Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

High school students on asteroid patrol for NASA


Salt Lake Tribune
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:03 UTC
Utah - The students of American Fork High School get up pretty early to discover an asteroid.

How early? The 34 students on science teacher Curtis Craig's "Caveman team" of the Killer Asteroid Project arrive to upload their star-measuring software and asteroid database long before school starts. Then begins the long, arduous process of observing telescopic images for asteroid activity. Taking three images shot 20 minutes apart, they sequence them in motion. A small change in the image may signal asteroid movement. Recording the coordinates of that movement on a grid, students extrapolate the trajectory, then submit their reports to Harvard University's Minor Planet Center, which cues up its telescope to students' reported coordinates. If the center's telescope finds an image to match those coordinates, a new asteroid discovery is born.
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Telescope

Iowa State University Center Maps Out Asteroid Defense Strategies

Alexis Madrigal
Wired
Thu, 29 May 2008 17:56 UTC
Asteroid deflection is one of those topics that draws an eclectic mix of serious NASA engineers, professors, and crazy people.

To help sort through decades of scientific research and a century of science fiction, Iowa State university professor Bong Wie is establishing the first-ever Asteroid Deflection Research Center.

The Center will look at all available technologies that could be deployed to some day keep a space rock from slamming into the Earth and ending civilization.
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Hourglass

Ancient Egyptian Temple Entrance Found in Nile River

Andrew Bossone
National Geographic
Tue, 27 May 2008 17:39 UTC


Nile Aswan stone
©Supreme Council of Antiquities

Archaeologists have discovered a portico, or covered entryway, of an ancient Egyptian temple beneath the surface of the Nile River.

The entryway once led to the temple of the ram-headed fertility god Khnum, experts say.

A team of Egyptian archaeologist-divers found the portico in Aswan while conducting the first-ever underwater surveys of the Nile, which began earlier this year.
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Info

New High-Temperature Superconductors Are Iron-based With Unusual Magnetic Properties


Science Daily
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:18 UTC
In the initial studies of a new class of high-temperature superconductors discovered earlier this year, research at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has revealed that new iron-based superconductors share similar unusual magnetic properties with previously known superconducting copper-oxide materials.

superconductors
©Robert Rathe
The magnetic structure of the new iron-based superconductors was determined at the thermal triple-axis spectrometer at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. Physicists Jeff Lynn and Ying Chen prepare the instrument for use.
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Info

Gene Mutations Responsible For 10 Percent Of Schizophrenia Pinpointed


Science Daily
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:12 UTC
People with schizophrenia from families with no history of the illness were found to harbor eight times more spontaneous mutations -- most in pathways affecting brain development -- than healthy controls. By contrast, no spontaneous mutations were found in people with schizophrenia who had family histories of the illness. The findings strongly suggest that rare, spontaneous mutations likely contribute to vulnerability in cases of schizophrenia from previously unaffected families.

Genetic mutations
©P. Alexander Arguello, Columbia University Medical Center, May 2008
A. Genetic mutations that result in fewer than two (middle offspring) or more than two (right offspring) genomic copies of a chromosomal region, are present in individuals who have schizophrenia, but not present in their biological parents who do not have the disease. For comparison, a family with an unaffected offspring is indicated at the left. B. A schematic representation of a spontaneous copy number mutation found in one individual with schizophrenia. This mutation results in loss of genes, including a gene affecting neurodevelopment (EPHB1).
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Robot

Monkeys control robotic limbs using only their thoughts

Anja Schulze
maltastar.com
Sat, 31 May 2008 00:00 UTC
A team of American scientists published a report in the journal Nature on Wednesday which proves that monkeys have been able to control a robotic arm using only their thoughts.

The animals were able to feed themselves with a prosthetic arm which was controlled by brain activity.
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Ark

Amazonian Indigenous Culture Demonstrates Universal Mapping Of Number Onto Space


Science Daily
Sat, 31 May 2008 13:44 UTC
The ability to map numbers onto a line, a foundation of all mathematics, is universal, says a study published May 30 in the journal Science, but the form of this universal mapping is not linear but logarithmic. The findings illuminate both the nature and the limits of the human predisposition to measurement, a foundation for science, engineering, and much of our modern culture.

Image
©iStockphoto/Anthony Hall
Munduruku people spontaneously placed numbers on a line in a compressed, logarithmic function, such that smaller numbers appeared at greater spatial intervals (as they do on slide rules).
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Info

Invasion Strategy Of World's Largest Virus Revealed


Science Daily
Sat, 31 May 2008 12:48 UTC
A Weizmann Institute study provides important new insights into the process of viral infection. The study, reported in the online journal PLoS Biology, reveals certain mechanisms by which mimivirus - a virus so called because it was originally thought to mimic bacteria in various aspects of their behavior - invades amoeba cells.

Virus
©Distinct DNA Exit and Packaging Portals in the Virus Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus Zauberman N, Mutsafi Y, Halevy DB, Shimoni E, Klein E, et al. PLoS Biology Vol. 6, No. 5, e114 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060114
(A) TEM image of cryo-fixed sectioned and stained extracellular Mimivirus particles revealing a star-shaped structure at a unique vertex. (B) Cryo-TEM image of a whole vitrified fiber-less Mimivirus. (C) SEM image of the star-shaped structure in a mature extracellular Mimivirus particle. (D) Cryo-SEM of an immature, fiber-less particle. (E) Tomographic slice of a mature intracellular Mimivirus particle captured at a late (12 h post infection) infection stage. As shown in Video S1, at this late stage the host cell is packed with mature viral particles. (F and G) Volume reconstruction of the particle shown in (E), revealing the presence of an outer (red) and inner (orange) capsid shells. The star-shaped structure is present in both shells but adopts partially open (dark, star-like region), and completely sealed configurations in the outer and inner shells, respectively. (H) Superposition of the two shells in (F) and (G).
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Telescope

Possible Ice On Mars Seen By Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm Camera


Science Daily
Sat, 31 May 2008 12:42 UTC
Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.

Phoenix mars Lander
©NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona
As seen in the top center of this image from Phoenix, the exhaust from the descent engine has blown soil off to reveal either rock or ice, which has not yet been determined.
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Telescope

How Plasma From Superstorms Affects Near-Earth Space


Science Daily
Sat, 31 May 2008 11:13 UTC
NASA scientists have uncovered new details about how plasma from superstorms interact with Earth's magnetosphere.

Earths inner magnetosphere during a superstorm
©NASA/Mei-Ching Fok and Thomas E. Moore
This computer-generated image shows a view of Earth's inner magnetosphere during a superstorm.

"The surprising result of this model is that the magnetosphere's main phase pressure is dominated by energetic protons from the plasmasphere, rather than from the solar wind," says Mei-Ching Fok, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Fok and her team will present their findings on May 29 at the American Geophysical Union conference in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl.
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