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What an unmanned aerial vehicle can do with depth perception - 0 views

  • This UAV is capable of both hover and wing-borne flight, making the delivery and precision emplacement of a payload possible
  • A special robotic arm was designed with the capability of carrying up to 1 pound.
  • developed a low-cost vision system to estimate the target's position relative to the hovering vehicle in real time
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  • vision system enables the UAV to search and find the target for the emplacement autonomously and then perform the action
  • Our goal
  • was to show we could quickly develop and integrate the right technology to make this work
  • this technology
  • successfully demonstrated
  • A newly developed stereo vision system that tracks the emplacement target and motion of the robotic arm.
  • The vision system, coupled with global positioning system, controls the arm and V-Bat during emplacement.
  • Control logic to maneuver the vehicle and direct the robotic arm to accurately engage the emplacement target.
  • Vehicle stability with the arm extended 6 feet with a 1-pound payload.
  • Autonomous search and detection of the emplacement target and autonomously emplaced a 1-pound payload
Mars Base

Ken Mattingly Explains How the Apollo 13 Movie Differed From Real Life - 0 views

  • : In the movie, mission controllers huddle in a side room and try to figure out how to stretch the resources of the lunar module — designed to carry only two men for a couple of days — into a four-day lifeboat to support three men.
  • somewhat true, NASA already had a preliminary lifeboat procedure simulated
  • Somewhere in an earlier sim [simulation], there had been an occasion to do what they call LM lifeboat, which meant you had to get the crew out of the command module and into the lunar module, and they stayed there
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  • In the movie, as the crew faces a deadly buildup of carbon dioxide, a team in mission control builds a new system on the spot that adapts an originally incompatible filter
  • The solution that they came up with was that they could make a way to use the vacuum cleaner in the command module with some plastic bags cut up and taped to the lithium hydroxide cartridges and blow through it with a vacuum cleaner
  • there was a simulation for the Apollo 8 mission where a cabin fan was jammed due to a loose screw
  • Joe [Joseph P.] Kerwin showed up, and we talked about “How did you build that bag and what did you do?”
  • In the movie, Mattingly spends hours in a simulator putting together the procedures for starting up the cold, dead command module in time to bring the astronauts safely back to Earth
  • the simulation runs (done by other astronauts, Mattingly said) were more of a verification of already written procedures
  • they went to the simulator there at JSC [Johnson Space Center], and we handed them these big written procedures and said, “Here. We’re going to call these out to you, and we want you to go through, just like Jack will. We’ll read it up to you. See if there are nomenclatures that we have made confusing or whatever. Just wring it out. See if there’s anything in the process that doesn’t work.”
Mars Base

Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery - 0 views

  • A model of the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
  • For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
  • According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
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  • one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
  • research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
  • Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
  • how messages can be placed and controlled. 'If you can understand the dynamics of an event, you can try to control it, and keep the interest in the topic going
  • This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing
  • For example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
  • Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people
  • Videos of the rumours spreading
Mars Base

Robot Space 'Gas Attendant' Could Salvage Old Satellites by 2015 | Satellite Refueling ... - 0 views

  • middle of the decade
  • possible to salvage satellites that run out of fuel or suffer minor malfunctions in orbit
  • Canada-based aerospace firm
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  • designing a spacecraft that will serve as an orbiting gas station and mechanic.
  • will be able to top off satellites' fuel tanks
  • perform minor repairs as needed
  • first servicing satellite could be ready to go by 2015 or 2016
  • Currently, most satellites last only as long as their stores of onboard propellant allow
  • When a spacecraft runs out of fuel, it essentially turns into a very expensive piece of space junk, adding to the massive cloud of debris already clogging Earth orbit.
  • servicing spacecraft would be controlled from the ground
  • could operate with varying degrees of autonomy
  • when the SIS spacecraft itself runs low on fuel, a separately launched "tanker" would replenish its supply of propellant, allowing the vehicle to continue servicing satellites far into the future.
  • MDA thought it found that customer last year.
  • However, the two companies announced last month that the deal is off
  • I guess we were not able to meet those datelines for the original plan, due to various factors
  • isn't the only business or organization working to develop satellite-servicing technology
  • Aerospace firm Vivisat, for example, is designing a spacecraft called the Mission Extension Vehicle, which would dock to satellites and provide propulsion and attitude control.
  • The U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has started a program called Phoenix, which seeks to recycle still-functioning pieces of defunct satellites and incorporate them into new space systems for low cost.
  • 16 February 2012
Mars Base

Study finds switch that lets early lung cancer grow unchecked - 0 views

  • Cellular change thought to happen only in late-stage cancers to help tumors spread also occurs in early-stage lung cancer as a way to bypass growth controls
  • study points to EMT as a key step in lung cancer progression during the earliest stages of cancer development
  • Normal cells recognize when they are dividing too rapidly, and turn on programs that block inappropriate cell division
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  • found that early-stage lung cancer cells switch on EMT in order to bypass these controls
  • discovery could offer a new way to prevent progression to late-stage lung cancer
  • Because EMT is a well-recognized late-stage transition that occurs in all sorts of solid tumors, the researchers say they believe that the same early-stage use of EMT they found in lung cancer is likely occurring in other cancers.
  • Late-stage cancer uses EMT to change tumor cells into a form that can migrate through blood.
Mars Base

X-51 Waverider 'Scramjet' Test Flight Fails - 0 views

  • flight of the X-51A Waverider scramjet ended abruptly after the experimental aircraft suffered a control failure and broke apart during an attempt to fly at six times the speed of sound
  • test flight took place off the coast of California and the X-51A was dropped from a B-52 bomber
  • faulty control fin prevented it from starting its unique “airbreathing” scramjet engine
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  • The X-51 Waverider program is a cooperative effort of the Air Force, DARPA, NASA, Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
  • technology would be successful enough to eventually be used for more efficient transport of payloads into orbit
  • Pentagon has touted its ability to deliver strikes around the globe within minutes.
  • craft was carried to about 15,240 meters (50,000 ft.) by a B-52 from Edwards Air Force Base in California
  • dropped over the Pacific Ocean
  • Designers were hoping the Waverider would reach Mach 6 or more
  • scramjet (short for “supersonic combustion ramjet”) is an air-breathing engine, where intake air blows through its combustion chamber at supersonic speeds
  • engine has no moving parts
  • oxygen needed by the engine to combust is taken from the atmosphere passing through the vehicle, instead of from a tank onboard
  • Some designers have predicted it could reach speeds of anywhere from Mach 12 to Mach 24. Mach 24 is more than 29,000 km/hour (18,000 miles per hour.) This could cut an 18-hour trip to Tokyo from New York City to less than 2 hours.
  • May 2010, the first test of the vehicle had sort of a “successful” flight of 200 seconds of autonomous flight
  • another test in 2011 failed
Mars Base

'The Pill' for Men Is Closer to Reality - ScienceNOW - 0 views

  • A compound called JQ1, which was originally developed as a cancer therapy, can also cause reversible infertility in male mice without apparent side effects for the rodents or their offspring
  • male contraceptive that would be more effective than condoms and more easily reversible than a vasectomy
  • compound isn’t ready for testing in healthy men
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  • offers a promising lead
  • originally developed as an anticancer agent
  • designed to inhibit a protein called BRD4, which helps regulate cell division and is known to be involved in a type of aggressive skin cancer
  • after 6 weeks of daily injections of JQ1 the animals' sperm counts were reduced by nearly 90%. Only 5% of the remaining sperm were able to swim properly, compared with 85% of sperm in control mice. After 3 months of treatment, none of the mice were able to sire offspring
  • had no apparent effect on the production of testosterone or other hormones made by the testes
  • A month or two after treatment stopped, all of the mice were again able to father as many pups as control mice
  • no obvious side effects in the mice, and the offspring of the treated animals showed no abnormalities.
  • compound seems to target developing sperm both before and after meiosis
  • If you're taking healthy people in their twenties and giving them a drug, you want to be very sure it doesn’t affect anything else
  • the lifespans of mice aren’t sufficient to test the possible long-term effects of drugs that people might want to be able to take for decades
  • Primate experiments, meanwhile, are prohibitively expensive, and funding is scarce
Mars Base

Sony Patent Reveals Biometric Controllers - PS3 News at IGN - 0 views

  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • Measuring skin moisture, heart rhythm and muscle movement
  • the following ideas are mentioned in the application
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  • Character changes based on biometric feedback, such as a character sweating when you're nervous.
  • Tensing up your muscles to absorb an attack or power up shields.
  • Weapons that become more accurate or less steady depending on your level of stress.
  • A boost to run faster, jump higher and punch harder while stressed.
  • Rapid decreases in health if your stress increases.
  • Different attacks based on stress levels.
  • Background music that matches your stress level, or becomes more relaxing if you're stressed.
  • Scaling difficulty based on stress level.
  • The last time biometric feedback was introduced to mainstream games was Nintendo's vitality sensor, which was announced at E3 2009 but never released.
Mars Base

Russia Races to Save Mars Moon Probe from Space Junk Fate | Russia Phobos-Grunt Mars Mo... - 0 views

  • "I think we have lost the Phobos-Grunt," Vladimir Uvarov, a former space official at the Russian Defense Ministry, told the Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta today (Nov. 10), according to ABC News. "It looks like a serious flaw. The past experience shows that efforts to make the engines work will likely fail."
  • There have been conflicting news reports as to how long the Russians have before the spacecraft's batteries run out, ranging from two days to two weeks
  • The ambitious flight marks Russia's first attempt at an interplanetary mission since 1996.
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  • Phobos-Grunt is in a safe, so-called parking orbit, and there is little danger of it colliding with other spacecraft or satellites
  • The space station is above that orbit, and the space station is one of the lowest spacecraft in orbit
  • The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is tracking without difficulty both the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft and its associated Zenit 2 second stage
  • This information is also available to Russian experts. NASA hopes that control of the spacecraft can still be achieved and that it can be sent on its proper path to Mars
  • a rough estimate, the lifetime is measured at several weeks to a few months at that altitude, but probably not much more than that
  • even though the spacecraft is still full of fuel. If the probe cannot be saved, Russian flight controllers have the option of venting out the onboard fuel into space.
  • even if it's full of fuel and it re-enters — it will break up in atmospheric re-entry, which does not really pose a hazard.
Mars Base

Venerable Voyager 2 Spacecraft Gets a Tune-up 14 billion Kilometers From Earth - 0 views

  • engineers at JPL sent commands across 14 billion kilometers (9 billion miles) out to Voyager 2
  • enabling it to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft
  • This will reduce the amount of power that the 34-year-old probe needs to operate,
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  • hopefully — the power to operate for at least another decade
  • The move was a little risky
  • backup roll thrusters were previously unused
  • been idle and out in the harsh environment of space for 32 years
  • Voyager 2 will save about 11.8 watts of electric power by turning off the heater that kept the hydrazine fuel to the primary thrusters warm
  • Voyager 1 and 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. With this latest command, both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters
  • The primary roll thrusters now turned off fired more than 318,000 times. Voyager 1 changed to the backup for this same component after 353,000 pulses in 2004
  • energy generated by Voyager 2′s Plutonium 238 nuclear power source continues to decline, and is now down to about 270 watts from the 470 watts being produced when the spacecraft launched in 1977
  • at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid-2020′s.
  • Using solar power for a spacecraft traveling beyond Jupiter is impractical
  • This latest tune-up will hopefully get Voyager 2 a little farther while she’s still able to communicate with Earth
Mars Base

February 20 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on February 20th, died, and ev... - 0 views

  • Glenn in orbit
  • In 1962, John Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first U.S. manned orbital mission. Launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, he completed three-orbits around the earth, at a maximum altitude of approx. 162 miles and an orbital velocity of approx. 17,500 mph. He spotted Perth, Australia, when that city's residents greeted him by switching on their house lights in unison. A four-cent U.S. stamp was put on sale the same day, making it the first U.S. stamp issued on the day of the event it commemorated. Glenn returned to space 36 years later, making 134 more orbits as a crew member of the space shuttle Discovery (29 Oct - 7 Nov 1998) for investigations on space flight and the aging process.
  • In 1986, the Soviet Union launched into orbit Mir, a new space station. Mir, the Russian word for peace, had six docking ports and special laboratories for scientific research. Weeks later, a veteran crew was sent to man the 56-ft-long and 13.6-ft wide station. The core module provided living quarters for the cosmonauts: galley/table, cooking elements and storage, individual crew cabins and personal hygiene area. They also had a working compartment for monitoring and commanding the core systems supported by an electric power system, thermal control system, computer systems, environmental control and life support, communications and tracking systems. Five additional modules were launched between Mar 1987 and April 1996
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  •  Space station Mir
  • In 1937, the first a successful automobile-airplane combination was complete and ready for testing.The first flight took place the next day, 21 Feb 1937. Built by the Westerman Arrowplane Corporation of Santa Monica, Cal., the vehicle was dubbed the Arrowbile, and claimed a top air-speed of 120 mph and 70 mph on a highway. Designed by aeroengineer Waldo Dean Waterman (1894-1976), it evolved from the prototype Arrowplane, a project to design a simple, easy to fly, low cost airplane. The Studebaker Corporation, which supplied the 100 hp engines, eventually took delivery of five Arrowbiles
  • Car airplane
  • Car airplane
Mars Base

Could the Video-Game Tetris Curb Cravings for Food, Cigarettes and Alcohol? - 0 views

  • A recent study suggests that Tetris could actually help dieters reduce cravings
  • examine how the game can affect people's carvings
  • researchers created two study groups: One that played Tetris for three minutes while the other group was told that the game was loading but they never received the chance to play
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  • participants were then asked to rate their cravings for cigarettes, food and alcohol based on the vividness, intrusiveness and strength of those cravings.
  • Tetris group showed a 24 percent reduction in cravings following their activity with the game
  • the other group who did not get to play Tetris did not experience any craving reductions.
  • "Ultimately, we are constantly looking for ways to stimulate cravings for healthy activities - such as exercise - but this a neutral activity that we have shown can have a positive impact."
  • "Feeling in control is an important part of staying motivated, and playing Tetris can potentially help the individual to stay in control when cravings strike
  • It is something a person can quickly access, for the most part whether they are at work or at home, and replaces the feeling of stress caused by the craving itself,"
Mars Base

An Unexpected Ending for Deep Impact - 0 views

  • After almost 9 years in space
  • July 4th impact and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects
  • NASA’s Deep Impact/EPOXI mission has officially been brought to a close.
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  • team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has reluctantly pronounced the mission at an end after being unable to communicate with the spacecraft for over a month
  • The last communication with the probe was Aug. 8
  • journeyed a total of about 4.7 billion miles (7.58 billion kilometers).
  • Launched in January 2005
  • the spacecraft first traveled about 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the vicinity of comet Tempel 1.
  • On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor into the path of comet to essentially be run over by its nucleus on July 4
  • caused material from below the comet’s surface to be blasted out into space
  • examined by the telescopes and instrumentation of the flyby spacecraft
  • in late December 2007 to put it on course to encounter another comet, Hartley 2 in November 2010
  • Sixteen days after that comet encounter, the Deep Impact team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly back past Eart
  • The spacecraft’s extended mission
  • the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010
  • Along the way, it also observed six different stars to confirm the motion of planets orbiting them
  • took images and data of the Earth, the Moon and Mars
  • data helped to confirm the existence of water on the Moon, and attempted to confirm the methane signature in the atmosphere of Mars
  • It took images of comet ISON this year and collected early images of comet ISON in June
  • After losing contact with the spacecraft last month, mission controllers spent several weeks trying to uplink commands to reactivate its onboard systems
  • Although the exact cause of the loss is not known
  • analysis has uncovered a potential problem with computer time tagging that could have led to loss of control for Deep Impact’s orientation.
  • That would then affect the positioning of its radio antennas, making communication difficult
  • its solar arrays, which would in turn prevent the spacecraft from getting power
  • allow cold temperatures to ruin onboard equipment, essentially freezing its battery and propulsion systems.
Mars Base

Why Teenagers Are So Impulsive | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

  • When teenagers successfully resist an urge in a common test of impulsivity, they show increased activation in a brain region associated with restraint
  • suggesting that their brains have to work harder to avoid acting on the impulse
  • Why do teens—especially adolescent males—commit crimes more frequently than adults
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  • One explanation may be that as a group, teenagers react more impulsively to threatening situations than do children or adults
  • likely because their brains have to work harder to rein in their behavior
  • teenagers have a reputation for courting danger that is often attributed to immaturity or poor decision-making
  • If immaturity or lack of judgment were the only problem, however, one would expect that children, whose brains are at an even earlier stage of development
  • younger children tend to be more cautious than teenagers, suggesting that there is something unique about adolescent brain development that lures them to danger
  • It's hard to generalize about teenage impulsivity
  • some adolescents clearly have more self-control than many adults
  • a growing body of evidence suggests that, in general, teens specifically struggle to keep their cool in social situations
  • many crimes committed during adolescence involve emotionally fraught social situations
  • to test whether teens perform badly on a common impulsivity task when faced with social cues of threat
  • recruited 83 people, ranging in age from 6 to 29, to perform a simple "Go/No-Go" task
  • they watched a series of faces making neutral or threatening facial expressions flicker past on a computer screen
  • Each time the participants saw a neutral face, they were instructed to hit a button
  • They were also told to hold back from pressing the button when they saw a threatening face
  • As the participants performed the task, the researchers monitored their brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging.
  • teenagers made about 15% more errors than adults and children when attempting to stop themselves from pressing the button when they saw the threatening facial expression
  • Males performed worse than females, suggesting a sex difference that fits with the disproportionate number of crimes that male teens commit,
  • adolescents who did manage to restrain themselves showed significantly higher activity in a brain region called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which is involved in top-down control of behavior
  • think of it as the break
  • the teenage brain might need to work a little harder to hold that response back
Mars Base

Backup Computer Glitches On Space Station But Crew Safe, NASA Says - 0 views

  • A backup computer that controls “some systems associated with robotics
  • is not “responding to commands
  • The crew is safe, there’s no “immediate” change to space station operations, and because the primary computer is working
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  • If the computer does need to be replaced, crew members of Expedition 39 will need to do at least one spacewalk
  • NASA is allowing contingency spacewalks in American spacesuits to go forward as the agency addresses problems raised in a report about a life-threatening spacesuit leak in July
  •  confirmed Friday night that a backup computer on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) called a Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (MDM) is not responding to commands
  • The station’s MDM computers control some systems associated with robotics aboard the space station
  • The primary MDM operating aboard the space station is functioning normally and there is no immediate impact to space station operations
  • The computer outage does not pose a risk to the six crew members aboard the space station
  • Replacing the backup MDM, if needed, would require a spacewalk
  • April 11
Mars Base

Satellite Left Stranded by SpaceX Rocket Falls From Space | Space.com - 0 views

  • Orbcomm
  • satellite, launched Oct. 7 into a bad orbit by a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket
  • provided enough data to proceed with the launch of the full constellation starting next year.
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  • In its statement, Orbcomm suggested that i
  • had enough access to the satellite in less than four days in orbit to validate the performance of its major subsystems.
  • Orbcomm said that, had its satellite been the primary payload on SpaceX’s Oct. 7 flight, the mission would have been a success
  • OG2 satellite bus systems including power, attitude control, thermal and data handling were also tested to verify proper operation
  • The solar array and communications antenna deployments were successful
  • Orbcomm requested that SpaceX carry one of their small satellites
  • few hundred pounds, vs. Dragon at over 12,000 pounds
  • on this flight so that they could gather test data before we launch their full constellation next year.
  • The higher the orbit, the more test data they can gather, so they requested that we attempt to restart and raise altitude
  • NASA agreed to allow that, but only on condition that there be substantial propellant reserves, since the orbit would be close to the space station
  • Orbcomm understood from the beginning that the orbit-raising maneuver was tentative
  • They accepted that there was a high risk of their satellite remaining at the Dragon insertion orbit.
Mars Base

NASA's Curiosity rover to be back online next week - 0 views

  • On February 28, controllers put the rover into "minimal activity safe mode," when they switched the machine's operations to a backup computer after detecting malfunctions in the primary computer's flash memory.
  • The statement said the rover exited safe mode on Saturday and its high gain antenna went back online on Sunday.
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