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Sunday, December 22, 2013

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Astronauts nail first spacewalk to fix station's cooling system

By Irene and Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two NASA astronauts, their spacesuits rigged with snorkels in case of a water leak, floated outside the International Space Station for 5-1/2 hours on Saturday, successfully completing the first steps to fix the outpost's cooling system. The spacewalk, which was broadcast live on NASA Television, was the first for NASA since July when the spacesuit helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano began filling with water, a situation that could have caused him to drown. No such leaks were detected in Saturday's spacewalk, the first of two or possibly three that will be needed to complete the cooling system repair. While the six-member crew is not in danger, the remaining cooling system cannot support the three laboratories and other modules on the U.S. side of the $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations.

Ants Stay Clean by Squirting Antimicrobials from Their Butts

Ants may not seem particularly germaphobic, since they live in bacteria-rich dirt and often eat decaying plants and animals. But some ants have evolved to be quite fastidious sanitizers, regularly bathing themselves in antimicrobial secretions emitted from glands in their rear ends. Now, research from scientists based at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom suggests some ants also take it upon themselves to sanitize young, vulnerable members of their colonies by scrubbing their broods and nesting materials with their cleaning fluids. "We knew that [the secretions] help adults, and we knew that the brood survives and isn't constantly being affected by fungi," study co-author Christopher Tranter told LiveScience.

Robots to the rescue at international trials in Florida

The robot, developed by the Tartan Rescue team from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of 17 competing in the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. The challenge was launched in 2011 in response to the meltdown of Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant after it was hit by a massive earthquake-spawned tsunami. The backup power systems needed to cool plant's reactors failed and an emergency team from Tokyo Electric Power Company was unable to enter the damaged reactor building due to the intense radiation. DARPA sent robots designed to disarm improvised explosive devices in Iraq to Japan, yet by the time workers were trained to use them it was too late to prevent a nuclear meltdown.

Real-Life 'RoboCop' May Be Coming to a Street Near You

The K5 Beta, a just-unveiled prototype from California-based company Knightscope, might change all that. But what it does have, Knightscope representatives said, is an onboard sensor array that can see, hear, touch and smell its surroundings. The K5 can also combine that sensory data with "existing raw business, government and crowdsourced social data sets, and subsequently assigns an alert level that determines when a business, community or authorities should be notified of a concern," according to Knightscope's press release. If the K5 does detect that an "incident" is occurring, it makes all of its sensor data publicly available via Wi-Fi, "to allow the entire community to review the information transparently and contribute additional relevant, real-time information," Knightscope representatives said.

Japanese Humanoid Robot Dominates DARPA Challenge

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — A Japanese robotics team dominated the field after an ambitious two-day competition that saw robots driving cars, climbing ladders and wielding power tools.

Smart Move? Costs and Benefits of a Smart Grid

Simply put, a smart grid is an electrical grid that's integrated with computerized, two-way communication networks. "A smart grid is one that has real-time monitoring and reaction, which allows the system to constantly modify and tune itself to an optimal state," said Massoud Amin, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota and an outspoken proponent of smart-grid development. Indeed, the advantages of a smart grid are almost too numerous to list, but according to SmartGrid.gov (a website developed by the Department of Energy), a smart grid will permit more efficient transmission of electricity, lower operating and kilowatt costs, quicker restoration of electricity after outages and reduced energy use during peak-demand hours. In addition to keeping your lights on and your cellphone charged, the development of a smart grid would have substantial environmental and economic benefits, proponents say.

Astronauts nail first spacewalk to fix station's cooling system

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two NASA astronauts, their spacesuits rigged with snorkels in case of a water leak, floated outside the International Space Station for 5-1/2 hours on Saturday, successfully completing the first steps to fix the outpost's cooling system. The spacewalk, which was broadcast live on NASA Television, was the first for NASA since July when the spacesuit helmet worn by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano began filling with water, a situation that could have caused him to drown. No such leaks were detected in Saturday's spacewalk, the first of two or possibly three that will be needed to complete the cooling system repair. While the six-member crew is not in danger, the remaining cooling system cannot support the three laboratories and other modules on the U.S. side of the $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations.

Robots to the rescue at international trials in Florida

By Zachary Fagenson HOMESTEAD (Reuters) - As a squat, red-and-black robot nicknamed CHIMP gingerly pushed open a spring-loaded door a gust of wind swooped down onto the track at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and slammed the door shut, eliciting a collective sigh of disappointment from the audience. The robot, developed by the Tartan Rescue team from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, was one of 17 competing in the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. ...

Spacesuit Issue Delays Next Spacewalk Until Christmas Eve

NASA has delayed the second of three planned holiday spacewalks by 24 hours, setting up a Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) excursion from the International Space Station for two astronauts. The agency made the decision after noticing an issue with the spacesuit of Rick Mastracchio, who ventured outside the orbiting lab with fellow NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins Saturday (Dec. 21) to address a problem with the station's cooling system. Water may have entered part of Mastracchio's spacesuit in the orbiting outpost's airlock after Saturday's extravehicular activity (EVA), NASA officials said. So the flight control team at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston have directed Mastracchio to use a spare suit for the next spacewalk, which was originally planned for Monday (Dec. 23);

Pregnant and Looking for Work? Attack Stereotypes Head-On

While it is often a difficult task for pregnant women to find new work due to the discrimination they sometimes face, there are steps they can take to make it easier, new research suggests. A study funded by Rice University discovered that pregnant women can minimize the discrimination they face while searching for jobs by addressing negative pregnancy stereotypes in the application process. The experiment measured formal discrimination (whether applicants for retail positions were told a job was available and were allowed to complete a job application), as well as interpersonal discrimination (whether sales personnel attempted to prematurely end the conversation, pursed their lips, exhibited hostility, treated the applicant rudely, furrowed their eyebrows and seemed awkward). The study revealed that ratings from three perspectives — those of applicants, observers and independent evaluators — converged to show that pregnant job applicants received more interpersonal hostility than their nonpregnant job peers.

The Most Unusual Flexible Jobs of 2013

As technology continually makes remote employment easier, more and more individuals are finding that flexible work opportunities suit their personal lives and schedules better than a 9-to-5 office gig. Job listings on the company's site have increased by 25 percent since this time last year, and CEO Sara Sutton Fell believes it's a sign of the changing job market. "Every year, I look over the industry changes, and this year, the growth in the number of flexible job offerings really stands out to me," Sutton Fell said. The company, which currently has more than 17,000 job listings, recently released its 2013 list of the most surprising flexible job opportunities posted on its website.

10 Kinds of Customer Service Calls That Drive Customers @!*%ing Nuts

No one draws the wrath of irate consumers like satellite television providers, new research shows. A study by mobile advertising technology company Marchex revealed that one in every 82 calls to a satellite TV provider elicits cursing from the customer. Satellite TV narrowly edged out housing contractors, who get sworn at by customers on one out of every 90 calls. John Busby, senior vice president at the Marchex Institute, concludes that television providers draw the ire of customers for two reasons.

Ancient Spider Rock Art Sparks Archaeological Mystery

Archaeologists have discovered a panel containing the only known example of spider rock art in Egypt and, it appears, the entire Old World. The rock panel, now in two pieces, was found on the west wall of a shallow sandstone wadi, or valley, in the Kharga Oasis, located in Egypt's western desert about 108 miles (175 kilometers) west of Luxor. Facing east, and illuminated by the morning sun, the panel is a "very unusual" find, said Egyptologist Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo who co-directs the North Kharga Oasis Survey Project. The identification of the creatures as spiders is tentative and the date of it uncertain, Ikram told LiveScience in an email.

How to Give a Tiger a Root Canal

A 4-year-old male Siberian tiger named Marty had to undergo the dreaded dental procedure in his den at Scotland's Highland Wildlife Park on Wednesday (Dec. 18) after keepers noticed signs of trouble. Marty apparently had a small chip on his lower right canine and was starting to rely on the left side of his mouth while chewing, according to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. "A problem for big carnivores like tigers and polar bears, the pulp layer of the tooth is only a couple of millimeters below the tip of the tooth, so even chipping a tiny bit of tooth off can cause problems as the pulp underneath is exposed and infection can set in," Douglas Richardson, head of living collections for the Highland Wildlife Park, said in a statement.

Hawaii Night Sky Revealed in Stunning New Video

A new viral time-lapse video depicts the Milky Way over Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in amazing detail, complete with telescopes and dancing laser beams. Sean Goebel, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, created the new Hawaii night sky video from photographs shot on three consecutive nights in April and four nights in the summer of 2013. The film features the night sky progression over Mauna Kea, a 13,803-foot (4,207 meters) mountain on Hawaii's Big Island, and its many telescopes. Goebel used a home-built rotary table to create motion in the scenes.

Mars Curiosity Rover LEGO Model Set for New Year's Day Release

LEGO will launch its 2014 toy line with a fan-created model of NASA's Mars Curiosity rover. The Danish toy company announced on Wednesday (Dec. 18) that its new "NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover" building brick set will be available for sale from the LEGO Shop online beginning Jan. 1. "Hailed by NASA as a 'miracle of engineering' when [the real rover] landed on Mars in August 2012, we are thrilled to present a LEGO set based on this historic spacecraft," Tim Courtney, LEGO's community manager, wrote on the company's website. The Curiosity model is the fifth product to be released in the LEGO CUUSOO line of fan-designed sets.

NY school all-in on trend of all-digital textbooks

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — At Archbishop Stepinac High School, the backpacks got a whole lot lighter this year because nearly every book — from freshman biology to senior calculus — is now digital, accessible on students' laptops and tablets.

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Saturday, December 21, 2013

FeedaMail: Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News

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Can Human Civilization Continue Indefinitely?

SAN FRANCISCO — Human beings have altered the Earth so much that human extinction is a real possibility if people continue on their current path. "For our civilization to become a new kind of entity on the planet, we need to live comfortably, over the long haul, with world-changing technology," David H. Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Library of Congress, said Dec. 12 here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Not everyone agrees that a long-term perspective is possible or that it will prevent Earth's demise. For most of the last 4.5 billion years, Earth has been shaped by natural disasters, such as the dinosaur-killing asteroid, or biological forces, such as the rise of cyanobacteria that created the planet's oxygen-rich atmosphere, Grinspoon said.

Pot and Pets: Should Dogs Get High?

His owner, after seeing the effect that narcotic painkillers such as tramadol were having on Miles, decided to try something else: medical marijuana. As marijuana's once-ironclad restrictions become more relaxed, and researchers begin to find more therapeutic uses for the formerly banned substance, pet owners around the world may be wondering: Is pot good for my pet? Since 1970, marijuana has been classified by the federal government as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it has no recognized medical uses and a high potential for abuse, placing it in the same category as heroin and LSD. Many medical authorities, including the American Medical Association and the National Association for Public Health Policy, scoff at pot's Schedule I designation.

Rugged Martian Terrain Chewing Up Curiosity Rover's Wheels

Engineers are gearing up to perform a check of the Mars rover Curiosity's six wheels, which have accumulated a lot of wear and tear during the robot's 16 months on the Red Planet.

NASA Astronauts Perform 1st of 3 Holiday Spacewalks Saturday: Watch Live

On Saturday morning (Dec. 21), two NASA astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station to perform the first of potentially three urgent spacewalks to fix the vital cooling system on the orbiting outpost, and you can watch the excursion live online. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio will perform the spacewalk, which is expected to begin the necessary repairs on the outside of the station. NASA TV will broadcast the entire 6.5-hour spacewalk set to begin at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT) Saturday. The six residents of the space station are not in any immediate danger, but in order to get the station up to its fully functional status, the two astronauts will need to perform a series of quickly planned spacewalks, NASA officials said.

The Most Productive Day of the Workweek Is ...

Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps, said Mondays can be productive because many workers spend the day catching up from the previous week and planning the one ahead. "The goal should be to maintain the positive momentum established on Tuesday throughout the week." To help make that happen, Accountemps offers the following five tips to increase productivity and make every day like Tuesday.

The Thing Employees Want Most From a Job

For most employees, money doesn't necessarily buy happiness: Nearly 45 percent of surveyed Americans say having work they enjoy is their greatest professional priority, while about one-third consider job security, work-life balance and good benefits equally valuable, a new study finds. Specifically, employees in the first decades of their working lives — millennials and Gen Xers — place much more value on opportunities for advancement than do baby boomers, who are at or near the peak of their careers. About two-thirds of these young adults said they want to be the boss or a top executive someday, compared with just half of Gen Xers and 26 percent of baby boomers. The findings of the study are based primarily on data from anew Pew Research Center survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, the Current Population Survey and the American Time Use Survey.

NASA Astronauts Step Outside Space Station for 1st of 3 Holiday Spacewalks

Two NASA astronauts have begun the first of three quickly planned spacewalks to fix a problem with the International Space Station's vital cooling system. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio ventured outside of the space station's Quest airlock today (Dec. 21) to begin the repairs. NASA TV will broadcast the entire 6.5-hour EVA (extra-vehicular activity or spacewalk), and you can watch the spacewalk live on SPACE.com. The six space station residents are not in any immediate danger, but in order to get the station up to its fully functional status, the two astronauts will need to perform the spacewalks scheduled for today, Dec. 23 and, if necessary, Christmas Day (Dec. 25), NASA officials said.

Robot Olympics: Japan's Schaft Takes Lead in 2-Day Competition

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — After one full day of competition, a two-legged, 209-pound (95 kilograms) blue robot sits atop the leaderboard here at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials. DARPA, the agency within the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing new technologies for the military, designed the contest as a way to foster the development of new robots that could one day work with humans to secure disaster sites in the aftermath of a natural or man-made catastrophe.

6 Ancient Tributes to the Winter Solstice

Today (Dec. 21), those living in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate the mark of increasingly longer days, those in the Southern Hemisphere will transition to shorter days, and those at the equator won't notice much of a difference at all. The global discrepancy in seasonal sunlight results from Earth's 23.5-degree tilt on its axis: During the Northern Hemisphere winter, the Earth is tilted directly away from the sun, and during the summer, it is tilted directly toward the sun. For many ancient civilizations that struggled to subsist through harsh winter months, the winter solstice marked a time of spiritual rejoice and celebration. Still other people celebrate the day by tuning into the spiritual rituals of ancient civilizations and visiting the sites of winter solstice tributes.

Spacewalking Astronauts Remove Faulty Space Station Pump Ahead of Schedule

HOUSTON — Two astronauts working speedily outside the International Space Station removed a faulty pump module ahead of schedule, potentially negating the need for a planned Christmas Day spacewalk as they work to repair the outpost's critical cooling system. NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins ventured outside the space station at 7:01 a.m. EST (1101 GMT) today (Dec. 21), just 10 days after a flow control valve malfunctioned inside the pump module that they were set to remove and replace during another 6.5-hour spacewalk on Monday. Saturday's spacewalk ended at 12:29 p.m. EST (1729 GMT), five hours and 28 minutes after it began. Originally, the astronauts were just going to prepare the faulty pump for removal today, but the spacewalkers completed the majority of the planned tasks for Saturday's spacewalk in just three hours.

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