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Mars Base

SpaceShipTwo Goes Supersonic in Third Rocket-Powered Test Flight - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...upersonic-in-third-test-flight

scibyte115 PrivateSpaceTravel

shared by Mars Base on 11 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 2014 should be the year that Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) brings passengers on suborbital space flights
  • the company started off the year by successfully completing its third rocket-powered supersonic flight
  • after dozens of successful subsonic test flights
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • They tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System, the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms, and the “feather” re-entry system.
  • the RCS will allow its pilots to maneuver the vehicle in space so that passengers will have great views of Earth, as well as aiding the positioning process for spacecraft re-entry
  • The new reflective protection coating on SS2’s inner tail boom surfaces is being evaluated to help maintain vehicle skin temperatures while the rocket motor is firing. Remove this ad
  • The WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft brought SS2 to an altitude around 46,000 ft.
  • Then SS2 was released, and its rocket motor was ignited, powering the spaceship to a planned altitude of 71,000 ft.
  • SS2’s highest altitude to date, and it also reached a speed of Mach 1.4.
Mars Base

What a Star About to Go Supernova Looks Like - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...out-to-go-supernova-looks-like

scibyte115 Supernova

shared by Mars Base on 11 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • This nebula with a giant star at its center
  • th stars had identical rings of the same size and age, which were travelling at similar speeds; both were located in similar HII regions; and they had the same brightness
  • no one can predict when a star will go supernova,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • But astronomers are certainly hoping they’ll have the chance to watch it happen.
  • has striking similarities to a star that went supernova back in 1987, SN 1987A.
  • SN 1987A is the closest supernova to that we’ve been able to study since the invention of the telescope and it has provided scientists with good opportunities to study the physical processes of an exploding star
Mars Base

Super-sensitive Camera Captures a Direct Image of an Exoplanet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...a-direct-image-of-an-exoplanet

scibyte115 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The world’s newest and most powerful exoplanet imaging instrument
  • has captured its first-light infrared image of an exoplanet
  • which orbits
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • the second-brightest star in the southern constellation Pictor
  • a distant planet 63 light-years away and several times more massive — as well as 60% larger — than Jupiter
  • many exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed over the past couple of decades using various techniques, very few have actually been directly imaged
  • Most planets that we know about to date are only known because of indirect methods that tell us a planet is there
  • With GPI we directly image planets around stars
  • doesn’t just image distant Jupiter-sized exoplanets; it images them quickly
  • early first-light images are almost a factor of ten better than the previous generation of instruments
  • In one minute, we were seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect
  • Beta Pictoris b is a very young planet — estimated to be less than 10 million years old (the star itself is only about 12 million
  • presence is a testament to the ability of large planets to form rapidly and soon around newly-formed stars
  • saw this on only the first week after the instrument was put on the telescope
  • what it will be able to do once we tweak and completely tune its performance
  • Another
  • images captured light scattered by a ring of dust that surrounds the young star HR4796A , about 237 light-years away
  • “Some day, there will be an instrument that will look a lot like GPI, on a telescope in space. And the images and spectra that will come out of that instrument will show a little blue dot that is another Earth.” – Bruce Macintosh, GPI team leader
Mars Base

Novel noninvasive therapy prevents breast cancer formation in mice - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...y-breast-cancer-formation.html

scibyte115 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A novel breast-cancer therapy that partially reverses the cancerous state in cultured breast tumor cells and prevents cancer development in mice
  • a new way to treat early stages of the disease without resorting to surgery, chemotherapy or radiation
  • The therapy emerged from a sophisticated effort to reverse-engineer gene networks to identify genes that drive cancer
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases
  • The findings open up the possibility of someday treating patients who have a genetic propensity
  • idea would be start giving it early on and sustain treatment throughout life to prevent cancer development or progression
  • more women than ever are undergoing early tests that reveal precancerous breast tissue
  • early diagnosis could potentially save lives; however, few of those lesions go on to become tumors and doctors have no good way of predicting which ones will
  • many women currently undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation who might never develop the disease.
  • some women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer have chosen to undergo preemptive mastectomies.
  • A therapy that heals rather than kills cancerous tissue could potentially help all these patients, as well as men who develop the disease
  • to date the only way to stop cancer cells has been to kill them.
  • he treatments that accomplish that, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, often damage healthy tissue, causing harsh side effects
  • First they had to identify the culprit genes among the thousands that are active in a cell at any moment
  • Molecular biologists typically
  • looking for cancer-causing genes, they search for individual genes that become active as cancer develops.
  • But because genes in cells work in complex networks
  • innocent genes being fingered for crimes they did not commit.
  • To improve the odds of finding the real culprits,
  • a systems biology expert who has developed a sophisticated mathematical and computational method to reverse-engineer bacterial gene networks.
  • honed the computational network to work for the first time on the more complex gene networks of mice and humans
  • The refined method helped the scientists spot more than 100 genes that acted suspiciously just before milk-duct cells in the breast begin to overgrow
  • The team narrowed their list down to six genes that turn other genes on or off, and then narrowed it further to a single gene called HoxA1 that had the strongest statistical link to cancer
  • researchers wanted to know if blocking the HoxA1 gene could reverse cancer in lab-grown cells
  • grew healthy mouse or human mammary-gland cells in a nutrient-rich, tissue-friendly gel
  • Healthy cells ensconced in the gel formed hollow spheres of cells akin to a normal milk duct
  • cancerous cells, in contrast, packed together into solid, tumor-like spheres.
  • treated cancerous cells with a short piece of RNA called a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that blocks only the HoxA1 gene
  • The cells reversed their march to malignancy, stopping their runaway growth and forming hollow balls as healthy cells do
  • they specialized as if they were growing in healthy tissue
  • The siRNA treatment also stopped breast cancer in a line of mice genetically engineered to have a gene that causes all of them to develop cancer
  • They packed the siRNA into nanoparticles called lipidoids that allow for genes to be silenced for weeks inside the body
  • they injected these nanoparticles
  • The treated mice remained healthy, while untreated mice developed breast cancer
Mars Base

January 17 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on January 17th, died, and events - 0 views

todayinsci.com/1_17.htm

scibyte115 History

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In 1929, Edwin Hubble communicated the now classic paper that first showed the universe was expanding (and later provided observational evidence for the Big Bang theory).
  • Expanding universe
Mars Base

January 15 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on January 15th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...1_15.htm

scibyte115 History

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Spacecrafts dock
  • In 1969, the first docking of two manned spacecraft took place between the Soviet Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5.
Mars Base

NewsDaily: Seth MacFarlane brings his love of science to TV - 0 views

www.newsdaily.com/...ings-his-love-of-science-to-tv

scibyte115 cosmos scibyte116

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Seth MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy"
  • is bringing
  • "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey," a 13-part series that will debut March 9 on Fox. It will also air on the National Geographic Channel.
Mars Base

China's Historic Moon Robot Duo Awaken from 1st Long Frigid Night and Resume Science Op... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-and-resume-science-operations

scibyte115 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Yutu woke up
  • Saturday, Jan. 11, at 5:09 a.m. Beijing local time
  • Chang’e-3 lander was awoken on Sunday, Jan. 12, at 8:21 a.m. Beijing local time, according to a BACC statement
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • They went to sleep to conserve energy since there is no sunlight to generate power with the solar arrays during the lunar night.
  • During the nocturnal hiatus they were kept alive by a radioisotopic heat source that kept their delicate computer and electronics subsystems warmed inside a box below the deck
  • It was maintained at a temperature of about minus 40 degrees Celsius to prevent debilitating damage
  • lunar night time environment when temperatures plunged to below minus 180 degrees Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Just prior to hibernating, the lander snapped the first image of the Earth taken from the Moon’s surface in some four decades
  • Yutu has already resumed roving
  • The Chang’e-3 lander should survive at least a year.
Mars Base

Bio-inspired glue keeps hearts securely sealed - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...140108154458.htm

scibyte115 heart

shared by Mars Base on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • When a child is born with a heart defect such as a hole in the heart, the highly invasive therapies are challenging due to an inability to quickly and safely secure devices inside the heart
  • Sutures take too much time to stitch and can cause stress on fragile heart tissue
  • currently available clinical adhesives are either too toxic or tend to lose their sticking power in the presence of blood or under dynamic conditions, such as in a beating heart
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • In the preclinical study, researchers
  • developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart
  • in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.
  • many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water
  • enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions
  • researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and biocompatible
  • the degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure
  • it works in the presence of blood and moving structures
  • Pedro del Nido, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, co-senior study author. "It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures."
  • the adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing
  • is biodegradable and biocompatible, so nothing foreign or toxic stays in the bodies of these patients
  • its adhesive abilities are activated with ultraviolent (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application
  • researchers note that their waterproof, light-activated adhesive will be useful in reducing the invasiveness of surgical procedures, as well as operating times, in addition to improving heart surgery outcomes.
Mars Base

New device can reduce sleep apnea episodes by 70 percent, study shows - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ce-apnea-episodes-percent.html

scibyte115 SleepDisorder

shared by Mars Base on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • After one year, patients using the device had an approximately 70 percent reduction in sleep apnea severity, as well as significant reductions in daytime sleepiness
  • Implantation of a sleep apnea device called Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) therapy can lead to significant improvements for patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA),
  • the first to evaluate the use of upper airway stimulation for sleep apnea
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • Stimulation Therapy for Apnea Reduction (STAR) trial
  • conducted at 22 medical centers in the United States and Europe
  • OSA, which affects more than 8 million men and 4 million women in the U.S. and is twice as common in men
  • is characterized by repeated episodes of upper airway collapse during sleep, due to narrowing or blockage
  • Patients with OSA stop breathing, known as apnea, frequently during sleep, often for a minute or longer
  • Repeated episodes of apnea can lead to daytime fatigue, and increase a person's risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and even death.
  • Treatments for OSA include weight loss, upper airway surgeries, oral appliances, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which is considered the primary treatment for OSA
  • CPAP is a successful treatment when used on a regular basis, as many as half of the patients who have been prescribed CPAP are unable to use it regularly
  • largely due to discomfort with the mask and/or the lack of desire to be tethered to a machine
  • Inspire UAS therapy
  • differs from other traditional sleep apnea devices and surgical procedures
  • targets the muscle tone of the throat rather than just the anatomy
  • Two thirds of patients using the Inspire UAS therapy device had successful control of their OSA
  • even more reported improvement in snoring, daytime sleepiness and quality of life measures
  • Eighty-six percent of patients were still using the device every night at the one year mark, which compares very favorably to CPAP
  • From 724 candidates initially screened, the STAR trial implanted and prospectively evaluated 126 moderate-to-severe OSA patients who had difficulty using or adhering to CPAP therapy:
  • 83 percent of the participants were men, the mean age was 54.5 years, and the mean body-mass index was 28.4.
  • All patients underwent surgery to implant the device.
  • The device stimulates the nerve of the tongue during sleep, thereby enlarging and stabilizing the airway and improving control of breathing.
  • Surgical implantation of the upper-airway stimulation system was performed by otolaryngologists at 22 academic and private centers
  • The device was implanted in three areas
  • stimulation electrode was placed on the hypoglossal nerve, which provides innervation to the muscles of the tongue
  • a sensing lead was placed between rib muscles to detect breathing effort
  • a neurostimulator was implanted in the upper right chest, just below the clavicle bone
  • Patients used a "controller" to turn on the device at night, so it is only used when the patient sleeps
  • device is designed to sense breathing patterns and deliver mild stimulation to a patient's airway muscles to keep the airway open during sleep.
  • various sleep-disorder measuring systems, patients were found to experience 68 to 70 percent fewer sleep-apnea episodes per hou
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