plenty of on-the-ground time to find the Creekwalk a great spot to have both reasonable parking and a regular stream of passers-by to coax into looking into strange telescopes.

2014march29_isan7_2

“And so,” you might ask, “how long was your observing list for the evening? And what’s the point of observing from such a bright location?” I’ve run into such questions a few times in my own travels, and I assume that some other outreach-centric amateur astronomers have been asked the same questions. The answer for ISAN 7 over a +2 hour session was the Moon, Jupiter, the Pleiades (M45), and the Orion Nebula (M42). That’s it. Didn’t try for anything else, didn’t want to.

And, importantly, those four were plenty.

At the heart of sidewalk astronomy is getting people who’ve never looked through a scope before to take in a detailed batch of photons a few seconds (the Moon), several minutes (Jupiter), or even several light years (M42, M45) older than the ones they’re usually exposed to. As some people are hesitant to even get their eye near the eyepiece, the very best way to run a sidewalk astronomy session (or any public viewing session) is to put the easiest, most obvious, and brightest nighttime objects into the field of view to draw the observer in. Any fuzzy object, 16th magnitude asteroid, or even Uranus and Neptune are the last things a trained observer should try to expose a new observer to (IMHO) given that the passers-by at a sidewalk astronomy event will only stick around (as we discovered) for about 4 minutes (a few definitely stuck around longer, while a few others we surgical about their inspection of the Moon and Jupiter before continuing on. I think they half-expected us to “pass the hat”).

2014march29_isan7_3

The Moon to a new observer is a jaw-dropper. Assume wow-factor imminent as soon as you see the Moon’s light projected out the eyepiece onto the face of someone slowly making their way to the focuser. Jupiter (and Saturn, for that matter) is also a treat at the right magnification (enough to see surface detail, but not so much that the image becomes dull and unsteady. A Barlow’ed 6 mm is NOT the way to go without a very large aperture and rock-solid mount). The Orion Nebula was our “advanced topics for the persistent observer” object, as it was bright enough to still show some nebulosity and additional detail.

Over the course of about two hours, we put the total count at about 60 (which wasn’t bad, given the temperature and the fact that we were on the far side of the restaurant-heavy part of Armory Square). Larry, John, and I made our way into a few pics (intermixed in this post – we were mostly too busy to stop and take snapshots. Thanks to Brad Loperfido for taking them).

And then there was Pedro Gomes, who single-handedly brought ISAN 7 (and CNYO) to Watertown on March 8th. Some of his image gallery from Facebook is reproduced below and we thank him for sharing his excellent scope run with us!

[envira-gallery id=”2573″]

Look for future Creekwalk sessions in the near future, including a few solar sessions and the next NASA Climate Day at the MOST.

Posted in: Observing Logs - Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,