SciByte

the probe “Corrects her orbit” every now and then.

Does this mean that the probe knows where she is? Probably not.

If Grunt’s safe mode includes a program that fires thrusters every so often to keep the craft from entering the atmosphere in the event of a malfunction just after reaching low Earth orbit

continues to occur, we can expect that the predicted date of atmospheric entry will be moved back again, just as it was moved from late December/early November to mid-January after the first orbital correction episode

it could buy more time for controllers to establish communication –although Roscosmos has stated that December is the limit for correcting the problem

hopefully — the power to operate for at least another decade

The move was a little risky

backup roll thrusters were previously unused

been idle and out in the harsh environment of space for 32 years

Voyager 2 will save about 11.8 watts of electric power by turning off the heater that kept the hydrazine fuel to the primary thrusters warm

Voyager 1 and 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. With this latest command, both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters

The primary roll thrusters now turned off fired more than 318,000 times. Voyager 1 changed to the backup for this same component after 353,000 pulses in 2004

energy generated by Voyager 2′s Plutonium 238 nuclear power source continues to decline, and is now down to about 270 watts from the 470 watts being produced when the spacecraft launched in 1977

at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid-2020′s.

Using solar power for a spacecraft traveling beyond Jupiter is impractical

This latest tune-up will hopefully get Voyager 2 a little farther while she’s still able to communicate with Earth

irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate

"It looks like crushed ice,

In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form

there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth'

, a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon

"On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."

estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.

One such lake

several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today

The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined

The lakes may even be habitats themselves

analysis of mosasaur locomotion had been limited by a lack of soft tissue fossils, which was crucial for the scientists to truly understand the degree of aquatic adaptation that the creature had achieved

new findings, which include scales and skin impressions, suggest that the mosasaur was able to minimize its frictional drag in the water.

features suggest that it held the front of its body somewhat rigid during swimming, leading it to depend on the rear of its body and tail for propulsion

These flexible electrode arrays could significantly expand surgical options for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy

In an animal model, the researchers saw spiral waves of brain activity not previously observed during a seizure

Similar waves are known to ripple through cardiac muscle during a type of life-threatening heart rhythm called ventricular fibrillation.

A stimulating electrode array might one day be designed to suppress seizure activity, working like a pacemaker for the brain

The brain contains billions of interconnected neurons that normally transmit electrical pulses

During a seizure, these pulses occur in abnormal, synchronized, rapid-fire bursts that can cause convulsions, loss of consciousness and other symptoms

is made of a pliable material that is only about one quarter the thickness of a human hair

It contains 720 silicon nanomembrane transistors in a multiplexed 360-channel array, which allow for minimal wiring and dense packing of the electrodes

The flexibility of the array allows it to conform to the brain's complex shape, even reaching into grooves that are inaccessible to conventional arrays

the array could be rolled into a tube and delivered into the brain through a small hole rather than by opening the skull

The researchers tested the flexible array on cats. Although mice and rats are used for most neuroscience research, cats have larger brains that are anatomically more like the human brain, with simplified folds and grooves

OCD and superior memory might have a common architecture in the brain

Scientists have long studied people with memory deficits, but there haven’t been many studies on people with exceptional memories

11 people who scored off the charts for autobiographical memory. These people could effortlessly remember, for instance, what they were doing on November 2, 1989, and could also tell you that it was a Thursday

Using brain scans, researchers found that people with supermemories had larger brain regions associated with memory

a brain structure called the lentiform nucleus, a cone-shaped mass in the core of the brain, was bigger in people with exceptional memories

This brain area has been linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder

The subjects haven’t been clinically evaluated for OCD, but LePort says that there are some similarities

The ability to organize their memories by dates seems to relieve anxiety

These people could encode information more effectively, or have a better system of retrieving it, or both

Though no genetic tests have been performed, some of the volunteers have reported that family members share extraordinary powers of recall

The volunteers are now keeping detailed diaries, so that the scientists can test whether particular kinds of memories are better suited to recollection. People might be better at remembering emotional memories, for instance