You can read about here: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/10jul_supermoons/

Or watch the video here:

Super Moons are will happen on the following dates this year:

It's just one article, not sure if the source is reputable, but what do you think about their claims?

Check out the article here: http://www.realfarmacy.com/scientists-blow-the-lid-on-cancer-sunscreen-myth/

Check out the article here: http://www.universetoday.com/111233/is-saturn-making-a-new-moon/

Some pretty cool wasps have shown up in my driveway!  They are very different.  First of all, they're HUGE!  Next, I've never seen them before!  Finally, they're tearing apart the lawn next to my driveway and the expansion joints in my concrete driveway!  I needed to know what these things were & find out if I should get rid of them or if they're dangerous to me!  (Read below the picture to find out how I used my PROBLEM-SOLVING skills to research a little bit about these new-to-me bugs!)  I really want all of my students to use their problem-solving skills and research skills to solve mysteries like this one!  I'd like those stories to be shared on their ePortfolios so we can all read about them!

It turns out that they're called: Cicada Killer Wasps & they're so cool (and pretty much harmless)!  But they are destroying my driveway by digging between my pieces of concrete!  Read this article to learn about these cool insects that I've never seen before!

Article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/the-cicada-killers-are-coming/277688/

This next article is a shorter version, but not as funny as the one above!  It also has some ideas for how to get rid of them if you don't enjoy their company! :(

Article: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ehs/pest/cicada-killers.shtml

So how did I know what these bugs were?  Did I just know about Cicada Killers?  Am I just a big, old smarty pants?  No!  Well, maybe.  Actually, I Googled: "insect identification" and the first result was this website:

http://www.insectidentification.org/

When I got there, I saw a form & filled it out like this:

It brought up a list of search results.  I looked at each picture and found one that looked like the huge bug that I saw in my driveway!  It said that it was called a Cicada Killer, and I know that cicadas are around since I hear them ALL THE TIME!  I clicked on it and read all about them & I knew it was the right bug!

August 5, 2013:  Something big is about to happen on the sun.  According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip. "It looks like we're no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal," says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."

A new ScienceCast video anticipates the reversal of the sun's global magnetic field. Play it The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years.  It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself.  The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of 'Solar Max' will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields.  The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet's polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun's polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing.

Astronomers at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) monitor the sun's global magnetic field on a daily basis. WSO home page Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle."

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the "heliosphere") extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the "current sheet."  The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun's equator where the sun's slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current.  The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide.  Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball.  As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

An artist's concept of the heliospheric current sheet, which becomes more wavy when the sun's magnetic field flips. More Cosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.  Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth. The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays, deflecting them as they attempt to penetrate the inner solar system. A wavy, crinkly sheet acts as a better shield against these energetic particles from deep space.

As the field reversal approaches, data from Wilcox show that the sun's two hemispheres are out of synch. 

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer. "Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway."

When that happens, Hoeksema and Scherrer will share the news with their colleagues and the public.

Original article: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/

Stan Munro glued more than 20,000 toothpicks to make this Spanish cathedral named "La Seu." His famous Toothpick City was bought by a new museum in Mallorca, Spain. That piece took 2 million toothpicks to build. Stan Munro, whose toothpick creations have been featured at the New York State Fair and the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology, will be on “60 Minutes” tonight, but not because of some scandal.

Munro is featured in a television commercial for insurer Mutual of Omaha. The commercial was set to premiere this week during “60 Minutes,” “The Biggest Loser” and “Dancing with the Stars.”

The Munro ad is one of 16 spots with people talking about the moment when they realized their lives had changed.

For Munro, who went from unemployed to a self-employed “toothpick engineer,” the aha moment was realizing that he could make a living doing something he considered a hobby.

“I never thought I’d be doing this,” he says in the commercial.

Gloria Wright / The Post-Standard, 2009Stan Munro works on a replica of Aspire, a tower in Qatar, in February 2009 as part of his Temples and Towers creation at the MOST in downtown Syracuse. Aha moments is a play on the last two syllables of the insurance company’s name, said Brittany Thomas, a spokesperson for Mutual of Omaha.

For Munro, the run-up to the first broadcast of the ads have spread his fame beyond the thousands who have seen his work in person. Mutual of Omaha put dozens of ads, including the one featuring Munro, on a Web site and asked visitors to choose the top 10.

The exposure led to interviews from around the world. In the fall he was interviewed, by phone, for a morning show in Australia and did another interview for someone in Fiji, he said. The Discovery Channel Canada sent a crew to see his work. Days before, the crew had been in Dubai, in the Middle East, he said.

All of Munro’s buildings are built at a scale of 1 to 164. Why? Because one of his first creations, a toothpick Chrysler Building, needed to be small enough to fit in his home’s TV room.

Since then, he’s stayed with that scale so that visitors can see what it would look like if some of the world’s most famous buildings — St. Peter’s Basilica, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Temple at Angkor Wat are just three of the dozens he has built — were all next to each other.

As a business, toothpick engineering is challenging, Munro said. Revenue comes from making custom projects for customers who contact him through his Web site — www.toothpickcity.com — and from selling entire exhibits. His first project — which included models of the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, Toronto’s CN Tower and 47 other famous buildings — was sold to a museum in Mallorca, Spain.

The second project, on which Munro has been working for months, could be sold, he said. Or it could become a traveling exhibit. Or, Munro said, it could become the core of a permanent exhibit, something he might call Toothpick World.

It could be a major tourist attraction in Central New York, he said. The idea was spurred by calls from tour groups passing through Syracuse that want to stop by the MOST to see his current project.

“It’s just a thought,” Munro said.

Well, a thought and a Web address he’s already registered.

For Mutual of Omaha, the Aha Moments campaign turned into an experiment with social media on the Internet. After sending a converted Airstream trailer to 25 cities to video people explaining moments that changed their lives, the insurance company asked the public to vote on which stories they wanted to see in ads.

Seventy-five thousand people voted.

“It was overwhelmingly positive,” said Todd Lieman, founder and co-president of Skadaddle Media, which came up with the idea for Mutual of Omaha.

The campaign started with commercials in early 2009, and will continue at least until the end of July, he said.

For people of a certain age, the insurance company is linked forever to “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.” While Marlin Perkins is long gone, the show is still on the air, said Andrew Rouillard, the company’s vice president of brand management and advertising. It airs on the Animal Planet channel.

The show provided “incredible brand recognition,” for the insurer, Lieman said.

The new campaign, which Lieman and his partner developed just as the nation’s economy was diving into recession, builds on that with stories told by people in their own voices, he said.

“We felt the country was ready for a very uplifting kind of message,” he said, “about taking risks and being rewarded.”

--Contact Charles McChesney at [email protected].

Original article: http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/cny_toothpick_engineer_to_be_f.html

Want to see and learn more?  Check out this video:  (If you don't want to watch all 6 minutes, then start it at 4:50 and watch the rest!)