We take a look at a new treatment for paralysis, spying a possible exomoon, troubles with the Space Station, Viewer Feedback, the Large Hadron Collider, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Breakthrough Paraplegic Therapy

• The belief that no recovery is possible and complete paralysis is permanent has been challenged now that four young men who have been paralyzed for years are now able to move their legs, as a result of epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord
• Epidural Electrical Stimulation
• In epidural stimulation, an electrical current is applied at varying frequencies and intensities to specific locations on the lumbosacral spinal cord
• The stimulator delivers a continuous electrical current to the participants\’ lower spinal cords, mimicking signals the brain normally transmits to initiate movement in the dense neural bundles that largely control the movement of the hips, knees, ankles and toes
• With the participants, once the signal was triggered, the spinal cord reengaged its neural network to control and direct muscle movements.
• In an initial study, published in May 2011 scientists evaluated the effects of epidural stimulation in the first participant who recovered a number of motor functions as a result of the intervention
• The New Study
• The four paralyzed participants ranged in neurological level, two of them had absolutely no sensation or cognition below the site of their injury with no chance of recovery and all were at least two years post-injury at the time of the intervention
• What is revolutionary is that the second, third and fourth participants were able to execute voluntary movements immediately following the implantation and activation of the stimulator.
• Over the course of the study, the researchers noted that the participants were able to activate movements with less stimulation, demonstrating the ability of the spinal network to learn and improve nerve functions
• Results
• The study surprised the scientists, who believed at least some of the sensory pathway must be intact for epidural stimulation to be successful.
• The participants\’ results and recovery time were unexpected, which led researchers to speculate that some pathways may be intact post-injury and therefore able to facilitate voluntary movements.
• All four men were able to bear weight independently, as reported by the team
• Beyond regaining voluntary movement, the research participants have displayed a myriad of improvements in their overall health
• Increases in muscle mass and regulation of their blood pressure, as well as reduced fatigue and dramatic improvements to their sense of well-being.
• This is groundbreaking for the entire field and offers a new outlook that the spinal cord, even after a severe injury, has great potential for functional recovery.
• Widespread Use
• When they first learned that the first patient in 2011 had regained voluntary control as a result of the therapy, scientists remained cautiously optimistic
• Now that spinal stimulation has been successful in four out of four patients, there is evidence to suggest it could work on more individuals who previously had little realistic hope of any meaningful recovery from spinal cord injury
• The implications of this study for the entire field are quite profound, and we can now envision a day when epidural stimulation might be part of a cocktail of therapies used to treat paralysis
• Since this effect was observed this in four out of four people it suggests that this is actually a common phenomenon in those diagnosed with complete paralysis
• The Future
• The study offers hope that clinical therapies can be developed to advance treatment for the nearly 6 million Americans living with paralysis, including nearly 1.3 million with spinal cord injuries.
• This study changes how we see motor complete spinal cord injury as it indicates that we don\’t have to necessarily rely on regrowth of nerves in order to regain function
• The scientists are optimistic that the therapy intervention will continue to result in improved motor functions
• Based on observations from the research, there is strong evidence that with continued advancements of the epidural stimulator, individuals with complete spinal cord injuries will be able to bear weight independently, maintain balance and work towards stepping
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Paraplegics Get Leg Function Back With Electrical Stimulation | News All Time News All Time
• YouTube | Kent Stephenson on his recovery | ReeveFoundation
• YouTube | Rob Summers on his recovery | ReeveFoundation
• YouTube | Dustin Shillcox on his recovery ReeveFoundation
• YouTube | Drew Meas on his recovery | ReeveFoundation
• Further Reading / In the News
• The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation
• Breakthrough therapy allows four paraplegic men to voluntarily move their legs | MedicalXPress.com
• Reawakening Limbs After Years of Paralysis | ScienceFriday.com
• \’Milestone\’ Therapy Produces Leg Movement in Paraplegics | consumer.healthday.com/

— NEWS BYTE —

ExoMoon?

• NASA-funded researchers have spotted the first signs of an \”exomoon,\” and though they say it\’s impossible to confirm its presence
• Discovery
• The discovery was made by watching a chance encounter of objects in our galaxy, which can be witnessed only once so they won\’t have a chance to observe the exomoon candidate again
• Scientists expect we can expect more unexpected finds like this.
• It was discovered with an international study using a telescope technique, called gravitational microlensing, takes advantage of chance alignments between stars
• When a foreground star passes between us and a more distant star, the closer star can act like a magnifying glass to focus and brighten the light of the more distant one
• These brightening events usually last about a month
• If the foreground star, or what astronomers refer to as the lens, has a planet circling around it, the planet will act as a second lens to brighten or dim the light even more
• Free Floating Planets
• Microlensing surveys have discovered dozens of exoplanets so far, in orbit around stars and free-floating
• A previous NASA-funded study, also led by the MOA team, was the first to find strong evidence for planets the size of Jupiter roaming alone in space, presumably after they were kicked out of forming planetary systems
• The new exomoon candidate, if real, would orbit one such free-floating planet.
• The Object
• By carefully scrutinizing these brightening events, astronomers can figure out the mass of the foreground star relative to its planet.
• In the new study, the nature of the foreground, lensing object is not clear. The ratio of the larger body to its smaller companion is 2,000 to 1.
• That means the pair could be either a small, faint star circled by a planet about 18 times the mass of Earth—or a planet more massive than Jupiter coupled with a moon weighing less than Earth
• One possibility is for the lensing system to be a planet and its moon
• A lower-mass pair closer to Earth will produce the same kind of brightening event as a more massive pair located farther away
• Once a brightening event is over, it\’s very difficult to take additional measurements of the lensing system and determine the distance
  The true identity of the exomoon candidate and its companion, a system dubbed MOA-2011-BLG-262, will remain unknown
• In The Future
• Astronomers have no way of telling which of these two scenarios is correct, the answer to the mystery lies in learning the distance to the circling duo
• In the future, it may be possible to obtain these distance measurements during lensing events
• NASA\’s Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes, both of which revolve around the sun in Earth-trailing orbits, are far enough away from Earth to be great tools for the parallax-distance technique.
• The basic principle of parallax can be explained by holding your finger out, closing one eye after the other, and watching your finger jump back and forth
• A distant star, when viewed from two telescopes spaced really far apart, will also appear to move
• When combined with a lensing event, the parallax effect alters how a telescope will view the resulting magnification of starlight
• Though the technique works best using one telescope on Earth and one in space, such as Spitzer or Kepler, two ground-based telescopes on different sides of our planet can also be used
• Multimedia
• YouTube | MOA-2009-BLG-319b – Gravitational microlensing – iPad Exoplanet App | Hanno Rein
• YouTube | Dark Jupiter Detection | TelescopeFeed
• YouTube | Gravitational Microlensing | Kowch737
• Further Reading / In the News
• Faraway moon or faint star? Possible exomoon found | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

International Space Station (ISS) Glitch

• April 11
• It was confirmed Friday night (April 11) that a backup computer on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) called a Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (MDM) was not responding to commands
• The primary computer continued to work so the crew was safe and there were no “immediate” change to space station operations,
• The failure was uncovered Friday “during a routine health check” of a box called EXT-2, which backs up a primary component that sits outside on the S0 truss (near the station’s center)
• It was decided that tf the computer did need to be replaced, crew members of Expedition 39 would need to do at least one spacewalk
• NASA is allowing contingency spacewalks in American spacesuits to go forward as the agency addresses problems raised in a report about a life-threatening spacesuit leak in July
• Multiplexer-Demultiplexer (MDM)
• This primary MDM not only controls a robotics mobile transporter, but also radiators and a joint to move the station’s solar arrays, among other things.
• NASA needs to reposition the arrays when a vehicle approaches because plumes from the thrusters can put extra “loads” or electrical power on the system.
• Luckily, the angle of the sun is such these days that the array can sit in the same spot for a while, at least two to three weeks
• NASA configured the station so that even if the primary computer fails, the array will automatically position correctly
• NASA also will move a mobile transporter on station today so that the station’s robotic arm is ready to grasp the Dragon when it arrives, meaning that even if the primary computer fails the transporter will be in the right spot
• April 12
• NASA began preparing a contingency spacewalk to deal with a broken backup computer component
• April 13
• NASA doesn’t want to go ahead with a space walk until spare spacesuit parts arrive, in the aftermath of a life-threatening suit leak that took place last summer.
• Those parts are on board the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft
• The Dragon is carrying a new spacesuit, components to fix an existing spacesuit, critical research experiments and food for the six crew members of Expedition 39.
• If Dragon is delayed again, the next launch opportunity is April 18 and the spacewalk would be pushed back
• Multimedia
• YouTube | NASA and the International Space Station Help Show It\’s a Small World After all | NASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• Backup Computer Glitches On Space Station But Crew Safe, NASA Says | UniverseToday.com
• Failed Space Station Computer Spurs Contingency Spacewalk Plans | UniverseToday.com
• Contingency Spacewalk Planned Next Week, But Dragon Must Arrive At Space Station First | UniverseToday.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Lunar Eclipses Tetrad

• For people in the United States, a lunar eclipses tetrad is about to begin, when a series of 4 consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six month intervals
• Check This Out | Lunar Eclipse Tetrad
• Brian McCoskey, Nogal
• Types of Lunar Eclipse
• On average, lunar eclipses occur about twice a year, but not all of them are total. There are three types
• Penumbral eclipse | The Moon passes through the pale outskirts of Earth’s shadow. It’s so subtle, sky watchers often don’t notice an eclipse is underway
• Partial eclipse | Is more dramatic that a penumbral as the Moon dips into the core of Earth’s shadow, but not all the way, so only a fraction of Moon is darkened.
• Total eclipse | The entire Moon is shadowed, is best of all. The face of the Moon turns sunset-red for up to an hour or more as the eclipse slowly unfolds.
• Lunar Eclipse Tetrad
• The total eclipse of April 15, 2014, will be followed by another on Oct. 8, 2014, and another on April 4, 2015, and another on Sept. 28 2015.
• Usually, lunar eclipses come in no particular order
• Occasionally, though, the sequence is more orderly. When four consecutive lunar eclipses are all total, the series is called a tetrad.
• During the 21st century, there are 9 sets of tetrads so it is a frequent occurrence in the current pattern of lunar eclipses, although during the three hundred year interval from 1600 to 1900, for instance, there were no tetrads at all
• The most unique thing about the 2014-2015 tetrad is that all of them are visible for all or parts of the USA
• Why red?
• Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it when the eclipse is underway
• As you scan your eye around Earth\’s circumference, you\’re seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once
• This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth\’s shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | NASA | Understanding Lunar Eclipses | NASA Goddard
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Eclipse Web Site
• A Tetrad of Lunar Eclipses – NASA Science | science.nasa.gov

— Updates —

Large Hadron Collider – Beginning of Startup

• Scientists working at CERN\’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility has reported that the process of restarting the massive experimental mechanism has begun, though it won\’t finish until sometime next year
• Last Time on SciByte …
• The Shutdown | SciByte 82 | Meteorites & Asteroids | February 19, 2013
• The Upgrade
• The facility is in the process of an upgrade, which has been in the planning stages for several years and will include upgrades to several pieces and parts of the facility that support the LHC as well as the main accelerator itself
• The team recognized that the facility had begun to suffer from diminishing returns and that many parts could be improved due to the development of new technology and improvements on old ways of doing things.
• The collider will have to be restarted in pieces to ensure that each is operating properly before the next can be brought online
• The team has successfully restarted the part they call the source, the piece of equipment responsible for stripping electrons off of hydrogen atoms for use in producing protons.
• What\’s Next?
• Team members have made much of the complete upgrade to the control system that integrates all of the systems and which of course will be central to a successful reboot.
• The team plans to fire up Linac2, an accelerator whose job it is to give protons their initial push
• After that a booster will be started that will be used to push the protons even faster, for the LHC to be used in its proper context, it must receive protons that are already moving exceedingly fast.
• In addition to swapping out parts for new and improved technology, technicians will also be replacing worn cables or other minor but necessary components
• If all goes well, the LHC should be ready and back in business sometime early 2015.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | CERN in 3 minutes CERN
• Image |
• Social Media
• CERN @CERN
• Further Reading / In the News
• CERN Website
• Large Hadron Collider team announces beginning of restart | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Bright Spot In Image
• Possible explanations include a glint from a rock or a cosmic-ray hit.
• \”In the thousands of images we\’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week,\” said Justin Maki, leader of the team that built and operates the Navigation Camera.
• The bright spots appear in images from the right-eye camera of the stereo Navcam, but not in images taken within one second of those by the left-eye camera.
• Arriving at New Science Location
• The reached a vantage point last week for its cameras to survey four different types of rock intersecting in an area called \”the Kimberley\”
• The science team expects to take several weeks for observations, sample-drilling and onboard laboratory analysis of the area\’s rocks
• Multimedia
• Image | Bright Spot Toward Sun in Image from NASA\’s Curiosity Mars Rover Right B campera| mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Image | Image was taken by Navcam: Left B (NAV_LEFT_B)
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Images From NASA Mars Rover Include Bright Spots | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• April 22, 1575 : 439 years ago : Surgery Book : The printing of Ambroise Paré\’s book Oeuvres Complètes (Complete Works) was finished, but its publication was opposed by establishment physicians. His previous texts on surgery had popularized a new way to treat gunshot wounds without cauterisation, reintroduced the ligature in amputation, and improved midwifery techniques. These many writings were gathered together in this one new volume, which spread his teachings throughout the world. It remained in print for a century and ran to thirteen editions. He wrote in French instead of Latin with practical, common sense so that many barber-surgeons, who (like Paré) were unable to interpret Latin, had access to medical knowledge otherwise unavailable from Latin texts
• Ambroise Paré\’s was a French physician, one of the greatest surgeons of the European Renaissance, known as the \”father of modern surgery\” for his many innovations in operative methods. While an army surgeon, he introduced the method of treating wounds by ligature of arteries instead of cauterisation with red-hot irons or boiling oil. Paré also invented prostheses. \”Le Petit Lorrain\” was a hand, operated by springs and catches, for a French Army Captain, which he then used in battle. Paré also invented a kneeling peg leg and foot prosthesis. It had an adjustable harness, knee lock control, and other engineering features used today. He was surgeon to Henry II and his three successors. He wrote books on anatomy, surgery, plague, obstetrics, and deformities

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• 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
• 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 2am.

• Saturn | 9-10pm | Rises around 9-10pm 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
• HeavensAbove

The post Paraplegic Therapy & Exomoon | SciByte 126 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at treating a gunshot wound in 15 sec, fatigue and light, a new Martian crater, the Olympic torch, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Sealing a Gunshot Wound in 15 sec

• When a soldier is shot on the battlefield a medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity
• A startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers are working on a better way to stop bleeding
• XStat
• XStat is a modified syringe that injects specially coated sponges into wound faster and more efficiently than gauze.
• Early efforts were inspired by Fix-a-Flat foam for repairing tires
• After seeing early prototypes, the U.S. Army gave the team $5 million to develop a finished product
• The final material would need to be sterile, biocompatible, and fast-expanding
• The team settled on a sponge made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting, antimicrobial substance that comes from shrimp shells
• In just 15 seconds, they expand to fill the entire wound cavity, creating enough pressure to stop heavy bleeding
• A tricky part was getting the sponges into a wound, they needed a lightweight, compact way to get the sponges deep into an injury
• To ensure that no sponges would be left inside the body accidentally, they added X-shaped markers that make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.
• Applicator
• A 30 mm-diameter, [1.2 in] polycarbonate syringe that stores with the handle inside to save space
• To use the applicator, a medic pulls out the handle, inserts the cylinder into the wound, and then pushes the plunger back down to inject the sponges as close to the artery as possible.
• Three single-use XStat applicators would replace five bulky rolls of gauze in a medic’s kit
• RevMedx also designed a smaller version of the applicator, with a diameter of 12 mm, for narrower injuries
• Each XStat will likely cost about $100, Steinbaugh says, but the price may go down as RevMedx boosts manufacturing
• The Future
• When RevMedx submitted its application to the FDA, the U.S. Army attached a cover letter requesting expedited approval
• In the future, RevMedx hopes to create biodegradable sponges that don’t have to be removed from the body
• They are also working on an applicator that could cover large by using expanding gauze made of the same material as XStat sponges
• Further Reading / In the News
• How A Simple New Invention Seals A Gunshot Wound In 15 Seconds | Popular Science

— NEWS BYTE —

Blue Light

• According to researchers they\’ve found that exposure to short wavelength, or blue light, during the day can improve alertness and overall performance.
• Previous research has shown that blue light is able to improve alertness during the night, but new data demonstrates that these effects also extend to daytime
• The Study
• Researchers measured wavelengths of light that were most effective in warding off fatigue via the development of specialized light equipment
• They compared the effects of blue light exposure to an equal amount of green light on alertness and performance in 16 study participants for 6.5 hours over a day.
• Participants were rated based on how they felt through reaction times that measured electrodes to assess changes going on in the brain due to light exposure.
• Results
• Results showed that participants exposed to blue light consistently rated themselves as less sleepy with quicker reaction times and fewer attention relapses.
• They also showed changes in brain activity patterns that indicated a more alert state.
• The Future
• This opens up a new range of possibilities for using light to improve human alertness, productivity and safety by
  helping to improve alertness in day shift workers in addition to night workers
• A better quality lighting that would not only help them see better but also make them more alert
• The next big challenge is to determine how to deliver better lighting in many places such as schools, homes and workplaces that could provide a more productive and alert atmosphere.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Could Blue Light Help Fight Fatigue? Study | ScienceWorldReport.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New Mars Crater

• Researchers used HiRISE to examine a site after the orbiter\’s Context Camera had revealed a change in appearance here between observations in July 2010 and May 2012
• Before-and-after imaging that brackets appearance dates of fresh craters on Mars has indicated that impacts producing craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter occur at a rate exceeding 200 per year globally
• The impact crater dominates the image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA\’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013.
• It shows a 30-meter-wide crater with a rayed blast zone and far-flung surrounding secondary material and debris as far as 15 kilometers [9.3 miles] in distance.
• In examining ejecta distribution, scientists can learn more about the impact event
• Also Seen By
• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space Images: A Spectacular New Martian Impact Crater – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | jpl.nasa.gov
• Brand New Impact Crater Shows Up on Mars | UniverseToday.com

— Updates —

Olympic Torch

• Last Time On SciByte …
• SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks | November 12, 2013
• Olympic Torch in Space
• Ever since the first relay for the 1936 summer Olympic games in Berlin, Olympic torches have traditionally been used to carry a burning flame from Greece to the host country’s stadium
• On Nov. 6, 2013 (Nov. 7 UT) a Soyuz TMA-11M rocket launched with the Expedition 38/39 crew on the ISS and an Olympic torch
• The Olympic Torch was taken on a space walk for the first time on Nov 9, 2013 handed off from one cosmonaut to the other in a symbolic relay in orbit [the torch was not lit during its time aboard the ISS or, obviously, while in space]
• The real reason for the spacewalk is to do some routine Russian maintenance outside the station
• The ISS travels around the Earth 16 times each day, and the torch spent nearly four days in space [~64 orbits]
• That particular torch
• The torch was given back to Olympic officials and was the one used to light the 2014 Olympic cauldron during the Opening Ceremony in Sochi on Feb. 7.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Raw: Spacewalkers Hand Off Olympic Torch | AssociatedPress
• Further Reading / In the News
• The Olympic Torch That Went Around the World… Literally | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Traversing Sand Dunes
• Image of Wheel
• Up close view of hole in one of rover Curiosity\’s six wheels caused by recent driving over rough Martian rocks.
• Mosaic assembled from Mastcam raw images taken on Dec. 22, 2013 (Sol 490).
• Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
• Sand Dune
• Curiosity reached the eastern side of a dune on Jan. 30 and returned images that the rover team is using to guide decisions about upcoming drives
• Before giving the go ahead to move forward, engineers took a few days to carefully assess the dune’s integrity and physical characteristics
• Curiosity was able to pass over the dune in Dingo Gap without difficulty
• The rovers science instruments and cameras to insure there wasn’t the potential to get irretrievably stuck in a deep sand trap.
• The team even commanded Curiosity to carry out a toe dip by gently rolling the 20 inch (50 cm) diameter wheels back and forth over the crest on Tuesday, Feb. 4 to insure it was safe to mount
• Previous Images of Earth
• NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit imaged Earth from the surface in March 2004, soon after landing
• Mars Global Surveyor in 2003 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007
• NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn captured the Earth and Moon in 2013
• Earth Images
• New images from NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover show Earth shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky and it even includes our moon, just below Earth
• The images, taken on Jan. 31, 2014 about 80 minutes after sunset, used both of her high resolution color mast mounted cameras to collect the series of Earth/Moon images
• The distance between Earth and Mars when Curiosity took the photo was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers).
• “A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright “evening stars,” said NASA
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Crosses Dingo Gap Dune – Gateway to Valley and Mountain Destinations Beyond | UniverseToday.com
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Sees \’Evening Star\’ Earth | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Sees \’Evening Star\’ Earth | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Feb 15, 2013 : 1 year ago : Chelyabinsk Meteor : A meteor exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk , Russia. It produced a shock wave so intense that about 1,000 people were reported injured, mostly by flying glass fragments. To view the meteor streaking across the sky, many people were at their windows when the sonic boom shattered the glass panes. The meteor was estimated to be 2 meters in diameter, with a mass of about 10 tons. It entered the Earth\’s atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 33,000 mph when it was viewed by residents of Chelyabinsk (a city of 1 million about 930 miles east of Moscow) at about 9:20 am local time, just after sunrise. They saw a thick, white contrail and an intense flash of light ending with a loud thundering sound as the shattering of the meteor blew apart with several kilotons of energy (equivalent to an atomic bomb)
• YouTube | Meteorite crash in Russia: Video of meteor explosion that stirred panic in Urals region | RT
• Last Time on SciByte
• SciByte 82 | Meteorites & Asteroids | February 19, 2013
• SciByte 83 | Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue | February 26, 2013
• SciByte 84 | HIV & SpaceX Troubles | March 5, 2013

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Friday, February 14 | Full Moon (exactly full at 6:53 p.m. EST). Regulus in constellation Leo to the Moon\’s left during evening. You might be able to see part of Leo that looks like a backwards question mark, with Regulus being the period
• Planets
• Venus | Dawn | \”Morning Star\” in the SE
• Mars | ~10-11 pm | Spica, blue giant variable star, 5* to it\’s left. They are highest in the sky around 3-4am, with Spica now to the lower right. [5* ~ 3 middle fingers held at arms length
• Jupiter | Early evening | Eastern Sky, crossing overhead around 9pm and setting in the W before dawn

• Saturn | ~1am | Rises in the E-SE, moves to its highest in the S at 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 Medical Tech & Martian Crater | SciByte 119 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at 3-D printed ears, a tiny movie, a light pollution app, treating grey hair and vitiligo, picture books, corrections, updates, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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3D Printing Bionic Ears

• -Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can \”hear\” radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability
• -The primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue
• Building Bionics
• -Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies that typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue
• -This new work suggests a new way to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format
• -Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; several groups have reported using the technology for this purpose in the past few months
• -This project is the team\’s first effort to create a fully functional organ: one that not only replicates a human ability, but extends it using embedded electronics
• Manufacturing Bionic Ears
• -Ear reconstruction \”remains one of the most difficult problems in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery\” so this team turned to a manufacturing approach called 3D printing
• -Researchers used an ordinary 3D printer to combine a matrix of hydrogel and calf cells with silver nanoparticles that form an antenna. The calf cells later develop into cartilage
• -Two wires lead from the base of the ear and wind around a helical \”cochlea\” – the part of the ear that senses sound which can connect to electrodes, the finished ear consists of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure,
• -This is the first time that researchers have demonstrated that 3D printing is a convenient strategy to interweave tissue with electronics
• The Future
• -Further work and extensive testing would need to be done before the technology could be used on a patient
• -The ear in principle could be used to restore or enhance human hearing if electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a patient\’s nerve endings, similar to a hearing aid
• -The current system receives radio waves, but he said the research team plans to incorporate other materials, such as pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to enable the ear to register acoustic sounds
• Multimedia
• -YouTube | 3D Printed Bionic Ears Listening to Beethoven in Stereo | McAlpineResearch
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Printable \’bionic\’ ear melds electronics and biology | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

It’s a Small, Small Movie

• -Scientists from IBM have released the world\’s smallest movie, made entirely of atoms
• The Instrumentation
• -In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope
• -The Microscope weighs two tons, and operates at a temperature of negative -450 Fahrenheit / -268 Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times
• -The IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.
• -Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to \”feel\” atoms
• -Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface
• -Moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it\’s actually moved
• The Movie
• -Named \”A Boy and His Atom,\” the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.
• -Scientists rendered still images of the individually arranged atoms, resulting in 242 single frames
• Also From the Team
• -Recently created the world\’s smallest magnetic bit, answering the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12.
• -It takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device, atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.
• Multimedia
• -YouTube | A Boy And His Atom: The World\’s Smallest Movie | IBM
• -YouTube | IMB \’The Worlds Smallest Movie\’ Channel
• -Image | Star Trek Logo made of atoms
• Further Reading / In the News
• –IBM researchers make world\’s smallest movie using atoms | Phys.org
• –Tiny Bubbles: Star Trek Gets An Atomic Look | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Light Pollution App

• -Researchers from the German \”Loss of the Night\” project have developed an app for Android smart phones, which counts the number of visible stars in the sky
• The App
• -The smartphone app will be used by scientists to understand and evaluate sky brightness, also known as light pollution or skyglow, on a worldwide scale
• -Currently satellites that observe Earth at night measure the light that is radiating into the sky, not the brightness that is experienced by people and other organisms on the ground
• -The data can be used to map the distribution and changes in sky brightness, and will eventually allow scientists to investigate correlations with health, biodiversity, energy waste and other factors
• -With this app, people from around the world can collect data on skyglow without needing expensive equipment.
• -You simply use an interactive view of a portion of the night sky where you can adjust it so that it corresponds to the number of stars you see in the sky
• -Some of the testers found that without intending too they learned the names of several stars and constellations
• -Development of the app was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education, and is based on the widely used Google Sky Map application
• Website
• -GoolgePlay | Loss of the Night
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Twinkle, twinkle little star: New app measures sky brightness | Phys.org

Reversing Grey Hair and Vitiligo

• Grey Hair
• -People who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out
• -A new report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase)
• Vitiligo
• -The study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition vitiligo, a condition that causes depigmentation of sections of skin
• -To achieve this breakthrough, Schallreuter and colleagues analyzed an international group of 2,411 patients with vitiligo
• -They found that for the first time, patients who have a certain nerval distribution involving skin and eyelashes show the same oxidative stress as observed in the much more frequent type of vitiligo
• -The more common Vitiligo is associated with decreased antioxidant capacities including catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and the repair mechanisms methionine sulfoxide reductases
• –Further Reading / In the News
• –Gray hair and vitiligo reversed at the root | MedicalXPress

‘Reading’ Picture Books

• -Researchers have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book
• -Often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun
• -These findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk that is really important for children to hear, especially as they transition to school
• Last time on the … FauxShow?
• –FauxShow 139 | Story Time | May 9 2013
• The Study
• -A graduate student, recorded 25 mothers while they read to their toddlers both a wordless picture storybook and a vocabulary book with pictures
• -Moms in the study used forms of complex talk when reading the picture storybook to their child more often than the picture vocabulary book
• -The team was especially interested in looking at the language mothers use when reading both wordless picture storybooks and picture vocabulary books
• -They paid close attention to see if parents provided extra information to children like relating the events of the story to the child\’s own experiences or asking their child to make predictions.
• What This Means
• -The results of the study are significant for both parents and educators because vocabulary books are often marketed as being more educational
• -This shows that even short wordless picture books provide children with exposure to the kinds of language that they will encounter at school and can lay the foundation for later reading development
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Reading wordless storybooks to toddlers may expose them to richer language | MedicalXpress.com

— CORRECTIONS —

Haiku to Mars Corrections

• Viewer Feedback – Check This Out
• -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes [May 7, 2013]
• -I mistakenly attributed this to Curiosity
• The Mission
• -NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, to gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
• -The Mission launch window opens on November 18, 2013
• And Earthly DVD to Mars
• -The team wants to pack onboard a DVD containing the names of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will be on the DVD
• -The top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars on board the orbiting MAVEN spacecraft and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website
• Student Art Contest Timeline
• -Contest Ran from March 15-April 8, Public Voting was between April 16-May 6
• -Contest Winner Will Be Announced on May 20
• Send Your Name and Haiku to Mars
• -Submissions | May 1 – July 1
• -Public Voting | July 15 – July 29
• -Message Contest Winner Announced | August 8
• Haiku
• -A poem with three lines where the first and the last lines must have exactly five syllables, and the second line must have exactly seven syllables.
• Example
• Listening and learning, [5]
• and information gathering, [7]
• makes Happy Science [5]
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Going to Mars » Send your name & message to Mars!
• –NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science

— UPDATES —

Awesome Second-Hand Telescopes

• -A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions the middle of last year
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 51 | Talking Robots and Voyager 1 – Space Telescope Donations | June 19, 2012
• The Story of the Telescopes
• -The two spy scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture
• -Cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency
• -The cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year, which is not insignificant, but it\’s not something that\’s unmanageable
• -The telescopes\’ 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view
• -NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches
• Finding Ideas
• -When NASA asked scientists to suggest missions for the telescopes, more than 60 serious proposals came in, the most promising of which were presented in early February
• Seven Big Ideas
• -Mars-orbiting space telescope
• -Exoplanet observatory
• -General-purpose faint object explorer
• -Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope
• -Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)
• -Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)
• -Research of Earth\’s upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)
• The Future
• -Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch
• -There are currently no instruments on the two telescopes right now, just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures so it would take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure
• -The funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted, and there\’s no guarantee that it will be with current budgetary concerns
• Further Reading / In the News
• –NASA Mulling Missions for Donated Spy Telescopes | National Reconnaissance Office | Space.com

Reality TV on Mars [MarsOne]

• -By May 7th about 78,000 people applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22
• -78,000 applications in two weeks is a good start to their goal of half a million applicants
• -Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion
• -Plans are to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists\’ first years on the Red Planet.
• Last Time on SciByte
• –SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets and Diabetes – MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science | May 7, 2013
• –SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets and Eye’s – Martian Reality TV | September 4, 2012
• Application Process
• -The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply, by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler.
• -There is an application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on the wealth of the applicant\’s home country. United States citizens pay $38
• -Reviewers will pick 50 to 100 candidates from each of the 300 regions around the world that Mars One has identified
• -By 2015, this pool will be whittled down to a total of 28 to 40 candidates, then the core group will be split into groups of four, which will train for their one-way Mars mission for about seven years
• -Finally, an audience vote will pick one of these groups to be humanity\’s first visitors to the Red Planet.
• From All Over the World
• -People from more than 120 countries have already send in applications
• -As of May 7 the greatest number of submissions by country are the United States (17,324), China (10,241), and the United Kingdom (3,581)
• -Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India round out the top 10.
• Multimedia
• –Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
• -YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Mars Colony Project Gets 78,000 Applications in 2 Weeks | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

First Music Video in Space

• Nikki – Check It Out!
• YouTube Space Oddity | Chris Hadfield
• YouTube Music Monday with Chris Hadfield and students singing coast-to-coast | canadianspaceagency
• YouTube First recorded comments by Chris Hadfield after landing | canadianspaceagency

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• After Conjunction Updates
• -New software was uploaded what was developed and tested on Earth on the \’testbed\’ that will allow more autonomous navigation that will help Curiosity select safe routes by itself
• -Additional safety checks have been added to the onboard software for the ChemCam instrument to make sure it is never directly pointed at the sun for a long period of time
• Plans
• -Calibration data for the navigation cameras, to make sure the B-side computer navigation camera\’s are working properly before moving to a new location
• Second Drilling Location
• -The team operating NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover has selected a second target rock for drilling and sampling. The rover will set course to the drilling location in coming days.
• -\”Cumberland,\” lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity\’s drill first touched Martian stone in February
• -Both rocks are flat, with pale veins and a bumpy surface. They are embedded in a layer of rock on the floor of a shallow depression called \”Yellowknife Bay.
• -This second drilling is intended to confirm results from the first drilling, which indicated the chemistry of the first powdered sample from John Klein was much less oxidizing than that of a soil sample the rover scooped up before it began drilling.
• -Cumberland and John Klein are very similar, Cumberland appears to have more of the erosion-resistant granules that cause the surface bumps, concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago
• -Mission engineers recently finished upgrading Curiosity\’s operating software following a four-week break rover continued monitoring the Martian atmosphere during the break, but the team did not send any new commands
• Multimedia
• -YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (May 9, 2013): \’Spring Break\’ Over: Commanding Resumes | JPL
• -Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• -Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• –Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Curiosity Rover Team Selects Second Drilling Target On Mars | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• –Mars Rover Curiosity Gears Up for Drilling, Epic Drive | Space.com
• –Bizarre Mars Mountain Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water | Space.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 20, 1901 : 112 years ago : 3D Projector : Claude Grivolas, one of Pathe\’s main shareholders in Paris, France, patented a projector for three-dimensional (stereoscopic) movies viewed wearing spectacles with one red and one blue lens (French patent No. 310,864). He received a British patent on 23 May 1901 (No. 10,695) For filming, he used a dual camera arrangement which photographed images alternately. He then created one composite master film with the left camera images alternated with the right camera image. His projector had a shutter with one red and one blue transparent sections, with opaque quadrants between them. Left-eye images were projected through the blue filter followed by right-eye images in red light. The movie appeared black and white when viewed using red/blue spectacles

Looking up this week

• –Keep an eye out for …
• -Fri | May 17 | Look above the Moon in the SW, above it you may see the backwards question mark of stars that are part of the constellation LEO (they are the head and shoulders)
• Planets
• -Venus | ~20 min after sunset | Look to the W-NW and you may be able to see Venus starting to appear
• -Jupiter | After sunset | It is the first \”star\” to appear, appearing a little lower each day and setting at the end of twilight
• -Saturn | After nightfall | Look to the SE, it is to the lower left of Spica and will be at it\’s highest point in the sky around midnight
• Coming Up

• -Venus, Jupiter, Mercury | Will be getting closer and closer this month with a conjunction on the 28th when Venus and Jupiter will only be 1*, about the width of your pinky finger at arms length

• 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 Bionic Ear & Atomic Movie | SciByte 93 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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.

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