Team Diabetes of Second Life has announced their 2019 fund-raising season. Founded in 2015 by Jessi2009 Warrhol and John Brianna (Johannes1977 Resident), Team Diabetes of Second Life is the official and authorised team of the American Diabetes Association in SL.
Their mission is to raise awareness, tolerance, and funds for diabetes in the virtual world of Second Life. According to the World Health Organisation in 2016 some 422 million adults in the world have diabetes and 1.5 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year.
The 2019 Team Diabetes of Second life season will run from October through to December, with the following events scheduled to take place:
October 18th though 26th: Scare Me Silly (off-season event – see below).
November 1st through 30th: National Diabetes Month, featuring:
November 1st through 30th: The Red Hunt.
November 3rd: The Red Ball.
November 14th: World Diabetes Day.
December 5th to December 14th: Christmas Showcase & Winter Art Show.
Scare Me Silly
Scare Me Silly is an annual event taking place around Halloween. It features live performances. DJ parties, a hunt and a quest, tricks and treats, a haunted mansion, ghostly rides and – of course – shopping!
As noted above, this year the event will take place from Friday, October 18th through Saturday, October 26th inclusive. Registrations for the event from both merchants and artists are now open, and the application form, with guidelines and terms can be found here.
About the American Diabetes Association
Established in 1940, the American Diabetes Association is working to both prevent and cure diabetes in all it forms, and to help improve the lives of all those affected by diabetes. It does this by providing objective and credible information and resources about diabetes to communities, and funding research into ways and means of both managing and curing the illness. In addition, the Association gives voice to those denied their rights as a consequence of being affected by diabetes.
About Team Diabetes of Second life
Team Diabetes of Second Life is an official and authorised fund-raiser for the American Diabetes Association in Second Life. Established with the aim of raising funds in support of diabetes treatment and to raise awareness of the disease in SL, Team Diabetes of Second Life was founded by Jessi2009 Warrhol and John Brianna (Johannes1977 Resident), who serve on the Advisory Board along with Eleseren Brianna, Veruca Tammas, Rob Fenwitch, and Dawnbeam Dreamscape.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, September 15th
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5th – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
No updates.
Project viewers:
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
The new Trailer and Camper regions arrive in Bellisseria – but are not currently available to users to claim, as more work in the regions is required
Monday, September 16th, 2019, marked the deployment of the first batch of trailer and camper regions to the Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent.
First previewed at the SL16B celebrations in June (see: A Look at the Camper and Trailer Homes with Patch Linden), the trailers and campers have long been anticipated, and while the new regions are not quite ready for release to users, their arrival in the live version of Bellisseria means the availability of these new home types has moved a step closer. Further, the regions include a number of new facilities and features for the Bellisseria continent – including the much talked about railway system.
The new Trailers and Campers sit within parkland regions similar to those people may have visited during the SL16B celebrations in June 2019
As previously noted, the Campers and Trailers are provided in four styles apiece – the difference being that of size – the trailers are somewhat larger than the campers (or caravans, as we call them in Europe) – although both are being (initially, at least), made available on 512 sq metre parcels.
In keeping with the preview regions as SL16B, the trailers and campers are located in a park / wilderness setting, with plenty of hills, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, a forest and more. trails wind through the region, offering both a means to explore and a way for those who come to occupy the campers and trailers feel as if they are part of a community.
A view of the new lodge, one of the public spaces in the new Trailers and Campers regions for Bellisseria.
One of the new public areas is an impressive parkland lodge. It sits with its back to a sweeping curve of rocky hills down which waters tumble and bubble through a brook. Overlooking a decently-sized lake to the front, it has moorings extending out from one side. These demonstrate a lesson well-learnt from the early days of Bellisseria, as they include rez zones for boats.
Inside, the lodge offers plenty of interior space on the main floor, complete with a coffee bar. Above this are two galleried sitting spaces, while outside a large deck offers further seating. Behind the lodge, up on a shoulder of one of the hills sits a little railway stop serving the lodge. Those who prefer a more daring means to arrive at the lodge can always try the zipline close by!
Inside the lodge. Patch sits at the far end of the hall with Mystic Mole at the coffee bar on the right, enjoying a little peace and quiet before the inrush of local residents
I can’t see too much about the railway itself – Patch and the Moles were taking questions in the Lodge, but given the volume of people there, I opted to keep away. What I can say is the layout is extensive, forming an open-ended loop around a major part of the new regions that varies between single and double tracks.
The one train I managed to spot on the rails was – unsurprisingly – a steam loco. However, whether it was one of those intended to ply the tracks, or simply there as a test vehicle, I couldn’t honestly say (as I didn’t check ownership!).
One of the new train stations serving the new Bellisseria regions, with trailers visible in the background
It’s important to note that this is only the initial deployment of these regions – as noted above, the Trailers and Campers are not – as of the time of writing – available to users. As to when the new parcels will be made available, it will be Really Very Soon Now™, with Patch Linden noting to me:
We’re working through all of our final tests, like any of the large scale releases we’ve done, we’re in that state of, it could be in an hour, it could be tomorrow, hard to say if something doesn’t pass, we’re delayed like a shuttle launch trying to lift off. xD
– Patch Linden, Monday, September 16th
As I understand it, the release cycle for these new parcels will be an initial large-scale release, similar to those first seen with the Traditional Homes and Houseboats. After these have occurred, releases for Trailers and Campers will be plugging-in to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday rolling release schedule that w’ve seen since June. All releases will be via the Linden Homes registration page.
With a much smaller footprint that the homes and houseboats so far released, the Trailer and Campers offer more outdoor space for use, even allowing for the 512 sq m size of their parcels
As I’ve previously noted, the Trailer and Campers offer considerably smaller interior living space than the Traditional Homes and Houseboats (hardly surprising, given they are trailers and campers!). However, this is compensated for by the amount of outdoor space available. Even when considering these are 512 sq m plots, it adds up to a far amount of room.
This space, coupled with the overall landscaping of the new regions could actually – and in difference to the doubts I expressed in June – potentially make these new Linden Homes offering potentially attractive (as witnessrd by the (premature) abandonments of homes and houseboats seen ahead of the region deployments).
K2-18b as it might appear in orbit around its red dwarf parent star and with the other known planet in the system – K2-18c – also visible. Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
I first wrote about K2-18, a red dwarf star some 11 light-years from Earth, and its two companion planets in December 2017. At that time, the outermost of the two planets, called K2-18b or EPIC 201912552 b and discovered in 2015, was the subject of a study to determine its mass in an attempt to better understand the planet’s possible atmospheric properties and bulk composition. This was of particular interest to scientists as K2-18b lay within its parent star’s habitable zone – where liquid water might exist on the planet’s surface.
That study ultimately revealed K2-18b has a mass of around 8 times that of Earth, putting it in the “super-Earth” category of rocky worlds, with a diameter roughly 2.3 times greater than Earth’s (see: Space Sunday: Exoplanets Update). Since then, K2-18b has continued to be the subject of study – and it has now become the first exoplanet thus far discovered confirmed to have water vapour, mostly likely liquid water clouds, within its atmosphere.
The news came via two independent studies that have been carried out using the data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The first study, written by the team who originally gathered the data, appeared on September 10th, 2019 on arXiv.org, but has not been peer-reviewed. The second study – which has been peer-reviewed – appeared in the September 11th edition of Nature Astronomy.
The team responsible for gathering the data – led by Björn Benneke, a professor at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal – did so after applying to use Hubble to observe K2-18b shortly after its discovery. They were ultimately granted telescope time in in 2016 and 2017, using Hubble to gather data in the light from the red dwarf star, and how that light changed under the influence of any atmosphere surrounding K2-18b as it transited in front of the star. Spectrographic analysis of the data confirmed the planet has a fairly dense atmosphere rich in hydrogen and helium – and which also contains the molecular signature of water.
Researchers gathered data on K2-18b’s atmosphere by using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe changes in the light from its parent star as it passed through the planet’s atmosphere during transits. Credit: NASA / ESA simulation
After gathering the data, Benneke’s team wanted time to carry out further observations to both confirm what they had found and make additional discoveries. In the meantime, their findings were available for others to study – which is exactly what a team led by Dr. Angelos Tsiaras based at the University College London (UCL), UK did.
Using independent means of analysing the data, both teams reached the same overall conclusions concerning the major finds within K2-18b’s atmosphere – although they come to different conclusions as to the planet’s likely form. The UCL specify K2-18b as a rocky planet with a dense atmosphere, between 0.01% and 50% of which is water vapour. By comparison, the amount of water vapour in our atmosphere is put at between 0.1% and 4% – so, K2-18b could have anything from a comparable amount of water vapour in its atmosphere to Earth through to being a completely flooded world.
By contrast, Benneke’s team believe the planet is more of a “mini-Neptune”: a planet with a small, solid core surrounded with a thick atmosphere that is predominantly hydrogen / helium in nature, with only trace amounts of water vapour – albeit enough to create liquid water clouds, and possibly even rain. However, the idea that the planet is a mini-Neptune is somewhat at odds with other findings about the planet – such as the December 2017 study.
There is also some tension between the two teams. While Benneke acknowledges his team’s research was open to others to use, he is somewhat aggrieved the UCL team did not bother to contact him or his team concerning their work or their intentions. However, he also sees the results of the UCL’s work as positive in respect to understanding the nature of K2-18b.
The presence of liquid water in the planet’s atmosphere doesn’t automatically mean it is home to life. There are some significant issues around this. For one thing, while the plant is within the habitable zone, the precise surface temperature has yet to be determined, and could range from -73ºC to +47ºC (-100ºF and +116ºF), meaning it could be colder or hotter than the coldest / hottest places on Earth.
There’s also the fact that the planet is so close to its parent, orbiting once every 33 days, that it is likely tidally-locked with its star. This means one side of the planet will be in perpetual sunlight, and the other in perpetual darkness – something that could well give rise to extreme weather conditions. Finally, there’s the fact that K2-18 is a red dwarf star. These, as I’ve noted before, can be exceptionally violent, and flares and coronal mass ejections from the star are likely to both expose the planet to high levels of radiation and could strip away its atmosphere over time, although it is possible K2-18b’s atmosphere might be dense enough to help it withstand at least some of this stripping away.
Finding water on a potentially habitable world other than Earth is incredibly exciting. K2-18b is not ‘Earth 2.0’ as it is significantly heavier and has a different atmospheric composition. However, it brings us closer to answering the fundamental question: Is the Earth unique?
– Dr. Angelos Tsiaras (UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data)
co-author of the UCL study on K2-18b
The next phases in studying K2-18b will likely come in the mid-to-late 2020s. Benneke and his team are already planning to continue their work using NASA’s James Webb telescope, due to be launched in 2021, while Giovanna Tinetti, a member of the UCL team studying K2-18b also happens to be the Principal Investigator for Europe’s Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infra-red Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL). She has already indicated the planet will be target for study by that mission when it launches in 2028.
It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.
Sunday, September 15th 18:30: Tilly and the Bookwanderers
Eleven year-old Tilly has lived above her grandparent’s bookshop ever since her mother disappeared shortly after she was born. Like the rest of her family, Tilly loves nothing more than to escape into the pages of her favourite stories.
One day Tilly realises that classic children’s characters are appearing in the shop through the magic of `book wandering’ – crossing over from the page into real life.
With the help of Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland. Tilly is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to her mother all those years ago, so she bravely steps into the unknown, unsure of what adventure lies ahead and what dangers she may face.
Join Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe to find out more!
Monday, September 16th 19:00: Moonheart
Gyro Muggins reads Charles de Lint’s 1994 novel.
When Sara and Jamie discovered the seemingly ordinary artefacts, they sensed the pull of a dim and distant place. A world of mists and forests, of ancient magic, mythical beings, ageless bards – and restless evil.
Now, with their friends and enemies alike–Blue, the biker; Keiran, the folk musician; the Inspector from the RCMP; and the mysterious Tom Hengyr; Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of Tamson House, that sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.
Sweeping from ancient Wales to the streets of Ottawa today, Moonheart will entrance you with its tale of this world and the other one at the very edge of sight and the unforgettable people caught up in the affairs of both. A tale of music, and motorcycles, and fey folk beyond the shadows of the moon. A tale of true magic; the tale of Moonheart.
Tuesday, September 17th 19:00: Poems Line Jazz, like Poems
with Ktadhn Vesuvino, live on stream.
Wednesday, September 18th: The Night Before Pirate Day
With R. Crap Mariner, Da5id Abbot, Corwyn Allen, and The Dread Pirate Caledonia at The Pirate Cove.
Thursday, September 19th
Note: both Thursday sessions will take place at The Pirate Cove.
19:00: Jack Sparrow: The Siren Song, Part 2
Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew have suddenly fallen under a sinister spell. While continuing on their quest for the Sword of Corts, they find themselves entranced by an ethereal song which leads them away from their quarry.
With Shandon Loring, also in Kitely – teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.
21:00: Seanchai late Night
Contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy from on-line sources with Finn Zeddmore.
Focus Magazine’s gallery space is constantly evolving, something that makes any repeat visit both interesting and enjoyable, both for the art on display and to see what is happening in general. My latest visit was in part a reflection of this, as I wanted to see the latest addition to the gallery’s exhibition space: the Exploratorium of Art.
Located at the southern end of the gallery’s skybox space, the Exploratorium presents an “underground” exhibition space for artists where they can display and – if they wish – sell their work.
The Exploratorium, Focus Gallery – Loegan Magic
It is a semi-permanent exhibition – by that I mean, they can exhibit as long as they feel they would like to or until they run out of fresh content, and artists replenish the work at least every month. Ideally, artists will be members of the group and have an interest in participating in the community.
– Focus Magazine Gallery co-owner Angela Thespian, discussing the Exploratorium
Currently, spaces within the Exploratorium are offered to artists on the basis of direct invitation, or as a result of names being passed on by other artists within the community; there is no fee charged to artists for mounting an exhibition.
The Exploratorium, Focus Gallery – Wanderer
Some 16 spaces are offered in the exhibition hall, with some familiar names on display at the time of my visit, including Anibrm Jung, CybeleMoon, Focus co-owner, PatrickofIreland, as well as two or artists whose work I was seeing for the first time. Together, those currently displaying present a rich mix of landscape and avatar studies
Alongside of the Exploratorium is the Focus Artist in Residence (FAIR) gallery, which at the time of my visit featured the work of Jos Loll, Finn Somerset, Kaleb Avedon and Bryce Sun. These are, as with the June FAIR exhibition I reviewed (see: Focus Gallery in Second Life, June 2019). Having witnessed his first exhibition just a couple of months back, I was particularly pleased to see a further display of work by Kaleb Avedon – who is also a gifted live performer in Second Life.
Focus Gallery -Doc Romano
The main gallery space, located in the focus office building, features an exhibition of work by Doc Battitude. I admit to being more familiar with Doc via the region designs of CandleWood (see: Touring CandleWood in Second Life, March 2019) and Iona Shores (see: Exploring Iona Shores in Second Life, June 2019).
When it comes to his art, Doc offers an eye for detail and framing that easily matches that see within CandleWood and Iona Shores and demonstrated by his partner, AdalynneReed. The images here focus primarily on male and female avatars, particularly on the upper level of the gallery space, while the lower level includes a selection of landscape pieces. The latter are, for me, eye-catching, but I must confess The Windmill and The lighthouse Tale particularly captivated me.
Focus Gallery -Doc Romano
Rounding-out the exhibitions on offer during my visit is an outdoor selection of art called The Happiness Photo Walk, featuring images and photos from Second Life and the physical world, taken by Feature group members of things that make them happy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of these feature dogs, although I was a little surprised that only one featured one of our Ruling Overlords – a grey cat looking suitably unimpressed!
Focus Gallery continues to engage with the art on display, and with a developing programme of art-related events and activities, including talks and discussions by artists, the gallery is a recommended destination for all those supportive of art in Second Life.
Established in 1940, the American Diabetes Association is working to both prevent and cure diabetes in all it forms, and to help improve the lives of all those affected by diabetes. It does this by providing objective and credible information and resources about diabetes to communities, and funding research into ways and means of both managing and curing the illness. In addition, the Association gives voice to those denied their rights as a consequence of being affected by diabetes.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 