In just a few hours, the shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center. Atlantis will deliver parts to the international space station, with a few creatures stowed among the cargo. No, not pigs, but butterflies. One hundred K-12 schools will receive “habitat kits” to observe butterflies develop in earthly classrooms while simultaneously watching larvae in outer space.

A live feed will beam pictures of the weightless cocoons (which are far less buoyant than you’d think) back down to earth. These are some brave butterflies, but not the first insects to boldly go where few bugs have gone before. Silkworms, bees, and even ants have entered outer orbit. I guess TV really does imitate life:

Scientific American: Next Shuttle Mission Will Carry Butterflies to Space for Classroom Science Experiments

(Photo courtesy Yolanda via Flickr/CreativeCommons)

Our segment on those old cassette mixtapes from ex’s that we just can’t let go of got a response from a listener named A. Rioux, who wrote:

I still have a mix tape that was made for me by a high school friend during my freshman year of college. He evidently had a bit of a crush on me. If only I knew! Timmy Watts, where are you? I play it from time to time and reminisce about past lives. I've taped the tape where it has broken, I’ve tried to record it onto another medium (unsuccessful due to the low-fi seven-inch tracks), but I know all the words to all the songs and I even hear snippets of the instrumental numbers sometimes during NHPR station ID breaks! (I just wish I still had the home made liner notes with the original art and all the bands!)

Well, Timmy Watts, if you’re out there listening, get in touch. That old mixtape might finally score you the lady of your dreams. We also discussed how many of us have become overly dependent on GPS to find our way around. Ken Leonard from Farmington was a delivery driver and writes about a fellow driver who was fired because of his poor sense of direction:

He was finally let go the day he was riding with a manager and was staring at his GPS screen trying to find where his next stop was instead of looking out the windshield at the great big sign saying that he was directly in front of the restaurant in question.

We also spoke to local writer Rebecca Lavoie about her eight-year-old son, who loves math but hates reading. A listener named Patrick can relate:

I have an 11-year-old that is exactly the same way. When it comes to actually sitting down and reading printed books, he has lots of trouble. He's a very good reader, he just doesn't get into it. My son enjoys doing Sudoku and math problems as well. We've come to accept it as well, and we still try to urge him to read books, but it's hard.

Maybe their kids can start a math club together. And finally, we got some great responses to a segment on for-profit colleges that offer student loans with exorbitant interest rates. Listener John Anderson wrote:

When I first began attending The New England Institute of Art, I had many of the concerns discussed on the show. The major red flag was the ease with which I was able to gain admission to the college. Luckily, I found the program to be very good. Researching schools was very, very difficult. It would be extremely beneficial if the government provided a Better Business Bureau type model for colleges.

And Randall Neukam wrote:

Nice expose -- you provided good information for those out in the cold because of the economy who certainly don't need their initiative kicked in the head by scoundrels. And you offered an alternative: community colleges.

As always, we welcome your ideas, comments and feedback on our blog, via Facebook and Twitter or you can always call our listener line at 603-223-2448

(Photo courtesy Sarah Gilbert via Flickr/CreativeCommons)

Here’s another way to make science appeal to kids – put it to song. Take one part Mr. Wizard and two parts High School Musical, shake vigorously, and you get The Sounds of Science.

Four students and one graduate from the University of California at Berkley entered a video contest about nanotechnology and ended up with a full-fledged science music video production team. A combination of handmade puppets, dancing, and Broadway-style musical numbers brings the excitement of scientific discovery to life in front of kid’s eyes. Take their second video, "The Safety Song," which already has had more than 400,000 hits.

The videos were made on weekends and during downtime from research and experiments. The sounds of science producers have received kudos from teachers, who they encourage to use the videos in their classrooms. The team admits that the videos take a lot of time, but they say it also kept them sane during the stress of grad school.

The Scientist: Scientific song and dance

Welcome to Here's What's Awesome, answer the secret word and you'll get an extra fourteen cents. It's a common word, something you find around the internet.

20,000 Robotic Submersibles Under the Sea
Did you know the government is funding the construction of an underwater robot armada? No, I am not a crackpot - and no, we don't need to alert an elite force of b-movie actors to stop them. Yes, these bots are subsidiaries to a larger "mothership", but they're tracking ocean currents, which could help track weather events, gauge environmental damage and even "swarm to disaster sites such as oil spills and airplane crashes." Still in the prototype stage, but stay tuned. [InventorSpot]

And if you leave it on all weekend... run
Want to teach kids to turn the lights off? A new "lightswitch ghost" attaches to the switch and changes facial expression and color as more energy is used - green and happy if the light's been on a little while, red and decidedly unhappy if it's been on for hours. [Inhabitat]

I believe Oli Lemieux can fly
And now, purely for fun, a video that's been making the rounds: a very acrobatic practice session with Cirque du Soleil's Oli Lemieux. The (unrelated?) music has some language not suitable for younger viewers, so just turn the sound down and consider that this guy has about the coolest job in the world:

[Neatorama]

Now it's your turn: share an awesome link in the comments. Hey, comment is our secret word!

Photo by ittybittiesforyou via Flickr/Creative Commons