Albert Bresnick was a personal photographer to Earhart, and now, astronaut Randy Bresnick is rekindling the family connection. The Marine aviator and first-time space flier received the white, green and red scarf from the 99s Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City, an organization of female pilots that formed with the help of Earhart. Randy Bresnick is also bringing along a photo from the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kan.

In 1932, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming in the process a prominent and celebrated adventurer. She, along with her navigator, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean five years later while trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane.

The remaining crew members of STS-129 have chosen a wide assortment of medals, shirts, patches and even a thumb drive to commemorate their 11-day venture to the International Space Station.

A cycling jersey from Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation will travel on the flight, completing the distance in seven minutes that Armstrong and the cyclists in the peloton rode in three weeks during the Tour de France.

Veteran astronaut Charles O. Hobaugh, also a Marine pilot, commands the mission that will deliver a pair of racks loaded with equipment to the station.

First-time shuttle Pilot Barry E. Wilmore has seen to it that Tennessee Technical University is well-represented in the commemorative assortment known as the Official Flight Kit. The school, which Wilmore graduated from with a master’s in electrical engineering, will see a thumb drive, purple and gold placard, gold medallion, and a stuffed-toy eagle make the trip into space aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date.

"Intermediate-mass black holes contain between 100 and 10,000 times the sun’s mass," explained Tod Strohmayer, an astrophysicist at Goddard. "We observe the heavyweight black holes in the centers of galaxies and the lightweight ones orbiting stars in our own galaxy. But finding the ‘tweeners’ remains a challenge."

Several nearby galaxies contain brilliant objects known as ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). They appear to emit more energy than any known process powered by stars but less energy than the centers of active galaxies, which are known to contain million-solar-mass black holes.

"ULXs are good candidates for intermediate-mass black holes, and the one in galaxy NGC 5408 is especially interesting," said Richard Mushotzky, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park. The galaxy lies 15.8 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus.

Using the European Space Agency’s orbiting XMM-Newton observatory, Strohmayer and Mushotzky studied the source — known as NGC 5408 X-1 — in 2006 and 2008.

XMM-Newton detected what the astronomers call "quasi-periodic oscillations," a nearly regular "flickering" caused by the pile-up of hot gas deep within the accretion disk that forms around a massive object. The rate of this flickering was about 100 times slower than that seen from stellar-mass black holes. Yet, in X-rays, NGC 5408 X-1 outshines these systems by about the same factor.

Based on the timing of the oscillations and other characteristics of the emission, Strohmayer and Mushotzky conclude that NGC 5408 X-1 contains between 1,000 and 9,000 solar masses. This study appears in the October 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"For this mass range, a black hole’s event horizon — the part beyond which we cannot see — is between 3,800 and 34,000 miles across, or less than half of Earth’s diameter to about four times its size," said Strohmayer.

If NGC 5408 X-1 is indeed actively gobbling gas to fuel its prodigious X-ray emission, the material likely flows to the black hole from an orbiting star. This is typical for stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy.

Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today.

"The way we explore tomorrow will be unlike any cup of tea we’ve ever tasted," said Fink, who was recently appointed as the Edward and Maria Keonjian Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "We are departing from traditional approaches of a single robotic spacecraft with no redundancy that is Earth-commanded to one that allows for having multiple, expendable low-cost robots that can command themselves or other robots at various locations at the same time."

Fink and his team members at Caltech, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona are developing autonomous software and have built a robotic test bed that can mimic a field geologist or astronaut, capable of working independently and as part of a larger team. This software will allow a robot to think on its own, identify problems and possible hazards, determine areas of interest and prioritize targets for a close-up look.

The way things work now, engineers command a rover or spacecraft to carry out certain tasks and then wait for them to be executed. They have little or no flexibility in changing their game plan as events unfold; for example, to image a landslide or cryovolcanic eruption as it happens, or investigate a methane outgassing event.

"In the future, multiple robots will be in the driver’s seat," Fink said. These robots would share information in almost real time. This type of exploration may one day be used on a mission to Titan, Mars and other planetary bodies. Current proposals for Titan would use an orbiter, an air balloon and rovers or lake landers.

In this mission scenario, an orbiter would circle Titan with a global view of the moon, with an air balloon or airship floating overhead to provide a birds-eye view of mountain ranges, lakes and canyons. On the ground, a rover or lake lander would explore the moon’s nooks and crannies. The orbiter would "speak" directly to the air balloon and command it to fly over a certain region for a closer look. This aerial balloon would be in contact with several small rovers on the ground and command them to move to areas identified from overhead.

"This type of exploration is referred to as tier-scalable reconnaissance," said Fink. "It’s sort of like commanding a small army of robots operating in space, in the air and on the ground simultaneously."

A rover might report that it’s seeing smooth rocks in the local vicinity, while the airship or orbiter could confirm that indeed the rover is in a dry riverbed - unlike current missions, which focus only on a global view from far above but can’t provide information on a local scale to tell the rover that indeed it is sitting in the middle of dry riverbed.

"Intermediate-mass black holes contain between 100 and 10,000 times the sun’s mass," explained Tod Strohmayer, an astrophysicist at Goddard. "We observe the heavyweight black holes in the centers of galaxies and the lightweight ones orbiting stars in our own galaxy. But finding the ‘tweeners’ remains a challenge."

Several nearby galaxies contain brilliant objects known as ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). They appear to emit more energy than any known process powered by stars but less energy than the centers of active galaxies, which are known to contain million-solar-mass black holes.

"ULXs are good candidates for intermediate-mass black holes, and the one in galaxy NGC 5408 is especially interesting," said Richard Mushotzky, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park. The galaxy lies 15.8 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus.

Using the European Space Agency’s orbiting XMM-Newton observatory, Strohmayer and Mushotzky studied the source — known as NGC 5408 X-1 — in 2006 and 2008.

XMM-Newton detected what the astronomers call "quasi-periodic oscillations," a nearly regular "flickering" caused by the pile-up of hot gas deep within the accretion disk that forms around a massive object. The rate of this flickering was about 100 times slower than that seen from stellar-mass black holes. Yet, in X-rays, NGC 5408 X-1 outshines these systems by about the same factor.

Based on the timing of the oscillations and other characteristics of the emission, Strohmayer and Mushotzky conclude that NGC 5408 X-1 contains between 1,000 and 9,000 solar masses. This study appears in the October 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"For this mass range, a black hole’s event horizon — the part beyond which we cannot see — is between 3,800 and 34,000 miles across, or less than half of Earth’s diameter to about four times its size," said Strohmayer.

If NGC 5408 X-1 is indeed actively gobbling gas to fuel its prodigious X-ray emission, the material likely flows to the black hole from an orbiting star. This is typical for stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy.

Space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to dock to the station at 10:53 a.m. and deliver two pallets carrying more than 20,000 pounds worth of spare equipment too large to be launched into space aboard any other vehicle.

Atlantis’ six-man crew received their wake-up call at 3:28 a.m. Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” was played for Mission Specialist Robert Satcher as the day’s wake-up song.

The morning will focus on preparations for the rendezvous and docking to the station. Commander Charles Hobaugh and Pilot Barry Wilmore will perform a few final corrective jet firings to refine the orbiter’s path to the station and position the vehicle for its rendezvous pitch maneuver 600 feet beneath the station at 9:52 a.m. While Hobaugh performs the “backflip” Expedition 21 Flight Engineers Jeffrey Williams and Nicole Stott will take photos from the station. Their photos will be sent to the ground for review by experts to ensure that the shuttle’s heat shield did not sustain any damage during Monday’s launch.

Once the maneuver is complete, Hobaugh will fly Atlantis ahead of the space station and slowly back it in for the docking to the station’s Harmony node. After a series of leak checks that should take about two hours, the hatches between the two vehicles will be opened and the two crews will start their joint operations.

Hatch opening will mark the end of Flight Engineer Nicole Stott’s two-and-a-half-month stint with the space station’s crew. She’ll officially become a member of the STS-129 crew, and the station will be manned by a five-person crew until Dec. 1, when Commander Frank De Winne and Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko and Robert Thirsk will depart the station in their Soyuz vehicle. Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev will be left behind to man the station alone until the rest of the Expedition 22 crew arrives on Dec. 23.

Atlantis’ crew is scheduled to go to sleep just before 7:30 p.m. The next shuttle status report will be issued at the end of the crew’s workday or earlier if events warrant.

A series of maneuvers will take place prior to docking. Later in the day, the Express Logistics Carrier 1 will be unberthed from Atlantis payload bay and handed off from the shuttle robotic arm to the space station robotic arm. At the end of the day, Mike Foreman and Satcher will “campout” in the Quest Airlock to prepare for Thursday’s spacewalk.

Keep in mind that if you’re driving, there is no safe amount of alcohol to imbibe, despite the fact that legal sanctions may not kick in until you have passed a certain blood-alcohol threshold. (Some states have zero-tolerance policies for young drivers.) But forget about the law for a moment: You could kill someone or be killed if you drink and drive. That is all the incentive you need to never get behind the wheel after drinking.

Even if you happen to be legally sober, if you have the misfortune of being in a car accident"one that wasn’t your fault"you absolutely do not want the police to smell those two cups of beer or fruity spiked punch on your breath at the accident scene. Your credibility will be zero and police at the scene will be skeptical of your account"who could blame them? As a college student who smells like alcohol, you’ll be put on the defense, no matter what the circumstances.

Everyone has different limits when it comes to drinking, but a general rule of thumb is to have no more than one drink an hour; those with smaller builds, such as a woman who weighs 115 pounds, have an even lower limit.

A "drink" is generally defined as a 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.

Other variables include exactly what kind of beer, wine, or spirits you’re drinking, as well as the serving size. If you’re drinking beer out of one of those ubiquitous red plastic 16-ounce cups, it counts as one-and-a-third beers"you should have at most two over a three-hour period. And if you’re drinking a strong punch-type concoction out of a giant cup, you could easily be consuming two or more "drinks" at once.

To avoid anything like that situation, John Andersen and his buddies at the University of Missouri"Columbia always take precautions. "Between my friends and me, we always have a person who is our designated driver"not because we know that we are going to become completely drunk, but because we know that zero tolerance means zero tolerance, and a DUI can practically ruin your life," he says. "No matter if you plan on getting drunk or not, if you know you are going to have a drink, you should turn your keys over. All of this sounds like complete and utter common sense, but it is incredible how many people don’t listen to common-sense ideas."

So how can parents keep kids from cheating in a society that seems to stress winning at any cost? According to Eric Anderman, Professor of Educational Psychology at The Ohio State University and co-editor of the book Psychology of Academic Cheating, the trick is to diminish the motivations that drive cheating in the first place.

“Kids cheat when they become stressed,” explains Anderman, who says that as the pressure to get good grades and high test scores increases, so does the incidence of cheating. Anderman says that although children who cheat in school do not fit any defined profile, they’re usually students “who are much more focused on getting good grades and extrinsically motivated rather than intrinsically motivated by a desire to learn.”

That means that the more pressure students feel, the more likely they are to resort to cheating. And although pen-and-paper notes and other familiar methods are still very much in use, cell phones and PDAs have opened up new opportunities for students gunning for top grades. “Obviously with more technology there are more methods kids use to cheat,” says Anderman. Browsing the Internet during a test, texting solutions or taking photos of answer sheets and messaging them to friends are all possible in the digital age, and enforcement of no phone policies can be tough for teachers.

• Visit the library often. Make sure your child has a library card.
• Include your child in family conversations and listen to what he/she has to say. Being listened to builds a child’s self-esteem and helps him/her learn.
• Read aloud to your child. Verbal expression helps with vocabulary development which is an important aspect of learning to read. 
• Provide opportunities for sharing information and learning about your child’s interests and feelings.
• Verbal expression leads to language development, an important aspect of learning to read.
• Play with words by rhyming, finding opposites, and naming synonyms or words that have the same meanings like “big” and “large”. These types of activities give practice with thinking and vocabulary development.
• Check on your child’s progress in reading and ask the teacher about ways you can help.
• Play games with your child that involve reading and thinking about words.
• Make a grocery list with your child. Allow your child to find items in the grocery store and cross them off the list. Together, read labels, ingredients, and compare prices during the shopping trip.
• Have your child read schedules such as those for TV, buses, trains, etc.
• Link movies and television shows to books you have read together.
• Encourage your child to look up phone numbers in the phone book. Show him/her how to locate a business number by its category or by its name.
• Give gifts that encourage reading and writing: reading lamps, magazine subscriptions, books, stationery, pens, and blank books.
• Discuss your child’s reading accomplishments and praise him/her often.
• Make thank you notes, birthday cards, and invitations together. Allow your child to be creative in designing and writing.

Here’s the good news: academic standards are designed to prepare children grade by grade and step by step. If your child has been working steadily through elementary school, sixth grade math will be just one more manageable step. In fact, studies show that when math is well taught, kids this age just love it—after all, it’s a way to discover sense and pattern in the world, and feel pretty darn smart in the process.

So what can you expect? Since states are allowed to choose their own standards under No Child Left Behind, there may be some variation. For specific details, remember to consult your state’s academic standards on the department of education website. It’s also wise to ask your school to show you its frameworks and texts, so that you can see exactly how the standards will be covered during the year.

In general, however, you can expect these themes in sixth grade math:

What should my child already know?

As a general rule, teachers hope that by the end of fifth grade students will have a very solid working knowledge of all four “operations”—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—along with fractions, simple percentages, decimals, and basic graphing. At a minimum, they should also know about basic formulas for perimeter, area, and geometrical shapes.

What should my child learn in this grade?

Number Sense: This builds directly on the basic skills of elementary school—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals—but now more complex. Talk about these computations with your child: How does a fraction translate into decimals? Why do we call multiplication and division “inverse operations”? This is also the time when many teachers start to introduce negative numbers, which can be tricky. You can help with real-life situations, like “Yes, you can borrow $10 from me to afford that toy, but that means your account will go down to negative $10.”