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Mars Base

Space Shuttle Endeavour Arrives at Museum Home | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-endeavour-museum-arrival.html

scibyte67 shuttle

shared by Mars Base on 15 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • reached the threshold of the hangar at about 2 p.m. PDT (5:00 p.m. EDT; 2100 GMT), where it was set to enter through the building's temporarily removed rear wall
  • , Endeavour will be hoisted vertical and exhibited with a pair of solid rocket boosters and a replica external fuel tank to re-create how the space shuttle looked before liftoff.
Mars Base

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: The Mission - 0 views

marsrover.nasa.gov/...status.html

scibyte67 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 13 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Opportunity is conducting
  • science campaign at a location where orbital observations show the presence of clay minerals
  • rover is positioning near a large, light-toned block of exposed rock outcrop, called "Whitewater Lake."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Sol 3092 (Oct. 4, 2012), the rover moved, likely the smallest amount ever, with less than an inch (1 centimeter) of total motion in order to position the robotic arm favorable on a dark-rind surface target
  • n Sol 3094 (Oct. 6, 2012), Opportunity performed a 15-minute brush of a surface target with the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT)
  • followed with the collection of a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic
  • then the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration
  • Total odometry is 21.78 miles (35,050.07 meters)
Mars Base

Satellite Left Stranded by SpaceX Rocket Falls From Space | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ded-satellite-falls-space.html

scibyte67 Orbcomm

shared by Mars Base on 13 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Orbcomm
  • satellite, launched Oct. 7 into a bad orbit by a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket
  • provided enough data to proceed with the launch of the full constellation starting next year.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • In its statement, Orbcomm suggested that i
  • had enough access to the satellite in less than four days in orbit to validate the performance of its major subsystems.
  • Orbcomm said that, had its satellite been the primary payload on SpaceX’s Oct. 7 flight, the mission would have been a success
  • OG2 satellite bus systems including power, attitude control, thermal and data handling were also tested to verify proper operation
  • The solar array and communications antenna deployments were successful
  • Orbcomm requested that SpaceX carry one of their small satellites
  • few hundred pounds, vs. Dragon at over 12,000 pounds
  • on this flight so that they could gather test data before we launch their full constellation next year.
  • The higher the orbit, the more test data they can gather, so they requested that we attempt to restart and raise altitude
  • NASA agreed to allow that, but only on condition that there be substantial propellant reserves, since the orbit would be close to the space station
  • Orbcomm understood from the beginning that the orbit-raising maneuver was tentative
  • They accepted that there was a high risk of their satellite remaining at the Dragon insertion orbit.
Mars Base

Prospective Alzheimer's drug builds new brain cell connections - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...alzheimer-drug-brain-cell.html

scibyte67 Alzheimer

shared by Mars Base on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • researchers have developed a new drug candidate that dramatically improves the cognitive function of rats with Alzheimer's-like mental impairment
  • intended to repair brain damage that has already occurred
  • This is about recovering function
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • t makes these things totally unique. They're not designed necessarily to stop anything. They're designed to fix what's broken. As far as we can see, they work
  • current Alzheimer's treatments, which either slow the process of cell death or inhibit cholinesterase, an enzyme believed to break down a key neurotransmitter involved in learning and memory development
  • Last month, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, reported that only three of 104 possible treatments have been approved in the past 13 years
  • Development of the WSU drug is only starting
  • Safety testing alone could cost more than $1 million
  • been working on their compound since 1992
  • practical utility of these early drug candidates, however, was severely limited
  • they were very quickly broken down by the body and couldn't get across the blood-brain barrier,
  • cellular barrier that prevents drugs and other molecules from entering the brain
  • 'That's useless. I mean, who wants to drill holes in people's heads?
  • designed a smaller version of the molecule
  • Not only is it stable but it can cross the blood-brain barrier
  • added bonus is it can move from the gut into the blood, so it can be taken in pill form
  • reported similar but less dramatic results in a smaller group of old rats. In this study the old rats
  • tested the drug on several dozen rats treated with scopolamine, a chemical that interferes with a neurotransmitter critical to learning and memory.
  • a rat treated with scopolamine will never learn the location of a submerged platform in a water tank, orienting with cues outside the tank
  • After receiving the WSU drug, however, all of the rats did, whether they received the drug directly in the brain, orally, or through an injection.
  • statistically valid, additional studies with larger test groups will be necessary to fully confirm the finding.
  • bench assays using living nerve cells to monitor new neuronal connections
  • Dihexa to be seven orders of magnitude more powerful than BDNF, which has yet to be effectively developed for therapeutic use
Mars Base

Dental surgeon adds music to drill to appease patients - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...rgeon-music-drill-appease.html

scibyte67 dentist

shared by Mars Base on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • a dental surgeon in the Indonesian city of Purworejo has
  • connected an MP3 player to a dental drill that plays music loud enough to drown out the distinctive whine of the instrument
  • he discovered that many patients, especially children were not afraid of the dentist; instead, they were afraid of the drill
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • connecting the drill with the music player
  • , patients are able to control its volume by opening and closing their mouths
  • e wider they open, the louder the music grows which means the dentist doesn't have to continually urge patients to open wider for better access to back teeth
  • he invested 6 million rupiah (approximately $595)
  • mainly for the benefit of frightened children
  • using it in his practice since 2006 and has noted that many adults also prefer the musical drill to the standard model.
  • Patients can make requests he says, though he does try to limit the choices to songs that calm the nerves
  • t it took a year of research and effort to configure the drill
  • Doctor Gustiana presented his modified drill to attendees at the International Dental Congress held in Greece earlier this year.
Mars Base

Frenchman, American win Nobel for quantum physics (Update 6) - 0 views

phys.org/...eland-nobel-physics-prize.html

scibyte67 Nobel

shared by Mars Base on 13 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • American physicist David Wineland
  • and French physicist Serge Haroche speaks to the media in Paris after they were named winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics.
  • in a quantum computer, an individual particle can essentially represent a zero and a one at the same time
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • A Frenchman and an American shared the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for inventing methods to peer into the bizarre quantum world of ultra-tiny particles, work that could help in creating a new generation of super-fast computers
  • quantum computers could radically change people's lives in the way that classical computers did last century, but a full-scale quantum computer is still decades away
  • for experiments on quantum particles that have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day help lead to computers many times faster than those in use today.
  • If scientists can make such particles work together, certain kinds of calculations could be done with blazing speed.
  • The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
  • 2012: Serge Haroche of France and David Wineland of the U.S. for "for ground-breaking experimental methods" that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
  • 2011: American physicist Saul Perlmutter, U.S.-Australian researcher Brian Schmidt and American professor Adam Riess "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae."
Mars Base

'God particle' discovery poses Nobel dilemma - 0 views

phys.org/...cle-discovery-poses-nobel.html

scibyte66 scibyte67 HiggsBoson

shared by Mars Base on 08 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • But whether the July 4 fireworks will unlock the great prize is unclear.
  • cautious, given that the new particle has not yet been officially sealed as the Higgs.
  • almost certain it is the coveted beast
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • y still need to confirm this
  • s further work to see how it behaves and reacts with other particles
  • there is a remote possibility that the new particle is not the Higgs, although this would be an even more groundshaking announcement.
  • six physicists, each building on the work of others, published a flurry of papers on aspects of the theory within four months of each other back in 1964.
  • The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died last year, and Francois Englert.
  • followed by Higgs, who was the first to say only a new particle would explain the anomalies of mass
  • further complication is that thousands of physicists worked in the two labs at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva where Higgs experiments were conducted independently of each other.
  • decide whether theoreticians or experimentalists—or both—should get the glory.
  • At most three names, although they can include organisations, can share a Nobel
  • e prize cannot be given posthumously.
  • The Nobel will "eventually" go to the Higgs
  • s not yet certain that the newly-discovered particle is in fact a Higgs boson
  • nothing stopping us from giving the prize to an organisation. But it has not been the custom in the scientific prizes
  • The Nobel Peace Prize has often been awarded to organisations. But in the science prizes we have tried to find the most prizeworthy individuals
Mars Base

Did NASA's Voyager 1 Spacecraft Just Exit the Solar System? | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/r-spacecraft-solar-system.html

scibyte66 scibyte67 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists are crunching one more set of numbers to find out for sure.
  • New data from the spacecraft indicate that the historic moment of its exit from the solar system might have come and gone two months ago
  • For two years now, data beamed back to Earth by Voyager 1 has hinted at its close approach to the edge of the solar system, a pressure boundary called the heliopaus
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • bubble of electrically charged particles blowing outward from the sun (called the heliosphere) exactly counterbalances the inward pressure of the gas and dust from interstellar space, causing equilibrium between the two
  • scientists have had trouble figuring out what, exactly, happens at or near this boundary — making it hard to tell whether Voyager has crossed it
  • In 2010, Voyager passed the point where the solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outward from the sun, seemed to
  • indicated that the wind had suddenly died down, and all the surrounding solar particles were at a standstill
  • "stagnation region" came as a surprise
  • expected to see the solar wind veer sideways
  • the perplexing collapse of the solar wind at the edge of the heliosphere left them without a working model for the outer solar system
  • no well-established criteria of what constitutes exit from the heliosphere
  • "All theoretical models have been found wanting."
  • a space scientist at Johns Hopkins who works with Voyager 1 data, said that in any model of the heliopause, an object exiting through it should experience three changes: a sharp rise in the number of collisions with cosmic rays (high-energy particles from space), a dramatic drop in the number of collisions with charged particles from the sun, and a change in the direction of the surrounding magnetic field.
  • Based on two of those criteria, Voyager 1 looks as if it passed through the heliopause at the end of the summer
  • The level of these cosmic ray collisions jumped significantly in late August.
  • spacecraft has experienced a steady rise in the number of collisions with particles whose energies are greater than 70 Mega-electron-volts, indicating they are probably cosmic rays emanating from supernova explosions far beyond the solar system
  • in late August, cosmic ray collisions sharply rose, and solar particle collisions sharply fell: two indicators of a transition through the heliopause
  • To officially declare Voyager's crossing, the scientists need to check if the third condition holds
  • change in magnetic field direction
  • e interstellar field beyond the influence of the sun) is critical because, even though there is debate among astrophysicists as to what direction the field will lie in
  • unlikely that it is the direction that we have been seeing at Voyager 1 throughout the most recent years
  • scientists could not say when the magnetic field analysis would be finished. But when it is
  • Once we have a consensus within the team we will inform NASA for a proper announcement,
Mars Base

Voyager 1 may have left the solar system - 0 views

phys.org/...012-10-voyager-left-solar.html

scibyte67 Voyager1

shared by Mars Base on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • there's no official word from NASA
  • the buzz
  • is that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • evidence comes from this graph, above, which shows the number of particles, mainly protons, from the Sun hitting Voyager 1 across time
  • uge drop at the end of August hints that Voyager 1 may now be in interstellar space
  • on July 28, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside our Solar System dropped by half. However, in three days, the levels had recovered to near their previous levels. But then the bottom dropped out at the end of August.
  • Voyager team has said they have been seeing two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space
  • drop in particles from the Sun
  • jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our Solar System.
  • third key sign would be the direction of the magnetic field
  • No word on that yet, but scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction
  • Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space.
  • Voyager project scientist for the entire mission, who was quoted in early August. "We are certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly. But we are not yet able to say that Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space."
  • the data are changing in ways that the team didn't expect, "but Voyager has always surprised us with new discoveries."
  • Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is approximately 18 billion kilometers (11 billion miles) from the Sun
  • Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 15 billion km (9.3 billion miles) from the Sun.
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