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How A Simple New Invention Seals A Gunshot Wound In 15 Seconds | Popular Science - 0 views

  • When a soldier is shot on the battlefield
  • A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery
  • startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers who were working on a better way to stop bleeding.
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  • RevMedx recently asked the FDA to approve a pocket-size invention: a modified syringe that injects specially coated sponges into wounds
  • XStat, the device could boost survival
  • by plugging wounds faster and more efficiently than gauze. 
  • early efforts were inspired by Fix-a-Flat foam for repairing tires
  • They bought some ordinary sponges from a hardware store and cut them into 1-centimeter circles
  • Then, they injected the bits of sponge into an animal injury
  • After seeing early prototypes, the U.S. Army gave the team $5 million to develop a finished product
  • The final material would need to be sterile, biocompatible, and fast-expanding
  • The team settled on a sponge made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting, antimicrobial substance that comes from shrimp shells
  • To ensure that no sponges would be left inside the body accidentally, they added X-shaped markers that make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.
  • In just 15 seconds, they expand to fill the entire wound cavity, creating enough pressure to stop heavy bleeding
  • Getting the sponges into a wound,
  • proved to be tricky.
  • RevMedx needed a lightweight, compact way to get the sponges deep into an injury
  • 30 millimeter-diameter, polycarbonate syringe that stores with the handle inside to save space
  • To use the applicator, a medic pulls out the handle, inserts the cylinder into the wound, and then pushes the plunger back down to inject the sponges as close to the artery as possible.
  • Three single-use XStat applicators would replace five bulky rolls of gauze in a medic’s kit
  • RevMedx also designed a smaller version of the applicator, with a diameter of 12 millimeters, for narrower injuries
  • Each XStat will likely cost about $100, Steinbaugh says, but the price may go down as RevMedx boosts manufacturing
  • When RevMedx submitted its application to the FDA, the U.S. Army attached a cover letter requesting expedited approval
  • In the future, RevMedx hopes to create biodegradable sponges that don’t have to be removed from the body
  • To cover large injuries, like those caused by land mines, the team is working on an expanding gauze made of the same material as XStat sponges
Mars Base

Could Blue Light Help Fight Fatigue? Study - 0 views

  • According to researchers
  • , they've found that exposure to short wavelength, or blue light, during the day can improve alertness and overall performance.
  • previous research has shown that blue light is able to improve alertness during the night, but our new data demonstrates that these effects also extend to daytime
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  • "These findings demonstrate that prolonged blue light exposure during the day has an an alerting effect."
  • researchers measured wavelengths of light that were most effective in warding off fatigue via the development of specialized light equipment
  • compared the effects of blue light exposure to an equal amount of green light on alertness and performance in 16 study participants for 6.5 hours over a day.
  • participants were rated based on how they felt through reaction times that measured electrodes to assess changes going on in the brain due to light exposure.
  • Results showed that participants exposed to blue light consistently rated themselves as less sleepy with quicker reaction times and fewer attention relapses.
  • They also showed changes in brain activity patterns that indicated a more alert state.
  • open up a new range of possibilities for using light to improve human alertness, productivity and safety
  • helping to improve alertness in night workers has obvious safety benefits, day shift workers may also benefit
  • better quality lighting that would not only help them see better but also make them more alert
  • next big challenge is to determine how to deliver better lighting in many places
  • such as schools, homes and work places that could
  • provide a more productive and alert atmosphere.
Mars Base

Curiosity Crosses Dingo Gap Dune - Gateway to Valley and Mountain Destinations Beyond - 0 views

  • the rover passed over the Red Planet dune without difficulty
  • They also show some interesting veins and mineral fractures are visible in the vicinity just ahead
  • The Martian dune lies between two low scarps sitting at the north and south ends.
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  • The rover successfully traversed the dune in Dingo Gap
  • Before giving the go ahead to move forward, engineers took a few days to carefully assess the dune’s integrity and physical characteristics
  • the rovers science instruments and cameras to insure there wasn’t the potential to get irretrievably stuck in a deep sand trap.
  • The missions science focus has shifted to “search for that subset of habitable environments which also preserves organic carbon,” says Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger
  • Up close view of hole in one of rover Curiosity’s six wheels caused by recent driving over rough Martian rocks.
  • Mosaic assembled from Mastcam raw images taken on Dec. 22, 2013 (Sol 490).
  • Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
  • The team even commanded Curiosity to carry out a toe dip by gently rolling the 20 inch (50 cm) diameter wheels back and forth over the crest on Tuesday, Feb. 4 to insure it was safe to mount
Mars Base

Space Images: A Spectacular New Martian Impact Crater - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

  • fresh impact crater dominates this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013.
  • Researchers used HiRISE to examine this site because the orbiter's Context Camera had revealed a change in appearance here between observations in July 2010 and May 2012
  • The crater spans approximately 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone
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  • In examining ejecta's distribution, scientists can learn more about the impact event
  • The explosion that excavated this crater threw ejecta as far as 9.3 miles (15 kilometers).
  • Before-and-after imaging that brackets appearance dates of fresh craters on Mars has indicated that impacts producing craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter occur at a rate exceeding 200 per year globally
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth - 0 views

  • New images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover show Earth shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky
  • even includes our moon, just below Earth
  • The distance between Earth and Mars when Curiosity took the photo was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers).
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  • The images, taken about 80 minutes after sunset
  • Jan. 31, 2014
Mars Base

You are Here! Curiosity's 1st Photo of Home Planet Earth from Mars - 0 views

  • Earth shines
  • in the Martian twilight sky
  • “A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright “evening stars,” said NASA
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  • Curiosity used both of her high resolution color mast mounted cameras to collect a series of Earth/Moon images
  • Processing has removed the numerous cosmic ray strikes
  • these are not the first images of the Earth from Mars orbit or Mars surface
  • NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit imaged Earth from the surface in March 2004, soon after landing
  • Mars Global Surveyor in 2003 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007
  • NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn captured the Earth and Moon
  • in 2013
Mars Base

The Olympic Torch That Went Around the World… Literally - 0 views

  • Ever since the first relay for the 1936 summer Olympic games in Berlin, Olympic torches have traditionally been used to carry a burning flame
  • from Greece to the host country’s stadium
  • On Nov. 6, 2013 (Nov. 7 UT) a Soyuz TMA-11M rocket launched
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  • the Expedition 38/39 crew to the ISS
  • Along with their mission supplies and personal items, the crew members brought along something special: a torch for the 2014 Olympics.
  • The torch was brought into space two days later
  • during an EVA on Nov. 9, and handed off from one cosmonaut to the other in a symbolic relay in orbit
  • “symbolic” because the torch was not lit during its time aboard the ISS or, obviously, while in space
  • the ISS travels around the Earth 16 times each day, and the torch spent nearly four days in space
  • it will be that particular spacefaring torch that will be used to light the 2014 Olympic cauldron during the Opening Ceremony in Sochi on Feb. 7.
Mars Base

February 13 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on February 13th, died, and ev... - 0 views

  • FEBRUARY 13
  • Family Portrait Of The Planets
  • In 1990, the U.S. space probe Voyager I , while heading out to the edge of the Solar System, at 5:12pm PST began a four-hour series of photographs in a look backward which captured the Sun and six planets. An elongated large mozaic was later made by combining about 60 images. In this first “Family Portrait of the Planets”, the Sun appeared almost star-like and the planets were mere dots. Mercury was too close to the sun to photograph. Mars and Pluto, were too small to resolve. This first record of the Solar System from space may remain the only one for decades to follow. Voyager I had a unique lofty perspective, looking down on the plane in which the planets orbit. It had been steadily climbing since it passed Saturn in 1980, and reached an angle of 32 degrees high above the plane of the solar system
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  • ENIAC first operated
  • In 1946, the world's first electronic digital computer, ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) was first demonstrated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, by the late John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The ENIAC machine occupied a room 30 by 50 feet. Its birth lay in WW II as a classified military project known only as Project PX. The ENIAC is historic because it laid the foundations for the modern electronic computing industry. The ENIAC demonstrated that high-speed digital computing was possible using the vacuum tube technology then available. Built out of some 17,468 electronic vacuum tubes, ENIAC was in its time the largest single electronic apparatus in the world
Mars Base

Brand New Impact Crater Shows Up on Mars - 0 views

  • This image shows a
  • 30-meter-wide crater with a rayed blast zone and far-flung secondary material surrounding
  • Scientists say the impact and resulting explosion threw debris as far as 15 kilometers in distance.
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  • Before and after pictures of this region show the new impact crater formed between July 2010 and May 2012.
  • With MRO’s help, scientists have been able to estimate that Mars gets pummeled with about 200 impacts per year, but most are much smaller than this new one
Mars Base

February 18 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on February 18th, died, and ev... - 0 views

  • Pluto
  • In 1930, the planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, when comparing two photographic plates taken six days apart the previous month. He found a starry speck that changed position between them. The search for Planet X was started three decades earlier (before Tombaugh was born) at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by Percival Lowell. Deviations in the positions of Uranus and Neptune were suspected to be due to the gravity of an undiscovered ninth planet. Locating it meant sifting through the millions of star images for one dim dot that moved. Lowell was unsuccessful, but in his will decreed that the hunt should continue. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farmboy when Lowell Observatory director Vesto Slipher hired him in 1929. Pluto was the only planet found by an American
Mars Base

February 15 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on February 15th, died, and ev... - 0 views

  • Meteor explosion over Russia with 1,000 injuries
  • In 2013, a meteor exploded in the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains. It produced a shock wave so intense that about 1,000 people were reported injured, mostly by flying glass fragments. To view the meteor streaking across the sky, many people were at their windows when the sonic boom shattered the glass panes. The meteor was estimated to ;be 2 meters in diameter, with a mass of about 10 tons. It entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph when it was viewed by residents of Chelyabinsk (a city of 1 million about 930 miles east of Moscow) at about 9:20 am local time, just after sunrise. They saw a thick, white contrail and an intense flash of light ending with a loud thundering sound as the shattering of the meteor blew apart with several kilotons of energy (equivalent to an atomic bomb)
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