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NASA says the most distant human made object — the Voyager 1 spacecraft — is in interstellar space

It actually made the transition about a year ago

there is a bit of an argument on the semantics of whether Voyager 1 is still inside or outside of our Solar System

A project to “green” desert areas with an innovative mix of technologies—producing food, biofuel, clean water, energy, and salt

A pilot plant built by the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) produced 75 kilograms of vegetables per square meter in three crops annually, comparable to commercial farms in Europe, while consuming only sunlight and seawate

The heart of the SFP concept is a specially designed greenhouse. At one end, salt water is trickled over a gridlike curtain so that the prevailing wind blows the resulting cool, moist air over the plants inside

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral

but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust.

Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again

Dec. 11, 2013

the pump module on one of the space station’s two external cooling loops automatically shut down when it reached pre-set temperature limits

These loops circulate ammonia outside the station to keep both internal and external equipment cool

To learn new motor skills, the brain must be plastic: able to rapidly change the strengths of connections between neurons, forming new patterns that accomplish a particular task

if the brain were too plastic, previously learned skills would be lost too easily.

A new computational model developed by MIT neuroscientists explains how the brain maintains the balance between plasticity and stability

scientists working at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility has reported

that the process of restarting the massive experimental mechanism has begun

though it won't finish until sometime next year

Surgery book

In 1575, printing of Ambroise Paré's book Oeuvres Complètes (Complete Works) was finished, but its publication was opposed by establishment physicians. His previous texts on surgery had popularized a new way to treat gunshot wounds without cauterisation, reintroduced the ligature in amputation, and improved midwifery techniques. These many writings were gathered together in this one new volume, which spread his teachings throughout the world. It remained in print for a century and ran to thirteen editions. He wrote in French instead of Latin with practical, common sense so that many barber-surgeons, who (like Paré) were unable to interpret Latin, had access to medical knowledge otherwise unavailable from Latin texts

 First woman to fly across English Channel

In 1912, American aviator Harriet Quimby became the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel. She left England in a 50-hp monoplane lent to her by Louis Blériot. She headed for France in a plane she had never flown before and a compass she had just learned how to use. Despite poor visibility and fog, Quimby landed 59 minutes later near Hardelot, France. Upon landing, she was greeted by the local residents, but the Titanic sinking just days earlier, limited reporting of Quimby's achievement in the world press. She died the same year, on 1 Jul 1912, when she lost control of her plane at a flying exhibition near Quincy, Mass. She was the first American woman to become a licensed pilot, but her career as a pilot lasted a mere 11 months.

Space station Mir accident

In 1997, the space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power

National Robotics Initiative, a federal program that aims to push the development of co-robots, or bots that work alongside—and occasionally inside—humans

NRI is a panoply of loosely-related ideas, few of which are photogenic

But this research is worth a closer look

The vehicle holds seats for 7 passengers, and includes an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) that provides a comfortable environment for crewmembers

Dragon V2’s robust thermal protection system is capable of lunar missions, in addition to flights to and from Earth orbit

Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)

to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere

to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere

First cell phone call

In 1973, the first portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper. The phone was 10 inches in height, 3 inches deep and an inch-and-a-half wide and weighed 30-oz. Since then, cell phones have shrunk to a mere palm-size weighing 4-oz, and are used by a billion people around the world. Cooper's first ''shoebox'' phone replaced a car phone of the time that weighed more than 30 pounds and cost thousands of dollars. A car phone owner had to drill a hole in his car to install the antenna and most of the phone sat in the trunk. A control unit with a handset was placed inside the car

Investigators at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found a therapy that reverses new onset Type 1 diabetes in mouse models and may advance efforts in combating the disease among humans.

Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults and affects about 5 percent of all people with diabetes

. In Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce sufficient insulin, which is central to glucose metabolism: without insulin, blood glucose rises