Ka`u News Briefs Tuesday, June 20, 2017

     Statewide, "We have the highest rate of homelessness per capita in the nation with 505 out of every 100,000 residents without housing: a total of about 8,000 people. Here, we have the highest life expectancy in the country, yet the average life expectancy of our homeless individuals is 51. People afflicted with mental illness and addiction suffer on our streets. Families with children live in tent cities under constant threat of upheaval. Unsafe and unsanitary conditions lead to health complications that put over a billion dollar strain on our already limited Medicaid resources. This is a public health crisis. This is a humanitarian crisis. This is an economic crisis. 

     "Compassionately and effectively tackling the moral, economic, and societal issues that all must be addressed to solve our states homelessness crisis will require innovation, collaboration, and, above all else, determination. As a doctor and as a senator, know that I will continue to seek out new ideas and approaches, and will continue this fight in the legislature,the emergency room, and in our communities."

While most homelessness is in urban O`ahu, remote places are  where homeless people retreat as streets and parks are cleared.

     For local residents to view, Green provided links to television specials from PBS and BBC and said they are only "two of the most recent examples of the national and international media covering our homeless epidemic. The nation and the world have taken notice of our struggles and our steadfast efforts to combat them. With their eyes upon us, I am confident that not only can we succeed, but we can also set a shining example for other communities struggling with homelessness. We will continue to tirelessly move forward together with innovation, collaboration, compassion, and, of course, with aloha. We will not rest until we have seen tangible, positive change."
     Green advocates to accept homelessness as a medical condition and says providing housing would save taxpayer money at the emergency rooms and hospital wards. He says that doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing homeless people and that health insurance should cover it.
    While his bills are yet to pass the state legislature, he is working with insurance companies to help save them money, he says.
     View the BBC's Homeless in Hawai`i and the PBS feature Hawai`i's Homeless.

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Coffee farms looked like rice paddies when Iselle flooded Wood Valley in 2014. Photo by Anne Celeste

CENTRAL PACIFIC HURRICANE CENTER predicts a normal to above-normal hurricane season through Nov. 30, predicting five to eight tropical cyclones. This is the first season that Ka`u Regional Gym serves as the area's disaster shelter. The hurricane season outlook includes a possible transition to a weak El Nino and prediction for near-or above-average ocean temperatures in the main hurricane formation region, and near-or weaker-than-average vertical wind shear in that same region. Gerry Bell, PhD., NOAA;s lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at the Climate Prediction Center, said,  "If El Nino develops, it may become strong enough to produce an above-normal season."

ASTRONOMY ON THE BIG ISLAND makes one discovery after another. One of the latest, through Keck Observatory, was presented recently at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held in Austin, Texas.
     The presenter was Trent Duput, a graduate of the Institute for Astronomy at University of Hawai`i at Manoa.  “When we look up and see the stars shining at night, we are seeing only part of the story,” said Dupuy. "Not everything that could be a star ‘makes it,’ and figuring out why this process sometimes fails is just as important as understanding when it succeeds.”
     Dupuy, the lead author of the study, and co-author Michael Liu of the University of Hawai`i found that an object must weigh at least 70 times the mass of Jupiter in order to start hydrogen fusion and achieve star-status. If it weighs less, the star does not ignite and becomes a brown dwarf instead.
     How did they reach that conclusion? The two studied 31 faint brown dwarf binaries (pairs of these objects that orbit each other) using W. M. Keck Observatory’s Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics system to collect ultra-sharp images of them, and track their orbital motions using high-precision observations.

     “We have been working on this since Keck Observatory’s LGS AO first revolutionized ground-based astronomy a decade ago,” said Dupuy.  “Keck is the only observatory that has been doing this consistently for over 10 years. That long-running, high-quality data from the laser system is at the core of this project.”The result of the decade-long observing program is the first large sample of brown dwarf masses.
    “It’s the synergy between Keck Observatory and CFHT that really gets us the full power of the results,” said Dupuy.
     Their goal was to measure the masses of the objects in these binaries, since mass defines the boundary between stars and brown dwarfs.
     The research team also used the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain the extremely sharp images needed to distinguish the light from each object in the pair. However, the price of such zoomed-in, high-resolution images from Hubble and Keck Observatory is that there is no reference frame to identify the center of mass. Wide-field images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) containing hundreds of stars provided the reference grid needed to measure the center of mass for every binary.
     “As they say, good things come to those who wait. While we’ve had many interesting brown dwarf results over the past 10 years, this large sample of masses is the big payoff. These measurements will be fundamental to understanding both brown dwarfs and stars for a very long time,” said Liu.

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Hawaiian Music Concert, Wed, June 21, 6:30 – 8 p.m., Kīlauea Visitor Center Auditorium in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Komakakino share a love of hula, Hawaiian culture and singing traditional mele (songs) in the Hawaiian language. Free; park entrance fees apply.