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Monday, March 2, 2015

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Astronauts Add Antennas, Cables to Space Station in 3rd Spacewalk

The International Space Station is now three steps – or rather spacewalks – closer to being ready for the arrival of new U.S. commercial crewed spacecraft with the successful completion of a two-astronaut outing on Sunday morning (March 1). NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Barry "Butch" Wilmore ventured outside the orbiting outpost for the third time in eight days to prepare the station for new docking ports to be added later this year. On Sunday, Virts and Wilmore routed some 400 feet (122 meters) of cables and installed two antenna booms that will provide navigational data to spacecraft approaching the complex. Virts and Wilmore completed the 5-hour, 38-minute spacewalk at 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT), having started the excursion at 6:52 a.m. EST (1152 GMT).

SpaceX rocket blasts off with world's first all-electric satellites

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A Space Exploration Technologies rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sunday to put the world's first all-electric communications satellites into orbit. The 22-story tall booster soared off its seaside launch pad at 10:50 a.m. EST, the third flight in less than two months for SpaceX, as the privately owned, California-based company is known. Perched on top of the rocket were a pair of satellites built by Boeing and owned by Paris-based Eutelsat Communications and Bermuda-based ABS, whose majority owner is the European private equity firm Permira. The satellites launched on Sunday are outfitted with lightweight, all-electric engines, rather than conventional chemical propulsion systems, to reach and maintain orbit.

Dirt-Watching NASA Satellite Deploys Giant Space Antenna (Video)

A recently launched NASA satellite has just deployed a giant antenna in space. The huge tool will help scientists collect unprecedented data that could help craft better weather forecasts around the world. The space agency's Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft (SMAP) is tasked with beaming back new global soil moisture maps designed to aid in crafting more effective warning systems for floods, droughts and other possible emergencies. "Just this Tuesday, SMAP completed a critical step in its journey toward becoming a productive member of NASA's Earth-observing fleet," Peg Luce, deputy director of the Earth Science Division at NASA, said during a news conference Thursday (Feb. 26).

Elusive 'Dark Photons' Still Lurking in the Shadows

A giant atom smasher has found no trace of a mysterious particle called the dark photon.

Ancient Bolivians Stripped Flesh from Dead Bodies in Ritual Complex

At an ancient ritual complex in Bolivia, archaeologists discovered the ruins of a room where dead bodies were dissolved down to their bones in sizzling pots of caustic chemicals. Founded during the late first century A.D., the site known as Khonkho Wankane was one of the smaller ceremonial centers to pop up in the Andes Mountains around Lake Titicaca before the rise of the more famous nearby ancient city of Tiwanaku. At its height, Khonkho Wankane (sometimes spelled Qhunqhu Wankani) covered about 17 acres (7 hectares) with at least three sunken temples, several large platforms, a big central plaza and quite a few circular houses. "We expected to find typical household stuff — grinding stones, cooking pots and things like that — but the assemblage was quite different," said Scott Smith, an archaeologist at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.

Chatty Machines? Future Computers Could Communicate Like Humans

Researchers are trying to break down the language barrier between humans and computers, as part of a new program from the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for developing new technologies for the U.S. military. The program — dubbed Communicating with Computers (CwC) — aims to get computers to express themselves more like humans by enabling them to use spoken language, facial expressions and gestures to communicate. "[T]oday we view computers as tools to be activated by a few clicks or keywords, in large part because we are separated by a language barrier," Paul Cohen, DARPA's CwC program manager, said in a statement. Computers previously developed by DARPA are already tasked with creating models of the complicated molecular processes that cause cells to become cancerous.

Most Docs Have Concerns About Delaying Vaccines But Do It Anyway

Researchers surveyed more than 500 U.S. pediatricians and family physicians, and asked whether they had received a request from parents to "spread out" their child's vaccines over a longer period than the length of the recommended vaccine schedule. Some parents make these requests because they have concerns about the recommended vaccine schedule — for example, they may think that their child is getting too many vaccines in a short period, according to the study. But nearly all doctors had concerns about straying from the recommended schedule: 87 percent said that parents who chose to spread out vaccines were putting their children at risk for contracting preventable infectious diseases, and 84 percent said the alternative schedules were more painful for children, because they had to come back to the doctor more times for injections. The doctors who were surveyed reported using a number of strategies to respond to these requests, including telling parents that they would immunize their own children according to the recommended schedule, and explaining that following an alternative schedule puts children at risk for infectious diseases.

Bionic Eye Lets Blind Man See Again

A bionic eye implant is now allowing a blind man to see the outlines of his wife after 10 years in darkness. The implant, called a retinal prosthesis, consists of a small electronic chip that is placed at the back of the eye to send visual signals directly into the optic nerve. The bionic eye doesn't have enough electrodes to recreate the details of human faces, but for the first time since he lost his vision, the man can make out the outlines of people and things, and walk without a cane. The Minneapolis-St. Paul man, Allen Zderad, suffered from a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa, in which the cells in the retina that gather light gradually die.

Meet 2 New Spider Species: 'Skeletorus' and 'Sparklemuffin'

Two gorgeous new species of peacock spiders nicknamed "Skeletorus" and"Sparklemuffin" have been discovered in Australia, according to a new report. The two new species were found in southeast Queensland by Madeline Girard, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley who studies peacock spiders, and a friend who went with her into the field. Girard affectionately gave the nickname Sparklemuffin to one of the species, Maratus jactatus, which has bluish and reddish stripes on its abdomen. Sparklemuffin looks similar to three previously discovered species in this group of peacock spiders, whereas Skeletorus looks very different from all the other known species in the group.

Using Faulty Forensic Science, Courts Fail the Innocent (Op-Ed)

Karen Kafadar is Commonwealth Professor and chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of Virginia and a member of the Forensic Science Standards Board. Anne-Marie Mazza is the director of the Committee on Science, Technology and Law of the National Academy of Sciences. Historically, forensic science has had a huge impact on identifying and confirming suspects in the courtroom, and on the judicial system more generally. Forensic scientists have been an integral part of the judicial process for more than a century.

These 5 Supplements Do Nothing for Alzheimer's, Despite Claims (Op-Ed)

She has published widely on the dietary supplement controversy. On Feb. 3, the New York State attorney general's office demanded that four major retailers — GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreens — remove certain store-brand herbal supplements from their shelves pending further quality-control measures. DNA testing on the supplements showed that a whopping 79 percent contained none of the herbs listed on their labels. Just as bad, the tests indicated the supplements often contained cheap fillers such as powdered rice, pine, citrus, houseplants and wheat — the latter despite claims on some labels that a product was wheat- and gluten-free.

Surgeon's Helper: 3D Printing Is Revolutionizing Health Care (Op-Ed)

Scott Dunham is a senior analyst for SmarTech Markets Publishing, which focuses exclusively on additive manufacturing and 3D printing. Dunham is a regularly featured speaker at 3D printing industry events worldwide, and he will be presenting at the Additive Disruption Summit on April 1 and the RAPID conference on May 19. Health care is a constant topic of debate today — but health care is not all about politics. While makers of professional 3D printers are specifically developing, and promoting, dental uses for 3D-printed technology, the universe of non-dental medical applications is now entering a phase of rapid growth.

Forging Metamaterials: Labs Craft Invisibility Cloaks, Perfect Lenses and Nanostructures (Kavli Roundtable)

Alan Brown, writer and editor for the Kavli Foundation, edited this roundtable for Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The very fact that we have to specify the type of metamaterial tells you that any definition is not as simple as saying it's just something that doesn't exist in nature.

U.S. 'Pet' Tiger Trade Puts Big Cats at Great Risk (Op-Ed)

Nicole Paquette is the vice president of wildlife protection at The Humane Society of the United States. They are bred repeatedly and forced to produce litter after litter — so many litters that there are now far too many tigers in the United States, and not enough responsible and experienced facilities to care for them. One of the main causes of tiger overpopulation in the United States is some facilities use tiger cubs for public handling. For a fee, members of the public can play with, bottle-feed, swim with or have their photo taken holding a tiger cub.

Mystery Woman Buried Near Richard III

Archaeologists found a lead coffin buried in the ruins of an English medieval church, just feet from the grave of British King Richard III. When they opened the tomb, they expected to find the skeleton of a knight or a friar. She was interred sometime in the late 13th or 14th century, before Richard was hastily buried at the monastery known as Grey Friars in Leicester, England. In fact, Richard III is the only man archaeologists have examined from the site so far. "We were naturally expecting to find friars," Grey Friars site director Mathew Morris told Live Science.

Lockheed invests in Rocket Lab's U.S. unit to keep pace with innovation

Lockheed Martin Corp said on Monday it had made a strategic investment in the U.S. unit of New Zealand's Rocket Lab, which is building a carbon-composite rocket, the Electron, to launch small satellites into orbit for less than $5 million. Lockheed spokesman Matt Kramer didn't say how big the investment was, but said the company saw potential applications for Rocket Lab's technologies light lift, hypersonic flight technologies and low-cost flight testing. Rocket Lab disclosed Lockheed's investment Monday when it announced that it had completed a Series B financing round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Companies' tests used in 'superbug' scope cleaning flawed: FDA

The scopes were linked to the exposure of 179 patients to drug-resistant bacteria at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles and may have contributed to two deaths. In early 2014, following a superbug outbreak at a hospital in Illinois, the FDA asked Fujifilm Holdings Corp, Olympus Corp and Pentax, which make the devices, to submit their test results for review, Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the agency's chief scientist, said in an interview. In some cases the tests were poorly carried out. In others, they were properly conducted but the cleaning and disinfecting protocol failed, said Ostroff, who will become the FDA's acting commissioner when Dr. Margaret Hamburg leaves at the end of March. The deficiencies in the companies' tests has not been reported. The flawed data calls into question the reliability of all current cleaning and disinfecting protocols and expose a weakness in the FDA's regulation of such devices - one which the agency is now moving to close.

Plant Plastics Seed New Tech, from Miatas to Tea Bags

Jacqueline Conciatore is a science writer for the U.S. National Science Foundation. Every year in the United States, more governments enact such restrictions, which are part of a larger shift away from petroleum-based plastic. Bioplastics are made wholly or in part from renewable biomass sources such as sugarcane and corn, or from the digest of microbes such as yeast. Some bioplastics are biodegradable or even compostable, under the right conditions.

Apple to Wal-Mart, Big Biz is Betting on Green Energy (Op-Ed)

Lynn Scarlett, managing director for public policy at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. While everyone still has to carry around a phone charger for the forseeable future, Apple is taking a different approach to its own energy supply. For Apple, the benefits are clear. Apple's decision affirms that clean energy, climate solutions and economic opportunity can converge.

What Would It Be Like to Live on Mars?

The idea of living on Mars has been a staple of science fiction since the 19th century, when American astronomer Percival Lowell speculated that the channels on the Red Planet were really ancient canals built by intelligent extraterrestrials. In 1965, NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft completed the first Martian flyby, and six years later, the Soviet Union's Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to land softly on Mars. Since then, there have been numerous successful missions to the Red Planet, including the deployment of four Mars rovers — the now-defunct Sojourner and Spirit, and the still-active Opportunity and Curiosity — and NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which produced a map of the entire planet. NASA is now planning for a manned mission to Mars, which is slated for the 2030s.

SpaceX Rocket Launches 2 Communications Satellites Into Orbit (Video)

The private spaceflight company SpaceX launched a pair of communications satellites to space Sunday (March 1), and you can see amazing videos and photos of the liftoff. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida at 10:50 p.m. EST (0350 March 2 GMT) carrying the ABS 3A and EUTELSAT 115 West B satellites to orbit. Now firing their ion thrusters to reach geo station [geostationary orbit] over Europe & Asia," SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on Twitter just after liftoff. The two satellites are the "first all-electric propulsion satellites, they carry no liquid propellant – rather, they reach orbit entirely via a lighter and more efficient electric propulsion system," SpaceX representatives wrote in a news release.

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Sunday, March 1, 2015

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Big Bang, Deflated? Universe May Have Had No Beginning

If a new theory turns out to be true, the universe may not have started with a bang. In the new formulation, the universe was never a singularity, or an infinitely small and infinitely dense point of matter. "Our theory suggests that the age of the universe could be infinite," said study co-author Saurya Das, a theoretical physicist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. The new concept could also explain what dark matter — the mysterious, invisible substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe — is actually made of, Das added.

Rare Roman Tombstone Discovered in England

A 1,800-year-old tombstone was discovered at a Roman cemetery in England this week. Because of its inscription, archaeologists know who was buried in the grave: a 27-year-old woman named Bodica. "It's incredibly rare," Neil Holbrook, of Cotswold Archaeology, told Live Science. For the last two months, Holbrook's team has been excavating a Roman cemetery just outside the ancient city walls of Cirencester, a town in Gloucestershire, to make way for the construction of a new office park.

NASA Satellite Captures Amazing 3D Videos of Rain, Snow

Mesmerizing and swirling animations of rain and snow dance across a map of the Earth, shown in a video released yesterday (Feb. 26) by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The NASA video captures worldwide precipitation from April to September 2014, and even shows Hurricane Arthur twist into a tropical storm from July 2 to 4 in the Atlantic Ocean, said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, a GPM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The "GPM mission is the first coordinated international satellite network that provides near real-time global estimates of rain and snow," Skofronick-Jackson said at news conference yesterday. The video is the product of the GPM Core Observatory, launched one year ago on Feb. 27 by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

NASA resolves issue with spacesuit helmet water leak

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Water that leaked into an astronaut's helmet after a spacewalk on Wednesday poses no threat, clearing the way for another outing to rig the International Space Station for new space taxis, NASA said on Friday. Space station flight engineer Terry Virts was back in the station's airlock on Wednesday following a successful spacewalk when he noticed a small amount of water in his helmet. Another astronaut nearly drowned during a July 2013 spacewalk due to a helmet leak. Virts, who was making his second spacewalk in a week, was never in any danger, NASA said.

White & Gold or Blue & Black? Science of the Mystery Dress

David Williams, a vision scientist at the University of Rochester in New York, has a theory. Light is made up of different wavelengths, which the brain perceives as color.

Monsanto says GM corn trial in final stage in India

By Mayank Bhardwaj and Krishna N. Das NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Monsanto's Indian subsidiary expects to submit final trial results for its genetically modified (GM) corn to lawmakers within a year for the government to then decide on a commercial launch, the company's country head said on Friday. India does not currently allow the growing of GM food crops but the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, keen to improve farms' productivity, has encouraged open field trials after a five-year de facto ban. "We are close to the final stage in corn," Shilpa Divekar Nirula, chief executive of Monsanto India, told Reuters.

NASA Spacecraft Arrives at Dwarf Planet Ceres This Week

NASA's Dawn spacecraft will begin orbiting the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres this week, ending a deep-space chase that lasted 2 1/2 years. "We've been using the ion propulsion system for a long time gradually to reshape Dawn's orbit around the sun so that it matches Ceres' orbit," said Dawn Mission Director and Chief Engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 to study Vesta and Ceres, which are 330 miles (530 kilometers) and 590 miles (950 km) wide, respectively. Dawn's observations of these planetary building blocks should shed light on the planet-formation process and the conditions prevalent during the solar system's early days, NASA officials have said.

Astronauts leave space station for third spacewalk

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Two U.S. astronauts left the International Space Station on Sunday for a seven-hour spacewalk to install communications and navigation aides for new commercial space taxis. Station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts floated outside the station's Quest airlock shortly after 7 a.m. EST/1200 GMT to begin their third spacewalk in eight days, a NASA Television broadcast showed. The purpose of the outings is to prepare berthing slips for spaceships being developed by Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. One adapter will be installed at the berthing slip once used by NASA's space shuttles, which were retired in 2011.

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Friday, February 27, 2015

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U.S. rocket launch pad repair set to halt in funding spat

By irene klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Work to repair a Virginia-owned launch pad damaged by an Orbital ATK rocket explosion is about to halt amid a debate about who should pick up the bill, officials involved in the dispute told Reuters. Orbital was launching its third Antares mission for NASA under a $1.9 billion contract to fly cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital had insurance to cover its losses at Wallops, as well as damage to federal property and other entities as required by the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial launches in the United States. A funding solution may come as Orbital talks to Virginia officials and NASA, which owns and operates the Wallops Flight Facility.

More Mysterious Craters Found in Siberia

Last summer, the discovery of several new giant craters in Siberia drew worldwide interest, launching wild speculation that meteorites, or even aliens, caused the gaping crevasses. In July 2014, reindeer herders discovered a 260-feet-wide (80 meters) crater in northern Russia's Yamal Peninsula. Now, satellite images have revealed at least four more craters, and at least one is surrounded by as many as 20 mini craters, The Siberian Times reported. "We know now of seven craters in the Arctic area," Vasily Bogoyavlensky, a scientist at the Moscow-based Oil and Gas Research Institute, told The Siberian Times.

Cool Pacific Ocean Slowed Global Warming

The Pacific Ocean has been a planetary air conditioner for the past two decades, but the relief may soon end, a new study finds. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans undergo decades-long natural oscillations that alter their sea surface temperatures. Over the past 130 years, the tempo of global warming has revved up or slowed down in tune with changing ocean temperatures, researchers reported today (Feb. 26) in the journal Science. The Pacific Ocean wielded its mighty influence starting in 1998, when it interrupted the rapid climb of global temperatures, the study reported.

US Needs a Mars Colony, Buzz Aldrin Tells Senators

The United States must do more than just plant a flag on Mars if it wants to continue as a leader in the field of space exploration, Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin told senators this week. "In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," Aldrin told members of the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness during a hearing Tuesday (Feb. 24). Going to Mars without setting up a colony — launching only round-trip manned missions, in other words — would not be enough, nor would setting up human outposts on the moon, Aldrin said. Buzz Aldrin, who set foot on the moon just after Neil Armstrong in July 1969, has developed an architecture to establish a Mars colony, with the first manned Red Planet landings envisioned in 2038.

New Space Telescope Tech Could Be 1,000 Times Sharper Than Hubble

A new type of orbiting telescope could take images more than 1,000 times sharper than those snapped by NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope, the technology's developers say. Researchers have dubbed their concept the "Aragoscope," after French scientist Francois Arago, who was the first to discover that light waves diffract around a disk. The Aragoscope could take images of plasma swaps between stars and of black hole event horizons, the points beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape a black hole's gravitational pull, said project leader Webster Cash of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The heavier the space telescope, the more expensive the cost of the launch," said CU-Boulder doctoral student Anthony Harness.

Stephen Hawking Thinks These 3 Things Could Destroy Humanity

Stephen Hawking may be most famous for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities, but the world-renowned physicist has also become known for his outspoken ideas about things that could destroy human civilization. Here are a few things Hawking has said could bring about the demise of human civilization. Hawking is part of a small but growing group of scientists who have expressed concerns about "strong" artificial intelligence (AI) — intelligence that could equal or exceed that of a human. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in December 2014.

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