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Mars Base

Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...tic-rehab-helps-paralyzed.html

scibyte49 MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • employing a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation, researchers have restored a remarkable degree of voluntary movement in rats paralyzed by a spinal cord injury
  • After several weeks of treatment, the rodents were able to walk—with some assistance—to retrieve a piece of food, even going up stairs or climbing over a small barrier to get it
  • Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • These fibers, or axons, are the long extensions that convey signals from one end of a neuron to another, and unfortunately, they don't regrow in adults
  • Restoring axons' ability to regrow using growth factors, stem cells, or other therapies has been a longstanding—but frustratingly elusive—goal for researchers.
  • Most spinal injuries in people do not sever the spinal cord completely
  • To approximate this situation in rats, his team made two surgical cuts in the spinal cord, severing all of the direct connections from the brain, but leaving some tissue intact in between the cuts
  • had the rodents begin a rehab regime intended to bypass the fractured freeway, as it were, by pushing more traffic onto neural back roads and building more of them
  • This regime, which began about a week after the rats were injured, lasted about 30 minutes a day
  • During each session, the researchers injected the animals with a cocktail of drugs to improve the function of rats' neural circuits in the part of the spinal cord involved in leg movements
  • stimulated this area with electrodes
  • With its spinal cord thus primed for action, a rat was fitted into a harness attached to a robotic device that supported its weight and allowed it to walk forward on its hind legs to the extent that it was able
  • At first, the rats could not move their legs at all, let alone walk.
  • after 2 or 3 weeks, the rodents began taking steps toward a piece of food after a gentle nudge from the robo
  • By 5 or 6 weeks, they were able to initiate movement on their own and walk to get the food
  • after a few additional weeks of intensified rehab, they were able to walk up rat-sized stairs and climb over a small barrier placed in their path
  • did not undergo rehab, in contrast, showed no improvement at all
  • Rats suspended over a moving treadmill that elicited reflex-like stepping movement
  • full recovery depends on making intentional movements, not just any movement
  • Additional experiments in the paper make a compelling case that the rats' recovery is due to new neural connections forming to create a detour around the injury
  • s work suggests that all three components of the rehab strategy—the drugs, the electrical stimulation, and the robot-assisted physical therapy
  • case study published last year reported some recovery of voluntary movements in a man paralyzed in a vehicle accident, after he underwent a combination of electrical stimulation and physical therap
  • two more patients are undergoing similar rehab now, and his group hopes to add drug therapy to enhance nerve repair in the future
  • the strategy's limitations. For one thing, it wouldn't work if the spinal cord were completely severed
  • treated rats could only make voluntary movements while the electrical stimulation was turned on, and the same was mostly true of the patient Edgerton and colleagues worked with. "This is not a cure for spinal cord injury," Courtine says. "It's a promising proof of principle."
Mars Base

New Particle at World's Largest Atom Smasher is Likely Higgs Boson | LHC | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/son-particle-lhc-findings.html

scibyte53 HiggsBoson

shared by Mars Base on 04 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Physicists are more than 99 percent sure that they've found a new elementary particle that is likely the long-sought Higgs boson.
  • they'd seen a particle weighing roughly 125 times the mass of the proton
  • it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The Higgs
  • is thought to hold the key to one of the mysteries of the universe: Why do things have mass?
  • statistics reach a level called 5 sigma, meaning that there is only a one in 3.5 million chance the signal isn't real.
  • data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV
  • GeV stands for gigaelecton volts
  • Today's findings come from the two general-purpose experiments at LHC, ATLAS and CMS. Both observed particle collisions independently and analyzed their observations separately
  • scientists from each team were not allowed to tell each other what they found until today, for fear their results would bias the other experiment's researchers toward looking for the same results.
Mars Base

Smart headlights let drivers see between the raindrops - 0 views

phys.org/...dlights-drivers-raindrops.html

scibyte53 headlight

shared by Mars Base on 05 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • During low-light conditions, drivers rely mainly on headlights to see the road but the same headlights reduce visibility when light is reflected off of precipitation back to the driver
  • Carnegie Mellon professor and his team
  • Computer science professor Srinivasa Narasimhan
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • stream light in between the drops
  • answer consists of a co-located imaging and illumination system-- camera, projector, and beamsplitter
  • integrate an imager and processing unit with a light source
  • camera images the precipitation at the top of the field of view
  • processor can tell where the drops are headed and sends a signal to the headlights
  • make their adjustments and react to dis-illuminate the particles
  • entire action, starting from capture to reaction, takes about 13 ms.
  • system runs at 120 Hz. The camera uses a 5 ms exposure time and the system has a total latency of 13 ms
  • how fast will the system need to be, to be actually effective, in a car
  • simulations show that a system operating near 1,000 Hz, with a total system latency of 1.5 ms, and exposure time of 1 ms can achieve 96.8% accuracy
  • 90% light throughput during a heavy rainstorm [25 mm/hr] on a vehicle traveling 30 km/hr
  • 400 Hz with less accuracy will be a significant [>= 70%] improvement for the driver
  • operating range is about 13 feet in front of the headlights
  • recent computer vision methods that digitally remove rain and snow streaks from captured images
  • simulation results show that it is possible to maintain light throughput well above 90 percent for various precipitation types and
  • prototype system operating at 120Hz on laboratory-generated rain, which validated their earlier simulations
  • prototype consists of a camera with gigabit ethernet interface (Point Grey, Flea3), DLP projector (Viewsonic, PJD62531), and desktop computer with Intel architecture (Intel i7 quad core processor).
  • next steps will involve making the system faster and more compact to test on a moving platform
  • research for those ends may take three to four more years and “commercializing it as a product will take additional years.”
  • the prototype was built with off-the-shelf components
  • data transfer speed is slower than if the components were more closely integrated
  • more sophisticated algorithms are needed to maximize system speed and account for factors such as vehicle motion and wind turbulence
Mars Base

'Post-it note' on breast cancer gene signals risk of disease spreading - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...reast-cancer-gene-disease.html

Cancer GrabBag

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Methylation of the gene could be used to flag up breast cancer patients who have a greater chance of the disease spreading – helping doctors decide what treatment plan would be most effective.
  • high levels of a molecular modification called methylation on a gene called CACNA2D3, were linked to the spread of the disease in breast cancer patients
  • gene CACNA2D3 is a known tumour suppressor gene which prevents cancer
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • next stage is to repeat these findings in larger studies with patients to confirm whether analysing methylation of the gene could be a useful test
  • research suggests that methyl groups can muffle the messages given by the CACNA2D3 gene - blocking its potential protective effect against breast cancer
Mars Base

Drug's 'double hit' overcomes leukaemia resistance - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...drug-leukaemia-resistance.html

Cancer GrabBag

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • drug that uses a unique ‘double hit’ to kill leukaemia cells could be a potential new treatment for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia
  • 30 per cent of patients with AML have faults in the FLT3 gene
  • linked to more aggressive leukaemias and poor survival
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • drugs that target these faults are available, the disease eventually builds resistance, leaving treatments ineffective.
  • researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London
  • developed a unique drug that targets AML cells in a “double hit”.
  • blocks the protein made by the faulty FLT3 gene along with another key protein – called Aurora kinase – which are both involved in driving cancer growth
  • healthy blood cells, FLT3 sends a signal to the cells telling them when to proliferate, while Aurora kinase plays a role in cell division
  • Leukaemia cells with faulty FLT3 can proliferate out of control
  • many cancer cells have higher levels of Aurora kinase, causing errors during cell division
  • drug is also unique because it can destroy cells even if they develop new faults in the FLT3 genes that would make them resistant to other inhibitors
  • There has been great interest in using FLT3 drugs to treat AML
  • effectiveness has been limited because leukaemia cells gain new mistakes in the FLT3 gene, causing resistance.
  • new drug has the potential to overcome this and has a range of possible uses in AML
  • those over 60 who don’t tolerate chemotherapy well, and also to treat  leukaemia patients who have relapsed
  • We’re excited about the potential of our new ‘double hit’ drug and are now planning to take it into clinical trials to see if it is effective in patients
  • faults that occur in the FLT3 gene cause rapid cell division
  • Each year around 2,380 people are diagnosed with AML in the UK
  • creating cells in the lab that mimic how drug resistance develops in AML the researchers were able to show that their new drug delivers a ‘double hit’ to halt cancer cells in their tracks
Mars Base

Why Do We Sneeze? - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...neeze-health-science-sinusitis

GrabBag medical

shared by Mars Base on 16 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • When we breathe in foreign particles, sensors in our noses and sinuses detect the objects. The sensors signal the cilia—tiny, hairlike paddles that line our nostrils and sinuses—to move to expel the irritants
  • burst of air produced by a sneeze not only clears nasal passages but also triggers the cilia sensors to kick the paddles into high gear for an extended period
  • sneeze works by "resetting the system—like Control-Alt-Delete" on a PC
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Cilia—which resemble a "constantly moving shag carpet" under the microscope—propel potentially harmful material out of our lungs and either up to our nostrils to be expelled or down to our gullets, where stomach acid zaps any harmful organisms
  • People with sinusitis and genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis have trouble clearing out mucus, even though they sneeze a lot.
  • For cilia to work, they need mucus
  • contradiction
  • wonder whether sneezing has a role in getting cilia to clear out mucus—and whether that process was somehow impaired in sinusitis patients
  • puffed air on the lining—a sort of "in vitro sneeze
  • If you puff air on these cells, [their cilia] beat faster
  • from sinusitis patients
  • , the cilia did not beat faster
  • patients aren't getting the same cellular response as patients who don't have the syndrome
  • chronic inflammation or toxins in sinusitis-related bacteria may be preventing the cilia from working properly
  • Can we actually take this information and translate it into a novel therapy
  • scientists could theoretically develop nasal sprays or other topical treatments to get the cilia revved up in people with impaired mucus clearance
  • no "satisfactory treatment option" for chronic sinusitis, which affects an estimated 14 to 16 million Americans
  • usually treated with medicine and surgery to relieve the symptoms, which can include congestion, reduced smell and taste, and pain or swelling in the face
Mars Base

Practicing music for only few years in childhood helps improve adult brain: research - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ars-childhood-adult-brain.html

scibyte60 music

shared by Mars Base on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • A little music training in childhood goes a long way in improving how the brain function
  • researchers for the first time have directly examined what happens after children stop playing a musical instrument after only a few years
  • Compared to peers with no musical training, adults with one to five years of musical training as children had enhanced brain responses to complex sounds, making them more effective at pulling out the
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • lowest frequency in sound
  • crucial for speech and music perception, allowing recognition of sounds in complex and noisy auditory environments.
  • musical training as children makes better listeners later in life
  • the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning
  • For the study, young adults with varying amounts of past musical training were tested by measuring electrical signals from the auditory brainstem in response to eight complex sounds ranging in pitch
  • Forty-five adults were grouped into three
  • matched groups based on histories of musical instruction
  • One group had no musical instruction
  • another had 1 to 5 years
  • the other had to 6 to 11 years
  • Both musically trained groups began instrumental practice around age 9
  • musical training during childhood led to more robust neural processing of sounds later in life
  • Prior research on highly trained musicians and early bilinguals revealed that enhanced brainstem responses to sound are associated with heightened auditory perception, executive function and auditory communication skills.
  • we infer that a few years of music lessons also confer advantages in how one perceives and attends to sounds in everyday communication situations, such as noisy restaurants
Mars Base

Disintegrating Alien Planet Has Comet-Like Tail | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/n-planet-dust-tail-kepler.html

scibyte62 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 06 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers have found a dusty tail streaming off a faraway alien planet, suggesting that the tiny, scorching-hot world is indeed falling apart.
  • In May, researchers announced the detection of a possibly distintegrating exoplanet, a roughly Mercury-size world being boiled away by the intense heat of its parent star
  • a different team has found strong evidence in support of the find
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Both studies used observations from NASA's Kepler space telescope
  • completing an orbit every 15 hours
  • surface temperatures estimated to be around 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,982 degrees Celsius).
  • predicted that the planet is likely surrounded by a huge veil of dust and gas
  • In the new study, a different team
  • affirms the existence of this planetary dust tail
  • found clear signals that
  • light is being scattered and absorbed by large amounts of dust.
  • Further work with different instruments could help nail down just what the planet is made of
  • By observing the dust clouds in different colors, something Kepler cannot do, we will be able to determine the amount and the composition of the dust and estimate its lifetime
  • "As the evaporation peels the planet like an onion, we can now see what used to be the inside of a planet."
Mars Base

Mars Express Reveals Possible Martian Glaciers - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...eals-possible-martian-glaciers

scibyte24

shared by Mars Base on 03 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • , one of the greatest needs future astronauts will face is water
  • Mars Express has imaged an area on the red planet which may yield large quantities of sub-surface ice
  • Extending from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • spanning latitudes from roughly 30°N to 50°N, the Phlegra Montes
  • gently rolling series of hills that have been probed by radar
  • surmised these low mountain ranges are not volcanic in origin, but created through tectonic forces and may conceal a copious supply of frozen water
  • high resolution stereo imaging from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, we’re able to detect a feature called ‘lobate debris aprons’.
  • it’s a normal feature for mountains found around these latitudes
  • Earlier studies of the debris aprons show the material has slid down the mountain slopes with time – a feature shared with Earth’s glaciers
  • scientists surmise this region may be a type of Martian glacier
  • also been confirmed by radar on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • lobate debris aprons could indeed signal the presence of ice – perhaps only 20 meter below the surface
  • , nearby impact craters also show signs of recent glaciation
  • ridges formed inside these ancient holes from snowfall, and then slid down the slopes
  • With time, it compacted to form a glacier structure
  • A one time, Mars’ polar axis was quite different than it is today
  • it created different climatic conditions and mid-latitude glaciers may have developed at different times over the last several hundred million years
Mars Base

Babies Lip-read Before Talking - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Babies_lip-read_before_talking

scibyte30 babies

shared by Mars Base on 20 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • infants start babbling at around age 6 months in preparation for talking
  • shift from focusing on adults’ eyes to paying special attention to speakers’ mouths
  • tots become able to blurt out words and simple statements at age 1, they go back to concentrating on adults’ eyes
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • babbling babies match up what adults say with how they say
  • budding talkers can afford to look for communication signals in a speakers’ eyes
  • tested 179 infants from English-speaking families at age 4, 6, 8 or 12 months
  • devices tracked where babies looked when shown videos of women speaking English or a foreign language
  • also report that on average, infants’ pupils increasingly dilated between ages 8 months and 1 year in response to Spanish speakers, a sign of surprise at encountering unfamiliar speech
  • By 2 years of age, children with autism avoid eye contact and focus on speakers’ mouths
  • new findings raise the possibility of identifying kids headed for this developmental disorder even earlier
  • hasn’t yet been demonstrated that children who continue to look at the mouths of native-language speakers after age 1 develop autism or other communication problems more frequently than those who shift to looking at speakers’ eyes
Mars Base

Double Dispatch: Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle - 0 views

www.stephanboyer.com/...lancing-electric-unicycle.html

scibyte27

shared by Mars Base on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • A custom MIG-welded steel chassisA 450 Watt electric motorTwo 7 Ah 12 Volt batteriesA 5DOF intertial measurement unitThe OSMC H-bridgeAn ATmega328P microcontroller
  • operates much like a Segway -- you lean forward to accelerate, and lean back to brake
  • holding in my right hand (in the video at the bottom) is a "kill switch" -- if I let go of it, the unicycle deactivates the motor,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bullet integrates readings from the gyro and accelerometer using a complementary filter. To balance, the angle estimate is fed through a PID loop (with no integral term). The loop runs at 625 Hz. The output from this stage determines the duty cycle of a 1.22 kHz PWM signal, which is connected to the H-bridge. The code was written in C, and is in the public domain.
  • It took me several hours to be able to ride in a straight line without crashing, and it took several days to learn how to turn in a controlled manner. Many of my friends have tried riding it, usually with little success (including some actual unicyclers).
  • I am certainly not the first person to build an electric unicycle. Perhaps the most well-known self-balancing unicycle is Trevor Blackwell's Eunicycle, which also uses the OSMC. His design is similar to mine, but uses a much more expensive battery pack ($218 for his vs $44 for mine). Also, the Eunicycle's motor and gearbox cost a grand total of $644, whereas Bullet's drive system (including the wheel itself) was $195. Finally, the IMU he uses is about $100 more than mine. Overall, Bullet is several hundred dollars cheaper than the Eunicycle, but this comes at a price (mostly weight).
Mars Base

New 'super-black' material absorbs light across multiple wavelength bands - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...sorbs-multiple-wavelength.html

light scibyte21

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it
  • The team has since reconfirmed the material's absorption capabilities in additional testing
  • Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."
  • The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair
  • They are positioned vertically on various substrate materials much like a shag rug
  • team has grown the nanotubes on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, materials commonly used in space-based scientific instruments
  • application is stray-light suppression
  • the team found that the material absorbs 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet and visible
  • 98 percent in the longer or far-infrared bands
  • We knew it was absorbent. We just didn't think it would be this absorbent from the ultraviolet to the far infrared
  • If used in detectors and other instrument components, the technology would allow scientists to gather hard-to-obtain measurements of objects so distant in the universe that astronomers no longer can see them in visible light or those in high-contrast areas, including planets in orbit around other stars
  • More than 90 percent of the light Earth-monitoring instruments gather comes from the atmosphere, overwhelming the faint signal they are trying to retrieve
Mars Base

New drug could treat Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and brain injury - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-multiple-sclerosis-brain.html

Alzheimer MultipleSclerosis GrabBag

shared by Mars Base on 25 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • A new class of drug
  • shows early promise of being a one-size-fits-all therapy for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury by reducing inflammation in the brain
  • The drugs
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • target a particular type of brain inflammation
  • brain inflammation, also called neuroinflammation, is increasingly believed to play a major role in the progressive damage characteristic of these chronic diseases and brain injuries.
  • offers an entirely different therapeutic approach to Alzheimer's than current ones being tested to prevent the development of beta amyloid plaques in the brain
  • The plaques are an indicator of the disease but not a proven cause
  • given to a mouse genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's, it prevents the development of the full-blown disease
  • identifies the optimal therapeutic time window for administering the drug, which is taken orally and easily crosses the blood-brain barrier.
  • In previous animal studies, the same drug reduced the neurological damage caused by closed-head traumatic brain injury and inhibited the development of a multiple sclerosis-like disease. In these diseases as well as in Alzheimer's, the studies show the therapy time window is critical
  • work by preventing the damaging overproduction of brain proteins called proinflammatory cytokines
  • Scientists now believe overproduction of these proteins contributes to the development of many degenerative neurological diseases
  • When too many of the cytokines are produced, the synapses of the brain begin to misfire
  • mouse model of Alzheimer's received MW151 three times a week starting at six months of age, right at the time the proinflammatory cytokines began to rise. This would be the comparable stage when a human patient would begin to experience mild cognitive impairment
  • drug protected against the damage associated with learning and memory impairment
  • before Alzheimer's memory changes are at a late stage may be a promising future approach to therapy
  • In M.S., overproduction of the proinflammatory cytokines damage the central nervous system and the brain
  • proteins directly or indirectly destroy the insulation or coverings of the nerve cells that transmit signals down the spinal cord
  • insulation is stripped, messages aren't properly conducted down the spinal cord
  • When mice that were induced to develop an M.S.-like disease received MW151 orally, they did not develop disease as severe.
  • After a traumatic brain injury, the glia cells in the brain become hyperactive and release a continuous cascade of proinflammatory cytokines
  • As a result of this hyperactivity, researchers believe the brain is more susceptible to serious damage following a second neurological injury.
  • when MW151 is given during an early therapeutic window three to six hours after the injury, it blocks glial activation and prevents the flood of proinflammatory cytokines after a traumatic brain injury
  • early on after traumatic brain injury or a even a stroke, you could possibly prevent the long-term complications of that injury including the risk of seizures, cognitive impairment and, perhaps, mental health issues
  • Stroke also causes inflammation in the brain that may also be linked to long-term complications including epilepsy and cognitive deficits
Mars Base

Japanese Satellite to Write Morse Code in Sky | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ats-space-station-fitsat1.html

scibyte56 FITSAT-1

shared by Mars Base on 25 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • robotic Japanese cargo vessel now en route to the International Space Station is loaded with food, clothes, equipment — and a set of tiny amateur radio satellites, including one that will write Morse code messages in the sky
  • slated to arrive at the station
  • July 27
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • ultrasmall satellites it's carrying, which are known as cubesats, will likely remain on the orbiting lab until September
  • using the Kibo module's robotic arm.
  • One of the cubesats, FITSAT-1, will write messages in the night sky with Morse code, helping researchers test out optical communication techniques for satellites, researchers said.
  • One of FITSAT-1's experimental duties is to twinkle as an artificial star
  • just under 3 pounds (1.33 kilograms
  • high power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that will produce extremely bright flashes.
  • hope, will be observable by the unaided eye or with small binoculars
  • the cubesat's high-output LEDs will blink in flash mode, generating a Morse code beacon signal.
  • contains a neodymium magnet that forces it to always point to magnetic north, like a compass.
  • Mars Base on 25 Jul 12
     
    FITSAT-1
Mars Base

Quick and Curious Facts About the Mars Science Laboratory Mission - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ars-science-laboratory-mission

scibyte57 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 02 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Quick and Curious Facts About the Mars Science Laboratory Mission
  • Curiosity rover will land on Mars at 05:31 UTC on Aug. 6 (10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 and 1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6
  • Earth-received time
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • (13.8 minutes) for radio signal to reach Earth from Mars
  • landing will be at about 3 p.m. local time at the Mars landing site.
  • How long does it take for the rover to get to Mars’ surface after it reaches the outer atmosphere?
  • How big is the parachute?
  • How big are the spacecraft and the rover?
  • How does the rover get its power for roving?
  • What are the science instruments on board Curiosity?
  • How many cameras are on Curiosity?
  • When did Curiosity launch?
  • How far is Mars away from Earth?
  • How fast can Curiosity rove?
  • Where is Curiosity’s landing site?
  • What will the weather be like at Gale Crater?
  • How many possible landing sites did scientists considered before deciding on Gale Crater?
  • How long is the primary mission?
  • How much does this mission cost?
Mars Base

Summer Olympics: 2020 | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...look-summer-olympics-2020

scibyte58 Olympics

shared by Mars Base on 05 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • HOLOGRAPHIC OBSTACLES
  • 100 riders are injured in eventing falls every year, and when a multimillion-dollar horse goes down, even a minor injury like a twisted ankle can end its career
  • Line-of-sight infrared beams could monitor the edges of the obstacles; if the horse breaks the beam, the system would instantly alert the judges—and the crowd—to the fault
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • SMART LANDING PADS
  • Scoring the exact length of a long or triple jump can be imprecise and time-consuming
  • land in a sand pit
  • Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a 2,016-pressure-sensor array to map where an athlete hits the ground
  • underneath the sand in the landing pit, a dozen or so of the mats could record the exact point of touchdown
  • computer could automatically calculate the length of the jump
  • HEAD-UP GOGGLES
  • Swimmers
  • with an integrated head-up display could broadcast a live view of the competition and help racers to better pace themselves
  • AUTOMATIC GOAL KEEPER
  • German research
  • has developed an automated goal-tracking system
  • Actuators around the net generate a magnetic field across the face of the goal. When the ball passes through that field, a chip embedded in the ball sends a signal to the ref’s watch within one tenth of a second.
  • RETRACTABLE DIVING BOARD
  • On a good day, a diver’s head misses the board by a couple of inches
  • famously, Greg Louganis in the 1988 Olympics.
  • In the one second a typical diver is airborne above the plane of the board, it could retract as much as three feet
Mars Base

Tevatron experiments report latest results in search for Higgs boson - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...atest-results-higgs-boson.html

scibyte37 HiggsBoson

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • New measurements
  • indicate that the elusive Higgs boson may nearly be cornered.
  • two independent experiments see hints of a Higgs boson.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • collaborations found excesses in their data that might be interpreted as coming from a Higgs boson with a mass in the region of 115 to 135 GeV.
  • claim evidence of a new particle only if the probability that the data could be due to a statistical fluctuation is less than 1 in 740
  • claimed only if that probability is less than 1 in 3.5 million, or five sigmas.
  • stringent constraints established by earlier direct and indirect measurements made by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the Tevatron, and other accelerators,
  • place the mass of the Higgs boson within the range of 115 to 127 GeV
  • consistent with the December 2011 announcement of excesses seen in that range by LHC experiments, which searched for the Higgs in different decay patterns
  • None of the
  • experiments
  • are strong enough to claim evidence for the Higgs boson
  • This is an important milestone for the Tevatron experiments, and demonstrates the continuing importance of independent measurements
  • the latest result in a decade-long search by teams of physicists at the Tevatron
  • two collaborations independently combed through hundreds of trillions of proton-antiproton collisions recorded by their experiments to arrive at this exciting result
  • Higgs bosons, if they exist, are short-lived and can decay in many different ways.
  • Higgs can decay into different combinations of particles
  • still much work ahead before the scientific community can say for sure whether the Higgs boson exists
  • According to the Standard Model, the theory that explains and predicts how nature’s building blocks behave and interact with each other, the Higgs boson gives mass to other particles
  • Physicists have known for a long time that the Higgs or something like it must exist
  • Higgs boson is created in a high-energy particle collision, it immediately decays into lighter more stable particles
  • physicists retraced the path of these secondary particles and ruled out processes that mimic its signal.
  • Tevatron was a proton/anti-proton collider, with a maximum center of mass energy of 2 TeV,
  • LHC is a proton/proton collider that will ultimately reach 14 TeV
  • two accelerators collide different pairs of particles at different energies and produce different types of backgrounds
  • search strategies are different
  • search for the Higgs boson by the Tevatron and LHC experiments is like two people taking a picture of a park from different vantage points
Mars Base

10 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do | NASA, Mars Science Laboratory & Curio... - 0 views

www.space.com/s-rover-curiosity-science.html

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 20 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Mast Camera (MastCam)
  • capture high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape, which scientists will study and laypeople will gawk at
  • Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass
  • instrument will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair
  • MAHLI sits on the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm
  • Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
  • small camera located on Curiosity's main body, will record video of the rover's descent to the Martian surface
  • will click on a mile or two above the ground, as soon as Curiosity jettisons its heat shield. The instrument will then take video at five frames per second until the rover touches down. The footage will help the MSL team plan Curiosity's Red Planet rovings, and it should also provide information about the geological context of the landing site, the 100-mile-wide
  • Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
  • makes up about half of the rover's science payload.
  • a suite of three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer
  • will search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it
  • look for other elements associated with life on Earth, such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
  • The rover's robotic arm will drop samples into SAM via an inlet on the rover's exterior
  • Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
  • CheMin will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance
  • will help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet
  • CheMin has an inlet on Curiosity's exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover's robotic arm
  • will shine a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals' crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract
  • Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam)
  • This instrument will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits
  • help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform
  • The laser sits on Curiosity's mast, along with a camera and a small telescope
  • Three spectrographs sit in the rover's body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics
  • spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples
  • Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
  • sits at the end of Curiosity's arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt
  • APXS will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei. This barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays. Scientists will be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays
  • Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
  • located near the back of Curiosity's main body, will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface
  • The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back. Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice
  • should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m).
  • Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
  • instrument will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays
  • designed specifically to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars
  • will allow scientists to determine just how much radiation an astronaut would be exposed to on Mars
  • Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
  • partway up Curiosity's mast, is a Martian weather station
  • measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation.
  • integrated into daily and seasonal reports
  • MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI)
  • MEDLI isn't one of Curiosity's 10 instruments
  • will measure the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky
  • will tell engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft's trajectory, performed
  • data to improve designs for future Mars-bound spacecraft
Mars Base

It's Alive! Russia's Phobos-Grunt Probe Phones Home | Phobos-Grunt Mars Mission | Mars ... - 0 views

www.space.com/signal-esa-ground-station.html

Phobos-Grunt scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 23 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • the head of Russia's space agency, said after launch the mission could be salvaged until early December
  • many experts said the launch period has already expired, meaning Phobos-Grunt would have to wait until 2013 for another shot at Mars
  • Tuesday's brief contact did not produce telemetry to gain insight into the situation on-board the spacecraft
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Phobos-Grunt is likely functional and charging batteries through its solar panels
  • 23 November
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