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Mars Base

SpaceX Aborts Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Due to Engine Trouble | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/hanksgiving-rocket-launch.html

scibyte111 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral
  • but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust.
  • Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Officials had not announced a new target launch date
  • SpaceX was targeting liftoff of the 22-story rocket at 5:39 p.m. EST (2239 GMT) Thursday, aiming to achieve the first Thanksgiving Day launch from Florida's Space Coast since 1959
  • The launch was pushed back to Thursday after multiple technical problems thwarted an initial launch attempt Monday
  • The rocket's mission is to place the SES 8 television broadcasting satellite into orbit
  • e highest altitude ever achieved by a SpaceX launch.
  • the flight is critical to SpaceX's future in the commercial launch market, in which it competes against stalwart launch vehicles from Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
  • The Falcon 9 pressurized its propellant tanks, switched to internal power and ignited its nine Merlin 1D first stage engines a few seconds before the appointed launch time
  • the Falcon 9's computer-controlled countdown sequencer recognized a problem and called off the launch
  • As engineers continued to study the problem, SpaceX elected to restart the countdown to preserve a chance to launch Thursday
  • Ultimately, however, SpaceX said they could not get comfortable with the issue in time and ordered another hold with less than a minute left in the day's second countdown.
Mars Base

Remnants Suggest Comet ISON Still Going: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • as ISON got closer to the star
  • Analyses of light captured by NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft seemed to show the comet growing dimmer
  • Next, pictures from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which should have captured ISON on its closest approach to the Sun, showed absolutely nothing
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Then the European–US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spotted a faint glimmer on the other side of the Sun, on a trajectory where ISON would have been expected to appear
  • ISON is probably the most observed comet ever
Mars Base

Comet ISON faded again | Human World | EarthSky - 0 views

earthsky.org/...n-might-be-spectacular-in-2013

scibyte111 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • NOVEMBER 29, 2013.
  • Comet ISON rounded the sun yesterday at 18:45 UTC/ 1:45 p.m. EST, and appeared to be disintegrating
  • Then yesterday evening the comet started appearing brighter again
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • NOVEMBER 30, 2013
Mars Base

Sea Coral in Bone Grafting? How the Material is Made Compatible with Natural Bone - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...al-made-compatible-natural.htm

scibyte112 Biometerial

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • sea coral
  • scientists have now discovered a way to refine
  • properties that may make it more compatible with natural bone.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • When biomaterials do not biodegrade
  • may continuously cause problems
  • In extreme conditions, it is possible that the different mechanical properties of the artificial bone graft may cause a re-fracture or become a source for bacterium growth in infection
  • In order to get around this issue
  • researchers decided to study the calcium carbonate found in the exoskeleton of sea coral and convert it into coralline hydroxyapatite (CHA)
  • then refined the material to produce coralline hydroxyapatite/calcium carbonate (CHACC)
  • This CHACC composition contained 15 percent of CHA in a thin layer around the calcium carbonate and had a strong, porous structure that has made CHA commercially successful, but contained significantly improved biodegrading properties to support natural bone healing.
  • not to say that the material is ready to be used across the globe
  • There is a ways to go before the material can match the benefits of an autograft
  • and can be used by the several million people worldwide that undergo bone grafting procedures each year
  • the development of the CHACC material could provide an important step toward creating a biodegradable material that could help patients in the future
Mars Base

Memories 'geotagged' with spatial information - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...131128141405.htm

scibyte111 memories

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Using a video game in which people navigate through a virtual town delivering objects to specific locations, a team of neuroscientists
  • has discovered how brain cells that encode spatial information form "geotags" for specific memories and are activated immediately before those memories are recalled.
  • work shows how spatial information is incorporated into memories and why remembering an experience can quickly bring to mind other events that happened in the same place
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • findings provide the first direct neural evidence for the idea that the human memory system tags memories with information about where and when they were formed
  • this study involved playing a simple video game on a bedside computer
  • The game in this experiment involved making deliveries to stores in a virtual city
  • The participants were first given a period where they were allowed to freely explore the city and learn the stores' locations
  • When the game began, participants were only instructed where their next stop was, without being told what they were delivering
  • After they reached their destination, the game would reveal the item that had been delivered, and then give the participant their next stop
  • After 13 deliveries, the screen went blank and participants were asked to remember and name as many of the items they had delivered in the order they came to mind
  • This allowed the researchers to correlate the neural activation associated with the formation of spatial memories (the locations of the stores) and the recall of episodic memories: (the list of items that had been delivered).
  • "Having these patients play our games allows us to record every action they take in the game and to measure the responses of neurons both during spatial navigation and then later during verbal recall."
  • By asking participants to recall the items they delivered instead of the stores they visited, the researchers could test whether their spatial memory systems were being activated
  • map-like nature of the neurons associated with spatial memory made this comparison possible
  • During navigation, neurons in the hippocampus and neighboring regions can often represent the patient's virtual location within the town
  • Using the brain recordings generated while the participants navigated the city, the researchers were able to develop a neural map that corresponded to the city's layout
  • As participants passed by a particular store, the researchers correlated their spatial memory of that location with the pattern of place cell activation recorded
  • With maps of place cell activations in hand, the researchers were able to cross- reference each participant's spatial memories as they accessed their episodic memories of the delivered items
  • given just the place cell activations of a participant
  • could predict, with better than chance accuracy, the item he or she was recalling
  • cannot distinguish whether these spatial memories are actually helping the participants access their episodic memories
  • seeing that this place cell activation plays a role in the memory retrieval processes
  • Earlier neuroscience research
  • had suggested the hippocampus has two distinct roles
  • tracking location information for spatial memory, and
  • recording events for episodic memory
  • This experiment provides further evidence that these roles are intertwined
Mars Base

India's First Mars Probe 'MOM' Blasts Free of Earth Joining MAVEN in Race to Red Planet - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ng-maven-in-race-to-red-planet

scibyte111 India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine
  • Dec. 1)
  • to begin her nearly yearlong momentous voyage to the Red Planet.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Indian space engineers initiated the 440 Newton liquid fueled engine firing precisely as planned at 00:49 hrs (IST) on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2013 during a critical nail-biting burn lasting some 22 minutes
  • MOM is nicknamed ‘Mangalyaan’ – which in Hindi means ‘Mars craft
Mars Base

Spectacular Liftoff Thrusts China's First Rover 'Yutu' to the Moon - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-first-rover-yutu-to-the-moon

scibyte111 ChineseSpaceProgram

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • China successfully launched its first ever lunar rover bound for the Moon’s surface aboard a Long March rocket
  • at 1:30 a.m. Beijing local time, Dec. 2, 2013 (12:30 p.m. EST, Dec. 1) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
  • The name for the ‘Yutu’ rover – which translates as ‘Jack Rabbit’ – was chosen after a special naming contest involving a worldwide poll and voting to select the best name
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • ‘Yutu’ stems from a Chinese fairy tale, in which the goddess Chang’e flew off to the moon taking her little pet Jade rabbit with her.
  • The Chang’e 3 lander will fire thrusters to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 6.
  • It is due to make a powered descent to the lunar surface on Dec. 14, firing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for touchdown in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
  • If successful, the Chang’e 3 mission will mark the first soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna 24 sample return vehicle landed nearly four decades ago back in 1976.
  • Jack Rabbit measures 150 centimeters high and weighs approximately 120 kilograms
  • The rover and lander are equipped with multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition
  • The rover is expected to continue operating for at least three months
  • The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps around 2020
Mars Base

ScienceShot: Printing a Dinosaur | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...scienceshot-printing-dinosaur

scibyte111 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The target fossil for the new study was a specimen that had been dug up from a German clay pit in the early 1900s
  • The object, still encased in much of the rock that had entombed it, had been slathered in concrete and then transported back to a museum in Berlin
  • struck by a bomb during World War II, sending the specimen and hundreds of others into a jumbled heap of rubble
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Most of the fossils that weren’t blasted to dust had had their labels burned, so no one could identify what the remaining concrete jackets held or where they had been dug up
  • A CT scan of one such lump
  • revealed that it held a vertebra
  • from a Plateosaurus
  • the researchers report
  • That, in turn, allowed the researchers to determine where the fossil had originally been unearthed, among other details
  • Scientists have long used CT scans to peek inside fossil-bearing rocks, but the increasing use of 3D printers now enables them to make endless numbers of exact copies of those relics
  • The technique might even help museum folk speed up their analyses: By knowing what’s inside a lump of rock, researchers can determine which fossils are worth extracting, and which ones can wait
Mars Base

Dinosaur Bone Damaged in WWII Revealed with 3D Printing | LiveScience - 0 views

www.livescience.com/-dinosaur-bone-3d-printed.html

scibyte111 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 02 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • belongs to the Museum of National History in Berlin
  • During World War II, a bomb fell on the museum's east wing, collapsing the basement where dinosaur fossils were stored
  • Making matters worse, bones from two separate expeditions had been housed in the same area
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • One expedition, in Tanzania, ran from 1909 to 1913 and brought back 235 tons of fossils, labeled with letters based on their locations.
  • The other fossils came from a 1909 discovery in Halberstadt, Germany. Those bones also used a letter-based label system
  • individual animals
  • By comparing the scans to sketches of the long-ago digs, the researchers determined that the vertebra came from the Halberstadt dig in Germany
  • The scans showed a fractured bone. Some of the cracks were no doubt from fossilization
  • But one crunched-up corner was likely the result of the bombing
  • To recreate the bone as it was before the bombing, the researchers took data from the CT scan and built a blueprint to 3D print the fossil
  • When the process was done
  • The researchers were even able to print the bone chip from the bombing damage, which fit into the rest of the vertebra like a puzzle piece.
  • Mars Base on 02 Dec 13
     
    Dinosaur Bone Damaged in WWII Revealed with 3D Printing
Mars Base

SpaceX Successfully Completes First Mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit | SpaceX - 0 views

www.spacex.com/...n-geostationary-transfer-orbit

scibyte111 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 04 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • December 03, 2013
  • SpaceX
  • completed its first geostationary transfer mission, delivering the SES-8 satellite to its targeted 295 x 80,000 km orbit
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • launch pad and the first commercial flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in over five years
  • SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on manifest, of which over 60% are for commercial customers
  • This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program
  • When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions
Mars Base

SpaceX Launches Falcon 9 Rocket On High-Stakes Commercial Satellite Mission | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/mark-commercial-satellite.html

scibyte111 SpaceX

shared by Mars Base on 04 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX's first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.
Mars Base

Scientists Color Silk By Feeding Silkworms Fabric Dyes | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...-feeding-silkworms-fabric-dyes

scibyte112

shared by Mars Base on 05 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • team fed ordinary silkworms mulberry leaves that had been sprayed with fabric dyes. Out of seven tested dyes, only one worked, producing a thread that reminded me of pink-dyed hair.
  • the worms themselves take on some color before they weave their silk cocoons. Their colorful diets did not affect their growth
  • coloring fabric normally uses enormous amounts of fresh water
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The water gets contaminated with dangerous chemicals in the process, requiring costly treatment before factories can dump it back into waterways—or wreaking havoc when factory owners dodge cleanup rules
  • Scientists are just starting to study this idea, however, it remains to be seen if it's commercially viable
  • In this experiment, the Indian team tested seven azo dyes, which are cheap and popular in the industry
  • The scientists found different dyes moved through silkworms' bodies differently. Some never made it into the worms' silk at all
  • Others colored the worms and their cocoons, but the color molecules settled mostly in the sticky protein the worms add to their cocoons
  • That sticky stuff gets washed away before the silk is turned into fabric
  • Only one dye, named "direct acid fast red," showed up in the final, washed silk threads. By the time it made it there, it was a pleasant, light pink.
Mars Base

Study gives new meaning to 'let your fingers do the walking' - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...2013-12-fingers.html

scibyte112

shared by Mars Base on 05 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • conclusion of a study conducted by a team of cognitive psychologists
  • When you are typing away at your computer, you don't know what your fingers are really doing
  • It found that skilled typists can't identify the positions of many of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard and that novice typists don't appear to learn key locations in the first place
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • we're capable of doing extremely complicated things without knowing explicitly what we are doing
  • The researchers recruited 100 university students and members from the surrounding community to participate in an experiment
  • The participants completed a short typing test
  • Then, they were shown a blank QWERTY keyboard and given 80 seconds to write the letters in the correct location
  • On average, they typed 72 words per minute, moving their fingers to the correct keys six times per second with 94 percent accuracy
  • By contrast, they could accurately place an average of only 15 letters on a blank keyboard.
  • The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn't come as a surprise
  • For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention
  • Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car
  • What did come as a surprise, however, was evidence that conflicts with the basic theory of automatic learning which holds that it starts out as a conscious process and gradually becomes unconscious with repetition
  • According to the widely held theory, when you perform a new task or the first time, you are conscious of each action and store the details in working memory
  • Then, as you repeat the task, it becomes increasingly automatic
  • This allows you to think about other things while you performing the task but your conscious recollection of the details gradually fades away
  • researchers were surprised when they found evidence that the typists never appear to memorize the key positions, not even when they are first learning to type.
  • Evidence for this conclusion came from another experiment included in the study
  • The researchers recruited 24 typists who were skilled on the QWERTY keyboard and had them learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard, which places keys in different locations.
  • After the participants developed a reasonable proficiency with the alternative keyboard, they were asked to identify the placement of the keys on a blank Dvorak keyboard
  • On average, they could locate only 17 letters correctly, comparable to participants' performance with the QWERTY keyboard.
  • According to the researchers, the lack of explicit knowledge of the keyboard may be due to the fact that computers and keyboards have become so ubiquitous that students learn how to use them in an informal, trial-and-error fashion when they are very young
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