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Fridays are awesome.
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I`m Carl Azuz with your commercial-free news source for the classroom.
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First up this March 20th,
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President Obama announced a new executive order yesterday.
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It requires U.S. government agencies
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to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
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The president says he wants a 40 percent reduction
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over the next 10 years in the types of emissions
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that many scientists say contribute to climate change.
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Government buildings will have to reduce energy use.
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Government agencies will have to replace their vehicles
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with lower emissions ones, like hybrids.
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But this is an order not approved by Congress,
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and it`s limited to government property only,
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which makes up a relatively small source of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Republicans say decisions like this hurt American jobs.
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And like other executive orders,
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the next president could reverse this decision.
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President Obama also made news yesterday for suggesting
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that voting should be mandatory in the US.
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At a town hall event in Cleveland, Ohio,
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he was asked how to offset the influence of money in politics.
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The president said if everybody voted,
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it would be, quote, "transformative."
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Twenty-six countries require their citizens to vote.
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In some places, like Australia and Belgium,
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people can get fined if they don`t.
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And if they don`t pay that fine in Belgium, they can be jailed.
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The U.S. has a relatively low voter turnout rate
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among wealthier democracies.
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In the 2012 presidential election,
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just over 57 percent of all eligible voters voted.
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In the 2014 midterm elections, it was just under 37 percent.
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The midterms usually have lower turnout.
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Critics say the freedom to vote also comes the freedom not to vote.
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And they say that passing a law and then enforcing it would be hard to do.
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Delaware has several nicknames -- The Diamond State,
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The Small Wonder, The Blue Hen State, The First State.
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Our first Roll Call school is from this state.
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In Newcastle, we`re happy to see John G. Leach School is watching.
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Now to sportsman`s paradise,
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or the Sugar State, or The Pelican State.
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The Wolves are with us from St. Paul`s School.
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It`s in Covington, Louisiana.
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And in The Grand Canyon State, hello to Gila Ridge High.
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The Hawks are hovering over Yuma, Arizona.
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There`s a lot of celestial science surrounding us this week.
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First, the solar eclipse we told you about.
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It`s visible for a couple of minutes, anyway, in parts of Europe,
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Northern Asia and North Africa.
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Second, the spring equinox --
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it`s today, the official first day of spring.
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Day and night will be about equally as long,
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with the sun shining directly over the equator.
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Third, scientists say a solar storm like this one
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sent some serious space weather our way.
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When bursts of energy from our closest star hit the Earth`s atmosphere,
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auroras, these bands of light,
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lit up areas farther north and south than usual.
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Yes, we had one of the more severe,
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potential disruptive, geomagnetic storms
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that we`ve seen in about a 10 year period,
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as a pair of solar flares ejected from the sun
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on Sunday morning arrived at the Earth`s magnetic field,
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the Earth`s magnetosphere on Tuesday morning.
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And the way they interact with the Earth`s magnetic field is
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what essentially leads to seeing these colorations of yellows,
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greens and also reds.
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And they get deflected off toward the polar regions.
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This particular event being so strong,
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we had the ability to see
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that across some of the lower latitudes of the world,
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at least a little farther south than what you typically would see.
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But the most common colors are the colors of green there,
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as they -- the particles begin to collide with oxygen.
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A little less common is when you have the blues, the violets,
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the purples, as we have the particles colliding with nitrogen.
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And then you get up to the rarest of the types,
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the red coloration,
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and this is where high altitude oxygen interacts
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with the particles of the solar flare once it arrives across the Earth.
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But that was the perspective on Tuesday.
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The area, as far as the viewing points, as far south as,
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really, the northern portion of the United States,
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the Midwestern U.S., the Northeastern U.S.,
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notice portions of Northwestern Europe,
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from Glasgow out there toward Oslo.
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St. Petersburg also had the potential to see some of this.
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And we certainly know we`ve seen video coming in over New Zealand,
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Christchurch, to Hobart,
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some of the other viewing areas of interest
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with this unusual and powerful solar event.
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Typically, 10 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. the best time to see it clear nights.
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Well, far away from major city light pollution,
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the best setup, as well.
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And around March and September,
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the equinox period also a good time to see it.
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And hence why it`s a good time right now.
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If you have the possibility, get outside and take a look.
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Back in high school,
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some of my teachers would play classical music to help us learn.
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Did it work?
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Well it does in rats.
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A study in the late 1990s found that rats
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that repeatedly heard the music of Mozart were better
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at finding their way through mazes than rats who didn`t.
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Music from minimalist composers like Philip Glass or just plain
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white noise did not have the same effects.
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Now, that`s Ratdom.
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Doves are helping a U.S.-based company map the world -- not the birds.
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Though these doves aren`t much bigger,
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they operate much higher --
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about as high as the International Space Station,
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hundreds of miles over our heads.
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They cost less than conventional satellites,
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but they don`t last much longer than a year
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before they burn up in the atmosphere.
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Still, businesses are taking notice.
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Earth as seen from the surface of the moon.
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Moving closer and it still looks much the same.
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What you don`t see from either distance is that our planet is constantly changing.
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We haven`t kept a close satellite eye on all this.
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Well, that`s about to change.
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There`s a company here in San Francisco with an ambition
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that`s out of this world -- to map the Earth like it`s never been mapped before.
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We`ve invented a miniaturized satellite
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that allows us to build the world`s biggest constellation
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of Earth imaging satellites.
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Chris Boshuizen is a physicist who`s always been fascinated by space.
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After developing several satellites for NASA,
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he set up a company with two friends on Christmas Day, 2010.
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This is an actual one-to-one scale model of our satellite.
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This usually pops out of a pod.
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The wings fall down here on the side
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and these wings are our solar panels that we use for --
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for collecting solar power and recharging our batteries.
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This is a high resolution industrial camera,
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scientific-grade camera that we use for collecting the images.
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So that`s -- essentially you can view it kind of like a glorified Web cam
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in a box with a computer and some radios.
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So we have currently 20 satellites in orbit.
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You can see them here in -- in their orbits,
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in which they were placed by their rocket.
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The satellites come out from behind the shadow of the Earth
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and when they`re in sunlight,
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they take pictures of the ground continuously.
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Once they have enough pictures,
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they pass over one of our ground stations.
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And what we get looks like this.
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Vast evolving landscapes, a tapestry of changing microclimates,
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ecosystems and land use.
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We currently have a large number of customers in agriculture,
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mining and resources, energy, as well as finance.
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So being able to see the planet changing
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and how people are undertaking their economic activity,
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where they`re investing and what they`re doing has tremendous value.
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It hasn`t always been a smooth ride.
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They lost some 26 doves in a rocket explosion in October last year,
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just seconds after lift-off.
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Despite this setback,
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they hope to have a constellation of 100 or so satellites by 2016.
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They have a mission, one they`ve had since setting up the company,
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to help safeguard our fragile planet.
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A new type of car could be headed to a road near you.
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The difference is, this one can fly.
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I don`t mean speed, I mean take off from a runway and fly.
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It has collapsible wings.
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Its top speed on the road is estimated to be around 99 miles per hour.
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In the air, 124 miles per hour.
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You can`t buy it yet. It`s still being developed.
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But it could be available in two to three years. The cost?
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Several hundred thousand euros. In other words, a lot.
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But if you have the kind of budget where the sky is the limit,
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you`ll have license to fly and drive it if you have a license to fly and drive it.
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It certainly looks runway ready,
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though drivers afraid of heights might dislike, or, at most,
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fear it. Have a great weekend,
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from all of our staff at CNN STUDENT NEWS.