MarsOne – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:49:04 +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 MarsOne – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity | SciByte 113 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/48212/freshwater-aquifers-brain-plasticity-scibyte-113/ Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:06:29 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=48212 We take a look at new sources of freshwater, plasticity, water on Europa, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

The post Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity | SciByte 113 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

post thumbnail

We take a look at new sources of freshwater, plasticity, water on Europa, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Star Trek: The Return (Adapted) Audiobook | William Shatner | Audible.com

Hidden Freshwater Reserves

  • According to the latest report documented in the journal Nature Australian scientists have identified vast freshwater reserves buried beneath the oceans
  • The Discovery
  • Groundwater scientists were very well aware of the presence of the freshwater reserves beneath the seafloor, but have assumed it to occur during unusual and extraordinary situations
  • Researchers have now revealed the presence of nearly half a million cubic kilometres [120,000 cubic mi] of low salinity water located beneath the seabed on the continental shelves
  • Located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa, the newly discovered fresh water reserves can be used to supply water to coastal cities
  • This water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we\’ve extracted from the Earth\’s subsurface in the past century since 1900
  • This latest study reveals that the fresh and brackish aquifers under the seabed are a common phenomena
  • Formation
  • Hundreds to thousands of years ago when the sea level was lower than what it is currently rainwater penetrated into the ground and filled up the water tables in regions that are currently under sea
  • Nearly 20,000 years ago, the sea levels rose, the ice caps began melting and the areas were covered by oceans
  • Most of the aquifers today are protected from seawater by blankets of clay and sediments that are piled on top
  • These aquifers are not different from those found below land. Their salinity is low due to which they can be easily converted into drinking water
  • Acquisition and Use
  • Researchers propose two ways to gain access to these freshwater reserves, either be by constructing a platform and drilling into the seabed, which is expensive, or drill from the mainland that is at a closer distance from the aquifer
  • Freshwater under the seabed is much less salty than seawater and it can be converted to drinking water with less energy than seawater desalination and also leave us with a lot less hyper-saline water
  • Because of how they formed, these water reserves are non-renewable and should be used carefully
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists Discover Untapped Freshwater Reserves Beneath the Oceans | ScienceWorldReport.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Learning New Skills

  • A new computational model developed by MIT neuroscientists explains how the brain maintains the balance between plasticity and stability and how it can learn very similar tasks without interference between them.
  • To learn new motor skills, the brain must be plastic: able to rapidly change the strengths of connections between neurons, forming new patterns that accomplish a particular task, if the brain were too plastic, previously learned skills would be lost too easily.
  • Neurons
  • The key is that neurons are constantly changing their connections with other neurons
  • Not all of the changes are functionally relevant – they simply allow the brain to explore many possible ways to execute a certain skill, such as a new tennis stroke
  • The brain is always trying to find the configurations that balance everything so you can do two tasks, or three tasks, or however many you\’re learning
  • According to this theory as the brain explores different solutions, neurons can become specialized for specific tasks
  • As the brain learns a new motor skill, neurons form circuits that can produce the desired output
  • Modifications
  • Perfection is usually not achieved on the first try, so feedback from each effort helps the brain to find better solutions, complications arise when the brain is trying to learn many different skills at once
  • Because the same distributed network controls related motor tasks, new modifications to existing patterns can interfere with previously learned skills, particularly when you\’re learning very similar things such as two different tennis strokes
  • Instructions for each task would be stored in a different location on a computer chip; however, the brain is not organized like a computer chip.
  • Instead, it is massively parallel and highly connected – each neuron connects to, on average, about 10,000 other neurons
  • That connectivity offers an advantage, however, because it allows the brain to test out so many possible solutions to achieve combinations of tasks
  • The constant changes in these connections, which researchers call hyperplasticity, is balanced by another inherent trait
  • Neurons have a very low signal to noise ratio, meaning that they receive about as much useless information as useful input from their neighbors
  • New Model with Signal Noise
  • Most models of neural activity don\’t include noise, but the MIT team says noise is a critical element of the brain\’s learning ability
  • This model helps to explain how the brain can learn new things without unlearning previously acquired skills
  • The paper shows is that, counterintuitively, if you have neural networks and they have a high level of random noise, that actually helps instead of hindering the stability problem
  • Without noise, the brain\’s hyperplasticity would overwrite existing memories too easily
  • Low plasticity would not allow any new skills to be learned, because the tiny changes in connectivity would be drowned out by all of the inherent noise
  • What it Means
  • The constantly changing connections explain why skills can be forgotten unless they are practiced often, especially if they overlap with other routinely performed tasks
  • Skills such as riding a bicycle, which is not very similar to other common skills, are retained more easily
  • Once you\’ve learned something, if it doesn\’t overlap or intersect with other skills, you will forget it but so slowly that it\’s essentially permanent
  • Researchers are now investigating whether this type of model could also explain how the brain forms memories of events, as well as motor skills
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | How Neurons Work Made Simple ~ An Animated Guide | cosmiccontinuum
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • How Our Brain Balances Old and New Skills | ScienceWorldReport.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

MarsOne, Another Step Forward

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Water Jets Above Another One of Jupiters Moons

  • Jacob F. Roecker ‏@jacobroecker
  • Check This Out
  • NASA\’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted water vapor above Europa frigid south polar region, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon\’s surface
  • Only after a particular camera on the Hubble Space Telescope had been repaired on the last servicing mission by the Space Shuttle did we gain the sensitivity to really search for these plumes
  • Europa’s ocean could help explain its jigsaw surface | Arstechnica.com
  • Water Plumes
  • Scientists had previously detected evidence of an ocean under Europa\’s icy crust
  • The simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa
  • If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean then future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa\’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice
  • Water Plumes Seen Before
  • This would actually be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes, the first one to be discovered was Saturn\’s moon Enceladus
  • First detected in 2005 by NASA\’s Cassini orbiter, the plumes of Enceladus possess dust and ice particles
  • Surface Terrain
    • Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has cracks in its surface, as seen before on Enceladus
  • On Europa the cracks come in the form of jumbled pieces of ice that make up what are called the moon\’s “chaos terrains.”
  • It seems likely that the ocean has something to do with the chaos terrain, especially given the presence of salt there
  • To figure that out, however, we’d have to know something about how water circulates in that ocean
  • It’s been thought that the big-picture pattern might look something like the atmosphere of Jupiter, with alternating bands of eastward or westward flow.
  • Circulation in the ocean would be driven by the heat from Europa’s interior, making it difficulty of studying Europa’s oceans
  • When They Can Be Seen
  • Europa plumes are similar to Enceladus in that they also seem to vary depending on the moon\’s orbital position; active jets have only been seen when Europa is farthest from Jupiter
  • This supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean
  • The Future
  • Once the plumes are confirmed, scientists can take a closer look at their composition and may even be able to find out more about the potential subsurface sea of Europa
  • Future space probe missions to Europa could confirm that the exact locations and sizes of vents and determine whether they connect to liquid subsurface reservoirs
  • ESA\’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, a mission planned for launch in 2022, and which aims to explore both Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Jupiter Moon Europa\’s Water Plume Spied By Hubble – Artist Impression Video | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • New computer model may explain moon Europa\’s chaotic terrain | Phys.org
  • Hubble discovers water vapor venting from Jupiter\’s moon Europa | Phys.org
  • NASA Hubble Telescope Discovers Water Plumes Over Icy Europa | ScienceWorldReport.com
  • Europa\’s ocean could help explain its jigsaw surface | Ars Technica

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

International Space Station Troubles

China’s Chang’e-3 Moon Rover

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Dec 22, 1882 : 131 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.
  • The First Electric Christmas Tree Lights | TodayInSci.com

Looking up this week

  • Keep an eye out for …
  • Sat, Dec 21 | The shortest day of the year in the N hemisphere and the longest day in the S hemisphere. Winter officially begins in the N hemisphere at the solstice at 12:11pm EST
  • Winter Constellation | Orion | Is in the E-SE right now, when it rises its three belt start are nearly verticle Image
  • Planets
  • Venus | \”Evening Star\” | Rises in the SW during and after dusk moving lower and lower each day
  • Mars | Rises around 12-1 am local, and moves to the high S skies by dawn
  • Jupiter | End of Twilight | Rises in the E-NE, and rises to its highest point around 1-2am. The moon will be near Jupiter off and on for now, interesting to know that Jupiter is 1,600 times farther away than the Moon.
  • Saturn | Dawn Brightening | Rises in the SE, it is far to the lower left of Mars

SciByte is going on a Holiday break, we will be Back Jan 7, 2014 See you then!

The post Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity | SciByte 113 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Bionic Ear & Atomic Movie | SciByte 93 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/37221/bionic-ear-atomic-movie-scibyte-93/ Tue, 14 May 2013 20:41:41 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=37221 We take a look at 3-D printed ears, a tiny movie, a light pollution app, treating grey hair and vitiligo, picture books, and more.

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

]]>

post thumbnail

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.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

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

— 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

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

]]> Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/36836/habitable-exoplanets-diabetes-scibyte-92/ Tue, 07 May 2013 21:35:10 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=36836 We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, and spacecraft updates.

The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>

post thumbnail

We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Support the Show:

[asa]1613776233[/asa]
[asa]B00B7VZN76[/asa]

Show Notes:

More Habitable Zone Exoplanets

  • Astronomers have announced that they have found three new, potentially rocky, planets in the habitable zone of their stars by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
  • Kepler Space Telescope
  • As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
  • Mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
  • Until now planets in the habitable zone were discovered by what is known as the radial velocity method, which gives a lower limit for the planet’s mass, but no information about its radius
  • While a small radius (less than 2 Earth radii) is a strong indicator that a planet around is indeed rocky it is difficult to assess whether or not a planet is rocky, like the Earth.
  • Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars is harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
  • Kepler-62
  • Kepler62 is a red dwarf star, about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
  • It is only 20 percent as bright as the sun and is about 1,200 light years away and contains five planets currently identified
  • Two of the worlds, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
  • Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy
  • The biggest uncertainty right now is about both planets composition, early evidence suggests that at least 62f is rocky
  • Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f would exhibit distinctly different colors and make our search for signatures of life easier on such planets in the near future
  • Kepler-62e
  • Orbit is 122 days
  • 1.6 times the diameter of Earth
  • Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth according to computer models to sustain an ocean
  • An astronomer at the University of Washington not involved in the research says that Kepler-62e may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
  • If 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, half of its surface always facing the star, and the other always facing away
  • Kepler62-f
  • Orbit is 267 days
  • 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
  • Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean
  • Kepler-69 System
  • Kepler-36 is a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
  • The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star\’s habitable zone
  • Kepler-69c
  • 1.7 times bigger than Earth, sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
  • Habitable Zone Types
  • The \”empirical habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet if that planet has sufficient cloud cover
  • The \”narrow habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface even without the presence of a cloud cover
  • Of Note
  • According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, there are now nine potential habitable worlds outside of our solar system, with 18 more potentially habitable planetary candidates found by Kepler waiting to be confirmed
  • Astronomers predict there are 25 potentially habitable exomoons
  • Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that
  • Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Animation of the Kepler 62 Planetary System | UniverseTodayVideos
  • YouTube | NASA\’s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest \’Habitable Zone\’ Planets to Date | NASASolarSystem
  • Infographic | 3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained | Space.com
  • IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
  • IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
  • IMAGE | Current known potentially habitable exoplanets | Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo.
  • IMAGE | The habitable zone for different types of stars | Image: L. Kaltenegger (MPIA)
  • YouTube | Full Anouncement | Kepler Makes Discoveries Inside the Habitable Zone | NASAtelevision
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Discovered! Most Earth-Like Alien Planet & 2 Other Possibly Habitable Worlds | Space.com
  • Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
  • Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images | UniverseToday.com
  • Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

New Possible Diabetes Treatment Option

  • Researchers have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes and believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes
  • Type 1 Diabetes
  • While betatrophin primarily as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, it is believed it might play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as well
  • Perhaps boosting the number of beta cells and slowing the progression of that autoimmune disease when it\’s first diagnosed
  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by a combination of excess weight and lack of exercise and causes patients to slowly lose beta cells and the ability to produce adequate insulin
  • Provide this hormone, the type 2 diabetic will make more of their own insulin-producing cells, and this will slow down, if not stop, the progression of their diabetes
  • Betatrophin
  • The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate
  • In addition the new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin
  • The researchers know that the hormone exists in human plasma; betatrophin definitely exists in humans
  • The Research
  • The team wasn\’t just looking at what happens when an animal doesn\’t have enough insulin, they were able to find this a gene that had largely gone unnoticed before
  • Another hint came from studying what happens during pregnancy, when there are more beta cells needed, and it turns out that this hormone goes up
  • When a woman gets pregnant, her carbohydrate load, her call for insulin, can increase an enormous amount because of the weight and nutrition needs of the fetus
  • The Future
  • Betatrophin could be in human clinical trials within three to five years, an extremely short time in the normal course of drug discovery and development
  • If it works as they hope it will it could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or month, or even year
  • The researchers who discovered betatrophin caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Potential Diabetes Breakthrough | Harvard
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Potential diabetes breakthrough: Researchers discover new hormone spurring beta cell production | MedicalXPress.com

Soaking up Venom in Blood

  • A tiny sponge camouflaged as a red blood cell could soak up toxins ranging from anthrax to snake venom, new research suggests
  • Bacteria and Poisons
  • One of the mainstay strategies of bacteria and poison is to poke holes in cells, disrupting their internal chemical balance and causing them to burst
  • So far, researchers haven\’t had much success creating all-purpose treatments to exploit this vulnerability
  • Nanosponges
  • Researchers created a tiny spherical core of a lactic acid byproduct, which forms naturally during metabolism in the human body
  • To get the outer skin of red blood cells, they used a difference in particle concentration inside and outside the cells to cause them to burst, and then collected their outer membranes
  • They then wrapped the cores in the outer surface of the red blood cell
  • The nanoparticles, also called nanosponges, act as decoys that lure and inactivate the deadly compounds
  • The entire ensemble became a tiny nanosponge, which was about 85 nanometers in diameter, or 100 times smaller than a human hair
  • The sponges\’ tiny size means a small amount of blood, for camouflage, can be used to make an effective dose
  • In cell cultures, the camouflaged sponges act as decoys, luring the toxins from the bacteria that causes strep throat and bee venom
  • The toxins then bind to the structure the \”poisons\” normally use to poke through cells
  • When they stick onto the nanosponge, that particular damaging structure gets preoccupied, since the sponges are so small they can circulate freely through blood vessels, and then the body can digest the entire particle
  • Experiment
  • The team injected 18 mice with a lethal dose of a MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, toxin. Half the mice then got a dose of the nanosponges
  • Whereas all the mice in the control group died, all but one that received the treatment survived
  • When injected into mice, the tiny decoys protect mice against lethal doses of a toxin produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
  • The Future
  • The researchers want to see whether the method works in human blood, and against other toxic chemicals, such as scorpion venom and anthrax, which use similar attack strategies
  • Because so many bacteria use the same pore-forming strategy, the nanosponges could be used as a universal treatment option when doctors don\’t know exactly what is causing an illness
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tiny Sponge Soaks Up Venom in Blood | Scientific American

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Water in Jupiter\’s Clouds

  • How Did It Get There?
  • In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plowed into Jupiter leaving behind millions of gallons of water.
  • Water from the impact still makes up at least 95 percent of the water in the planet’s upper atmosphere
  • Telescopes had previously spotted water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, some 100 kilometers above the planet’s ammonia cloud tops, but those surveys could not determine where the water came from
  • Now astronomers have created a high-resolution map of water vapor distribution throughout Jupiter’s atmosphere
  • They found that the concentration of water peaked in the planet’s southern hemisphere, right in the region where the comet struck
  • More water also appeared at higher altitudes around the planet, which supports the comet as its origin.
  • Water from other sources such as Jupiter’s icy moons would likely spread out more evenly around the planet and would gradually filter down to lower altitudes
  • Multimedia
  • Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 – How The Universe Works | DiscoveryTV
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • News in Brief: Comet\’s water still hanging around on Jupiter | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science

  • Mars colony project will do its best to avoid disturbing potential Red Planet life rather than aggressively hunt it down
  • Science and Life
  • The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22
  • They plan to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 to make a permanent human colony on the Red Planet, with new crews arriving every two years thereafter
  • Human explorers will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life to localize the pollution
  • Mars One is working with experts to minimize the risks its colonization effort may pose to potential Red Planet lifeforms
  • While Mars One hasn\’t picked a precise location for its settlement yet, the organization is targeting a swath of the Red Planet between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude
  • Mars One astronauts will not necessarily be scientists
  • Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply, with the selection committee prizing traits such as intelligence, resourcefulness, determination and psychological stability over academic background
  • Science is not the main focus of what we are doing; although, crewmembers will take some scientific gear with them
  • Mars One officials won\’t dictate what the experiments should be, but there will be a budget for equipment that they want to take for scientific research
  • Multimedia
  • Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
  • YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars One
  • Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK—

Peter, AKA \”Korlus\” | Check This Out!

  • On April 4, 2012 he Fermi spacecraft almost ended it\’s mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe because of a collision with a dead Cold-War spy satellite
  • What Happened?
  • An automatically generated report arrived from NASA\’s Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA\’s Goddard Space Flight Center was sent to the FERMI team just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
  • The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet
  • An update days later indicated the satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other
  • Using thrusters for use at the end of Fermi\’s operating life designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere they were able to adjust the orbit just slightly enough to evade a collision
  • The U.S. Space Surveillance Network continues to keep tabs on every artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Near Miss – Dead Russian Spy Satellite Forces NASA Probe Move | VideoFromSpace
  • YouTube | Animation of Earth with Near-Earth Orbital Debris [HD] | TheMarsUnderground
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars One
  • Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

New Atlantis Exhibit Prep

  • The Space shuttle Atlantis is set to go on public display June 29 at NASA\’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida
  • Shuttle Reveal
  • It was revealed Friday, April 26 after workers spent two days peeling off its protective shrink-wrap cover of the past five months.
  • Workers began carefully cutting back the 16,000 square feet (1,486 square meters) of shrink wrap that protected Atlantis as its $100 million exhibition building was completed around it
  • By the end of the first day, the shuttle\’s nose, tail, aft engines and left wing were exposed, the workers completed the process the next day, revealing Atlantis\’ right wing and its 60-foot-long (18 meter) payload bay
  • Opening the payload bay is set to begin in May, will take about two weeks, as the doors are very slowly hoisted open, one by one.
  • Atlantis has been mounted. Thirty feet (9 meters) in the air, the space shuttle has been tilted 43.21 degrees, such that its left wing extends toward the ground.
  • Atlantis will appear to be back in space – an effect that will be enhanced by lighting and a mural-size digital screen that will project the Earth\’s horizon behind the shuttle
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Clip | Uncovering the Nose
  • YouTube Clip | Uncovering a Wing
  • YouTube Clip | Peeling Back the Layers
  • YouTube | Shuttle Atlantis Unwrapped & Revealed at Kennedy Visitor Center | SpaceVidsNet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Atlantis Exposed: Space Shuttle Fully Unwrapped for NASA Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center | Space.com

SpaceShipTwo

Opportunity Rover Back Fron Glitch

  • Mars rover Opportunity has overcome a glitch that put the robot into standby mode late last month
  • What Happened?
  • Opportunity apparently put itself into standby auto mode, in which it maintains power balance but waits for instructions from the ground, on April 22, after sensing a problem during a routine camera check, mission officials said.
  • The rover\’s handlers didn\’t notice the problem until April 27, when Opportunity got back in touch after a nearly three-week communications moratorium
  • They then prepared a new set of commands on April 29 designed to get things back to normal, and the fix has apparently worked
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Rover Opportunity Back in Action After Glitch | Mars Solar Conjunction | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 01, 1958 : 55 years ago : Van Allen radiation belts : The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint symposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC. He used data from the Explorer I and Pioneer III space probes of the earth\’s magnetosphere region to reveal the existence of the radiation belts – concentrations of electrically charged particles. Van Allen (born 7 Sep 1914) was also featured on the cover of the 4 May 1959 Time magazine for this discovery. He was the principal investigator on 23 other space probes

Looking up this week

The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]>