A NASA call for novel ideas on how to tackle its ambitious mission to capture an asteroid and park it near the moon has paid off in spades, with the agency receiving hundreds of proposals from potential partners.

NASA has received more than 400 proposals from private companies, non-profit groups and international organizations in response to a call for asteroid-retrieval mission suggestions released last month, agency officials announced Friday (July 26). The space agency will review the submissions over the next month and plan to discuss the most promising ideas in a public workshop in September.

"We are really excited about the overwhelming response," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told reporters here at the NewSpace 2013 conference, adding that the ideas were "overwhelmingly positive."

NASA put out an official request for information on June 18 to seek input on how to achieve its asteroid retrieval mission. That asteroid capture plan, which NASA unveiled in April, is known as the agency's Asteroid Initiative.

M.P.E.C. 2013-O29, issued on 2013 July 20, reports the recovery of the Apollo asteroid 2003 DZ15 (magnitude 18) by F51 Pan-STARRS 1, Haleakala, on images taken on July 19.4 with a 1.8-m Ritchey-Chretien + CCD.

2003 DZ15 was discovered on February 2003 by 608 Haleakala-NEAT/MSSS and it has an estimated size of 95 m - 210 m (based on the object's absolute magnitude H=22.2) and it will have a close approach with Earth at about 9.1 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0233 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers) at 0037 UT on 2013 July 30. This asteroid will reach the peak magnitude ~16.5 on 29 and 30 July 2013. This is its closest approach to the Earth for this century, although it will make a pass nearly as close to the Earth in 2057 on February 12th.

We performed some follow-up measurements of this object, from the Q62 ITelescope network (Siding Spring, AU) on 2013, July 28.6, through a 0.50-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD + focal reducer. Below you can see our image, single 120-second exposure, taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~16.6 and moving at ~40.80 "/min. At the moment of the close approach 2003 DZ15 will move at ~52 "/min. Click on the image below to see a bigger version (the asteroid is trailed in the image due to its fast speed).
Here you can see a short animation showing the movement of 2003 DZ15 (three consecutive 120-second exposure).

Implications for Deciphering Differences in Disease Susceptibility, Drug Resistance and Effectiveness.

Humans are far more than merely the sum total of all the cells that form the organs and tissues. The digestive tract is also home to a vast colony of bacteria of all varieties, as well as the myriad viruses that prey upon them. Because the types of bacteria carried inside the body vary from person to person, so does this viral population, known as the virome.

By closely following and analyzing the virome of one individual over two-and-a-half years, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, led by professor of MicrobiologyFrederic D. Bushman, Ph.D., have uncovered some important new insights on how a viral population can change and evolve - and why the virome of one person can vary so greatly from that of another. The evolution and variety of the virome can affect susceptibility and resistance to disease among individuals, along with variable effectiveness of drugs.

Their work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most of the virome consists of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria rather than directly attacking their human hosts. However, the changes that bacteriophages wreak upon bacteria can also ultimately affect humans.

"Bacterial viruses are predators on bacteria, so they mold their populations," says Bushman. "Bacterial viruses also transport genes for toxins, virulence factors that modify the phenotype of their bacterial host." In this way, an innocent, benign bacterium living inside the body can be transformed by an invading virus into a dangerous threat.

Discovery Date: July 24, 2013

Magnitude: 17.7 mag

Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-O54.

Discovery Date: July 16, 2013

Magnitude: 20.6 mag

Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-O53.

Following the posting on the Central Bureau's Transient Object Confirmation Page about a possible Supernova in M74 (TOCP Designation: PSN J01364816+1545310) we performed some follow-up of this object remotely through a 0.43-m f/6.8 astrograph + CCD of iTelescope network (MPC Code Q62 - Siding Spring, AU).

On our images taken on July 27.7, 2013 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart with R-filtered CCD magnitude 13.0 and V-filtered CCD magnitude 12.6 at coordinates:

R.A. = 01 36 48.20, Decl.= +15 45 31.0

(equinox 2000.0; UCAC-3 catalogue reference stars). Our annotated confirmation image (single 120-second exposures under a cloudy sky):
An animation showing a comparison between our confirmation image and the archive POSS2/UKSTU plate (R Filter - 1990) can be viewed here.

I love this galaxy. Not only does M74 display a near perfect spiral form but if this latest supernova is confirmed, it will be the third to "go boom" in the galaxy in just 11 years. The new object, designated PSN J01364816+1545310, was discovered blazing near 12.4 magnitude by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search at Lick Observatory near San Jose, Calif. "PSN" stands for "possible supernova" and the long string of numbers give the object's position in the sky using the celestial equivalents of latitude and longitude.

The life and death of the world's tallest species of bird is the focus of a new book being published by Craig Potton Publishing this month.

'First we killed them, then we ate them, and then we forgot about them,' says Quinn Berentson, author of Moa: The life and death of New Zealand's legendary bird. 'Human beings have not been kind to the moa, and the biggest insult is we've almost completely forgotten about them. Like most 'Kiwis' I realised I actually knew nothing about the really iconic and unique birds that made New Zealand famous around the world - the moa. Writing the book is my attempt to get the real story of the moa out there and remind us all what we lost.'

The moa are arguably the most unusual and unique family of birds that have ever lived but they became extinct reasonably quickly after the arrival of the Maori in New Zealand, and were a distant memory by the time European explorers arrived in the country. So the identification of their bones in the 1840s caused a worldwide sensation. 'The discovery was described at the time as "the zoological find of the century," and the surprising discoveries have persisted until the present day,' says Quinn.

'The moa has fascinated and bamboozled the finest minds in natural history for 170 years and so, rather than write an encyclopaedia, I've tried to tell the story of its rediscovery - with all the twists and turns, devious personalities and unlikely events - and summarize the latest scientific discoveries that have occurred in just the last few years and have totally changed our perception of the giant birds.

Basically almost everything we thought we knew about the moa has been turned on its head over the last 10 years because of advanced DNA analysis. It turns out for most of the last 170 years we had a totally mistaken view of what the birds looked like, how they lived and even where they lived. Now New Zealand scientists have finally solved many of the mysteries that baffled the best minds in natural science for the last century.'

'It's a serious book about a popular subject and will fill a real gap in our natural history literature,' says publisher Robbie Burton. 'It's a fascinating story and an important book that richly recounts and illustrates the life and death of the giant bird.

Pasadena, California -- The true identity of centaurs, the small celestial bodies orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune, is one of the enduring mysteries of astrophysics. Are they asteroids or comets? A new study of observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) finds most centaurs are comets.

Until now, astronomers were not certain whether centaurs are asteroids flung out from the inner solar system or comets traveling in toward the sun from afar. Because of their dual nature, they take their name from the creature in Greek mythology whose head and torso are human and legs are those of a horse.

"Just like the mythical creatures, the centaur objects seem to have a double life," said James Bauer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Bauer is lead author of a paper published online July 22 in the Astrophysical Journal. "Our data point to a cometary origin for most of the objects, suggesting they are coming from deeper out in the solar system."

"Cometary origin" means an object likely is made from the same material as a comet, may have been an active comet in the past, and may be active again in the future.

In worms, the spread of death can be seen easily under a microscope as a wave of blue fluorescence travelling through its gut

Researchers from Wellcome Trust likened spread of blue glow travelling through the worm's body to that of the Grim Reaper, stalking death

The research could prove to be a useful model for understanding death in people and perhaps even lead to an increase in life expectancy

British scientists have captured death spreading like a wave through the body of a worm, by studying the blue fluorescence that travels cell-to-cell until the whole organism is dead.

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) likened the spread of the blue glow travelling through the worm's body to that of the Grim Reaper, stalking death.

They believe that the research could eventually prove to be a useful model to understanding death in people and perhaps even lead to an increase in life expectancy.