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Mars Base

Breakthrough cancer-killing treatment has no side-effects, study finds - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ng-treatment-side-effects.html

scibyte89 scibyte90 Cancer

shared by Mars Base on 07 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Cancer cells grow faster than normal cells and in the process absorb more materials than normal cells
  • took advantage of that fact by getting cancer cells to take in and store a boron chemical
  • When those boron-infused cancer cells were exposed to neutrons, a subatomic particle, the boron atom shattered and selectively tore apart the cancer cells, sparing neighboring healthy cells
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The technique worked excellently in mice
  • ready to move on to trials in larger animals, then people
  • This innovative treatment produced none of the harmful side-effects of conventional chemo and radiation cancer therapies.
  • A particular form of boron will split when it captures a neutron and release lithium, helium and energy
  • the helium and lithium atoms penetrate the cancer cell and destroy it from the inside without harming the surrounding tissues.
Mars Base

First drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-failure-mortality-decade.html

scibyte96 scibyte97 heart

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Coenzyme Q10 decreases all cause mortality by half
  • results of a multicentre randomised double blind trial
  • It is the first drug to improve heart failure mortality in over a decade
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) occurs naturally in the body and is essential to survival
  • CoQ10 works as an electron carrier in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells, to produce energy and is also a powerful antioxidant
  • CoQ10 levels are decreased in the heart muscle of patients with heart failure, with the deficiency becoming more pronounced as heart failure severity worsens
  • Double blind controlled trials have shown that CoQ10 improves symptoms, functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure with no side effects
  • until now, no trials have been statistically powered to address effects on survival
  • study randomised 420 patients with severe heart failure
  • to CoQ10 or placebo and followed them for 2 years
  • primary endpoint was time to first major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE)
  • unplanned hospitalisation due to worsening of heart failure, cardiovascular death, urgent cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support
  • CoQ10 halved the risk of MACE
  • 29 (14%) patients in the CoQ10 group reaching the primary endpoint compared to 55 (25%) patients in the placebo group
  • CoQ10 also halved the risk of dying from all causes, which occurred in 18 (9%) patients in the CoQ10 group compared to 36 (17%) patients in the placebo group
  • CoQ10 treated patients had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality
  • and lower occurrence of hospitalisations for heart failure
  • There were fewer adverse events in the CoQ10 group compared to the placebo group
  • CoQ10 is the first medication to improve survival in chronic heart failure since ACE inhibitors and beta blockers more than a decade ago
  • Other heart failure medications block rather than enhance cellular processes and may have side effects
  • CoQ10
  • is a natural and safe substance, corrects a deficiency in the body and blocks the vicious metabolic cycle in chronic heart failure called the energy starved heart
  • CoQ10 is present in food, including red meat, plants and fish, but levels are insufficient to impact on heart failure
  • CoQ10 is also sold over the counter as a food supplement but
  • Food supplements can influence the effect of other medications including anticoagulants and patients should seek advice from their doctor before taking them
Mars Base

Mars Rover Opportunity Nears Nebulous Off-Planet Driving Record | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/pportunity-driving-record.html

scibyte97 scibyte98 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The all-time mark is held by the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled about 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the moon back in 1973
  • Opportunity
  • racked up 22.75 miles (36.61 km) on Mars
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • it's unclear
  • the old moon rover's mark is imprecise
  • 37 kilometers is highly uncertain
  • Scientists now have high-quality images of the moon taken by spacecraft such as NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and some of these photos even show Lunokhod 2's tracks
  • researchers could nail down the longstanding off-planet driving record if they wanted to
  • But he and his fellow Opportunity team members have no plans to do this work themselves
Mars Base

Antarctic's Mountains Revealed By Sharpest Map Yet - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...unken-mountains-antarctica-ice

scibyte97 scibyte98

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • the British Antarctic Survey, Bedmap2 drew upon millions of new measurements of the frozen continent's surface elevation, ice thickness, and bedrock topography from a wide variety of sources collected over several decades
  • the original Bedmap relied mostly on ground-based measurements, which limited the scientists in terms of how much land they could cover
  • a NASA program called Operation IceBridge sends out airplanes that fly over the entire continent. The airplanes are equipped with lasers that measure the surface mountains' heights and other features, as well as ice-penetrating radar that maps subglacial bedrock—"giving [scientists] a more 3-D picture of the ice sheet itself
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the new data has revealed several smaller features—both on Antarctica's surface and buried under the ice—that were missed in the previous Bedmap effort
  • scientists want to know the shapes of mountains and rocks to model how fast ice will move across these features on its way to the ocean, where the ice can melt and contribute to sea level rise
Mars Base

Concentrator solar cell with world's highest conversion efficiency of 44.4% - 0 views

phys.org/...-world-highest-conversion.html

scibyte98 scibyte99 SolarPower

shared by Mars Base on 16 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Sharp Corporation has achieved the world's highest solar cell conversion efficiency of 44.4%, using a concentrator triple-junction compound solar cell
  • Measurement of the value—which sets a record for the world's highest concentrating conversion efficiency—was confirmed
  • Compound solar cells typically offer high conversion efficiency while utilizing photo-absorption layers made from compounds of multiple elements, such as indium and gallium
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • triple-junction compound solar cells use a proprietary technology that enables the efficient conversion of sunlight into electricity by means of a stack of three photo-absorption layers
  • o achieve a concentrating conversion efficiency of 44.4%, Sharp worked to widen the effective concentrator cell surface and ensure uniformity of width at the interface of the connecting concentrator cell and electrodes.
  • Because of their high conversion efficiency, compound solar cells have thus far been used primarily on space satellites
Mars Base

Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos |... - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...epler_closer_to_its_holy_grail

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • five-planet system around a star called Kepler-62, some 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra
  • Astronomers found the planets by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
  • Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are far more accommodating. They are 1.6 and 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • early evidence supports the optimistic view that at least 62f is rocky
  • biggest uncertainty about both planets is their composition
  • an astronomer at the University of Washington
  • not involved in the research
  • Kepler-62e
  • may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
  • if 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, with one half of its surface always illuminated and the other perpetually dark
  • Kepler 62 is about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
  • Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars
  • harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
  • another study
  • led by
  • NASA Ames Research Center
  • identified two planets around a sunlike star called Kepler-69, some 2,700 light-years away
  • One of the planets is 1.7 times the size of Earth and teeters on the inner edge of the habitable zone
  • probably too hot for life
  • almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
  • even a planet 75 percent larger than Earth is potentially habitable
  • Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
Mars Base

3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained (Infographic) | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/abitable-zone-infographic.html

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Kepler-62 is a red dwarf, only 20 percent as bright as the sun
  • located 1,200 light-years away from Earth
  • The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star's habitable zone
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
  • As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
  • mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
Mars Base

Discovered! Most Earth-Like Alien Planet & 2 Other Possibly Habitable Worlds | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/e-alien-planets-discovery.html

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The third potentially habitable planet, called Kepler-69c, is 1.7 times bigger than Earth and orbits a star similar to our own
  • It's the smallest world ever found in the habitable zone of a sunlike star
  • scientists rolled out seven new exoplanets today — five in the Kepler-62 system and two in Kepler-69
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Kepler-62e and f take 122 and 267 days, respectively, to complete one orbit around their star, which is just 20 percent as bright as the sun
  • The telescope needs to observe three transits to flag a planet candidate, so detecting a potentially habitable world in a relatively distant orbit can take several years
  • Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that
Mars Base

Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-potentially-habitable-planets

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler mission has found a planetary system with two small, potentially rocky planets that lie within the habitable zone of their star
  • Kepler-62, is a bit smaller and cooler than our Sun, and is home to a five-planet system
  • Two of the worlds, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • The curves show the mass-radius-relation (average density) for different types of planets
  • The blue line indicates
  • planets made mostly (75%) of water, the black line that of planets like our Earth that consist almost exclusively of rock (
  • estimate of their mass places them in a region (blue areas) where it is highly probable for them to be earth-like planets, that is: planets with a solid (if possibly covered in water) surface
  • the empirical habitable zone, liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet if that planet has sufficient cloud cover. In the narrow habitable zone, liquid water can exist on the surface even without the presence of a cloud cover
  • while the sizes of Kepler 62e and 62f are known, their mass and densities are not.
  • every planet found in their size range so far has been rocky, like Earth
  • Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy
  • life’s inventiveness to get to a technology stage will surprise us
  • Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth according to computer models
  • More distant Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean
  • Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions
  • Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly
  • the two would exhibit distinctly different colors and make our search for signatures of life easier on such planets in the near future
  • planets in the habitable zone were until now discovered by what is known as the radial velocity method
  • gives you a lower limit for the planet’s mass, but no information about its radius
  • What makes Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f so exciting is
  • We know their radius, which indicates that these are indeed rocky planets, and they orbit their star in the habitable zone
  • makes it difficult to assess whether or not a planet is rocky, like the Earth. A small radius (less than 2 Earth radii), on the other hand, is a strong indicator that a planet around is indeed rocky – unless we are talking about a planet around a very young star
Mars Base

Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...er-planetary-systems-in-images

scibyte91 scibyte92 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 19 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, there are now nine potential habitable worlds outside of our solar system, with 18 more potentally habitable planetary candidates found by Kepler waiting to be confirmed
  • astronomers predict there are 25 potentially habitable exomoons
  • Current known potentially habitable exoplanets. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo
Mars Base

SpaceShipTwo Fires Rocket Engines for First Ever Supersonic Test Flight- Photos & Video - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...st-ever-supersonic-test-flight

scibyte92 scibyte93 SpaceShipTwo

shared by Mars Base on 30 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) commercial spaceliner named “Enterprise” lit up her hybrid rocket engines in flight and reached supersonic speeds for the first time in history
  • Monday, April 29, 2013 – in the skies over the Mojave Desert in California.
Mars Base

IBM researchers make world's smallest movie using atoms (w/ video) - 0 views

phys.org/...orld-smallest-movie-atoms.html

scibyte92 scibyte93

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists from IBM
  • unveiled the world's smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms
  • Named "A Boy and His Atom," the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world while opening up a dialogue with students and others on the new frontiers of math and science
  • In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
  • weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
  • IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
  • Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to "feel" atoms
  • Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
  • moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it's actually moved
  • scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
  • the same team of IBM researchers who made this movie also recently created the world's smallest magnetic bit. They were the first to answer the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
  • it takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device
  • atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
Mars Base

Printable 'bionic' ear melds electronics and biology - 0 views

phys.org/...nic-ear-melds-electronics.html

scibyte92 scibyte93 BionicEar

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability
  • primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue
  • used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies
  • That typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue
  • our work suggests a new approach—to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format
  • Last year, a research effort
  • resulted in the development of a "tattoo" made up of a biological sensor and antenna that can be affixed to the surface of a tooth
  • This project, however, is the team's first effort to create a fully functional organ: one that not only replicates a human ability, but extends it using embedded electronics
  • Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months
  • this is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics
  • Ear reconstruction "remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery
  • the team turned to a manufacturing approach called 3D printing
  • The finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure
  • Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical "cochlea" – the part of the ear that senses sound – which can connect to electrodes
  • further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient
  • the ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing.
  • electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient's nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid
  • The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds
  • researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage
Mars Base

Scientists sense breakthroughs in dark-matter mystery - 0 views

phys.org/...oughs-dark-matter-mystery.html

scibyte82 scibyte83 DarkMatter

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Dark matter throws down the gauntlet to the so-called Standard Model of physics.
  • Elegant and useful for identifying the stable of particles and forces that regulate our daily life, the Standard Model only tells part of the cosmic story
  • it does not explain gravity, although we know how to measure gravity and exploit it for our needs
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • the Standard Model has been found to account for only around four or five percent of the stuff in the Universe
  • dark matter, making up 23 percent, and dark energy, an enigmatic force that appears to drive the expansion of the Universe, which accounts for around 72 or 73 percent.
  • The dark matter theory was born 80 years ago when Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky discovered that there was not enough mass in observable stars or galaxies to allow the force of gravity to hold them together
  • why dark matter has six times the energy that is in ordinary matter
  • could be 10 trillions times bigger
  • first results will be published in two to three weeks
  • High-powered instruments track cosmic particles
  • To track these phantom particles, physicists rely on several methods and tools
  • One is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which captures gamma rays coming from collisions of dark matter particles.
  • only suggesting that these highly anticipated results would give humans a better idea about the nature of dark matter
  • Another tool used by the scientists is the South Pole Neutrino Observatory, which tracks subatomic particles known as neutrinos, which, according to physicists, are created when dark matter passes through the Sun and interacts with protons
  • Another
  • is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, the biggest particle smasher in the world
Mars Base

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Found? Big News Soon | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ter-found-nasa-experiment.html

scibyte82 scibyte83 DarkMatter

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle collector mounted on the outside of the International Space Station
  • first paper of results
  • in about two weeks
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • e said the results bear on the mystery of dark matter,
  • "It will not be a minor paper,"
  • important enough that the scientists rewrote the paper 30 times before they were satisfied with it
  • it represents a "small step" in figuring out what dark matter is, and perhaps not the final answer
  • Some physics theories suggest that dark matter is made of WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles), a class of particles that are their own antimatter partner particles
  • When matter and antimatter partners meet, they annihilate each other, so if two WIMPs collided, they would be destroyed, releasing a pair of daughter particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron, in the process
  • Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has the potential to detect the positrons and electrons produced by dark matter annihilations in the Milky Way
  • was installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, and so far, it has detected 25 billion particle events, including about 8 billion electrons and positrons
  • This first science paper will report how many of each were found, and what their energies are
  • If the experiment detected an abundance of positrons peaking at a certain energy, that could indicate a detection of dark matter,
  • while electrons are abundant in the universe around us, there are fewer known processes that could give rise to positrons
  • The smoking gun signature is a rise and then a dramatic fall" in the number of positrons with respect to energy
  • he positrons produced by dark matter annihilation would have a very specific energy, depending on the mass of the WIMPs making up dark matter
  • Another telling sign will be the question of whether positrons appear to be coming from one direction in space, or from all around
  • f they're from dark matter, scientists expect them to be spread evenly through space, but if they're created by some normal astrophysical process, such as a star explosion, then they would originate in a single direction
  • There is a lot of stuff that can mimic dark matter,"
  • Regardless of whether AMS has found dark matter yet, the scientists said they expected the question of dark matter's origin to become clearer soon
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