Second Annual

Pasadena, California
California Institute of Technology Campus

This conference is open to everyone, not just to SAS members. You can register directly on our on-line store.

Costs

Members: Registration fee: $99

Non-members: Registration fee: $120

Click here to sign up, or download a printable mail-in registration form (.pdf)

Accommodations

The Sheraton Hotel is giving SAS a special conference rate for all attendees.
Click here for more information

Schedule of Events

Thursday, 17 July

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Friday, 18 July

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Saturday, 19 July

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Sunday, 20 July

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Speakers (Partial List)

Paul MacCready, Ph.D.
Founder, CEO, Aerovironment Inc.
Guggenheim Medal Winner
Father of human-powered flight

"Citizen Flight Science for the Individual and the World"
First Annual Arthur T. Winfree Lecture

Flight is in the continuing stress of new energies, new efficiencies, and new controls - and also subject to new pressures of terrorists. The most exciting parts will be in various areas that fit the goals of amateurs and futurists. For example, the model area has recently prospered from the development of amazing Li-battery energy used in cell phones and microcomputers, permitting models to fly for hours on small batteries. Sailplane design is exceeding 60:1 glide ratios, and methods of extracting energy from sunlight and from the turbulent atmosphere are opening new potentials for flight. Two and four-place airplanes can become much cheaper to buy. Developments will be taking place in package delivery by unmanned aircraft (across oceans and also above forests), and in people transport from rooftops. All such technologies will grow rapidly both locally and globally, and many of them will be created by individual inventors and hobbyists.

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Michael Shermer
Founding Publisher of Skeptic Magazine

"In Darwin's Shadow"

Virtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this insightful biography of one of the greatest but least heralded scientists of the nineteenth century.

The presentation will be followed by a book signing.

Michael Shermer is founding publisher and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, and is director of the Skeptics Society. He has authored several popular books on science, including Why People Believe Weird Things, How We Believe, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do they Say It? and Borderlands of Science.

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John Dooley, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics, Millersville University

"Towards a Foucault Pendulum for the Non-Obsessed"

The 2002 model of the 1 meter driven Foucault pendulum was driven as a resonant device, slightly off resonance for stability. It requires matching the pendulum to the driving frequency within 100 parts per million. The matching is done by adjusting the length of the pendulum, in a manner similar to regulating a grandfather clock. As with a grandfather clock, changes in temperature require re-regulating the device.

The 2003 model follows a suggestion of Shawn Carlson in the the SAS Bulletin, to use a capacitive proximity sensor to control the driver. The method is surprisingly sensitive to the position of the sensor, but promises to remove the tedious tweaking needed for the resonant device.

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Glen Hemerick

"Restoring Plankton"

Mr. Hemerick has won local recognition and financial backing for an experiment his is conducting on whether or not local populations of saltwater plankton can be manipulated artificially. His project has also drawn praise for involving local high school science students.

His project involves collecting and cultivating saltwater plankton in a laboratory environment. They are grown and released into Puget Sound, or into streams which flow into lakes, which have a history of toxic, or other undesirable plankton, with the hope that the former may compete with the latter.

Glen Hemerick is an amateur scientist and volunteer with the Clover Park High School Science Club in Tacoma, WA.

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John Greaves
Patent Attorney
Schwegman, Lundberg, Woessner & Kluth, P.A.

"Patents and Other Intellectual Property for Amateur Scientists"

Amateur scientists have unique challenges when dealing with intellectual property, particularly patents and trade secrets. The types of challenges remain fairly constant with respect to the patent and trade secret laws. The consequences, however, are becoming more pronounced for the amateur scientist because of the trend for countries to harmonize their various intellectual property systems.

The presentation will cover a significant discussion of patent and trade secret law. The presentation will focus on the amateur scientist, whether the inventive process is at home or incidental to employment. With this focus on the challenges facing the amateur scientist, issues of intellectual property ownership, patentability of inventions, and the patenting process will be presented in depth.

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John Lighton, Ph.D.
University of Nevada

"Sensorship: Is There a Real World Out There?"

Dr. Lighton will discuss different techniques for collecting and recording data using electronic sensors, with special attention to citizen scientists on a budget. His presentation will also incude a brief demonstration of some of these techniques.

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Forrest M. Mims III
Geronimo Creek Observatory, TX.

"New Findings About The Extraordinarily Rare Devil's Cigar (Chorioactis geaster)"

The spectacular fungus commonly known as the devil's cigar (Chorioactis geaster (Peck.) Eckblad) was heretofore found only occasionally on the Japanese island of Kyushu and at several Texas sites between Austin and Fort Worth. This report expands the range of the fungus to Geronimo Creek in Guadalupe County, Texas. In Texas the fungus is closely associated with rotted stumps or roots of dead cedar elms (Ulmus crassiofolia (Nutt.)) subject to periodic flooding. The fruiting body emerges from the soil as a dark brown cylinder which eventually opens into a multi-pointed star having attractive tan or cinnamon-hued rays bordered by white edges. The hymenial surface then periodically emits bursts of spores that resemble white smoke. Spores of Geronimo Creek specimens have been cultured on sterile agar, apparently a first for the Texas population. Previously spores have been cultured only in Japan. Since observations began in 1986, as many as 30 clusters of devils cigars have appeared each fall at Geronimo Creek Observatory near Seguin in Central Texas (29.6N 97.9W). Observations of these fungi have revealed new information about their habitat, morphological differences, predation by various insects and mammals and possibly how they arrived in Texas on the winds of ancient Asian dust storms.

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Arielle Eckstut
Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Inc.

"Putting Your Passion into Print"

Find the publishing process daunting? Literary Agent, Arielle Eckstut, illuminates the nuts and bolts of getting a book published: how to choose what to write about, how to find an agent, how to navigate once you've found a publisher and more. Please bring any and all questions.

Arielle Eckstut is an agent at The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency where she has sold millions of dollars worth of books by people who have followed their personal passions. She is also the co-author of Pride & Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen, Satchel Sez: The Wit, Wisdom and World of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, and the forthcoming Putting Your Passion into Print.

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Lisa Glukhovsky
John J. McCarthy Observatory
Jr. Grand Prize Winner, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, 2003

"A Rapid, Accurate Method of Determining the Distance to Near Earth Asteroids"

Lisa Glukhovsky, a student at New Milford High School in western Connecticut, developed her project under the mentoring of SAS members of the Western Connecticut Chapter (WCCSAS). She conducted her research at the John J. McCarthy Observatory, a modern, fully equipped educational observation facility that was conceived, designed, funded, and built through the efforts of the WCCSAS. Lisa's entry at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair took a grand prize in the Jr. division, for which she was awarded over $75,000 in prize money.

One of the McCarthy Observatory's primary science missions is observing, precisely measuring the position of, and helping validate the orbits of newly-discovered Potentially Hazardous Objects. These objects are Near Earth Asteroids that professional watchers have determined may have orbits that bring them dangerously close to the earth at some future date.

Lisa Glukhovsky's presentation will detail a method she has developed for quickly and accurately determining distances from earth to these Near Earth Asteroids.

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Gary Coyne

Scientific Glass Blower, California State University, Los Angeles

"How to Break Glass (and How to Avoid It in the Laboratory)"

When asked "how does glass break", the usual answer is to hit it with a hammer or toss it on a floor. While those are two techniques for breaking glass, they do not explain how glass breaks. This paper will present the specific conditions that must be present for glass to break and explain the difference between physical and thermal strength. This paper will continue with how to use this information to decrease the amount of glass failure in the lab by selection of appropriate apparatus, apparatus design, and use.

Broken glass is not only a financial problem because of down time and replacement costs, but is an obvious safety concern. While it is impossible to prevent glass from breaking, it is fairly easy to limit the amount of glass breakage in the laboratory once you know how glass breaks.

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Diana Deutsch
Professor of Psychology, University of California San Deigo

"Phantom Words and Other Curiosities"

This talk explores and demonstrates some curious phenomena of sound perception, which are contained in a new compact disc by the author, entitled 'Phantom Words, and Other Curiosities', to be published in May. Just as with Deutsch's earlier compact disc 'Musical Illusions and Paradoxes', each demonstration provides the amateur scientist with the materials to conduct research on how the brain processes sound.

The CD is named after the demonstrations on the first few tracks. Each of these tracks consists of either two words, or a single word that is composed of two syllables, and these are repeated over and over again. The identical sequence is played through stereo loudspeakers; however when the first sound is coming from the speaker on the right the second sound is coming from the speaker on the left; and vice versa. After listening to these patterns for a while, people begin to hear 'phantom words', created by the brain in an attempt to create order out of the chaos of sound that is presented. The words that are heard typically change into different words and phrases on continued listening, so that people often believe that the sounds have been altered in some way. Most interestingly, what is heard often appears to reflect what is on ones' mind -- in fact, people often hear voices speaking in strange accents, so as to create for themselves words and phrases that are particularly meaningful to them.

A Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, Deutsch has over 130 written publications, including books, book chapters and articles. She has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of experimental Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. She has served as Governor of the Audio Engineering Society, as Chair of the Section on Psychology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is currently President-Elect of th Division 10 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity , and the Arts). She is Founding Editor of the journal Music Perception, and has served as Founding President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. Her numerous invited scientific and public lectures include tow that she delivered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her illusions and other demonstrations of sound perception and memory have been featured internationally in many radio and television broadcasts.

The Society for Amateur Scientists joins Professor Deutsch in thanking Wes Dooley of Audio Engineering Associates for his generosity in providing the audio equipment for this talk.

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George Hrabovsky
President, Madison Area Science and Technology (MAST)

"The Role of Theory in Amateur Science"

Every year hundreds of would-be theorists make startling, and usually wrong, discoveries. Why are they wrong? How could they make their work better? What can an amateur actually contribute to theory?

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Joseph DiVerdi, Ph.D., M.B.A.
XTR Systems, LLC

"Probing the Ionosphere Using Radios and Software"

Very Low Frequency radio waves detected by earth-bound transmitters and receivers can be used to probe the ionosphere and detect energetic, extra-terrestrial events, such as solar flares and even Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). The transmitter and receiver are located sufficiently far apart to permit only "over-the-horizon" communication where the radio waves are reflected and refracted by the ionosphere, hence revealing its structure.

Transmitters are provided by the major Navies of the world which take advantage of the unique propagation features of the VLF radio waves to communicate with submarines operating at depth. Receivers, based on analog circuitry and capable of monitoring a single frequency, are commonly set up by amateurs and variously forwarded to the AAVSO-SID group for compilation.

The Northern Colorado Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Observatory (NCSIDO) was created to continuously monitor the ionospheric structure and dynamics by monitoring multiple radio transmissions using Software Defined Radio (SDR). SDR is a class of techniques which replace many of traditional analog functions with digital and software processing components. The VLF range (3-30kHz) is especially convenient for the application of these techniques.

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DM Lindsay

"Chronic Fatigue with Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction: The Development of a New Classification and a Proposed Treatment"

DM Lindsay has worked tirelessly over the past several years to discover the cause of, and to develop a treatment for the illness that has left him virtually homebound. Emphasizing the role of the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) in metabolism, DM Lindsay has suggested that a Sympathetic Nervous System Insufficiency (SNS-I) could be a potentially treatable cause of chronic fatigue and orthostatic intolerance (OI). With U.S. patient populations of one million and 500,000 sufferers, respectively, the poorly recognized and poorly understood disorders of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and idiopathic OI disable many younger Americans. DM Lindsay hopes his work will help CFS and OI sufferers whose conditions are related to autonomic nervous system dysfunction. He counts himself among those likely to benefit from his own work.

Several times in the last year DM has presented his contentions to investigators in his field. From these encounters DM has learned lessons helpful to other citizen scientists. In his presentation, DM will discuss these lessons, as well as other considerations important in presenting complex material, whether orally or in writing.

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John Powell
President, JP Aerospace

"PongSats: Miniature Student Payloads at the Edge of Space"

A PongSat is an experiment that fits inside of a ping pong ball. These ping pong ball ‘satellites’ are flown to the edge of space by balloons or launched in sounding rockets. There are six to ten high altitude missions flown by JP Aerospace each year. All of these missions carry PongSats.

Thousands of student ranging from 2nd graders to Ph.D. candidates have participated. Experiments range from mini-marshmallows that expand in the near vacuum at 100,000 feet to extremely accurate cosmic ray counters and full telemetry systems all contained inside a ping pong ball.

The PongSat program is operated at no charge to the schools or students.

Think big by thinking small. The PongSat program is designed to get students, researchers, engineers and people everywhere to be directly involved in space.

For the past 23 years John Powell has been an innovator in low cost space systems. His work has included a wide variety of development projects as well as flight systems including sounding rockets, modular micro-satellites, high altitude balloons and airships and a balloon based rocket launch systems.

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John W. Gudenas, Ph.D.
Division Chair of Computational and Natural Science
Aurora University

"The Citizen Scientist's Responsibility To The Community"

The "Citizen Scientist" is an abstract entity that will present different meanings of duty, responsibility and inherent properties depending who is using the term. Most likely the "Citizen Scientist" label has been created to describe any and all who have a desire and commitment to use their knowledge to better our local society in such a way that our nation benefits as well. While this sounds like a daunting and impossible task, the process starts on a very local level. At a recent presentation Professor Leon Lederman indicated that scientific literacy is at an alarmingly low level. This view sadly echoed the statement of Richard Feynman in a 1964 presentation where he said that "...you must all know from experience, that people--I mean the average person, the great majority of people--are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in, and they can stay that way." We, the amateur scientists, engineers, professors, researchers and all who have a desire to explore and understand nature share a responsibility, indeed an awesome responsibility typically ignored, to become proactive Citizen Scientists.

This presentation will explore this responsibility and offer solutions that start at the grass roots of the local community and examine one effort currently in progress. Funded in part by an SBC/ACI Grant.

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Roger G. Gilbertson
President & Cofounder
Mondo-tronics, Inc. / RobotStore.com

"The 10 (or 11) Basic Ways to Make Things Move"

What technologies do we have in our 21st Century tool kit for converting electricity into useable motion? Motors and solenoids use electromagnetism to move everything from wall clocks to pin balls, but we have also discovered 9 (or 10) other ways, including piezoelectricity, shape memory effect, electrohydrodynamics, magnetostriction and more - some you will recognize, others you may never have seen or even heard of before.

Hobbyist, robot builder, author and experimenter Roger G. Gilbertson presents a fast paced overview of the basic ways of making motion, with lots of toys and real-world demonstrations of these "magical" phenomena.

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Chuck Pullen
American Association of Variable Star Observers
Coyote Hill Observatory

"AAVSO: 100 Years of Enabling Amateur Science in Astronomy"

The American Association of Variable Star Observers has a near 100-year history of facilitating and enabling amateur science in astronomy. From our early alliance with the Harvard College Observatory and its long term Director H. Pickering, to our latest Gamma Ray Burster Network program in coordination with NASA, AAVSO provides cutting edge support to amateur and professional astronomers. AAVSO services include standard photometric sequences for visual and instrumental observers for over 4,000 objects, training and mentoring, standard observing practices, online discourse via discussion groups, and the service of approximately 12 full time staff at our headquarters in Cambridge, MA. Our database contains over 11 million observations, and will soon be completely available on-line to professional and amateur astronomers.

This presentation will discuss the general science of variable star astrophysics, how amateurs can make these measurements, and highlight some of the contribution our members have made in amateur and professional partnerships.

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Jack Dea, Ph.D.
Physicist, SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego

"Low Frequency Electromagnetic Monitoring and Relation to Earthquakes"

There are a lot of interesting signals at low frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum. Many signals come from the earth or are related to the earth and they range in frequency from milli-Hertz to 100 Hertz. Higher frequency waves, in the kilo-Hertz range, are related to magnetospheric waves and whistlers. The signals of around 0.1 to 5 Hertz are of particular interest because they have been correlated with the occurrence of some earthquakes.

Elevated broad band noise in the 0.1 to 5 Hz region have been observed prededing the occurrence of some earthquakes. The earthquake related noise dies off after the earthquake. Because the physical processes happen deep inside the earth, the mechanism of the generation low frequency electromagnetic noise is a topic of debate. And because the mechanism(s) are unclear, mainstream scientists are hesitant to study a topic that cannot be verified in the laboratory. On the other hand, the amateur scientist, can contribute to this fascinating field of research through monitoring at amateur stations. This talk will briefly describe some of the observations of low frequency electromagnetic signals that precede earthquakes. Then two of the standard instruments used for electromagnetic monitoring are described. They are the induction coil magnetometer and the electric field meter. Their description including both theory of operation and construction techniques. Next, a new tool, the variable permeability magnetometer, will be described. The theory and technique of the variable permeability magnetometer should interest the instrumentation enthusiast. Finally, an overview of a network of monitoring stations is presented. This network will be run be amateurs and can contribute toward the goal of pinning down the reality of the phenomenon of electromagnetic emissions preceding earthquakes and understanding its nature.

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Chris Bainter, Field Sales Engineer, National Instruments

"LabVIEW 7 Express - Productivity You Can Measure "

Learn about LabVIEW 7 Express! See how LabVIEW can rapidly create test, measurement, control and automation applications using intuitive graphical development. Quickly create user interfaces to interactively control your system and easily specify system functionality by assembling block diagrams. Learn how LabVIEW 7 combines ease of use, performance, and powerful functionality to deliver better productivity for your immediate needs, while providing scalability for long-term requirements.

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"Basic Techniques of Laboratory Glassblowing"

Mr. Gerhart, a member of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, will present a series of short workshops covering the basic techniques of blowing laboratory glassware. The workshops will take place in the Cal Tech Glass Shop, located in the Church Building, Room 04, which is in the sub-basement (two floors below ground level). The Church Building is located just across from the Noyes Laboratory.

The workshops should last between 30 and 45 minutes and will repeat through Sunday morning, concurrent with the Poster Session.

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Sheldon Greaves, Ph.D.
Project Manager, Society for Amateur Scientists

"Tapping the Treasures of Government Documents"

The US Government is the largest publisher in the world, issuing thousands of new publications every month on every subject imaginable. However because of the conditions under which government documents are published, classified and distributed, most people--including professionals and academics--do not know about these rich information resources. This means that someone who acquires a few specialized skills can gain access to information that is likely to be missed by the pros.

This paper will survey how government publication works, and explore some of the more useful tools for finding science-related information issued by government agencies in a variety of media. Self-described "guerrilla scholar"

Sheldon Greaves is the Editor in Chief of the Amateur Scientists' E-Bulletin and the Project Manager for the Society for Amateur Scientists.

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