GRAIL – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:47:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png GRAIL – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope | SciByte 96 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/38226/mammoth-blood-crowdsourced-telescope-scibyte-96/ Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:42:42 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=38226 We take a look at Woolly Mammoth blood, University Rover Challenge, conductive paint, crowdsourcing a telescope, frozen moss, and much more!

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We take a look at Woolly Mammoth blood, University Rover Challenge, conductive paint, crowdsourcing a telescope, frozen moss, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Book Pick:

Woolly Mammoth Blood!?!?!?

  • The Wooly Mammoth
  • An expedition led by Russian scientists earlier this month uncovered the well-preserved carcass of a female mammoth on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean
  • The head of the expedition, said the animal died 10,000 to 15,000, at the age of around 60 some, making it the first time that an old female had been found
  • Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago
  • Scientists think small groups of them lived longer in Alaska and on Russia\’s Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.
  • The Claim on the Body Preservation
  • The lower part of the carcass was very well preserved as it ended up in a pool of water that later froze over
  • The upper part of the body including the back and the head are believed to have been eaten by predators
  • The team was surprised that the carcass was so well preserved that it still had blood and muscle tissue, and that when they broke the ice beneath the stomach, very dark blood flowed out
  • The muscle tissue is also said to be red, the colour of fresh meat
  • The temperature at the time of excavation was -7 to – 10 degrees Celsius [19.4 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit]
  • Because these temperatures are below freezing it may be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryoprotective properties
  • To Be Studied
  • If these claims are true, it will be the most well-preserved tissue found from a Woolly Mammoth
  • Mammoth specialists from South Korea, Russia and the United States are expected to study the remains which the Russian scientists are now keeping at an undisclosed northern location
  • \”Jurassic Park Prize\”
  • Scientists already have deciphered much of the genetic code of the woolly mammoth from balls of mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost
  • The discovery gives researchers a really good chance of finding live cells which can help in cloning a mammoth
  • Last year the researchers signed a deal with cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea\’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, who in 2005 created the world\’s first cloned dog.
  • Those who succeed in recreating an extinct animal could claim a \”Jurassic Park prize\”, the concept of which is being developed by the X Prize Foundation
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Russians Find Mammoth Carcass With Liquid Blood | AssociatedPress
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Russian scientists make rare find of \’blood\’ in mammoth | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

University Rover Challenge

  • What is the University Rover Challenge?
  • The competition is hosted by the Mars Society, a non-profit research organization dedicated to promoting the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars
  • The competition site is located at the society\’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), a rocky barren landscape that\’s similar to Martian terrain
  • Each team was allowed to spend up to $15,000 on their rovers, which can weigh no more than 50 kilograms – about 110 lbs.
  • The URC is based on the assumption that the rovers are telerobots, which means they would be operated by astronauts on or orbiting Mars
  • Team members must guide their rovers via a remote connection, such as a computer in the back of a truck, as long as it\’s shielded so the team can\’t see their rovers
  • Teams compete in four challenges, which change year to year, designed to replicate the activities of NASA\’s rovers on Mars.
  • The Tasks for 2013
  • Teams will guide their rovers to collect the subsurface soil samples most likely to contain photosynthetic bacteria, lichen and other bits of living material
  • Deliver a series of packages, such as emergency supplies to \”astronauts\” (URC staff) in the field
  • Fix a dust-covered solar panel (without water, of course)
  • Navigate an obstacle course that will include climbing steep grades, getting over boulders and passing through PVC pipe gates, aimed to test each rover\’s maneuverability
  • The Teams
  • This year\’s teams represent universities and colleges in Canada, India, Poland and the United States
  • These include two-time returning champions Toronto\’s York University (2012 and 2009) and Oregon State (2010 and 2008)
  • Full list of entries for the 2013 URC
  • Winners
  • First Place with 493 out of 500 points (highest ever scored) | The Hyperion Team from Bialystok University of Technology, Poland
  • Second Place with 401 out of 500 points | Scorpio 3 team from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
  • Third Place with 350 out of 500 points | OSU Mars Rover Team from Oregon State University, USA
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Bialystok University of Technology – Hyperion Team
  • YouTube | Wroclaw University of Technology – Scorpio 3 Team
  • YouTube | University Rover Challenge Clips | Jeremy LeFevre
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The Rocky Road to Building the Next Mars Rover | Space.com
  • Contest Challenges Students to Design Next Mars Rover | University Rover Challenge | Space.com
  • University Rover Challenge | MarsSociety.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Conductive Paint

  • What Is It?
  • The substance allows the painting of \”liquid wiring\” on any surface, except for skin
  • Radio Shack stocks paint pens, which the inventors emphasized, is the first non-toxic electrically conductive paint available and it dries at room temperature
  • The inventors also say that they hope to appeal to a wide creative range of hobbyists, artists, and engineers for innovative ways to use their products
  • In addition the substance is child friendly, which opens the door to educational projects, including toys, and touch-sensitive paper drawings that play sounds
  • Applications
  • Generally split into two simple classifications, signaling and powering
  • Signaling could include using the Paint as a potentiometer while interfacing with a micro-controller, as a conduit in a larger circuit or as a capacitive sensor
  • Powering a device would include lighting LED\’s or driving small speakers
  • According to the company, Bare Paint has a surface resistivity of approximately 55 ohms/square at 50 microns layer thickness (human hair is ~100 microns)
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Bare Conductive Paint | Adafruit Industries
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • BareConductive.com
  • Conductive paint lands in pens and pots for creatives | Phys.org

Crowdsourced Telescope

  • A commercial asteroid-mining company aiming to launch a crowdfunded space telescope raised more than $200,000 on the first day of its campaign
  • Total raised by the morning of filming this show (June 3) $714,473
  • The Plan
  • Planetary Resources, a private venture aiming to mine near-Earth space rocks announced on May 29 that it would build and launch a space telescope for public use if it could raise at least $1 million in 33 days.
  • The telescope will be a twin copy of the Arkyd spacecraft the company is developing to detect, track and study asteroids in preparation for its mining mission
  • A test version of the spacecraft is set for its maiden trial flight in April 2014, while the crowdfunded model would launch in early 2015
  • What the Backers Get
  • Public backers would use it to study celestial objects of their choice, they also have the option of sponsoring research projects at schools, universities or museums that could use the instrument.
  • The telescope will also take self portraits that show the telescope in orbit, with a user-submitted photo displayed on the instrument\’s screen, a camera mounted on the hull of the spacecraft will snap the photo.
  • Where Does the Name \”ARYKD\” Come From?
  • To some Star Wars fans, it might sound familiar
  • In the start of the project while looking for a code name the idea was to make a derivation of Arakyd Industries from the Star Wars universe
  • According to the StarWars.wikia : \”Arakyd Industries was a major manufacturer of droids, heavy weapons, and starships, dating back to the days of the Galactic Republic\”
  • They made such things as the Viper probe droid model, which the Empire used to locate the Echo Base on the planet Hoth
  • The Viper probe droids themselves were based on earlier probe droids that were the first true probe droids to search planets and asteroids for valuable resources, such as metals to fuel the processing plants of industry
  • Other Random/Interesting Facts
  • The space shuttle had room for 1 Hubble Space Telescope in its payload bay, it could have fit 1,000 ARKYD Space Telescopes
  • Going at 5 mi/sec it will travel 8x faster than an SR-71 Blackbird flying at mach 3, that\’s going from San Francisco to Boston in 10 min
  • At those speeds it will have a few min each orbit to download information at DSL speeds, the primary/first ground station will be in Seattle
  • Once the mission is going it will take 150 \”selfies\” and make 15 astronomical observations per day
  • It will run off of only 50 W, the same amount as a standard household light … or 111 hamster wheels
  • ARYKD Dimensions
  • Weight : 15 kg / 33 lb
  • Height 200 mm / 7.8 in
  • Wingspan Deployed : 600 mm / 23.6 in
  • Peak Power : 50 W
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
  • YouTube | Planetary Resources Announces ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
  • YouTube | Planetary Resources Kickstarter Community Event with Star Trek\’s Brent Spiner (Lt. Cmdr Data) | PlanetaryResources
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Space Telescope Crowdfunding Project Raises $167,000 | Space.com
  • Asteroid Mining Company Puts Orbital Telescope On Kickstarter | Popular Science
  • Find out more on Kickstarter

Frozen Moss, Back to Life

  • Zombie Moss?
  • Scientists have recently found that even after hundreds of years buried under ice, mosses can regrow
  • The revived plants come from Canada’s Ellesmere Island, where the Teardrop Glacier has retreated since the end of a cold period in 1550 to 1850 known as the Little Ice Age
  • On recently exposed ground they found clumps of mosses that looked dead. But among the brown tangles, the team noticed a few green sprigs
  • The team took brown moss samples back to the lab and used radiocarbon dating to determine that they had lived about 400 years ago
  • Based on the glacier’s retreat rate, the researchers estimated the plants had been uncovered for less than two years.
  • The team then ground up some of the plants and gave them nutrients, water and light
  • From seven of 24 samples, a total of four moss species grew
  • The budding plants didn’t come from seeds or spores because in moss, any cell can be reset, almost like a stem cell, to grow a new plant
  • How long a moss cell can stay viable is “anyone’s guess,”
  • The findings suggest that the regenerated mosses may help repopulate ecosystems after glaciers retreat
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mosses frozen in time come back to life | Life | Science News

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

EyeSpy an Exoplanet!

  • The Hubby | Check This Out! | Exoplanet Directly Observed
  • A newly discovered gaseous planet has been directly photographed orbiting a star about 300 light-years from Earth
  • Only a few planets have been directly observed so far, and this world may be the least massive planet directly observed outside of the solar system
  • The Planet
  • The photo released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on June 3 depicts the suspected gas giant (called HD 95086 b) circling its young star (named HD 95086) in infrared light
  • The planet was discovered by ESO\’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Based on the planet\’s brightness, scientists estimate that it is only about four or five times more massive than Jupiter
  • The planet orbits its star at about twice the distance from the sun to Neptune and about 56 times the distance between Earth and the sun, the blue circle in the photo represents the distance between the sun and Neptune.
  • The star is relatively young, at only 10 million to 17 million years old, making the formation of the exoplanet and the dusty disc surrounding the star potentially intriguing to researchers
  • Formation
  • The planet might have grown by assembling the rocks that form the solid core and then slowly accumulated gas from the environment to form the heavy atmosphere
  • It also might have started forming from a gaseous clump that arose from gravitational instabilities in the disc
  • Interactions between the planet and the disc itself or with other planets may have also moved the planet from where it was born
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Never-Before-Seen Alien Planet Imaged Directly in New Photo | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Lunar Gravity Map

  • Mascons
  • Mascons, or gravitational anomalies, were discovered on the moon in the 1960s, as NASA officials were planning for the Apollo moon missions, but the cause of these anomalies was unknown
  • By mapping the moon\’s gravity field, the Grail probes uncovered the locations of lunar mascons, and offered unprecedented views of the moon\’s interior structure
  • This enabled scientists to study two basins – one on the lunar nearside and one on the far side of the moon – to develop sophisticated computer models for how mascons form
  • New Ideas How They Formed
  • Billions of years ago, massive asteroids that collided with the moon left deep craters that reached into the mantle material that lies beneath the thin lunar crust
  • What had been unexplained until now was how these big impact sites could support extremely dense material, and how the gravity field in these basins could be in such disequilibrium
  • Mascon basins on the near side of the moon were partially filled in with ancient flows of dense lava, which seemed able to account for the mass excess and positive gravity anomalies
  • For some basins, however, the observed lava flows were too thin to explain the mass excess, some basins were even found that exhibited mascons but lacked lava infill altogether
  • The researchers determined that ancient asteroid impacts excavated large craters on the moon, causing surrounding lunar materials and rocks from the moon\’s mantle to melt and collapse inward
  • This melting caused the material to become denser and more concentrated than the strong lunar crust, which also slides down into the impact hole, eventually forms a curved but rigid barrier over the basin, holding the dense materials down
  • New models from this data gave the researchers a glimpse of how the moon\’s mascons formed in the aftermath of huge asteroid impacts
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mystery of Moon\’s Lumpy Gravity Explained | Moon Missions | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Radiation Findings
  • Curiosity\’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft
  • The findings,indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA\’s career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.
  • Forms of Radiation
  • GCR\’s. Galactic cosmic rays are particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system.
  • SEP\’s. Solar energetic particles are associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun
  • Radiation Exposure
  • NASA has established a three percent increased risk of fatal cancer as an acceptable career limit for its astronauts currently operating in low-Earth orbit
  • Only about three percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles because of a relatively quiet solar cycle and the shielding provided by the spacecraft
  • The radiation detected for the accumulated dose during the trip was about what you would get if you had a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days
  • Shielding
  • Current spacecraft shield much more effectively against SEPs than GCRs. To protect against the comparatively low energy of typical SEPs, astronauts might need to move into havens with extra shielding on a spacecraft or on the Martian surface, or employ other countermeasures
  • GCRs tend to be highly energetic, highly penetrating particles that are not stopped by the modest shielding provided by a typical spacecraft.
  • The Future
  • RAD data collected during Curiosity\’s science mission will continue to inform plans to protect astronauts as NASA designs future missions to Mars in the coming decades
  • Radiation
  • The MSL spacecraft structure (which includes the backshell and heat shield as well as the Curiosity rover and its descent stage) provided significant shielding from the deep space radiation environment
  • The spikes in radiation levels occurred in February, March and late May of 2012 because of large solar energetic particle events caused by solar activity
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Data From NASA Rover\’s Voyage To Mars Aids Planning | mars.jpl.nasa.gov+ Comparison of Some Radiation Exposures to Mars-Trip Level | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Calculating Radiation Dose for Biological Tissue | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • Radiation Measurements During Trip From Earth to Mars | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 6, 1878 : 135 years ago : Liquid air : In 1878, liquid air obtained at a temperature of -192ºC was exhibited by Professor James Dewar at the Royal Institution, London. His work followed the small-scale production of liquid air by Raoul Pictet of Geneva (Dec 1877) and Cailletet of Paris (Jan 1878). In March 1893, Dewar produced solid air. He gave six well-illustrated Christmas Lectures on “Air: gaseous and liquid” at the Royal Institution between 28 Dec 1893 and 9 Jan 1894. (Some of the air in the room was liquefied in the presence of the audience, and remained so for some time, when enclosed in a vacuum jacket.) He demonstrated several physical properties of liquid air, and produced solid air at the Friday 19 Jan 1894 meeting of the Royal Institution

Looking up this week

The post Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope | SciByte 96 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Breath Analysis & Large Structures | SciByte 77 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/30191/breath-analysis-large-structures-scibyte-77/ Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:10:25 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=30191 We take a look at analysing your breath, large structures on a universal scale, inflatable space station modules, and more!

The post Breath Analysis & Large Structures | SciByte 77 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at analyzing your breath, large structures on a universal scale, inflatable space station modules, spacecraft update, Curiosity news and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Support the Show:

Show Notes:

Big on a Universal Scale

  • Image Credit: R. G. Clowes / UCLan
  • The low down
  • Quasars are the nuclei of galaxies from the early days of the universe that undergo periods of extremely high brightness that make them visible across huge distances that last 10–100 million years, which is brief on the astronomical time scale
  • Since 1982 it has been known that quasars tend to group together in clumps or ‘structures’ of surprisingly large sizes, forming large quasar groups or LQGs.
  • Significance
  • Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an international team of researchers has discovered a record-breaking cluster of quasars-young active galaxies at a mind blowing 4 billion years across
  • The Milky Way is a hundred thousand light-years across and is separated from its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, by 2.5 million light-years [~0.75 Megaparsecs (Mpc)]
  • The local supercluster of galaxies in which it’s located, the Virgo Cluster, is only a hundred million light-years wide
  • LQGs can be 650 million light-years [200 Mpc] or more across while Whole clusters of galaxies can be a mere 6.5 million light-years [2–3 Mpc]
  • While this elongated LQC has a typical dimension of 1.6 billion light-years [500 Mpc] with its longest dimension at 4 billion light years [1200 Mpc]
  • This would make it some 1600 times larger than the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda
  • The LQG is so significant in size it also challenges the Cosmological Principle: the assumption that the universe, when viewed at a sufficiently large scale, looks the same no matter where you are observing it from.
  • Of Note
  • The modern theory of cosmology is based on the work of Albert Einstein, and depends on the assumption of the Cosmological Principle
  • The Principle is assumed but has never been demonstrated observationally ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
  • Based on the Cosmological Principle and the modern theory of cosmology, calculations suggest that astrophysicists should not be able to find a structure larger than 1.2 million light-years [370 Mpc].
  • Recall that this elongated LQC has a typical dimension of 1.6 billion light-years [500 Mpc] with its longest dimension at 4 billion light years [1200 Mpc]
  • This discovery could mean that current mathematical descriptions of the universe has been oversimplified
  • It represents a serious difficulty and a serious increase in complexity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Biggest Thing in Universe Found—Defies Scientific Theory | news.NationalGeographic.com
  • Astronomers discover the largest structure in the universe | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Inflatable Space Station Modules

  • On Jan 11 NASA announced they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new inflatable module for the ISS, making it the first privately built module to be added to the space station
  • The low down
  • According to the website Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis I inflatable test module was inserted into orbit and is still functioning and “continuing to produce invaluable images, videos and data
  • A second Genesis module was launched in 2007 and it, too, is still functioning in orbit.
  • Previous information given out said the inflatable module for the space station would be used for adding additional storage and workspace, and certified to remain on-orbit for two years
  • Significance
  • The outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes it uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
  • NASA officials have said that BEAM could be on orbit about two years after getting an official go-ahead
  • The module will likely be launched by one of the agency’s commercial cargo suppliers, California-based SpaceX or Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp
  • Of Note
  • The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
  • They are looking at a possible outpost on the moon that would use several modules, propulsion tanks, and power units that would be joined together in space and then flown down to the lunar surface.
  • Lunar dirt would be piled over the modules to protect against radiation, thermal extremes and micrometeorite strikes.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Bigelow Inflatable Module Will be Added to Space Station | UniverseToday.com
  • NASA Buys Private Inflatable Room for Space Station | Space.com

What Else is on Your Breath

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 46 | Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | A breathalyzer that does more than find out how much you’ve had to drink [May 15, 2012]
  • The low down
  • Researchers have developed a test that can detect the presence of common infectious bacteria based just on the breath
  • The test measures the VOC, volatile organic compound, particles emitted in gasses, profiles that the bacteria create that are distinct those that the body, or other bacteria, give off
  • Significance
  • They conducted studies in lab mice that were infected with different types of common bacteria
  • Researchers used two different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause pneumonia, and one strain of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause respiratory infections
  • The researchers tested the animals’ breath the next day by ionizing breath samples then then shooting them through a mass spectrometer to analyze concentrations of various VOCs in a process called secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
  • The test identified the different bacterial infections as well as differentiated between healthy and infected
  • The team also located the difference between the two strains of P. aeruginosa
  • The speedy results of the test is appealing. And it could at least make it a good first step in detecting bacterial infections, with a follow-up culture coming later if deemed necessary-to detect drug-resistant TB, for example
  • This technique will have to be tested in large human trials before it can be used on a large scale in offices
  • Of Note
  • Similar breath tests have also been studied for detecting other ailments, such as diabetes and cancer
  • In addition it is thought that we will also be able to distinguish between bacterial, viral and fungal infections of the lung
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Breath Test Could Sniff Out Infections in Minutes | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network | blogs.scientificamerican.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

One Way Trip to Mars

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s | Martian Reality TV [September 4, 2012]
  • The low down
  • The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which hopes to put the first boots on the Red Planet in 2023, released its basic astronaut requirements on Jan 8
  • A televised global selection process will begin later this year.
  • Significance
  • Anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply to become a Mars colony pioneer
  • Important criteria, officials say, are intelligence, good mental and physical health and dedication to the project, as astronauts will undergo eight years of training before launch.
  • Even Well before the official Astronaut Selection Program, the project has already received more than 1,000 emails from individuals who desire to go to Mars
  • Of Note
  • Mars One plans to launch a series of robotic cargo missions between 2016 and 2021, which will build a habitable Red Planet outpost ahead of the arrival of the first four colonists in 2023.
  • More settlers will arrive every two years after that. There are no plans to return the pioneers to Earth
  • The project will be largely funded by staging a global reality-TV event
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Mars One introduction film | MarsOneProject
  • YouTube Construction steps of Mars One settlement | MarsOneProject
  • YouTube Channel [Mars One
  • Social Media
  • Mars One @MarsOneProject
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars One Homepage
  • Mars Colonists Wanted to Explore Red Planet | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

MoonKAM

  • The low down
  • The MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students) took more than 115,000 total images of the lunar surface, and imaging targets were proposed by middle school students
  • Some of the final images taken by the GRAIL MoonKAM educational cameras on board Ebb and Flow, the twin spacecraft for the mission
  • The spacecraft had lowered their orbit to only about 6.8 miles [11 km] above the lunar surface. While these images aren’t of the highest of resolution, they provide a great sense of what it would be like to orbit close to the Moon
  • This footage was shot just three days prior to when the mission ended with the planned impacts on a rim of a crater near the lunar north pole.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Parting Moon Shots from NASA’s GRAIL mission | JPLnewsJPLnews
  • Social Media
  • GRAIL MoonKAM @GRAIL_MoonKAM
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • New Video Shows the GRAIL MoonKAM’s Final Looks at the Moon | UniverseToday.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Jan 21, 1979 : 34 years ago : Neptune : Pluto has a highly elliptical orbit, completing its journey around the Sun every 248 years. Pluto’s distance from the Sun varies, most of the time, Pluto is the farthest planet from the Sun, but every 497 years, for 20 years during its orbit, Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune. In reality Pluto is actually quite a distance “above” Neptune and orbits the Sun twice for every three orbits of Neptune. Pluto “crossed” Neptune’s orbit on January 21, 1979, and temporarily became the 8th planet from the sun. On February 11, Pluto moved farther from the Sun than Neptune, regaining its status as the most distant planet in the solar system. well planet at that time Image| Orbits of Pluto and Neptune
  • PLUTO TO BECOME MOST DISTANT PLANET | Feb 09, 1999
  • Pluto and Neptune: Collision? | imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov

Looking up this week

The post Breath Analysis & Large Structures | SciByte 77 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> End of the World? | SciByte 75 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/29071/end-of-the-world-scibyte-75/ Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:47:38 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=29071 We take a look at the science of a few "end of the world" ideas, a few astronomy gift ideas, DARPA's Probe Droid, the new Space Station crew, and more!

The post End of the World? | SciByte 75 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the science of a few “end of the world” ideas, a few astronomy gift ideas, DARPA’s Probe Droid, the new Space Station crew, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Download | Ogg Download | Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | Ogg Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Support the Show:

Show Notes:

End of the World?

— NEWS BYTE —

Holiday Gift Ideas

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

DARPA … Probe Droid?

  • The low down
  • This UAV is capable of both hover and wing-borne flight, making the delivery and precision emplacement of a payload possible
  • A special robotic arm was designed with the capability of carrying up to 1 pound.
  • The low-cost vision system enables the UAV to autonomously search, find and track a target’s position relative to the hovering vehicle
  • The newly developed stereo vision system tracks the target and motion of the robotic arm.
  • The control logic maneuvers the vehicle and direct the robotic arm to accurately engage the emplacement target.
  • Vehicle stability can be maintained with the arm extended 6 feet with a 1-pound payload.
  • The goal was to show the team could quickly develop and integrate the right technology to make this work
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube V-Bat VTOL UAV | Headed to Target
  • YouTube V-Bat VTOL UAV | Search for and Find Target
  • YouTube V-Bat VTOL UAV | Arm Places Object
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • What an unmanned aerial vehicle can do with depth perception | phys.org

Snapshot Serengeti

  • The low down
  • Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been trying to count and locate the animals of the Serengeti, and began placing automatic cameras across the park a couple of years ago.
  • They now have more than 200 cameras around the region – all triggered by motion – capturing animals day and night.
  • They have amassed millions of images so far, and more come in all the time. So they’ve team up with us here at the Zooniverse!
  • They need the help of online volunteers to spot and classify animals in these snapshot of life in Serengeti National Park. Doing this will provide the data needed to track and study these animals, whilst giving everyone the chance to see them in the wild.
  • Snapshot Serengeti

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

GRAIL End of Mission

International Space Station – Expedition 34

– UPDATE –

The Higgs=Boson steps closer to certainty

  • The low down
  • The latest research findings from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN show that the CMS and ATLAS experiments are now reporting that the significance of their observation of the Higgs-like particle is standing close to the 7 sigma level
  • This is well beyond the 5 required for a discovery, and that the new particle’s properties appear to be consistent with those of a Standard Model Higgs boson.
  • Even with these results much further analysis is needed to reveal the full details of its identity
  • The next update is scheduled for the spring 2013 conferences although with the LHC shutting down after the new year and resuming operations in 2015, we’ll probably have to wait some time longer.
  • Of Note
  • 5 Sigma is 1 in about 1.7 million (1,744,278)
  • 7 Sigma is 1 in about 390 billion (390,682,215,445)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • CMS, ATLAS experiments report Higgs-like particle close to the 7 sigma level | phys.org

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Dec 22 1882 : 130 years ago : Christmas tree lights : The first string of electric lights decorating a Christmas tree was created for his home by Edward H. Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison. Previously, trees had been decorated with wax candles. The Dec 1901 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal advertised the Christmas tree lamps, first made commercially by the Edison General Electric Co. of Harrison, N.J. in strings of nine sockets, each with a miniature 2 candlepower, 32-volt, carbon-filament lamp*. Christmas tree lights quickly became the rage among wealthy Americans, but the average citizen didn’t use them until the 1920s or later. Character light bulbs became popular in the 1920s, bubble lights in the 1940s, twinkle bulbs in the 1950s and plastic bulbs by 1955. Image

Looking up this week

The post End of the World? | SciByte 75 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Spicy Foods & Mars | SciByte 74 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/28701/spicy-foods-mars-scibyte-74/ Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:43:52 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=28701 We take a look at why some people may like spicy foods, cracker sized satellites, spacecraft updates, and take a peek back into history.

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We take a look at why some people may like spicy foods, cracker sized satellites, 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:

The Right Personality for Spicy Foods?

  • The low down
  • The science of spicy food liking and intake shows there’s more to it than just increased tolerance with repeated exposure
  • Personality, researchers say, is also a factor in whether a person enjoys spicy meals and how often he or she eats them
  • Desensitization to capsaicin, the plant chemical that gives peppers their burn, is well documented, there’s also evidence that the effect is surprisingly small
  • Researchers have also previously linked chili liking to thrill seeking, specifically an affinity for amusement park rides and gambling
  • Significance
  • Investigators found a relationship between chili liking and sensation seeking when using a more formal measure of personality called Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale
  • In both cases, however, the associations were fairly weak, and neither study looked at intake – how often a person eats spicy foods, versus how much a person likes spice.
  • A new study used an updated measure of sensation seeking that avoided gender- and age-biased questions
  • Ninety-seven male and female participants ranging in age from 18 to 45 filled out a food-liking questionnaire and rated the intensity of sensations after sampling six stimuli, including capsaicin mixed in water
  • Sensation seeking emerged as a much stronger predictor of spicy food liking than in the previous studies it also predicted how often a person ate chili-laden meals
  • Personality traits, however, were not associated with high liking of non-spicy foods, which reduced the possibility that thrill seekers are just crazy about food in general
  • Of Note
  • The study group may not have been large enough to show a desensitizing effect as there is a lack of evidence for desensitization in the study boosts the argument for personality as an important factor
  • For instance frequent chili eaters didn’t feel the burn from the capsaicin sample any less than people who ate peppers less often
  • A combination of factors likely influences who goes for the mild wings on Super Bowl Sunday and who reaches for hot
  • Childhood exposure and learning all play a critical role in liking for spicy foods also individuals who acquired an entirely [new] set of food preferences as adults once they moved away from home as may have been a disconnect between reported frequency of intake and actual dose
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Love Of Spicy Food Is Built Into Your Personality | Popular Science

— NEWS BYTE —

Public Funded KickSat

  • The low down
  • KickSat is set to launch more than 200 of these tiny satellites, nicknamed “sprites,” into low-Earth orbit
  • KickSat will hitch a ride in September 2013 (subject to change) from Cape Canaveral on CRS–3, the third SpaceX Falcon 9 flight destined for the International Space Station
  • The roughly 250 sprites will be sent into space the NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, will provides a free launch (normally $300,000) for university space research
  • Significance
  • The team raised nearly $75,000 as more than 300 people sponsored a sprite that will transmit an identifying signal, such as the initials of the donor
  • One person, who donated $10,000, Manchester added, will get to “push the big red button” on the day of the launch.
  • Of Note
  • The “Sprites” are the size of a cracker but are outfitted with solar cells, a radio transceiver and a microcontroller
  • A large part of the project is helping people track their own satellites with a simple software radio interface
  • From a research standpoint, the plan is to interested in the dynamics and behavior of the satellites, and plans to test how to track their positions and determine their orbits
  • It’ll look like hundreds of postage stamps fluttering toward Earth-each an independent satellite transmitting a signal unique to the person who helped send it to space
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube KickSat | KickSatInSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • KickSat website
  • Kicksat: Crowd-funded, DIY spacecraft to float into low-Earth orbit | phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Smoking and Bone Density

  • The low down
  • Yet another reason not to smoke, especially as a teenager
  • Note that these tests were specifically aimed at women because there is a much higher incidence rate, but similar results might be a near direct correlation to men
  • Osteoporosis is a loss of bone density that predisposes people to fractures and leaves many elderly people – particularly women – hunched over
  • Significance
  • The teen years are crucial to developing a strong, dense skeleton, it is this age group is when you should gain about 50 percent of your bone accrual
  • A study recruited 262 healthy girls ages 11 to 17. The girls answered confidential questions about their nutritional habits and lifestyles and returned for three yearly visits to undergo bone density tests
  • Girls who reported smoking regularly showed nearly flat rates of bone density growth in the lower vertebrae and a decline in bone density at the hips
  • Nonsmokers showed normal, steadily rising bone density in both regions
  • By the time they reached age 19, daily smokers in the study had fallen a full year behind nonsmokers in bone mineral accrual
  • Of Note
  • The effects of smoking tend to be cumulative as the results also seem to concur with studies done in adults
  • It is estimated that smoking increases the risk of a vertebral fracture by 13 percent and hip fracture by 31 percent in women
  • It is still unclear, however exactly how smoking contributes to the reduced bone mineralization
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Smoking hurts teen girls’ bones | ScienceNews.org

Snapshot Serengeti

  • The low down
  • Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been trying to count and locate the animals of the Serengeti, and began placing automatic cameras across the park a couple of years ago.
  • They now have more than 200 cameras around the region – all triggered by motion – capturing animals day and night.
  • They have amassed millions of images so far, and more come in all the time. So they’ve team up with us here at the Zooniverse!
  • They need the help of online volunteers to spot and classify animals in these snapshot of life in Serengeti National Park. Doing this will provide the data needed to track and study these animals, whilst giving everyone the chance to see them in the wild.
  • Snapshot Serengeti

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Opportunity and the Search for a Habitable Environment

  • The low down
  • Opportunity rover is currently studying clay deposits on the rim of the Red Planet’s Endeavour Crater
  • The clays imply that the area was exposed to relatively neutral water long ago, as opposed to harshly acidic or basic
  • This clearly show that the chemistry that would’ve been suitable for life at the Opportunity site
  • Significance
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft spotted them from orbit, leading the rover team to point the golf-cart-size robot toward its current location, which is known as Matijevic Hill.
  • From orbit, scientists saw the unambiguous infrared spectral signature of clays along the rim of Endeavour Crater
  • At this point Opportunity has already circumnavigated Matijevic Hill and is likely stay at Matijevic Hill for a while, trying to understand how the clays were laid down billions of years ago
  • Of Note
  • While Opportunity is still going strong, it has some age-related issues, such as an arthritic arm, but the rover remains in good health
  • Part of the continuing work will involve investigating mysterious tiny spherules Opportunity has discovered embedded in the clay matrix
  • Scientist initially thought the BB-size gray spheres were similar to the iron-rich “blueberries;” however, initial analyses has shown that that’s not the case, leading the team to dub them “newberries.”
  • Currently the team isn’t sure exactly what the newberries are, or how they formed
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Opportunity Rover Does Walkabout of Crater Rim | NASA
  • Mars Rover Opportunity Exploring Possibly Habitable Ancient Environment | Space.com

GRAIL’s Lunar Gravitational Map

The Future Mars Rover?

  • The low down
  • NASA has announced plans to launch another mega-rover to the red planet in 2020 that will be modeled after Curiosity
  • To keep costs down, engineers will borrow Curiosity’s blueprints, recycle spare parts where possible and use proven technology including the novel landing gear
  • Significance
  • This announcement comes as NASA reboots its Mars exploration program during tough fiscal times
  • Many other details still need to be worked out, including where the rover will land and the types of tools it will carry to the surface
  • The science goals of the possible rover remains fuzzy, it will probably kick start a campaign to return Martian soil and rocks to Earth
  • A team of experts will debate whether the new rover should have the ability to drill into rocks and store pieces for a future pick up
  • Of Note
  • Curiosity ran over schedule and over budget, but with the engineering hurdles fixed the new rover is expected to cost less than Curiosity
  • One independent estimate put the mission at $1.5 billion, though NASA is working on its own figure
  • The Future
  • Next year, NASA plans to launch an orbiter to study the atmosphere
  • After NASA pulled out of a partnership with the Europeans in 2016 and 2018, it announced plans to fly a relatively low-cost robotic lander in 2016 to probe the interior but that it will contribute to the European missions, but in a minor role
  • Multimedia
  • New Rover to Mars on This Week @NASA | NASATelevision
  • NASA ANNOUNCES ROBUST MULTI-YEAR MARS PROGRAM; NEW ROVER TO COME | NASATelevsion
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Announces Robust Multi-Year Mars Program; New Rover To Close Out Decade Of New Missions | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
  • NASA aims to send another rover to Mars in 2020 | phys.org

Martian Mission Extensions

  • NASA plans to keep its Mars assets going as long as possible, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the Opportunity rover and the Mars Odyssey orbiter
  • The Mars Odyssey orbiter is not expected to still be viable in 2021, launched in 2001 the orbiter has been showing some signs of age
  • Of particularly important for the 2020 rover mission will be functioning orbiters at Mars to help relay communications back and forth to Earth
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Rover Curiosity Gets Mission Extension | Space.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

  • Mission Extension
  • Curiosity’s mission was originally planned to last two years. It has now been extended indefinitely.
  • The radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), should be able to continue converting the heat of plutonium–238’s radioactive decay into electricity for an estimated 55 years of positive power margin
  • First Round of Tests Complete
  • Curiosity has wrapped up scientific study of Rocknest, which also means the team has completed the checkout and first scientific use of all the instruments on the rover
  • The ChemCam laser and APXS chemical sensor were used to do initial technical analysis of the soil
  • MAHLI, a hand lens imager is used to take close up views of the soil to look at different particle sizes, shapes and colors and how they change with depth
  • The team analyzed the X-ray diffraction instrument data to see they can identify minerals in the soil based on their unique crystal structure
  • A good amount of the material in the soil was not crystalline but that’s not a problem for the other laboratory, SAM.
  • First Round of Tests Complete
  • Curiosity has also found that the Martian surface is five times richer than Earth’s in deuterium, a heavy version of hydrogen that contains an extra neutron
  • Radiation probably blasted water containing the lighter version of hydrogen into space early in the planet’s history
  • The discovery will help scientists better understand Mars’ early atmosphere and climate.
  • Of Note
  • The overall results show a composition that is typical of Mars soils studied at other sites with perhaps some very simple carbon containing molecules and perchlorate salts.
  • Curiosity has not yet seen any complex organic molecules but sand isn’t the best place to look and there won’t be any single image or measurement that’ll answer everything.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 7, 2012): Rover Results at Rocknest | JPLNews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Rover Curiosity Gets Mission Extension | Space.com
  • Transcript | Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 7, 2012): Rover Results at Rocknest | JPLNews
  • Mars rover deploys final instrument | sciencenews.com
  • Orbiter Spies Where Rover’s Cruise Stage Hit Mars | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Sir Patrick Moore

Looking back

  • Sir Patrick Moore (4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012)
  • An English amateur astronomer who attained prominent status in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter
  • He presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for more than 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show
  • The author of more than 60 books on astronomy geared toward the general public
  • His research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes.
  • Was a former president of the British Astronomical Association, co-founder and former president of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA)
  • In 1959, the Russians used his charts to correlate the first Lunik 3 pictures of the far side of the Moon and he was involved in the lunar mapping before the NASA Apollo missions.
  • Moore intended to be the first person ever to show a live broadcast of a direct telescopic view of a planet; the result was another unintended ‘comedy episode’, as cloud obscured all view of the heavens
  • He participated or presented for Apollo 8–17
  • Elected a member of the International Astronomical Union in 1966 and remains the only amateur astronomer to be a member of the IAU
  • Further Reading
  • BIOGRAPHY OF SIR PATRICK MOORE | bbc.co.uk

Looking up this week

The post Spicy Foods & Mars | SciByte 74 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Spinal Cord Injuries & Venus Transit | SciByte 49 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/20252/spinal-cord-injuries-venus-transit-scibyte-49/ Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:18:17 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=20252 We take a look at new rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries, nanotech medical diagnosis, Guinness bubbles, tomato's, spacecraft updates and back into history.

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We take a look at new rehabilitation for spinal cord injuries, nanotech medical diagnosis, Guinness bubbles, tomato’s, a quiet room, tornado map, spacecraft updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Spinal Cord injury treatment



YouTube channel Sergeytule | Credit: Courtesy of EPFL

  • The low down
  • Most spinal injuries in people do not sever the spinal cord completely
  • Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
  • These fibers, or axons, are the long extensions that convey signals from one end of a neuron to another, and unfortunately, they don’t regrow in adults
  • Restoring axons’ ability to regrow using growth factors, stem cells, or other therapies has been a longstanding and elusive goal for researchers.
  • Significance
  • To approximate a spinal injury in rats, researchers made two surgical cuts in the spinal cord, severing all of the direct connections from the brain, but leaving some tissue intact in between the cuts (it wouldn’t work for a completely severed cord)
  • The rats then began a rehab regime intended to bypass the fractured freeway, as it were, by pushing more traffic onto neural back roads and building more of them
  • The physical therapy began about a week after the rats were injured, and lasted about 30 minutes a day
  • During each session, the researchers injected the animals with a cocktail of drugs to improve the function of rats’ neural circuits in the part of the spinal cord involved in leg movements
  • They then stimulated this area with electrodes to prime the spinal cord for action
  • A rat was then fitted into a harness attached to a robotic device that supported its weight and allowed it to walk forward on its hind legs to the extent that it was able
  • At first, the rats could not move their legs at all, after 2 or 3 weeks, the rodents began taking steps toward a piece of food after a gentle nudge from the robot
  • By 5 or 6 weeks, they were able to initiate movement on their own and walk to get the food
  • After a few additional weeks of intensified rehab, they were able to walk up rat-sized stairs and climb over a small barrier placed in their path
  • Rats suspended over a moving treadmill that elicited reflex-like stepping movement
  • The amount of recovery depending on making intentional movements, not just any movement
  • Additional experiments in the paper make a compelling case that the rats’ recovery is due to new neural connections forming to create a detour around the injury
  • This study suggests that all three components of the rehab strategy are needed; the drugs, the electrical stimulation, and the robot-assisted physical therapy
  • Of Note
  • A case study published last year reported some recovery of voluntary movements in a man paralyzed in a vehicle accident, after he underwent a combination of electrical stimulation and physical therapy
  • Two more patients are undergoing similar rehab now, and his group hopes to add drug therapy to enhance nerve repair in the future
  • For the rats they could only make voluntary movements while the electrical stimulation was turned on, and the same was mostly true of the human patient in case study
  • YouTube
  • Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again | Sergeytule
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again | news.sciencemag.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Nanotechnology meets medical diagnosis



Credit: Stephen Chou/Analytical Chemistry

  • The low down
  • A common biological test called immunoassay, mimics the action of the immune system to detect the presence of biomarkers
  • When biomarkers are present they produce a fluorescent glow (light) that can be measured in a laboratory
  • The greater the glow, the more of the biomarker is present; however, if the amount of biomarker is too small, the fluorescent light is too faint to be detected
  • Princeton researchers have tackled this limitation by using nanotechnology to greatly amplify the faint fluorescence
  • Significance
  • The key to the breakthrough lies in a new artificial nanomaterial called D2PA
  • The new material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold, speckled on their sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk.
  • The sides of each pillar are speckled with even tinier gold dots about 10 to 15 nanometers in diameter Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair
  • The pillars are spaced 200 nanometers apart and capped with a disk of gold on each pillar
  • Using this material laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive
  • Increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.
  • Of Note
  • When a sample such as blood, saliva or urine is added to small glass vials containing antibodies that are designed to “capture” or bind to biomarkers of interest in the sample
  • Another set of antibodies that have been labeled with a fluorescent molecule are then added to the mix
  • When biomarkers are not present in the vials the fluorescent detection antibodies do not attach to anything and are washed away
  • This new technology could play a significant role in other areas of chemistry and engineering, from light-emitting displays to solar energy harvesting
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nanotechnology breakthrough could dramatically improve medical tests

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The rise and fall of Guinness bubbles

Credit : E. S. Benilov, et al.

  • The low down
  • Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid?
  • Stout beers such as Guinness foam due to a combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen bubbles, while other beers foam due only to carbon dioxide bubbles
  • In 2004 high-speed photography proved that bubbles do indeed sink
  • Significance
  • Simulations of the elongated vortices in a pint glass, where bubbles sink near the glass wall, and an anti-pint glass, where bubbles rise near the wall
  • A team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glass
  • As the glass narrows downwards and causes a circulation pattern that drives both fluid and bubbles downwards at the wall of the glass
  • It is not just the bubbles themselves that are sinking (in fact, they’re still trying to rise), but the entire fluid is sinking and pulling the bubbles down with it.
  • Of Note
  • Researchers are still uncertain of the specific mechanism responsible for reducing the bubble density near the wall for the pint geometry and increasing it for the anti-pint one.
  • The same flow pattern occurs with other types of beers, but the larger carbon dioxide bubbles are less subject to the downward drag than the smaller nitrogen bubbles in stout beers.
  • For a tilted straight-sided glass the side in the direction of the tilt represents the normal situation of a pint glass, while the opposite side is the “anti-pint” – and bubbles can be seen to both rise and fall in the same glass.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Irish mathematicians explain why Guinness bubbles sink | Phys.org
  • Falling stout bubbles explained | BBC News

You say tomato I say potato?

  • The low down
  • The genome of the tomato has been sequenced one from the “Heinz 1706” tomato as well as the sequence of a wild relative
  • Researchers report that tomatoes possess some 35,000 genes arranged on 12 chromosomes
  • Significance
  • The team has captured virtually all the genes for various characteristics, such as taste, natural pest resistance or nutritional content
  • Now that the genome sequence of one variety of tomato is known, it will also be easier and much less expensive for seed companies and plant breeders to sequence other varieties
  • The sequencing of the tomato genome has implications for other plant species such as Strawberries, apples, melons, bananas and many other fleshy fruits, share some characteristics with tomatoes
  • Information about the genes and pathways involved in fruit ripening can potentially be applied to them, helping to improve food quality, food security and reduce costs
  • Of Note
  • The gene sequencing confirms that the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable
  • The tomato shares 92% of its more than 34,000 protein-coding genes with its close relative, the recently sequenced potato
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tomato genome fully sequenced | phys.org
  • ScienceShot: Tapping the Tomato’s Secrets | news.sciencemag.org

Hear your own heart beat



Credit: Renee Jones Schneider / Minneapolis Star Tribune.

56 years of Tornado’s



Credit: John Nelson

  • The low down
  • Using information from data.gov, tech blogger John Nelson has created this spectacular image of tornado paths in the US over a 56 year period
  • The storms are categorized by F-scale with the brighter neon lines representing more violent storms
  • The tracker shows straight lines, but it is only because the data used in this study only tracked start and stop points
  • Also provided are some stats on all the storms in the different categories
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Stunning Visualization of 56 Years of Tornadoes in the US | UniverseToday.com
  • Data.gov

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo receives permit



Credit: VirginGalactic YouTube Channel | Credit: TSC

  • The low down
  • Virgin Galactic’s flight system consists of two vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft
  • SpaceShipTwo is designed to launch six passengers and two pilots into suborbital space and offer a few minutes of weightlessness, then return to Earth
  • Significance
  • Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle has won U.S. regulatory approval to begin powered flight testing of the rocket-propelled craft later this year
  • The experimental launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorizes the Scaled Composites development team "to progress to the rocket-powered phase of test flight
  • Before the rocket-powered testing phase they will perform aerodynamic performance of the spacecraft with the full weight of the rocket motor system on board
  • Integration of key rocket motor components, already begun during a now-concluding period of downtime for routine maintenance, will continue in the autumn
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Video : SS2 First Feather Flight, Mojave, May 2011)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • FAA Clears Virgin Galactic to Begin SpaceShipTwo Rocket Test Flights | Space.com

GRAIL Moon mission extension



Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT

Dragon SpaceCraft Splashdown



Credit: YouTube Channel ReelNASA

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 09 1822 : 190 years ago : False teeth : Charles Graham received the first patent for false teeth. His were not the first false teeth in use, however. In the Colonial years, rotten teeth were considered the cause of many illnesses, and they would be extracted. Varied ways of replacing them were tried. For example, George Washington had at least four sets of false teeth (though none were wooden, despite a myth to that effect). Washington’s first dentures were made using human teeth inserted into carved ivory. In 1789, dentist John Greenwood of New York, made Washington another set from gold, hippo teeth, and hippo and elephant ivory. The one natural remaining tooth was a molar, and a hole was left for that.
  • June 08 1937 : 75 years ago : Titan Arum : A specimen of the world’s largest flower, first bloomed in the U.S. in the NY Botanical Garden. The giant Sumatran Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum, measured 8½-ft high and 4-ft diam. Its putrid rotting-corpse fragrance repelled visitors. Native in Sumatran jungles of Indonesia, it is known there as the “corpse flower.” Dr. Odoardo Beccari, an Italian botanist, was the first western expert to find the Titan Arum in the Pading Province during 1878. Seeds he sent back to his patron, the Marchese Corsi Salviati were grown in Italy, and a few plants were at Beccari’s request sent to Kew Gardens in England in 1879. One of those seedlings flowered in June 1887. Another plant bloomed there in 1926, to wide attention.

Looking up this week : You May Have Seen

Looking up this week

The post Spinal Cord Injuries & Venus Transit | SciByte 49 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Habitable Planets & Plant Power | SciByte 32 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/16767/habitable-planets-plant-power-scibyte-32/ Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:27:07 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=16767 A look at a planet orbiting another star that could harbor water, a fungus that chows down on polyurethane, turning plants into solar cells, science of massage, and tracking snow!

The post Habitable Planets & Plant Power | SciByte 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at a planet orbiting another star that could harbor water, a fungus that chows down on polyurethane, turning plants into solar cells, science of massage, tracking snow, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Support the Show:

   

Show Notes:

Habitable planet?

  • The low down
  • Scientists Used public data from the European Southern Observatory, new measurements from the W. M. Keck Observatory’s High Resolution Echelle Spectrograph and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope
  • They combined data from all three ground-based telescopes, dating back 10 years, and analyzed it with novel data-analysis methods to come up with a solid signal of a planet
  • The star in this case is a M-dwarf star much dimmer and redder than our own in a triple-star system with a different chemical makeup than our sun
  • Such stars can be rather unstable and any planets would tend to be tidally locked and could make it difficult for a planet to form
  • Even the interior of planets could be affected, as radioactive elements would determine whether a planet has a molten core or a solid one.
  • Significance
  • The planet discovered is about 4.5 times as massive as the Earth
  • It orbits once every 28 days or so; in our solar system, that would put it so scorchingly close to the sun that water would boil off.
  • But because most of its incoming light is in the infrared, a higher percentage of this incoming energy should be absorbed by the planet
  • The new planet receives 90 percent of the light that Earth receives.
  • The planet is expected to absorb about the same amount of energy from its star that the Earth absorbs from the Sun
  • This would allow surface temperatures similar to Earth and perhaps liquid water, but this extreme cannot be confirmed without further information on the planet’s atmosphere.
  • Astronomers aren’t sure what the planet’s composition is, because they have not been able to measure its size
  • It could be a either a rocky or a gas planet. I would need to have a radius between about 1.7 and 2.2 Earth radii to be a rocky world.
  • While the planet can’t be seen directly yet, it’s not impossible that we could glean additional details about the potentially habitable super-Earth such readings of its atmosphere with the next generation of ground or space telescopes
  • * Of Note*
  • Its parent star, is located a mere 22 light-years away from Earth, with only about 100 stars closer to us
  • The other stars in the system are pretty far away, but would be visible in the sky of the planet
  • The system has much lower abundances of heavy elements (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), such as iron, carbon and silicon.
  • The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets
  • The unexpected is something planet hunters have learned to expect and in most cases, these surprises have tended to expand the possibilities for finding worlds
  • In addition planets coming out of Kepler are typically thousands of light-years away and we could never send a space probe out there,“ Vogt said. ”We’ve been explicitly focusing on very nearby stars, because with today’s technology, we could send a robotic probe out there, and within a few hundred years, it could be sending back pictures
  • Multimedia
  • IMAGE : Artist Rendition @ Space.com [Credit : Carnegie Institution for Science]]
  • IMAGE : Diagram of the planets orbiting the star @ Space.com [Credit : Carnegie Institution for Science]
  • IMAGE : GJ 667C triple system as seen from a telescope @ Physorg.com [Credit : Guillem Anglada-Escude]
  • IMAGE : The latest addition to a list of life-friendly exoplanets @ [Credit : Habitable Exoplanets Catalog/UPR Arecibo]
  • IMAGE : Artist depiction of the planet GJ667Cc and the three stars it orbits
    @     [Credit : Carnegie Institution / UCSC]
  • Social Media
  • Twitter Exoplanet App @ExoplanetApp
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones
  • Newfound Alien Planet is Best Candidate Yet to Support Life, Scientists Say
  • New super-earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby star
  • New super-Earth detected within the habitable zone of a nearby cool star
  • Potential ‘Goldilocks’ Planet Found
  • Super-Earth spotted in life-friendly zone
  • ScienceShot: Double-Star System Hosts Ancient World
  • New Planet Found: Could a Super-Earth plus Triple Stars Equal Life?
  • Cool sun could host habitable planet

*— NEWS BYTE — *

Hungry Fungi

  • The low down
  • Polyurethane is a synthetic polymer developed in the 1940s
  • It is often used to replaces rubber, paint, wood, or metals and is found in a wide variety of applications, and has the advantages of strength, durability and elasticity
  • Some can be recycled into other products but the waste ends up in landfills as a non-biodegrade object because nothing we know of can metabolize and digest it
  • The chemical bond in it are so strong they do not degrade readily
  • Although it can be burned it releases harmful carbon monoxide and other toxic chemicals
  • Significance
  • Each year Yale University operates a Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory course, which includes an expedition to a tropical jungle in the spring recess and summer research on samples collected
  • The 2011 group discovered that the Pestalotiopsis microspora fungus found in Ecuador and will not only eat polyurethane, but can survive on a diet consisting solely of polyurethane
  • In addition it can do so in the oxygen starved regions inside landfills
  • Several other microorganisms have been found that can degrade solid and liquid polyurethane but only this newest discovery can entirely survive on it under both Oxygen rich and Oxygen starved environments
  • * Of Note*
  • It is suggested that similar fungi could be used to naturally degrade waste products, a process known as bioremediation.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Amazon fungi found that eat polyurethane, even without oxygen @ Physorg.com
  • Amazonian Rainforest Fungus Eats Polyurethane, Potentially Solving a Big Landfill Problem @ PopSci.com

Solar panels you water?

  • The low down
  • Tiny structures inside plant walls carryout photosynthesis are called photo-system-I (PS-I).
  • Scientists at MIT harvested those structures, stabilized them and formed a layer on glass, similar to a conventional photovoltaic cell
  • The process successfully produced a current when exposed to light
  • However, this system needed a sophisticated lab to create and it’s efficiency was several magnitudes to low to be of practical use
  • Significance
  • The process has been simplified so that any lab can replicate it, allowing for researchers around the world making further improvements
  • So far the newer version is 10,000 times more efficient that the original system, although it still only converts 0.1% of sunlight into electricity
  • Once the system reaches 1–2% it will become useful because of the low cost and ease of process
  • Any raw plant material, could be put into centrifuges to concentrate the PS-I molecules
  • There are also tests going on to see if the needed concentrations would be achiecable with filtration
  • * Of Note*
  • The hope is that one day, in a remote or off-the-grid location one might be able to take a bag, mix in something green, paint it on a roof, and produce power
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO Harnessing nature’s solar cells
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Photovoltaic panels made from plant material could become a cheap alternative to traditional solar cells @ PhysOrg.com
  • MIT researcher creates solar cell from grass clippings @ RenewableEnergyMagazine.com

The science of massage

  • The low down
  • Strenuous exercises can actually tear muscle fibers, although it’s considered normal and generally heals fine
  • It has been said that massages can help release lactic acid from sore muscles, but that’s not entirely true
  • Muscles do like massages, but for another reason
  • A study on the cellular effects of massages post-exercise found that it actually chances the chemical signals that have to do with inflammation and muscle repair
  • Significance
  • Researchers had 11 healthy young men cycle to exhaustion, then one leg on each man was randomly selected for a massage.
  • Tissue samples were taken of each leg 10 minutes and 2.5 hours after the massage
  • What they saw was a 30% difference in the levels of two key proteins, one reduces inflammation and the other generates cell growth
  • * Of Note*
  • Before this study there was very little scientific research for why massage actually works
  • The traditional mainstream medical field have often dismissed massages and therapy, but these results seem likely to affect that
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • How Massage Helps Heal Muscles and Relieve Pain @ Healthland.Time
  • Massage Doesn’t Just Feel Good—It Changes Gene Expression and Reduces Inflammation @ DiscoverMagazome/com
  • Massage’s Mystery Mechanism Unmasked @ ScienceMag.org

Watching the snow fall from space

  • The low down
  • Rain tends to be spherical like drops, snow however comes in many different shapes when it comes to tracking and measuring amounts the shape differences make a great deal of difference
  • GPM Core set to be launched in 2014
  • The GPM Core will be one of the first times instruments will be in space specifically looking at falling snow
  • Significance
  • Satellites are being launched into orbit that will study global snowfall precipitation with much better detail then ever before
  • For the first time we will know when where and how much snow falls on the earth, letting us better understand and predict extreme weather
  • Once scientists calculate all the carious types of snowflake shapes the satellite will then be able to detect them from orbit.
  • * Of Note*
  • This satellite system will provide new insights into storm structures and large-scale atmospheric processes, precipitation micro physics
  • It will also provide advanced understanding of climate sensitivity and feedback processes
  • It will also extended capabilities in monitoring and predicting hurricanes and other extreme weather events, and improve forecasting abilities for natural hazards, including floods, droughts and landslides.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube VIDEO : NASA | Studying the Science of Falling Snow
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM)
  • GPM Spacecraft and Instruments
  • Getting to the Core of Earth’s Falling Snow@ UniverseToday.com

Honorable Mentions

First video of the far side of the moon

Colbert PSA for NASA

SPACECRAFT UPDATE

Curiosity rover

*— VIEWER FEEDBACK — *

Light speed travelling brothers : slepacus

SCIENCE CALENDER

Looking back

  • Feb 14, 1747: 265 years ago : Earth fails sobriety test : The Earth has a bit of a wobble to it’s gait British astronomer James Bradly published a paper on the Earths wobbling motion on its axis, coined as nutation (from Latin “nutare” to nod). Bradley first noticed the fluctuation during his studies of parallax at Molyneux’s observatory. Attributing it to the moon’s gravitational influence, he withheld any announcement until he had observed a full cycle of the motion of the moon’s nodes, taking about 18.6 years. During his career he also measured the diameter of Venus and was able to make calculations giving the speed of light.
  • Feb 12, 1941: 71 years ago : Sometimes mold is good? : The first injection of penicillin into a human test subject was conducted by Ernst Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who developed this antibiotic. The pair of scientist working on medical applications were made aware of a patient with septic scratches, blood poisoning and numerous abscesses. They were fearful of the side effects and chose a patient in terminal condition, within a day his temperature had dropped and his appetite returned. Alaxader Flemming, who discovered penicillin thought he had merely discovered an antiseptic and was convinced it could not last long enough in the human body to kill pathogenic bacteria and actually stopped studying it. Althought the use of bread with a blue mould (presumed to be Penicillium) as a means of treating suppurating wounds was a staple of folk medicine in Europe since the Middle Ages.
  • Feb 13, 1990 : 22 years ago : Time for the family photo’s : Voyager I , while heading out to the edge of the Solar System, began a four-hour series of photographs in a look backward which captured the Sun and six planets. An elongated large mozaic was later made by combining about 60 images. In this first “Family Portrait of the Planets”, the Sun appeared almost star-like and the planets were mere dots. Mercury was too close to the sun to photograph. Mars and Pluto, were too small to resolve. This first record of the Solar System from space may remain the only one for decades to follow. Voyager I had a unique lofty perspective, looking down on the plane in which the planets orbit. It had been steadily climbing since it passed Saturn in 1980, and reached an angle of 32 degrees high above the plane of the solar system.

Looking up this week

The post Habitable Planets & Plant Power | SciByte 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Revisiting the Moon | SciByte 27 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/15341/revisiting-the-moon-scibyte-27/ Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:32:49 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=15341 We take a look at new satellites orbiting the moon, bugged bugs, unicycles, a comet that survived it's brush with the sun, and much more!

The post Revisiting the Moon | SciByte 27 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at new satellites orbiting the moon, bugged bugs, unicycles, a comet that survived it’s brush with the sun, 15 minutes of science fame, another update on the poor Phobos-Grunt satellite and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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