SciByte

A little more than 2 1/2 hours into the spacewalk

removed the 260-pound pump controller box from the P6 truss and replaced it with a spare that had been stowed nearby

Spacewalkers practice underwater in the facility and divers provide assistance and dive safety protection during spacewalk simulations

The spacewalk is the 168th in support of the assembly and maintenance of the space

The device contains the mechanical systems that drive the cooling functions for the port truss.

The science team expects to use analysis of material from Cumberland to check

Preliminary findings from analysis of

rock powder by Curiosity's onboard laboratory instruments indicate that the location long ago had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life

Chaser demonstrated her grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”

The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions

Throughout the first three years of Chaser’s life, Pilley and a colleague trained the dog to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name

researchers also taught Chaser the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions

Chaser learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.

Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear

suspects that

first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory. Then

held that information in mind while deciding which of two objects to bring to which of two other objects.

Chaser started sentence training at age 7. She stood facing a pair of objects she knew by name

An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.

After several weeks of training, two experiments conducted

had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair

read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training

To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly

student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”

In 28 of 40 attempts, Chaser grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.

Another experiment tested Chaser’s ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first

with two objects behind her at the other end of the bed

After hearing a command, Chaser turned around and nabbed one of the objects.

then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials

"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how,"

lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona

two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages—they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language

Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."

Gonzales's research supports the first view—that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or "sound systems

The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8.

Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a 'pa' or a 'ba' sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard

'pa' and 'ba' sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly

'ba,' for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips

Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce 'pa' in a manner similar to English 'ba.'

English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the 'ba' and 'pa' sounds they hear in Spanish

most people think about differences between languages

different words and they have different grammars

at their base languages use different sounds

One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different

someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their 'pa' is like an English 'ba,' so when they say a word with 'pa,' it will sound like a 'ba' to an English monolingual

For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English

Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words—bafri and pafri—which are not real words in either language

Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the 'r' getting a Spanish pronunciation

Participants perceived 'ba' and 'pa' sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of 'r,' or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of 'r.'

when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers

hearing the exact same 'ba's and 'pa's would label them differently depending on the context

When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled 'ba' and 'pa' sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing

that lack of an effect

provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals

true primarily for those who learn two languages very young

If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent

astronomers knew that the galaxy contained at least 350 exoplanets, nearly all of them the size of Jupiter or larger

Kepler’s then spent four years

added nearly 3,000 planets

It will take at least several weeks before they beam commands up to the $600-million telescope, and they admit that a fix is a long shot.

Kepler engineers

strategizing about how to remotely repair one of two broken reaction wheels that precisely point the telescope

astronomers are convinced that the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of planets, roughly one for every star, with at least 17 billion of them Earth-sized

NASA’s next exoplanet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which is scheduled for a 2017 launch

Whereas Kepler has fixed its gaze on distant stars, TESS will focus on bright, nearby stars so that powerful telescopes like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe the atmospheres of planets that TESS discovers

s TESS

while less sensitive than Kepler, will nonetheless uncover plenty of planets in our neighborhood, including a handful of Earth-sized worlds

Astronomers

Other astronomers

are still optimistic. They have a year of data from the telescope left to analyze

quite possibly including an Earth-sized planet orbiting a sunlike star at a distance suitable for life

Astronomers hope to pair size measurements of planets observed by telescopes such as TESS with mass readings from ground-based scopes that look for subtle wobbles in stars’ motion caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.

Several years ago

radial velocity, could pick out only hulking planets that delivered a hard yank to their stars

lately the technology has improved so drastically that in October 2012, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher instrument

spotted what appears to be a planet only slightly heavier than Earth tightly orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a sunlike star a mere 4.4 light-years away

Kepler’s main goal was to determine the frequency of Earthlike planets in the galaxy

have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, but

actually determining that number

Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen

Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.

“Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it

Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.

made the discovery at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called “Cape York”

What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions

Opportunity can clearly see the alteration

Esperance is unlike any rock previously investigated by Opportunity; containing far more aluminum and silica which is indicative of clay minerals and lower levels of calcium and iron.

Most, but not all of the rocks inspected to date by Opportunity were formed in an environment of highly acidic water

More information on MA365 — perhaps with information on crew selection — should come in August, when members of the Phase 1 crew issue a report at the 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention

vehicles

compete in four challenges, designed to replicate the activities of NASA's rovers on Mars.

teams will guide their rovers to collect the subsurface soil samples most likely to contain photosynthetic bacteria, lichen and other bits of living material

specific tasks change each year, but the most difficult ones continue to be those that need rovers to do humanlike work

team members must guide their rovers via a remote connection, such as a computer in the back of a truck, as long as it's shielded so the team can't see their rovers

The URC is based on the assumption that the rovers are telerobots, which means they would be operated by astronauts on or orbiting Mars

In addition to collecting soil, the rovers will deliver a series of packages, such as emergency supplies to "astronauts" (URC staff) in the field, fix a dust-covered solar panel (without water, of course) and finally, navigate an obstacle course that will include climbing steep grades, getting over boulders and passing through PVC pipe gates, aimed to test each rover's maneuverability.

This year's teams represent universities and colleges in Canada, India, Poland and the United States

including two-time returning champions Toronto's York University (2012 and 2009) and Oregon State (2010 and 2008).

found clumps of mosses that looked dead. But among the brown tangles, the team noticed a few green sprigs

The team took brown moss samples back to the lab and used radiocarbon dating to determine that they had lived about 400 years ago

Based on the glacier’s retreat rate, the researchers estimated the plants had been uncovered for less than two years.

the team ground up some of the plants and gave them nutrients, water and light

From seven of 24 samples, a total of four moss species grew

The budding plants didn’t come from seeds or spores

In moss

any cell can be reset, almost like a stem cell, to grow a new plant

how long a moss cell can stay viable is “anyone’s guess,”

the findings suggest that the regenerated mosses may help repopulate ecosystems after glaciers retreat

they hope to appeal to a wide creative gamut of hobbyists, artists, and engineers for innovative ways to use their products

are Paint, they emphasized, is the first non-toxic electrically conductive paint available

the substance is child friendly, which opens the door to educational projects, including toys, and touch-sensitive paper drawings that play sounds

According to the company, Bare Paint has a surface resistivity of approximately 55 ohms/square at 50 microns layer thickness

The product is water-based but it is not waterproof

generally split applications into two simple classifications, signaling and powering

Signaling could include using the Paint as a potentiometer while interfacing with a micro-controller, as a conduit in a larger circuit or as a capacitive sensor

Powering a device would include lighting LED's or driving small speakers

Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago

scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on Russia's Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.

Scientists already have deciphered much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth from balls of mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost

Those who succeed in recreating an extinct animal could claim a "Jurassic Park prize

the concept of which is being developed by the X Prize Foundation

May 29) that it would build and launch a space telescope for public use if it could raise at least $1 million in 33 days.

The telescope will be a twin copy of the Arkyd spacecraft the company is developing to detect, track and study asteroids in preparation for its mining mission

A test version of the spacecraft is set for its maiden trial flight in April 2014, while the crowdfunded model would launch in early 2015

public backers would use it to study celestial objects of their choice

also have the option of sponsoring research projects at schools, universities or museums that could use the instrument.

The telescope will also take

self portraits that show the telescope in orbit, with a user-submitted photo displayed on the instrument's screen

A camera mounted on the hull of the spacecraft will snap the photo.

Already more than 200 backers have ordered selfies for $25 and above.

But if the crowdfunding campaign fails to reach its $1 million goal by June 30, the company will receive none of the money it has raised