We take a look at a new cancer drug, a dwarf planet, new dinosaur, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Possible New Cancer Drug

• A new study has developed a new drug, ZL105, that can manipulate the body\’s natural signalling and energy systems, allowing the body to attack and shut down cancerous cells
• Medicine Based on Precious Metals
• Platinum-based drugs are used in nearly 50% of all chemotherapeutic regimens, they damage DNA and cannot select between cancerous and noncancerous cells
• This new drug based on the precious metal iridium is specifically designed not to attack DNA and has a novel mechanism of action, means that it could not only dramatically slow down and halt cancer growth, but also significantly reduce the side effects
• Treatment
• Existing cancer treatments often become less effective after the first course, as cancer cells learn how they are being attacked, the newly developed drug is a catalyst and is active at low doses
• The energy-producing machinery in cancer cells works to the limit as it attempts to keep up with quick proliferation and invasion, this makes cancer cells susceptible to minor changes in the cell \’power-house\’
• This drug pushes cancer cells over the limit causing them to slow and shut down, whilst normal cells can cope with its effects
• It can attack cancer cells in multiple ways at the same time, so the cancer is less able to adapt to the treatment, which means the new drugs could be much more effective than existing treatments
• Effectiveness and the Future
• Preliminary data indicate that the novel drug may be ten times more effective in treating ovarian, colon, melanoma, renal, and some breast cancers, according to data obtained by the US National Cancer Institute
• Researchers now aim to expand the study to cancers that are inherently resistant to existing drugs and to those which have developed resistance after a first round of chemotherapy treatments.
• Further Reading / In the News
• New drug raises potential for cancer treatment revolution | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

A Possible New Dwarf Planet

• Astronomers have discovered a probable dwarf planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Pluto
• Discovery
• Astronomers been hunting for distant objects with the Dark Energy Camera, a 520-megapixel camera on the 4-meter Blanco telescope in Chile
• They captured 2012 VP113 during their first observing run, in November 2012, on the fifth image of the hundreds they would eventually snap, for months they tracked the object, until its full orbit became more apparent
• There have been a number of similar objects similar to this that have been found in the last decade that probably belong to the inner part of the Oort cloud
• **The New Object [2012 VP113] **
• The newfound object\’s official name is 2012 VP113, but the discovery team calls it VP for short, or just \’Biden\’ — after US Vice-President Joe Biden
• It is roughly 450 kilometers across, just one-fifth Pluto\’s, if Pluto were as big as a basketball, this new world a mere golf ball
• It\’s orbit takes it from 80 to 452 AU from the sun, never approaching Neptune (30 AU) or Pluto (39.5 AU).
• Pluto orbits the sun every 248 years, the new world requires 4340 years
• In several years time, after observations have pinned down its orbit, the scientists will submit a name for consideration by the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
• Origins
• Astronomers now have to come up with ideas to explain how these objects remain tightly gravitationally bound to the Sun when they orbit so far away.
• There are several competing ideas for how objects such as Sedna and 2012 VP113 got to where they are today
• One leading hypothesis proposes that in the Solar System’s infancy, a nearby star gravitationally perturbed the coalescing system and dragged some fragments out towards the edge
• Another possibility is that a massive rogue planet passed through at some point, kicking objects from the Kuiper belt outwards into the inner Oort cloud.
• Further Reading / In the News
• New Dwarf Planet Has Most Distant Trajectory Known | Scientific American
• ScienceShot: Small World Spotted Far Beyond Pluto | Science/AAAS
• Discovery! Possible Dwarf Planet Found Far Beyond Pluto\’s Orbit | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New Dinosaur Found in the Dakota’s

• Scientists unveiled the discovery, naming and description of a sharp-clawed, 500-pound, bird-like dinosaur that roamed the Dakotas with T. rex 66 million years ago
• New Dinosaur, Anzu
• Three partial skeletons of the dinosaur – almost making up a full skeleton – were excavated from the uppermost level of the Hell Creek rock formation in North and South Dakota
• Like many \”new\” dinosaurs, Anzu wyliei fossils were discovered some years ago, and it took more time for researchers to study the fossils and write and publish a formal scientific description
• The new dinosaur was 11.5 feet long, almost 5 feet tall at the hip and weighed an estimated 440 to 660 pounds
• Its jaws were tipped with a toothless beak, and its head sported a tall, rounded crest similar to that of a cassowary (a large ground bird native to Australia and New Guinea)
• The neck and hind legs were long and slender, also comparable to a cassowary or ostrich, the forelimbs of Anzu were tipped with large, sharp claws, and the tail was long and robust
• The researchers believe Anzu, with large sharp claws, was an omnivore, eating vegetation, small animals and perhaps eggs while living on a wet floodplain
• Studies of the rocks in which several of the most complete caenagnathid skeletons have been found show that these strata were laid down in humid floodplain environments
• Two skeletons show signs of trauma, one with a broken and healed rib, the other has an arthritic toe bone that may have been caused by an avulsion fracture (where a tendon ripped a piece off the bone to which it was attached).
• Whether these injuries were the result of combat between two individuals or an attack by a larger predator remains a mystery
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nearly complete \’chicken from hell,\’ from mysterious dinosaur group | ScienceDaily
• A \’chicken from hell\’ dinosaur: Large feathered dinosaur species discovered in North America | Phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

European Space Agencies Cometary Spacecraft Rosetta

• ESA sent a wake-up call to the 100-kg (220-lb) lander riding aboard the Rosetta spacecraft, bringing it out of its nearly 33-month-long slumber and beginning its preparation for its upcoming
• Philae Lander
• The lander, Philae, will touch down on the surface of a comet in November of 2014 and is received a “personal wake-up call” from Earth, 655 million kilometers away.
• A confirmation signal from the lander was received by ESA five and a half hours after the initial signal was sent
• Multimedia
• YouTube Philae touch down | European Space Agency, ESA European Space Agency, ESA
• Twitter | ESA Rosetta Mission Verified account @ESA_Rosetta
• Further Reading / In the News
• ESA Awakens Rosetta\’s Comet Lander | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity Rover Power Boost

• Opportunity rover on Mars has gotten a 70% boost in power over the past few weeks from a partial cleaning of dust from its solar panels
• Combined, with the seasonal effect and multiple dust-cleaning events have increased the amount of energy available each day from the rover\’s solar array by more than 70 percent compared with two months ago
• A good portion of that comes from the fact that its springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere where Oppy now sits, so the Sun is now shining longer and higher in the sky.
• Several recent gusts of wind – or perhaps small dust devils – have also cleaned much of the dust off the rover’s solar panels.
• The rover team reported that between Sols 3605 and 3606 (March 15 and March 16, 2014), there was a dust cleaning event which resulted in about a 10% improvement in power production to 574 watt-hours, another cleaning event this week has put the power output to 615 watt-hours
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Exploration Rover Mission | MarsRover.nasa.gov
• Opportunity Rover Gets Power Boost from Wind Events on Mars | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Arriving at New Science Location
• The rover has reached a vantage point for its cameras to survey four different types of rock intersecting in an area called \”the Kimberley\”
• This is the spot on the map the team has been headed for, on a little rise that gives a great view for context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley
• The science team expects to take several weeks for observations, sample-drilling and onboard laboratory analysis of the area\’s rocks
• The mission\’s investigations at the Kimberley are planned as the most extensive since Curiosity spent the first half of 2013 in an area called Yellowknife Bay
• Researchers plan to use Curiosity\’s science instruments to learn more about habitable past conditions and environmental changes.
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Scoping Out Next Study Area – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• April 9, 1959 : 55 years ago : First astronauts selected : NASA announced the selection of America\’s first seven astronauts for project Mercury. Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton were chosen from 110 applicants. Their training program at Langley, which ranged from a graduate-level course in introductory space science to simulator training and scuba-diving. Project Mercury, NASA\’s first high profile program, was an effort to learn if humans could survive in space. NASA required astronaut candidates to be male, not over 40 years old, not more than 5\’ 11\” height and in excellent physical condition. On 5 May 1961, Shepard became the first American in space

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Early dawn Venus is in the E-SE
• Mars | Twilight | Rises in the SE, with Spica 6* to its right. The two are their highest point around 1am Mars is at opposition [opposite the Sun] on Tues April 8 so it will be visible all night long.
• Jupiter | At twilight it is high in the SE, it crosses nearly overhead (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes) around 8 or 9 p.m. and sets in the West around 2-3am.

• Saturn | 10pm | Rises around 10pm or and is highest in the south around 3am. By then it\’s far to the left of Mars and Spica

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Cancer Drug & New Planet | SciByte 125 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at an infant possibly cured of HIV, a new dinosaur in Europe, antibiotics, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

2nd Infant Possibly Cured of HIV

• A second American baby born with the AIDS virus may have had her infection put into remission and possibly cured by very early treatment, in this instance, four hours after birth.
• Last Time on SciByte …
• Scibyte 84 | HIV & SpaceX Troubles | March 5, 2013
• The \’First Case\’
• The girl was born in LA a month after researchers announced the first case in Mississippi last year that led doctors worldwide to rethink how fast and hard to treat infants born with HIV
• The Mississippi baby is now 3 1/2 and seems HIV-free despite no treatment for about two years although she is still getting AIDS medicines, so the status of her infection is not as clear.
• Treatment
• Most HIV-infected moms in the U.S. get AIDS medicines during pregnancy, which greatly cuts the chances they will pass the virus to their babies
• The LA baby was born mother was not taking her HIV medicines although the mom was given AIDS drugs during labor to try to prevent transmission of the virus
• Doctors started the baby on AIDS drugs within a few hours after birth before test results came back, tests later confirmed she had been infected
• The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while
• Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood
• Tests
• A host of sophisticated tests at multiple times suggest the LA baby has completely cleared the virus
• Doctors are cautious about suggesting she has been cured, instead of being in remission but it looks like a cure
• The baby\’s signs are different from what doctors see in patients whose infections are merely suppressed by successful treatment
• Adult AIDS-related Development
• Only about 1 percent of people have two copies of the gene that gives this protection
• Scientists have modified genes in the blood cells of a dozen adults to help them resist HIV from a donor with natural immunity to the virus
• HIV usually infects blood cells through a protein on their surface called CCR5. A California company, Sangamo BioSciences Inc., makes a treatment that can knock out a gene that makes CCR5.
• They tested it in 12 HIV patients who had their blood filtered to remove some of their cells. The treated cells were infused back into the patients
• Four weeks later, half of the patients were temporarily taken off AIDS medicines to see the gene therapy\’s effect
• The virus returned in all but one of them; that patient turned out to have one copy of the protective gene
• Researchers knew that the virus was going to come back in most of the patients, but the hope is that the modified cells eventually will outnumber the rest and give the patient a way to control viral levels without medicines
• Further Reading / In the News
• Doctors hope for cure in a second baby born with HIV | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Tracking SeaTurtles

• Small satellite-tracking devices attached to sea turtles swimming off Florida\’s coast have delivered first-of-its-kind data that could help unlock the mystery of what endangered turtles do during the \”lost years.\”
• \”Lost Years
• \”Lost years\” refers to the time after turtles hatch and head to sea where they remain for many years before returning to near-shore waters as large juveniles
• The time period is often referred like this because not much has been known about where the young turtles go and how they interact with their oceanic environment
• Before this study, most of the scientific information about the early life history of sea turtles was inferred through genetics studies, opportunistic sightings offshore, or laboratory-based studies
• With real observations of turtles in their natural environment, scientists are able to examine and reevaluate existing hypotheses about the turtles\’ early life history
• Tracking
• A team of scientists tracked 17 loggerhead turtles for 27 to 220 days in the open ocean using small, solar-powered satellite tags
• The goal was to better understand the turtles\’ movements, habitat preferences, and what role temperature may play in early sea turtle life history
• While the turtles remain in oceanic waters (traveling between 124 miles to 2,672 miles) off the continental shelf and the loggerhead turtles sought the surface of the water as predicted
• The Study
• The study found that the turtles do not necessarily remain within the currents associated with the North Atlantic subtropical gyre
• It was historically thought that loggerhead turtles hatching from Florida\’s east coast complete a long, developmental migration in a large circle around the Atlantic entrained in these currents
• The team\’s data suggest that turtles may drop out of these currents into the middle of the Atlantic (Sargasso Sea)
• The team also found that while the turtles mostly stayed at the sea surface, where they were exposed to the sun\’s energy, the turtles\’ shells registered more heat than anticipated (as recorded by sensors in the satellite tags
• Hiding in the Seaweed
• A new hypothesis about why the turtles seek refuge in seaweed (Sargassum). It is a type of seaweed found on the surface of the water in the deep ocean long associated with young sea turtles.
• Scientists propose that young turtles remain at the sea surface to gain a thermal benefit, which makes sense because the turtles are cold blooded animals by remaining at the sea surface
• By associating with Sargassum habitat, turtles gain a thermal refuge of sorts that may help enhance growth and feeding rates, among other physiological benefits.
• The Importance
• Findings are important because the loggerhead turtles along with other sea turtles are threatened or endangered species
• Florida beaches are important to their survival because they provide important nesting grounds in North America, more than 80% along Florida\’s coast
• There are other important nesting grounds and nursing areas for sea turtles in the western hemisphere found from as far north as Virginia to South America and the Caribbean.
• There\’s a whole lot that happens during the Atlantic crossing that we knew nothing about and this work helps to redefine Atlantic loggerhead nursery grounds and early loggerhead habitat use
• Further Reading / In the News
• Sea turtles \’lost years\’ mystery starts to unravel | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New European Dinosaur

• A new dinosaur species found in Portugal may be the largest land predator discovered in Europe, as well as one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic
• Torvosaurus Gurneyi
• Scientists discovered bones belonging to this dinosaur north of Lisbon, they were originally believed to be a dinosaur species from North America
• Closer comparison of the shin bone, upper jawbone, teeth, and partial tail vertebrae suggested a new species, Torvosaurus Gurneyi
• The mouth bones have a different shape and structure, the number of teeth, as well as size and shape of the mouth, may differentiate the European and the American
• It had blade-shaped teeth up to 10 cm long, which indicates it may have been at the top of the food chain in the Iberian Peninsula roughly 150 million years ago
• Scientists estimate that the dinosaur could reach 10 meters long and weigh around 4 to 5 tons
• With a skull of 115 cm, it would be one of the largest terrestrial carnivores at this era
• An active predator that hunted other large dinosaurs, as evidenced by blade shape teeth up to 10 cm
• Evidences of closely related dinosaurs suggest that this large predator may have already been covered with proto-feathers
• Further Reading / In the News
• New dinosaur found in Portugal, largest terrestrial predator from Europe — ScienceDaily | ScienceDaily.com
• Torvosaurus gurneyi: New Giant Dinosaur Discovered in Portugal | sci-news.com

New Antibiotic to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria

• A team of researchers have discovered a new class of antibiotics to fight drug-resistant bacteria
• Oxadiazoles, was discovered in silico (by computer) screening and has shown promise in the treatment of MRSA in mouse models of infection
• Researchers screened 1.2 million compounds found that the oxadiazole inhibits a penicillin-binding protein
• The oxadiazoles are also effective when taken orally, currently there is only one marketed antibiotic for MRSA that can be taken orally.
• Further Reading / In the News
• New class of antibiotics discovered by chemists — ScienceDaily |ScienceDaily.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Continuing On
• Engineers will now occasionally commanding Curiosity to drive backwards in a newly tested bid to minimize serious damage to the six 20 inch diameter wheels
• Curiosity is well on the way to her next near term goal, which is a science waypoint, named Kimberly (formerly called KMS-9), which lies about half a mile ahead.
• \”Kimberley,\” features ground with striations and is where researchers plan to suspend driving for a period of science investigations
• The map shows the route driven by NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 561st Martian day, or sol, of the rover\’s mission on Mars (March 5, 2014)
• Multimedia
• Big-Context Traverse Map Through Sol 561 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back | March 13

• 1781 : 233 years ago : Uranus : Sir William Herschel announced his discovery of Uranus, the first planet discovered with a telescope. At the time of discovery he labeled it as a comet, by 1783 he finally acknowledged it was a planet, and by 1787, he had also observed the Uranian satellites Titania and Oberon (11 Jan 1787), which were later given these names by his son, John Herschel.
• 1930 : 84 years ago : Pluto : Clyde W. Tombaugh telegraphed the discovery of Pluto to the Harvard College Observatory. After nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 21, 23 and January 29 confirmed the movement and discovery of Pluto.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs, March 13 | ~hour after sunset | To the lower left of the Moon you can see the star Regulus (actually two binary stars). Regulus is the bottom star of the handle of the sickle of the constellation Leo (looks like a backwards question mark)
• Fri, Mar 14 | Tonight Regulus is above the moon
• Planets
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Before and during dawn Venus is in the SE
• Mars | 9pm | Rises in the SE, with Spica 6* to its right. The two are their highest point around 2am with Spica now 5-6* to the lower right
• Jupiter | Is the only planet visible right now in the evenings and is high in the SE, it crosses nearly overhead (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes) around 8 or 9 p.m. and sets in the West before dawn

• Saturn | 11pm | Rises around 11 or and is highest in the south at the beginning of dawn. By then it\’s far to the left of Mars and Spica

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post HIV Treatment & European Dinosaur | SciByte 123 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a strange exo-planet, SpaceX rocket testing, an Australian ‘lost world’, simulating dinosaurs walk, viewer feedback about human regeneration, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

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Hot Exoplanet is NOT a \’New Earth\’

• A team of astronomers have discovered an earth-like blazing hot planet that shouldn\’t exist
• No matter what the headlines say, just because an exoplanet has somewhat like Earth in density or size, it doesn\’t mean it\’s habitable.
• The Star Kepler 78
• A sun-like G-type star
• It is located 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus
• Discovered using data from NASA\’s Kepler Space Telescope with follow up observations were made using W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii
• Kepler 78-b
• First known Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density
• Diameter of 9,200 miles, 1.2 times the size of Earth
• Mass is 1.7 times more than Earth
• Composed of iron and rock
• Orbit Length | 8.5 hours
• Distance from star | 1.6 km / 1 mi
• Kepler 78-b Mass Measurements
• 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
• Generally it is difficult to measure the mass of planets that Kepler finds because it is hard for ground-based telescopes to spot the subtle wobble of the star
• In the case of Kepler 78-b since it orbits so 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
• Breaking The Rules
• When this planetary system was forming, the young star was larger than it is now meaning that it would have been inside the swollen star
• The planet couldn’t have formed farther out and migrated inward, because it should have been drawn straight into the star
• One of the 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
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Earth-like planet Kepler 78b | Nature Newsteam
• Further Reading / In the News
  +New Earth-Like Blazing Hot Planet ‘Kepler-78b’ Discovered | ScienceWorld.com
• New-found Earth-size Exoplanet Doomed – News Watch | Newswatch.NationalGeographic.com
  +Kepler Discovers Earth-Sized Mystery Planet – Popular Mechanics

— NEWS BYTE —

SpaceX Will Be Renting Test Space From NASA

• SpaceX has signed a contract to research, develop and test Raptor methane rocket engines at the NASA Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi
• Testing
• SpaceX currently does most of its rocket testing in Texas
• Now the plan is to use the E-2 test stand at Stennis, which is able to support both vertical and horizontal rocket engine tests
• The E-2 stand is big enough for components, but SpaceX would need a bigger stand for the whole Raptor
• Reportedly SpaceX is working out a Space Act agreement to establish user fees, amongst other things, once an agreement is finalized the testing can begin as early as next year
• Used For?
• There is 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
• There are multiple reports that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has mentioned the engine previously when talking about Mars missions
• Raptor Rocket Engine, What We Know
• Intended to power a higher performance upper stage for SpaceX launch vehicles, powered by methane and liquid oxygen (LOX)
• Designed to produce more than 661,000 lbf (2,940 kN) thrust in vacuum, which is the space environment that the Raptor second-stage engine is designed for.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Methane Rocket | Christopher Martinez
• Further Reading / In the News
• Stennis Space Center
• SpaceX Signs Pact To Start Rocket Testing At NASA Stennis | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Australian \’Lost World\’

• An expedition to a remote part of northern Australia has uncovered three new vertebrate species isolated for millions of years
• The Discovery
• James Cook University and a National Geographic film crew were dropped by helicopter onto the rugged Cape Melville mountain range on Cape York Peninsula
• Cape Melville, a plateau of boulder-strewn rainforest on top
• The virtually impassable mountain range is home to millions of black granite boulders the size of cars and houses piled hundreds of metres high
• 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
• What Was Found
• 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
• The Cape Melville Leaf-tailed Gecko, which has huge eyes and a long, slender body, is highly distinct from its relatives
• 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. The tadpoles even develop within the egg and a fully formed frog hatches out in the absence of water
• Further Reading / In the News
• \’Lost world\’ discovered in remote Australia | Phys.org
• Leaf-tailed gecko, golden-coloured skink and boulder-dwelling frog: New species found in Australia\’s lost world | independent.co.uk
• Spectacular New Species Found in \”Lost World\” | news.nationalgeographic.com

How Dinosaurs Walked

• Researchers have managed to use an advanced computer model to recreate the walking and running movements of the vast Cretaceous Argentinosaurus dinosaur
• Argentinosaurus
• The dinosaur lived on the then-island continent of South America somewhere between 97 and 94 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous
• Not much of Argentinosaurus has been recovered, but the proportions of the bones found and comparisons with other sauropod relatives allow paleontologists to estimate the its size
• The dinosaur weighed about 80 tons, making it one of the largest known dinosaurs, and the model showed that it would have reached about 5 mph when it walked across the Earth
• The Computer Model
• To create this computer model, the researchers laser scanned a 40 meter-long skeleton of Argentinosaurus
• The simulation used the equivalent of 30,000 desktop computers to allow the dinosaur to take its first steps in over 94 million years
• The digitization of such vast dinosaur skeletons using laser scanners brings Walking with Dinosaurs to life…this is science not just animation
• Currently, the researchers plan to use this same computer technique in order to model the steps of other dinosaurs, such as the Triceratops, Brachiosaurus and T. rex.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Argentinosaurus dinosaur digital reconstruction The University of Manchester: Dr Bill Sellers | Alison Barbuti
• YouTube | Argentinosaurus – Planet Dinosaur – Episode 5 | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scientists Digitally Reconstruct Movements of Largest Dinosaur in the World (Video) | Phys.org
• Argentinosaurus | Wikipedia

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Human Regeneration … Soon-ish?

• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Regrowing human body parts: The dream comes within reach | nbcnews.com
• Sometime in the next few decades, humans may be able to regrow a finger, toe, or among the most promising targets, maybe even fresh patches of beating heart tissue
• Research
• A decade ago scientists demonstrated that zebrafish have the ability to repair a badly damaged heart, thanks to a particular protein that regulates the regenerative process
• Young mice are able to regenerate toes, and the salamander can regrow a whole arm below the joint
• In 2010, one lab showed it was possible to enhance that same regenerative response in adult mice
• Researchers have been studying mouse toes to understand how a similar regrowth mechanism can be reactivated or imitated in adult humans
• In Humans
• Humans already have demonstrated some ability to regenerate body parts, very young children can fill out the tips of chopped off fingers and toes
• In August 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
• Researchers are still cautious about predicting how studies of animal regeneration will be applied to humans and it\’s dangerous to say, \’Yes, we expect to regenerate a limb\’ although the field is reaching a turning point

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

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+ NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity completed its first two-day autonomous drive Monday, Oct 28
+ During an autonomous drive the rover chooses a safe route to designated waypoints by using its onboard computer to analyze stereo images that it takes during pauses in the drive
+ The autonomous drive brought Curiosity to about 80m (262 ft) from \”Cooperstown,\” an outcrop bearing candidate targets for examination with instruments on the rover\’s arm.
+ Cooperstown is about one-third of the way along the route to Mount Sharp
+ Improvements
+ A key activity planned for this week, week of Nov. 4, is uploading a new version of onboard software the third such upgrade since landing
+ Include what information the rover can store overnight to resume autonomous driving the next day.
+ It also expands capabilities for using the robotic arm while parked on slopes
+ Multimedia
+ Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
+ Social Media
+ Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
+ Further Reading / In the News
+ Mars Science Laboratory: NASA\’s Curiosity Mars Rover Approaches \’Cooperstown\’ | mars.jlp.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• November 11, 1572 : 441 years ago : Tycho\’s Supernova / SN1572 : Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe began his meticulous observations of the supernova discovered in the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia. (Brahe was at the beginning of his career in 1572, and it was this supernova that inspired him to devote his lifetime to making accurate measurements of the positions of the stars and planets.) First noted by Wolfgang Schuler*of Wittenberg, for two weeks it was brighter than any other star in the sky and visible in daytime. By month\’s end, it began to fade but it remained visible to the naked eye for about 16 months until Mar 1574. Thus 16th-century astronomers learned that the heavens were not immutable, as had been believed. Brahe\’s book on his observations, De Nova Stella, originated the word “nova.”
• SN 1572 | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Wed, Nov 6 | Evening | Venus and the crescent Moon are close in the SW sky
• Sat, Nov 9 | First-quarter Moon to the SW
• Planets
• Venus | dusk | Is in the SW around dusk moving to set in the E-NE near the stars Castor and Pollux of the constellation Gemini
• Mars | Rises around 1-2am standard | Moves E, opposite to the stars, moving farther away from Regulus (blue-white star) and by dawn both are high in the S sky
• Comet ISON | Just before dawn | Below mars, but still only a telescopic object

• Jupiter | 9-10am standard | Rises in the E-NE moving to the high Southern sky by dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post “Hot-Earths” & New Species | SciByte 108 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at a high school dinosaur discovery, technological seeing eye cane, satellites both new and retiring, viewer feedback for bacteria eating viruses, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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— Show Notes —

High School Dinosaur Find

• A dinosaur skeleton discovered by a high-school student turns out to be the smallest, youngest and most complete duck-billed dinosaur of its kind ever found.
• The Discovery
• Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif is affiliated with The Webb Schools, a private high-school campus outside of Los Angeles
• The students at the schools participate in paleontology fieldwork as part of their coursework
• In 2009 a group of students were prospecting for fossils in Utah\’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, surveying ground that had previously been covered
• One student spotted a little sliver of bone sticking out from under a boulder and alerted a paleontologist and curator that was with them
• I originally looked like a piece of dinosaur rib, which is while nice not really worth the trouble of excavating at that time
• The bone was under what looked like a large cobblestone and on the other side of the boulder they found a dinosaur skull
• Since that indicated the strong possibility that the rest of the skeleton was beneath the boulder the team had to line up permits to excavate on the public land
• They then returned in 2010 to dig the bones from the ground
• The 363 kg [800-pound] rock, that the bones were surrounded by had to be airlifted out of the rugged backcountry by helicopter
• The Skeleton
• After 1,300 painstaking hours of cleaning, chiseling and picking, technicians revealed the fossil buried in all that stone
• Paleontologists realized they had an amazing example of a baby Parasaurolophus
• Parasaurolophus, walked the Earth some 75 million years ago.
• Dinosaurs in this genus are best known for their impressive tube-shaped head crests, which may have been used for display or perhaps to amplify the animals\’ calls
• The Skull
• The skull although remarkably complete is split into left and right halves by erosion which exposed structures on the inside of the skull that would otherwise be inaccessible
• The right and left halves were separated by weathering, with the left being the best preserved.
• A model was created from CT scan data, and shows all of the features exactly as they are in the original specimen
• Growth Rate
• They were able to sample the baby\’s leg bone, as dinosaur bones grow, they develop ring patterns, much like trees
• The sample of the leg bone that took didn\’t have any rings at all indicated that this animal was under a year old when it died
• Duck-billed dinosaurs hatch at about the same size as a human infant, within one year this dinosaur was already 6 feet (1.8 meters) long
• The Crest
• The dinosaur was already sprouting a crest bump so young suggests that Parasaurolophus started growing its crest earlier than other duck-billed dinosaurs.
• This discovery helps paleontologists understand how Parasaurolophus evolved that big crest, just by shifting around events in its development
• Misc
• On Oct. 22 \”Joe\” went on display at the Alf museum, with digital exploration of the skeleton also available at dinosaurjoe.com.
• The student who discovered the found the little duck-bill skeleton is now in college, studying geology
• Multimedia
• YouTube | A Tour of the Skull of \”Joe\” the Baby Parasaurolophus | AlfMuseumPaleo
• YouTube | A Tour of the Skeleton of \”Joe\” the Baby Parasaurolophus | AlfMuseumPaleo
• Album: Discovering a Duck-Billed Dino Baby | LiveScience
• Reconstructured Skull in 3D | Joe\’s Fossil Skull | Joe the Dinosaur
• Further Reading / In the News
• Joe the Dinosaur
• High-School Student Finds Bumpy-Headed Baby Dino | LiveScience

— NEWS BYTE —

\’Steer\’ing-eye Cane

• The robotic cane maps the user’s path with a vision and 3D camera, and picks out stairways, low overhangs, and other features of interest to the visually-impaired
• What is Currently Out There
• Robots designed by companies like iRobot can already drive themselves around indoors with a minimum of collisions although problems of obstacle detection and avoidance are far from licked
• The margin of failure for a robot cane has to be vanishingly small, and that level of accuracy could also benefit systems that aren’t attached to humans
• The Robotic Cane
• The bot will be able to verbally warn or guide the operator, speaking through a Bluetooth earpiece (and possibly through tactile feedback), it will also be able to perform limited steering maneuvers
• In navigation mode, the device\’s roller tip is activated, and may drive the cane and point it towards the desired direction of travel
• The six-degree-of-freedom roller does not drive the operator, but makes suggestions, and can be toggled on and off by switching between navaid and white cane modes
• Funding
• The co-robotic cane was co-funded for a three-year period by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the National Eye Institute (NEI), both of which are part of NIH
• National Robotics Initiative
• National Robotics Initiative, is a federal program that aims to push the development of co-robots, or bots that work alongside—and occasionally inside—humans
• NRI is a panoply of loosely-related ideas, few of which are photogenic
• The research done with this program are robots that could become part of our lives, in our own lifetimes,
• These robots won’t look like Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, or NASA’s (and GM’s) Robonaut 2. they are most likely to look a lot more like a walking stick, with a bunch of stuff bolted onto it.
• Another Funded Project
• One of the new projects funded by NSF is an effort to make robots that can better read the emotional needs of Parkinson’s sufferers, specifically those whose faces have been significantly paralyzed
• These robots would serve as mediators between victims of “facial masking” and their caregivers
• The project aims to “develop a robotic architecture endowed with moral emotional control mechanisms, abstract moral reasoning, and a theory of mind that allow corobots to be sensitive to human affective and ethical demands
• Whether it will be an existing system, or a new one is unclear, of that project’s collaborators is the roboticist who proposed the use of so-called “ethical governors” for autonomous military robots
• Further Reading / In the News
• An Autonomous, Self-Steering Robo-Cane, And Other Co-Robots to Come | Popular Science

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

European Satellite Going to Burn Up on \”Reentry\”

• The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, satellite launched in March 2009 on a planned two-year mission to map the variations in Earth\’s gravity field.
• The spacecraft consumed fuel at a much lower rate than expected, however, allowing GOCE to continue gathering data far beyond its expected lifespan providing the most accurate gravity data ever available to scientists
• Now GOCE has run out of fuel and will likely \’die\’ a fiery death in Earth\’s atmosphere around Nov 6
• Most of the satellite will disintegrate in the atmosphere, some smaller parts are expected to reach Earth’s surface although their precise location can not be calculated at this time
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Gravity Field And Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) | The Mars Underground
• Further Reading / In the News
• GOCE / Observing the Earth / Our Activities / ESA
• European Satellite, Out of Fuel, Will Plunge to Earth Next Month | Space.com

India\’s First Martian Probe

• India\’s the nation’s first true interplanetary probe, is now set to lift off on its mission to Mars in Nov.
• Mangalyan will leave Earth orbit in November and cruise in deep space for 10 months using an onboard propulsion system it will then enter an elliptical orbit around Mars
• Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) says the primary objectives of the orbiter are to demonstrate India’s technological capability, look for signs of life and study the planet’s atmospheric composition
• Multimedia
• YouTube | India\’s First Mars Mission Prepares for Launch | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• India\’s First Mars Probe Launch Set for Nov. 5 | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Bacteria Eating Virus

• Stephen, SMBinFLA in the chatroom
• Bacteria-eating viruses \’magic bullets in the war on superbugs\’ | ScienceDaily.com](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131016212558.htm)
• A specialist team of scientists from the University of Leicester has isolated viruses that eat bacteria, called phages, to specifically target the highly infectious hospital superbug Clostridium difficile
• Antibiotics
• Since the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, antibiotics have saved countless lives and impacted on the well-being of humanity
• The future impact of antibiotics is dwindling with more and more bacteria \’out-evolving\’ these miracle drugs
• Bacteriophages
• The team has been investigating an alternative approach to antibiotics, which utilizes naturally occurring viruses called bacteriophages, meaning \’eaters of bacteria\’.
• Bacteriophages are specific in what they kill and will generally only infect one particular species, or even strain, of bacteria
• Following attachment to their hosts, they inject their DNA into the bacterium, which then replicates many times over, ultimately causing the bacterial cell to burst open
• One Example of a Use
• Bacteria primarily affect our digestive system pose a serious threat when our natural digestive environment is disrupted or depleted, such as after chronic antibiotic use
• Antibiotics also destroy the \’good\’ gut bacteria, in turn increasing the potential for relapse or new infections
• Recent Developments
• A specific mixture of phages have been proved, through extensive laboratory testing, to be effective against 90% of the most clinically relevant C. diff strains currently seen in the U.K
• US-based biopharmaceutical company and pioneers in developing phage-based therapeutics and have already made progress in developing phages targeted against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a pathogen that causes acute, life-threatening lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients
• Goals
• One goal of funding further development and testing of phages developed by scientists is to have a phage mixture ready to go into phase 1 and 2 clinical trials
• Evaluations of the efficacy of bacteriophage therapy and optimisation of dosing regimes will be carried out
• Further Reading / In the News
• Bacteria-eating viruses \’magic bullets in the war on superbugs\’ | SciencDaily.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Nov 3, 1906 : 107 years ago : “SOS” | . . . – – – . . . : “SOS” was specified as the international distress signal, in a document signed by representatives of 27 nations at the second International Wireless Telegraph Convention in Berlin. It would replace the earlier Marconi call sign CQD. By 1904 many transatlantic British ships had wireless equipment. First used in England on landline wires, “CQ” preceded time signals and special notices as a sign for “all stations.” The Marconi company suggested adding the “D” meaning distress. The code “CQD” was established as a distress signal on 1 Feb 1904, but was never chosen from such a phrase as “Come Quick Danger.” The 1906 Conference proceedings do not detail the discussions about the choice of SOS. The likely reason is that it was speedy to tap out (not from “Save Our Souls”).
• S [ . . . ] O [ – – – ] S [ . . . ]
• V [ . . . – ] T [ – ] B [ – . . . ]

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thursday, Oct 31 | Halloween | No moon tonight.
• Thursday, Oct 31 | Halloween | Twilight | Venus is in the SW
• Saturday, Nov 02 | Sunrise | There will be a partial eclipse of the Sun for the Eastern Seaboard of North America. [Daytime Sunday for Africa, Middle East, and S Europe | How to Safely Observe the Sun (Infographic) | Space.com | How To View the Sun Safely | Sky and Telescope Image Sky & Telescope illustration / source: Stellarium
• Planets
• Saturn | No longer visible, in light of sunset
• Venus | Dusk | In the SW, set about an hour after dark
• Mars | 2-3am local | Still near the blue-white star Regulus (actually 4 stars, 2 binary star systems) they are high in the E by dawn
• Comet ISON | Before dawn below Mars. Still only visible in a moderate sized telescope. Updates on Comet ISON | Sky and Telescope
• Jupiter | 10-11pm local | Rises in the E-NE, with the star Castor and Pollux about 8* to the left (10* ~ fist held at arms length)

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 03

• “Fall Behind” | 2am ‘falls’ back to 1am

• Daylight saving time by country | Wikipedia

• Looking Up Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Dinosaurs & Satellites | SciByte 107 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at dinosaur fight scars, possible sub-glacial bacteria, a robot that can throw, update on the Higgs-Boson, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Dino-Eat-Dino World

• Scientists say that a scar recently found on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound
• The lucky dinosaur was an adult species of duck billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus annectens, that lived about 65 to 67 million years ago
• The Scar
• A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5×5 inches (12×14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature\’s bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye
• Some scientists say that the scar pattern is nearly identical to those found on modern reptiles, including iguanas
• Other scientists are not convinced, however, they say that the skin injury was not caused by a predator attack
• They say the size of the scar is relatively small, and it would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.
• Skull Injury
• Paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History say the skull also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the
• They determined that the marks on the skull, are more consistent with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones
• Prior to this discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound
• In that case however, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead
• Escape
• Although escaping from a T. rex is something that we wouldn\’t normally think might happen, duckbill dinosaurs were not without defenses.
• They travelled in herds, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe their hefty tail or kick its legs to take down predators, and traveled in herds
• They also had very powerful running muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they\’d taken flight
• The Puzzle Pieces
• Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting
• Though still unproven, it is thought that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, possibly a T. Rex
• The wound \”was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth,\”
• It\’s very likely that this particular dinosaur wasn\’t the only dinosaur to have scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents
• Further Reading / In the News
• Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack | News.NationalGeographic.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Strange Bacteria From Under the Polar Cap? … Or Momentary Hope

• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 33 | Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates – Sub Glacial Lakes (February 14, 2012)
• Collecting the Sample
• This discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica
• Last year the Russian team drilled almost 2.34 miles (4 kilometers) to reach the lake and take the samples.
• The lake is believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.
• The Sample, the Truth and Fiction
• A Russian scientist at the genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics had believed they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica
• He claimed that one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms, as far as DNA goes, basically zero
• The head of the genetics laboratory at the same institute said on Saturday that the strange life forms were in fact nothing but contaminants.
• New samples of water will be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May, if the same bacteria are found then the team will be sure that they have found new life on Earth that exists in no database
• On the “Extra-Terrestrial” Scale
• \”If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth.\”
• Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions
• Whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.
• Saturn\’s moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Russia admits no new life form found in Antarctic lake | phys.org
• Russia finds \’new bacteria\’ in Antarctic lake | Phys.org

Cheap Interplanetary Satellites

• Two CubeSats, designed by NASA\’s JPL and three university partners, are soon to go where no CubeSats have gone before: beyond Earth orbit.
• CubeSats are tiny satellites, some no bigger than four inches (10 cm) on each side, sent into orbit as secondary payloads on other launch vehicles
• The Mission
• The space agency’s twin satellites will be the first CubeSats to leave Earth\’s orbit for interplanetary space
• If the interplanetary test launch succeeds, CubeSats could someday blanket the solar system, conducting cheap, high-risk missions to comets, asteroids, moons and planets
• The INSPIRE project has been approved by NASA to launch sometime between 2014 and 2016, but a specific launch vehicle hasn\’t been selected.
• Just where the pioneering CubeSats will go is still unclear, however, since it’s not known yet which model rocket will be used for launch
• The first mission will be basically an escape trajectory in some unknown direction
• Since they won\’t have much propulsion or scientific instrumentation, the INSPIRE craft are mainly just a test of whether tiny machines can survive the harsh environment of space.
• The Challenges
• One of the challenges of the project is figuring how the tiny satellites will communicate with Earth.
• CubeSats are far cheaper than a traditional space mission but they lack room for complex communications systems or large power sources.
• As they away from Earth they need larger antennas to communicate with the low-powered craft
• In addition once they spacecraft leaves the protective magnetic field surrounding Earth, it\’s at risk of failure from solar radiation
• Traditional satellites are built with more expensive \”radiation-hardened\” components
• Further Reading / In the News
• Tiny Satellites\’ Big Mission: Going Beyond Earth Orbit | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

“BigDog” Can Throw Things Now Too

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 62 |
  Stradivarius & Tigers – Boston-Dynamics Robot’s [September 11, 2012]
• SciByte 35 | Neutrinos & Leap Year – Legged Squad Support System (LS3) [February 28, 2012]
• BigDog Stats
• The size of a large dog or small mule; about 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and weighs 240 lbs
• Can run at four miles per hour, walk across the roughest terrain, make its way through mud and snow (its four legs are articulated like an animal
• The robot carries 300-plus pound (136 kg) loads. According to Boston Dynamics, BigDog covered 12.8 miles (20.6 kilometers) without stopping or refueling, setting a world record for legged vehicles.
• Throwing for Distance
• Boston Dynamics is giving BigDog an enhanced ability to rely on its entire body for throwing heavy objects around, with an appendage powerful enough to lift and throw the objects aside.
• It grasps a block with \”jaws\” and flinging it out of the way, utilizing it\’s body and gait to throw it as well
• The idea is to make BigDog successfully cope with heavy objects that need to be hurled out of the way
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Dynamic Robot Manipulation | BostonDynamics
• YouTube | BigDog Overview (Updated March 2010) |BostonDynamics
• Social Media
• Boston Dynamics @BostonDynamics
• Further Reading / In the News
• Now Boston Dynamics\’ BigDog can lift and toss (w/ video) | Phys.org

— Updates —

Higgs-Boson

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 53 | Higgs-Boson (July 10, 2012)
• SciByte 37 | Solar Storms and Higgs Boson
• Physicists told a conference in La Thuile, Italy, that more analysis is needed before a definitive statement can be made on the Higgs-Boson
• Inch-by-Inch
• Since scientists\’ announcement last July that they had found a particle likely to be the Higgs, much data has been analysed, and its properties are becoming clearer
• Key to a positive identification of the particle is a detailed analysis of its properties and how it interacts with other particles
• Spin-Zero?
• The existence of spin angular momentum is where particles are observed to possess angular momentum that cannot be accounted for by orbital angular momentum alone
• Experiments indicate that the elementary particles are not made up of smaller particles rotating around a center point so the spin of an elementary particle is therefore seen as a truly intrinsic physical property, akin to the particle\’s electric charge and rest mass.
• Current theories are that these elementary particles spin is simply a physical property, like electrical charge and mass
• Rotating a spin-1/2 particle by 360 degrees does not bring it back to the same quantum state, but to the state with the opposite quantum phase; this is detectable, in principle, with interference experiments. To return the particle to its exact original state, one needs a 720 degree
• Rotating a spin-2 particle 180 degrees can bring it back to the same quantum state and a spin-4 particle should be rotated 90 degrees to bring it back to the same quantum state.
• A spin 0 particle can be imagined as sphere which looks the same after whatever angle it is turned through.
• Several teams researching the particle determining the Higgs-Boson spin say it must be spin-zero
• All the analysis conducted so far strongly indicates spin-zero, but it is not yet able to rule out entirely the possibility that the particle has spin-two
• The Future …?
• Until physicists can confidently observe the particle\’s spin, the particle will remain Higgs-like
• New research will have to stop as the Large Hadron Collider is upgraded, but physicists will still have plenty of data to analyze
• Further Reading / In the News
• Particle looking \’more and more\’ like Higgs, LHC scientists say | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Solar Eruption
• Scientists say a solar eruption was detected on March 5, 2013 headed toward Mars
• While the rover was designed to withstand punishing space weather, it was decided to power it down as a precaution since it suffered a recent computer problem
• Curiosity rover will postpone some activities but other Mars missions will operate normally
• Opportunity rover and two NASA spacecraft circling overhead carried on with normal activities
• The eruption appears to be fairly normal and was not expected to have an impact on Earth
• Since Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field, it does not experience geomagnetic storms instead the planet sees a spike in radiation
• Powerful solar blasts can cause trouble to Mars spacecraft. In 2003, an intense solar flare knocked out the radiation detector on the Odyssey orbiter
• In the worst-case scenario, one or more of the working Mars spacecraft may enter \”safe mode\” in which science activities are halted but they remain in contact with Earth.
• The delay means it\’ll take longer for Curiosity to return to analyzing the pinch of rock powder it collected from a recent drilling
• Starting to Resume Operations
• Over the weekend, Curiosity\’s mission operations team continued testing and assessing the A-side computer\’s memory
• Tests have provided a great deal of information about the rover\’s A-side memory
• The team has been able to store new data in many of the memory locations previously affected and more runs will demonstrate more memory is available
• Two software patches, targeting onboard memory allocation and vehicle safing procedures, are likely to be uplinked later this week
• After the software patches are installed, the mission team will reassess when to resume full mission operations.
• Curiosity exited safe mode on Saturday, March 2, and resumed using its high-gain antenna the following day
• The cause for the A-side\’s memory symptoms remains to be determined.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• YouTube Mars in a Minute: Why is Curiosity Looking for Organics? | JPLNews
• Curiosity Rover self portrait | UniverseToday | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Rover\’s Recovery Moving Forward | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA\’s Curiosity rover to be back online next week | Phys.org
• Solar Storm Blasting to Mars Shuts Down Curiosity – 1st Rocky Sample Results on tap | UniverseToday.com
• Curiosity sleeps as solar blast races toward Mars | Phys.org
• Mars Rover Curiosity Put on Standby After Solar Flare | Space Weather | Space.com
• Curiosity Is Awake Again And On The Path To Recovery | Popular Science

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• March 16, 1867 : 146 years ago : Antiseptic surgery : The Lancet published a paper by Joseph Lister, the first of a series of articles in the Lancet on his discovery of antiseptic surgery: On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess, &c. Lister applied Louis Pasteur\’s idea that the microorganisms causing gangrene might be controlled with chemical solutions. Since the use carbolic acid (phenol) was known as means of deodorizing sewage, Lister tested the results of using a solution of it for spraying instruments, on surgical incisions, and applied to dressings. Upon finding this procedure substantially reduced the incidence of gangrene, Lister published his results in series of articles in the Lancet on the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Sun, March 17 | ~ 9pm local | The Moon is in the west, Jupiter will be very close to the upper right of the moon, and the red star Aldebaran to it\’s lower left
• Jupiter | After sunset it will be high in the SW, and will move to the West as the evening progresses

• Saturn | Late Evening | Will rise in the E-SE, and will move to the high S sky in the early morning

• Where to Find Comet PanSTARRS
  

• 10* is about the width of your fist held at arm\’s length.

• This diagram is drawn for a viewer near 40* north latitude (Denver, New York, Madrid) 30 minutes after sunset.
• If you\’re south of there, the comet will be a little higher above your horizon early in the month than shown here.
• North of 40°, it will be a little lower early in March than shown here.

• SkyandTelescope.com/panstarrs

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post Strange Bacteria & Higgs-Boson | SciByte 85 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at more exoplanets around binary stars, a dinosaur’s dinner, sweet clouds around a star, diagnosing with eyes, Martian reality TV, updates on bionic eyes, Mars rover updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Support the Show:

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