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An artist’s concept of Kepler 452b orbiting its star, 1,400 light-years from Earth. The planet’s size puts it right on the edge between being rocky like Earth and a gas ball like Neptune. CreditT. Pyle/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA

Inching ahead on their quest for what they call Earth 2.0, astronomers from NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced on Thursday that they had found what might be one of the closest analogues to our own world yet.
It is a planet a little more than one and a half times as big in radius asEarth. Known as Kepler 452b, it circles a sunlike star in an orbit that takes 385 days, just slightly longer than our own year, putting it firmly in the “Goldilocks” habitable zone where the temperatures are lukewarm and suitable for liquid water on the surface — if it has a surface.
The new planet’s size puts it right on the edge between being rocky like Earth and being a fluffy gas ball like Neptune, according to studies of other such exoplanets. In an email, Jon Jenkins of NASA’s Ames Research Center, home of the Kepler project, and lead author of a paper being published in The Astronomical Journal, said the likelihood of the planet’s being rocky was 50 percent to 62 percent, depending on uncertainties in the size of its home star. That would mean its mass is about five times that of Earth.
Such a planet would probably have a thick, cloudy atmosphere and active volcanoes, Dr. Jenkins said, and twice the gravity of Earth. Describing the planet during a news conference, Dr. Jenkins lapsed into lines from John Keats’s poem “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.”
The star that lights this planet’s sky is about 1.5 billion years older than our sun and 20 percent more luminous, which has implications for the prospects of life, Dr. Jenkins said.
“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment,” he said. “It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star, longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”
Asked if any radio telescopes had pointed at the planet to try to detect extraterrestrial radio broadcasts, Dr. Jenkins said, “I hope so.”
To determine whether Kepler 452b deserves a place on the honor roll of possible home worlds, however, astronomers have to measure its mass directly, which requires being close enough to observe the wobbling of its star as it is tugged around by the planet’s gravity. For now, that is impossible, as Kepler 452b is 1,400 light-years away.
The planet is the first to be confirmed in a new list of candidates unveiled by Kepler astronomers on Thursday. It brings the number of possible planets discovered by Kepler to 4,696, many of them small like Earth. “We are the bread crumbs of the universe,” said Jeff Coughlin, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who compiled the catalog.
The spacecraft, launched in 2009, spent four years staring at a patch of the Milky Way on the border between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, looking for the dips in starlight caused by the passage of planets. Its pointing system failed in 2013, but astronomers are still analyzing the data Kepler collected. Every time they sift through it, new planets pop out.
In the meantime, Kepler has switched to a different mode of observing in a mission called K2.
The NASA news conference coincided with a major anniversary: It was only 20 years ago this fall that Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, of the University of Geneva, discovered a planet circling the star 51 Pegasi, about 50 light-years from here. It was the first planet known to belong to a sunlike star outside our solar system, and its discovery ignited an astronomical revolution.
Dr. Queloz, now at the University of Cambridge in England, said at the news conference, “This is a great time we live in.”
“If we keep working so well and so enthusiastically,” he went on, it is not too optimistic to think that in the future, “the issue of life on another planet will be solved.”
Astronomers say they now know from Kepler that about 10 percent of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, Kepler 452b probably among them. This means that of the 600 stars within 30 light-years of Earth, there are roughly 60 E.T.-class abodes, planets that could be inspected by a future generation of telescopes.

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“I dropped everything, got on the computer and said, ‘Can we get an in memoriam label up?’” she recalls.

Call it breaking-news museum curation.

Messages were already pinging between curators, graphic designers and other museum staff: Do we have a portrait of the late great bluesman? Can we acknowledge his passing?

Shumard of course knew that a fine black-and-white photographic portrait already was on display in a ground-floor exhibit dedicated to recent acquisitions. Shumard herself had helped the gallery acquire the gelatin silver print in 2013. It was made by Chuck Stewart, that great portraitist of the music world. He created the photo in 1992, a year after King opened his blues club on Beale Street in Memphis.

The staff edited and printed new text to go with the portrait. Verbs were changed to the past tense. The year of his passing was included. And a special separate label was added: “In Memoriam 1925-2015.”

Caroline Wooden, senior graphic designer at the National Portrait Gallery, adds new text to mark the passing of B.B. King, whose portrait is in the collection. (Bethany Morookian Bentley)
By the time the doors opened at 11:30 a.m., all was in place. Museum visitors noticed and were impressed.

“That’s an art museum paying attention to the real world,” said Matt Stanley of Chantilly.

“We just found out about it three hours ago, and it’s already been acknowledged,” said Olivia Harcourt of West Palm Beach, Fla.

“I knew he was on the edge, I didn’t know he was gone,” said Linda O’Hare of Santa Barbara, Calif.

The gallery’s staff members have done this before — they quickly noted the passing of Robin Williams last year. The curators keep informal tabs on the living subjects of portraits in the collection. When possible, they update museum text in real time. They have noticed that National Portrait Gallery-goers are close readers of the text. However, unlike newspaper editors who keep pre-written obituaries of famous people handy, the curators don’t compose post-mortem labels in advance.

Seeing the portrait of King prompted people to stop and reflect on the passing of a legend. It turns out that almost everyone is a B.B. King fan on some level.

“I’ve always appreciated how, in my generation, the people he brought up and the people he mentored,” said Stanley, 57. “Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joe Bonamassa have really benefited a lot from him. The fact that he lasted that long and was still playing is fantastic.”

“We saw B.B. King at Toad’s Place in New Haven” about 10 years ago, said Larry Gluck, who lives outside New Haven, Conn. “It was amazing. At that point he was pretty sick with diabetes, but he could play like he was a young guy. It’s not a night you forget.”

“His hand and guitar were like one,” said Toby Gluck, Larry’s wife.

“He still had that smile on his face,” Larry Gluck said, nodding at the portrait.

The portrait shows a guitar player in rapture — eyes closed, blissful expression, finger hitting a note half-way up the guitar neck. Shumard, the curator, remembers seeing Stewart’s photograph in an exhibit and knowing it was perfect for the gallery, which did not yet have a portrait of King.

“I loved the fact that this was a photographer who really got music and got musicians,” Shumard says. “It feels wonderfully intimate. B.B. King is completely unaware of the camera, and consequently, the viewers of the picture feel as though they’re right there with him.”

Here is the link…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/05/15/remembering-b-b-king-at-the-national-portrait-gallery/

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Oral-B has teamed up with Dr. Jonathan B. Levine, nationally recognized NYC based oral health expert and regular contributor on “The Dr. Oz Show,” to help Americans improve their oral health. Through a charitable partnership, Oral-B and Dr. Levine’s GLO Good Foundation are educating Americans on the importance of having good oral health. They visited and will be visiting select areas throughout the country, starting right here in Harlem on January 24th.

Dr. Levine joined more than 300 kids (ages K-12) at the Harlem Children’s Zone to host a special themed event, “Brush Up Smile Zone!” The event included a variety of fun and educational activities that spread the message about the importance of good oral health –as it relates to overall health.

PLUS! Dr. Mehmet Oz, Emmy® Award-winning host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” made a special appearance supporting his colleague and very own dentist Dr. Levine, sharing the importance of this mission. Along with Geoffrey Canada, introducing Dr. Levine and Dr. Oz.

WHERE:         Countee Cullen Community Center, PS 194

244 West 144th Street, New York, NY

Located between 7th Avenue (Frederick Douglass Blvd) and 8th Avenue (Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd)

WHO:        Dr. Jonathan B. Levine, Oral Health Expert

Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of “The Dr. Oz Show”

·        Photos of Dr. Levine and Dr. Oz demonstrating oral health care tips via interactive presentation using props from “The Dr. Oz Show”

·        Photos of more than 300 Harlem Children’s Zone kids participating in “Brush Up Smile Zone” activities, including:

Tooth [Photo] Booth

Plaque Attack Experiment

Brushing Bingo and more!

ABOUT ORAL-B: Oral-B is the worldwide leader in the over $5 billion brushing market and is working to help to raise nationwide awareness of the importance of having a healthy mouth. Part of the Procter & Gamble Company, the brand includes manual and power toothbrushes for children and adults, oral irrigators and interdental products, such as dental floss. Through its work with Dr. Jonathan B. Levine, Oral-B is encouraging Americans to take control of their oral health, and helping to educate them on the relationship between oral health and overall health. For more information, visit OralB.comor Facebook.com/OralB.

ABOUT GLO GOOD FOUNDATION: The GLO GOOD foundation is a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Jonathan B. Levine and his business partner and wife Stacey Levine, GLO Science founder, to build oral health initiatives in underserved populations globally. GLO GOOD creates comprehensive initiatives around oral health education, conducts screenings, delivers dental care and develops products that give people the tools to promote good oral health. The mission of the foundation is to make all people smile, and for good oral health to be available to everyone. To learn more about GLO GOOD, the founders and the GLO mission, visit: www.gloscience.com/glogood

ABOUT HARLEM CHILDREN’S ZONE:

The nonprofit Harlem Children’s Zone serves more than 11,000 children – from birth through college – and their families through a comprehensive network of education, social-service and community-building programs. The agency’s goal is to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty through education.

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2012 HONOREES AND SPONSORS
Honorees:
Marc Morial, CEO, National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans
Donna Byrd, publisher,
Theroot.com
Laurence Boschetto, CEO/president, Draftfcb
Sponsors:
Draftfcb
Baume & Mercier
JPMorgan Chase
Belvedere (the world’s first luxury vodka)
The brunch will be hosted by A.J. Calloway, New York City correspondent on “Extra,” and former host of popular B.E.T. show “106 & Park: B.E.T.’s Top 10 Live.”
Each honoree will be presented with a Baume & Mercier watch.
ABOUT DIVERSITY AFFLUENCE
As the only company of its kind, Diversity Affluence is a New York-based diversity research, marketing communications and business development consultancy that helps brands and businesses understand and market to affluent ethnic consumers-a group coined as “Royaltons.” For more than 25 years, Andrea Hoffman, Diversity Affluence’s founder and chief executive officer, has been a marketing strategist and trend forecaster.
“Diversity Affluence is committed to raising awareness of the vibrant affluent ethnic economic sector that people of color and other minorities occupy in contemporary society,” says Hoffman.
For more information about Hoffman, Diversity Affluence or Black Is The New Green: Marketing to Affluent African Americans, visit DiversityAffluence.com.

#andrea #hoffman #diversity #affluence #america #awards #hamptons #philanthropic #business #entertainment #industries #success #minority #b #smith #sag #harbor #determined #empower #pursuits #founder

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