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Mars Base

Mars Rover to Test Rock-Zapping Laser, 1st Drive Set | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/curiosity-laser-big-drive.html

scibyte59 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 18 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists plan to blast a Martian rock called N165 with Curiosity's laser
  • The 3-inch-wide (7.6 centimeters) stone sits just 9 feet (2.7 meters) from Curiosity, well within ChemCam's 25-foot (7.6 m) range
  • didn't pick it for its science value
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • sort of a target practice
  • Curiosity won't go straight to Mount Sharp
  • it will head first for Glenelg
  • captures much of the geological diversity of Gale Crater's floor
  • Researchers will likely keep checking out Curiosity and its instruments for another few weeks
  • the trip to Glenelg could take up to two months, depending upon how much science the team wants to do
  • team will probably keep Curiosity at Glenelg for about a month
  • The rover will use its drill for the first time at the site, boring more deeply into Martian rock than any robot has before
Mars Base

Common Lab Dye Found to Interrupt Formation of Huntington's Disease Proteins: Scientifi... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte59 GrabBag MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • methylene blue, gets a mention in medical literature as early as 1897 and was used to treat, at one time or another, ailments ranging from malaria to cyanide poisoning
  • never formally approved it as a therapy for any illnesses.
  • Because of existing knowledge of methylene blue and the fact that it’s not harmful to humans, I would hope that progress toward clinical trials could go relatively quickly," says 
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • a neurobiologist at University of California–Irvine
  • Huntington’s disease occurs when the C-A-G sequence of DNA base pairs repeat too often on the HTT gene, resulting in an abnormally long version of the huntingtin protein, that therefore folds incorrectly and forms clumps in the brain
  • usually begins to affect people in their 30s and 40s, causing movement problems and early death
  • No drug is currently available to stop the disease from progressing
  • For their experiment, researchers fed methylene blue mixed with food for a week to Drosophila flies
  • brains showed that protein clumps had been reduced by 87 percent compared with a control group
  • given methylene blue
  • underwent several tests to assess mobility
  • At two months of age, the treated mice showed abnormal clasping of their hind claws only 20 percent of the time
  • untreated counterparts clasped at a 60 percent rate
  • the number of mice used was not sufficient to provide statistically significant results and the difference in the test quickly dropped off at nine weeks of age
  • the data as hopeful, because even a delay in Huntington’s symptoms would be very helpful
  • more research is needed
  • Methylene blue would absolutely require further testing in mouse models and would need safety and efficacy trial before it could be used for humans."
  • This study shows promise pre-clinically and follow-up studies are needed in a more representative mouse model that expresses the full-length Huntingtin protein
Mars Base

Biggest Burmese Python Found in Florida-17.7 Feet, 87 Eggs - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...e-florida-eggs-biggest-science

scibyte59 Animal

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Captured in Everglades National Park, the "monstrous" constrictor will eventually be displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History,
  • Florida
  • a 17.7-foot-long (5.4-meter-long) Burmese python, the biggest snake of that species ever found in the southeastern U.S. state,
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • a necropsy on the euthanized python revealed she was carrying 87 eggs—also a state record for the species
  • The Everglades is home to a growing population of the invasive Asian pythons, many of which originate from snakes that either escaped into or were dumped into the wild in the 1990s
  • To biologist
  • those 87 eggs are "just more evidence that they are pretty much established—they're breeding in the Everglades
  • Python Patrol, focuses not on eradicating invasive pythons but on stopping the spread of the snake to sensitive areas, such as bird breeding spots
  • don't think we can necessarily get rid of every last one. We just want to keep them from moving elsewhere
  • pythons are going to be part of the native fauna in the next few decades
Mars Base

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

www.universetoday.com/...der-scramjet-test-flight-fails

scibyte59 ScramJet

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • 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

news.sciencemag.org/...d-points-toward-the-pill-.html

scibyte59 DrugTech

shared by Mars Base on 17 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • 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

Pioneering heart disease treatment - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...8-heart-disease-treatment.html

scibyte59 GrabBag MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers at King's College London have developed the first artificial functioning blood vessel outside of the body, made from reprogrammed stem cells from human skin
  • could have real potential to treat patients with heart disease
  • by either injecting the reprogrammed cells into the leg or heart to restore blood flow or grafting an artificially developed vessel into the body to replace blocked or damaged vessels
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • could also benefit diabetic patients with poor circulation, preventing leg amputation
  • Stem cell therapy to treat heart disease is already being carried out in the clinic using bone marrow cells
  • the long-term effectiveness at the moment is minimal and some types of stem cells have the potential to become a tumour
  • a new type of partial stem cell developed from fibroblasts (skin cells) can be reprogrammed into vascular cells before going into the body, which have no risk turning into tumours.
  • The process of developing vascular cells from skin cells took two weeks
  • the next step is to test this approach in cells from patients with vascular disease
  • This is an early study and more research needs to be done into how this approach works in patients, but the aim is to be able to inject reprogrammed cells into areas of restricted blood flow, or even graft an entirely new blood vessel into a patient to treat serious cardiovascular diseases
  • This team showed they can derive so-called ‘partial pluripotent’ cells from human skin cells in just four days, and convert them directly into a type of cell that lines our blood vessels
  • Traditional methods take longer and come with an increased chance of tumours forming from the new cells
  • discovery could help lead towards future therapies to repair hearts after they are damaged by a heart attack
  • possible future regenerative treatment, these cells might also be used in drug screening to find new treatments to tackle inherited diseases
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