Category Archives: Science

Big Island, Current Affairs, Government, Science, Sustainability

Criminalizing Farmers is Pretty Sad

August 26, 2013 Richard Ha 4 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

Two new GMO bills will be introduced in the Hawaii County Council on September 4, 2013.

Bill 109, sponsored by Brenda Ford, would require that all GMO crops presently being grown must be terminated within 30 months. No more GMOs will be allowed after the sunset date. Failure to comply would result in a $1,000 fine or 30 days in jail. This bill would make criminals of farmers, which is just unfathomable.
Bill 113, sponsored by Margaret Wille, would grandfather in all papaya and other current GMO crops in places where they are customarily grown. Otherwise, no new, open-air cultivation of GMO crops would be allowed. Violators would be fined $1000/day and responsible for legal, court and other costs.

Click chart to enlarge

Farmers are very worried that denying Big Island farmers the ability to grow crops that can be grown on other islands, and on the mainland, would drive them out of business.

It’s a valid worry. For instance, what if a plant is developed that emits a pheromone that repels insects? This would save cost and labor, and our conventional and organic farmers would be at a serious disadvantage compared to farmers on the other islands.

As another example, consider the sweet potato, which grows very well on the Hilo/Hamakua Coast. What happens if one day scientists are able to transfer a gene from the sweet potato and make Russett potatoes resistant to fungus? That would save 15 applications of sprays per season.

Papaya farmers worry that giving them an “exemption” implies that something is wrong with their product, and this could hurt them in the marketplace.

During the recent go-around of an anti-GMO bill that was shelved, people were very inconsiderate and even mean, and it did not have to be that way. That is not our aloha way.

It happened because our leaders allowed it to happen, and it is not something to be proud of.

None of this is anything to be proud of. We are seeing hype and fear. Why is our County Council not talking to the farmers?

Some readings on this subject:

By David Kroll, Contributor, Forbes.com

PHARMA & HEALTHCARE | 8/25/2013 @ 8:34AM |11,386 views

Is It Time For Scientist Activism Against GMO Fear-Mongering?

Also:

By Lindsay Abrams, Salon.com

MONDAY, AUG 26, 2013 04:42 AM HST

Is it anti-science to be anti-GMOs?

Government, Science, Sustainability

We Are Unwilling To Be Led To The Slaughter

August 21, 2013 Richard Ha 2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I was part of a four-person panel at the recent GMO Summit. I was spokesperson for the farmer group that organized a convoy around the County building a short time ago. The others were

Kamana Beamer, who gave the cultural perspective, which is the long term view of things
Hector Valenzuela, who presented a negative view of biotechnology
Dr. Dennis Gonsalves, who gave a pro-GMO point-of-view.

Three of the speakers, then, all coming from different perspectives, were pro-GMO. I will ask the speakers if they are willing to give a synopsis of their presentation, and if so, I will post them here.

As farmers, our primary concern is that banning the use of GMOs only on Hawai‘i Island, while allowing them to be used on the other Hawaiian islands, will slowly but surely drive us out of business. We are unwilling to be led to the slaughter.

Here is what I presented at the GMO Summit:

Aloha. I am Richard Ha. Although we have a farm, I am here today as a representative of Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United. This is a spontaneous farmer group that recently organized a convoy of more than 50 cattle, papaya and other farm trucks, as well as nearly 200 farmers, around the County building. It consists of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association, the Big Island Banana Growers Association, the Big Island Cattlemen’s Council, the Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association and various Farm Bureau chapters.

In all my time in farming, I have never seen farmers so united and concerned about one issue. Why are they so concerned? Because they feel their survival is at stake.

Farmers are price takers, not price makers, and when the cost of energy quadrupled in the last 10 years, we farmers could not increase our prices to cover the increase in cost. We know how vulnerable we are to rising oil prices. The anti-GMO bill takes away future cost-saving tools for farming.

Here’s a reality check on growing food.

Hawai‘i is located in the humid subtropics and it is a weed, bug and plant-disease paradise. We have no winter here to help us kill off bugs.

Farmers are not pesticide-crazed sprayers of toxic chemicals. They use cost-effective solutions to the pest problems of their particular crops. They use what’s least toxic, because they don’t want to harm themselves. They don’t overspray, because that wastes money. Farmers have common sense.

When we send farmers into battle against the pests, don’t shoot arrows at their backs. When we send them into battle against pests that use cannons, don’t send them out with swords and clubs.

If we do not want the large biotech companies to grow corn for seed, then write a bill that prohibits that. If we do not want GMO foods at all, then start with corn flakes and soda and ban those.

Consider these facts:

Hawai‘i imports more than 85 percent of its food. That’s almost all of our food.
Hawaii uses oil to generate more than 70 percent of its electricity. The U.S. mainland, which is both our supplier and our competitor, uses oil for only 2 percent of its electricity – so its costs are not skyrocketing from rising oil prices as much as ours are.
The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and will probably go higher.
As oil prices rise, Hawai‘i becomes less and less food secure.

These are the realities that Big Island farmers face every day. We must be one of the least food secure places in the world.

“Food security” means being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from. These days, it comes from all over the world. We are able to buy food from all over because money comes into our economy from the outside, with military spending and tourism being primary contributors. That provides us with money to pay for general services to our society and to buy our food.

Food security involves farmers farming. If the farmer makes money, the farmers will farm. And if the farmers make money, then their products will be competitive with imported foods. And that will mean lower cost foods for all.

Try to encourage those things that gives our farmers a competitive advantage. Leverage our sun that shines all year long. Don’t ban GMO corn that can give our cattle ranchers a fighting chance.

Maybe we can grow the grain that will encourage poultry farms and fish, too.

If we had poultry and cattle manure, our organic farmers would have a nitrogen source that could help them produce food for a profit.

Let’s all sit down and talk. Farmers are not the enemy.

In the 1800s, our Hawaiian population went from an estimated 700,000 to 50,000. We almost went extinct.

I’m sure they would have used new technology vaccines if they had been available.

Farmers have looked at all sides of the argument and have come down on the side of peer-reviewed science.

I would like to make one farmer observation about pesticides. The
dose makes the poison. Margaret Wille said she wants to ban the use of Roundup. Senator Ruderman introduced a bill to ban Roundup last session.

Let’s say there is a four-foot patch of weeds that one wants to control using Roundup. The amount of spray needed, which is already diluted 50-1 with water, is less than the thickness of a piece of typing paper. By contrast, rainfall in one year at Pepe‘ekeo
would result in a column of water 10 feet high over that spot. As I said, the dose makes the poison.

Previous to Roundup, farmers here used Paraquat, which is a skull-and-crossbones grass poison.

We don’t want to go back to that. We need a little bit of common sense here.

Here are three areas of concern to farmers:

Farmers on the other islands would be able to use new biotech seeds, while Big Island farmers would not. I just saw where a British researcher said he developed a technique that would give every plant the ability to fix nitrogen from air. But if other
islands could use it and we could not, this would eventually put Big Island farmers out of business. The Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV) threatens the State’s tomato industry, and there is a biotech solution that is ready to be implemented. Again, if other islands can use it while while Big Islanders cannot, this will eventually drive Big Island tomato farmers out of business.
Under Brenda Ford’s bill, papaya and GMO corn farmers and ranchers have 30 months to get out of those crops or they risk 30 days in jail. Making criminals of farmers is just beyond belief.
It isn’t the strongest or smartest that survive, but the ones that can adapt to change. This saying is attributed to Charles Darwin.

Although the bills by Ford and Wille might seem new and different and brave, below the surface they both prevent adapting to change. And that is one of the main reasons why farmers are against both attempts to prevent the planting of bioengineered
plants.

Farmers and ranchers have an abundance of common sense. My dad was a farmer. He only went to the sixth grade, but when I was 10 years old, he told me: “Find two solutions for every problem and then find one more just in case.”

He said, There are thousand reasons why no can. I looking for the one reason why CAN adapt to change.

Food Security, Government, Science

Big Island Farmers Rally Against Anti-GMO Bill

June 30, 2013 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

At the recent Hawai‘i County Council committee meeting about Bill 79, the anti-GMO bill, I said that it was a “Man Bites Dog” story because 90 percent of the Council room in Hilo was filled by small farmers.

And it’s still a Man Bites Dog story. Yesterday, our local farmers organized a rally, and 50 cattle trucks, papaya trucks, delivery trucks, etc. went around and around in front of the County building.

This video made by Lorie Farrell shows the farmers and the impressive rally:

Most trucks had two people in it. There were cattle ranchers, papaya farmers, nursery industry, banana farmers and others.

From the Hawaii Tribune-Herald:

12:05 am – June 29, 2013 — Updated: 12:05 am – June 29, 2013

Farmers rally against GMO ban

Farmers and ranchers voice their opposition to County bill 79 on Friday in front of the Hawaii County Building

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

“I’m here to save my job,” the woman explained as she waved to a honking line of vehicles crawling by the front of the Hawaii County Building on Aupuni Street in Hilo, shortly after 2 p.m. Friday.

The Panaewa papaya packer of nine years, who would only give her first name — Diana — said that she had joined with other agriculture industry workers to voice their opposition to Bill 79, a measure being proposed by County Councilwoman Margaret Wille that would limit the use of genetically modified crops on Hawaii Island.

“We want them to vote no on Bill 79,” she said….

Read the rest here

In my 30-something years of farming, I have never seen diverse farmers come together to support each other like this. I could see on everybody’s face that it was not a one-time thing!

Farmers have, as their top priorities, taking care of their families, workers, and feeding Hawai‘i’s people. Bill 79 is alarming because it pits the community against farmers, and farmers against farmers. Now farmers are having to defend themselves for being farmers.

In the Hawaiian culture, farmers were highly esteemed. This is not rocket science: If you like eat, you need someone who knows how to grow the food.

Farmers have some good characteristics to help them cope with the future. They are multi-talented and can fix equipment as well as grow crops. But most of all, they have good, old-fashioned common sense. This is the most important trait one must have to face an uncertain future.

Science, Sustainability

Fertilizer from Local Resources

June 16, 2013 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

It’s Father’s Day, and I’m thinking about my Pop and what he always told me: “Find three solutions for every problem, and then find one more just in case.”

I’m thinking, on this Father’s Day, that it’s appropriate to talk about the “one more solution.”

Excess or “curtailed” electricity is thrown away. What if we used curtailed electricity to make fertilizer?

Three years ago, my farmer friend Steve Gruhne in Iowa was talking about the ammonia and nitrogen cycle.

Nitrogen is a building block of protein. We can take the throw-away electricity and run it through water. Hydrogen and oxygen will bubble up. Take the hydrogen and combine it with nitrogen in the air and you get ammonia fertilizer. Just think – nitrogen fertilizer made from local resources!

Pop said there are a thousand reasons why no can. We are looking for the one reason why CAN!

Happy Fathers Day, Guys.

History, Maku‘u Stories, Science, Sustainability

Grass Roots Farming

May 29, 2013 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Science is great, but there are kids now that go to the
supermarket and think that’s where food comes from.

For me, it all goes back to Uncle Sonny and all the layers of technology that have cropped up since then.

When I first thought about farming, I spent hours and hours
talking to Uncle Sonny Kamahele down the beach at Maku‘u.

I’ve written about Uncle Sonny here and here. He was my Pop’s
cousin, and I learned the basic principles of farming from him.

I had just graduated from UH Manoa with an accounting degree.
I had cost benefit volume analysis and market share on my mind.

Uncle Sonny drove to town once a week. He did not have
electricity or running water, but he always had a stack of U.S. News & World Reports with the current copy on top. He made his living farming watermelon by himself.

One day he told me that he needed to open up a new plot of land because he could not stay at the same place for too long; he didn’t want to get a virus or a wilt of some sort.

Over the days and weeks, I watched him cut grass in the new plot with a sickle and pull it into a roll, and then cart the grass out of his plot in a wheelbarrow. When he wasn’t doing that, he would take a hoe and remove the roots of the grass, because he knew that otherwise it would regrow.

The other types of weed were dormant seeds of broad-leaved weeds that would germinate and pop up. Uncle Sonny would remove these with a hoe, only on dry days, without disturbing too much of the soil. After awhile the seeds would stop germinating.

Uncle Sonny knew that certain weeds could continuously regrow if the roots were not removed, and that others only grew from seed. I noticed that, after awhile, hardly any weeds grew in the new plot, and I thought about how amazing that was.

The lessons I learned from Uncle Sonny? Know what your problem is. Also: no waste time.

My grandma Leihulu lived with us for several years as I was growing up in Waiakea Uka. She grew taro and made poi, and she did the same things as Uncle Sonny. She always had a stack of California grass smoldering, even when it was raining – they were weeds she’d removed the same way he did. It was second nature to her. It was just her lifestyle.

Whenever I see a plot of ground that’s clean like that, it’s pretty obvious to me that they did that with a hoe, and that that is somebody that knows what they’re doing.

As Uncle Sonny got older, he started using pesticides, but because they cost money he was very very careful with them. It saves that part where you have to go and hoe the weeds out and go and pull the seeds out. It saved him a lot of time. It wasn’t very many years later that he started to use Roundup.

When I started farming, we were using skull & crossbones types of poisons like Paraquat. When we switched to Roundup, we didn’t have to use that anymore. It made spraying herbicides so much safer for the farmer.

When you use a chemical like Roundup in conjunction with a 100-hp tractor, you can do 1000 times more than one human can do. That means you can produce that much more food. But now that herbicides kill everything, you start losing that knowledge; you don’t have to know what the old guys knew.

When Uncle Sonny used herbicides, he always stuck the leaf into it and saw if it worked. If not, he’d add a little more.

He followed the instructions, but he never relied on the instructions for the final result. He knew the formula, but he checked to make sure the result was what he wanted. It showed me that he knew what he was doing. He knew why that particular spreader was in there, and checked the proportions for sure. Not that he doubted, but if he wanted it to work very well, he’d check it himself.

I haven’t seen anybody, not anybody, do that. But I think it was common knowledge with the old folks.

We are so far removed from our food now that we don’t really have a connection with why we’re doing what we’re doing. But we need the basic knowledge. You’ve got to know why you’re doing what you are doing.

Adopt-a-Class, Community, Education, Schools, Science

The Lamakū Project

April 25, 2013 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

I want to tell you what’s new. The Big Island Community Coalition (BICC), in partnership with ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, is kicking off the Lamakū Adopt-a-Visit project.

Download Adopt a Visit Program_2013_brochure

Lamakū means “torch of light.” This project will sponsor Puna and Ka‘ū students to go on a field trip to ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo.

Here’s how it works: You make a 100 percent tax-deductible donation to ‘Imiloa, specifying that it’s in support of the BICC “Adopt-a-Visit” project. (You can specify that it’s for a certain Puna or Ka‘ū school if you’d like, but that’s optional.)

Each $5 donation sponsors one student. Public, private, charter and homeschooled students are eligible.

Donations will be applied to the ‘Imiloa admission fee. As long as funds are available, ‘Imiloa will cover the cost of bus transportation to the Center. ‘Imiloa will coordinate the school visits, and will ensure that the donor receives feedback about the trip to ‘Imiloa they helped sponsor.

Eighty-nine percent of students in the Pahoa school complex participate in the free/reduced lunch program. This is the highest percentage in the state.

This is an opportunity to make a real difference on the ground. Thanks for your help.

How to donate

Articles, Mauna Kea, Science

Irradiator Starts Operating on O‘ahu

February 1, 2013 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

On Tuesday, I was in Honolulu and got to see locally grown produce go through the new O‘ahu irradiator as part of the equipment’s first commercial treatment.

It looks like a tall carousel, and automatically lowers units of produce underwater for a certain amount of time and at a specific distance so the irradiation is applied uniformly.

Curry leaves and papaya were part of that first treatment. Other products, such as basil and other in-demand produce, could also be exported using this method.

It’s a good example of how folks worked through environmental and other issues to come up with an acceptable solution.

The irradiator is located at the old Del Monte pineapple facilities, now occupied by the Hawaii Ag Research Center. “Stevie” Whalen, the Center’s leader, has an impressive vision of private and public organizations that will each help the whole.

Schools, Science

Hawai‘i Students Host Japan Students at Micro Robot Conference & Tournament

August 11, 2010 Richard Ha

‘Imiloa Astronomy Center hosted the first International Micro Robot Conference and Tournament last month.

Waiakea High School and ‘Iolani School hosted students and teachers who came from Ritsumeikan High School, a super science high school in Kyoto, Japan. Over two weeks, the Hawai‘i group took its peers hiking through Kilauea Iki Crater, star-gazing from Mauna Kea, to Coconut Island for an acoustic shrimp study, on an Atlantis submarine drive off Waikiki, and to presentations by astronomers, geologists and marine scientists.

In November, Waiakea High and ‘Iolani will each send a 5-student/1-teacher delegation to the 8th annual Ritsumeikan International Super Science Fair in Kyoto.

Also planned is a micro robot outreach programs on all islands, which introduces the LETry robot and other micro-mechanisms to participating teachers.

KTA’s program Living In Paradise: Science is fun has a YouTube video featuring Dave Olive and the Japanese students and teachers. It’s the third segment on that video.

Pictures from the two weeks that the Waiakea and ‘Iolani students took the Japanese students around. Wow:

Geothermal, Schools, Science

Robotics/Micro Mechanisms on the Big Island

June 18, 2010 Leslie Lang

The first Hawaii International Micro Robot Conference and Tournament will be held at ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo from July 16 through 19, 2010.

Art Kimura, Education Specialist for the Hawai‘i Space Grant Consortium at UH Manoa, says the conference is primarily to begin a discussion on how Big Island can benefit through micro mechanisms.

“Whether for R&D,” he says, “for actual production, for prototyping, partnerships and relevant applications including medical, agriculture, security, etc. We are hoping this will be a catalyst for further interest in what would be a clean industry (since they are micro devices, the facilities are not large).”

Richard is very interested in this, and says that from a business perspective he can see micro manufacturing taking off on the Big Island where geothermal electricity would be cheap.

“Because it is small by volume,” he says, “freight cost would not a large factor. The higher the input cost of electricity, the more competitive we become.”

“This is a field where we could become world leaders,” he says.

Also, the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo is hosting the 9th Annual ROV Competition on June 24-26, 2010. This video describes the international student underwater robotics competition.

Hilo is the perfect location for the competition because this year’s theme is underwater volcanoes. The event will be held at the Olympic-sized outdoor swimming pool at UH Hilo’s Student Life Center.

About 60 teams from all over the world are participating, including five from Hawaii:
•    Kapiolani Community College, Honolulu
•    Kealakehe Intermediate School, Kailua-Kona
•    Moanalua High School, Honolulu
•    Highlands Intermediate School, Pearl City
•    Hilo High School, Hilo

ROVs are remotely operated vehicles, also known as underwater robots or robot submersibles. They’ve been in the news a lot lately because they’re a critical tool in the attempts to manage the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Skilled ROV engineers and operators are needed in many marine technology industries that have importance in Hawaii, not just the oil and gas industry.

And they also have applications in science and exploration. For example: an ROV was used to explore the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, and an ROV was used to discover the location of the sunken Titanic.

The competition helps students develop the technology, piloting and teamwork skills needed to design, build and operate an ROV in a “real-world” setting and exposes them to marine technology careers. And if they decide working on ROVs isn’t right for them, they’ve still developed science, technology, engineering, math and teamwork skills that will be invaluable in any field.

The International Student ROV Competition is organized by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) center in Monterey, California.

Here is an email from Art Kimura about the 20th annual Future Flight Hawaii program:

From: Art Kimura

Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 2:46 PM

Subject: inspiring…the 20th annual Future Flight Hawaii program… misson complete

Aloha; Rene and I want to thank you all for being part of our 20 year journey….conceived and executed by a group of brave, perhaps naive on our part, 18 teachers in 1991, we are in awe of the teachers we have been privileged to work with. We should remember our first “boss,” George Mead,
DBED Office of Space Industry, who trusted us to initiate this program, and to Patti Cook who introduced us to the opportunity.

Truth be told, the program was to have ended some 15 years ago when the Office of Space Industry was shut down; through being adopted by the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium (mahalo to all at Spaced Grant…Dr. Luke Flynn, Dr. Jeff Taylor, Dr. Peter Mouginis-Mark, Marcia Sistoso, Eric Pilger, Linda Martel, Lorna Ramiscal and others), we have managed to continue the program…significantly changed from the week long and weekend residential
programs, these family engagement programs continue to be among the most requested programs to be sure. We thank the University of Hawaii at Hilo (Chancellor Rose Tseng, and the UHH Conference Center) which provided the facilities and services in the initial years before the program moved to the Kilauea Military Camp, then expanded to Maui (thanks to Betty Brask), Kauai (thanks to Cheryl Shintani) and Oahu. NASA specialists including Tom Gates, Greg Vogt, Cheick Diarra, Ota Lutz, Wayne Lee, David Seidel and others, HIGP scientists (Luke, Jeff, Scott Rowland and others), Gemini Telescope specialists (Peter Michaud, Janice Harvey), the UH College of Engineering,
and many other community specialists and resources have contributed to the program. We thank Creative Arts Hawaii for their long time support in designing the T shirts, bags and other materials that we have provided to the over 8,500 participants.

We have been honored to have worked with over 175 teachers as part of our mission control team, the summer institutes that we offered for credit and volunteers….they are truly educators with the right stuff.

How long do we continue is a frequently asked question….the initial goal of 10 years has long passed…then more recently, a personal goal was to have one of our grandchildren attend (oldest will not qualify for another
2 years)…but Morgan Nakamura who attended as a 4th grade student from Mililani in our first year, 1991, and who has been teaching business education at Pearl City High School (and is to be a state CTE resource teacher this fall), asked if we could continue the program for another 10
years…why? Morgan is to be married this October (Morgan brought her fiancee to the program and he passed the FF board of review) and she hopes her child will be able to attend. So old folks like Rene/I will have to pull out our walking canes or better, pass the torch to a new generation, to continue it into the future. With NASA’s vision of exploration changing under President Obama (no return to the moon), we will have to come up with new contextual themes to be sure.

We are grateful to you all for the engaging and creative lessons; we are always in awe of seeing how the lessons unfold under your imagination…..the paper roller coasters put the parents and children to work until late at night and there were amazing results on Sunday to be sure (thanks to Wendell, Arlene and Clyde)….the children surely enjoyed the special solar cooked snacks made in their own solar ovens (thanks to Glenn, Sylvia and Jan) ….the extensive mineral collection from Roger’s personal treasure provide a college level experience for all (thanks to Roger and Matt)….the worm decomposers modules were so engaging that even the squeamish were holding worms (of course Wendi’s Connor told me that his mother would scream at the worms)…we hope the new annelid family members will be part of Earth’s renewal and recycling (thanks to Colleen for drilling all the holes in the bins, to Cyndi for bringing your own annelid collection, and to Donna and Andrea), the planes were flying in the hall ways after the lessons on flight by Dale and Lani, you could drink contaminated liquids after the filtering of the liquids by Carole, Morgan and Joann, the polymer module added to their knowledge of how useful these materials are (thanks to Arlene, Wendell, Clyde) and students learned about leaves through the leaf identification lessons and fresh and dried leaves (thanks to Sylvia, Jan and Glenn).

We were so excited to see the debut of the newest Princess Teriyaki (how many have we had over the years)….Claire Sakata, daughter of Dennis, who spent two years in Japan in the JET program, and will be student teaching at Kapalama Elementary this fall, introduced her study of Japanese magic in such a dramatic way…Claire, please reserve October 16 to be on stage with Roger and Dale at the Astronaut Lacy Veach Day science magic program. The Space Science Magic brought back many memories of demonstrations from years past and the videos brought by Randal, Dennis and Dennis were amazing as well. Thanks to everyone for your hard work.

Randal Lau has generously spent extraordinary time to post the 2010 graduation videos and other videos from our Future Flight archive on:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boar59/FutureFlightHawaiiVideos?authkey=Gv1sRgCK
fyoaj4naDWYQ#

We hope it will provide everyone with great memories from this and from past years.

We are appreciative for the certificates of recognition from the State Senate presented by Senator Norman Sakamoto to Dr. Flynn, and from Governor Lingle, presented by Dr. Taylor, honors that reflect the long term commitment of all of the teachers and volunteers to develop creative and engaging lessons for the participants.

Future Flight Hawaii blasts off on our 21st annual program in June 2011 with an International Mission to Mars program.

We hope you will join us at:

July 17, 2010: Imiloa Astronomy Center, 6:30 p.m.-8:00 p.m.; public event for the 1st Hawaii Micro Robot Conference and Tournament: origami presentation by Hidenori Ishihara, robotics Professor, Kagawa University,
Shikoku, Japan, and bipedal robot demonstrations by Risa Sato, student at Shizuoka High School, winner of 2009 Bipedal robot competition at Nagoya University, and Hideaki Matsutani, technical education instructor, Meinan
Technical High School, Nagoya.

1st Children and Youth Day BrushBot tournament, October 3, 2010, State Capitol auditorium (if your child’s school wants to enter a team, please have the teacher contact us for workshop information and registration);
mahalo to Senator Chun-Oakland for the invitation.
*additional brushbot tournament to be hosted on the Big Island

9th annual Astronaut Lacy Veach Day of Discovery, October 16, 2010, Punahou School (http://www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu/Day-of-discovery/)
*keynote speaker: Kalepa Babayan, master navigator; content specialist,

Imiloa Astronomy Center…and the expanded Future Flight Weird Science team (Dale, Roger…and Claire)

11th annual Astronaut Ellison Onizuka Science Day, January 22, 2011, University of Hawaii at Hilo
(http://www.spacegrant.hawaii.edu/OnizukaDay/)

VEX robotics tournaments: http://www.hawaiiroc.org/ October 2, 2010: Maui County Fair (Baldwin High School gym) November 11, 2010: Iolani School gym November 20, 2010: Imiloa Astronomy Center December 3-4, 2010: Hawaii Convention Center

*3 other Oahu VEX tournaments to be scheduled

If you would like volunteer at these robotics or the Onizuka or Veach Day programs, please let us know.

Thank you again for being a part of our 20th annual program…we hope the rest of the summer provides time for relaxation and for family and friends to gather. It truly was a joy to work with you …. Art and Rene

Art and Rene Kimura
Future Flight Hawaii
Hawaii Space Grant Consortium

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Category Archives: Science

Criminalizing Farmers is Pretty Sad

Is It Time For Scientist Activism Against GMO Fear-Mongering?

Is it anti-science to be anti-GMOs?

We Are Unwilling To Be Led To The Slaughter

Big Island Farmers Rally Against Anti-GMO Bill

Farmers rally against GMO ban

Fertilizer from Local Resources

Grass Roots Farming

The Lamakū Project

Suggested Reading: Kalepa Baybayan’s Thoughts on TMT

Irradiator Starts Operating on O‘ahu

Hawai‘i Students Host Japan Students at Micro Robot Conference & Tournament

Robotics/Micro Mechanisms on the Big Island