SciByte

Dawn arrived in orbit around Vesta in July 2011

Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system and second most massive object in the asteroid belt

Last month, NASA extended Dawn's stay at Vesta by an extra 40 days to give the spacecraft more time to study the asteroid

spacecraft has revealed that many new details about Vesta

it is rich in iron and magnesium

experiences chilly temperatures that range from minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) in the sunlight, to minus150 degrees F (minus 100 degrees C) in shadowed areas.

Scientists think Vesta is a 4.5 billion-year-old relic left over from the formation of the solar system

In August the probe will move on to the Texas-size Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt and a space rock so large it is considered a dwarf planet.

expected to arrive at Ceres in February 2015

astronomers were able to determine its mass and radius

Spitzer became the first telescope to detect light from a planet beyond our solar system, when it saw the infrared light of a “hot Jupiter

NASA’s Hubble and Kepler space telescopes

using the same method

In this method, a telescope gazes at a star as a planet circles behind it. When the planet disappears from view, the light from the star system dips ever so slightly, but enough that astronomers can determine how much light came from the planet itself

information reveals the temperature of a planet, and, in some cases, its atmospheric components

other current planet-hunting methods obtain indirect measurements of a planet by observing its effects on the star.

about 8.57 Earth masses

radius is 1.63 times that of Earth

density is 10.9 ± 3.1 g cm-3 (the average density of Earth is 5.515 g cm-3),

Cancri e is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star

James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, likely will be able to learn even more about the planet’s composition

might be able to use a similar infrared method to Spitzer to search other potentially habitable planets for signs of molecules possibly related to life.

discovered that a particular enzyme, called 5-LOX, becomes more active in weightlessness.  

5-LOX enzyme in part regulates the life expectancy of human cells

Blood samples from two healthy donors were sent to the orbital outpost

One set was exposed to weightlessness for two days, while the other was held in a small centrifuge to simulate Earth-like gravity

samples were then frozen and sent back to Earth for analysis.

weightless samples showed more 5-LOX activity than the centrifuged samples

centrifuged samples remained identical to the ground samples

We now have a target enzyme

e 5-LOX enzyme can be blocked with existing drugs, so using these findings to improve human health could be a close reality

Research will continue

follow-up experiment returned to Earth in a Soyuz capsule with the Expedition 30 crew last week

Scientists will look for other changes in the cells to understand the underlying mechanisms fully.

When backlit in a darkened room the transparencies are transformed

illuminating the various organisms

have been kept in a dark room in the University’s Hatherly Laboratories since the 1960s.

storage conditions have proved ideal and the collection is still in excellent condition.

University of Exeter zoologist Dr. Robin Wootton, whose cataloguing project has brought the slides out of obscurity

painstakingly photographed each individual painting, using Photoshop Elements to optimise lighting and visibility.

the history of the transparencies

the University had acquired them from a Mrs F.R. Rowley on the death of her husband

in the late 1930s

it is possible that he may have known Hudson personally

designed to be illuminated from behind in a darkened

color image was planned by the MSL team, used to confirm that MAHLI is operating as it should

two green dots are reflections of the camera’s LED lights

rusty-orange out-of-focus parts are cables

silver thing is a bracket holding said cables.

green light means you pass (and your bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it’s just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently

red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor’s office to check if something more serious is an issue.

sensor chip that

It's coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath

nanowires enable the sensor to detect just a few molecules of the disease marker gas in a 'sea' of billions of molecules of other compounds that the breath consists of

can't buy this in the stores just yet

individual tests such as an acetone-detecting breathalyzer for monitoring diabetes and an ammonia-detecting breathalyzer to determine when to end a home-based hemodialysis treatment--are still being evaluated clinically

researchers envision developing the technology such that a number of these tests can be performed with a single device

you might be able to self-detect a whole range of diseases and disorders, including lung cancer, by just exhaling into a handheld breathalyzer.

nanowires can be rigged to detect infectious viruses and microbes like Salmonella, E. coli or even anthrax

the current method of extracting BBI from soybeans is time-consuming and involves harsh chemicals

soybean seeds incubated in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit naturally release large amounts of BBI that can easily be harvested from the water

protein appeared to be active

tests showing that it stopped breast cancer cells from dividing in a laboratory dish

Opportunity will look back with its panoramic camera to acquire multi-filter imaging of the surface targets it studied on Greeley Haven.

rover team will also check that the power supply still looks sufficient with the rover at a reduced tilt.

first drive since Dec. 26, 2011, took the rover about 12 feet (3.67 meters) northwest and downhill on Tuesday, May 8.

exploring the Meridiani region of Mars since landing in January 2004

arrived at the Cape York section of the rim of Endeavour Crater in August 2011

studying rock and soil targets on Cape York since then.

next goal is a few meters farther north on Cape York, at a bright-looking patch of what may be dust

haven't been able to see much dust in Meridiani

Endeavour Crater offers Opportunity a setting for plenty of productive

crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter

Unless wind removes some dust from Opportunity's solar array, allowing more sunlight to reach the solar cells, the rover will need to work during the next few weeks at locations with no southward slope

kept a northward tilt of about 15 degrees in recent months at its winter haven

favorably angled toward the winter sun low in the northern sky

supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region’s rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved.

Maya glyphs near his face call him “Younger Brother Obsidian,” a curious title seldom seen in Maya text. Based on other Maya sites, Saturno theorizes he could be the son or younger brother of the king and possibly the artist-scribe who lived in the house. “The portrait of the king implies a relationship between whoever lived in this space and the royal family,” Saturno said.

markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future

Perhaps most important, the otherwise humble chamber offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Maya society

in today's Xultún

just 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of jungle floor—it's a wonder Saturno's team found the artwork at all

At the Guatemalan site in 2010 the Boston University archaeologist and Ph.D. student Franco Rossi were inspecting a looters' tunnel, where an undergraduate student had noticed the faintest traces of paint on a thin stucco wall.

began cleaning off 1,200-year-old mud and suddenly a little more red paint appeared.

What the team found, after a full excavation in 2011, is likely the ancient workroom of a Maya scribe, a record-keeper of Xultún.

this was a workspace. People were seated on this bench" painting books that have long since disintegrated

The books would have been filled with elaborate calculations intended to predict the city's fortunes. The numbers on the wall were "fixed tabulations that they can then refer to—tables more or less like those in the back of your chemistry book," he added.

Undoubtedly this type of room exists at every Maya site in the Late Classic [period] and probably earlier, but it's our only example thus far."

Maya civilization spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region. Around A.D. 900 the Classic Maya centers, including Xultún, collapsed after a series of droughts and perhaps political conflicts

The apparent desperation of those final years may have played out on the walls of the newly revealed room—the only major excavation so far in Xultún.

Despite past looting, the interior of the newfound room is nearly perfectly preserved.

Among the artworks on the three intact walls is a detailed orange painting of a man wearing white disks on his head and chest—likely the scribe himself

the researchers noticed several barely visible hieroglyphic texts, painted and etched along the east and north walls of the room

One is a lunar table, and the other is a "ring number"—something previously known only from much later Maya books, where it was used as part of a backward calculation in establishing a base date for planetary cycles

Nearby is a sequence of numbered intervals corresponding to key calendrical and planetary cycles.

The calculations include dates some 7,000 years in the future

The Maya at Xultún were likely less concerned with the end of the world than the end of their world

Sadly, we may never understand the full context of the workroom. Many of the glyphs are badly faded. Worse, the entire city of Xultún was looted clean during the 70s, leaving very little other writing or antiquities.

Because of this, and despite Xultún's obvious prominence in the Maya world, many archaeologists had written off the

Paint doesn't preserve well in the rain forest climate of Guatemala, and Saturno figured that the faint red and black lines his student had found weren't going to yield much information

The discovery was "certainly nothing to write home about

felt he had a responsibility to excavate the room the looters had tried to reach, if only to be able to report the size of the structure along with the paint finding.

shocked to run into a brilliantly painted portrait: a Mayan king, sitting on his throne, wearing a red crown with blue feathers flowing out behind him.

Another figure peeks out from behind him

On an adjoining wall, three loincloth-clad figures sit, wearing feathered headdresses

ext to the king, a man painted in brilliant orange wearing jade bracelets reaches out with a stylus, likely identifying him as a scribe. He is labeled as "Younger Brother Obsidian," or perhaps "Junior Obsidian

small, 6-foot-by-6-foot room

calendar seemed to have been added after the murals were completed

almost as if an ancient scribe got sick of flipping through a document to find his timekeeping chart and decided to put it on the wall for at-a-glance reference

captioned "Older Brother Obsidian," or "Senior Obsidian,"

calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus,

Most likely

the wall calendar and the Dresden Codex both arose from earlier books that long ago rotted away

The murals only survived, because, instead of collapsing the room, Mayan engineers filled it with rubble and then built on top of it.

This is clearly a space where someone important was living, this important household of the noble class, and here you also have a mathematician working in that space," Stuart said. "It's a great illustration of how closely those roles were connected in Mayan society

Unfortunately, the name of the king pictured in the mural room has been lost.

Xultun was first discovered in 1915, less than 0.1 percent has been explored

Looters damaged much of the ancient city in the 1970s

much of historical significance has been lost. But archaeologists still don't even know how far the boundaries of the town extend.

So far, the sunspot has not triggered huge explosions from the sun, which scientists call coronal mass ejections.

Sunspot region AR 1476 was responsible for nearly all of the sun's storm activity

So far, the sunspot has fired off several flares, including a strong solar storm early Thursday (May 10).

These flares were all short-lived and there were no associated coronal mass ejections, so we do not expect any geomagnetic storms at Earth

It will take sunspot AR 1476 about two weeks to complete its trip across the face of the sun, as seen from Earth

NASA plans to webcast live footage of the transit from SDO, whose images should be spectacular.

Dragon is designed to need only relatively minor modifications to house humans

NASA has contracts with additional companies such as Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and United Launch Alliance to develop man-rated vehicles to transport astronauts to the space station.