Opportunity – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:48:24 +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 Opportunity – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Coder Puppy Mills | CR 177 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/89986/coder-puppy-mills-cr-177/ Mon, 02 Nov 2015 16:13:19 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=89986 Mike & Chris discuss the hard problem of identifying opportunity costs vs staying flexible and cheap, why making communication a priority is almost never a priority & the numbers suggest coding bootcamps are growing like crazy… But is that a good thing? Plus when to ship, and why testing can really make Mike testy, your […]

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Mike & Chris discuss the hard problem of identifying opportunity costs vs staying flexible and cheap, why making communication a priority is almost never a priority & the numbers suggest coding bootcamps are growing like crazy… But is that a good thing?

Plus when to ship, and why testing can really make Mike testy, your feedback & more!

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Foo

Show Notes:

Hoopla:

Why Software Outsourcing Doesn’t Work … Anymore – Yegor Bugayenko

I_’m talking about outsourcing, not offshore development. The difference is that in outsourcing, there are two companies involved: you the client and some WeCodeLikeNoOneElse Inc. from Loompaland. In offshore development, you just open an office in that same Loompaland with your own management and employees_

Shipping

When is it time to just call something done and ship
How much polish is enough
Acceptable bugs?

Testing is Making Me Testy

Can you be a good dev and be ‘bad at testing’?
Once upon a time… QA Staff Existed…. Should they come back?
TDD? BDD? Alphabet Soup?

Can coding bootcamps replace a computer science degree?

A _2015 survey from Course Report of 67 U.S. and Canadian bootcamp schools_found that the average tuition per program is just over $11,000, with an average program length of about 11 weeks. Compare that with an average cost of $31,321 for one year at a private college, and a tech bootcamp seems like a great deal. Even a year for in-state students attending a public institution can expect to pay just over $9,000 per year, while out-of-state students pay an average of $22,958 per year at public colleges.

Michael Dominick on Twitter: “#ubuntu 15.10 should I give it a shot @ChrisLAS ? #linux”

Feedback:

This guide will get you up and running Mattermost on DigitalOcean using the Docker container system.

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]]> Cancer Drug & New Planet | SciByte 125 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/54812/cancer-drug-new-planet-scibyte-125/ Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:52:29 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=54812 We take a look at a new cancer drug, a dwarf planet, new dinosaur, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and more!

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

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Show Notes:

Possible New Cancer Drug

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

— NEWS BYTE —

A Possible New Dwarf Planet

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

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New Dinosaur Found in the Dakota’s

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

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

European Space Agencies Cometary Spacecraft Rosetta

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

Opportunity Rover Power Boost

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

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

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

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

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

]]> Immunotherapy & Growing Lungs | SciByte 121 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/52322/immunotherapy-growing-lungs-scibyte-121/ Tue, 25 Feb 2014 20:44:22 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=52322 We take a look at cell-based cancer therapy, growing lungs, radiation free MRI’s, 3D crime scene scanners, spacecraft updates, and much more.

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We take a look at cell-based cancer therapy, growing lungs, radiation free MRI’s, 3D crime scene scanners, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Cell-Based Cancer Therapy

  • The largest clinical study ever conducted to date of patients with advanced leukemia found that 88 percent achieved complete remissions after being treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells.
  • Adult B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL)
  • Is a type of blood cancer that develops in B cells, is difficult to treat because the majority of patients relapse.
  • Patients with relapsed B-ALL have few treatment options; only 30 percent respond to salvage chemotherapy.
  • Cell-Based Therapies
  • Cell-based, targeted immunotherapy is a new approach to treating cancer that harnesses the body\’s own immune system to attack and kill cancerous cells.
  • Unlike with a common virus such as the flu, our immune system does not recognize cancer cells as foreign and is therefore at a disadvantage in eradicating the disease.
  • Researchers have been exploring ways to reengineer the body\’s own T cells to recognize and attack cancer.
  • In 2003, they were the first to report that T cells engineered to recognize the protein CD19, which is found on B cells, could be used to treat B cell cancers in mice.
  • In March 2013, the same team of researchers first reported the results of five patients with advanced B-ALL who were treated with cell therapy. Remarkably, all five patients achieved complete remissions.
  • In the current study, 16 patients with relapsed B-ALL were given an infusion of their own genetically modified immune cells, called T cells.
  • The cells were \”reeducated\” to recognize and destroy cancer cells that contain the protein CD19.
  • One of the first patients to receive this treatment more than two years ago. He was able to successfully undergo a bone marrow transplant and has been cancer-free and back at work teaching theology since 2011
  • The Current Study : Bone Marrow Transplantation Following Treatment
  • Historically, only 5 percent of patients with relapsed B-ALL have been able to transition to bone marrow transplantation.
  • The study consisted of 16 patients, who were able to follow the treatment with the standard care and curative option, bone marrow transplantation
  • Seven [44%] were able to successfully undergo bone marrow transplantation
  • Three [19%] were ineligible due to failure to achieve a complete remission following treatment.
  • Three [19%] were ineligible due to preexisting medical conditions
  • Two [13%] declined the treatment
  • One [6%] is still being evaluated for a potential bone marrow transplant.
  • Who Is Right For The Treatment
  • The study also provides guidelines for managing side effects of cell therapy, which can include severe flu-like symptoms such as fever, muscle pain, low blood pressure, and difficulty breathing
  • The researchers developed diagnostic criteria and a laboratory test that can identify which patients are at greater risk for developing this syndrome.
  • The Future
  • Additional studies to determine whether cell therapy can be applied to other types of cancer are already underway
  • Studies to test whether B-ALL patients would benefit from receiving targeted immunotherapy as frontline treatment are being planned.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Cell therapy shows remarkable ability to eradicate cancer in clinical study | MedicalXPress

— NEWS BYTE —

Growing Human Lungs

  • A team of researchers has, for the first time, successfully grown a human lung in a lab
  • Organs That Have Been Done
  • Windpipes, for example, have been successfully grown and implanted into human patients, and just last spring
  • A team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston successfully implanted lab grown kidneys into rats
  • Current Study
  • Lungs from two deceased juveniles were obtained
  • The first lung was stripped of all of its cells leaving just a scaffolding of elastin and collagen
  • Healthy cells were then taken from the second lung and applied to the scaffolding
  • The lung-to-be was placed in a glass tank full of a nutrient-rich solution where it soaked for four weeks.
  • During that time, new cell growth filled in the scaffolding resulting in a new lung.
  • The team repeated the whole exercise with another set of lungs and found the same result.
  • The researchers don\’t know how well the newly grown lung might work if it were implanted into a person, if at all
  • The Future
  • They are confident that they are on the right track in growing lungs in a lab that will eventually be used to replace damaged lungs in actual patients
  • The don\’t however expect lab-grown lungs to be transplanted into humans for at least a dozen years
  • The team next plans to repeat the process with pig lungs and then to implant the results into a live pig to see how well they actually work
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Texas scientists successfully grow human lungs in their lab | KTNV Channel 13 Action News KTNV Channel 13 Action News
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Research team successfully grows human lung in lab | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Radiation Free MRI

  • Researchers have discovered that MRI-based imaging techniques may be just as effective as other conventional scanning methods minus the radiation risks that come with cancer detection
  • PET-CT Scanning
  • Medical officials often must send radioactive traces through the body as part of PET-CT scans that expose a patient to the equivalent of 700 chest X-rays
  • For pediatric patients, this can be particularly risky, where radiation exposure could potentially lead to secondary forms of cancer later in life.
  • In fact it have been showed that exposure can almost triple the risk of cancer in children, compared to those over 30
  • The Study
  • The study-composed of 22 children with malignant lymphomas or sarcomas
  • The team worked to investigate the safety and effectiveness of an MRI-based approach that mimics the PET-CT scan\’s results, via an iron supplement
  • The study shows that an iron supplement can increase the visibility on traditional MRI scans with no adverse reactions from ferumoxytol supplements.
  • A larger group of patients will need to be tested in order to confirm the validity of the results
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Radiation-Free MRI Scans Now Viable to Assess Cancer in Children | ScienceWorldReport.com

3D Crime Scanner

  • Police in Queensland Australia have reported that they now have and are using a hand held and can be used to laser scan a crime scene in just a matter of minutes for creation of a 3D image
  • Current Scanning Tech
  • LIDAR is a remote sensing technology that works by sending out a laser beam and then reading what is bounced back.
  • Geologists use a similar scanner to map the insides of caves, and planet scientists have been using it to map the surface of the Earth from satellites.
  • A similar device was also used recently to map the interior of the leaning tower of Pisa to gain a better understanding of its structure or to help in repair should it start to topple.
  • Zebedee is based on that technology that has been put to a variety of uses over the past several years
  • Zebedee scanner
  • Zebedee extends LIDARs capabilities (which are 2D) by affixing it to the top of a spring
  • Bouncing (and spinning) the laser around atop the spring, the beam strikes objects in every direction. A computer then connects all the 2D readings together to create a 3D image
  • Police Use
  • Police in New Mexico have recently begun using a scanner they call the Faro 3D scanner system, it\’s based on the same basic technology
  • The police have been using the device to faithfully recreate an entire crime scene in as little as 20 minutes
  • The data captured can be looked at later by investigators or even people sitting in a jury box to get a better sense of what occurred at a crime scene.
  • The Zebedee has thus far been most useful for crime scenes that are difficult to access
  • Also where there are bad weather or at automobile accident scenes, which of course completely disappear once the cars are towed away
  • The next step, is to put a Zebedee on a drone of some sort to allow for recreating scenes from above or from longer distances.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Mobile Mapping Indoors and Outdoors with Zebedee | AutonomousSystemsLab AutonomousSystemsLab
  • YouTube | Next Media: Australian police adopt 3D mapping scanner to fight crime | The Malay Mail Online The Malay Mail Online
  • YouTube | Accident Reconstruction with the FARO Focus3D | FAROTechnologies FAROTechnologies
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Australian police get hand-held 3D crime scene laser scanner | Phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Opportunity Rover | Solving the Story of the ‘Mystery Rock’

  • ‘Pinnacle Island’ had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a set of before/after pictures taken by Opportunity’s cameras on Jan, 8, 2014 (Sol 3540) in the exact same spot had been vacant of debris in photos taken barely 4 days earlier.
  • Pinnacle Island measures only about 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters) with a noticeable white rim and red center
  • Last Time on SciByte …
  • SciByte 116 | Migraines & John Dobson | January 21, 2014
  • Solving the Riddle of ‘Pinnacle Island’ (A.K.A. the ‘Jelly Doughnut’)
  • The Martian riddle was finally resolved when Opportunity roved a tiny stretch and took some look back photographs to document the ‘mysterious scene’ for further scrutiny
  • New pictures showed another fragment of the rock – dubbed ‘Stuart Island’ – eerily similar in appearance to the ‘Pinnacle Island’ doughnut.
  • “Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance,” said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator
  • It turns out that the six wheeled Opportunity unknowingly ‘created’ the mystery herself when she drove over a larger rock, crushing it with the force from the wheels and her 400 pound (185 kg) mass.
  • Fragments were sent hurtling across the summit of the north facing Solander Point, one piece unwittingly rolled downhill.
  • Orbital View
  • The highly detailed image was freshly taken on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day 2014) by the telescopic High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
  • The orbital image shows not only rover Opportunity at her location today, but some of the wheel tracks created as she climbed from the plains below up to near the peak of Solander Poin
  • The scene is narrowly focused on a spot barely one-quarter mile (400 meters) wide.
  • The purpose was to “check the remote possibility that a fresh impact by an object from space might have thrown this rock to its new location
  • No fresh crater impacting site was found in the new image
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Opportunity rover Spied atop Martian Mountain Ridge from Orbit – Views from Above and Below | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Driving in Reverse
  • As a means to help combat the wear and tear on the wheels engineers have started driving the rover in reverse
  • The reverse drive validated feasibility of a technique developed with testing on Earth to lessen damage to Curiosity\’s wheels when driving over terrain studded with sharp rocks.
  • On Tuesday, Feb. 18, the rover covered 329 feet (100.3 meters), the mission\’s first long trek that used reverse driving and its farthest one-day advance of any kind in more than three months.
  • Next Destination
  • The rover team used images taken from orbit to reassess possible routes, after detecting in late 2013 that holes in the vehicle\’s aluminum wheels were accumulating faster than anticipated.
  • The mission\’s destinations remain the same: a science waypoint first and then the long-term goal of investigating the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, where water-related minerals have been detected from orbit.
  • The science waypoint, which may be where Curiosity next uses its sample-collecting drill, is an intersection of different rock layers about two-thirds of a mile (about 1.1 kilometers) ahead on the planned route
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Adds Reverse Driving for Wheel Protection | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • March 1, 1966 : 48 years ago : Soviet spacecraft reaches Venus surface : The mission of the Soviet Union\’s unmanned spacecraft Venera 3 (Venus 3) was a partial success when it reached Venus and automatically released a small landing capsule intended to explore the planet\’s atmosphere during a parachute descent. However, contact had been lost since 16 Feb 1966. Although no data was returned before the capsule impacted, it became the first man-made object to touch the surface of another planet. The Soviet Union issued a commemorative stamp to mark the achievement. Venera 3 was launched on 16 Nov 1965. The landing capsule (0.9-m diam., about 300-kg) had been designed to collect data on pressure, temperature, and composition of the Venusian atmosphere. Failure is believed due to overheating of internal components and the solar panels
  • Venera 3 | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

The post Immunotherapy & Growing Lungs | SciByte 121 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | SciByte 105 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/44732/exoplanet-clouds-updates-scibyte-105/ Tue, 15 Oct 2013 20:30:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=44732 We take a look at exoplanetary clouds, updating atomic weights, plastic on Saturns moon, viewer feedback, story and spacecraft updates, and more!

The post Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | SciByte 105 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at exoplanetary clouds, updating atomic weights, plastic on Saturn\’s moon, viewer feedback, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

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[asa]B00E8G5H6Y[/asa]

— Show Notes —

Exoplanet Clouds

  • Astronomers using data from NASA\’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet known as Kepler-7b
  • Kepler-7b
  • One of the first five planets to be confirmed by NASA\’s Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed in the first 33.5 days of Kepler\’s science operations
  • Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size, and orbits its star every five days
  • Previous observations of Kepler-7b revealed that it could float on water
  • Temperature and Light Data
  • Kepler\’s visible-light observations of Kepler-7b\’s moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
  • That data was not enough on its own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
  • Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet\’s atmosphere
  • Spitzer\’s ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b\’s temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin).
  • What the Temperature and Lights Measurements Mean
  • Those measurements are relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star, within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun)
  • The measurements are also too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed.
  • Astronomers don\’t expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but they do detected a clear, reflective signature that they interpreted as clouds
  • What it All Means
  • By observing Kepler-7b with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, scientists were able to produce a very low-resolution \’map\’ of this giant, gaseous planet
  • Astronomers determined that light from the planet\’s star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.
  • The patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time, indicating it has a remarkably stable climate
  • The Future
  • Combining Spitzer and Kepler data together offers scientists with a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at exoplanets
  • This is bringing advancements to exoplanet science, moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them
  • 3D Visualization Tool
  • A fully rendered tool, available for download at eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets
  • The program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA\’s Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets
  • Also Pointed Out By
  • Paul Hill ‏@P_H_9_3 on Twitter
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exotic World – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory | jpl.nasa.gov
  • Clouds On Alien Planet Mapped for 1st Time | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Updating Atomic Weights

  • The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, has changed the official atomic weights of 19 elements
  • Atomic Weights
  • Every atom of an element, silver for example, has the same number of protons
  • Silver has 47, but not every atom of an element necessarily has the same number of neutrons
  • Different versions of an element\’s atoms are called isotopes, Silver occurs as silver-109 and silver-107
  • Chemists calculate the atomic weight of an element that you see on the periodic table from the masses of its isotopes, giving more common isotopes more weight than less common isotopes
  • This doesn\’t necessarily mean every sample of silver on Earth has an atomic weight of exactly
  • Samples of elements vary from place to place, and the differences play an important role in many sciences
  • The differences help chemists trace the origin of different materials and help date archaeological findings
  • Not a Big a Deal, But Why Do It?
  • The latest atomic weights measurements differ too little from their predecessors to really change science
  • The changes in weights mostly come from continuing improvements in atomic mass measurements thanks to advances in the technology behind mass spectrometers
  • They can also change how they view the number of isotopes an element has
  • For example, the IUPAC had previously thought that thorium-230 was too rare to include in atomic weight calculations, they now recognize it
  • The last time international chemistry really altered the periodic table was in 2009, when IUPAC decided to list the atomic weights of some elements as ranges, instead of single numbers
  • The Changes
  • Atomic weights are relative, so they don\’t have units
  • Molybdenum, Losing 0.0122
  • Thorium, Losing 0.000322
  • Yttrium and Niobium, Tied, Losing 0.00001
  • Selenium, Gaining 0.0088
  • Cadmium, Gaining 0.0026
  • Holmium, Thulium and Praseodymium, all Gaining 0.00001
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Chemistry\’s Biggest Loser: Official Atomic Weights Change For 19 Elements | Popular Science
  • Periodic Table of the Elements | chemistry.about.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013

Plastic in Titan’s Clouds?

  • An essential chemical used in the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in Saturn\’s largest moon, Titan
  • Scientists used Cassini\’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery
  • Cassini Measures Propylene
  • NASA\’s Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, found that the atmosphere of Titan contains propylene
  • Propylene is a key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth
  • Strung together in long chains it can form a plastic called polypropylene
  • Helps Explain Voyager 1 Data
  • This helps answer a decades old question
  • When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon\’s brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.
  • Those measurement were very difficult to make because propylene weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Clip | Plastic Moon: Propylene Detected On Titan | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • [NASA Finds Ingredient for Plastic on Saturn\’s Moon Titan | Space.com](NASA Finds Ingredient for Plastic on Saturn\’s Moon Titan | Space.com)

Now There Are Robots Who Run …

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Ice Cap Growing/Shrinking?

  • Nogal
  • In the chat room I brought up the fact that the ice caps have been growing, yet everyone called me a nut
  • Sorry, Staying Away From Hot Button Issues
  • First SciByte will neither agree or disagree with a highly hot button issue
  • Some studies can be made to agree in either direction you feel
  • There are studies that say the area of the Antarctic polar cap is expanding while the Arctic is decreasing
  • There are also studies arguing about the thickness of both polar sheets
  • Adding to the confusion and arguments is an article from National Snow and Ice Data Center showing significant shrinking of the area of the polar cap actually had an error
  • In addition there are arguments about global heating/cooling/climate change over what time span and comparing to historical data
  • For issues such as this it is important to find data from as impartial sources as you can, and to also look at the data that argues against how you feel

Food Science

  • Matt
  • Have you ever considered doing an episode on some of Chris\’ beliefs about nutrition and food?
  • Sorry, Staying Away From Some Food Health Science
  • While I might talk about what science is saying about how food interacts with the human body I’m not a dietician or a medical doctor so I’m going to stay away from dietary issue
  • Studies that talk about how one specific thing affects how interacts with your well being and health I view as somewhat bordering on fuzzy science
  • There are so many things that can affect your health it is hard to say anything specific about the general population
  • There are also many people with restrictive diets because of allergies or sensitivities that restrict diets that only affect specific portions of the population

— Updates —

Comet ISON

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Private Space Travel – Orbital Science & SpaceX

  • Orbital Science – Cygnus Spacecraft
  • The Cygnus spacecraft initial docking was delayed a week due to an easily fixed communications glitch
  • After docking, the hatches to Cygnus opened on Monday, Sept. 30 after completing leak checks
  • Cygnus delivers about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food, clothing, water, science experiments, spare parts and gear to the Expedition 37 crew
  • SpaceX
  • Also on Sept 29 the Next Generation commercial SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had its demonstration test flight
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
  • They deployed Canada’s 1,060 pound (481 kg) Cascade, Smallsat, and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) weather satellite and several additional small satellites.
  • Private Space Travel
  • Both Cygnus and Falcon 9 were developed with seed money from NASA in a pair of public-private partnerships between NASA and Orbital Sciences and SpaceX
  • With Orbital science\’s successful delivery there are now two commercial partner\’s with the ability to deliver supplies to the ISS
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Clip Cygnus Spacecraft Captured By Space Station | videoFromSpace
  • YouTube | [SpaceX] Launch of Inaugural Falcon 9 v1.1 Rocket with Cassiope! | SpaceVidsNet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Doubly Historic Day for Private Space: Cygnus docks at Station & Next Gen Falcon 9 Soars | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity

  • Planning the Path to Prepare for Winter
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) recently succeeded in collecting “really interesting” new high resolution survey scans of Solander Point
  • The new CRISM spectrometer survey from Mars orbit will vastly improve the spectral resolution – from 18 meters per pixel down to 5 meters per pixel
  • It will take some time, a few weeks, to review and interpret the new spectral data from the MRO and decide on a course of action
  • The new MRO data are crucial for targeting the rover’s driving in coming months.
  • Solander Point
  • Opportunity rover has begun the ascent of Solander Point, the first mountain she will ever climb
  • Solander Point is an eroded ridge located along the western rim of huge Endeavour Crater where Opportunity is currently located
  • Another important point about ‘Solander Point’ is that it also offers northerly tilted slopes that will maximize the power generation during Opportunity’s six month winter
  • Recent Science
  • The rover recently investigated an outcrop target called ‘Poverty Bush’.
  • The 3 foot long (1 meter) robotic arm was deployed and the rover collected photos with the Microscopic Imager (MI)
  • They collected several days of spectral measurements with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).
  • What is interesting about this location is that there are several geologic units that are overlapping and Opportunity is sitting on the contact
  • The east side of the contact are rocks maybe a billion years older than those on the west side of the contact
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Opportunity Scaling Solander Mountain Searching for Science and Sun | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • More Autonomy
  • Curiosity has now used a new technique, in placement of the tool-bearing turret on its robotic arm
  • The technique, called proximity placement, uses the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) as if it were a radar for assessing how close the instrument is to a soil or rock surface
  • The rover can then interpret the data and autonomously move the turret closer if it is not yet close enough
  • This will enable placement of the instrument much closer to soil targets than would have been feasible without risk of touching the sensor head to loose soil
  • It will also save extra days of having team members check the data and command arm movement in response
  • Multimedia
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Science Laboratory: Images | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • October, 18 1989 : 24 years ago : Jupiter orbiter Galileo launched
     : The Galileo space orbiter was released from the STS 34 flight of the Atlantis orbiter. Then the orbiter\’s inertial upper stage rocket pushed it into a course through the inner solar system. The craft gained speed from gravity assists in encounters with Venus and Earth before heading outward to Jupiter. During its six year journey to Jupiter, Galileo\’s instruments made interplanetary studies, using its dust detector, magnetometer, and various plasma and particles detectors. It also made close-up studies of two asteroids, Gaspra and Ida in the asteroid belt. The Galileo orbiter\’s primary mission was to study Jupiter, its satellites, and its magnetosphere for two years. It released an atmospheric probe into Jupiter\’s atmosphere on 7 Dec 1995.
  • Galileo Spacecraft Website | NASA

Looking up this week

<img src=\”https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/ISON_Comet_captured_by_HST%2C_April_10-11%2C_2013.jpg/250px-ISON_Comet_captured_by_HST%2C_April_10-11%2C_2013.jpg” width=250 align=right>

The post Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | SciByte 105 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Bilingualism & A Smart Dog | SciByte 95 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/37926/bilingualism-a-smart-dog-scibyte-95/ Tue, 28 May 2013 20:27:50 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=37926 We take a look at Bilingualism, cancer cell mortality, one smart dog, bringing Mars to Earth, spacecraft updates, and more!

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We take a look at Bilingualism, cancer cell mortality, one smart dog, bringing Mars to Earth, 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

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Path of Destruction: Star Wars: Darth Bane, Book 1

  • 2,000 years after KOTOR
  • 1,000 years before New Hope
  • Before, but general area of Yoda being born (+/- 50 or so)
  • Connected to prophesy from Dark Forces Books/Game, dealing directly with Kyle Katarn

Brains and Bilingual Language

  • According to new research, individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate \”sound systems\” for each language
  • Previous Ideas on the Brain and Languages
  • One idea was that people who speak more than one language have different processing modes for their two languages
  • One mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language
  • Another view was that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by calibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language
  • New Research Supports…
  • Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona, research supports the first view
  • When most people think about the difference in languages they think of the different words and grammar, but at the root of the languages are different sounds
  • The Study – Setup
  • The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8
  • Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a \’pa\’ or a \’ba\’ sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard
  • \’pa\’ and \’ba\’ sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly
  • For example, for English speakers \’ba\’ typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips
  • Spanish speakers begin vocal cord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce \’pa\’ in a manner similar to English \’ba.\’
  • English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds they hear in Spanish
  • The Study – Bilingual Participants
  • The bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English
  • Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two non real words bafri and pafri
  • Both groups heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the \’r\’ getting a Spanish pronunciation
  • Participants perceived \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of \’r,\’ or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of \’r.\’
  • When they put people in \”English mode,\” they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers
  • Hearing the exact same \’ba\’s and \’pa\’s would label them differently depending on the context
  • The Study – Bilingual Participants
  • When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception
  • They labeled \’ba\’ and \’pa\’ sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing
  • What Does That Mean?
  • Difference between the two groups provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals
  • This is primarily true for those who learn two languages very young
  • If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent
  • Bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or \”sound systems\”
  • One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different
  • Someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their \’pa\’ is like an English \’ba,\’ so when they say a word with \’pa,\’ it will sound like a \’ba\’ to an English monolingual
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study shows how bilinguals switch between languages | MedicalXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Diet Help Makes Cancer Cells Mortal

  • New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells\’ \”superpower\” to escape death
  • By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled.
  • Apigenin
  • One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming
  • Researchers, found that a compound in certain plant-based foods, called apigenin, could stop breast cancer cells from inhibiting their own death.
  • Parsley, celery and chamomile tea are the most common sources of apigenin, but it is found in many fruits and vegetables
  • Through additional experimentation, the team established that apigenin had relationships with proteins that have three specific functions
  • Among the most important was a protein called hnRNPA2, which influences the activity of messenger RNA, or mRNA, which contains the instructions needed to produce a specific protein
  • Splicing
  • The production of mRNA results from the splicing, or modification, of RNA that occurs as part of gene activation, abnormal splicing is the culprit in an estimated 80 percent of all cancers
  • In cancer cells, two types of splicing occur when only one would take place in a normal cell – a trick on the cancer cells\’ part to keep them alive and reproducing.
  • Researchers observed that apigenin\’s connection to the hnRNPA2 protein restored this single-splice characteristic to breast cancer cells, eliminating the splicing form that inhibited cell death
  • This suggests that when splicing is normal, cells die in a programmed way, or become more sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs.
  • Multimedia
  • XKCD | Cancer Cells
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • The compound in the Mediterranean diet that makes cancer cells \’mortal\’ | MedicalXPress.com

Dog Understanding Grammer

  • In experiments directed by her owner a 9-year-old border collie has demonstrated a grasp of the basic elements of grammar by responding correctly to commands such as “to ball take Frisbee” and its reverse, “to Frisbee take ball.”
  • Word Training
  • The dog had previous, extensive training to recognize classes of words including nouns, verbs and prepositions
  • Throughout the first three years of the dogs life she was trained to recognize and fetch more than 1,000 objects by name
  • Researchers also taught the meaning of different types of words, such as verbs and prepositions and sentence training at age 7
  • The dog learned that phrases such as “to Frisbee” meant that she should take whatever was in her mouth to the named object.
  • An experimenter would say, for instance, “to ball take Frisbee.” In initial trials, the experimenter pointed at each item while saying its name.
  • After several weeks of training, two experiments were conducted
  • The Experiments – \’Eyeing the Prize\’
  • In one experiment the dog had to choose an object from one pair to carry to an object from the other pair
  • Researchers read commands that included words for those objects. Only some of those words had been used during sentence training
  • To see whether Chaser grasped that grammar could be used flexibly student also read sentences in the reversed form of “take sugar to decoy.”
  • In 28 of 40 attempts, the dog grabbed the correct item in her mouth and dropped it next to the correct target.
  • The Experiments – Hidden in Plain Sight
  • Another experiment tested the dogs ability to understand commands when she couldn’t see the objects at first
  • Researchers placed two objects behind her at the other end of the bed, after hearing a command, the dog turned around and nabbed one of the objects.
  • Then ran to the living room and delivered the item to one of another pair of objects. She succeeded on all 12 trials
  • What is Exactly Happening
  • Exactly how the dog gained her command of grammar is unclear although researchers suspects that she first mentally linked each of two nouns she heard in a sentence to objects in her memory
  • Multimedia
  • Chaser – The intelligent Border Collie | PetfansDotnet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dog sniffs out grammar | Psychology | Science News

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

A Year on Mars, on Earth

  • The Mars Society has just announced a year long simulation of astronauts on Mars in the arctic
  • The proposed Mars Arctic 365 (MA365) mission on Canada’s Devon Island would take place at Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
  • According to the Mars Society the arctic is a lot like Mars in that it is cold, isolated, and dangerous
  • The society is asking for $50,000 from supporters in the next 24 days before starting the first phase (basically retrofitting the station and adding equipment) in July
  • More information on MA365 – perhaps with information on crew selection – should come in August, when members of the Phase 1 crew issue a report at the 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Society Proposes A Year-Long Arctic Mission To Better Prepare for the Red Planet | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Kepler Strategies

  • What\’s the Latest?
  • Kepler engineers are now strategizing about how to remotely repair one of two broken reaction wheels that precisely point the telescope
  • It will take at least several weeks before they beam commands up to the $600-million telescope, and they admit that a fix is a long shot.
  • Kepler Exoplanet History
  • When Kepler was launched into space astronomers knew that the galaxy contained at least 350 exoplanets, nearly all of them the size of Jupiter or larger
  • Kepler’s then spent four years adding nearly 3,000 planets
  • Now astronomers are convinced that the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of planets, roughly one for every star, with at least 17 billion of them Earth-sized
  • Kepler’s main goal was to determine the frequency of Earthlike planets in the galaxy while they now have enough data to make an intelligent extrapolation about what that number is, determining a more exact number will remain in limbo unless the telescope comes back online
  • What\’s the Next Mission
  • NASA’s next exoplanet-hunting mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, is scheduled for a 2017 launch
  • Whereas Kepler has fixed its gaze on distant stars, TESS will focus on bright, nearby stars so that powerful telescopes like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe the atmospheres of planets that TESS discovers
  • While less sensitive than Kepler, will nonetheless uncover plenty of planets in our neighborhood, including a handful of Earth-sized worlds
  • Astronomers hope to pair size measurements of planets observed by telescopes such as TESS with mass readings from ground-based scopes that look for subtle wobbles in stars’ motion caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Gone perhaps, but Kepler won\’t soon be forgotten | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

Opportunity, Still Hard at Work

  • Opportunity, has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favorable to ancient Martian biology
  • Opportunity’s analysis of a new rock target named “Esperance” confirmed that it is composed of a “clay that had been intensely altered by relatively neutral pH water
  • Esperance is unlike any rock previously investigated by Opportunity; containing far more aluminum and silica which is indicative of clay minerals and lower levels of calcium and iron.
  • Most, but not all of the rocks inspected to date by Opportunity were formed in an environment of highly acidic water
  • This represents the most favorable conditions for biology that Opportunity has yet seen in the rock histories it has encountered
  • Water that moved through fractures during this rock’s history would have provided more favorable conditions for biology than any other wet environment recorded in rocks Opportunity has seen
  • Opportunity accomplished the ground breaking new discovery by exposing the interior of Esperance with her still functioning Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) and examining a pristine patch using the microscopic camera and X-Ray spectrometer on the end of her 3 foot long robotic arm.
  • This discovery comes at the conclusion of a 20 month long science expedition circling around a low ridge called “Cape York,” the team even committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it
  • Esperance stems from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
  • What’s so special about Esperance is that there was enough water not only for reactions that produced clay minerals, but also enough to flush out ions set loose by those reactions
  • Opportunity can clearly see the alterations caused by that process
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Opportunity Discovers Clays Favorable to Martian Biology and Sets Sail for Motherlode of New Clues | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Self-Portrait
  • This self-portrait of NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover\’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013)
  • In addition three exposures were taken during Sol 270 (May 10, 2013) to update the appearance of part of the ground beside the rover
  • The updated area, which is in the lower left quadrant of the image, shows gray-powder and two holes where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target \”John Klein.\”
  • The rover\’s robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the arm.
  • Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic\’s component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, used in the mosaic
  • Radiation Reading Findings
  • Announcement coming on Thurs, May 30
    Multimedia
  • May\’s Planet Dance | SkyandTelescope
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Updated Curiosity Self-Portrait at \’John Klein\’ | mars.jpl.NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 25, 2011 : 2 years ago : SciByte 1 : After appearing on a few shows on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, most specifically after doing \”Space Wednesday\’s\” on Jupiter@Night, Heather (chatroom handle : Mars_Base) started doing a science based show with Jeremy. The show had a short hiatus between SciByte 16 and 17, leading to a change in style and co-host, Chris. Throughout it\’s life the show has been about spreading science information, and in general making Science Happy.

Looking up this week

The post Bilingualism & A Smart Dog | SciByte 95 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Kepler & Ancient Water | SciByte 94 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/37576/kepler-ancient-water-scibyte-94/ Tue, 21 May 2013 20:30:15 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=37576 We take a look at sad news for the Kepler space telescope, wireless brain imaging, remote ancient water, cancer genes, sound imaging, and more!

The post Kepler & Ancient Water | SciByte 94 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at sad news for the Kepler space telescope, wireless brain imaging, remote ancient water, cancer genes, sound imaging, viewer feedback, 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

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[asa]B00CTT9646[/asa]

Kepler\’s Last Dance?

  • NASA’s Kepler telescope lost its ability to precisely point toward stars when one of the reaction wheels –devices which enable the spacecraft to aim in different directions without firing thrusters – has failed
  • Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission completed its 3.5-year planned run last year.it monitors some 150,000 sunlike stars in search of transiting planets
  • Reaction Wheels
  • Reaction wheels try to balance the forces from the solar pressure, that’s what forces a wheel to run
  • Last year reaction wheel #2 failed, and now #4 has failed
  • In July 2012 reaction wheel #2 failed, then earlier this year elevated friction was detected in reaction wheel #4, they saw some movement on the wheel but it went back quickly
  • Extending Fuel Supplies
  • They are currently using thrusters to stabilize the spacecraft, and in its current mode, the onboard fuel will last for several months
  • They could extend the fuel to last a period of several years in a “Point Rest State,” where we can park the vehicle
  • Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink
  • The software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week
  • There is the possibility of the wheel running in the opposite direction, but running the wheel backward would mean they would need to use more thruster fuel
  • What Lies Ahead
  • The spacecraft needs at least three reaction wheels to be able to point precisely enough to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars, but it might be possible to use the telescope for another purpose that does not require such precise pointing abilities
  • They will continue to analyze the situation to try and get the telescope back online
  • Even if the Kepler spacecraft is unable to make more observations, there are still terabytes of data to pore over with two years of data that has yet to be searched through
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Kepler Update on This Week @NASA | NASATelevision
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Kepler mission may be over | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
  • Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Suffers Major Failure, NASA Says | Space.com
  • Kepler spacecraft\’s planet-hunting days may be over | Phys.org
  • Malfunction Could Mark the End of NASA\’s Kepler Mission – ScienceInsider | ScienceMag.org
  • Kepler Planet-Hunting Mission in Jeopardy | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Wireless Brain Imaging

  • A new technology is using wireless signals to provide real-time, non-invasive diagnosis of brain swelling or bleeding.
  • The device analyzes data from low energy, electromagnetic waves, similar to the kind used to transmit radio and mobile signals
  • It could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited
  • The Prototype
  • Engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants
  • One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver
  • The waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on
  • The device\’s diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans
  • Researchers take advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries
  • For brain edema, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue and for brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.
  • Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.
  • Then computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.
  • Prototype Testing
  • The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army
  • The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.
  • The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling
  • Why is it Important?
  • Symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Wireless signals could transform brain trauma diagnostics | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Ancient Water Story

  • A UK-Canadian team of scientists has discovered ancient pockets of water, which have been isolated deep underground for billions of years and contain abundant chemicals known to support life
  • Before this finding, the only water of this age was found trapped in tiny bubbles in rock and is incapable of supporting life
  • The Water
  • The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are thought to be around 2.7 billion years old. But no-one thought the water could be the same age, until now
  • Using ground-breaking techniques researchers show that the fluid is at least 1.5 billion years old, but could be significantly older.
  • The interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life
  • Scientists say the water found in the Canadian mine pours from the rock at a rate of nearly two litres per minute yet don\’t yet know if the underground system in Canada sustains life
  • Hydrogen, Methane, and Life
  • Researchers have analysed water pouring out of boreholes from a mine 2.4 kilometres beneath Ontario, Canada
  • They have found that the water is rich in dissolved gases like hydrogen, methane and different forms – called isotopes – of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon
  • The amount of hydrogen in the water is similar to that around hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, where microbial life has been found
  • The hydrogen and methane come from the interaction between the rock and water, as well as natural radioactive elements in the rock reacting with the water
  • These gases could provide energy for microbes that may not have been exposed to the sun for billions of years.
  • What This Means On a Larger Scale
  • The similarity between the rocks that trapped it and those on Mars raises the hope that comparable life-sustaining water could lie buried beneath the red planet\’s surface
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Billion-year-old water could hold clues to life on Earth and Mars | Phys.org

Flipping Genes for Cancer

  • Researchers at Johns Hopkins have identified a gene that, when repressed in tumor cells, puts a halt to cell growth and a range of processes needed for tumors to enlarge and spread to distant sites
  • The work shows for the first time that switching this gene off in aggressive cancer cells dramatically changes their appearance and behavior
  • The team applied the same techniques to several strains of human breast cancer cells in the laboratory, including the so-called triple negative cells
  • Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
  • Triple-negative breast cancer cells tend to behave aggressively and do not respond to many of our most effective breast cancer therapies
  • Cells with suppressed HMGA1 grow very slowly and fail to migrate or invade new territory
  • The team then implanted tumor cells into mice, the tumors with HMGA1 grew and spread to other areas, such as the lungs, while those with blocked HMGA1 did not grow well in the breast tissue or spread to distant sites.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Making cancer less cancerous: Blocking a single gene renders tumors less aggressive | MedicalXpress.com

Sound Pictures of Your Car

  • Researchers have created a camera that creates a heat map-like view of machinery, or anything else
  • 30 digital microphones and a high-res camera pick up on what\’s making noise, and an image shows the different levels of noise, organized by a color gradient with blue meaning a little noise, and red is the most extreme level.
  • While this is not the first sound camera, at about 4 pounds it is one of the most portable
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • This Sound Camera Could Help You Fix Your Car | Popular Science

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Space Station Patch

  • Peter Daintree / \”Korlus\” – Check This Out!
  • Space Station ammonia Leak and Fix
  • Answer
  • Expedition 35 Flight Engineers inspected and replaced a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant
  • Coolant Pump
  • The device contains the mechanical systems that drive the cooling functions for the port truss.
  • The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS
  • While the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew was not in any danger
  • The Fix
  • The spacewalk is the 168th in support of the assembly and maintenance of the space
  • While astronauts on the station prepared in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center used the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA
  • A little more than 2 1/2 hours into the spacewalk removed the 260-pound pump controller box from the P6 truss and replaced it with a spare that had been stowed nearby
  • What Happened in the \”Down Time\”
  • All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, were transferred throughout the day to another channel
  • The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Station Ammonia Leak Prompts Spacewalk Preps | ReelNASA
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • NASA – Astronauts Complete Spacewalk to Repair Ammonia Leak, Station Changes Command | NASA.gov
  • Emergency Spacewalk Likely for ‘Serious’ ISS Coolant Leak | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Opportunity’s Driving Marathon

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Second Drilling Location
  • The first drilling location was at a target called \”John Klein\” three months ago
  • The new target Cumberland resembles John Klein and lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) farther west
  • On May 19th Curiosity drilled a hole into Cumberland about an 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) deep
  • Preliminary findings from analysis of the first site, \”John Klein,\” indicate that the location long ago had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life
  • The science team expects to use analysis of the new material from Cumberland to check against those results
  • ”Blinking Image”
  • Before-and-After Blink of \’Cumberland\’ Drilling | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
  • This pair of images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the rock target \”Cumberland\” before and after Curiosity drilled into it to collect a sample for analysis
  • The \”before\” image was taken during the 275th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity\’s work on Mars (May 15, 2013).
  • Curiosity drilled into Cumberland on Sol 279 (May 19, 2013) and took the second image later that same sol.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (May 16, 2013): Rover Readies for Second Drilling | JPLNews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Drills Second Rock Target | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 27, 1931 : 82 years ago : Balloon Record : In 1931, Auguste Piccard and Charles Knipfer took man\’s first trip into the stratosphere when they rode their balloon to an altitude of 51,800 feet (nearly 10 miles above the earth). This required the use of a pressurized cabin, which Piccard had designed. On-board experiments included the use of an electroscope to investigate cosmic rays

Looking up this week

The post Kepler & Ancient Water | SciByte 94 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/30961/multitasking-tractor-beams-scibyte-79/ Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:12:40 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=30961 We take a look at multitasking abilities, red pens, tractor beams, bicycle airbags, tracking twitter, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, and more.

The post Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at multitasking abilities, red pens, tractor beams, bicycle airbags, tracking twitter, spacecraft 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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Show Notes:

Multitasking Proficiency

  • The low down
  • Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a new study indicates that people who multitask the most – including talking on a cell phone while driving – are least capable of doing so.
  • The Study
  • The study participants were 310 University of Utah psychology undergraduates – 176 female and 134 male with a median age of 21 – who volunteered for their department\’s subject pool in exchange for extra course credit.
  • The subjects were put through a battery of tests and questionnaires to measure actual multitasking ability, perceived multitasking ability, cell phone use while driving, use of a wide array of electronic media, and personality traits such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking.
  • Research suggests that people who engage in multitasking often do so not because they have the ability, but because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task
  • The more people multitask by talking on cell phones while driving or by using multiple media at once, the more they lack the actual ability to multitask, and their perceived multitasking ability \”was found to be significantly inflated
  • The Results
  • To measure actual multitasking ability, participants performed a test named Operation Span, or OSPAN.
  • The test involves two tasks: memorization and math computation where participants must remember two to seven letters, each separated by a math equation that they must identify as true or false
  • A simple example of a question: \”is 2+4=6?, g, is 3-2=2?, a, is 4×3=12.\” Answer: true, g, false, a, true.
  • Participants also ranked their perceptions of their own multitasking ability by giving themselves a score ranging from zero to 100, with 50 percent meaning average, 70 percent of participants thought they were above average at multitasking
  • Study subjects reported how often they used a cell phone while driving, and what percentage of the time they are on the phone while driving
  • Subjects also completed a survey of how often and for how many hours they use which media, including printed material, television and video, computer video, music, nonmusic audio, video games, phone, instant and text messaging, e-mail, the Web and other computer software such as word processing
  • Multitasking, including cell phone use while driving, correlated significantly with sensation-seeking, indicating some people multitask because it is more stimulating, interesting and challenging, and less boring – even if it may hurt their overall performance
  • Of Note
  • The data suggest the people talking on cell phones while driving are people who probably shouldn\’t.
  • In fact the people who are most likely to multitask harbor the illusion they are better than average at it, when in fact they are no better than average and often worse
  • People who score high on a test of actual multitasking ability tend not to multitask because they are better able to focus attention on the task at hand
  • Study participants also reported spending 13 percent of their driving time talking on a cell phone, which Strayer says roughly squares with federal estimates that one in 10 drivers are on the phone at any given time
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Automated Operation Span Tutorial | zupef
  • Image Driving simulator they use in some research | David Strayer, University of Utah
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Frequent multitaskers are bad at it: Motorists overrate ability to talk on cell phones when driving | MedXPress.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Attack of the red pens

  • The low down
  • Sociologists claim in a paper they\’ve had published that when teachers use a red pen to add comments to student papers, students perceive them more negatively than if they use another color pen
  • The Study
  • The two researchers enlisted the assistance of 199 undergraduate students – each was given four versions of an already graded essay by an unknown instructor
  • The graded remarks were deemed as high or low in quality with some written in red, others in blue
  • Students were asked to read the essay and the remarks given by the instructor and then to rate how they felt about what the instructor had written and to suggest what grade they would have given the essay
  • They were also asked how they felt about the instructor that had written the original remarks
  • The Results
  • After they\’d finished with their opinions, each was also given a questionnaire designed to provide the researchers with more concrete data.
  • The researchers found that the student volunteers didn\’t seem to be impacted one way or another by pen color when they agreed with the instructor\’s comments and grade
  • When they disagreed; however, there were definitely some differences – mainly negative
  • When the instructors\’ comments were written in red versus blue the volunteers judged them more harshly and as a result, rated them lower in \”bedside manner.\”
  • The volunteers didn\’t seem to judge the quality of the comments any differently – their negative feelings were aimed at the person that had written the remarks when they wrote in red ink
  • Of Note
  • The researchers theorize that red ink is akin to using all caps when writing e-mail or text messages – it\’s like shouting at a person
  • Those being graded naturally feel a little bit abused and respond by growing angry or sad, which, they note, doesn\’t really promote the learning process
  • The team suggest instructors stop using red pens and go with a shade of blue instead
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Study shows red pen use by instructors leads to more negative response | phys.org

Tractor Beams a reality?

  • Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first time a light beam has been used to draw objects towards the light source, albeit at a microscopic level.
  • What is it?
  • Researchers have found a way to generate a special optical field that efficiently reverses radiation pressure of light.
  • The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples
  • The team discovered a technique which will allow them to provide \’negative\’ force acting upon minuscule particles
  • The technique
  • Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons
  • Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun
    Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.
  • Scientists have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for biomedical photonics and other disciplines
  • What does it mean to todays science?
  • The occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition
  • This allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device
  • Optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising biomedical applications of optical manipulation allowing
  • Scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the \”tractor\” beam force-field, rearranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger
  • Multimedia
  • Image Example of comet with two tails | SpacePlace.nasa.gov
  • First video reveals working tractor beam in action | newscientist.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Star Trek\’s \’tractor\’ beam created in miniature by researchers | phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Bicycle Airbags

HIggs-Boson Twitter Rumors and Following

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 53 | Higgs Boson – To Higgs-Boson or not to Higgs-Boson | July 10, 2012
  • The low down
  • For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.
  • The model is based on the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement
  • The Data
  • According to the analysed data, the rumours that the Higgs boson had been discovered started around 1st July 2012
  • That means it was one day before the announcement at Tevatron, and three days before the official announcement from CERN on 4th July.
  • The research shows that rumours started to spread on Twitter firstly in the USA, UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, as well as Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, all countries with strong scientific connections to the experiments at the LHC.
  • What it means
  • Other researchers on the project are also interested in how information spreads on social media
  • This is really useful for practical applications such as marketing, for example if you want to run a global marketing campaign you can identify key people on social media to help you to spread your message
  • Once you have identified these key advocates, you can change and steer the message in a different direction, potentially modifying opinions of millions of people or keep the interest in the topic going
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube The Anatomy of a Scientific Gossip – World View | networkedsystemslab
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Scientists analyse global Twitter gossip around Higgs boson discovery | phys.org

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE —

Opportunity rover still on the move

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 61 | ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s – Opportunity, Driving Distance and life | September 4, 2012
  • Nine Years of Service
  • NASA\’s Opportunity rover landed on Mars the night of Jan. 24, 2004 PST (just after midnight EST on Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down
  • Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend three months searching for evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet
  • Spirit finally stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, after getting mired in soft sand and failing to maneuver into a position that would allow it to slant its solar panels toward the sun over the 2009-2010 Martian winter. NASA declared the rover dead in 2011 after 7 years of service
  • Opportunity, after 9 years of service, is currently inspecting clay deposits along the rim of Mars\’ huge Endeavour Crater. Clays form in relatively neutral (as opposed to acidic or basic) water, so
  • Rover road trips
  • So far, robotic rovers have been to the moon and Mars, with astronauts actually driving a lunar car on the moon during NASA\’s Apollo program
  • Soviet-era Lunakhod 2 : In the lead for total distance travelled the farthest is the the Soviet-era Lunakhod 2, which drove 23 miles (37 kilometers) during its 1973 mission
  • NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover : The next rover with the most driving distance is NASA\’s Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven 22.3 miles (35.89 km) by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972
  • Opportunity rover : Next, in a close third, is the Opportunity rover, which has been driving across the plains of Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet since 2004 and has driven more than 22.03 miles (35.46 km) and is still going today
  • This means that Opportunity is a mere one third of a mile (0.4 km) to being the second farthest driven, and a little under a mile (1.5 km) to being the farthest
  • I estimate, barring any delays for science or equipment and based on past mileage, that in the next 2 months it might overtake the distance travelled by Apollo 17 rover, and the distance by the Lunokhod in the next 6 months.
  • The latest to enter the race is Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, which is just getting started with only 0.4 mile (0.7 km) traveled so far.
    the area may once have been capable of supporting primitive microbial life
  • Multimedia
  • Distances Driven on Other Worlds Infographic | Space.com
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Distance Traveled, Extraterrestrial Vehicles | Wheeled Vehicles, Moon & Mars | Space.com
  • NASA\’s Opportunity Rover Begins Year 10 on Mars | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Dyscalculia

  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu – Dyscalculia | January 22, 2013
  • James Lewis
  • Suggests a concern that there is an overdiagnosis of \’labels\’
  • Could simply be that you could learn differently
  • Response
  • Almost certainly “the system” can over-diagnose students
  • Are you or were you “diagnosed”? If so learn what exemptions, etc, that you qualify for should you choose to utilize them
  • Try different ways of learning outside the classroom that can help in the classroom or supplement

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

THIS WEEK

  • NASA – Day of Remembrance
  • Apollo 1 | January 27, 1967 | Command Pilot Virgil \”Gus\” Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee
  • Challenger | January 28, 1986 | Francis R. Scobee – Mission Commander, Michael J. Smith – Pilot, Ellison S. Onizuka – Mission Specialist 1, Judith A. Resnik – Mission Specialist 2, Ronald E. McNair – Mission Specialist 3, Christa McAuliffe – Payload Specialist 1, Gregory B. Jarvis – Payload Specialist 2
  • Columbia | February 1, 2003 | Rick Husband, Commander; William C. McCool, Pilot; Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander; David M. Brown, Mission Specialist 1; Kalpana Chawla, Mission Specialist 2; Laurel Clark, Mission Specialist 4; and Ilan Ramon, Payload Specialist 1

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Feb 01, 1972 : 40 years ago : Hand-held calculator : The first scientific handheld calculator was introduced for $395 by Hewlett- Packard, named the HP-35 for having 35 keys. It was the first handheld calculator able to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke. The red LED display could give scientific notation up to 10 digits mantissa and 2 digits exponent. The price was reduced several times, eventually to $195. By Feb 1975 (when production of the model was discontinued), 300,000 had been sold. The numbers and functions for calculations were entered in “Reverse Polish Notation”(RPN), which used an “ENTER” key but needed no parentheses or “=” key. It ran on rechargeable batteries and had electronics with several integrated circuits in a 3.1\” x 5.8\” x 1.4\” (79 ×147×34 mm) case.
  • Image author : Seth Morabito | originally posted to Flickr as HP 35 Calculator

Looking up this week

The post Multitasking & Tractor Beams | SciByte 79 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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

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

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We take a look at why some people may like spicy foods, cracker sized satellites, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

The Right Personality for Spicy Foods?

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

— NEWS BYTE —

Public Funded KickSat

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

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Smoking and Bone Density

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

Snapshot Serengeti

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

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Opportunity and the Search for a Habitable Environment

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

GRAIL’s Lunar Gravitational Map

The Future Mars Rover?

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

Martian Mission Extensions

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

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

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

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Sir Patrick Moore

Looking back

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

Looking up this week

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

]]> Nobel & Stratos | SciByte 67 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/26116/nobel-stratos-scibyte-67/ Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:04:57 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=26116 We take a look at the 2012 Nobel award in Physics, Felix Baumgartner’s jump, exoplanets, spacecraft and Curiosity updates and so much more!

The post Nobel & Stratos | SciByte 67 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at the 2012 Nobel award in Physics, Felix Baumgartner’s jump, exoplanets, dentists, spacecraft and Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

2012 Nobel in Physics

  • 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
  • American physicist David Wineland and French physicist Serge Haroche were named winners of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics “for groundbreaking experimental methods” that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems
  • Their experiments on quantum particles have already resulted in ultra-precise clocks and may one day help lead to computers many times faster than those in use today.
  • Their research is inventing methods to peer into the bizarre quantum world of ultra-tiny particles, work that could help in creating a new generation of super-fast computers
  • Quantum computers could radically change people’s lives in the way that classical computers did last century, but a full-scale quantum computer is still decades away
  • In a quantum computer, an individual particle can essentially represent a zero and a one at the same time
  • If scientists can make such particles work together, certain kinds of calculations could be done with blazing speed.
  • Why not Higgs?
  • There is a remote possibility that the new particle is not the Higgs, although this would be an even more ground shaking announcement.
  • Originally six physicists, each building on the work of others, published a flurry of papers on aspects of the theory within four months of each other back in 1964.
  • The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died last year, and Francois Englert.
  • Followed by Higgs, who was the first to say only a new particle would explain the anomalies of mass
  • Further complicating the issue is that thousands of physicists worked in the two labs at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva where Higgs experiments were conducted independently of each other.
  • Another question is whether theoreticians or experimentalists—or both—should get the glory.
  • At most three names, although they can include organisations, can share a Nobel and a prize cannot be given posthumously.
  • The Nobel will “eventually” go to the Higgs but it is not yet certain that the particle is indeed the Higgs Boson
  • The Nobel Peace Prize has often been awarded to organisations. But in the science prizes they have tried to “find the most prizeworthy individuals”
  • Of Note
  • The prizes are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
  • Although they are announced before the Dec 10 anniversary
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Official website of the Nobel Prize
  • Frenchman, American win Nobel for quantum physics (Update 6) | phys.org
  • ‘God particle’ discovery poses Nobel dilemma | phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Red Bull Stratos


— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Exoplanet

  • The low down
  • The news is coming out that citizens utilizing Kepler data from PlanetHunters have found a planet in a 4-star system!
  • Also an Earth-sized exoplanet has been discovered about the nearest star
  • More information on this in next weeks SciByte!

Musical Dental Drill

  • The low down
  • A dental surgeon in the Indonesian city of Purworejo has connected an MP3 player to a dental drill that plays music loud enough to drown out the distinctive whine of the instrument
  • He discovered that many patients, especially children were not afraid of the dentist; instead, they were afraid of the drill
  • Patients are able to control its volume by opening and closing their mouths the wider they open, the louder the music grows which means the dentist doesn’t have to continually urge patients to open wider for better access to back teeth
  • It took Dr. Gustiana a year of research, effort, and 6 million rupiah (approximately $595) to configure the drill
  • He has been using it in his practice since 2006 and has noted that many adults also prefer the musical drill to the standard model.
  • Patients can make requests though he does try to limit the choices to songs that calm the nerves
  • Of Note
  • Doctor Gustiana presented his modified drill to attendees at the International Dental Congress held in Greece earlier this year.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Dentist Creates Singing Dental Drill to Ease Fears | NTDTV
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dental surgeon adds music to drill to appease patients | MedicalXpress.com

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Shuttle Endeavour moves into new home

Return of “Voyager 1 in Interstellar space?”

  • Inch by inch to interstellar space
  • Voyager team has said they have been seeing two of three key signs of changes expected to occur at the boundary of interstellar space
  • A jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays originating from outside our Solar System and a drop in particles from the Sun
  • A third key sign would be the direction of the magnetic field
  • New tantalizing data
  • Scientists are now analyzing the data to see whether the magnetic field has, indeed, changed direction
  • Of Note
  • Complicating the issue is the fact we don’t really know what to expect, in fact data from 2010 broke what working models we had
  • The entire team will come to a resolute consensus before any announcement is made
  • Social Media
  • NASAVoyager2 @NASAVoyager2
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Did NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft Just Exit the Solar System? | Space.com
  • Voyager 1 may have left the solar system | Phys.org

Orbcomm

  • Last time on SciByte
  • Red Bull Stratos & SpaceX | SciByte 66 – Red Bull Stratos [October 9, 2012]
  • The low down
  • The Orbcomm satellite, launched Oct. 7 into a bad orbit by a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket
  • It has however provided enough data to proceed with the launch of the full constellation starting next year.
  • In a statement, Orbcomm suggested that it had enough access to the satellite in less than four days in orbit to validate the performance of its major subsystems.
  • Also that had its satellite been the primary payload on SpaceX’s Oct. 7 flight, the mission would have been a success
  • The solar array and communications antenna deployments were successful
  • OG2 satellite bus systems including power, attitude control, thermal and data handling were also tested to verify proper operation
  • Orbcomm had requested that SpaceX carry one of their small satellites on this flight so that they could gather test data before we launch their full constellation next year.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Satellite Left Stranded by SpaceX Rocket Falls From Space | Space.com

Opportunity Rover

  • The low down
  • Opportunity is conducting science campaign at a location where orbital observations show the presence of clay minerals
  • The rover is positioning near a large, light-toned block of exposed rock outcrop, called “Whitewater Lake.”
  • On Sol 3092 (Oct. 4, 2012), the rover moved, likely the smallest amount ever, with less than an inch (1 centimeter) of total motion in order to position the robotic arm favorable on a dark-rind surface target
  • On Sol 3094 (Oct. 6, 2012), Opportunity performed a 15-minute brush of a surface target with the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT
    followed with the collection of a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic
    then the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an overnight integration
  • The total distance travelled during the mission is 21.78 miles (35,050.07 meters)
  • Multimedia
  • Image [Exposed rock outcrop, called Whitewater Lake(https://twitter.com/MarsRovers/status/256907735189299201/photo/1)
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy | @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Exploration Rover Mission: The Mission | marsrover.nasa.gov

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • October 18, 1962 : 50 years ago : Nobel Prize for DNA : Dr. James D. Watson of the U.S., Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. Maurice Wilkins of Britain won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for their work in determining the double-helix molecular structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

Looking up this week

The post Nobel & Stratos | SciByte 67 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Cool Pavement & Martian Snow | SciByte 63 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/24751/cool-pavement-martian-snow-scibyte-63/ Tue, 18 Sep 2012 21:06:09 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=24751 We take a look at keeping pavements cool, snow on Mars, volcano's, painless shots, updates on the Higgs-Boson, spacecraft updates, and more!

The post Cool Pavement & Martian Snow | SciByte 63 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at keeping pavements cool, snow on Mars, volcano’s, painless shots, tooth protection, updates on the Higgs-Boson, spacecraft updates, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Pavement Temperatures

  • New ‘Cool pavement’ technology could make parking lots cool, literally
  • The low down
  • In a typical city, pavements account for 35 to 50 percent of surface area, half is comprised of streets and about 40 percent of exposed parking lots
  • Pavements reflect as much as 30 to 50 percent of the sun’s energy, compared to only 5 percent for new asphalt (and 10 to 20 percent for aged asphalt)
  • Most of these are constructed with dark materials
  • Dark pavements absorb almost all of the sun’s energy, the pavement surface heats up, which in turn also warm the local air
  • Significance
  • Berkeley Lab scientists have been studying “cool pavement” technologies
  • Like cool roofs, which are lighter-colored roofs that keep the air both inside and outside the building cooler by reflecting more of the sun’s energy
  • Cool pavements can either be made from traditional pavement materials that are lighter in color such as cement concrete or it can consist of cool-colored coatings or surface treatments for asphalt surfaces
  • An ideal design goal would be a pavement with solar reflectance of at least 35 percent
  • Sealcoats are a common maintenance practice for parking lots and schoolyards since the asphalt pavement structure degrades over time
  • scientists will be collecting data from the exhibit to see how the coatings fare over time and at some point they will reach an equilibrium at which the solar reflectance won’t degrade much anymore
  • They are very interested to see what happens when it rains, which may help the coatings self-clean and restore higher reflectance
  • Cool pavement coatings can be used in lieu of a sealcoat, and is a good strategy for cities looking to introduce cool pavement technologies
  • Across an entire city, small changes in air temperature could be a huge benefit as it can slow the formation of smog
  • And just a couple of degrees can also reduce peak power demand, by reducing the energy load from air-conditioning
  • In addition more reflective parking lots could allow building owners and cities to save on energy needed to illuminate streets and parking lots
  • Chicago has already reported energy savings from using solar-reflective pavements in its alleys
  • More field studies are needed however to verify and quantify the results as many of these benefits have been confirmed by scientific models
  • Heat Island Group has converted a portion of a new temporary parking lot at Berkeley Lab into a cool pavement exhibit that will also allow them to evaluate the products over time
  • The exhibit provides an opportunity to feature cool pavement coatings that are applied directly to existing paved surfaces
  • It features six coatings donated by two manufacturers [Emerald Cities Cool Pavement and StreetBond]
  • The team will closely monitor the solar reflectance values and temperatures of 20 x 24 square-foot pavement sections of six different materials on a residential street on the UC Davis campus
  • Scientists hope to better understand how changes in solar reflectance over time affect heat transfer throughout the pavement structure
  • Of Note
  • These studies may assist policymakers and pavement professionals in making informed decisions regarding cool pavement requirements for building codes and project specifications
  • One hurdle is that the benefits of cool pavements are more for the public rather than the building owner as benefits are less immediately tangible than for cool roofs
  • The initial cost premium can potentially be offset over the lifespan of the product with increased durability and less need for ongoing maintenance
  • Cool pavements come in different hues, including green, blue and yellow, and their solar reflectance value depends on both color and material
  • Some colors that look dark but are actually more reflective in the near infrared spectrum
  • Schoolyards are a particular target because of the negative health implications of hot blacktops for schoolchildren
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Heat Island Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • ‘Cool pavement’ technologies studied to address hot urban surfaces | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Let it snow dry-ice on Mars

  • Spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making it the only body in the solar system known to show this weather phenomenon
  • The low down
  • Data was gathered by MRO’s Mars Climate Sounder instrument during the Red Planet’s southern winter in 2006–2007
  • The instrument measures brightness in nine different wavelengths of visible and infrared light, allowing scientists to learn key characteristics of the particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as their sizes and concentrations.
  • One large cloud was 300 miles (500 kilometers) wide
  • Significance
  • One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds
  • Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon
  • The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from an angle clearly showed carbon-dioxide ice particles, and they extend to the surface
  • The snow on Mars fell from clouds around the planet’s south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007
  • The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide – or “dry ice” – cap year-round
  • This new discovery may help explain how it formed and persists, researchers
  • These observations were also the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds
  • The clouds were composed of carbon dioxide, flakes of Martian air, and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface.
  • Of Note
  • Astronomers still aren’t entirely sure how the dry ice sustaining Mars’ south polar cap – the only place where frozen carbon dioxide exists year-round on the planet’s surface – is deposited.
  • It could come from snowfall, or the stuff may freeze out of the air at ground level, researchers said.
  • The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition (snow or frost) is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual carbon dioxide polar cap
  • Dry ice requires temperatures of about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 125 Celsius) to fall, reinforcing just how cold the Martian surface is.
  • In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix lander observed water-ice snow, this find means Mars hosts two different kinds of snowfall
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Snow on Mars: ‘Dry Ice’ Snowflakes Discovered by NASA Probe | Space.com

Atlantis Volcano Active?

  • The island that was created 3,600 years ago when a volcano erupted that was the second-largest blast in human history is swelling with lava
  • The low down
  • The eruption that created the island of Santorini may have destroyed the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete, which may have started the myth of Atlantis
  • Santorini locals began to suspect last year that something was afoot with the volcano under their Greek island group
  • Wine glasses occasionally vibrated and clinked in cafes, suggesting tiny tremors, and tour guides smelled strange gasses.
  • Beginning in the January 2011 data, there were more than a thousand small quakes, most of them imperceptible
  • Satellite radar technology has revealed the source of the symptoms
  • A rush of molten rock swelled the magma chamber under the volcano by some 351–702 million cubic ft [13 to 26 million cubic yards] or about 15 times the volume of London’s Olympic Stadium between January 2011 and April 2012
  • This has forced parts of the island’s surface to rise upward and outward by 3 to 5.5 inches [8–14 cm, ) confirmed with satellite radar images and GPS receivers
  • Significance
  • The earthquake activity and the rate of bulging have both slowed right down in the last few months
  • Even with these events the volcano has been quiet for 60 years and recent events don’t indicate an imminent eruption
  • It is quite likely that it could remain quiet for another few years or decades.
  • Since scientists don’t know enough about the lifecycle of large volcanoes in between eruptions to be certain
  • Catastrophic eruptions on Santorini, which produce mostly pumice rather than lava, appear to occur here about 20,000 years apart
  • The last one, in 1950, oozed enough lava to cover a few tennis courts
  • Despite its relative quiet, Santorini is an ideal location to learn more about processes like the magma chamber’s rapid inflation
  • While satellite evidence of swelling magma chambers has rarely been available for an active volcano, the processes the data represent may not be all that unusual
  • Some large volcanoes like Santorini and Yellowstone spend hundreds or thousands of years in a state of what you’d call dormancy and often have these little restless patches
  • These types of phenomena are likely to be common, but you need the right instruments and technology to detect what are usually rather small changes in behavior.
  • Of Note
  • We aren’t any closer to knowing if, or when, the next lava eruption might happen
  • Scientist are comparing the recent events to to someone blowing a big breath into an invisible balloon when you don’t know how small or big the balloon is, and don’t know whether just one more breath will be enough for it to pop or not
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Santorini Bulges as Magma Balloons Underneath | news.nationalgeographic.com

Painless shots

  • A new laser-based system blasts microscopic jets of drugs into the skin could soon make getting a shot as painless as being hit with a puff of air
  • The low down
  • In previous studies, researchers used a laser wavelength that was not well absorbed by the water of the driving liquid which caused the formation of tiny shock waves that dissipated energy and hampered the formation of the vapor bub
  • The laser with a wavelength of 2,940 nanometers, which is readily absorbed by water. This allows the formation of a larger and more stable vapor bubble
  • Hypodermic needles are still the first choice for ease-of-use, precision, and control
  • Significance
  • This type of laser is commonly used by dermatologists, particularly for facial esthetic treatments
  • The laser is combined with a small adaptor that contains the drug to be delivered, in liquid form, plus a chamber containing water that acts as a “driving” fluid
  • A flexible membrane separates these two liquids
  • Each laser pulse, which lasts just 250 millionths of a second, generates a vapor bubble inside the driving fluid.
  • The pressure of that bubble puts elastic strain on the membrane
  • The impacting jet pressure is higher than the skin tensile strength and thus causes the jet to smoothly penetrate into the targeted depth underneath the skin
  • The drug to be forcefully ejected from a miniature nozzle in a narrow jet a mere 150 millionths of a meter (micrometers) in diameter or a little larger than the width of a human hair
  • To test the effectiveness of the drug delivery system, a special gel is used to mimic the behavior of human skin
  • Tests on guinea pig skin show that the drug-laden jet can penetrate up to several millimeters beneath the skin surface, with no damage to the tissue
  • Because of the narrowness and quickness of the jet, it should cause little or no pain and the region of the skin has no nerve endings, so the method "will be completely pain-free
  • Of Note
  • Researchers are now working with a company to produce low-cost replaceable injectors for clinical use
  • Further work would be necessary to adopt it for scenarios like mass vaccine injections for children
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Laser-powered ‘Needle’ Promises Pain-free Injections | BusinessWire
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Laser-powered ‘needle’ promises pain-free injections | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Tooth protection

  • Japanese scientists have created a microscopically thin film [0.00016 in/0.004 mm]that can coat individual teeth to prevent decay or to make them appear whiter, the chief researcher said
  • The film is a hard-wearing and ultra-flexible material
  • It is made from hydroxyapatite, the main mineral in tooth enamel
  • It could be five or more years before it could be used in practical dental treatment such as covering exposed dentin, the sensitive layer underneath enamel, but it could be used cosmetically within three years
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Japan tooth patch could be end of decay | https://medicalxpress.com

— UPDATES—

Higgs-Boson

  • The announcement two months ago that physicists have discovered a particle consistent with the famous Higgs boson has cleared a formal hurdle with publication in a peer-reviewed journal
  • Although CERN’s announcement was never doubted, it still had to be vetted by peers and then published in an established journal to meet benchmarks of accuracy and openness.
  • Further work is being carried out to confirm whether the new particle is the famous Higgs
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Higgs boson: landmark announcement clears key hurdle | Phys.org

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Shuttle Endeavour

  • There have been a few weather delays so the schedule continues to change so watch my twitter feed and #SpotTheShuttle for the latest updates
  • JB Mars Base
  • [#spottheshuttle](https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23spottheshuttle)

Expedition 32

  • The low down
  • Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American spaceflyer (Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba) has landed safely back on Earth
  • They landed at 02:54 UTC on Monday, September 17 (8:53 a.m. Kazakhstan time Monday, 10:53 p.m. EDT Sunday, September 16
  • The Mission
  • The Soyuz crew was in good health and spirits
  • The three signed their Soyuz spacecraft, which is destined for a Russian museum
  • Their 125-day spaceflight began in mid-May and included three spacewalks and several robotic cargo ship arrivals
  • The three spaceflyers were originally slated to blast off in March, but a pressure test incident cracked their first Soyuz capsule, causing a six-week delay while another spacecraft was readied.
  • They finally launched on May 14 and just eight days later, SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule docked with the station on a historic demonstration mission, becoming the first private vehicle ever to do so.
  • on Sep. 5, crewmates Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide performed an extra spacewalk – the third for the mission
  • They replace a vital power unit on the station’s backbone-like truss. Using improvised tools such as spare parts and a toothbrush to remove a stuck bolt that had delayed the fix a week earlier
  • Expedition 33
  • Expedition 33 is now underway as Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineers Aki Hoshide and Yuri Malenchenko continue their stay until Nov. 12
  • They will have the station to themselves until mid-October, when three more astronauts will float through the hatch and bring the expedition up to its full complement of six crewmembers.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube [[ISS] Expedition 32 Safely Landed | SpaceVidsNet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lN-nUBwCWs&t=30s)
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Touchdown! Soyuz Spacecraft Lands Safely with Russian-US Crew | Space.com
  • Expedition 32 Lands Safely in Kazakhstan | UniverseToday.com

Opportunity is still finding new things

  • A strange picture of odd, spherical rock formations on Mars from NASA’s Opportunity rover has scientists wondering what exactly they’re looking at.
  • The low down
  • Opportunity is currently exploring a location known as Cape York along the western rim of a giant Martian crater called Endeavour
  • A recent photo by Opportunity shows a close-up of a rock outcrop covered in blister-like bumps that mission scientists can’t yet explain
  • The rock, called Kirkwood, is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects
  • Significance
  • The photo is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm
  • At first the formations appear similar to so-called Martian “blueberries”, iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004
  • “Blueberries” are actually concretions created by minerals in water that settled into sedimentary rock, they were first spotted by Opportunity soon after its landing in 2004 and has seen them at many of its science site
  • However they actually differ in several key ways, and scientists have never seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars
  • In this new photo, many of the strange features are broken, revealing odd concentric circles inside that seem to be seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle
  • These bumpy, spherical formations on the Kirkwood rock represent something new
  • The accumulations are different in concentration, structure, composition and in distribution
  • The science team have several theories, but none that truly stand out as the best explanation
  • Making this one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission, showing that Opportunity is still pumping out new discoveries after more than eight years on Mars.
  • Of Note
  • As the spring equinox is approaching on Mars, ensuring increasing levels of sunshine for Opportunity’s solar arrays and are currently at production levels comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago
  • The Kirkwood outcrop is just one science pit stop at Cape York for Opportunity
  • Mission scientists have already picked out another interesting rock outcrop nearby, a pale patch that may contain tantalizing clay minerals, for possibly study after Opportunity completes its current analysis.
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy ‏ @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Strange Mystery Spheres on Mars Baffle Scientists | Space.com

–CURIOSITY UPDATE–

  • Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer [APXS] which is used to analyze mineralogy of samples was also tested
  • There is new panorama from Mars where you can zoom in and you can see actual rocks
  • Curiosity has nearly finished robotic arm tests. Once complete, the rover will be able to touch and examine its first Mars rock
  • It will drive some more and try to find the right rock to begin doing contact science with the arm
  • There is also a look ahead to the terrain to get to the foothill of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp where there appear to be big dunes
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Sept. 13, 2012) | JPLNews
  • Image Gallery Mars Science Laboratory
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Say Ahhh to Mars | UniverseToday.com
  • [Drive Time: Curiosity Rover Ready to Roll toward First Martian Destination: Scientific American Gallery

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • September 23, 1846 : 166 years ago : Neptune discovered : The German astronomer Johan G. Galle discovered Neptune after only an hour of searching, within one degree of the position that had been computed by Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier. Independently of the English astronomer John C. Adams, Le Verrier had calculated the size and position of a previously unknown planet, which he assumed influenced the irregular orbit of Uranus, and he asked Galle to look for it.

Looking up this week

Catch SciByte LIVE:

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The post Cool Pavement & Martian Snow | SciByte 63 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s | SciByte 61 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/24096/tatooine-exoplanets-eyes-scibyte-61/ Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:29:04 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=24096 We take a look at more exoplanets around binary stars, a dinosaur's dinner, sweet clouds around a star, Martian reality TV, Mars rover updates and much more!

The post ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s | SciByte 61 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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

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Show Notes

More ‘Tatooine’ Planets



YouTube : | Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, T. Pyle

  • NASA’s Kepler mission has found the first multi-planet solar system orbiting a binary star
  • Last time on SciByte
  • SciByte 17 | Neutrinos & Tatooine – “Tatooine” Planet (October 18, 2011)
  • The low down
  • The two stars orbit one another in roughly 7.5 days the primary star is about the same mass as the Sun, and its companion is an M-dwarf star one-third its size
  • The primary star is about 6,000 times dimmer than can be seen with the naked eye making taking spectra of the system very difficult, the secondary star is too faint to measure
  • These values, along with the Kepler eclipse and transit timings, were plugged into a model that calculated the relative sizes of all the bodies involved
  • Significance
  • The inner planet, Kepler–47b, is three times wider than Earth and orbits the binary star every 49.5 days
  • The outer planet receives about 88 percent the amount of energy the Earth receives from the sun and is 4.6 times the size of Earth with an orbit of 303.2 days.
  • The outer planet is the first planet found to orbit a binary star within the “habitable zone,”however the planet’s size (about the same as Uranus) means that it is an icy giant, and not an abode for life
  • Of Note
  • This discovery proves that whole planetary systems can form in a disk around a binary star
  • An unconfirmed hint of an additional world lurks in the blinking starlight produced when the planetary companions pass between the two stars and Earth indicates that there could be another planet in this system however the additional blink has been seen clearly just once
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Tatooine-Like System Found – Two Planets, Two Stars | VideoFromSpace
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Exoplanet Pair Orbits Two Stars – Science News | Space.com
  • Kepler finds first multi-planet system around a binary star | Phys.org
  • How 2 ‘Tatooine’ Planets Orbit Twin Stars (Infographic) | Space.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Fuzzy Dino’s Dinner Menu



Credit: Cheung Chungtat. (2012) PLoS ONE

  • The low down
  • Fossils are occasionally found with the remains of animals and plants inside what were once their guts
  • These contents can shed light on what they once ate — for instance, past research showed a mammal predator apparently had a tiny dinosaur as its last meal.
  • Significance
  • Scientists investigated two specimens of a carnivorous dinosaur from Liaoning, China, known as Sinocalliopteryx gigas
  • The predator was roughly the size of a wolf, about 6 feet (2 meters) long, and had feathers or hairlike fuzz covering its body to help keep it warm
  • One of the Sinocalliopteryx specimens, a complete and remarkably well-preserved skeleton, apparently dined on a birdlike, cat-size feathered dinosaur known as Sinornithosaurus, judging by the partial leg found in its gut.
  • The fact that Sinocalliopteryx gobbled at least two birds of the same species at about the same time indicates that chances are very good it was actively selecting its prey; that makes it a predator
  • In addition capturing flying prey is indicative of a stealthy predator
  • Multimedia
  • Image Gallery Dinosaur Guts: Photos of a Paleo-Predator | LiveScience.com
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Last Meal Found in Stomach of Fuzzy Dinosaur | LiveScience.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Sweet Star Cloud



Credit: ESO/L. Calçada & NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team | Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

  • Sugar molecules have been found in the gas surrounding a young sun-like star
  • The low down
  • The young star is part of a binary similar mass to the sun and is located about 400 light-years away
  • Sugar molecules, known as glycolaldehyde, have previously been detected in interstellar space
  • This is the first time sugars have been spotted so close to a sun-like star
  • The molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun
  • The sugar found is glycolaldehyde, is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee
  • They were found the sugar molecules using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile
  • Significance
  • When new stars are formed, the clouds of dust and gas from which they are born are extremely cold
  • As the newborn star develops, it heats up the inner parts of the rotating cloud of gas and dust, warming it to about room temperature
  • This heating process evaporates the chemically complex molecules and forms gases that emit radiation that can be picked up by sensitive radio telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile
  • Since is located relatively close to Earth, scientists will be able to study the molecular and chemical makeup of the gas and dust around the young star
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Sugar Molecules Discovered Around Sun-Like Star | Search for Life & Alien Planets | Space.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Diagnosis with eye’s

  • Researchers at the University of Southern California have devised a method for detecting certain neurological disorders through the study of eye movements.
  • The low down
  • Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Parkinson’s Disease (PD) all affect vision
  • Researchers believe that they can be identified through an evaluation of how patients move their eyes while they watch television
  • Typical methods of detection are costly, labor-intensive and limited by a patient’s ability to understand and comply with instructions
  • Significance
  • In a test participants in the study were simply instructed to “watch and enjoy” television clips for 20 minutes while their eye movements were recorded.
  • With eye movement data from 108 subjects, the team was able to identify older adults with Parkinson’s Disease with 89.6% accuracy, and children with either ADHD or FASD with 77.3% accuracy
  • This method provides considerable promise as an easily-deployed, low-cost, high-throughput screening tool, especially for young children and elderly populations who may be less compliant to traditional tests
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Studying everyday eye movements could aid in diagnosis of neurological disorders | MedicalXpress.com

Martian Reality TV

  • A Dutch company that aims to land humans on Mars in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent Red Planet colony has received its first funding from sponsors
  • The low down
  • Mars One estimates that it will cost about $6 billion to put the first four humans on the Red Planet
  • Mars One plans to fund most of its ambitious activities via a global reality-TV media event that will follow the mission from the selection of astronauts through their first years on the Red Planet
  • The televised process of selecting its 40-person astronaut corps is slated to begin in 2013
  • They aims to launch a series of robotic missions between 2016 and 2020 that will build a habitable outpost on the Red Planet
  • The first four astronauts would set foot on Mars in 2023, and more to arrive every two years after that
  • Initial sponsors include Byte Internet (a Dutch Internet/Webhosting provider); Dutch lawfirm VBC Notarissen; Dutch consulting company MeetIn; New-Energy.tv (an independent Dutch web station that focuses on energy and climate); and Dejan SEO (an Australia-based search engine optimization firm).
  • Of Note
  • There are no plans to return any of participants to Earth.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Mars One introduction film (updated version) | MarsOneProject
  • Social Media
  • Mars One @MarsOneProject
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Private Manned Mars Mission Gets First Sponsors | Space.com

— Updates —

Virtual Sight Takes First Steps



YouTube channel : virtualpoint | Instant Eye : Kevin Hand

– MARS ROVER UPDATES –

Opportunity

  • Driving Distance and life
  • Was designed for .6mi [1km] distance and a 90 sol mission
  • Has now driven 35 times the distance it was designed now at 21.75mi [35km]
  • It’s life has lasted almost 34 times the original lifetime design at 3,057 Martian sols
  • Opportunity’s solar array energy production is good, producing about 568 watt-hours
  • Oppy is now moving to survey an exposed outcrop in search of phyllosilicate clay minerals that have been detected from orbit
  • The Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the end of the robotic arm was imaged (top image) to reconfirm the available bit for future grinding and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) collected a measurement of atmospheric argon.
  • Social Media
  • Spirit and Oppy @MarsRovers
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Opportunity Rover Tops 35 Kilometers of Driving | UniverseToday.com

Curiosity

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • Sep 07, 1888 : 124 years ago : First baby incubator : A baby incubator was first used in the U.S. to care for an infant at State Emigrant Hospital on Ward’s Island, New York. Edith Eleanor McLean weighed 2-lb 7-oz. Originally called a “hatching cradle,” the device was 3-ft square, 4-ft high, It was designed to increase the survival rate for premature infants by the maternity ward doctors, Drs. Allan M. Thomas and William C. Deming.* At the 1904 World’s Fair, Tennessean E.M. Bayliss exhibited 14 metal-framed glass incubators with constant ventilation and temperature of 90ºF, attended by nurses caring for real endangered infants from orphanages and poor families. The care of the infants was paid for by the exhibit admission fee

Looking up this week

The post ‘Tatooine’ Exoplanets & Eye’s | SciByte 61 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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