Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

US: NASA says space station may be evacuated in November?

Mike Wall
MSNBC /SPACE.com
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:51 UTC
Image
© NASASunlight glints off the International Space Station with the blue limb of Earth providing a dramatic backdrop in this photo taken by an astronaut on the shuttle Endeavour just before it docked after midnight on Feb. 10, 2010 during the STS-130 mission.
The International Space Station may have to start operating without a crew in November if Russian engineers don't figure out soon what caused a recent rocket failure, NASA officials announced Monday.

The unmanned Russian cargo ship Progress 44 crashed just after its Aug. 24 launch to deliver 2.9 tons of supplies to the orbiting lab. The failure was caused by a problem with the Progress' Soyuz rocket, which is similar to the one Russia uses to launch its crew-carrying vehicle, which is also called Soyuz, to the station.

Currently, six astronauts reside on the space station. But three of them are due to return to Earth next month, and the rest are scheduled to come back in mid-November. If the rocket anomaly isn't identified and fixed soon, a fresh crew won't be able to get to the station before the last three astronauts depart.
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Attention

Mind-Altering Bugs

Greg Miller
Science Now
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:06 UTC
Gut Bacteria
© Simko/Visuals UnlimitedGut feeling. A steady diet of Lactobacillus rhamnosus (above) appears to reduce anxiety in mice.
Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut "microbiome" influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, altering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior.

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in how gut bacteria might influence the brain and behavior, says John Cryan, a neuroscientist at University College Cork in Ireland. So far, most of the work has focused on how pathogenic bugs influence the brain by releasing toxins or stimulating the immune system, Cryan says. One recent study suggested that even benign bacteria can alter the brain and behavior, but until now there has been very little work in this area, Cryan says.

To further investigate the mind-altering potential of benign bacteria, Cryan and colleagues at McMaster University in Canada fed mice a broth containing a benign bacterium, Lactobacillus rhamnosus. The scientists chose this particular bug partly because they had a handy supply and also because related Lactobacillus bacteria are a major ingredient of probiotic supplements and very little is known about their potential side effects, Cryan says.
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Info

Cookie Test Yields Secrets of Self-Control Years Later

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:00 UTC
Cookies
© Superfloss / stock.xchngChocolate chip cookies: Could you resist?
Imagine hundreds of 4-year-olds each alone in a room with a delectable cookie or a scrumptious marshmallow. Before they reach for the enticing confection, an experimenter offers them a choice: they can have one right away, or get two if they just wait. Can they resist sweet temptation for 15 agonizing minutes, or do they surrender to instant gratification?

This simple test of willpower, and follow-up studies for years afterward, has uncovered a host of insights on how self-control, or the lack thereof, might influence lives.

Now, decades after the marshmallow experiment started, by analyzing the first batch of these children, long since grown up, scientists have pinpointed brain circuits underlying willpower. Such research could help discover new ways to improve self-control, potentially helping to fight addiction and obesity, scientists suggested.
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Question

Italy Lacks Money to Interpret Data From New Telescope in Chile

Laura Margottini
Science Insider
Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:48 UTC
VST Telescope
© ESO/G. Lombardi

Orvieto - After spending €15 million to help build a powerful survey telescope in Chile, Italy doesn't have the €250,000 a year needed to analyze the exquisite data that the telescope has begun to collect.

With a diameter of 2.6 meters and a giant 268 megapixel camera, the Vlt Survey Telescope (VST) is the largest telescope in the world specifically designed to survey the skies in visible light. The newest addition to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), it is adjacent to the Very Large Telescope (VLT), four 8.2 meter optical telescopes at Cerro Paranal in Chile. A joint venture between the Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy - that is part of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) - and ESO, it began capturing its first pictures in June.

But Italy might not be able to harvest the fruits of its investment. "We need to find €250,000 a year to pay at least four mathematicians and some computers" to process the data coming from the telescope, says Massimo Capaccioli, an astrophysicist at University of Naples Federico II and a champion of the VST program.
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Telescope

Best of the Web: Electric Universe: Andromeda's Mother Cassiopeia

Stephen Smith
thunderbolts.info
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:18 UTC
cassiopeia
© Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNAM/Ioffe/D. Page, P. Shternin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. WeissThe remains of an exploding double layer known as Cassiopeia A with an artist's impression of a theoretical entity called a neutron star.

Rather than searching for exotic explanations, this celestial object can best be described using plasma physics.

According to a recent announcement from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the so-called "supernova remnant" Cassiopeia A (or "Cas A") harbors a strange passenger within the neutron star that is supposed to inhabit its interior, a form of superconductor known as a superfluid.

As theory suggests, neutron stars form when large stars exhaust their fuel supplies as they age. Once a star with about five times the mass of our Sun accumulates enough thermonuclear "ash" composed of non-fusible elements like iron in its core, it undergoes a catastrophic implosion. Since nuclear reactions can no longer be sustained, the star becomes the victim of its own gravity field. The star's outer surface collapses inward at tremendous speed, rebounding off the dense core material. The star then erupts outward in a supernova explosion, blasting its outer layers into space, releasing X-rays, gamma rays, and extreme ultraviolet.
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2 + 2 = 4

Study: El Nino doubles risk of civil war in tropics


CTV News
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:15 UTC
El Nino War Tropics
© AP / Sayyid AzimA Masai farmer is seen with his cattle, in Kitengela, Kenya, an area hit by severe drought, 50 km east of the capital Nairobi, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009.
A new study makes a direct connection between the frequency of civil war in tropical countries, and extreme weather patterns.

The study suggests the risk of major violence doubles during El Nino, a weather phenomenon which brings hot temperatures and reduced rainfall to tropical regions every five years or so.

A group of researchers from Princeton and Columbia University's Earth Institute looked back over the past half-century, and compared the timing and location of civil wars with the appearance of El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

The multi-disciplinary researchers looked at conflicts between 1950 and 2004, where 25 or more people were killed in "battle-related deaths," says the study which was published this week in the journal Nature. That amounted to 234 conflicts in 175 countries.

The group mainly looked at tropical countries that are directly linked -- or "teleconnected" -- to El Nino, and used countries that are weakly affected be El Nino as a comparison.
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Camera

Red Sprites: Lightning Bolts from Space


Space Weather
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:27 UTC
High above Earth in the realm of meteors and noctilucent clouds, a strange and beautiful form of lightning dances at the edge of space. Researchers call the bolts "sprites"; they are red, fleeting, and tend to come in bunches. Martin Popek of Nýdek in the Czech republic photographed these specimens on August 27th:

Red Lightning_1
© Martin PopekImage Taken: Aug. 27, 2011
Location: Nýdek,Czech Republic
"Sprites are a true space weather phenomenon," explains lightning scientist Oscar van der Velde of Sant Vicenç de Castellet, Spain. "They develop in mid-air around 80 km altitude, growing in both directions, first down, then up. This happens when a fierce lightning bolt draws lots of charge from a cloud near Earth's surface. Electric fields [shoot] to the top of Earth's atmosphere--and the result is a sprite. The entire process takes about 20 milliseconds."
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Star

Asteroid dust confirms meteorite's ancient origins

Sindhya N Bhanoo
The Times of India
Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:23 UTC
Last year, a Japanese spacecraft brought asteroid dust back to Earth for the first time, and now researchers analysing the dust report that most meteorites on Earth originate from stony S-type asteroids like the one sampled, confirming what scientists have long theorized, but hadn't been able to prove.

Through actual, physical sampling of the dust particles, less than four thousandths of an inch in length, researchers were able to confirm that the dust is identical to material that makes up meteorites.

This and other findings are published in a set of six papers in the current issue of the journal Science.

The asteroid dust was gathered by Hayabusa, a spacecraft launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2003.
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Info

Closest Supernova in 25 Years Is a 'Cosmic Classic,' Astronomers Say


Space.com
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:23 UTC
Supernova
© Peter Nugent and the Palomar Transient FactoryThe arrow marks PTF 11kly in images taken on the Palomar 48-inch telescope over the nights of, from left to right, Aug. 22, 23 and 24. The supernova wasn't there Aug. 22, was discovered Aug. 23, and brightened considerably by Aug. 24.

Astronomers have spotted the closest supernova in a generation - and in a week or so, stargazers with a good pair of binoculars might be able to see it, too.

The supernova, or exploded star, flared up Tuesday night (Aug. 23) in the Pinwheel Galaxy, just 21 million light-years from Earth. It's the closest star explosion of its type observed since 1986, and astronomers around the world are already scrambling to train their instruments on it.

Researchers said they think they caught the supernova, named PTF 11kly, within hours of its explosion.

"PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It's already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday," Peter Nugent, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement yesterday (Aug. 25).

"Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride," added Nugent, who was the first person to spot the supernova. "It is an instant cosmic classic."
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Binoculars

Underground River "Rio Hamza" Discovered 4km Beneath the Amazon

Alok Jha
The Guardian, UK
Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:44 UTC
Image
© Frans Lanting/CorbisAn aerial view of the Amazon river.
Scientists estimate the subterranean river may be 6,000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon

Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin - around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river, but hundreds of times wider.

The rivers of the Amazon basin constitute one of the largest drainage systems on the Earth, with a catchment area of more than 7 million square kilometres.

Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km.

The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
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