Spaceflight venture Moon Express wants to be the first private company ever to land on the Moon in 2017 — and now the company has been granted approval by the United States government to launch to the lunar surface. It's the first time the government has granted regulatory approval for a private mission beyond Earth orbit. And Moon Express came very close to being denied permission to go.

No regulatory framework currently exists for a commercial space missions to another world. Lawmakers are working on a permanent solution, but it likely won't be ready in time for Moon Express' 2017 mission. So the company came up with its own temporary framework — a regulatory patch — that the US government could use to oversee the company's mission. And after a meeting between the Federal Aviation Administration, the White House, and the State Department, Moon Express has been given the approval it needs to launch to the Moon.

So far, commercial companies have mostly just launched satellites into space; all specialized private missions, like launching cargo to the space station, have been overseen by NASA. That means Moon Express could be the first private company to land on the Moon, as well as the company that travels the farthest away from our planet.

For anyone holding out hope that life as we know it might exist on our terrestrial satellite, China just burst that bubble.

The unmanned lunar lander Chang'e 3 left Earth in December 2013 and arrived at the Moon a few days later, touching down in Mare Imbrium. With its primary mission focused on exploration, the spacecraft announced a major discovery last year, uncovering a new type of basaltic rock.

The latest data from Chang'e 3 points to a new discovery - or, at least, a kind of anti-discovery. Its onboard optical telescope has confirmed that there is no liquid water on the Moon.

We only have one planet, and so we should use it wisely. You know, kind of like that saying about our health. Well, some of you may have heard that one, and if not, I believe you still get the gist of it. Think about this: our planet and its resources are like our body in a way, and so harsh treatment will eventually wear it out... Unless, of course, we change our mindset about almost everything. So, what should we do about it?

The Netherlands may have an answer to our predicament. It isn't a new concept, mind you, but it's certainly a rather renovated idea. Like the Amish, this project provides the means to be self-reliant, but unlike the simplicity of the Amish, this concept retains high-tech capabilities.

Self-sustainability

When it comes to being self-reliant, we're talking about whole villages, not just one home. After all, self-sustainable living can be accomplished more efficiently by working together, family with family, friend with friend. That's why, a community pilot project, the brainchild of ReGen Villages, a California-based developer, will see its completion in 2017. We will see entire villages which will operate from within! How amazing is that! This concept starts just outside of Amsterdam, but plans are to share these innovations with Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Norway.

A humongous, superhot cloud of gas surrounding our galaxy, the Milky Way, is spinning at a dizzying rate, new research shows.

The cloud, called the Milky Way's halo, extends hundreds of thousands of light-years across. Using archived data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton telescope, astronomers found the halo is spinning in the same direction as the galaxy and almost as fast.

"This flies in the face of expectations," Edmund Hodges-Kluck, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan and lead author on the new study, said in a statement. "People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary — but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk."

Durham, NC - A new study could explain why DNA and not RNA, its older chemical cousin, is the main repository of genetic information. The DNA double helix is a more forgiving molecule that can contort itself into different shapes to absorb chemical damage to the basic building blocks -- A, G, C and T -- of genetic code. In contrast, when RNA is in the form of a double helix it is so rigid and unyielding that rather than accommodating damaged bases, it falls apart completely.

The research, published August 1, 2016 in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, underscores the dynamic nature of the DNA double helix, which is central to maintaining the stability of the genome and warding off ailments like cancer and aging. The finding will likely rewrite textbook coverage of the difference between the two purveyors of genetic information, DNA and RNA.

"There is an amazing complexity built into these simple beautiful structures, whole new layers or dimensions that we have been blinded to because we didn't have the tools to see them, until now," said Hashim M. Al-Hashimi, Ph.D., senior author of the study and professor of biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine.

DNA's famous double helix is often depicted as a spiral staircase, with two long strands twisted around each other and steps composed of four chemical building blocks called bases.

Each of these bases contain rings of carbon, along with various configurations of nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. The arrangement of these atoms allow G to pair with C and A to pair with T, like interlocking gears in an elegant machine.

When Watson and Crick published their model of the DNA double helix in 1953, they predicted exactly how these pairs would fit together. Yet other researchers struggled to provide evidence of these so-called Watson-Crick base pairs. Then in 1959, a biochemist named Karst Hoogsteen took a picture of an A-T base pair that had a slightly skewed geometry, with one base rotated 180 degrees relative to the other. Since then, both Watson-Crick and Hoogsteen base pairs have been observed in still images of DNA.

Five years ago, Al-Hashimi and his team showed that base pairs constantly morph back and forth between Watson-Crick and the Hoogsteen configurations in the DNA double helix. Al-Hashimi says that Hoogsteen base pairs typically show up when DNA is bound up by a protein or damaged by chemical insults. The DNA goes back to its more straightforward pairing when it is released from the protein or has repaired the damage to its bases.

"DNA seems to use these Hoogsteen base pairs to add another dimension to its structure, morphing into different shapes to achieve added functionality inside the cell," said Al-Hashimi.

A major revision is required in our understanding of our Milky Way Galaxy according to an international team led by Prof Noriyuki Matsunaga of the University of Tokyo. The Japanese, South African and Italian astronomers find that there is a huge region around the centre of our own Galaxy, which is devoid of young stars. The team publish their work in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy containing many billions of stars with our Sun about 26,000 light years from its centre. Measuring the distribution of these stars is crucial to our understanding of how our Galaxy formed and evolved. Pulsating stars called Cepheids are ideal for this. They are much younger (between 10 and 300 million years old) than our Sun (4.6 billion years old) and they pulsate in brightness in a regular cycle. The length of this cycle is related to the luminosity of the Cepheid, so if astronomers monitor them they can establish how bright the star really is, compare it with what we see from Earth, and work out its distance.

Despite this, finding Cepheids in the inner Milky Way is difficult, as the Galaxy is full of interstellar dust which blocks out light and hides many stars from view. Matsunaga's team compensated for this, with an analysis of near-infrared observations made with a Japanese-South African telescope located at Sutherland, South Africa. To their surprise they found hardly any Cepheids in a huge region stretching for thousands of light years from the core of the Galaxy.

The power of hypnotic trance to alter your mind and body is due to changes in a few specific areas of the brain, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered.

The scientists scanned the brains of 57 people during guided hypnosis sessions similar to those that might be used clinically to treat anxiety, pain or trauma. Distinct sections of the brain have altered activity and connectivity while someone is hypnotized, they report in Cerebral Cortex.

Senior author David Spiegel, MD, professor and associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said:

Russian scientists in cooperation with the national space agency are developing a magnetic 3D bioprinter that will allow production of living tissue in the micro-gravity conditions of the International Space Station.

The unique technology will be developed in partnership between the United Rocket and Space Corporation, part of the Roscosmos and 3D Bioprinting Solutions, a resident of the Skolkovo Innovation Center.

"The development of a magnetic bioprinter will allow printing tissue and organ constructs which are hypersensitive to the effects of space radiation - sentinel-bodies (eg, thyroid gland) - for biomonitoring of the negative effect of cosmic radiation in the conditions of a prolonged stay in space and for the development of the preventive countermeasures," 3D Bioprinting Solutions said in a press release after signing a contract with the space corporation on Monday.

The scientific team hopes to send the "unique" technology to the ISS by 2018. Scientists envision that in the long term the newly designed bioprinter could potentially be used to correct astronauts' damaged tissues and organs during long space flights. In addition, the company says the new technology could be used on Earth for the "faster" printing of human tissue and organs to save people's lives.

Announcing the new partnership, the United Rocket and Space Corporation's Director General, has called the endeavor "one more step" that will aid "human exploration of other planets." His colleague, the managing partner of the 3D Bioprinting Solutions, Youssef Hesuani believes that the technology will offer a "unique opportunity" to pursue "new approaches in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine."

Hot days and melting permafrost

In Russia last week several cases of anthrax were reported in a nomadic reindeer herding community. Eight people have been formally diagnosed with the disease and one 12-year-old boy has died.


Anthrax today is commonly thought of as a biological weapon, but anthrax isn't man-made. The disease, caused by a bacteria, shows up in oblique references in written texts as early as 1250 BC. The bacteria occurs naturally in soil, only becoming dangerous when they enter the body of a human or animal, where they multiply, producing a toxin that can cause a host of unpleasant and deadly symptoms ranging from blisters through high fevers, chills, shortness of breath, and nausea.

It can be treated with antibiotics, and is not contagious, but can be spread when people come in contact with infected livestock or products like meat or animal skins that originate from infected animals.

The sudden spike in Siberian anthrax cases has roots in 1941, when the last outbreak happened in the area. Researchers believe that this year's record-breaking stretch of warm temperatures has contributed to melting permafrost, the previously permanently frozen layer of soil in the tundra.

The F-35's many flaws have been well documented. But according to pilots, one aspect of the fifth-generation fighter works so well that it's actually causing new problems.

After months of delays, the US Air Force is expected to deem its F-35 variant combat ready this week. That status means that the fighters are undergoing new exercises to test the plane's capabilities and prepare pilots.

But the aircraft's state-of-the-art stealth technology is evidently making it difficult for the military to carry out those drills. Exercises performed at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho were meant to test the plane's ability to evade surface-to-air missiles [SAM], but ground units had a difficult time locking onto the aircraft.

"If they never saw us, they couldn't target us," said Lt. Col. George Watkins, according to Defense News.