SciByte

While the

rover was designed to withstand punishing space weather, its

decided to power it down as a precaution since it suffered a recent computer problem

Opportunity rover and two NASA spacecraft circling overhead carried on with normal activities

The eruption did not appear severe or extreme, but "middle of the road

was not expected to have an impact on Earth

Since Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field, it does not experience geomagnetic storms

the planet sees a spike in radiation

Powerful solar blasts can cause trouble to Mars spacecraft. In 2003, an intense solar flare knocked out the radiation detector on the Odyssey orbiter

In the worst-case scenario, one or more of the working Mars spacecraft may enter "safe mode" in which science activities are halted but they remain in contact with Earth.

The delay means it'll take longer for Curiosity to return to analyzing the pinch of rock powder it collected from a recent drilling

Engineers were in the middle of troubleshooting when they decided to wait for the weather to pass

One property that will allow several teams researching the particle to declare whether or not it is a Higgs, is called spin

A Higgs must have spin-zero

All the analysis conducted so far strongly indicates spin-zero, but it is not yet able to rule out entirely the possibility that the particle has spin-two

Until we can confidently tie down the particle's spin, the particle will remain Higgs-like

looking "more and more"

discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vosto

believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica

The Russian team last year drilled almost four kilometres (2.34 miles) to reach the lake and take the samples.

t the interest surrounded one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms.

"In terms of work with DNA this is basically zero. A level of 90 percent usually means that the organism is unknown."

not even possible to find the genetic descendants of the bacteria.

"If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth."

new samples of water would be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May.

"If we manage to find the same group of organisms in this water we can say for sure that we have found new life on Earth that exists in no database,"

Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions

whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.

Saturn's moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.

, will be the first CubeSats to leave Earth's orbit for interplanetary space.

CubeSats are tiny satellites, some no bigger than four inches (10 cm) on each side, sent into orbit as secondary payloads on other launch vehicles

If the interplanetary test launch succeeds, CubeSats could someday blanket the solar system, conducting cheap, high-risk missions to comets, asteroids, moons and planets

Just where the pioneering CubeSats will go is still unclear, however, since it’s not known yet which model rocket will be used for launch

The first mission will be basically an escape trajectory

he rocket's going to send us in some unknown direction

Lacking much propulsion or scientific instrumentation, the INSPIRE craft are a test of whether tiny machines can survive the harsh environment of space.

The INSPIRE project has been approved by NASA to launch sometime between 2014 and 2016, but a specific launch vehicle hasn't been selected.

One of the challenges of the project is figuring how the tiny satellites will communicate with Earth.

CubeSats are far cheaper than a traditional space mission but they lack room for complex communications systems or large power sources.

As we head away from Earth, we're talking about using much larger antennas" to communicate with the low-powered craf

Furthermore, once a spacecraft leaves the protective magnetic field surrounding Earth, it's at risk of failure from solar radiation

Traditional satellites are built with more expensive "radiation-hardened" components

satellites are instead built to respond to a shut-down command from Earth if space weather systems detect an oncoming solar flare

about 65 to 67 million years ago

The skull

also showed signs of trauma

from the size and shape of the marks on the bone

paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History

speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex

, though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack,

. The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth,"

also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.

Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada

not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack

The size of the scar is relatively small

, and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.

certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones,"

Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound.

But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead

It's very likely that this particular

wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents

Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear

. "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen,"

Duckbill dinosaurs

were not without defenses.

, for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.

Furthermore, they were fast

had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight,"

Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors

Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting

grasping a block with "jaws" and flinging it out of the way.

The idea is to make BigDog successfully cope with heavy objects that need to be hurled out of the way

BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule; about 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and weighs 240 lbs

BigDog can run at four miles per hour, walk across the roughest terrain, make its way through mud and snow (its four legs are articulated like an animal

The robot carries 300-plus pound loads. According to Boston Dynamics, BigDog covered 12.8 miles without stopping or refueling, setting a world record for legged vehicles.

investigators

investigators say the prompt administration of antiviral treatment likely led to this infant's cure by halting the formation of hard-to-treat viral reservoirs

Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place

dormant cells responsible for reigniting the infection in most HIV patients within weeks of stopping therapy

researchers say they believe this is precisely what happened in the child described in the report

"functionally cured," a condition that occurs when a patient achieves and maintains long-term viral remission without lifelong treatment and standard clinical tests fail to detect HIV replication in the blood

a sterilizing cure—a complete eradication of all viral traces from the body

a functional cure occurs when viral presence is so minimal, it remains undetectable by standard clinical tests, yet discernible by ultrasensitive methods

The child described

was born to an HIV-infected mother and received combination antiretroviral treatment beginning 30 hours after birth.

A series of tests showed progressively diminishing viral presence in the infant's blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth

The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while

Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood

Test for HIV-specific antibodies—the standard clinical indicator of HIV infection—also remained negative

Currently, high-risk newborns—those born to mothers with poorly controlled infections or whose mothers' HIV status is discovered around the time of delivery—receive a combination of antivirals at prophylactic doses to prevent infection for six weeks and start therapeutic doses if and once infection is diagnosed

this particular case

may change the current practice because it highlights the curative potential of very early ART

natural viral suppression without treatment is an exceedingly rare phenomenon observed in less than half a percent of HIV-infected adults

HIV experts have long sought a way to help all HIV patients achieve elite-controller status

"elite controllers," whose immune systems are able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels

investigators caution they don't have enough data to recommend change right now to the current practice of treating high-risk infants

but the infant's case provides the rationale to start proof-of-principle studies in all high-risk newborns

next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns

A single case of sterilizing cure has been reported so far

in an HIV-positive man treated with a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. The bone marrow cells came from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the white blood cells that renders some people resistant to HIV

Such a complex treatment approach, however, HIV experts agree, is neither feasible nor practical for the 33 million people worldwide infected with HIV

researchers say preventing mother-to-child transmission remains the primary goal

Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98 percent of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive pregnant women