SciByte

NASA is now considering other science missions

the health of the spacecraft, but it is so far listed as good (except for the two damaged reaction wheels).

There are limiting factors

radiation can degrade components over time, and a stray micrometeorid could (as a small chance) cause damage on the spacecraft

a state where the spacecraft uses as little fuel as possible

point rest state right now

will extend the fuel “budget” for years

unable to say just how many years yet

Another concern is NASA’s limited budget

Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star’s habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form

NASA made several attempts to resurrect the wheels

follow-up spacecraft planned: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which is expected to start around 2017 or 2018. It will look for alien planets in the brightest and closest stars in the entire sky, in locations that are (in relative terms) close to Earth.

relatively big

because the moon orbits so close to Mars

just 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers

Phobos takes eight hours to complete one lap around Mars

Observations of Phobos and Deimos by Curiosity and

Opportunity should help researchers refine their knowledge of the two moons' orbits

hibernation simply refers to the seasonal bodily changes that occur in some animals—slower heart rates, decreased oxygen intake, and a reduced ability to regulate body temperature

during hibernation, a lemur’s breathing can slow to one inhalation every 20 minutes, and its heart rate drops from a normal 200 beats per minute to just 4 beats per minute

lemurs can hibernate, surviving three-quarters of a year without deep sleep,

The longest a human has ever been recorded going without sleep is allegedly 18 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes

severely sleep-deprived humans have a tendency to fall asleep for seconds at a time, it’s hard to prove such claims without brain monitoring

rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—which is when we dream

non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep is vital. When you fall into bed after pulling an all-nighter

deep, non-REM sleep that you want

when lemurs hibernate, scientists speculate that they experience only REM sleep. Though no one can prove whether lemurs actually dream

primates exhibit all the telltale signs of a full night’s REM sleep such as increased brain activity, rapid eye movements, and muscle paralysis

A 1989 study by sleep scientist

demonstrated the lethal consequences of sleep deprivation

When the researcher kept ten rats awake, depriving them of non-REM sleep, they developed skin lesions, lost weight, and experienced an erosion of their gastrointestinal tracts.

After 32 days, all of the rats were dead

If you completely deprive animals of [non-REM] sleep, then they die

yet the lemurs that hibernate appear to be able to go for months without sleep…and they’re not dying

Lemurs in captivity often don’t hibernate

Some of [the lemurs hibernated] 40 feet off the ground in the middle of the forest in coastal Madagascar

team visited the primates in their natural habitat—Madagascar

By placing the lemurs in special nesting boxes and attaching EEGs to their tiny foreheads while they hibernated, Krystal was able to record their vital signs

found that when it was warm outside, close to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), the primates would only hibernate in REM sleep.

A team led by oceanographer

bounced sound waves off the deep-sea mountain to measure its size

Tamu Massif forms a broad, rounded dome rising 4 kilometers from the seafloor and stretching 450 by 650 kilometers across

Core samples that the researchers extracted from the volcano’s slopes showed that, during its prime 145 million years ago, the ancient mound spewed lava sheets 23 meters thick.

As temperatures inside the body fall, several failsafe systems spring into action

Blood vessels near the skin squeeze tight to hold warmth in, the body starts to shiver and brown fat, a tissue that’s especially plentiful in newborns, starts to produce heat

colleagues bypassed the rats’ defenses against the cold with a compound that’s similar to adenosine, a molecule in the body that signals sleepiness

After about an hour in a room chilled to 15° Celsius, the rats grew lethargic

brain waves slowed, their blood pressure dropped and their heart grew sluggish, occasionally skipping beats

The rats’ core temperature dropped from about 38°  to about 30° C, or 80° Fahrenheit

measured even lower temperatures in further experiments — rats’ core body temperature reached 15° C or about 57° F.

The rats weren’t in a coma, nor were they asleep or truly hibernating

Hibernating animals’ metabolisms plummet and their temperatures sink much lower

an Arctic ground squirrel, for instance, cools to about —3° C when it hibernates

It’s a new state

don’t really know what it is

In the experiment, loud noises and tail pinches failed to arouse the rats.

They didn’t eat or drink. Occasionally, one would slither into a corner, but for the most part, the animals stayed still for up to 6 hours

In unpublished experiments, Tupone has kept the animals in the unresponsive state for 24 hours, he says.

Warming the room coaxed the rats out of their torpor

The recovery process takes about 12 hours, during which the animals ate and drank voraciously

After recovering, the animals were alert, moved around their cages normally and slept when tired

When people have heart attacks or strokes, clinicians can use ice packs or frigid water to chill people and prevent further tissue damage

those methods of cooling take time and can have dangerous side effects

the effect seems to carry over to tasks in everyday life and is still there after six months

The study also shows how patterns of brain activity change as those cognitive skills improve

NeuroRacer is a three-dimensional video game in which players steer a car along a winding, hilly road with their left thumb, while keeping an eye out for signs that randomly pop up

If the sign is a particular shape and colour, players have to shoot it down using a finger on their right hand

draws on a mix of cognitive skills just as real life does — such as attention focusing, task switching and working memory

first recruited around 30 participants for each of six decades of life, from the 20s to the 70s

confirmed that multitasking skills as measured by the game deteriorated linearly with age

then recruited 46 participants aged 60–85

put them through a 4-week training period with a version of NeuroRacer that increased in difficulty as the player improved

After training, subjects had improved so much that they achieved higher scores than untrained 20-year-olds

the skill remained six months later without practice

scientists also conducted a battery of cognitive tests on the participants before and after training

Certain cognitive abilities that were not specifically targeted by the game improved and remained improved

working memory and sustained attention

occurred 13.8 billion years ago

These newfound objects allowed the researchers to calculate that an FRB should occur once every 10 seconds

whether the new signals came from inside or outside the Milky Way.

they studied how the radio waves were affected by the material they pass through — a technique that could allow these new objects to shed light on the components of space.

As radio waves travel in space, they are stretched and slowed by the ionized material through which they move

Using models, the team concluded that the FRBs traveled billions of light-years — much farther than the edge of Earth's galaxy

the source is likely located in another galaxy

They are so bright and narrow that we can limit the size of the emission region at the source to just a few hundred kilometers

Although the explosions are brief, the astronomers can pinpoint the bursts' locations pretty accurately

No corresponding object could be observed in optical, gamma or X-ray wavelengths, so the explosions' origins remain unknown to scientists

Possible sources

intersecting magnetic fields from two neutron stars, extremely dense city-size bodies packing the mass of the sun.

A special kind of supernova orbited by a neutron star could potentially produce radio bursts as the star's magnetic field interacts with the explosion of the supernova

such combinations would be rare

favorite explanation is a giant burst from a magnetar, a highly magnetized type of neutron star

performed approximately a year after the FRBs were first spotted, looked at whether the objects continued to produce emission, but the signals appear to be nonrepeating

Efforts are ongoing at the moment to detect FRBs in close to real time, such that they can be followed up quickly

the powerful radio pulses emanate from sources 5 billion to nearly 11 billion light years away

these sources remains a mystery

but “clearly they’re very energetic events, probably cataclysmic.”

One-time radio pulses have been hard to detect

today’s telescopes capture radio waves from such a small fraction of the sky

the instruments lack the ultrafast time resolution required to pinpoint the short-lived bursts

The four new blips may add weight to the only other extragalactic radio burst ever witnessed, reported seven years

only had one burst

wondered whether it was

artifact

a Grade 10 student

designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts

and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness

Using four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air

bought Peltier tiles and tested them to see if they could produce sufficient power to light an LED

power was no problem but getting the needed voltage was, as the tiles did not generate enough of the voltage needed

some changes to the circuit design

used the Internet for information, experimented with different circuits

finding an energy-harvesting article

that made note of a circuit that could provide enough voltage when used with a recommended transformer

The final design included mounting the Peltiers on a hollow aluminum tube which was inserted in a larger PVC pipe with an opening that allowed ambient air to cool the tube

The palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe and warmed the tiles.

The result was a bright light at 5 degree Celcius [sic] of Peltier differential

Materials for the flashlight project cost her $26

The top winner gets a $50,000 scholarship and trip to the Galapagos Islands

The prize ceremony takes place in September. Winners will be chosen in different age categories—13-14, 15-16, 17-18.

Unlike people have been led to believe, they do not have chunks of rotting flesh from their meals on their teeth, cultivating bacteria

the poor hygiene of water buffalo is responsible for perceptions about deadly toxic bacteria in the dragons

They now populate the islands of Indonesia where they prey on the introduced water buffalo, and on pigs and deer

a pair of researchers

has discovered how fear can actually increase or decrease the ability to discriminate among sounds depending on context

study

emotional conditioning in mice to investigate how hearing acuity (the ability to distinguish between tones of different frequencies) can change following a traumatic event, known as emotional learning

In these experiments

animals learn to distinguish between potentially dangerous and safe sounds—called "emotional discrimination learning."

This type of conditioning tends to result in relatively poor learning, but

designed a series of learning tasks intended to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the mice, varying the difficulty of the

The researchers found that, as expected, fine emotional learning tasks produced greater learning specificity than tests in which the tones were farther apart in frequency

animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies

animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response

pitch discrimination abilities were measured in the animals, the mice with more specific responses displayed much finer auditory acuity than the mice who were frightened by a broader range of frequencies

Another interesting finding of this study is that the effects of emotional learning on hearing perception were mediated by a specific brain region, the auditory cortex

The auditory cortex has been known as an important area responsible for auditory plasticity

Surprisingly

found that the auditory cortex did not play a role in emotional learning

the specificity of emotional learning is controlled by the amygdala and sub-cortical auditory areas

hypothesis is that the amygdala and cortex are modifying subcortical auditory processing areas. The sensory cortex is responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, but it's not necessary for developing specialized or generalized emotional responses

when the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibition opened

at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Atlantis dominates the center of a multistory building that allows views of the orbiter from many angles.