50 Highlights of Space Travel -- 50 Years Of NASA

NASA Mission Apollo 16

Photo NASA No AS16-114-18422 - Mission Apollo 16 on the Moon.
View of Plum crater photographed by Apollo 16 crew during EVA.

From National Geographic:

From Sputnik to Apollo 11 to Saturn's moons, click through our time line to tour 50 highlights from 50 years of space exploration.

The link is HERE.

Happy Birthday NASA!

From Popular Science:

The space agency celebrates it's 50th anniversary today and PopSci is on hand for the occasion. Find out the science behind space food, the history of the Apollo hoax and more.

The Link is HERE.

In The Language Of Love, Money Talks

From ABC News:

New Study Finds Women are More Likely to Marry Men with Money.

Money can't buy love, but it seems to earn you more babies. Rich men sire more children than paupers, according to a new study of thousands of middle-aged British men.

Women are more likely to marry men who can provide for them and their children than penniless men, says Daniel Nettle, a behavioural scientist at Newcastle University, UK, who led the new study.

"It's not that if you're richer you'll have more children – if you're richer you're less likely to be childless," he says.

For much of civilization, females have tended to mate with better providers, but many sociologists argue that the industrial and sexual revolutions have immunised people in developed countries such evolutionary pressures.

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Unknown Earth: Our Planet's Seven Biggest Mysteries

From The New Scientist:

It's the place we call home, but there is much about planet Earth that remains frustratingly unknown. How did it form from a cloud of dust? How did it manage to nurture life? And just what is going on deep within its core? New Scientist investigates these and other fundamental questions about our beautiful, enigmatic world.

How come Earth got all the good stuff?

What happened during Earth's dark ages?

Where did Earth's life come from?

Why does Earth have plate tectonics?

What is at the centre of the Earth?

Why is Earth's climate so stable?

Can we predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?

Explore an interactive map of our Unknown Earth

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'Hub' Of Fear Memory Formation Identified In Brain Cells

From Science Blog:

A protein required for the earliest steps in embryonic development also plays a key role in solidifying fear memories in the brains of adult animals, scientists have revealed. An apparent "hub" for changes in the connections between brain cells, beta-catenin could be a potential target for drugs to enhance or interfere with memory formation.

The results are published online this week and appear in the October issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The protein beta-catenin acts like a Velcro strap, fastening cells' internal skeletons to proteins on their external membranes that connect them with other cells. In species ranging from flies to frogs to mice, it also can transmit early signals that separate an embryo into front and back or top and bottom.

During long-term memory formation, structural changes take place in the synapses – the connections between neurons in the brain, says Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. Ressler is a researcher at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, where the research was conducted, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

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Melamine Contaminated Milk

From Science Base:

A brief summary and update to the Sciencebase original posts on Melamine in Milk and Melamine Scandal Widens.

Dairy farmers have been feeling the squeeze for years, particularly in parts of the world where technological advancement has been slow in coming and so their profit margins on their milk output have not been lifted by improved efficiency. In order to boost profits milk has been diluted. However, this brings with it the problem of falling quality - dilute with water and measurable concentrations of milk proteins, fats, and sugars fall. Dilution by up to 30% has not been uncommon, which is where melamine (as I’ve mentioned) comes in. Melamine is a small organic molecule with a high nitrogen content that can easily fool the quality control equipment into thinking that nitrogen (from protein) is present at normal levels and so the milk is passed as good.

Unfortunately, it is possible that melamine accumulates in the body and causes toxicity problemsmelamine accumulates in the body and causes toxicity problems - basically damaging the kidneys and forming stones (solid deposits within the kidneys or bladder). Infants fed regularly with milk containing melamine will be particularly susceptible to these effects. As we have seen tens of thousands have been affected and several have died in China. Why this problem is not more widespread, given the rather large number of infants potentially having been drinking contaminated formula-milk for months is unclear.

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World’s Largest Study Of Near-Death Experiences To Start

From World-Science:

The Uni­ver­s­ity of South­amp­ton, U.K. an­nounced it is launch­ing this week the world’s largest-ever study on wheth­er peo­ple have thoughts for a time while they are clin­ic­ally “dead.”

The AWARE (A­WAre­ness dur­ing RE­sus­cita­t­ion) study is to be launched by the Hu­man Con­scious­ness Proj­ect at the uni­ver­s­ity, an in­terna­t­ional col­la­bora­t­ion of sci­en­tists and physi­cians who study the brain, con­scious­ness and clin­ical death.

The study is led by Sam Par­nia of Weill Cor­nell Med­i­cal Cen­ter in New York, with Uni­ver­s­ity of South­amp­ton re­search­ers. Fol­low­ing an 18-month pi­lot phase at some U.K. hos­pi­tals, the study is now be­ing ex­pand­ed to in­clude oth­er cen­tres with­in the U.K., main­land Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, Par­nia said.

“Con­trary to pop­u­lar per­­cep­tion,” Par­nia said, “death is not a spe­cif­ic mo­ment. It is a pro­cess that be­gins when the heart stops beat­ing, the lungs stop work­ing and the brain ceases func­tion­ing—a med­i­cal con­di­tion termed car­di­ac ar­rest, which from a bi­o­log­i­cal view­point is syn­on­y­mous with clin­ical death.

“Dur­ing a car­di­ac ar­rest, all three cri­te­ria of death are pre­s­ent. There then fol­lows a per­i­od of time, which may last from a few sec­onds to an hour or more, in which emer­gen­cy med­i­cal ef­forts may suc­ceed in restart­ing the heart and re­vers­ing the dy­ing pro­cess. What peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing this per­i­od of car­di­ac ar­rest pro­vides a un­ique win­dow of un­der­stand­ing in­to what we are all likely to ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing the dy­ing pro­cess.”

Some stud­ies have found that 10 to 20 percent of peo­ple who go through car­di­ac ar­rest and clin­ical death re­port lu­cid, well struc­tured thought pro­cesses, rea­son­ing, mem­o­ries and some­times de­tailed re­call of events dur­ing their en­coun­ter with death, Par­nia said.

Dur­ing the AWARE stu­dy, doc­tors will use soph­is­t­icated tech­nol­o­gy to study the brain and con­scious­ness dur­ing car­di­ac ar­rest. At the same time, they plan to test the val­id­ity of out of body ex­pe­ri­ences and claims of be­ing able to “see” and “hear” dur­ing car­di­ac ar­rest.

New Facility Uses Algae to Turn Coal Pollution Into Fuel

From Gas2.org:

A coal fired power-plant in Oregon has started a pilot project to curb pollution by using algae to harvest greenhouse gases and make fuel and other useful products.

The power plant in Boardman, Oregon, is the state’s only coal-fired facility — and also the the state’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide. To deal with this problem, Portland General Electric and Columbia Energy Partners have started a pilot project to turn the otherwise nasty emissions into biodiesel, ethanol, and even livestock feed.

How does it work? Just like you and I breathe in oxygen to make energy, algae breathe in carbon dioxide to make energy. So, if you capture all that carbon dioxide and feed it to the algae, they grow. Algae are particularly oily little buggers so after they’ve matured they can be squeezed to make oil. The leftover algae carcasses can then be converted to ethanol and used as feed for livestock.

Right now, the project’s scale is so tiny that it’ll hardly scratch the surface of the 600-megawatt facility’s 5 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions. But project proponents are quick to point out that when the project goes full scale in 2½ years, it should reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 60% during daylight hours and produce 20 million gallons of biodiesel per year.

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Scientists Work With Algae To See If It Could Become The Fuel Of The Future

From Sympatico.ca:

BORCULO, Netherlands - Set amid cornfields and cow pastures in eastern Holland is a shallow pool that is rapidly turning green with algae, harvested for animal feed, skin treatments, biodegradable plastics - and with increasing interest, biofuel.

In a warehouse about 200 kilometres southwest, a bioreactor of clear plastic tubes is producing algae in pressure-cooker fashion that its manufacturer hopes will one day power jet aircraft.

Experts say it will be years, maybe a decade, before this simplest of all plants can be efficiently processed for fuel. But when that day comes, it could go a long way toward easing the world's energy needs and responding to global warming.

Algae is the slimy stuff that clouds your home aquarium and gets tangled in your feet in a lake or ocean. It can grow almost everywhere there is water and sunlight, and under the right conditions it can double its volume within hours. Scientists and industrialists agree that the potential is huge.

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Second-hand Smoke May Trigger Nicotine Dependence Symptoms In Kids

Second-hand smoke may trigger symptoms of nicotine dependence in children, a new study has found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Thomas Pullicino)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2008) — Parents who smoke cigarettes around their kids in cars and homes beware – second-hand smoke may trigger symptoms of nicotine dependence in children.

The findings are published in the September edition of the journal Addictive Behaviors in a joint study from nine Canadian institutions.

"Increased exposure to second-hand smoke, both in cars and homes, was associated with an increased likelihood of children reporting nicotine dependence symptoms, even though these children had never smoked," says Dr. Jennifer O'Loughlin, senior author of the study, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and a researcher at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal.

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Earth's Air Divided By Chemical Equator

This model representation shows the chemical equator found in the study. The colors indicate the carbon monoxide concentrations on 30 January 2006; red is polluted air and blue is clean air.Credit: Glenn Carver, Cambridge University

From Live Science:

Scientists have found a temporary "chemical equator" that separates the heavily polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere from the cleaner air of the Southern Hemisphere over the Western Pacific — only it isn't where they expected to find it.

The Northern Hemisphere tends to have more polluted air than the Southern Hemisphere because it has more cities, more population in those cities on average and more industry. And each hemisphere's air masses tend to stay segregated from one another. That allows scientists to "see" chemical boundaries between the air masses of hemispheres by monitoring big changes in levels of air pollution.

These boundaries, or chemical equators, can typically be found at a "wall" created by global air circulation patterns that separates Northern and Southern hemispheric air. Called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), it is a belt of low pressure that circles the Earth roughly at the equator.

This is a good place to look for chemical equators, or partial ones, between the two hemispheres, but it is not where Geraint Vaughan of the University of Manchester in England and his colleagues found one in the Western Pacific.

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Mars Craft Detects Falling Snow

Artist's concept of Phoenix lander.

From The Washington Post:

Soil Tests Also Hint at Past Presence of Liquid Groundwater

Icy snow falls from high in Mars's atmosphere and may even reach the planet's surface, scientists working with NASA's Phoenix lander reported yesterday.

Laser instruments aboard the lander detected the snow in clouds about 2 1/2 miles above the surface and followed the precipitation as it fell more than a mile. But because of limitations with the technology, it was unclear whether any of the powdery stuff made it all the way to the surface.

"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway of York University in Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. "We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground."

In addition to finding snow, the Phoenix team reported discovering material in the Martian soil that had once been dissolved in water -- clays and calcium carbonate (limestone) that could have formed only in the presence of liquid water. Although the lander's instruments earlier found water ice below Mars's polar surface and had photographed surface fog and clouds, it has found nothing like liquid water on the surface.

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Why Your Flight Got Canceled

This post is not necessarily a "science post", but it is one of my pet peeves .... so .....

Why Your Flight Got Canceled -- Popsci

Last year, U.S. airlines canceled 21,000 flights. Or rather, a small cadre of guys canceled 21,000 flights. Every gate agent reports up the ladder at a given airline to a set of command-center managers. We spoke with a few of the people who make the big decisions to learn what factors influence whether they cancel a flight.

Number one is no surprise: the weather. Here we present the other four. Knowing them won’t get your plane moving, but it will make for conversation the next time you’re stranded at the airport bar.

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The Five Diseases You Should Worry About

Click To Enlarge

A Primer To The Next Population-Threatening Oandemic -- Popsci

Last May, scientists met in Geneva, Switzerland, to update the World Health Organization’s plans for pandemic preparedness. It looks like a crisis could arrive sooner rather than later. Thanks to climate change and drug resistance, a handful of deadly organisms are spreading across the globe; some are poised to make a comeback in the U.S. after decades of absence. Growth in international travel and increasing urbanization around the world are sure to make this century’s inevitable pandemic much worse, and experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say we’re not at all prepared for what’s to come. But although bird flu has gotten most of the press (it’s still a threat to those in North America, as birds regularly migrate here from areas in Asia where the virus is firmly entrenched), here are five other diseases that deserve your attention.

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Grid Of 100,000 Computers Heralds New Internet Dawn

A network of supercomputers called the Grid will allow information to be downloaded quicker than ever. Tasks that took hours will now take seconds

From The Times Online:

A network of 100,000 computers providing the greatest data processing capacity yet unleashed has been created to cope with information pouring from the world’s largest machine.

The Grid is the latest evolution of the internet and the world wide web and computer scientists will announce on Friday that it is ready to be connected to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

It is designed for schemes where huge quantities of data need crunching, such as large research and engineering projects. The Grid has the kind of power required to download movies in seconds, and the ability to make high-definition video phone calls for the same price as a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases. However, it is unlikely to be directly available to most internet users until telecoms providers build the fibre-optic network required to use it.

The Grid allows scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to get access to the unemployed processing power of thousands of computers in 33 countries to deal with the data created by the LHC.

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Smallest Extrasolar Planet Found

From Science-News:

The hunt for true “Earth-like” planets is heated, with many participants eagerly searching, hoping to be the first to find one. We are not there yet, but getting very close.

At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) researcher David Bennett announced the finding of an extrasolar planet called MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb. It’s located 3,000 light-years away from Earth and has three times the mass of our planet. The lightest extrasolar planet discovered weighed in at five-Earth masses and was discovered in April.

The host planet’s star is anywhere from 3,000 to 1 million times fainter than our sun so the planet may be colder than Pluto, but based upon the findings in this discovery astrophysicists suggest MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb could have a thick atmosphere that blankets the planet by trapping in heat. They also go on to theorize this planet may also be covered with a deep ocean.

Once the Kepler Mission is under way (NASA mission to hunt for Earth sized planets. Kepler will launch in February 2009) news like this will occur much more often and bring many exciting possibilities with it.

Will September Be The Month The Sun Truly Transitions To Cycle 24?

Solar cycle 23 as seen from SOHO - click for larger image

From Watts Up With That?

Below is a note forwarded to me by John Sumption from Jan Janssens. For those who do not know him, Jan runs a very comphrehensive solar tracking website here.

Jan included the caveat:

This topic’s sure to start another heated discussion on the solar blogs

So I’m happy to oblige by posting it here. Jansen makes some good points about the possible first month that cylce 24 spots exceed cycle 23 spots. But when you are in a deep minimum like this one, it is hard to pinpoint the transition, because next month may bring the reverse condition. He writes:

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Mars Lander Finds Minerals Suggesting Past Water

This photo released by NASA shows the edge of a solar panel on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, right, in a trench on the surface of Mars, where a sample of soil was taken by the lander. NASA announced Monday, Sept. 29, 2008, that the spacecraft discovered two minerals in the Martian soil that suggest interaction with water in the past. (AP Photo/NASA, JPL-Caltech)

From Yahoo News/AP:

LOS ANGELES - NASA's Phoenix spacecraft has discovered evidence of past water at its Martian landing site and spotted falling snow for the first time, scientists reported Monday. Soil experiments revealed the presence of two minerals known to be formed in liquid water. Scientists identified the minerals as calcium carbonate, found in limestone and chalk, and sheet silicate.

But exactly how that happened remains a mystery.

"It's really kind of all up in the air," said William Boynton, a mission scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson.

A laser aboard the Phoenix recently detected snow falling from clouds more than two miles above its home in the northern arctic plains. The snow disappeared before reaching the ground.

Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains in May on a three-month mission to study whether the environment could be friendly to microbial life. One of its biggest discoveries so far is confirming the presence of ice on the planet.

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NASA Delays Shuttle Mission to Hubble Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope in a file image.
(NASA/Handout/Reuters)

From Space.com:

NASA has delayed the last shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until early 2009 in order to repair a broken device that is blocking the orbital observatory from sending its iconic images of the cosmos back to Earth, agency officials said late Monday.

Seven astronauts were training to launch toward Hubble aboard the shuttle Atlantis on Oct. 14 on mission to extend the space telescope's life through at least 2013, but the unexpected failure of a vital data relay system on Saturday will add months of delay to their spaceflight.

"I think it's very obvious that Oct. 14 is off the table," NASA's space shuttle program manager John Shannon told reporters.

NASA announced Monday that a device known as the Side A Science Data Formatter failed, apparently for good, late Saturday, leaving the otherwise healthy Hubble with no means of relaying data and observations to scientists back on Earth. The electronics box failed after 18 years in service since Hubble launched in April 1990.

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Gifted Children: How to Bring Out Their Potential

From Scientific American:

Contrary to what many people believe, highly intelligent children are not necessarily destined for academic success. In fact, so-called gifted students may fail to do well because they are unusually smart. Ensuring that a gifted child reaches his or her potential requires an understanding of what can go wrong and how to satisfy the unusual learning requirements of extremely bright young people.

One common problem gifted kids face is that they, and those around them, place too much importance on being smart. Such an emphasis can breed a belief that bright people do not have to work hard to do well. Although smart kids may not need to work hard in the lower grades, when the work is easy, they may struggle and perform poorly when the work gets harder because they do not make the effort to learn. In some cases, they may not know how to study, having never done it before. In others, they simply cannot accept the fact that some tasks require effort [see “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids,” by Carol S. Dweck; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008].

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