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News in Brief: Comet's water still hanging around on Jupiter | Atom & Cosmos | Science ... - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...till_hanging_around_on_Jupiter

scibyte92 comet

shared by Mars Base on 26 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plowed into Jupiter
  • The comet also left behind
  • millions of gallons of water. Water from the impact still makes up at least 95 percent of the water in the planet’s upper atmosphere
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Telescopes had previously spotted water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, some 100 kilometers above the planet’s ammonia cloud tops, but those surveys could not determine where the water came from
  • create a high-resolution map of water vapor distribution throughout Jupiter’s atmosphere
  • used the E
  • astronomers
  • researchers
  • found that the concentration of water peaked in the planet’s southern hemisphere, right in the region where the comet struck
  • More water also appeared at higher altitudes around the planet, which
  • supports the comet as its origin.
  • Water from other sources such as Jupiter’s icy moons would likely spread out more evenly around the planet and would gradually filter down to lower altitudes
Mars Base

Potential diabetes breakthrough: Researchers discover new hormone spurring beta cell pr... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...kthrough-hormone-spurring.html

scibyte92 Diabetes

shared by Mars Base on 26 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes
  • researchers believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes
  • The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin
  • The researchers who discovered betatrophin
  • caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans
  • the results of their work, which was supported in large part by a federal research grant, already have attracted the attention of drug manufacturers.
  • could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or once a month, or in the best case maybe even once a year
  • Type 2 diabetes,
  • usually caused by a combination of excess weight and lack of exercise
  • causes patients to slowly lose beta cells and the ability to produce adequate insulin
  • provide this hormone, the type 2 diabetic will make more of their own insulin-producing cells, and this will slow down, if not stop, the progression of their diabetes
  • betatrophin primarily as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, he believes it might play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as well
  • perhaps boosting the number of beta cells and slowing the progression of that autoimmune disease when it's first diagnosed
  • betatrophin could be in human clinical trials within three to five years, an extremely short time in the normal course of drug discovery and development
  • not for the federal funding of basic science research, there would be no betatrophin
  • impressed National Institutes of Health grant reviewers, and received federal funding for 80 percent of the work leading to the discovery of betatrophin
  • just wondering what happens when an animal doesn't have enough insulin. We were lucky to find this new gene that had largely gone unnoticed before
  • Another hint came from studying
  • What happens during pregnancy
  • During pregnancy, there are more beta cells needed, and it turns out that this hormone goes up during pregnancy
  • in pregnant mice
  • when the animal becomes pregnant this hormone is turned on to make more beta cells
  • not interested in curing mice of diabetes, and we now know the gene is a human gene
  • know that the hormone exists in human plasma; betatrophin definitely exists in humans
Mars Base

Atlantis Exposed: Space Shuttle Fully Unwrapped for NASA Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center... - 0 views

www.space.com/tlantis-unwrapped-exhibit.html

scibyte92 shuttle

shared by Mars Base on 27 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Space shuttle Atlantis
  • is set to go on public display June 29 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida
  • revealed Friday (April 26) after workers spent two days peeling off its protective shrink-wrap cover of the past five months.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • , workers began carefully cutting back the 16,000 square feet (1,486 square meters) of shrink wrap that protected Atlantis as its $100 million exhibition building was completed around it
  • By the end of the first day, the shuttle's nose, tail, aft engines and left wing were exposed.
  • the workers completed the process, revealing Atlantis' right wing and its 60-foot-long (18 meter) payload bay
  • Opening the payload bay is
  • set to begin in May, will take about two weeks, as the doors are very slowly hoisted open, one by one.
  • Atlantis has been mounted. Thirty feet (9 meters) in the air, the space shuttle has been tilted 43.21 degrees, such that its left wing extends toward the ground.
  • Atlantis will appear to be back in space — an effect that will be enhanced by lighting and a mural-size digital screen that will project the Earth's horizon behind the shuttle
Mars Base

Tiny Sponge Soaks Up Venom in Blood: Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

scibyte92 MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 27 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • A tiny sponge camouflaged as a red blood cell could soak up toxins ranging from anthrax to snake venom, new research suggests
  • The new "nanosponge,"
  • The nanoparticles, also called nanosponges, act as decoys that lure and inactivate the deadly compounds
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • When injected into mice, the tiny decoys protect mice against lethal doses of a toxin produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
  • Follow-up studies need to be done in humans
  • One of the mainstay strategies of bacteria and poison is to poke holes in cells, disrupting their internal chemical balance and causing them to burst
  • far, researchers haven't had much success creating all-purpose treatments to exploit this vulnerability
  • researchers created a tiny spherical core of a lactic acid byproduct, which forms naturally during metabolism in the human body
  • They then wrapped the cores in the outer surface of red blood cells. (To get the outer skin of red blood cells, they used a difference in particle concentration inside and outside the cells to cause them to burst, and then collected their outer membranes
  • The entire ensemble became a tiny nanosponge, which was about 85 nanometers in diameter, or 100 times smaller than a human hair
  • In cell cultures, the camouflaged sponges act as decoys, luring the toxins from
  • the bacteria that causes strep throat) and bee venom
  • then binding to the structure the "poisons" normally use to poke through cells
  • When they stick onto the nanosponge, that particular damaging structure gets preoccupied, and then the body can digest the entire particle
  • the team injected 18 mice with a lethal dose of a MRSA toxin. Half the mice then got a dose of the nanosponges
  • Whereas all the mice in the control group died, all but one that received the treatment survived
  • Because so many bacteria use the same pore-forming strategy, the nanosponges could be used as a universal treatment option when doctors don't know exactly what is causing an illness
  • The sponges' tiny size means a small amount of blood, for camouflage, can be used to make an effective dose
  • also allows them to circulate freely through blood vessels, lure enough of the toxins to have an impact and still be degraded safely
  • the researchers want to see whether the method works in human blood, and against other toxic chemicals, such as scorpion venom and anthrax, which use similar attack strategies
Mars Base

SpaceShipTwo Fires Rocket Engines for First Ever Supersonic Test Flight- Photos & Video - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...st-ever-supersonic-test-flight

scibyte92 scibyte93 SpaceShipTwo

shared by Mars Base on 30 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) commercial spaceliner named “Enterprise” lit up her hybrid rocket engines in flight and reached supersonic speeds for the first time in history
  • Monday, April 29, 2013 – in the skies over the Mojave Desert in California.
Mars Base

Reading wordless storybooks to toddlers may expose them to richer language - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...-toddlers-expose-richer_1.html

scibyte93

shared by Mars Base on 30 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book
  • often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • these findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear, especially as they transition to school
  • a graduate student, recorded 25 mothers while they read to their toddlers both a wordless picture storybook and a vocabulary book with pictures
  • moms in our study significantly more frequently used forms of complex talk when reading the picture storybook to their child than the picture vocabulary book
  • especially interested in looking at the language mothers use when reading both wordless picture storybooks and picture vocabulary books
  • to see if parents provided extra information to children like relating the events of the story to the child's own experiences or asking their child to make predictions.
  • The results of the study are significant for both parents and educators because vocabulary books are often marketed as being more educationa
  • even short wordless picture books provide children with exposure to the kinds of
  • language that they will encounter at school
  • lay the foundation for later reading developmen
Mars Base

Mars Rover Opportunity Back in Action After Glitch | Mars Solar Conjunction | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-rover-exits-standby-mode.html

scibyte92 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Mars rover Opportunity has overcome a glitch that put the robot into standby mode late last month
  • ortunity apparently put itself into standby automode — in which it maintains power balance but waits for instructions from the ground — on April 22, after sensing a problem during a routine camera check, mission officials said.
  • rover's handlers didn't notice the problem until April 27, when Opportunity got back in touch after a nearly three-week communications moratorium
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Opportunity's controllers prepared a new set of commands on April 29 designed to get things back to normal, and the fix has apparently worked
Mars Base

Printable 'bionic' ear melds electronics and biology - 0 views

phys.org/...nic-ear-melds-electronics.html

scibyte92 scibyte93 BionicEar

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability
  • primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue
  • used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies
  • That typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue
  • our work suggests a new approach—to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format
  • Last year, a research effort
  • resulted in the development of a "tattoo" made up of a biological sensor and antenna that can be affixed to the surface of a tooth
  • This project, however, is the team's first effort to create a fully functional organ: one that not only replicates a human ability, but extends it using embedded electronics
  • Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months
  • this is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics
  • Ear reconstruction "remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery
  • the team turned to a manufacturing approach called 3D printing
  • The finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure
  • Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical "cochlea" – the part of the ear that senses sound – which can connect to electrodes
  • further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient
  • the ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing.
  • electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient's nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid
  • The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds
  • researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage
Mars Base

IBM researchers make world's smallest movie using atoms (w/ video) - 0 views

phys.org/...orld-smallest-movie-atoms.html

scibyte92 scibyte93

shared by Mars Base on 02 May 13 - No Cached
  • Scientists from IBM
  • unveiled the world's smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms
  • Named "A Boy and His Atom," the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world while opening up a dialogue with students and others on the new frontiers of math and science
  • In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
  • weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
  • IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
  • Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to "feel" atoms
  • Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
  • moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it's actually moved
  • scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
  • the same team of IBM researchers who made this movie also recently created the world's smallest magnetic bit. They were the first to answer the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
  • it takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device
  • atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
Mars Base

NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...asa-wants-send-your-haiku-mars

scibyte93 MarsHaiku

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • Any Earthling can submit a haiku about Mars by July 1—the DVD will include the name of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will eventually orbit the red planet.
  • NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, it wants to pack onboard a DVD containing three poetic messages
  • Starting July 15, an online public vote will open to select the three top haikus.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • NASA's MAVEN mission will be the first mission devoted to studying the Martian upper atmosphere
  • gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
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