July 2013 Newsletter

Another month gone by way too fast!  As I’m sure many of you will notice, we’ve made some changes to the newsletter to make it more visually stimulating, so we hope you like it! (Please leave us your give us your thoughts through the poll at the end of the post)  With that said though, I don’t want to keep you from the new layout any longer, so enjoy.

Science Behind the Sci-Fi Panel Overview

• Science Focus: Paleobotany
• Author: Jamie Boyer

• Science Focus: Neuroscience
• Author: Robert Hampson

• Science Focus: Astrobiology
• Author: Jacob Haqq-Misra

• Science Focus: Astrophysics
• Author: Amitai Bin-Nun

FEATURED GUEST PANEL:

• Science Focus: Archeology and Science Outreach
• Author: Scott Viguie J.D., PhD
• Up Next Month: Ed Trollope, a UK Space Engineer and Director of http://www.ThingsWeDontKnow.com, comes in to discuss the Drake Equation (equation looking at the possibility of life on other planets).

This Month’s “Random Science News”

I decided to change this section up a bit this month.  Just like the purpose of our games will be to expose players to science that wouldn’t usually learn about through main-stream media, I decided I wanted to change this section a bit to do the same and showcase some of the random science news I come across each month.  And as another twist, I decided it’d probably be a bit more fun this month if every news bit had video. 🙂

• 3D Printing is gaining legs!! (couldn’t resist the pun)  But the major point here is, with 3D printing, technology is able to grow faster and more ‘production’ based as this toy robot can now be quickly manufactured.
• SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is working on landing technology for their delivery rockets, helping to overcome one of the major cost setbacks of launching items into space.  To learn more & even see it in action, just fast forward the video below to 0:50.
• Gearing the news a bit more around the home world for our upcoming game, Escaping Titan, take a listen to this month’s ScienceCast from NASA
• And finally, here is an awesome article about work Harvard is doing to allow humans to control the thoughts of mice!  This research parallels with the SSI brain implant technology that will be found in the game and which has been spoken of in Robert Hampson’s Science Behind the Sci-Fi posts each month.  Although this article does also include a video, I didn’t want to include it as it does include animal testing and some readers here may be sensitive to that content.

Share your thoughts!

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy some of this month’s content.  If you are liking what you hear though, we’d love to get your feedback, so if the poll above didn’t give you enough room to express your thoughts, feel free to comment below, or feel check out our forums and start sharing through threads of your own!

That’s all for this month, ciao.

 -Tyler