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Mars Base

'Lost world' discovered in remote Australia - 0 views

phys.org/...st-world-remote-australia.html

scibyte108

shared by Mars Base on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • An expedition to a remote part of northern Australia has uncovered three new vertebrate species isolated for millions of years
  • University and a National Geographic film crew were dropped by helicopter onto the rugged Cape Melville mountain range on Cape York Peninsula
  • leaf-tail gecko, a gold-coloured skink—a type of lizard—and a brown-spotted, yellow boulder-dwelling frog, none of them ever seen before
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The virtually impassable mountain range is home to millions of black granite boulders the size of cars and houses piled hundreds of metres high
  • Cape Melville, a plateau of boulder-strewn rainforest on top
  • a small boulder-dwelling frog, the Blotched Boulder-frog, which during the dry season lives deep in the labyrinth of the boulder-field where conditions are cool and moist
  • In the absence of water
  • tadpole develops within the egg and a fully formed frog hatches out.
  • The Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, which has huge eyes and a long, slender body, is highly distinct from its relatives
  • National Geographic, the team plans to return to Cape Melville within months to search for more new species, including snails, spiders, and perhaps even small mammals
Mars Base

SpaceX Signs Pact To Start Rocket Testing At NASA Stennis - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...rocket-testing-at-nasa-stennis

scibyte108 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • SpaceX
  • has signed a contract to research, develop and test Raptor methane rocket engines at the NASA Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi
  • plans to use the E-2 test stand at Stennis, which is able to support both vertical and horizontal rocket engine tests
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • A press release from his office said the presence of the private space company would boost jobs in the region
  • There’s little information on SpaceX’s website about what the Raptor engine is or specific development plans
  • Space News reports that it would be used for deep-space missions
  • SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has mentioned the engine previously when talking about Mars missions, according to multiple media reports
  • test the whole engine at Stennis
  • the first phase starts with the components
  • E-2 stand at Stennis is big enough for components, but we would need a bigger stand for the whole Raptor
  • reportedly hashing out a Space Act agreement to establish user fees and other parameters
  • Once that’s finished, the testing will begin, perhaps as early as next year
  • SpaceX currently does most of its rocket testing in Texas
Mars Base

New Earth-Like Blazing Hot Planet 'Kepler-78b' Discovered - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...overed-an-impossible-world.htm

scibyte108 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • first known Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density
  • diameter of 9,200 miles,
  • is 1.2 times the size of Earth and 1.7 times more massive than Earth and it is composed of iron and rock
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • planet circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one mile
  • one of tightest known orbit on record and due to this its formation is deemed as impossible and not suitable for life.
  • The scientists believe no planet can form so close to its star nor could it have moved to its current position.
  • Kepler-78b poses a challenge to theorists
  • When this planetary system was forming, the young star was larger than it is now.
  • the current orbit of Kepler-78b would have been inside the swollen star
  • The star of Kepler-78b is slightly smaller and less massive than the sun
  • Sun-like G-type star, which is  located 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus
  • The exoplanet was discovered using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope
  • follow up observations were made using W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii
Mars Base

New-found Earth-size Exoplanet Doomed - News Watch - 0 views

newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/...d-earth-sized-exoplanet-doomed

scibyte108 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • two independent research teams have now confirmed the planet’s mass and density by measuring “wobbles” of its sun-like host star, seen as the exoplanet orbits around it
  • it couldn’t have formed farther out and migrated inward, because it should have been drawn
  • straight into the star
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • more exotic possibilities is that it is the remnant core of a disrupted gas giant
  • The extreme gravitational pull from its star will draw it ever closer in, ripping the entire planet apart in about three billion years
Mars Base

Kepler Discovers Earth-Sized Mystery Planet - Popular Mechanics - 0 views

www.popularmechanics.com/...-sized-mystery-planet-16101131

scibyte108 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • it is difficult to measure the mass of planets that Kepler finds
  • it hard for ground-based telescopes to spot the subtle wobble of the star
  • since
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • orbits
  • close to its star, the planet exerts a greater gravitational pull on the star that it would if it were as far as Earth is from our sun
Mars Base

Regrowing human body parts: The dream comes within reach - NBC News.com - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...s-just-over-horizon-6C10984423

scibyte108 ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 05 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Sometime in the next few decades, humans may be able to regrow a finger here, a toe there – and maybe even fresh patches of beating heart tissue
  • Human hearts are among the most promising targets
  • A decade ago
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • demonstrated that zebrafish had the ability to repair a badly damaged heart, thanks to a particular protein that regulates the regenerative process
  • That trick could work for humans as well as fish
  • this month, researchers from the Gladstone Institutes showed that they could turn human scar tissue into electrically conductive tissue in a lab dish by fiddling with just a few key genes
  • Among the hurdles that lie ahead: taking that technique out of the lab and applying it to living human hearts
  • humans already have demonstrated some ability to regenerate body parts
  • very young children can fill out the tips of chopped off fingers and toes
  • the salamander, which can regrow a whole arm below the joint
  • Young mice are able to regenerate toes, too
  • been studying mouse toes to understand how a similar regrowth mechanism can be reactivated or imitated in adult humans
  • In 2010, his lab showed it was possible to enhance the regenerative response in adult mice
  • researchers are cautious about predicting how studies of animal regeneration will be applied to humans
  • it's dangerous to say, 'Yes, we expect to regenerate a limb
  • the field is reaching a turning point
Mars Base

Russia launches Sochi Olympic torch into space - 0 views

phys.org/...sochi-olympic-torch-space.html

scibyte109 Olympics

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Russian officials have made it clear that the torch will remain unlit at all times for safety reasons.
  • the Olympic torch was carried into space ahead of the 1996 and 2000 Olympics in Atlanta and Sydney but has never before been taken on a spacewalk
Mars Base

Astronomers answer key question: How common are habitable planets? - 0 views

phys.org/...-common-habitable-planets.html

scibyte109

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • astronomers analyzed all four years of Kepler data in search of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars
  • Based on this analysis, they estimate that 22 percent of stars like the sun have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, though not all may be rocky or have liquid water
  • NASA's Kepler spacecraft
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • provided enough data to complete its mission objective: to determine how many of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets
  • Based on a statistical analysis
  • astronomers now estimate that one in five stars like the sun have planets about the size of Earth and a surface temperature conducive to life.
  • nearly 20 years since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet around a normal star
  • Since then we have learned that most stars have planets of some size and that Earth-size planets are relatively common in close-in orbits that are too hot for life
  • Earth-size planets in Earth-size orbits are not necessarily hospitable to life, even if they orbit in the habitable zone of a star where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold
  • thick atmospheres, making it so hot at the surface that DNA-like molecules would not survive
  • rocky surfaces that could harbor liquid water suitable for living organisms
  • Last week,
  • provided hope that many such planets actually are rocky
  • NASA launched the Kepler space telescope in 2009 to look for planets that cross in front of, or transit, their stars, which causes a slight diminution – about one hundredth of one percent – in the star's brightness
  • 150,000 stars photographed every 30 minutes for four years
  • reported more than 3,000 planet candidates
  • the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii
  • help them determine each star's true brightness and calculate the diameter of each transiting planet, with an emphasis on Earth-diameter planets.
  • The team's definition of habitable is that a planet receives between four times and one-quarter the amount of light that Earth receives from the sun
  • Independently
  • focused on the 42,000 stars that are like the sun or slightly cooler and smaller, and found 603 candidate planets orbiting them
  • Only 10 of these were Earth-size, that is, one to two times the diameter of Earth and orbiting their star at a distance where they are heated to lukewarm temperatures suitable for life
  • Accounting for missed planets, as well as the fact that only a small fraction of planets are oriented so that they cross in front of their host star as seen from Earth, allowed them to estimate that 22 percent of all sun-like stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets in their habitable zones.
  • All of the potentially habitable planets found in their survey are around K stars, which are cooler and slightly smaller than the sun
  • analysis shows that the result for K stars can be extrapolated to G stars like the sun
Mars Base

An artificial blood substitute from Transylvania - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...d-substitute-transylvania.html

scibyte109

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Researchers in
  • Romania, have recently made some significant advances in developing artificial blood substitutes
  • formulation is based not on synthetic hemoglobins, but rather on hemerythrin protein extracted from marine worms
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the team has been testing their blood substitute in both mice and in cultured cells
  • initial results suggest that many of the adverse effects normally associated with either perfluorocarbon (PFC) or hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier (HBOC) substitutes can be eliminated, or at least minimized
  • Human blood only has a shelf life of a few weeks
  • It also needs to be matched to the recipient's blood type,
  • the risks of disease transmission can be minimized by testing, dangers still present if the donor has been recently infected
  • What makes hemoglobin such a success, is a phenomenon known as cooperative binding
  • as more oxygen binds to hemoglobin in the lungs, it becomes even easier for additional oxygen to bind
  • The problem
  • is that one way or another, the hemoglobin they contain ends up escaping and causing serious damage to organs like the kidneys
  • While their small size allows them to penetrate and oxygenate the nooks and crannies of the body much better than RBCs, that same feature also leads to undesireable extravasation into tissue
  • The goal is not to develop a permanent replacement solution, but rather something that could be used to bridge a critical situation for the few hours or days
  • Researchers have found when these modified hemoglobins do get into tissues, they bind nitric oxide, which appears to have the result that the patient's blood pressure rises precipitously
Mars Base

India's Mars Orbiter Mission Rising to Red Planet - Glorious Launch Gallery - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...planet-glorious-launch-gallery

scibyte109 SpacecraftUpdate India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) safely
  • injected into
  • initial elliptical Earth parking orbit following Tuesday’s (Nov. 5)
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • launch
  • ISRO engineers successfully completed the first of six orbit raising “Midnight Maneuver” burns at 01:17 hrs IST
  • Nov. 6
  • The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will
  • eventually arrive at the Mars Sphere of Influence after a 10 month interplanetary cruise
  • India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars
  • The launch “placed MOM very precisely into an initial elliptical orbit around Earth
  • ISRO’s engineers devised a
  • procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over the next several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
  • engine fires when
  • is at its closest point in orbit above Earth. This increases the ships velocity and gradually widens the ellipse
  • raises the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
  • expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day
  • voyage
  • arrives in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014
  • , NASA’s
  • MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch
  • on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida
  • Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal
  • study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost
  • MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history
Mars Base

Crew Launches to Space Station with Olympic Torch - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ace-station-with-olympic-torch

scibyte109 Olympics

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • In an usual situation, when the new crew arrives, there will be nine crew members and three Soyuz vehicles at the ISS
  • The new crew is bringing the unlit torch along, then
  • the space station’s current crew, will take the torch out on a spacewalk,
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The real reason for the spacewalk is to do some routine Russian maintenance outside the station
  • Then,
  • three crew members will return
  • and they will bring the torch back home
  • The torch then will be given back to Olympic officials and it will be used in the opening ceremonies of the February games
  • There have not been nine crew members on the ISS since 2009.
Mars Base

Just a few years of early musical training benefits the brain later in life - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ly-musical-benefits-brain.html

scibyte109

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Older adults who took music lessons as children but haven't actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response to a speech sound than individuals who never played an instrument,
  • As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing
  • the brains of older adults show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speec
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong musical training may offset these and other cognitive declines
  • previous studies show such age-related declines are not inevitable
  • the current study,
  • explored whether limited musical training early in life is associated with changes in the way the brain responds to sound decades later
  • t the more years study participants spent playing instruments as youth, the faster their brains responded to a speech sound.
  • For the study, 44 healthy adults, ages 55-76, listened to a synthesized speech syllable ("da") while researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem
  • This region of the brain processes sound and is a hub for cognitive, sensory, and reward information
  • researchers discovered that, despite none of the study participants having played an instrument in nearly 40 years
  • participants who completed 4-14 years of music training early in life had the fastest response to the speech sound (on the order of a millisecond faster than those without music training).
  • a millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference
Mars Base

Indian Mars mission on track, makes first engine burns - 0 views

phys.org/...indian-mars-mission-track.html

scibyte109 SpacecraftUpdate India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 08 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The main aim of the mission is to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form
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