Maldivian Association for the Advancement of Science (MAAS) has not held a public event for a few weeks now but we resume with activities this week again with two public presentations scheduled for tonight.

The two presentations are by Dr. K. Sivakumar, Assistant Professor at Faculty of Marine Sciences, Annamalai University (India). He specializes in marine actinobacteria.

Marine Actinobacteria from Indian Islands

This is a research presentation on marine actinobacteria (MAB) and will touch on the following:
- Introduction on Actinobacteria & MAB
- Biotechnological Potentials of MAB
- Indian Research on MAB
- Identification (16S rDNA based) of MAB
- Phylogeography of MAB from Andaman, Nicobar and Gulf of Mannar Islands.

Time: 20:30 PM-21:30 PM
Venue: Auditorium, Mandhu College

Climate Change and World Reefs

This lecture will focus on climate change and world reefs and will touch on the following:
- UNFCCC
- Coral Reefs
- Threats to Coral Reefs
- Climate Change Induced Impacts on Coral Reefs World over
- Darwin Atolls and Climate Change
- Indian reefs

Time: 21:30 PM-22:30 PM
Venue: Auditorium, Mandhu College


Hope to see you there!

Martin Robbins, who authors the "The Lay Scientist" science blog at The Guardian, has posted an article titled which mentions my magnetic implants and the research on magnetic implant based human-machine interfaces.

I like the last line on the article!:

"Jawish Hameed is not 'Magnetoman', but there's something quite amazing about a species that, given five wonderful senses with which to experience our world, sets about trying to build a sixth."

- Read Magnetic kids, and the scientist with magnets in his fingers

I've been asked about the gathering of planets in the sky a few times the past several days and especially today since Sun published an article in Dhivehi on their website. Here's some information that may be useful for those curious to catch it in the sky and hopefully clears up some of the misinformation floating about...

Four of the planets in our Solar System (Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter) have been inching closer together since the second half of last month and will appear in the tightest clustering on the 10th and 11th of May. Unfortunately, the four planets first show themselves on the horizon from the East at 4:15 AM in the Maldives. The best hope of catching them all together is around 4:50 AM - 5:05 AM but the glow of the rising Sun, which is following the four planets closely in the sky, may quickly hinder your ability to observe them so near the horizon. There is a good chance of seeing Venus as it is the brightest, followed by Jupiter while the other two planets may be very hard to spot with the naked eye.



Conjunctions of planets like these happen quite often but a conjunction of 4 planets this close together is considered to be rare. The planets appear to be so close together for us observing from the Earth because all the planets in our Solar System have nearly the same plane of orbit and their orbits around the Sun have lined them them up closely within Earth's perspective - for the moment (see image below).



A helpful way to demonstrate or imagine this might be to lay a large object on a table (to represent the Sun), and lay five other small objects (to represent the four planets and the Earth) at different distances away from the large object to represent planets in their orbits. Choose the third small planet object away from the large Sun object, which represents the Earth, and arrange the other small objects so they line up while looking from the perspective of the Earth object but still lie on their own orbital path.

Remember, there is a total lunar eclipse that is visible in the Maldives next month with the penumbral phase beginning at 22:25 PM of 15th June and the total phase beginning at 00:22 AM of 16th June!