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Mars Base

Researchers film rare striped rabbit in Sumatra (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...iped-rabbit-sumatra-video.html

scibyte48 rabbit

shared by Mars Base on 26 May 12 - No Cached
  • With cameras set up in Sumatra looking for medium- and small-sized wild cats, such as leopards, a research group involving the University of Delaware's Kyle McCarthy, found images of something else entirely -- a rabbit. Not just any ordinary rabbit, but a Sumatran striped rabbit, one of the world's rarest species and one that had been captured on film only three times before.
  • while his group plans on continuing their study of small cats, they are now also focusing on the rare rabbit species
  • This is the most data that anybody has compiled on these rabbits ever
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 10 photographs of the Sumatran striped rabbit on two separate occasions in locations 790 meters apart
Mars Base

Mussel Glue Could Help Repair Birth Defects - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...glue-could-help-repair-bi.html

scibyte83 BirthDefects

shared by Mars Base on 19 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • researcher said he has used the mollusk’s tricks to develop medical applications
  • include a biocompatible glue that could one day seal fetal membranes, allowing prenatal surgeons to repair birth defects without triggering dangerous premature labor
  • mussels secrete liquid proteins that harden into a solid, water-resistant glue
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Not even Super Glue will stick in a fish aquarium because a layer of water forms that keeps the two surfaces from bonding
  • mussels somehow elbow the water aside and bind themselves to rocks anyway
  • Over 30 years, Waite’s team has uncovered the basis of this remarkable ability
  • parts of the proteins that face out toward the hard surface. It enables liquid holdfast proteins to solidify rapidly and stick flawlessly to wet and salty surfaces
  • If I were to list the desired properties for medical adhesives, they would look exactly the same
  • colleagues have created a synthetic, thread-like polymer called polyethylene glycol that mimics the mussel protein
  • To see if the compound worked in live animals, a veterinary surgeon collaborating with Messersmith's team made a 2.5-centimeter incision in the carotid artery of a dog and placed four stitches along the length of that incision to hold it in place
  • With the stitches alone, the incision bled when the surgeon pressed it.
  • just 20 seconds after the mussel-based glue was applied, the artery was sealed and didn’t bleed.
  • recently
  • team began testing its glue on fetal membranes
  • For the past few decades, surgeons have begun surgically repairing birth defects like spina bifida while a fetus is still in utero
  • the process is risky because the surgery risks rupturing the fetal membrane prematurely, sending the mother into premature labor.
  • There are no good adhesives on the market for surgeons to repair such fetal-membrane tears
  • in recent, unpublished experiments in rabbits, Messersmith and colleagues found that after a veterinary surgeon poked a 3.5-mm hole in the animal’s fetal membrane, the new, mussel-inspired glue readily sealed up the puncture
  • without the glue, only 40% of the fetal rabbits survived the surgery, but with the glue, 60% did.
  • In another recent result
  • researchers chemically altered the polyethylene glycol polymer so that the glue would shrink when it hardened
  • This could counter tissue swelling during surgery,
  • fetal surgeons working with Messersmith are testing whether the glue can help reseal the tissue surrounding the spinal cord to repair a serious birth defect known spinal bifida in rabbits
Mars Base

Yutu rover Suffers Significant Setback at Start of 2nd Lunar Night - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ck-at-start-of-2nd-lunar-night

scibyte117 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The six wheeled Yutu rover, which means ‘Jade Rabbit’, has “experienced a mechanical control abnormality” in a new report by China’s official government newspaper, The People’s Daily. Remove this ad
  • ‘Jade Rabbit’ was traversing southwards from the landing site as the incident occurred just days ago – about six weeks into its planned 3 month moon roving expedition
  • very few details have emerged or been released by the Chinese government about Yutu’s condition or fate
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The abnormality occurred due to the “complicated lunar surface environment,” said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence
  • took place just prior to the beginning of the 2nd lunar night and
  • ‘dormancy’ for both ‘Jade Rabbit’ and the Chang’e-3
  • Based on unofficial accounts, it appears that one of the solar panels did not fold back properly over Yutu’s mast after it was lowered to the required horizontal position into a warmed box to shield and protect it from the extremely frigid lunar night time temperatures
  • could potentially spell doom for the mast mounted instruments and electronic systems, including the color and navigation cameras and the high gain antenna, if true
  • each Lunar night also lasts approximately 14 Earth days
  • there is no communication possible during sleep mode, no one will know until the resumption of daylight some two weeks from now – around Feb. 8 to 9.
Mars Base

Spectacular Liftoff Thrusts China's First Rover 'Yutu' to the Moon - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-first-rover-yutu-to-the-moon

scibyte111 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • China successfully launched its first ever lunar rover bound for the Moon’s surface aboard a Long March rocket
  • at 1:30 a.m. Beijing local time, Dec. 2, 2013 (12:30 p.m. EST, Dec. 1) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
  • The name for the ‘Yutu’ rover – which translates as ‘Jack Rabbit’ – was chosen after a special naming contest involving a worldwide poll and voting to select the best name
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • ‘Yutu’ stems from a Chinese fairy tale, in which the goddess Chang’e flew off to the moon taking her little pet Jade rabbit with her.
  • The Chang’e 3 lander will fire thrusters to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 6.
  • It is due to make a powered descent to the lunar surface on Dec. 14, firing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for touchdown in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
  • If successful, the Chang’e 3 mission will mark the first soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna 24 sample return vehicle landed nearly four decades ago back in 1976.
  • Jack Rabbit measures 150 centimeters high and weighs approximately 120 kilograms
  • The rover and lander are equipped with multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition
  • The rover is expected to continue operating for at least three months
  • The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps around 2020
Mars Base

China's Jade Rabbit Lunar Rover Comes Back to Life After Malfunction - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...omes-back-life-malfunction.htm

scibyte120 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • China's state news agency, Xinhua, reported
  • that the rover
  • recovered from its previous non-responsive state and is now fully awake and able to receive signals
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • China's lunar program spokesman Pei Zhaoyu told Xinhua
  • the rover was reported to have been lost after it failed to communicate with Chinese mission controllers
  • various media outlets around the world filed an obituary for the lunar rover after Xinhua reported its alleged death
Mars Base

Children with autism show increased positive social behaviors when animals are present - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...positive-social-behaviors.html

scibyte84

shared by Mars Base on 28 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • authors compared how 5-13 year old children with ASD interacted with adults and typically-developing peers in the presence of two guinea pigs compared to toys
  • The presence of an animal can significantly increase positive social behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
  • in the presence of animals, children with ASD demonstrated more social behaviors like talking, looking at faces and making physical contact
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • also more receptive to social advances from their peers in the presence of the animals than they were when playing with toys
  • also increased instances of smiling and laughing, and reduced frowning, whining and crying behaviors in children with ASD more than having toys did.
  • Previous studies have shown that people are more likely to receive overtures of friendship from strangers when walking a dog than when walking alone
  • similar effects have been observed for people holding smaller animals like rabbits or turtles
  • authors suggest that this 'social lubricant' effect of animals on human social interactions can be particularly important for individuals with socio-emotional disabilities
  • the ability of an animal to help children with ASD connect to adults may help foster interactions with therapists, teachers or other adult figures
  • animal-assisted interventions may have applications in the classroom as well,
  • For children with ASD, the school classroom can be a stressful and overwhelming environment
  • If an animal can reduce this stress or artificially change children's perception
  • then a child with ASD may feel more at ease and open to social approach behaviors
Mars Base

Science Retractions: Top 5 Withdrawn Studies Of 2012 - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ithdrawn-papers_n_2353421.html

scibyte76 Retraction

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Hyung-In Moon is a genius, says Hyung-In Moon
  • Korean scientist Hyung-In Moon took the concept of scientific peer review to a whole new level by reviewing his own papers under various fake names
  • Moon's research — which included a study on alcoholic liver disease and another on an anticancer plant substance — can't be trusted
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • admitted to falsifying data in some of his papers
  • , 35 of his papers have been retracted in 2012.
  • Peer review is a process in which scientific peers in the same field judge the merit of a submitted journal paper
  • editors at the Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry grew suspicious when four of his glowing reviews came back within 24 hours. Anyone who has ever submitted a paper for peer review knows that reviewers take weeks or months to reply
  • Math paper a big, fat zero
  • "In this study, a computer application was used to solve a mathematical problem"
  • Neither the one-sentence abstract
  • nor the co-author's e-mail address, ohm@budweiser.com
  • publishing this one-page gem entitled "A computer application in mathematics"
  • published in January 2010 but not retracted until April 2012, despite silly sentences such as "Computer magnification is a Universal computer phenomenon" and "This is a problematic problem."
  • retracted the paper because it "contains no scientific content." The editors chalked it up to "an administrative error
  • Maybe his failure doesn't feel better than success
  • The Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel
  • has found that,
  • failure sometimes feels better than success
  • The only problem is that his research appears to be either mostly or completely fabricated
  • work has appeared in top journals
  • his good looks and clever research topics made him a media darling
  • So far, 31 papers have been retracted
  • meat eaters are absolved: One of Stapel's studies, now suspected to be fabricated, found that meat eaters are more selfish and less social than vegetarians
  • Studies proposing a link between cellphone use and cancer often rely on weak statistics. This one just used fudged data
  • in 2008, scientists published a paper
  • stating that cellphones in standby mode lowered the sperm count and caused other adverse changes in the testicles of rabbits
  • although small and published in a rather obscure journal, made the news rounds.
  • In March 2012, the authors retracted the paper
  • the lead author didn't get permission from his two co-authors and, according to the retraction notice, there was a "lack of evidence to justify the accuracy of the data presented in the article."
  • Stem-cell cure for heart disease likely faked
  • biologist Shinya Yamanaka had just won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which are adult cells that can be reprogrammed to their "embryonic" stage
  • claimed at a New York Stem Cell Foundation meeting in early October to have advanced this technology to cure a person with terminal heart failure
  • Two institutions listed as collaborating on Moriguchi's related papers
  • denied that any of Moriguchi's procedures took place there
  • origuchi has admitted only to making some "procedural" mistakes
  • He is sticking to his story, however, that one patient was cured … at a Boston hospital not yet named
Mars Base

It's Official: Voyager 1 Is Now In Interstellar Space - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...1-is-now-in-interstellar-space

scibyte102 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 13 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • it is not farther out than the Oort Cloud
  • it will take 300 more years reach the Oort cloud and the spacecraft is closer to our Sun than any other star
  • the plasma environment Voyager 1 now travels through has definitely changed from what comes from our Sun to the plasma that is present in the space between stars.
  • debate
  • There’s also been a
  • between the latest various science papers and their authors
  • Scientists thought that when the spacecraft had crossed over into interstellar space, the magnetic field direction would change
  • that didn’t happen
  • scientists determined they needed to look at the properties of the plasma instead
  • The Sun’s heliosphere is filled with ionized plasma from the Sun
  • Outside that bubble, the plasma comes from the explosions of other stars millions of years ago
  • The main tell-tail difference is the interstellar plasma is denser.
  • the real instrument that was designed to make the measurements on the plasma quit working in the 1980’s
  • Instead they used the plasma wave instrument, located on the 10-meter long antennas on Voyager 1 and
  • from the Sun
  • a massive Coronal Mass Ejection
  • The antennas have radio receivers at the ends – “like the rabbit ears on old television sets
  • The CME erupted from the Sun in March 2012, and eventually arrived at Voyager 1′s location 13 months later, in April 2013
  • Because of the CME, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string
  • The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma
  • the particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere
  • The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012 from other CMEs
  • extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012
  • certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
  • not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn’t expect
  • after further review, the Voyager team generally accepts the August 2012 date as the date of interstellar arrival
  • The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause
  • expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020
  • , it was first questioned in August of 2012, with more speculation in December 2012, then in March of 2013
  • Then about a month ago
  • Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft
  • emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts — the power of a refrigerator light bulb
  • Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day
  • planetary alignment that only happens every 176 years enabled the two spacecraft to join together to reach all the outer planets in a 12 year time period
  • By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt
  • Data from Voyager 1′s instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second
  • signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth.
  • After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available
  • Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our Sun
  • They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind.
  • While Voyager 1 will keep going, we will not always be able to communicate with it, as we do now
  • In 2025 all instruments will be turned off, and the science team will be able to operate the spacecraft for about 10 years after that to just get engineering data
  • In the year 40,272 AD, Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor
Mars Base

China's Maiden Lunar Rover 'Yutu' Rolls 6 Wheels onto the Moon - Photo and Video Gallery - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...e-moon-photo-and-video-gallery

scibyte113 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 15 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • China’s first ever lunar rover rolled
  • onto the Moon’s soil on Sunday, Dec. 15, barely seven hours after the Chang’e-3 mothership touched down
  • The six wheeled ‘Yutu’, or Jade Rabbit, rover drove straight off a pair of ramps at 4:35 a.m. Beijing local time
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