SciByte

The technology

could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited

The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army

The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling

symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.

The researchers took advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries

For brain edemas, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue

For brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.

Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.

Computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.

The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.

engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants

One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver

the waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on

The device's diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans

Kepler

needs at least three reaction wheels to be able to point precisely enough to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars

that doesn’t require such precise pointing abilities

Last year, NASA had approved an extended mission for Kepler through 2016

Initially, they did see some movement on the wheel

but it quickly went back

have a few things to try

get wheel #4 working again

they are currently using thrusters to stabilize the spacecraft, and in its current mode, the onboard fuel will last for several months

a “Point Rest State,”

would extend the fuel to last a period of several years

where we can park the vehicle

Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink

software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week

the team completed the upload of the parameters the software will use

there is the possibility of the wheel running in the opposite direction, but running the wheel backward would mean they would need to use more thruster fuel

reaction wheels try to balance the forces from the solar pressure, that’s what forces a wheel to run

Earlier this year, elevated friction was detected in reaction wheel #4

even if the Kepler spacecraft is unable to make more observations, there are still terabytes of data to pore over

have two years of data that has yet to be searched through

Researchers

analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada

found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms – called isotopes – of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon

there is as much hydrogen in the water as around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, many of which teem with microscopic life

The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water

These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.

The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now

Using ground-breaking techniques

researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.

interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life

Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life

the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute

don't yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life

The Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.

golf-cart-size Opportunity

landed on Mars in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet

Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later

Opportunity had been working at a section of the rim dubbed "Cape York" since the middle of 2011

this week it began trekking toward an area called Solander Point, which lies 1.4 miles (2.2 km) away

Opportunity's handlers have said they'd like to add this milestone to the rover's resume, though science remains the mission's top priority

could see if the lubricant that is in there, having sat quietly, has redistributed itself, and maybe it will work

The other scheme,

this has never been tried, involves using thrusters and the solar pressure exerted on the solar panels to try and act as a third reaction wheel and provide additional pointing stability

Kepler carries a photometer, not a camera, that looks at the brightness of stars, and so its optics deliberately defocus light from stars to create a nice spread of light on the detector, which is not ideal for spotting asteroids

The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station

While Cassidy and Marshburn prepare in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA