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ENCORE What’s in a name? “Holocene” defines the geologic epoch we’re in. Or were in? Goodbye to “Holocene” and hello “Anthropocene!” Yes, scientists may actually re-name our geologic era as the “Age of Man” due to the profound impact we’ve had on the planet.

We’ll examine why we’ve earned this new moniker and who votes on such a thing. Plus, discover the strongest evidence for human-caused climate change.

Also, why cities should be celebrated, not reviled… a musing over the possible fate of alien civilizations … and waste not: what an unearthed latrine – and its contents – reveal about ancient Roman habit and diet.

• William Steffen – Climate scientist and the Executive Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, Canberra
• Simon Donner – Geographer at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver
• Edward Glaeser – Economist, Harvard University, author of Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
• Douglas Vakoch – Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute
• Mark Robinson – Director of Environmental Archaeology at the University of Oxford
• Erica Rowan – Doctoral student, University of Oxford

Descripción en español

First released October 24, 2011

Adapted from MESSENGER Mission News (March 26, 2013)

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919 — recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign names to nine impact craters on Mercury. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities.

Global map of Mercury recently released by the NASA Messenger team. The globe on the left was created from the MDIS monochrome surface morphology base map campaign. The globe on the right was produced from the MDIS color base map campaign. Portraits of the nine artists, musicians and authors honored with the name of a crater on the planet. (adapted from NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington & Wikipedia by F. Marchis)

The newly named craters are

• Alver, for Betti Alver (1906-1989), an Estonian writer who rose to prominence in the 1930s, toward the end of Estonian independence and on the eve of World War II. She published her first novel, Mistress in the Wind, in 1927. She also wrote several short stories, poetry, and translations.

• Donelaitis, for Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780), a Lutheran pastor who was considered one of the greatest Lithuanian poets. He is best known for The Seasons, considered the first classic Lithuanian poem. It depicts the everyday life of Lithuanian peasants. His other works include six fables and a tale in verse.

• Flaiano, for Ennio Flaiano (1910-1972), an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic especially noted for his social satires. He became a leading figure of the Italian motion-picture industry after World War II, collaborating with writer Tullio Pinelli on the early films of writer and director Federico Fellini.

• Hurley, for James Francis “Frank” Hurley (1885-1962), an Australian photographer and adventurer. He participated in several expeditions to Antarctica and served as an official photographer with Australian Imperial Forces during both world wars. The troops called him “the mad photographer,” because he took considerable risks to obtain photographs.

• L’Engle, for Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007), an American writer best known for young-adult fiction, particularly the award-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.

• Lovecraft, for Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century. He popularized “cosmic horror,” the notion that some concepts, entities, or experiences are barely comprehensible to human minds, and those who delve into such topics risk their sanity.

• Petofi, for Sándor Petőfi (1823-1849), a Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary. He wrote the Nemzeti dal (National Poem), which is said to have inspired the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 that grew into a war for independence from the Austrian Empire.

• Pahinui, for Charles Phillip Kahahawai “Gabby” Pahinui, (1921-1980), a Hawaiian guitar player considered to be one of the most influential slack-key guitar players in the world. His music was a key part of the “Hawaiian Renaissance,” a resurgence of interest in traditional Hawaiian culture during the 1970s.

• Roerich, for Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), a Russian painter and philosopher who initiated the modern movement for the defense of cultural objects. His most notable achievement was the Roerich Pact of 1935, an international treaty signed by India, the Baltic states, and 22 nations of the Americas (including the United States), affirming that monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational, and cultural institutions and their personnel are to be considered neutral in times of war unless put to military use.

Ray Espiritu, a mission operations engineer on the MESSENGER team, submitted Pahinui’s name for consideration. “I wanted to honor the place where I grew up and still call home even after many years away,” he says. “The Pahinui crater contains a possible volcanic vent, and its name may inspire other scientists as they investigate the volcanic processes that helped to create Mercury, just as investigation of Hawaiian volcanoes helps us understand the volcanic processes that shape the Earth we know today.”
These nine newly named craters join 95 other craters named since the MESSENGER spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby in January 2008.

“We are delighted that the IAU has once again assigned formal names to a new set of craters on Mercury,” adds MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “These names will make it easier to discuss these features in the scientific literature, and they provide a fresh opportunity to honor individuals who have contributed to the cultural richness of our planet.”

More information about the names of features on Mercury and the other objects in the Solar System can be found at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Planetary Nomenclature Web site:http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/index.html.

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011 UTC), to begin a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s extended mission began on March 18, 2012, and ended one year later. A possible second extended mission is currently under evaluation by NASA. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.

A piece of Mars: There are vast plains on Mars that display criss-crossing streaks like this. These are ~5 m (~16 feet) across, give or take. Did an alien drive a dune buggy all over, leaving behind tracks? Nope. These are the distinctive trails made by the passage of dust devils, which act like huge vacuum cleaners that suck up dust from the ground. The patterns of the tracks change every year as new dust devils churn away at the surface. (HiRISE ESP_030916_1250, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

We love our family and friends, but sometimes their ideas about how the world works seem a little wacky. We asked BiPiSci listeners to share examples of what they can’t believe their loved-ones believe, no matter how much they hear rational explanations to the contrary. Then we asked some scientists about those beliefs, to get their take.

Discover whether newspaper ink causes cancer … if King Tut really did add a curse to his sarcophagus … the efficacy of examining your irises – iridology – to diagnose disease … and more!

Oh, and what about string theory? Is it falsifiable?

• Steven Novella – Physician at Yale University, host of the podcast, “Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe”
• Matthew Hutson – Author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane
• Brian Greene – Physicist, Columbia University, author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos and The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
• Guy Harrison – Author of 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True and, most recently, 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian

A piece of Mars: Dunes near the north and south poles get cold in the winter, just like they do on Earth. Except on Mars instead of H2O ice, it’s a mix of CO2 and H2O ice (mostly CO2). In the spring the white ice slowly disappears, revealing the dark dunes underneath. (HiRISE PSP_002033_1325, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

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A piece of Mars: Nili Patera on Mars is an ancient volcano. Some of the old volcanic material has been blown into rather striking sand dunes. It is the first place where dunes were conclusively identified as actively moving. Here’s a closeup of one of them — the steep slip face on the downwind side indicates these dunes are moving to the lower left. This dune migrates about a meter every year. (HiRISE ESP_030210_1890, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

It’s hard to get lost these days. GPS pinpoints your location to within a few feet. Discover how our need to get from A to B holds clues about what makes us human, and what we lose now that every digital map puts us at the center.

Plus, stories of animal navigation: how a cat found her way home across Florida, and the magnetic navigation systems used by salmon and sea turtles.

Also, why you’ll soon be riding in driverless cars. And, how to map our universe.

• John Bradshaw – Director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute, author of Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet and, most recently, Cat Sense
• Kenneth Lohmann – Biologist at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
• Simon Garfield – Author of On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks
• William “Red” Whittaker – Roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University
• James Trefil – Physicist at George Mason University, author of Space Atlas: Mapping the Universe and Beyond

A piece of Mars: Here are some old dunes that look a little like vertebrae of fossils (if you think they look like dragon spines poking out of the ground then you’re playing too many video games). The white areas are stabilized and possibly lithified. The blue areas are where the dunes are being actively eroding, exposing old bedding (faint parallel stripes) within the dunes. (HiRISE ESP_030583_1610, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Imagine biting into a rich chocolate donut and not tasting it. That’s what happened to one woman when she lost her sense of smell. Discover what scientists have learned about how the brain experiences flavor, and the evolutionary intertwining of odor and taste.

Plus a chef who tricks tongues into tasting something they’re not. It’s chemical camouflage that can make crabgrass taste like basil and turn bitter crops into delicious dishes – something that could improve nutrition world-wide.

Meanwhile, are we a tasty treat for aliens? Discover whether we might be attractive snacks for E.T. And, out-of-this-world recipes from a “gAstronomy” cookbook!

• Bonnie Blodgett – Author of Remembering Smell: A Memoir of Losing—and Discovering—the Primal Sense
• Gordon Shepherd – Neurobiologist, Yale University School of Medicine, author of Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters
• Homaro Cantu – Chef and owner of restaurants Moto and iNG in Chicago, chairman and founder of Cantu Designs Firm
• Niki Parenteau – Astrobiologist, SETI Institute
• Markus Hotakainen – Astronomer, chef, author of gAstronomical Cookbook

Descripción en español

A piece of Mars: Not all piles of windblown sand are able to form proper dunes, with a fully developed avalanche on the downwind side. Here, bluish sand tries to make its way through hilly terrain, which both traps the sand and makes it difficult for slip faces (avalanches) to form. Smaller, now stabilized dunes in the upper right were also trapped by the hills. (HiRISE ESP_030570_1440, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Today I would like to share with you an idea for the International Women’s day on March 8 2013.  If you work in an institution, university, or non-profit related to science, have you taken note of the number of women around you? In astronomy and planetary science, it is not too bad even if it is not perfect, but some “hard” science groups, like physics or computer science, clearly have a low proportion of women in their ranks. I will not elaborate on the reasons for such lack of representation; instead , I propose to focus on the bright side.

Yes, there are more and more women in science, some of them even reaching the highest level of responsibility in their field.  One of the issues is that women are not as vocal as the men with a similar job. Is  that a secondary effect due to  years of being the underdog in a field, hence spending your energy fighting against stereotypes and nasty comments? Or it is simply because after getting the recognition of your peers, women enjoy their work and make the best of it? The main issue is that all kids need examples when they grow up, and highlighting  woman scientists could help girls think that they can also achieve their dream and become scientists, engineers, astronauts or a successful business woman.

This long preamble brings me to my idea. On Friday March 8, we should make sure that the women in our institutions enjoy a coffee or a lunch together. Let them talk and exchange their thoughts, and take pictures to show the world that there are women in science, and sharing their experience on Twitter  (hashtag #WomenOfScience). They are here, not a majority, but they are an important part of scientific work and discussion.

I look forward to seeing pictures from your institution. SETI Institute will post pictures on their Twitter/Facebook/Google+ accounts as well.

Clear Skies

Franck M.

ENCORE Calling all pessimists! Your brain is wired for optimism! Yes, deep down, we’re all Pollyannas. So wipe that scowl off your face and discover the evolutionary advantage of thinking positive. Also, enjoy other smile-inducing research suggesting that if you crave happiness, you should do the opposite of what your brain tells you to do.

Plus, why a “well-being index” may replace Dow Jones as a metric for success … a Twitter study that predicts your next good mood … and whether our furry and finned animal friends can experience joy.

• Frank Drake – Astronomer and author of the Drake Equation
• Tali Sharot – Cognitive neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London and the author of The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain
• Michael Macy – Sociologist at Cornell University
  
  His team’s Twitter study: http://timeu.se/
• Carol Graham – Economist at the Brookings Institution and author of The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being
• David DiSalvo – Science and technology writer, author of What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
• Robin Ince – U.K.-based comedian
• Jonathan Balcombe – Animal behavior scientist and author of The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure

Descripción en español

First released October 17, 2011

A piece of Mars: As the wind blows sand over terrain, the grains deepen grooves in weak materials, enhancing the topography in the direction of the strongest wind. Here, over eons, sand marching from right to left has formed dunes (oriented perpendicular to the wind) and elongated grooves downwind of low hills. (HiRISE ESP_030582_1850, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Face it – humans are pattern-seeking animals. We identify eyes, nose and mouth where there are none. Martian rock takes on a visage and the silhouette of Elvis appears in our burrito. Discover the roots of our face-tracking tendency – pareidolia – and why it sometimes leads us astray.

Plus, why some brains can’t recognize faces at all … how computer programs exhibit their own pareidolia … and why it’s so difficult to replicate human vision in a machine

• Phil Plait – Astronomer, Skeptic, and author of Slate Magazine’s blog Bad Astronomy
• Josef Parvisi – Associate professor, Stanford University, and clinical neurologist and epilepsy specialist at Stanford Medical Center
• Nancy Kanwisher – Cognitive neuroscientist, at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
• Greg Borenstein – Artist, creative technologist who teaches at New York University
• Pietro Perona – Professor of electrical engineering, computation and neural systems, California Institute of Technology

A piece of Mars: Some of the dunes on Mars are just plain weird. Here are some feather-shaped ones. I’m not sure anybody knows why they form these fractal shapes just yet. I don’t know of anything on Earth that looks like these. (HiRISE ESP_028024_1830 NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

A piece of Mars: Dark sand has been blown into the scene from the upper right. It has piled up against older, brighter dunes that may now be inactive. The sand drifts on and on, piling up where the wind weakens and carving out rock where the wind is strong. And that is geology on Mars today. (HiRISE ESP_028024_1830 NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

ENCORE The tools of forensics have moved way beyond fingerprint kits. These days, a prosecutor is as likely to wave a fMRI brain scan as a smoking gun as “Exhibit A.” Discover what happens when neuroscience has its day in court.

Meanwhile, research into the gold standard of identification, DNA, marches on. One day we may determine a suspect’s eye color from a drop of blood.

Plus, why much of forensic science – from fingerprinting to the polygraph – is more like reading tea leaves than science. And will future crime victims be robots?

• Owen Jones – Professor of law, Professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee
• Manfred Kayser – Forensic molecular biologist, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Marc Goodman – Founder, The Future Crimes Institute
• David Faigman – Law professor, University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco

Descripción en español

First aired September 19, 2011

Almost 12h after the event, it is time to gather my notes on the russian meteor event (#RussianMeteor) and my thoughts on this impact and those which may come soon.

Meteor captured from a dashboard camera near Chelyabinsk, Russia

What do we know?
(I collected these pieces of information from numerous of my colleagues. Thanks)

Today February 15 2013 a meteor exploded over the region of Chelyabinsk, Russia near the Southern Ural Mountains at 9:20:26 am LT (03:20:26 UTC). The explosion  occurred at an altitude of ~15-20 km  and the bolid impact speed was estimated to ~20 km/s with a trajectory oriented from North-East to South-West. Almost instantaneously,  several recordings of the meteor impact were available on the web, thanks to the presence of dashcam in most of the russian cars and also because this part of Russia is heavily populated. On a side note, this event puts an end to any romantic Valentin Day dinner that most of the Californian astronomers had planned, since it was still Feb 14 for us.

The explosion, or sonic boom, was recorded by several instruments including an infrasound station from University of Western Ontario, USGS seismometers  and the Meteosat-9 geostationnary satellite.   The blast caused significant damages in the area (see the video above) and several hundred of people were injured, mostly because the shockwave blew out windows. I read one report of a factory building which roof collapsed.  The contrail has this weird dual shape, possibly because the meteoroid split in half shortly after entering in Earth atmosphere.

The entry of the meteor was definitely at low angle, so the blast is due to the sonic boom, not to a direct impact. In other words, the meteor fragmented in Earth atmosphere. The presence of several small impact craters have been mentioned but not confirmed yet. One of them is a hole in a frozen lake and the russian media reported that divers will start tomorrow to search for fragments at the bottom of the lake.

Possible fragment impact above a frozen lake (Photo: Vladislav Petlyuk)

The big picture

There are several back-to-the-envelop estimates of the size and mass of the body but roughly the bolid had a diameter of 15m, a Mass of 7,000 tons (assuming a rocky density of 3 g/cc) . NASA scientists claim that the explosion was due to the largest rock crashing on the planet since Tunguska in 1908 (energy 10-15 MegaTons of TNT equivalent). Peter Brown, from University of Western Ontario determined a total energy of 300 kilotons of TNT equivalent  for the Russian meteor, so ~20 Hiroshima bombs.  It was  larger than  the Oct 2009 Indonesia event (50 kTons TNT  eq) and Sikhote-Alin fall (Feb 1947,  10 kTons TNT eq).  Interestingly based on the statistical study of near-Earth asteroid population, we can estimate that a #RussianMeteor-like event should happen every ~30 years.

Potential damage to Earth from NEA impact. I added the russian meteor on this graph (red square) with an energy of 300 kTons TNT eq, corresponding to a frequency of impact of 30 years. Adapted from LSST website. credit: A. Harris, SSI/LLST

The existing (Catalina Sky Survey, Pan STARRS) and future surveys (LSST) are dedicated to search for large impactors. These searches are motivated by the George E. Brown, Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act, which calls for NASA to detect 90 percent of NEOs with diameters of 140 meters or greater by 2020. As you can see on the graph above only ~10 percent of those asteroids have been discovered so far. For smaller ~15m asteroids equivalent to the #RussianMeteor, the survey is very incomplete since only 0.1 percent of those asteroids are known.

Should we spend our limited space money to build extremely large facilities to search for these small ~15m asteroids? I don’t think so, since we don’t have yet a complete understanding of the technologies needed to mitigate those events, and considering the current lack of financial resources, we should  be more imaginative than building larger aperture telescopes.

Our space budget could be better used on setting an alert system similar to the existing ones for tsunamis, volcanoes, and in some countries earthquakes. They could help save life and could avoid a disaster. What come in my mind first are technologies that we are handling and to which we don’t have a complete control, such as nuclear power plants. A warning of a few minutes could be crucial to avoid major disaster in case of a impact with a >15m asteroid nearby a nuclear facility. The 2012 Fukishima nuclear power plant accident is a vivid example of catastrophic and worldwide ripple effects after a localized natural disaster. Without getting into those extreme cases, our society and its economy rely on  transportation (e.g. bridge, trains, commercial jets) that could  be affected by 15m-meteor impact, so an early warning system could save a lot of lives and reduce the number of injuries.

NEOSSat: Canada's Sentinel in the Sky (credit: Canadian Space Agency)

Spending a few hundred million of dollars to set up an alert network an array of small telescopes around Earth (in space) should be the new challenge of a civilization aware of the danger coming from space and willing to mitigate it. The Canadian Agency is leading the effort on this topic with the development of NEOSSat, a micro-satellite dedicated to detecting and tracking asteroids and satellites, to be launched on February 25 2013.

Let’s also keep in mind that the cost of this alert system should be shared by most of the nations, since there is no borders from space. It was a bad day for Russia, and also a reminder for us that space is not a friendly place.

Clear skies,

Franck M.

An important message 
We are asking YOU, the US-based SETI Institute Fans,  our followers on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to help us save science from sequestration. Send a FAX or write a letter and even send a tweet to your members of Congress. Today is the day you should act to save science!

Background

The AAS is a member of a coalition of 3,200 national organizations named NDD United. The coalition has worked actively to communicate to Congress that a balanced approach to deficit reduction is necessary and that significant cuts to the non-defense discretionary (NDD) portion of the federal budget called for by the 2011 balanced budget amendment in the form of a sequester would have wide-ranging and negative impacts. The sequester is scheduled to be implemented on March 1st.

The White House budget office estimates that this $85 billion sequester will require across-the-board cuts of five percent for non-defense discretionary programs and eight percent for defense discretionary programs. With only seven months left in FY 2013, the effective cuts for some programs could even reach nine percent for non-defense and 13 percent for defense. While we cannot predict specific programmatic impacts at this point, these additional cu ts will clearly mean fewer grants, deferred missions, layoffs of contractor personnel, and furloughs of Federal employees.

NDD United delivered a letter to Congress on February 11th  (http://publichealthfunding.org/uploads/NDD3200Letter.Final.Feb2013.pdf) and is calling for all members of the Coalition to speak out to their member of Congress via Twitter on Thursday, February 14th.

AAS members may also make contact directly by phone, fax, or letter, if they do not use Twitter or are unfamiliar with its use. Sending email is not an efficient way of communicating with Congress, so do not utilize this communication medium.

What You Can Do Today

The AAS asks all members to take a moment today to contact their members of Congress.

If you use Twitter, use your members’ twitter handle and the sample tweets below to make your voice heard. A slightly outdated but complete list of members’ twitter handles are available here: http://govsm.com/w/House and here: http://govsm.com/w/Senate.

If you’d prefer to make a call, send a FAX or write a letter, use the AAS’ Contacting Congress resource to find your members’ office numbers [ http://aas.org/contacting-congress ]. A brief message indicating that you want your member of Congress to take a balanced approach to deficit reduction and that you are against the sequester will be sufficient. Specifics are not required at this time.

Template & Sample Tweets from the NDD United are appended below. BE SURE TO
CUSTOMIZE THE CONTENT FOR YOUR USE…DO NOT CUT AND PASTE!

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Template

We need to invest in education, public safety, research, & infrastructure [ insert member twitter handle]. #NoMoreCuts to these vital areas!

Sample

We need to invest in education, public safety, research, & infrastructure @MaxBaucus.
#NoMoreCuts to these vital areas!

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Template

Discretionary investments have already been cut by nearly $1.5 trillion. [insert member twitter handle] make sure there are #NoMoreCuts! #sequester

Sample

Discretionary investments have already been cut by nearly $1.5 trillion. @MaxBaucus make sure there are #NoMoreCuts! #sequester

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Template (links to NDD national sign-on letter)

Remember [insert member twitter handle], over 3200 groups want you to say #NoMoreCuts to discretionary investments! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t #sequester

Sample

Remember @MaxBaucus, over 3200 groups want you to say #NoMoreCuts to discretionary investments! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t #sequester

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Template

#Sequestration means an 5.1% cut to #[insert issue area of concern] funding in 2013. [insert member twitter handle] make sure there are #NoMoreCuts! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t

Sample

#Sequestration means an 5.1% cut to #education funding in 2013. @MaxBaucus make sure there are #NoMoreCuts! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t

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Template (links to AIA jobs loss report)

Discretionary cuts to #[insert issue area of concern] harm the #economy! [insert member twitter handle] say #NoMoreCuts! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t

Sample

Discretionary cuts to #education harm the #economy! [insert member twitter handle] say #NoMoreCuts! http://bit.ly/11Bzd0t

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| LINK: http://aas.org/posts/opportunity/2013/02/aas-call-action-let-congress-hear-your-opinion-sequester-ndd-coalition-day

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