Science Relief : News and Articles on Science, Health, Space and Technology

Polymer gel, heal thyself: University of Pittsburgh engineering team proposes new composites that can regenerate when damaged

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:18:00 +0530

In the computer simulation, the composite is cut (far left) and the nanorods begin migration to the cut interface. In the third image, the polymerization from the rods surface and cross-linking initiates, culminating in the newly regrown gel (final image). Credit: University of Pittsburgh

When a chair leg breaks or a cell phone shatters, either must be repaired or replaced. But what if these materials could be programmed to regenerate-themselves, replenishing the damaged or missing components, and thereby extend their lifetime and reduce the need for costly repairs? That potential is now possible according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, who have developed computational models to design a new polymer gel that would enable complex materials to regenerate themselves.

Principal investigator is Anna C. Balazs, PhD, the Swanson School's Distinguished Robert v. d. Luft Professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, and co-authors are Xin Yong, PhD, postdoctoral associate, who is the article's lead author; Olga Kuksenok, PhD, research associate professor; and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, PhD, J.C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences, department of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University.

"This is one of the holy grails of materials science," noted Dr. Balazs. "While others have developed materials that can mend small defects, there is no published research regarding systems that can regenerate bulk sections of a severed material. This has a tremendous impact on sustainability because you could potentially extend the lifetime of a material by giving it the ability to regrow when damaged."

The research team was inspired by biological processes in species such as amphibians, which can regenerate severed limbs. This type of tissue regeneration is guided by three critical instruction sets -- initiation, propagation, and termination -- which Dr. Balazs describes as a "beautiful dynamic cascade" of biological events.

"When we looked at the biological processes behind tissue regeneration in amphibians, we considered how we would replicate that dynamic cascade within a synthetic material," Dr. Balazs said. "We needed to develop a system that first would sense the removal of material and initiate regrowth, then propagate that growth until the material reached the desired size and then, self-terminate the process."

"Our biggest challenge was to address the transport issue within a synthetic material," Dr. Balazs said. "Biological organisms have circulatory systems to achieve mass transport of materials like blood cells, nutrients and genetic material. Synthetic materials don't inherently possess such a system, so we needed something that acted like a sensor to initiate and control the process."

The team developed a hybrid material of nanorods embedded in a polymer gel, which is surrounded by a solution containing monomers and cross-linkers (molecules that link one polymer chain to another) in order to replicate the dynamic cascade. When part of the gel is severed, the nanorods near the cut act as sensors and migrate to the new interface. The functionalized chains or "skirts" on one end of these nanorods keeps them localized at the interface and the sites (or "initiators") along the rod's surface trigger a polymerization reaction with the monomer and cross-linkers in the outer solution. Drs. Yong and Kuksenok developed the computational models, and thereby established guidelines to control the process so that the new gel behaves and appears like the gel it replaced, and to terminate the reaction so that the material would not grow out of control.

Drs. Balazs, Kuksenok and Yong also credit Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, who contributed toward the understanding of the chemistry behind the polymerization process. "Our collaboration with Prof. Matyjaszewski was exceptionally valuable in allowing us to accurately account for all the complex chemical reactions involved in the regeneration processes" said Dr. Kuksenok.

"The most beautiful yet challenging part was designing the nanorods to serve multiple roles," Dr. Yong said. "In effect, they provide the perfect vehicle to trigger a synthetic dynamic cascade." The nanorods are approximately ten nanometers in thickness, about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

In the future, the researchers plan to improve the process and strengthen the bonds between the old and newly formed gels, and for this they were inspired by another nature metaphor, the giant sequoia tree. "One sequoia tree will have a shallow root system, but when they grow in numbers, the root systems intertwine to provide support and contribute to their tremendous growth," Dr. Balazs explains. Similarly, the skirts on the nanorods can provide additional strength to the regenerated material.

The next generation of research would further optimize the process to grow multiple layers, creating more complex materials with multiple functions.

Source: University of Pittsburgh

Finding Aliens on Dying Planets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:11:00 +0530

This chart shows star temperatures vs. stellar flux showing various zones including Earth. Credit: Chester Harmon

Scientists should take the conservative approach when searching for habitable zones where life-sustaining planets might exist, according to James Kasting, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, including when building Terrestrial Planet Finders. That conservative approach means looking for planets that have liquid water and solid or liquid surfaces, as opposed to gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. The habitable zone in a solar system is the area where liquid water, and by extension life, could exist. Defining the habitable zone is key to the search for life sustaining planets in part because the idea of a habitable zone is used in designing the space-based telescopes that scientists would use to find planets where metabolism -- and potentially life -- life might exist.

"It's one of the biggest and oldest questions that science has tried to investigate: is there life off the earth?" Kasting said. "NASA is pursuing the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System, but some of us think that looking for life on planets around other stars may actually be the best way to answer this question."

Recent research by Ravi Kopparapu, a post-doctoral researcher working with Kasting, suggests that the frequency of Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of stars known as M-dwarfs is 0.4 to 0.5. To find four potential Earth-like candidates, scientists would need to survey the habitable zones of about 10 cool stars. This data came from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which collected information on transiting exoplanets for almost four years before being partially disabled. Previous estimates put this frequency at 0.1, which would have forced scientists using planet finders to survey more stars, searching farther away from our Solar System.

An even more recent estimate of the frequency of Earth-like planets was announced by Eric Petigura and colleagues at the Kepler Science Conference in early November. They calculated the figure at 0.22 around stars more similar to the Sun. But Kopparapu and Kasting think Petigura and colleagues' estimate could be too high by a factor of two because they used an overly optimistic estimate for the width of the habitable zone. If so, then the old value of 0.1 may be closer to the truth.

The ability of a planet to sustain liquid water is traditionally part of the criteria when searching for life-sustaining planets. While some have argued that subsurface water would be enough to sustain life, testing that hypothesis remotely would be virtually impossible, so the focus for astronomers should remain on surface water, Kopparapu and Kasting note in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

"All life that we know of is carbon-based and depends on the presence of liquid water during at least part of its life cycle," Kasting notes in the paper. "Hence, if we see a planet that shows evidence for liquid water, we can immediately think about the possible presence of carbon-based life."

While no federal funding to build a Terrestrial Planet Finder is currently in place, the amount of research related to exoplanets is strengthening. A TPF would allow for the detection of gases -- or lack thereof -- in planets' atmospheres. If, for example, no signs of life are found after searching the habitable zones of 30 stars, that could be a reason for pessimism, said Kasting, who is also part of Penn State's Earth and Environmental Systems Institute.

And, while it may be more appealing to know that there is evidence of life on other planets, learning that there is not would have scientific implications.

"Maybe every planet out there that has the right conditions develops life," Kasting said. "We don't really know the answer to that. But, it could be. If you're an optimist, you think it just takes the right conditions. It happened on Earth, why wouldn't it happen somewhere else?"

It is possible that initial observations of Earth-like exoplanets could give an ambiguous answer, Kasting added. For example, oxygen might be found, but not methane. But even that could open the door to further exploration.

While the pursuit of life in the outer reaches of the sky might seem far-fetched at first glance, Kasting noted that astronomers have talked about it as a second Copernican revolution.

"Did it make any difference when we figured out that the Earth was going around the sun rather than vice versa? If you're just a practical-minded person, it made absolutely no difference to your life because life goes on Earth just the way it did," Kasting said.

"But if you expand your mind a little bit, it helped us figure out our place in the universe -- that we're actually on a little planet going around a rather normal star amongst many other stars in the galaxy, and there are many galaxies out there. It's been one of the most profound changes ever in human thought. We think of TPF as the next step in the Copernican revolution, to figure out if there are other Earths out there and if there is life on those planets."

Source: Penn State

Syria's civil war imperils nation's rich archaeological treasures

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 5 Sep 2013 02:19:00 +0530

Satellite imagery of the ancient Roman city of Apamea reveals that the entire site has been pockmarked with holes dug by looters since the start of the civil war.

The Romans occupied modern-day Syria, and before them, the Assyrians, Persians and Akkadians built empires there.

The country is home to ancient Paleolithic fossils, some of the earliest evidence of agriculture and one of the largest troves of cuneiform tablets ever discovered.

"It's probably one of the oldest occupied areas of the Earth," said Emma Cunliffe, an archaeology researcher at Durham University in England, who has published a report documenting archaeological damage in Syria. "It's been continuously occupied since before modern man even existed."

Yet hundreds of archaeological sites are imperiled by civil war in Syria; bombing and looting have ravaged some of the richest of these sites; government and rebel forces have occupied ancient castles and bulldozed archaeological mounds created over thousands of years of human occupation. All six of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the country have been damaged, Cunliffe said.

Still, some archaeologists are trying to preserve Syria's heritage. They are talking to government and rebel leaders to protect the most important treasures, and have compiled a list of the key archaeological "no strike" sites that should be protected.

"This is the heritage first and foremost of the Syrian people, and then of the whole world," said Andrew Moore, the first vice president of the Archaeological Institute of America. "It's therefore in everybody's interests to do all they can to protect these important monuments."

Littered with heritage

As part of the Fertile Crescent, the land that is now Syria has been occupied for tens of thousands of years.

Syria contains some of the world's most beautiful Roman cities, Apamea and Palmyra, as well as a stunning Crusader-era castle called Krak des Chevaliers. Archaeologists have unearthed tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets in the ancient city of Ebla. The country houses the tombs of several of Mohammed's relatives, and its cities of Aleppo and Damascus have been continuously occupied for thousands of years.

Syria is also littered with thousands of other unstudied archaeological sites.

Historically, people in the region have built mud brick settlements on the ruins of earlier cities. Over thousands of years, a large mound, or tell, forms with layers of each civilization piled atop one another, said Jesse Casana, an archaeologist at the University of Arkansas and the chairman of the American Schools of Oriental Research's Damascus Committee.

Thousands of tells are scattered throughout the country. Most have not been excavated, and even at the most famous digs, archaeologists have barely scratched the surface, Casana said.

Bombing and looting

Bombing has already destroyed some of the most beautiful landmarks in the country. Last year, a 10th-century mosque in the old city of Aleppo was destroyed by bombing, and large parts of the old city, which may be one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world, were damaged as well.

But looting is a far bigger problem than direct destruction, Casana said.

Shadowy networks of antiquities smugglers outside of Syria are paying desperate locals to strip archaeological sites of artifacts.

Other evidence suggests that fighters are smuggling artifacts to buy weapons, Cunliffe said.
At the same time, the civil war has drained resources for protecting archaeological sites. Though civil servants do what they can, their efforts are no match for the chaos.

Ebla has been extensively looted and post-civil war satellite imagery has revealed that Apamea, the historic Roman city, has been riddled with holes since the start of the civil war.

"It looks like the surface of the moon," Cunliffe told LiveScience. "In eight months, the looted area exceeded the total excavated area."

Archaeological mounds, meanwhile, serve as attractive outposts for military because of their higher elevation.
"A lot of archaeological sites are being pretty severely damaged by military," Casana told LiveScience. "They build huge bunkers for tanks, or anti-aircraft equipment. They dig huge trenches into them and bulldoze sides of them off."

Protecting future sites

Archaeologists are doing what they can to protect the most famous sites. They have spoken with rebel and government forces about protecting those sites.

And organizations such as Blue Shield have documented damage using satellite imagery and have compiled lists of hundreds of the most valuable sites.

The U.S. government has added those sites, along with places such as hospitals and schools, to its "no strike" list. If the United States does pursue military strikes, hopefully, the potential for damage will be limited, Casana said.

Still, there's no undoing the damage that's already been done. The site that Casana once studied, Tell Qarqur in Western Syria, has been badly damaged.

"They put tanks on my site," Casana said. "I'm sure they're using my excavation trenches as toilets and digging holes in the thing. It's pretty depressing."

Woman gets pregnant seven years after ovaries removed

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 5 Sep 2013 00:04:00 +0530

Scientists from Melbourne IVF and the Royal Women's hospital helped a woman who had both her ovaries removed get pregnant.

Australian doctors succeeded in helping a woman get pregnant seven years after her ovaries were removed during cancer treatment.

Vali, a woman from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, asked doctors to preserve some of her ovarian tissue while she was undergoing cancer treatment in case it was possible to graft it back in the future.
"It didn't really hit me until I was ... 24 and I had to make some serious decisions about my healthcare then," she said. "I was really lucky with my doctors. I was able to have this opportunity even though I didn't really know anything about it."

Associate professor Kate Stern, head of fertility preservation at Melbourne IVF, said she consulted with Vali's surgeon and oncologist before attempting the first graft in 2010.
A second graft was done two years later.

"The tissue was put back in the front wall of her abdomen, so that means it's under the skin and the muscle but not inside the abdomen," Stern said. "We wanted to see if this might help her get pregnant. Then we gave her some very gentle hormone stimulation -- not the full-on IVF."

The process produced two eggs, which where later fertilized and put back inside Vali's uterus. The 24-year-old cancer survivor and her partner, Dean, are now expecting twins.

Stern said when they began the procedure it was "unlikely" that it would be successful.
"There have been 29 babies born in the world [using this procedure]," he said. "But that's all from tissue that's been grafted back into the ovary or close to the ovary. But still, with that 29 there have been multiple, multiple, multiple attempts."

Stern said there was a big team of people behind the breakthrough.
"It's amazing how everyone is so excited for our patient. We've been doing this for a long time now, so it's taken a while to get to this point."

Making plants' inner qualities visible

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 4 Sep 2013 02:30:00 +0530

The hyperspectral camera is mounted under the wing of the airplane used for research. Credit: Fraunhofer IFF

A photographic airplane circles above an Australian vineyard in large arcs. An onboard camera takes pictures of the grapevines in regular intervals – anything but ordinary photos, though. Instead, this camera "looks" directly inside plants and delivers valuable information on their constituents to viticulturists. This enables viticulturists to systematically modify their cultivation in order to increase the yield of their grapevines by using hybrids with valuable properties – a real challenge under the basic conditions in Australia: The soil is dry and salty and summer temperatures are often extremely high.

This look at a grapevine's "inner qualities" is made possible by special software that processes data from a hyperspectral camera, which records images of many adjacent wavelengths. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg developed the software and the mathematical models it contains. "Every molecule absorbs light in a very specific wavelength range," explains project manager Prof. Udo Seiffert. "The camera chip we use covers a large area of the relevant wavelength spectrum and, together with appropriate software, is able to scan the biochemical composition of every single recorded pixel precisely." The camera thus delivers an overview of every constituent present in a plant in any significant concentration – a kind of hyperspectral "fingerprint".

A camera delivers an overview of phytoconstituents

The raw data have to be processed appropriately in order to make them usable for clients. "Our data processing is based on mathematical modeling. On the basis of these algorithms, the software recognizes characteristic absorption properties of defined target constituents and filters them out of the raw data," explains Seiffert. Initially, the researchers have to calibrate the software for the particular application so that it "knows" what constituents it should display. To do so, they photograph reference plants with their camera in order to obtain the fingerprint of the constituents. Then, the photographed tops of the plants are sent to a laboratory in order to analyze the concentrations of the constituents that are relevant to the user. Afterward, the laboratory results are entered into the mathematical model together with the hyperspectral fingerprint. The special thing about the software is its ability to correlate information autonomously and to save this knowledge. "Picture it somewhat like learning vocabulary," explains Seiffert. Once the software has learned the correlation, it automatically filters the relevant constituents out of the hyperspectral camera images the next time. Then, a laboratory analysis is no longer needed for other series of measurements.

Looking inside plants creates effective new options for farmers to increase crop yield. For instance, certain metabolites – products of metabolism – provide information on the quality of a plant's nutrition. Farmers can concentrate on cultivating those plants that thrive particularly well under the prevalent climatic conditions, thus enabling them to irrigate their fields less, for instance. Diseases such as fungal infections can also be detected faster thanks to hyperspectral technology. An infested plant activates defense mechanisms before an infection becomes outwardly visible – by dead leaves, stalks or mildew. Theses mechanisms indicate that the plant has detected and is combatting the infection. Previously, such tests required lengthy experiments in greenhouses. Not least, aerial photos can be used to detect sources of infection in a field quickly.

The first series of measurements with the project partner, the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility at the University of Adelaide, have concluded – the results are promising. At present, another use of the camera down under is in the planning stage. A demonstrator of the system's use in greenhouses and laboratories will be on display at Booth E72 in Hall 9 at the BIOTECHNICA in Hannover from October 8 to 10, 2013.

Birds choose sweet-smelling mates

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 4 Sep 2013 01:00:00 +0530

In a first-of-its-kind study, a Michigan State University researcher has demonstrated that birds communicate via scents, and that odor reliably predicts their reproductive success. Credit: Nicole Gerlach

For most animals, scent is the instant messenger of choice for quickly exchanging personal profiles. Scientists, however, have long dismissed birds as odor-eschewing luddites that don't take advantage of scent-based communications.

In a first-of-its-kind study, however, a Michigan State University researcher has demonstrated that birds do indeed communicate via scents, and that odor reliably predicts their reproductive success. The study appears in the current issue of Animal Behaviour and focuses on volatile compounds in avian preen secretions.

Birds' preen glands are located near their tails. Using their beaks, birds extract oil from the glands and rub it on their feathers and legs. Historically, this activity was thought to simply bolster the strength of feathers.
Danielle Whittaker, managing director of MSU's BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, and her research team, however, have shown that it plays a key role in signaling reproductive health.

"This study shows a strong connection between the way birds smell near the beginning of the breeding season – when birds are choosing mates – and their reproductive success for the entire season," she said. "Simply put, males that smell more 'male-like' and females that smell more 'female-like' have higher genetic reproductive success."

The long-held assumption was that birds' preferred methods of communication and mate selection were visual and acoustic cues. Studying dark-eyed juncos, Whittaker's team compared which were more effective – chemical signals or size and attractive plumage.

The study shows a strong connection between the way birds smell near the beginning of the breeding season and their reproductive success. Credit: Nicole Gerlach

The results showed that individual bird odor correlated with reproduction success while size and plumage were less reliable. The study also revealed that females were making multiple decisions based on how their potential mates smelled.

"Based on odor, females seemed to be not only choosing with which males to mate, but many times they also were selecting different males to raise their nestlings," Whittaker said. "Interestingly enough, the cuckolding males had higher levels of a 'female-like' odor."

In addition, the researchers believe odors serve as beacons for hormone levels, current condition and overall health, and genetic background.

Microsoft buys Nokia smartphones, services in $7.2B deal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 23:59:00 +0530

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaks during a press conference on the company's deal with Finnish mobile manufacturer Nokia in Espoo, Finland on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013. Microsoft Corp. is buying Nokia Corp.'s line-up of smartphones and a portfolio of patents and services in an attempt to mount a more formidable challenge to Apple Inc. and Google Inc. as more technological tasks get done on mobile devices instead of personal computers. (AP Photo/Lehtikuva, Markku Ulander)

Microsoft is wagering $7.2 billion on the idea that owning Nokia's phone business will help the software giant grab a bigger slice of the mobile computing market from Apple and Google

The Windows maker is buying Nokia Corp.'s line-up of smartphones and a portfolio of patents and services. The 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion) deal, announced late Monday, marks a major step in the company's push to transform itself from a software maker focused on desktop and laptop computers into a more versatile and nimble company that delivers services on any kind of Internet-connected gadget.
But some analysts questioned whether buying up the mobile business of Nokia, the fading star of the cellphone world, would aid Microsoft.

"Until there are signs that (Microsoft) can innovate and successfully execute in the post-PC era, we expect the stock to languish at current levels," said Janney analysts Yun Kim and Alice Hur. "We do not believe the planned acquisition of (Nokia's) mobile business changes (Microsoft's) strategic positioning in the smartphone market."

Microsoft's shares fell $2.05, or 6.1 percent, to $31.35 in midday trading in the U.S.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has been racing to catch up with customers who are increasingly pursuing their digital lives on smartphones and tablet computers rather than traditional PCs. The shift is weakening Microsoft, which has dominated the PC software market for the past 30 years, and empowering Apple Inc., the maker of the trend-setting iPhone and iPad, and Google Inc., which gives away the world's most popular mobile operating system, Android.

Microsoft is now betting it will have a better chance of narrowing the gap with its rivals if it seizes complete control over how mobile devices work with its Windows software.
"It's a bold step into the future—a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies," Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer told reporters at Nokia's headquarters in Finland Tuesday. "It's a signature event."

But speaking to investors and analysts later Tuesday, Ballmer admitted that the company still has to play catch-up with the likes of Apple and Android.

"We know we need to accelerate. We're not confused about that," he said.

Standing together are from left to right, Nokia's new CEO Timo Ihamuotila, Chairman of the Board Risto Siilasmaa and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, during the press conference of the Finnish mobile manufacturer Nokia in Espoo, Finland on Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013. Microsoft has announced a takeover of the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia in a deal reported to be worth some 5.44 billion euros (US dlrs 7.2 billion). (AP Photo / LEHTIKUVA, Markku Ulander)

"We need to be a company that provides a family of devices."

Nokia, based in Espoo, near the Finnish capital, and Microsoft have been trying to make inroads in the smartphone market as part of a partnership forged in 2011. Under the alliance, Nokia's Lumia smartphones have run on Microsoft's Windows software, but those devices haven't managed to compete with iPhone or the array of Android-powered devices spearheaded by Samsung Electronics' smartphones and tablets
Terry Myerson, Microsoft Executive Vice-President of Operating Systems, admitted on a call to investors Tuesday that the message about company's products hasn't been getting through to consumers and that "marketing approaches we've used in the past have been inefficient."

The acquisition is being made at the same time that Microsoft is looking for a new leader. Just 10 days ago, Ballmer, 57, announced he will step down as CEO within the next year.

Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft in 2010 to become Nokia CEO, will step down as president and CEO of the company to become executive vice president of Nokia devices and services and will rejoin Microsoft once the acquisition closes.

The deal has fueled speculation that Elop, a former Microsoft executive, will emerge as a top candidate to succeed Ballmer.

Nokia board chairman Risto Siilasmaa told reporters that they had been preparing the deal since February. "It's been an extremely pragmatic and deeply analytical process where we have left no stone unturned to understand all the possible alternatives for the company going forward," said Siilasmaa, who will be Nokia's interim CEO.

Investors in Nokia welcomed the deal, sending shares in the company up 34 percent to 3.97 euros in Helsinki.

Microsoft hopes to complete the deal early next year. If that timetable pans out, about 32,000 Nokia employees will transfer to Microsoft, which currently has about 99,000 workers.
The proposed price consists of 3.79 billion euros ($5 billion) for the Nokia unit that makes mobile phones, including its line of Lumia smartphones that run Windows Phone software. Another 1.65 billion euros ($2.2 billion) will be paid for a 10-year license to use Nokia's patents, with the option to extend it indefinitely. Ballmer said that Microsoft will invest more than $250 million in a new data center to serve European consumers.

Nokia CFO Timo Ihamuotila said the company's future will center on its mobile networks business and two smaller units—HERE mapping services and the advanced technologies unit including Nokia's licensing business.

"Our aim is clearly to grow the networks business in a profitable way," he said in a call to investors. "It is a cash-generating business where we can invest into the future growth."

Nokia will continue to own the rights to its brand, but the deal between the two companies prevents it from venturing into a separate smartphone business until the end of 2015.

Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said the move was good for Nokia's shareholders but did not change much for the ailing Finnish firm, which has lost significant market share.

"Nokia is still heavily dependent on Microsoft's software capabilities and Microsoft continues to lag the market like it has done in the last few years," Mawston said. "Not much will change whether Nokia is inside or outside the Microsoft portfolio."

The deal with Nokia represents the second most expensive acquisition in Microsoft's 38-year history, ranking behind an $8.5 billion purchase of Internet calling and video conferencing service Skype. Tony Bates, who ran Skype, is also regarded as a potential successor to Ballmer.
The money to buy Nokia's smartphones and patents will be drawn from the nearly $70 billion that Microsoft held in overseas accounts as of June 30.

Atmosphere's Emission Fingerprint Affected By How Clouds Are Stacked

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 03:17:00 +0530

Clouds, which can absorb or reflect incoming radiation and affect the amount of radiation escaping from Earth's atmosphere, remain the greatest source of uncertainty in global climate modeling.
By combining space-based observations with climate models, researchers are able to derive baseline spectral signals, called spectral fingerprints, of how changes in the physical properties of the Earth's atmosphere, such as the concentration of carbon dioxide or the relative humidity, affect the amount of radiation escaping from the top of the atmosphere.

Researchers can then use these spectral fingerprints to attribute changes in the observed top-of-atmosphere radiation to changes in individual atmospheric properties. However, recent research has shown that the way global climate models represent the interactions between clouds and radiation can complicate the process of making these spectral fingerprints.

Researchers are finding that what matters is not only the presence or absence of clouds at each location represented in the model but also how the clouds are stacked vertically within each model grid.
Using a simulation experiment to mimic the future climate, Chen et al. tested how different approaches to parameterize cloud stacking affect the attributions of climate change signals in the longwave spectra recorded at the top of the atmosphere.

The authors tested three approaches to parameterize cloud stacking and find that the differences in stacking assumptions affected the modeled global mean for outgoing longwave radiation by only a few watts per square meter.

The global average for outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere is around 240 watts per square meter. However, based on which parameterization is used, similar changes in the portion of the sky covered by clouds (especially the clouds in the middle and lower troposphere) can lead to spectral fingerprints that differ by up to a factor of two in the amplitude.
Citation: Xiuhong Chen, Xianglei Huang, Xu Liu, ' Non-negligible effects of cloud vertical overlapping assumptions on longwave spectral fingerprinting studies',

Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50562

Facebook aims for piece of big TV ad budgets

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 02:00:00 +0530

Even before Facebook begins displaying splashy video ads, it's preparing for a backlash from users like Amy Pittel.

The 44-year-old writer and stay-at-home mother from Livermore, Calif., says she's weary of being bombarded by ads on Facebook and the rest of the Internet, most of which she ignores.
"I shall continue to do as I always have when an unwanted video ad or commercial comes on: check my email or another Web page until the ad is finished," Pittel said.

So why would Facebook risk alienating its 1.1 billion users? It's betting it can finally crack open that big pot of dollars that marketers spend on television. Advertisers are expected to shell out $205 billion on TV commercials this year, dwarfing what they spend online and on mobile devices.

Starting as early as this fall, Facebook plans to charge between $1 million and $2.5 million a day for video ads depending on the size of the audience an advertiser is trying to reach, according to a person familiar with the new ads who is not authorized to publicly discuss them.

The ads would play automatically on mobile devices and desktop computers but without sound unless users tap on or interact with them. Facebook users will see multiple 15-second video ads from one advertiser each day, he said.

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.

It's a tantalizing proposition for marketers: online video ads that combine the images, sound and movement of TV commercials with the reach of the Internet and the ability to target key demographics and then track how people respond to ads.

Google Inc.'s YouTube, Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc. are making their own pitches for TV ad dollars. AOL recently bought online video advertising firm Adap.tv in a $405 million deal. And, in May, Twitter announced it was forming partnerships with media companies to track what people are tweeting while watching shows. The San Francisco company also has a deal with Nielsen to launch its own rating system this fall to measure the reach of TV shows on Twitter.

"We believe that the next step for Google, Facebook, Amazon and other Internet players is to finally attract ad dollars from the sizable TV market," Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter said in a research report.

A recent survey from research firm EMarketer Inc. found that 75 percent of media buyers are likely or very likely to shift TV dollars to digital video advertising in the coming year, he noted.

"This changing mind-set on the part of advertisers presents a major opportunity for Google, Facebook and others to finally gain share from TV ad budgets," Schachter said.

Facebook has begun making its case with a study it commissioned from Nielsen that it drew more people in the 18-to-24 age group in prime-time viewing hours on weeknights than any of the four major television networks. Videos made and shared through its new video feature on Instagram are also catching on quickly.
"Facebook is clearly trying to compete with TV, and the ad dollars that have historically gone that direction. Their story is that more sophisticated targeting and better measurement capabilities of Facebook are not just competitive with television, but may in fact be better," said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president at EMarketer. "We will see if that's really the case."

Wall Street already has high expectations for Facebook's potential to draw TV ad dollars.

Facebook shares have surged past $38, its initial public stock offering price, as the company gains momentum in its mobile advertising business and as analysts publish bullish estimates for how much revenue video ads could bring.

Morgan Stanley estimates that video ads could generate $3.5 billion for Facebook by 2017. By next year, video ads could represent 10 percent of the social network's advertising revenue, analysts there said.
"Video is the new black," said Tim Hanlon, founder and chief executive of the Vertere Group, an advertising consulting firm. "Everyone wants to do video, even if it doesn't seem to fit. And I think on its face, video in social networks is a tough fit."

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser says he thinks his Wall Street colleagues are overestimating the opportunity for Facebook.

"It will likely be more modest than optimists might expect, and what they generate will not likely come from television budgets," Wieser said.

Instead, Facebook probably will compete for advertising dollars that are currently going to YouTube, video ad networks and online portals, Wieser said.

He also thinks Facebook's goal to get $1 million to $2.5 million a day from video campaigns is unrealistic. Most digital budgets run tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, with a single larger advertiser committing millions to Facebook over the course of a year, he said.

Facebook already offers a way for marketers to show video ads. They can embed videos in page posts and promote them.

This will be a far more direct way for marketers to reach Facebook users, although at least at first, Facebook video ads will target users based only on age and gender.

"The absolute commitment which Facebook is asking for is well beyond the scope of what advertisers will pay in a single one-off buy," Wieser said. "This leads us to suspect that over time Facebook will iterate its offering to include video assets, which are priced at much lower costs and included in general ad sales packages."

Other analysts wonder whether video will prove effective on Facebook. TV ads have worked so successfully in the past half-century in part because people are passively staring at a screen, not flipping through status updates, commenting on friends' posts or uploading photos.

So far, Hulu and other services have emerged as the big winners in video advertising, analysts say, because they are showing ads before or during studio-produced, premium content, much the way consumers are accustomed to seeing ads on TV.

"It's an order of magnitude more difficult to do TV-like video in social network environments," Hanlon said.
He says that's why Facebook is treading so carefully.

Behind the scenes, Facebook has taken great pains to balance what is potentially a lucrative opportunity to sell a new kind of ad with the concerns of users who come to Facebook to catch up with friends, not to be pitched products. For example, it is working to make sure videos load quickly so they don't distract and annoy users.

Lisa Bryant, a digital marketer from Little Rock, Ark., says she understands that Facebook has to make money, and she's hopeful Facebook video ads will be worthwhile.

"The trick, I think, is finding the right balance of disruption with relevance, with shareability," Bryant said. "I don't have any problem with disruption, as long as the content served to me is relevant and useful."

$1 Syphilis Test To Make Diagnosis Readily Available Throughout Latin America

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 01:15:00 +0530

Syphilis has become a serious health issue (again) in Latin American countries, with 3 million cases. Every year 330,000 pregnant women with syphilis receive no treatment, resulting in 110,000 children born with congenital syphilis and a similar number of miscarriages.

Commercial kits for early syphilis detection are too expensive to use in a systematic screening of all pregnancies in Latin American countries where, in some areas, there are five new cases daily. The proteins needed for the test come from the bacterium that causes syphilis. And reducing the price of the tests requires producing high volumes of these proteins.

That's where The UN University's Venezuela-based BIOLAC programme, which in 2013 marks 25 years of advancing regional economic and health interests by building biotech science throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, provided help, supporting two courses in the development of diagnosis methods and recombinant protein production and purification processes.

The courses, conducted in Paraguay, were co-organized by Graciela Velazquez and Graciela Russomando of Paraguay and, from Uruguay, Dr. Monica Marín and Mario Señorale. They set a simple problem-based goal: develop a $1 dollar early detection kit that would work as easily as popular pregnancy tests. The syphilis test would be administered together with the pregnancy test in health centers, allowing for immediate point of care administration of penicillin to treat any detected infection.

"Early diagnosis is essential because to cure syphilis we only need penicillin. It is very cheap, very easy. The sole challenge is to obtain immediate diagnosis," says Marín, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Uruguay's University of the Republic. "BIOLAC was the starting point. Without them, this could not have been possible.

"Obtained via DNA technologies used in the training courses, the proteins have proven highly sensitive and specific in detecting syphilis. To mass produce them, we are now using BIOLAC workshops to optimize the genetic expression and purification experimental procedures.

"By next year, we anticipate having ready to use throughout Latin America a diagnostic test of the same quality as those available commercially today but at least 25 times cheaper.

"UNU-BIOLAC provides training and undertakes research at the intersection of science, technology, and society, helping the region employ modern biotechnology in social and economic development," says Jose Luis Ramirez, Director of the UNU-BIOLAC programme since year 2000.

Headquartered in Caracas at the campus of the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados beside Simon Bolivar University, Dr. Ramirez says a priority in this field is to halt the slow decay of archives of Bolivar's papers.
"UNU-BIOLAC has played a proud and important role in many proud achievements over the past 25 years, exemplified by such breakthroughs as the genetic sequencing of an increasingly valuable grape and the development of a low-cost test for syphilis -- a common and devastating illness," says Dr. Ramirez.
Says United Nations Under Secretary-General David Malone, Rector of UNU: "The conviction driving the launch of this programme -- that biotechnology science can make a major contribution to the health of the people and economies of Latin America and the Caribbean -- has proved true in so many ways over the past quarter century. We look forward to exploring further new possibilities of great relevance to these regions in years ahead."

Global Analysis Shows Cardiac Stents Beneficial in Women

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 00:22:00 +0530

Cardiac stents to open blocked heart arteries and reduce chest pain have been used for decades. However, cardiologists have never been certain that women benefitted from their use because clinical trials testing stents only included, at most, 25 percent women, making the overall findings mostly relevant to just men.

But now a new world-wide pooled analysis, presented by researchers from The Mount Sinai Medical Center at the ESC Congress 2013 in Amsterdam, organized by the European Society of Cardiology, provides strong evidence that stents work well in women. Their examination of 26 randomized stent studies that enrolled 11,557 women concluded that women benefit just as much from stents as men do.
All of the different generations of stents were also deemed to be effective. However, researchers also found that the use of the newest drug-eluting stents (DES) in women were safer in comparison to earlier era DES and bare-metal stents.

"We are happy that our analysis showed promising results for women and found stents are beneficial in females. The magnitude of benefit seems to be in line with what the clinical trials show in the general population they studied, which was mostly men," reports the study's lead investigator, Roxana Mehran, MD, Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials and Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

"Whenever you have only 25 percent of a population, such as women, represented in clinical trials, you are really never sure of the safety and efficacy of a medical device in that population," says Dr. Mehran. "Clinically, women are not always the same as men."

It is not clear why more women were not enrolled in the clinical trials testing different generations of stents. "It may be that many women did not meet the clinical trial inclusion criteria because they are generally older when a stent is needed and because of age, they may have additional health issues that made them ineligible. Also, they may just have chosen not to participate," according to Dr. Mehran.

While the reason for the lack of female participation in stent clinical trials was not the focus of this new study, the critical issue could make a difference in how women have been ultimately treated for their heart disease over the years, according to study co-author Usman Baber, MD, Director of Clinical Biometrics and Assistant Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

"There could very well be some reluctance by cardiologists in giving certain devices to women because of the lack of available safety and effectiveness data in the female population," Dr. Baber says.

"The results of our new analysis should provide reassurance to both physicians and female patients that the stent devices we are using have a similar efficacy and safety profile to what we have observed in men," says Dr. Baber.

In the ten year analysis of stent use, 10 percent of women received a bare-metal stent, 36 percent were given an earlier generation DES, and 54 percent received more advanced DES stents.

The investigators found that the three-year rates of death or heart attack among women treated with bare-metal stents, early generation DES, and newer generation DES, was 13 percent, 11 percent, and 9 percent, respectively. Rates of stent thrombosis -- the development of a new clot -- were 1 percent, 2 percent, and 1 percent, respectively. And the use of DES was also associated with a significant reduction in the need to reopen the artery -- the range was 19 percent, 8 percent, and 6 percent, respectively.

Interestingly, this new gender analysis on stent use was generated by an extraordinary global collaboration. The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) launched and sponsored the Women in Innovation (WIN) Initiative, a world-wide effort devoted to improving treatment of women with cardiovascular disease.

Researchers from many countries came together at a one-day Gender Data Forum, sponsored by SCAI, WIN, and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), where Dr. Mehran and her research team discussed the lack of outcomes evidence regarding the use of stents in women.

"At the end of the day, researchers and industry sponsors agreed to share data on their clinical trials to pool together and examine the available scientific evidence about stent use in women," Dr. Mehran says. "This kind of global collaboration is unprecedented, and could serve as a future model to look at disease treatments for other populations who are underrepresented in clinical trials."

The study was generously funded by the Women in Innovation (WIN) Initiative.

The 20 big questions in Science

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 2 Sep 2013 10:25:00 +0530

From the nature of the universe (that's if there is only one) to the purpose of dreams, there are lots of things we still don't know – but we might do soon. A new book seeks some answers

What's at the bottom of a black hole? See question 17. Photograph: Alamy

1 What is the universe made of?

Astronomers face an embarrassing conundrum: they don't know what 95% of the universe is made of. Atoms, which form everything we see around us, only account for a measly 5%. Over the past 80 years it has become clear that the substantial remainder is comprised of two shadowy entities – dark matter and dark energy. The former, first discovered in 1933, acts as an invisible glue, binding galaxies and galaxy clusters together. Unveiled in 1998, the latter is pushing the universe's expansion to ever greater speeds. Astronomers are closing in on the true identities of these unseen interlopers.

2 How did life begin?

Four billion years ago, something started stirring in the primordial soup. A few simple chemicals got together and made biology – the first molecules capable of replicating themselves appeared. We humans are linked by evolution to those early biological molecules. But how did the basic chemicals present on early Earth spontaneously arrange themselves into something resembling life? How did we get DNA? What did the first cells look like? More than half a century after the chemist Stanley Miller proposed his "primordial soup" theory, we still can't agree about what happened. Some say life began in hot pools near volcanoes, others that it was kick-started by meteorites hitting the sea.

3 Are we alone in the universe?

Perhaps not. Astronomers have been scouring the universe for places where water worlds might have given rise to life, from Europa and Mars in our solar system to planets many light years away. Radio telescopes have been eavesdropping on the heavens and in 1977 a signal bearing the potential hallmarks of an alien message was heard. Astronomers are now able to scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for oxygen and water. The next few decades will be an exciting time to be an alien hunter with up to 60bn potentially habitable planets in our Milky Way alone.

4 What makes us human?

Just looking at your DNA won't tell you – the human genome is 99% identical to a chimpanzee's and, for that matter, 50% to a banana's. We do, however, have bigger brains than most animals – not the biggest, but packed with three times as many neurons as a gorilla (86bn to be exact). A lot of the things we once thought distinguishing about us – language, tool-use, recognising yourself in the mirror – are seen in other animals. Perhaps it's our culture – and its subsequent effect on our genes (and vice versa) – that makes the difference. Scientists think that cooking and our mastery of fire may have helped us gain big brains. But it's possible that our capacity for co-operation and skills trade is what really makes this a planet of humans and not apes.

5 What is consciousness?

We're still not really sure. We do know that it's to do with different brain regions networked together rather than a single part of the brain. The thinking goes that if we figure out which bits of the brain are involved and how the neural circuitry works, we'll figure out how consciousness emerges, something that artificial intelligence and attempts to build a brain neuron by neuron may help with. The harder, more philosophical, question is why anything should be conscious in the first place. A good suggestion is that by integrating and processing lots of information, as well as focusing and blocking out rather than reacting to the sensory inputs bombarding us, we can distinguish between what's real and what's not and imagine multiple future scenarios that help us adapt and survive.

6 Why do we dream?

We spend around a third of our lives sleeping. Considering how much time we spend doing it, you might think we'd know everything about it. But scientists are still searching for a complete explanation of why we sleep and dream. Subscribers to Sigmund Freud's views believed dreams were expressions of unfulfilled wishes – often sexual – while others wonder whether dreams are anything but the random firings of a sleeping brain. Animal studies and advances in brain imaging have led us to a more complex understanding that suggests dreaming could play a role in memory, learning and emotions. Rats, for example, have been shown to replay their waking experiences in dreams, apparently helping them to solve complex tasks such as navigating mazes.

7 Why is there stuff?

You really shouldn't be here. The "stuff" you're made of is matter, which has a counterpart called antimatter differing only in electrical charge. When they meet, both disappear in a flash of energy. Our best theories suggest that the big bang created equal amounts of the two, meaning all matter should have since encountered its antimatter counterpart, scuppering them both and leaving the universe awash with only energy. Clearly nature has a subtle bias for matter otherwise you wouldn't exist. Researchers are sifting data from experiments like the Large Hadron Collider trying to understand why, with supersymmetry and neutrinos the two leading contenders.

8 Are there other universes?

Our universe is a very unlikely place. Alter some of its settings even slightly and life as we know it becomes impossible. In an attempt to unravel this "fine-tuning" problem, physicists are increasingly turning to the notion of other universes. If there is an infinite number of them in a "multiverse" then every combination of settings would be played out somewhere and, of course, you find yourself in the universe where you are able to exist. It may sound crazy, but evidence from cosmology and quantum physics is pointing in that direction.

9 Where do we put all the carbon?

For the past couple of hundred years, we've been filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide – unleashing it by burning fossil fuels that once locked away carbon below the Earth's surface. Now we have to put all that carbon back, or risk the consequences of a warming climate. But how do we do it? One idea is to bury it in old oil and gas fields. Another is to hide it away at the bottom of the sea. But we don't know how long it will stay there, or what the risks might be. Meanwhile, we have to protect natural, long-lasting stores of carbon, such as forests and peat bogs, and start making energy in a way that doesn't belch out even more.

10 How do we get more energy from the sun?

Dwindling supplies of fossil fuels mean we're in need of a new way to power our planet. Our nearest star offers more than one possible solution. We're already harnessing the sun's energy to produce solar power. Another idea is to use the energy in sunlight to split water into its component parts: oxygen, and hydrogen, which could provide a clean fuel for cars of the future. Scientists are also working on an energy solution that depends on recreating the processes going on inside stars themselves – they're building a nuclear fusion machine. The hope is that these solutions can meet our energy needs.

11 What's so weird about prime numbers?

The fact you can shop safely on the internet is thanks to prime numbers – those digits that can only be divided by themselves and one. Public key encryption – the heartbeat of internet commerce – uses prime numbers to fashion keys capable of locking away your sensitive information from prying eyes. And yet, despite their fundamental importance to our everyday lives, the primes remain an enigma. An apparent pattern within them – the Riemann hypothesis – has tantalised some of the brightest minds in mathematics for centuries. However, as yet, no one has been able to tame their weirdness. Doing so might just break the internet.

12 How do we beat bacteria?

Antibiotics are one of the miracles of modern medicine. Sir Alexander Fleming's Nobel prize-winning discovery led to medicines that fought some of the deadliest diseases and made surgery, transplants and chemotherapy possible. Yet this legacy is in danger – in Europe around 25,000 people die each year of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Our drug pipeline has been sputtering for decades and we've been making the problem worse through overprescription and misuse of antibiotics – an estimated 80% of US antibiotics goes to boosting farm animal growth. Thankfully, the advent of DNA sequencing is helping us discover antibiotics we never knew bacteria could produce. Alongside innovative, if gross-sounding, methods such as transplanting "good" bacteria from fecal matter, and the search for new bacteria deep in the oceans, we may yet keep abreast in this arms race with organisms 3bn years our senior.

13 Can computers keep getting faster?

Our tablets and smartphones are mini-computers that contain more computing power than astronauts took to the moon in 1969. But if we want to keep on increasing the amount of computing power we carry around in our pockets, how are we going to do it? There are only so many components you can cram on to a computer chip. Has the limit been reached, or is there another way to make a computer? Scientists are considering new materials, such as atomically thin carbon – graphene – as well as new systems, such as quantum computing.

14 Will we ever cure cancer?

The short answer is no. Not a single disease, but a loose group of many hundreds of diseases, cancer has been around since the dinosaurs and, being caused by haywire genes, the risk is hardwired into all of us. The longer we live, the more likely something might go wrong, in any number of ways. For cancer is a living thing – ever-evolving to survive. Yet though incredibly complicated, through genetics we're learning more and more about what causes it, how it spreads and getting better at treating and preventing it. And know this: up to half of all cancers – 3.7m a year – are preventable; quit smoking, drink and eat moderately, stay active, and avoid prolonged exposure to the midday sun.

15 When can I have a robot butler?

Robots can already serve drinks and carry suitcases. Modern robotics can offer us a "staff" of individually specialised robots: they ready your Amazon orders for delivery, milk your cows, sort your email and ferry you between airport terminals. But a truly "intelligent" robot requires us to crack artificial intelligence. The real question is whether you'd leave a robotic butler alone in the house with your granny. And with Japan aiming to have robotic aides caring for its elderly by 2025, we're thinking hard about it now.

16 What's at the bottom of the ocean?

Ninety-five per cent of the ocean is unexplored. What's down there? In 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard travelled seven miles down, to the deepest part of the ocean, in search of answers. Their voyage pushed the boundaries of human endeavour but gave them only a glimpse of life on the seafloor. It's so difficult getting to the bottom of the ocean that for the most part we have to resort to sending unmanned vehicles as scouts. The discoveries we've made so far – from bizarre fish such as the barreleye, with its transparent head, to a potential treatment for Alzheimer's made by crustaceans – are a tiny fraction of the strange world hidden below the waves.

17 What's at the bottom of a black hole?

It's a question we don't yet have the tools to answer. Einstein's general relativity says that when a black hole is created by a dying, collapsing massive star, it continues caving in until it forms an infinitely small, infinitely dense point called a singularity. But on such scales quantum physics probably has something to say too. Except that general relativity and quantum physics have never been the happiest of bedfellows – for decades they have withstood all attempts to unify them. However, a recent idea – called M-Theory – may one day explain the unseen centre of one of the universe's most extreme creations.

18 Can we live for ever?

We live in an amazing time: we're starting to think of "ageing" not as a fact of life, but a disease that can be treated and possibly prevented, or at least put off for a very long time. Our knowledge of what causes us to age – and what allows some animals to live longer than others – is expanding rapidly. And though we haven't quite worked out all the details, the clues we are gathering about DNA damage, the balance of ageing, metabolism and reproductive fitness, plus the genes that regulate this, are filling out a bigger picture, potentially leading to drug treatments. But the real question is not how we're going to live longer but how we are going to live well longer. And since many diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, are diseases of ageing, treating ageing itself could be the key.

19 How do we solve the population problem?

The number of people on our planet has doubled to more than 7 billion since the 1960s and it is expected that by 2050 there will be at least 9 billion of us. Where are we all going to live and how are we going to make enough food and fuel for our ever-growing population? Maybe we can ship everyone off to Mars or start building apartment blocks underground. We could even start feeding ourselves with lab-grown meat. These may sound like sci-fi solutions, but we might have to start taking them more seriously.

20 Is time travel possible?

Time travellers already walk among us. Thanks to Einstein's theory of special relativity, astronauts orbiting on the International Space Station experience time ticking more slowly. At that speed the effect is minuscule, but ramp up the velocity and the effect means that one day humans might travel thousands of years into the future. Nature seems to be less fond of people going the other way and returning to the past, however some physicists have concocted an elaborate blueprint for a way to do it using wormholes and spaceships. It could even be used to hand yourself a present on Christmas Day, or answer some of the many questions that surround the universe's great unknowns.

New Moon Probe Raises Questions About What to Do Next in Space

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 1 Sep 2013 16:25:00 +0530

Terry Zaperach/NASA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Engineers at a NASA site in Virginia preparing an unmanned craft for its moon mission, which is set to start Friday.

The last moon mission on NASA’s current schedule — a small, unmanned spacecraft that will study moon dust and the lunar atmosphere — is scheduled to launch on Friday from Wallops Island, Va., elating scientists who study the moon but highlighting political questions about what NASA should do next.

The Smart Car-size spacecraft, which NASA calls the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, will take 30 days to get into orbit around the moon, spend the next 30 days checking its equipment and proceed with scientific work for 100 days, searching for water molecules in the atmosphere and gathering data about the curious substance known as lunar dust. Then the probe, which goes by the acronym Ladee (pronounced laddie), will take a death plunge into the rocky surface of the subject it is studying.

The results of the scientific program could be helpful in preparing for future manned missions to the moon. Although NASA currently does not have such plans, some members of Congress have called on the space agency to return to the moon rather than pursuing its current space objectives.

Although there is wide agreement that NASA should ultimately aim for a manned flight to Mars, that goal is far off. The more immediate plan, which has been criticized on Capitol Hill, is to capture an asteroid and tow it closer to home so astronauts can visit it.

But NASA has continued sending unmanned spacecraft to the moon; the coming mission will be the third to go there in five years. While scientists are excited about what the experiment may yield, they are also concerned about the absence of future moon voyages on NASA’s schedule.

“If you’re going to fly this mission with the goal of understanding the atmosphere and how dust might affect future human missions, and you don’t have the future human missions, then part of the reason for the mission disappears,” said David Kring, senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a NASA-financed research institute in Houston.

Even if NASA sits on the sidelines, traffic to the moon will be busy. China announced last week that it would land its first exploratory rover on the moon by the end of the year. India, Japan, Russia and the European Space Agency also have unmanned missions in the works. And Google is sponsoring a competition called the Lunar X Prize, offering up to $20 million to the first company that can send a robotic spacecraft to the moon by 2015 and make it perform certain tasks.

The Ladee spacecraft was conceived when NASA was also planning new manned missions to the moon, which would have been the first since 1972. But the Obama administration canceled that program, called Constellation, in 2010, calling it over budget and behind schedule. Ladee stayed in the pipeline.

The spacecraft will search for water in the very thin lunar atmosphere, which is estimated to be 1/100,000th the density of Earth’s, perhaps similar to Mercury’s. Scientists want to find out how the ice on the moon’s poles managed to get there, said Richard Elphic, project scientist for the mission. They speculate that water molecules in the moon’s atmosphere may have migrated toward the poles and frozen in place, he said.

Evidence of water below the moon’s surface was discovered in recent years by a NASA-financed instrument aboard an Indian spacecraft, Chandrayaan-1. Data collected from the coming mission could help complete the picture of the moon’s water cycle, Dr. Elphic said.

The orbiter will also examine the movements of lunar dust. “Dust” is a bit of a misnomer, the scientists said: the crushed debris is extremely fine but also has jagged, sharp edges, since there is no wind or water on the moon’s surface to wear it down.

“It’s certainly more annoying than terrestrial dust,” said Sarah Noble, program scientist for the mission. “It’s like shards of glass, and it sticks to everything. If it gets into your eyes or your skin, it’s abrasive and it hurts. It also really gums up machinery.”

The dust poses a risk to robots and humans alike, as it can wreak havoc on equipment and spacesuits. Understanding the way the dust moves through the atmosphere will help scientists better prepare for longer missions on the moon, Dr. Elphic said.

Not everyone agrees that dust is a major concern. “Dust on the lunar surface does not pose a serious risk to future lunar exploration,” Dr. Kring said, pointing out that astronauts managed to survive the dust without major problems. But he still saw value in the dust inquiry, saying, “We always want to reduce the risk, and to understand the dust phenomenon in and of itself is worthwhile.”

NASA said the launching would break technological ground. Previously, spacecraft were custom-made for each mission and the models were not reusable. But this spacecraft was designed for assembly-line production, so that future missions could save money by using identical components.

The spacecraft’s design and construction cost $125 million out of a mission price of $250 million, said Dwayne Brown, a NASA spokesman. If the same design were used again, Mr. Brown said, NASA estimates that the cost would drop to $90 million for the first spacecraft and then over time to $55 million each. At the moment, though, NASA does not have other projects lined up to reuse the model, he said.

The spacecraft will ride on the maiden voyage of the Minotaur V rocket built by the Orbital Sciences Corporation, one of several private contractors NASA has turned to in recent years to supply rockets for its missions. The launching will be the first lunar mission for Orbital, as well as the first moon journey departing from Wallops Island.

In 2009 and 2011, Orbital lost two NASA satellites in failed launching of its Taurus XL rocket, costing the agency more than $600 million.

For this mission to succeed, Ladee will need to launch, separate from the Minotaur V, and insert itself into lunar orbit. Then, NASA will be able to begin its experiments.

“Once we’re on the moon, we’ll breathe a big sigh of relief,” Dr. Noble said.

Economic View: A Carbon Tax That America Could Live With

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 1 Sep 2013 15:06:00 +0530

THIS summer, the Obama administration released the President’s Climate Action Plan. It is a grab bag of regulations and policy initiatives aimed at reducing the nation’s carbon emissions, which many scientists believe contribute to global warming.

This got me to thinking: What might I do to reduce my own carbon emissions? Here are some things I came up with. Think of them as Greg Mankiw’s Climate Action Plan.

• I could buy a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.

• I could swap my traditional car for one with new technology, like a hybrid or an electric vehicle.

• I could car-pool to work.

• I could use public transportation.

• I could move closer to my job.

• I could buy a smaller house that requires less energy to heat and cool.

• I could adjust the thermostat to keep my home cooler in winter and warmer in summer.

• I could put solar panels on my roof.

• I could buy more energy-efficient home appliances.

• I could eat more locally produced foods, which need less fuel to transport.

I could go on, but by now you get the idea. Every day, we all make lifestyle choices that affect how much carbon is emitted. These decisions are personal but have global impact. Economists call the effects of our personal decisions on others “externalities.”

The main question is how we, as a society, ensure that we all make the right decisions, taking into account both the personal impact of our actions and the externalities. There are three approaches.

One approach is to appeal to individuals’ sense of social responsibility. This is what President Jimmy Carter did during the energy crisis of the 1970s. He encouraged Americans to adjust their thermostats and insulate their homes. I can still picture Mr. Carter sitting in the chilly White House, wearing his cardigan sweater.

It’s true that as a socially responsible economist, I always weigh the global costs and global benefits before pushing the ignition button on my car. (Yes, my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek.) But expecting most people to act this way is unrealistic. Life is busy, everyone has his or her own priorities, and even knowing the global impact of one’s own actions is a daunting task.

THE second approach is to use government regulation to change the decisions that people make. An example is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards that regulate the emissions of cars sold. The President’s Climate Action Plan is filled with small regulatory changes aimed at making Americans live more carbon-efficient lives.

Yet this regulatory approach is fraught with problems. One is that it creates an inevitable tension between the products that consumers want to buy and the products that companies are allowed to sell. Robert A. Lutz, the former General Motors executive, laments that CAFE standards are “a huge bureaucratic nightmare.” He says, “CAFE is like trying to cure obesity by requiring clothing manufacturers to make smaller sizes.”

Yet another problem with such regulations is that they can influence only a small number of crucial decisions. In a free society, the government can’t easily regulate how close I live to work, whether I car-pool with my neighbor or how often I don a cardigan. Yet if we are to reduce carbon emissions at minimum cost, we need a policy that encompasses all possible margins of adjustment.

Fortunately, a policy broader in scope is possible, which brings us to the third approach to dealing with climate externalities: putting a price on carbon emissions. If the government charged a fee for each emission of carbon, that fee would be built into the prices of products and lifestyles. When making everyday decisions, people would naturally look at the prices they face and, in effect, take into account the global impact of their choices. In economics jargon, a price on carbon would induce people to “internalize the externality.”

A bill introduced this year by Representatives Henry A. Waxman and Earl Blumenauer and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Brian Schatz does exactly that. Their proposed carbon fee — or carbon tax, if you prefer — is more effective and less invasive than the regulatory approach that the federal government has traditionally pursued.

The four sponsors are all Democrats, which raises the question of whether such legislation could ever make its way through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The crucial point is what is done with the revenue raised by the carbon fee. If it’s used to finance larger government, Republicans would have every reason to balk. But if the Democratic sponsors conceded to using the new revenue to reduce personal and corporate income tax rates, a bipartisan compromise is possible to imagine.

Among economists, the issue is largely a no-brainer. In December 2011, the IGM Forum asked a panel of 41 prominent economists about this statement: “A tax on the carbon content of fuels would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than would a collection of policies such as ‘corporate average fuel economy’ requirements for automobiles.” Ninety percent of the panelists agreed.

Could such an overwhelming consensus of economists be wrong? Well, actually, yes. But in this case, I am confident that the economics profession has it right. The hard part is persuading the public and the politicians.

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President George W. Bush.

National Park Service director gets firsthand look at the Rim fire

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 1 Sep 2013 14:00:00 +0530

A member of the BLM Silver State Hotshot crew uses a drip torch to set back fires on the southern flank of the Rim Fire in California. (Mike McMillan, Associated Press / August 30, 2013)

GROVELAND, Calif. — As the Rim fire has burned into Yosemite National Park and into the record books, it has been watched around the world. From Washington, D.C., National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said he monitored the blaze's progress daily as flames threatened Sierra Nevada communities, ancient sequoia groves and the reservoir that holds San Francisco's water supply.

On Saturday, he went to see the blaze firsthand.

"This is a gnarly fire," Jarvis told firefighters at a morning briefing. "It's got high attention, huge fuels, big flame lengths and lots of really, really dry, climate-driven conditions."

Jarvis visited what has become one of the largest wildfires in California history as it continued to expand slowly and deter some visitors to Yosemite at the start of the busy Labor Day weekend. Crews fighting the 222,777-acre blaze had reached 40% containment by Saturday evening.

In an interview with The Times, Jarvis said the massive Rim fire is one example of what is to be expected across the West as climate change, drought and decades of fire suppression leave forests dried-out, overloaded with fuel and more vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires.

"It is a fire that's demonstrating the challenges that we in the land-management business are facing with climate change," he said. "A legacy of fire suppression in these forests and, recently, a reduction in our fire funding is all resulting in these huge fires that are incredibly difficult to control and very expensive."

To prepare the landscape, Jarvis said parks like Yosemite must reduce the fuels that have built up in forests that have not burned in many decades. Under Park Service policy, that means forest thinning, prescribed burns and, sometimes, using natural fires as a tool.

Firefighters have been battling the Rim fire since it broke out Aug. 17 in the Stanislaus National Forest. It drew worldwide attention once it crossed into Yosemite, where about a quarter of the 348-square-mile blaze is now burning.

Jarvis' survey of the fire followed visits last week by Gov. Jerry Brown and Tom Tidwell, chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

He arrived as the blaze entered its third week during one of the most popular weekends of the year for U.S. parks. Yosemite officials say it has led to a decline in visitors, particularly starting Saturday after winds shifted and pushed fairly heavy smoke into Yosemite Valley, some 20 miles southeast of the fire's edge.

On the road to the northern part of Yosemite, he said, he was struck by the sight of all the other vehicles heading in the opposite direction. A stretch of Tioga Road, or California 120, has been closed because of the fire, cutting off the east-west route through the park. But much of Yosemite remained open and many campgrounds were full on Saturday, a park spokeswoman said.

The smoky skies could give an idea of how the park might have looked before it was first protected nearly 150 years ago. President Lincoln signed legislation that gave Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the state of California, a precursor to its becoming a national park in 1890.

If you had visited Yosemite back then, Jarvis said, it "would have had smoke all the time because nobody was putting out the fires. There were lightning strikes and fires just burned until winter came."
He is not advocating for a return to that practice with the Rim fire.

"I want to be clear: There is no 'let it burn' policy here. We are putting this fire out," he said. "But at the same time, we recognize fire is essential to this system."

Jarvis acknowledged the years of work ahead to rehabilitate the fire-scarred land but said he is not overly worried about the recovery of tens of thousands of acres of Yosemite forest.

"Nature is pretty resilient," he said. Just as the forest of Yellowstone National Park has bounced back since the fires that raged there in 1988, Yosemite "will see mostly natural recovery over time."

Why Do U.S. Behavioral Science Researchers Keep Skewing Their Results?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 07:30:00 +0530

Mad Science J.J. via Wikimedia Commons

Despite its lofty ideals, science isn't always impartial and unbiased. Scientists on occasion have fabricated data, or at least tweaked it to suit their needs. They've got a career to make, after all, and boring findings don't bring fame and fortune.

So how often are scientists prone to exaggerating or cherry-picking their results? When it comes to U.S.-based soft sciences, kind of a lot. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, behavioral sciences researchers from the U.S. in particular are more likely to overestimate their findings, compared to researchers from other countries. And it was only in behavioral research--the same "U.S. effect" did not show up in nonbehavioral studies.

Behavioral science encompasses anything that studies the way people (or animals) act and interact in the world, usually through observation. So that covers fields like psychology, sociology and anthropology.
"Behavioral studies have lower methodological consensus and higher noise, making US researchers potentially more likely to express an underlying propensity to report strong and significant findings," the researchers write.

And why do they think U.S. scientists are so prone to exaggeration?

Our preferred hypothesis is derived from the fact that researchers in the United States have been exposed for a longer time than those in other countries to an unfortunate combination of pressures to publish and winner-takes-all system of rewards. This condition is believed to push researchers into either producing many results and then only publishing the most impressive ones, or to make the best of what they got by making them seem as important as possible, through post hoc analyses, rehypothesizing, and other more or less questionable practices.

New 'Walking' Shark Species

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 05:30:00 +0530

The newfound species of walking shark, Hemiscyllium Halmahera, grows up to 27 inches (70 centimeters) long and is harmless to humans.
Credit: © Conservation International / Mark Erdmann

A new species of "walking" shark has been discovered in a reef off a remote Indonesian island.
These sharks don't always rely on "walking" to move about — often, they only appear to touch the seafloor as they swim using their pectoral and dorsal fins in a walklike gait, said Fahmi (who only goes by one name), a shark researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Science who wasn't involved in the study describing the species. In the video of the newfound walking shark, however, the animal is clearly touching the seafloor. [Video: New Shark "Walks" Along Reef]

The shark grows up to 27 inches (70 centimeters) long and is harmless to humans, said Mark Erdmann, a marine biologist and adviser with Conservation International who was also a co-author on the study describing the species. The animal has been dubbed Hemiscyllium halmahera, named after the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera where it was found. Sharks in its genus (the taxonomic group above species) are also known as epaulette sharks, since many sport markings that resemble military epaulettes, according to a Conservation International statement.

Of all known epaulette or walking sharks, six of nine species hail from Indonesia, Fahmi told LiveScience. The animals lay eggs under coral ledges, after which the young sharks lead relatively sedentary lives until adulthood, according to the statement. These sharks do not cross areas of deep water and are found in isolated reefs throughout Indonesian and western Pacific waters, the statement noted.
Coincident with the discovery of the new species, Indonesia has announced various initiatives to protect sharks. In the last six months, for example, two of the country's biggest tourist destinations, the island groups of Raja Ampat and West Manggarai, have outlawed shark and ray fishing in their waters, according to the statement. The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries is also drafting legislation to protect endangered sharks and rays, said Agus Dermawan, director of the Ministry's Marine Conservation Directorate, in the release.

Part of the reason for the shift toward conservation is that sharks are important for tourism; sharks are generally worth more alive in the ocean than they are worth dead, Dermawan said. "We now know, for instance, that a living manta ray is worth up to US $1.9 million to our economy over the course of its lifetime, compared to a value of only $40 to $200 for its meat and gill-rakers," which are used in traditional medicines, Dermawan said.

A study describing the new walking shark species was published in July in the Journal of Ichthyology.

NASA's next Mission on Mars will chase the Secret of Atmosphere of Red Planet

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0530

This artist's conception shows the NASA's MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. The mission will launch in late 2013. / LASP

Scientists are gearing up for NASA's next spacecraft to Mars, an orbiter equipped to probe the Martian upper atmosphere for clues to how the Red Planet's atmosphere has thinned and how Mars' climate has evolved over time.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission, called MAVEN for short, will address the question of where the planet's once-thicker atmosphere -- and long ago flowing water -- went. Playing the role of detective, the spacecraft is expected to deliver puzzle pieces that will help scientists discern the astrobiological potential for life on Mars in the past, and perhaps even today.
MAVEN was the key focus of a 2013 New Media Practitioners Professional Development Workshop, held here Aug. 23-25 at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). MAVEN is due to launch aboard an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station later this year.

Final stage

"We're in the final stage of preparing for launch," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN at LASP and director of the university's Center for Astrobiology. "All of the science instruments are complete and on the spacecraft. We are on schedule and we are on budget."

MAVEN's launch window is Nov. 18 to Dec. 7. But thanks to the spacecraft retaining a low mass, an additional 12 to 13 days beyond the close of Dec. 7 is also available, Jakosky said.

"We want to have as much opportunity there as possible, because if we miss the launch period, it's 26 months before we get to do it again" Jakosky said. (That's how long it will take for Earth and Mars to once again reach the necessary alignment.)

Given a Nov. 18 departure date, and a 38-minute propulsive burn once it reaches Mars, MAVEN would swing into Mars orbit on Sept. 22, 2014.

With its outstretched solar wings, each tipped by a magnetometer, MAVEN is about the same length as a school bus, roughly 37 feet (11 meters).

Lost to space

Once on location, MAVEN will undergo five and a half weeks of a "transition phase" to set up for the start of scientific work, Jakosky said.

Armed with science instruments, MAVEN is prepared to, among other investigations, find out how much of the atmosphere of Mars and volatiles have been lost to space over time. Studying the current state of the planet's upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the solar wind is also high on the agenda.
"It's the simultaneity of measurements that's really the key to the MAVEN analysis," Jakosky said. No doubt, there's lots of room for surprise findings, he added.

Putting on his astrobiological hat, Jakosky said that by assaying the processes through which the top of the Martian atmosphere can be lost to space, scientists could better understand the changes in the climate of Mars over the last 4 billion years. That, in turn, means MAVEN might deliver insight into whether microbes could have survived on Mars in the past.

Extended mission

An extended mission for MAVEN offers "high scientific value," Jakosky said. "We designed everything for a one-year lifetime primary mission. Everything beyond that is icing on the cake." He noted the orbiter's onboard fuel could allow it to operate out to 2023.

The sun's activity level creates a bit of an uncertainty, said MAVEN science team member Janet Luhmann, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "We don't know how lucky we'll be," she said, but the team hopes the sun will churn out not-so-wimpy coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or outpourings of solar plasma, belching them at Mars during MAVEN's science gathering.

MAVEN should help satisfy human curiosity about both Earth's local universe and the bigger scale of things, Luhmann said. "Are we missing something in our picture of the story we're reconstructing?" Luhmann asked in an interview with SPACE.com. "That's essential. So, if nothing else, we will have constrained the question better."

The MAVEN mission offers a lot of scientific value, Luhmann said. "It opens up so many new insights, all at once."

Chit-chat sessions

With MAVEN on duty at the Red Planet, the spacecraft can offer an added bonus, carrying out coordinated observations with the European Space Agency's now-orbiting Mars Express.
NASA also plans some "chit-chat" sessions between MAVEN's Electra telecommunications relay package and the NASA Curiosity rover now on Mars, said Mehdi Benna, a planetary scientist and engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument is currently on the prowl for compounds associated with life, also exploring the ways in which these compounds are generated and destroyed in the Martian ecosphere.

"It's great to have the two assets," Benna said. "It's a win-win" to use the same type of mass spectrometers: one looking at the lower part of the atmosphere and one investigating the upper part of the atmosphere.

Fingers-crossed anxiety

Now a decade since the MAVEN mission was first sketched out, Jakosky is admittedly hungry to see launch day. But he has a little extra fingers-crossed anxiety about the always-risky business of rocket flight. That's because this mission's success depends on that of some other projects.

"I have had a tremendous interest in all of the Atlas launches leading up to ours," Jakosky told SPACE.com.
Next up is a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket that will take off on Sept. 18, and will toss the third U.S. Air Force Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite into orbit.

"If something happens to this one, there's going to be an incredible reluctance to launch another one -- that is, ours -- until they fully understand the cause of the problem and fix it," Jakosky said. "The Atlas 5 has a tremendous, positive success record, so I'm optimistic it will perform well."

Nevertheless, Jakosky said he and his colleagues talk amongst themselves and agree that the business of hurling payloads into space is not for the faint of heart. Jakosky himself falls back on a quote from one of "The Godfather" movies: "This is the business we've chosen."

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's new book "Mission to Mars - My Vision for Space Exploration" published by National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A step closer in the Search of Cosmic Rays Origin

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 01:30:00 +0530

Cosmic rays, high-energy particles, can damage electronics on Earth, as well as human and non-human DNA, which puts astronauts in space at risk but has also caused any number of genetic modifications in plants that are considered completely natural.

Their origin has confounded scientists for decades. A study using data collected by IceTop at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, reveals new information that may help unravel the longstanding mystery of exactly how and where these "rays", because the more scientists learn about the energy spectrum and chemical composition of cosmic rays, the closer humanity will come to uncovering where these energetic particles originate.
Cosmic rays are known to reach energies above 100 billion giga-electron volts (1011 GeV). The data reported in this latest paper cover the energy range from 1.6 times 106 GeV to 109 GeV. Researchers are particularly interested in identifying cosmic rays in this interval because the transition from cosmic rays produced in the Milky Way Galaxy to "extragalactic" cosmic rays, produced outside our galaxy, is expected to occur in this energy range.

The cosmic ray energy spectrum, shows the steepening at the "knee." Below the knee, cosmic rays are galactic in origin; above that energy, particles from more distant regions in our universe become more and more likely. Credit: Bakhtiyar Ruzybayev/University of Delaware

Exploding stars called supernovae are among the sources of cosmic rays here in the Milky Way, while distant objects such as collapsing massive stars and active galactic nuclei far from the Milky Way are believed to produce the highest energy particles in nature.

As University of Delaware physicist Bakhtiyar Ruzybayev, the study's corresponding author, points out in the scientific figure (above) submitted to the journal, the cosmic-ray energy spectrum does not follow a simple power law between the "knee" around 4 PeV (peta-electron volts) and the "ankle" around 4 EeV (exa-electron volts), as previously thought, but exhibits features like hardening around 20 PeV and steepening around 130 PeV.

"The spectrum steepens at the 'knee,' which is generally interpreted as the beginning of the end of the galactic population. Below the knee, cosmic rays are galactic in origin, while above that energy, particles from more distant regions in our universe become more and more likely," Ruzybayev explained. "These measurements provide new constraints that must be satisfied by any models that try to explain the acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays."

Citation: Aartsen, M. G. and Abbasi, R. and Abdou, Y. and Ackermann, M. and Adams, J. and Aguilar, J. A. and Ahlers, M. and Altmann, D. and Auffenberg, J. and Bai, X. and Baker, M. and Barwick, S. W. and Baum, V. and Bay, R. and Beatty, J. J. and Bechet, S. and Becker Tjus, J. and Becker, K.-H. and Benabderrahmane, M. L. and BenZvi, S. and Berghaus, P. and Berley, D. and Bernardini, E. and Bernhard, A. and Bertrand, D. and Besson, D. Z. and Binder, G. and Bindig, D. and Bissok, M. and Blaufuss, E. and Blumenthal, J. and Boersma, D. J. and Bohaichuk, S. and Bohm, C. and Bose, D. and B\"oser, S. and Botner, O. and Brayeur, L. and Bretz, H.-P. and Brown, A. M. and Bruijn, R. and Brunner, J. and Carson, M. and Casey, J. and Casier, M. and Chirkin, D. and Christov, A. and Christy, B. and Clark, K. and Clevermann, F. and Coenders, S. and Cohen, S. and Cowen, D. F. and Cruz Silva, A. H. and Danninger, M. and Daughhetee, J. and Davis, J. C. and De Clercq, C. and De Ridder, S. and Desiati, P. and de Vries, K. D. and de With, M. and DeYoung, T. and D\'\iaz-V\'elez, J. C. and Dunkman, M. and Eagan, R. and Eberhardt, B. and Eisch, J. and Ellsworth, R. W. and Euler, S. and Evenson, P. A. and Fadiran, O. and Fazely, A. R. and Fedynitch, A. and Feintzeig, J. and Feusels, T. and Filimonov, K. and Finley, C. and Fischer-Wasels, T. and Flis, S. and Franckowiak, A. and Frantzen, K. and Fuchs, T. and Gaisser, T. K. and Gallagher, J. and Gerhardt, L. and Gladstone, L. and Glusenkamp, T. and Goldschmidt, A. and Golup, G. and Gonzalez, J. G. and Goodman, J. A. and G'ora, D. and Grandmont, D. T. and Grant, D. and Groß, A. and Ha, C. and Haj Ismail, A. and Hallen, P. and Hallgren, A. and Halzen, F. and Hanson, K. and Heereman, D. and Heinen, D. and Helbing, K. and Hellauer, R. and Hickford, S. and Hill, G. C. and Hoffman, K. D. and Hoffmann, R. and Homeier, A. and Hoshina, K. and Huelsnitz, W. and Hulth, P. O. and Hultqvist, K. and Hussain, S. and Ishihara, A. and Jacobi, E. and Jacobsen, J. and Jagielski, K. and Japaridze, G. S. and Jero, K. and Jlelati, O. and Kaminsky, B. and Kappes, A. and Karg, T. and Karle, A. and Kelley, J. L. and Kiryluk, J. and Klas, J. and Klein, S. R. and Kohne, J.-H. and Kohnen, G. and Kolanoski, H. and Kopke, L. and Kopper, C. and Kopper, S. and Koskinen, D. J. and Kowalski, M. and Krasberg, M. and Krings, K. and Kroll, G. and Kunnen, J. and Kurahashi, N. and Kuwabara, T. and Labare, M. and Landsman, H. and Larson, M. J. and Lesiak-Bzdak, M. and Leuermann, M. and Leute, J. and Lunemann, J. and Maciias, O. and Madsen, J. and Maggi, G. and Maruyama, R. and Mase, K. and Matis, H. S. and McNally, F. and Meagher, K. and Merck, M. and Meures, T. and Miarecki, S. and Middell, E. and Milke, N. and Miller, J. and Mohrmann, L. and Montaruli, T. and Morse, R. and Nahnhauer, R. and Naumann, U. and Niederhausen, H. and Nowicki, S. C. and Nygren, D. R. and Obertacke, A. and Odrowski, S. and Olivas, A. and Omairat, A. and O' Murchadha, A. and Paul, L. and Pepper, J. A. and Perez de los Heros, C. and Pfendner, C. and Pieloth, D. and Pinat, E. and Posselt, J. and Price, P. B. and Przybylski, G. T. and Radel, L. and Rameez, M. and Rawlins, K. and Redl, P. and Reimann, R. and Resconi, E. and Rhode, W. and Ribordy, M. and Richman, M. and Riedel, B. and Rodrigues, J. P. and Rott, C. and Ruhe, T. and Ruzybayev, B. and Ryckbosch, D. and Saba, S. M. and Salameh, T. and Sander, H.-G. and Santander, M. and Sarkar, S. and Schatto, K. and Scheriau, F. and Schmidt, T. and Schmitz, M. and Schoenen, S. and Schoneberg, S. and Schonwald, A. and Schukraft, A. and Schulte, L. and Schulz, O. and Seckel, D. and Sestayo, Y. and Seunarine, S. and Shanidze, R. and Sheremata, C. and Smith, M. W. E. and Soldin, D. and Spiczak, G. M. and Spiering, C. and Stamatikos, M. and Stanev, T. and Stasik, A. and Stezelberger, T. and Stokstad, R. G. and Stößl, A. and Strahler, E. A. and Ström, R. and Sullivan, G. W. and Taavola, H. and Taboada, I. and Tamburro, A. and Tepe, A. and Ter-Antonyan, S. and G. Tešić and Tilav, S. and Toale, P. A. and Toscano, S. and Unger, E. and Usner, M. and Vallecorsa, S. and van Eijndhoven, N. and Van Overloop, A. and van Santen, J. and Vehring, M. and Voge, M. and Vraeghe, M. and Walck, C. and Waldenmaier, T. and Wallraff, M. and Weaver, Ch. and Wellons, M. and Wendt, C. and Westerhoff, S. and Whitehorn, N. and Wiebe, K. and Wiebusch, C. H. and Williams, D. R. and Wissing, H. and Wolf, M. and Wood, T. R. and Woschnagg, K. and Xu, C. and Xu, D. L. and Xu, X. W. and Yanez, J. P. and Yodh, G. and Yoshida, S. and Zarzhitsky, P. and Ziemann, J. and Zierke, S. and Zoll, M.,IceCube Collaboration, 'Measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum with IceTop-73', Phys. Rev. D » Volume 88 » Issue 4 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.88.042004

Element No. 115: Made in Lab, Fleeting Element May Join Periodic Table

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 00:25:00 +0530

How do you find a new element, like the recently discovered superheavy chemical element 115?

Elements beyond atomic number 104 are referred to as superheavy elements and are produced at accelerator laboratories and generally decay after a short time. Initial reports about an element with atomic number 115 were released from a research center in Russia in 2004 but their indirect evidence was insufficient for an official discovery.

The latest group was able to present a way to directly identify new superheavy elements by taking a sample of the exotic element americium and depositing a layer on a thin foil, which was subsequently bombarded with calcium ions at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. For the first time, the exploitation of a new detector system allowed registering photons along with the alpha-decay of the new element and its daughter products.

Measured photon energies correspond to those expected for X-rays from these products and thus serve as the element's fingerprint.

"This can be regarded as one of the most important experiments in the field in recent years, because at last it is clear that even the heaviest elements' fingerprints can be taken," said Professor Dirk Rudolph from Lund University in Sweden and Professor Christoph Düllmann, professor at Mainz University and leading scientist at GSI Darmstadt. "The result gives high confidence to previous reports. It also lays the basis for future measurements of this kind."

Element 115 is yet to be named: a committee comprising members of the international unions of pure and applied physics and chemistry will review the new findings and decide whether further experiments are needed to acknowledge official discovery of the element. Only after acceptance can a name may be proposed by the discoverers.

Besides the X-ray events, the researchers have also obtained data giving them a deeper insight into the structure and properties of the heaviest currently known atomic nuclei. This paves the way towards improved predictions for properties of nuclei beyond the border of current knowledge.

Upcoming in the scientific journal The Physical Review Letters.

Menthol Cigrettes are getting more Popular among Young People

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 23:58:00 +0530

A new study on mentholated cigarette use in the U.S. finds an increase in menthol cigarette smoking among young adults and concludes that efforts to reduce smoking likely are being thwarted by the sale and marketing of mentholated cigarettes, including emerging varieties of established youth brands.

“Our findings indicate that youth are heavy consumers of mentholated cigarettes, and that overall menthol cigarette smoking has either remained constant or increased in all three age groups we studied, while non-menthol smoking has decreased,” says lead researcher Gary Giovino, PhD, professor and chair of the University at Buffalo Department of Community Health and Health Behaviors.
A photo of Giovino is available here.

Giovino, one of the world’s leading tobacco surveillance researchers, estimated menthol and non-menthol cigarette use during 2004-10 using annual data on nearly 390,000 persons 12 years old and older who took part in the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. The data included more than 84,000 smokers.
The results, which were published online in the international journal, Tobacco Control showed that:

Among cigarette smokers, menthol cigarette use was more common among 12-17 year olds (56.7 percent) and 18-25 year olds (45 percent) than among older persons (range 30.5 percent to 32.9 percent).
Menthol use was associated with being younger, female, and of non-white race or ethnicity.
Among all adolescents, the percent who smoked non-menthol cigarettes decreased from 2004-10, while menthol smoking rates remained c
Among all young adults, the percent who smoked non-menthol cigarettes also declined, while menthol smoking rates increased.
The use of Camel menthol and Marlboro menthol increased among adolescent and young adult smokers, particularly non-Hispanic whites, during the study period.

“The study results should inform the FDA regarding the potential public health impact of a menthol ban,” Giovino says.

“The FDA is considering banning menthol cigarettes, or other regulatory options,” he says. “This research provides an important view of the trends and patterns of menthol use in the nation as a whole. The FDA will consider these findings and findings from multiple other studies as it goes forward.”

Giovino is particularly alarmed that the findings show youth are heavy consumers of mentholated cigarettes and the use of menthols is specifically associated with being younger, female and of non-white ethnicity.
“This finding indicates that mentholated cigarettes are a ‘starter product’ for kids in part because menthol makes it easier to inhale for beginners,” says Giovino. “Simply stated, menthol sweetens the poison, making it easier to smoke. Young people often think menthol cigarettes are safer, in part because they feel less harsh.
“When I was growing up, one of my older friends said he didn’t think that menthol cigarette smoking was that dangerous because he was told that they were good for you if you got a cold,” says Giovino. “It turns out that Kool was advertising that way for a long time but was stopped from doing so by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) around 1955.

NASA Research: Why our Giant Black Holes Spiting and Consume less Material than Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 23:31:00 +0530

SgrA* closeup: The blue fuzzy object at the center are X-rays from emitted Sgr A*, the super massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. (Credit: Courtesy Q. Daniel Wang, UMass Amherst)

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes. New Chandra images of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, indicate that less than 1 percent of the gas initially within Sgr A*'s gravitational grasp ever reaches the point of no return, also called the event horizon. Instead, much of the gas is ejected before it gets near the event horizon and has a chance to brighten, leading to feeble X-ray emissions.

These new findings are the result of one of the longest observation campaigns ever performed with Chandra. The spacecraft collected five weeks' worth of data on Sgr A* in 2012. The researchers used this observation period to capture unusually detailed and sensitive X-ray images and energy signatures of super-heated gas swirling around Sgr A*, whose mass is about 4 million times that of the sun.
"We think most large galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center, but they are too far away for us to study how matter flows near it," said Q. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who led of a study published Thursday in the journal Science. "Sgr A* is one of very few black holes close enough for us to actually witness this process."

The researchers found that the Chandra data from Sgr A* did not support theoretical models in which the X-rays are emitted from a concentration of smaller stars around the black hole. Instead, the X-ray data show the gas near the black hole likely originates from winds produced by a disk-shaped distribution of young massive stars.

"This new Chandra image is one of the coolest I've ever seen," said co-author Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "We're watching Sgr A* capture hot gas ejected by nearby stars, and funnel it in towards its event horizon."

To plunge over the event horizon, material captured by a black hole must lose heat and momentum. The ejection of matter allows this to occur.

"Most of the gas must be thrown out so that a small amount can reach the black hole," said Feng Yuan of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China, the study's co-author. "Contrary to what some people think, black holes do not actually devour everything that's pulled towards them. Sgr A* is apparently finding much of its food hard to swallow."

The gas available to Sgr A* is very diffuse and super-hot, so it is hard for the black hole to capture and swallow it. The gluttonous black holes that power quasars and produce huge amounts of radiation have gas reservoirs much cooler and denser than that of Sgr A*.

The event horizon of Sgr A* casts a shadow against the glowing matter surrounding the black hole. This research could aid efforts using radio telescopes to observe and understand the shadow. It also will be useful for understanding the effect orbiting stars and gas clouds may have on matter flowing toward and away from the black hole.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra
For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit: http://chandra.si.edu

New Study says that 200,000 early Deaths were caused by Air Pollution

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 23:27:00 +0530


This graphic shows the annual average concentrations of fine particulates from U.S. sources of combustion emissions from (a) electric power generation; (b) industry; (c) commercial and residential sources; (d) road transportation; (e) marine transportation; (f) rail transportation; (g) sum of all combustion sources; (h) all sources.

Graphic: Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment

Researchers from MIT’s Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment have come out with some sobering new data on air pollution’s impact on Americans’ health.

The group tracked ground-level emissions from sources such as industrial smokestacks, vehicle tailpipes, marine and rail operations, and commercial and residential heating throughout the United States, and found that such air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths each year. Emissions from road transportation are the most significant contributor, causing 53,000 premature deaths, followed closely by power generation, with 52,000.

In a state-by-state analysis, the researchers found that California suffers the worst health impacts from air pollution, with about 21,000 early deaths annually, mostly attributed to road transportation and to commercial and residential emissions from heating and cooking.

The researchers also mapped local emissions in 5,695 U.S. cities, finding the highest emissions-related mortality rate in Baltimore, where 130 out of every 100,000 residents likely die in a given year due to long-term exposure to air pollution.

“In the past five to 10 years, the evidence linking air-pollution exposure to risk of early death has really solidified and gained scientific and political traction,” says Steven Barrett, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “There’s a realization that air pollution is a major problem in any city, and there’s a desire to do something about it.”

Barrett and his colleagues have published their results in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

Data divided

Barrett says that a person who dies from an air pollution-related cause typically dies about a decade earlier than he or she otherwise might have. To determine the number of early deaths from air pollution, the team first obtained emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emissions Inventory, a catalog of emissions sources nationwide. The researchers collected data from the year 2005, the most recent data available at the time of the study.

They then divided the data into six emissions sectors: electric power generation; industry; commercial and residential sources; road transportation; marine transportation; and rail transportation. Barrett’s team fed the emissions data from all six sources into an air-quality simulation of the impact of emissions on particles and gases in the atmosphere.

To see where emissions had the greatest impact, they removed each sector of interest from the simulation and observed the difference in pollutant concentrations. The team then overlaid the resulting pollutant data on population-density maps of the United States to observe which populations were most exposed to pollution from each source.

Health impacts sector by sector

The greatest number of emissions-related premature deaths came from road transportation, with 53,000 early deaths per year attributed to exhaust from the tailpipes of cars and trucks.

“It was surprising to me just how significant road transportation was,” Barrett observes, “especially when you imagine [that] coal-fired power stations are burning relatively dirty fuel.”

One explanation may be that vehicles tend to travel in populated areas, increasing large populations’ pollution exposure, whereas power plants are generally located far from most populations and their emissions are deposited at a higher altitude.

Pollution from electricity generation still accounted for 52,000 premature deaths annually. The largest impact was seen in the east-central United States and in the Midwest: Eastern power plants tend to use coal with higher sulfur content than Western plants.

Unsurprisingly, most premature deaths due to commercial and residential pollution sources, such as heating and cooking emissions, occurred in densely populated regions along the East and West coasts. Pollution from industrial activities was highest in the Midwest, roughly between Chicago and Detroit, as well as around Philadelphia, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Industrial emissions also peaked along the Gulf Coast region, possibly due to the proximity of the largest oil refineries in the United States.

Southern California saw the largest health impact from marine-derived pollution, such as from shipping and port activities, with 3,500 related early deaths. Emissions-related deaths from rail activities were comparatively slight, and spread uniformly across the east-central part of the country and the Midwest.

While the study is based on data from 2005, Barrett says the results are likely representative of today’s pollution-related health risks.

Jonathan Levy, a professor of environmental health at Boston University, says Barrett’s calculations for the overall number of premature deaths related to combustion emissions agree with similar conclusions by the Environmental Protection Agency. The group’s results — particularly the breakdown of emissions by state — provide valuable data in setting future environmental policy, he says.

“A public-health burden of this magnitude clearly requires significant policy attention, especially since technologies are readily available to address a significant fraction of these emissions,” says Levy, who was not involved in the research. “We have certainly invested significant societal resources to address far smaller impacts on public health.”

China is going to Launch its first Unmanned Rocket by the End of 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 18:10:00 +0530

China plans to land an unmanned exploratory rover on the moon by the end of 2013, a step forward in the country’s efforts to master the skills of space travel, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday.

The launching rocket and other components for the Chang’e-3 lunar probe, named after a goddess in Chinese mythology who flew to the moon, have already been assembled and tested, Xinhua reported, citing a meeting of the Chinese lunar exploration program.

“The Chang’e-3 mission will be our country’s first soft landing on an extraterrestrial body,” said the head of the lunar exploration program, Ma Xingrui, according to Xinhua. “The technology is complicated and extremely difficult, with huge risks and great responsibilities.”

The mission will build on China’s two previous Chang’e lunar exploration efforts: a craft launched in 2007 that orbited the moon, and another launched in 2010 that did the same and then embarked on deep-space exploration and tests. Chinese space engineers have also speculated about eventually attempting a manned mission to the moon.

China sees establishing a long-term presence in space as an important part of its emergence as a global power. This year, it sent three Chinese astronauts into orbit for a 15-day mission that included exercises in docking, an important skill needed to build and maintain a manned space station. China first sent an astronaut into space in 2003. The latest report did not give a specific date for the Chang’e-3 launching.

The United States, which landed astronauts on the moon starting in 1969, plans to launch its latest lunar probe on Sept. 6. The unmanned probe is meant to study lunar dust.

3D-Printing Not Yet Mainstream, But Critics Are Missing the Point (Op-Ed)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:38:00 +0530

The CubeX Trio from 3D Systems is just one example of hardware that has drawn polarizing opinions on its ability to impact society.
Credit: Scott Dunham, Photizo Group

Scott Dunham is a research manager with Photizo Group, a market research and consulting firm. This article was adapted from Dunham's post to the Photizo Group website.

First, it was the 3D-printing evangelists. They really started coming out of the woodwork around 2010, when 3D Systems bought into the personal 3D-printing market, making claims like "3D printing will be bigger than the Internet," and "3D printing is the next industrial revolution."

Do I dispute those claims directly? Not exactly, but I certainly recognize the nature of those who make such claims. Usually, they come from people who have a vested interest in making 3D printing popular.

Now, the 3D-printing detractors are getting their share of the spotlight — for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, I suppose. They're saying things like "3D printing is a gimmick," and "3D printing has no commercial value."

I do have to admit that, in my experience, those in the 3D-printing detractor camp usually have more direct experience with the technology than do the advocates. But I can't help but end up disagreeing with them to a greater degree than I do with the evangelists.

A recent survey from U.K.-based market research firm Ipsos MORI is making its rounds in the 3D blogosphere and Twittersphere under the headline "Only 6 Percent of Britons Want a 3D Printer," and is being accompanied by plenty of skepticism on what this might mean for the future of 3D printing as a widely adopted technology that will change life as we know it.

Here's the thing — whether you're an evangelist or detractor, few people are looking at "consumer" 3D printing with the right perspective. 3D printers aren't meant for everyone. I think content produced using 3D-printers will be more popular commercially than the actual printers themselves.

The elements of trial and error, persistence, and patience — which most people claim need to be eliminated from the desktop 3D-printing experience in order for it to succeed — will never be completely eliminated. You can't create something worthwhile without some degree of dedication, persistence and hardship. The thoughtless operation of the latest tablets and smartphones will not apply here.

What does this mean for widespread 3D-printing adoption? It simply means that most people need to put this fantastic technology into perspective. The study from Ipsos MORI illustrates this concept. Most people appear surprised that "only" 6 percent of the British population said they were interested in owning a 3D printer. Some assumed that, like the smartphone, 3D printers would, at this point, have nearly universal appeal among consumers. Others, seeing the 6 percent data point, would use this as validation to prove that 3D printers aren't legitimate and could never live up to the claims being made about them.

But let's think about this a little bit: 6 percent of the U.K.'s population is nearly 4 million people. The number of personal 3D printers that have been sold so far is likely fewer than 50,000 units worldwide. That's a staggering difference in potential future demand, in just one country.

Now, I'm not saying that survey really proves anything — there's still no telling if all those people who say they want a 3D printer will actually get one. But the point is this: At a consumer level, 3D printing is probably going to stay in the realm of hobbyist and semiprofessional usage by people who want to invest the time and effort to become proficient with the technology, in whatever form that may be. It is when these future hobbyists start applying 3D printing to their other hobbies and businesses that the technology will really start to take off.

The content that will be 3D printed in the future probably will be more popular than 3D printers themselves, in terms of consumer adoption. That content alone is going to be pretty revolutionary. But if the study out of Britain demonstrates anything, it's that there's still a huge pool of future demand for 3D printers. They might not be in every household, but if you're expecting them to be, you're probably looking at the technology the wrong way.

This story was provided by Tom's Guide, a sister site to LiveScience. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Tom's Guide.