SciByte

hiked more than 70 miles (or 50 hours) during the trip

captured a collection of panoramas at key camps and other interesting stops along the way

mountain views were shot with a tripod and a digital camera with a fisheye lens

photos from the summits and some surrounding attractions and read more about the team behind the Everest trip on the Google Maps blog.

Last year

he said they had found the engines from Apollo 11, but it may be been difficult to determine exactly which flight the ones found were from

NASA launched 65 F-1 engines, five per flight, on 13 Saturn V boosters between 1967 and 1973

Supposedly there would be serial numbers to make the identification of which flight these engines were from

still on the ship, so perhaps the identification will come later

Each of the engines stands 19 feet tall by 12 feet wide and weigh over 18,000 pounds.

Five F-1 engines were used in the 138-foot-tall S-IC, or first stage, of each Saturn V

three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface

photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces

5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface

automated fault-protection action, entering ‘safe mode’ at about 8 p.m. PDT (11 p.m. EDT) on March 16,

It did not switch to the A-side computer, which was restored last week and is available as a back-up if needed. The rover is stable, healthy and in communication with engineers.

safe-mode entry was triggered when a command file failed a size-check by the rover’s protective software

Engineers diagnosed a software bug that appended an unrelated file to the file being checked, causing the size mismatch

another hiatus — this one planned — will commence on April 4, when Mars will begin passing behind the Sun from Earth’s perspective

Mission engineers will refrain from sending commands to the rover during a four-week period to avoid data corruption from solar interference.

Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that can poke holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV, and other viruses

in addition to anti-viral therapy, the paper's senior author

has shown melittin-loaded nanoparticles to be effective in killing tumor cells.

The new study shows that melittin loaded onto these nanoparticles does not harm normal cells

because

added protective bumpers to the nanoparticle surface

When the nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, which are much larger in size, the particles simply bounce off

HIV, on the other hand, is even smaller than the nanoparticle, so HIV fits between the bumpers and makes contact with the surface of the nanoparticle, where the bee toxin awaits

, an advantage of this approach is that the nanoparticle attacks an essential part of the virus' structure. In contrast, most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus's ability to replicate.

this anti-replication strategy does nothing to stop initial infection, and some strains of the virus have found ways around these drugs and reproduce anyway.

attacking an inherent physical property of HIV

Theoretically, there isn't any way for the virus to adapt to that

potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant

Since melittin attacks double-layered membranes indiscriminately, this concept is not limited to HIV.

Many viruses, including hepatitis B and C, rely on the same kind of protective envelope and would be vulnerable to melittin-loaded nanoparticles

When we combine what we have learned from our remote sensing and contact science instruments with the data that's coming in from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.

the information that we're getting from the CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we've ever analyzed before on Mars

they tell us that the John Klein rock was deposited in a fresh water environment

This is an important contrast with other sedimentary environments that we've visited on Mars, like the Meridiani Planum landing site where the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, has been operating since 2004.

At that site, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.

direct contrast to the fresh water environment we're seeing here at the John Klein Site

The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment

We found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.

these few tablespoons of powder from a Martian rock have provided the Curiosity science team with an exciting new dataset