Democrats celebrated the Obama administration’s efforts to promote Internet freedom abroad, according to the language of their newly approved, previously godless party platform.
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Democratic platform puts no limits on Internet porn, pushes for Web freedom
NEW ORLEANS Waves from Hurricane Isaac uncovered oil previously buried along Gulf Coast beaches, exposing crude that wasn't cleaned up after the BP spill in 2010.
Since Isaac made landfall more than a week ago, the water the storm has receded and tar balls and oil have been reported on shores in Alabama and Louisiana, where officials closed a 13-mile stretch of beach Tuesday.
BP said Wednesday some of that oil was from the spill, but said some of the crude may be from other sources, too.
"If there's something good about this storm it made it visible where we can clean it up," BP spokesman Ray Melick said.
BP still has hundreds of cleanup workers on the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers and leading to the nation's largest offshore spill.
Melick said the company was working with the Coast Guard, state officials and land managers to clean up the oil on the Fourchon beach in Louisiana. He said crews would be there Thursday.
Isaac made landfall near Fourchon on Aug. 28 as a Category 1 storm, pummeling the coast with waves, wind and rain. Seven people were killed in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Ed Overton, a chemist and oil spill expert at Louisiana State University, said the exposed oil was weathered and less toxic, though it could still harm animals such as crabs, crawfish and bait fish.
He said the storm helped speed up natural processes that break down oil and it might take several more storms to stir up the rest of the oil buried along the coast.
"We don't like to say it, but hurricanes are Mother Nature's way of taking a bath," he said.
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Oil from BP spill turns up on Gulf beaches after Hurricane Isaac; company to clean it up
The winner of the first European Astronomy Journalism Prize, designed to help inspire the next generation of researchers, has been announced today (5 September 2012) at a reception in the House of Commons. Katia Moskvitch from the BBC was announced as the winner and awarded a trip to Chile, by a panel of judges representing the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) who ran the competition, together with the Royal Astronomical Society and the Association of British Science Writers. The aim of the prize was to increase media coverage of astronomy, a means to promoting the wonders of astronomy -- a subject regularly cited as a key reason for students opting to take up careers in science. The judges chose Katia as the winner, for her remarkable series on ESO's Very Large Telescope located in Paranal Observatory, Chile [1].
Katia's prize was announced at a reception primarily held to celebrate the UK's involvement in the Large Hadron Collider after the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson last month (http://www.stfc.ac.uk/About+STFC/39278.aspx). The UK plays a lead role in both particle physics and astronomy and is ranked number one in the world for astronomy*.
Katia said: "As a technology journalist at the BBC, I don't get to write about astronomy very often. That's why I really loved my time in Chile, reporting about the telescopes in ESO's observatories, and learning a lot of new things about space and technology. After I had written my features, I received really good feedback from readers, and a colleague urged me to enter this competition. I was quite surprised but very happy when I found out I won!"
A special prize for excellence also went to Robin McKie from the Observer newspaper for his work on British involvement in the search for gravitational waves. [2]. The judges highly commended Maggie McKee from Boston, Massachusetts, for an article in New Scientist on European involvement in the study of the Transit of Venus. [3].
Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said: "Media coverage is an important way of conveying the wonder of science to the public and making complex research easier to understand. It's great to see such high quality, engaging journalism being recognized today. I have no doubt it will have played some part in encouraging the next generation to take up astronomy, helping to maintain the UK's leading position in this field."
Katia Moskvitch will be ESO's guest at the inauguration of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean Atacama desert next March 2013.
Robin McKie will take up his prize of a visit to the Very Large Telescope later this year and Maggie McKee's prize is a trip to the UK from the US where she is based -- visiting some of the UK's leading science facilities including STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Discovery Center.
Professor John Womersley, STFC Chief Executive said: "The media are vital partners in spreading the inspirational message of astronomy -- and of other science fields -- and it's in all our interests to work together with the media to encourage more, and higher quality, coverage. The quality of the journalism being acknowledged here today is exceptional -- we need more like this, to help inspire the next generation of much needed future scientists".
Lars Lindberg Christensen, Head of the Education and Public Outreach Department at ESO said: "We would like to congratulate all participants and especially the winners for their outstanding work of promoting European astronomy. We hope such recognition will stimulate more coverage of Europe's leading contributions to the field of astronomy and bring these results closer to the public."
Due to the success of the competition it will run again next year. Details will be announced on the STFC and ESO websites in due course: http://www.stfc.ac.uk/astroprize http://www.eso.org/public/astroprize
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Nova Scotia's largest aerospace contractor is rebranding itself as part of an effort to secure more military spending, including a piece of the federal shipbuilding contract.
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WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Specialists On Call, Inc. (SOC), announced today that it recently delivered its 50,000th emergency teleneurology consultation since the companys inception. This achievement in patient volume is unprecedented for any telemedicine company as well as for any single bricks and mortar healthcare facility treating emergency neurology cases.
SOC provides hospitals with immediate 24/7/365 access to board certified, fellowship trained neurologists for recommendations on stroke or any other neurologic emergency via telemedicine. By leveraging the skills of its expert neurologists, SOC helps hospitals and health systems treat neurologic emergencies and stroke patients with greater efficiency and effectiveness. Today, Specialists On Call provides nearly 2,000 emergency consultations each month to over 200 hospitals across 22 states. With access to around-the-clock on-call neurology coverage, these facilities among others have demonstrated increased tPA administration rates as well as reduced length of stay for stroke patients. Since 2006, SOC has helped oversee the administration of more tPA to eligible stroke patients than any single healthcare facility in the same amount of time.
Specialists On Calls new telepsychiatry service line delivers access to expert psychiatrists for hospitals hard pressed to provide 24/7/365 psychiatric on-call coverage in their emergency room. This turnkey service alleviates common hospital mental health care pain points such as staffing, boarding, security and depleted clinical resources. Thus far, SOCs telepsychiatry service has already produced thirty-three times the consult volume that their teleneurology service line generated during its first six months of operation and currently boasts an industry leading ECO reversal rate of over sixty percent.
To have helped over 50,000 patients with a critical medical emergency is truly remarkable, commented Specialists On Calls CEO, Joe Peterson, M.D. Were incredibly proud of what weve built, and we share our success with the countless number of lives weve impacted. Everyone at Specialists On Call is witness to the power of telemedicine and committed to further growth that will help even more patients and the hospitals that treat them.
Specialists On Call
Specialists On Call, Inc. (SOC), is a Joint Commission-accredited organization that is changing emergency medicine. As the leading provider of emergency telemedicine consultations, SOC gives hospitals vital 24/7/365 access to more than 55 board certified, fellowship trained academic specialists, each with a minimum of 10 years experience. With operations on both coasts, SOC provides more than 2,000 emergency consultations per month for hospitals nationwide and hospital systems such as Vanguard Health Systems, HCA, Inc. and Tenet Healthcare Corporation.
For more information please visit http://www.specialistsoncall.com
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Specialists On Call Helps 50,000th Emergency Patient
Public release date: 5-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Seroka rseroka@aan.com 612-928-6102 American Academy of Neurology
MINNEAPOLIS New research shows that professional football players may be at a higher risk of death from diseases that damage the cells in the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease and ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), compared to the general U.S. population. The study is published in the September 5, 2012, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study included 3,439 players with an average age of 57 from the National Football League with at least five playing seasons from 1959-1988. Researchers reviewed death certificates for causes of death from Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and ALS. At the time of the analysis, only 10 percent of the participants had passed away.
The research found that professional football players in this study were three times more likely to die as a result of diseases that damage brain cells compared to the general population. A player's risk of death from Alzheimer's disease or ALS was almost four times higher than the general population. Of the 334 who died, seven had Alzheimer's disease and seven had ALS. The risk of dying from Parkinson's disease was not significantly different than that of the general population.
To determine if these risks differed by position played, researchers divided the players into two groups: those who played non-line ("speed") positions which included quarterbacks, running backs, halfbacks, fullbacks, wide receivers, tight ends, defensive backs, safeties and linebackers, and those who played line ("non-speed") positions, which included defensive and offensive linemen. Speed position players were more than three times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative cause than non-speed position players. A total of 62 percent of the players were in speed positions.
"These results are consistent with recent studies that suggest an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease among football players," said study author Everett J. Lehman, MS, with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati. "Although our study looked at causes of death from Alzheimer's disease and ALS as shown on death certificates, research now suggests that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may have been the true primary or secondary factor in some of these deaths. A brain autopsy is necessary to diagnose CTE and distinguish it from Alzheimer's or ALS. While CTE is a separate diagnosis, the symptoms are often similar to those found in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS, and can occur as the result of multiple concussions."
Lehman said the study was limited by the small number of deaths in the analysis.
###
The study was supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
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NFL players may be at higher risk of death from Alzheimer's and ALS
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Contact: Jim Fessenden james.fessenden@umassmed.edu 508-856-2000 University of Massachusetts Medical School
WORCESTER, MA The first comprehensive decoding and annotation of the human genome is being published today by the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, an international consortium of scientists from 32 institutions, including the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The groundbreaking ENCODE discovery appears in a set of 30 papers in Nature, Genome Research and Genome Biology.
Using data generated from 1,649 experiments with prominent contributions from the labs of UMMS professors Job Dekker and Zhiping Weng the group has assigned biochemical functions for an astounding 80 percent of the human genome. These findings promise to fundamentally change our understanding of how the tens of thousands of genes and hundreds of thousands of gene regulatory elements, or switches, contained in the human genome, interact in an overlapping regulatory network to determine human biology and disease.
As little as a decade ago, the human genome was viewed by scientists as a collection of independent genes that contained the instructions for making the proteins that carried out the basic biological functions necessary for life. Driven by this premise, most researchers focused on understanding the relatively small portion of the genome that made up protein-coding genes while the non-coding portion of the genome often referred to as "junk DNA" received little attention. The sequencing of the human genome in 2003 and more recent efforts by the ENCODE consortium, which is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and others over the last decade, has begun to fundamentally change researchers' views on the importance of the non-coding portion of the genome.
Scientists now know that the protein-coding portions of the genome make up only one part of our genetic picture. Of equal importance are those areas of the genome that regulate genes. These elements, such as regulatory DNA elements and non-coding RNA, control when a gene is turned on and off and can also amplify or curtail expression of a gene. Even a small change in when a gene is turned on can have a huge biological impact, or in specific circumstances, contribute to disease.
Taken together, genes and their regulatory elements create a vast network of overlapping systems that carry out the basic biological processes necessary for life, a system that scientists are only now beginning to understand. Using a wide variety of experimental and computational approaches, members of the ENCODE consortium have generated comprehensive information about the identities, locations and characteristics of human genes and regulatory switches throughout the genome. This data represents an expansive resource that biomedical researchers can use to begin unraveling how this system works and how it contributes to disease.
"This work provides a critical map of tens of thousands of genes and hundreds of thousands of regulatory switches that are scattered all over the 3 billion nucleotides of the genome," said Dr. Dekker, PhD, professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology and co-director of the Program in Systems Biology at UMMS. "As a group, we've identified more than 4 million sites that through binding specific proteins affect biological function."
Three dimensional wiring of the genome
What this map doesn't tell scientists, though, is which switches or elements regulate which genes. That is where the work of Dekker, the lead author on one of the six ENCODE papers that appear in Nature, provides unique insights. Over the last decade, Dekker has pioneered the development of chromosome conformation capture technologies (3C) and combined it with next-generation sequencing technologies (5C) to create three-dimensional models of folded chromosomes. In turn, these models can be used to determine which parts of the genome, when folded, come in physical contact.
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UMASS Medical School faculty annotate human genome for ENCODE project
Public release date: 5-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Angela Hopp ahopp@asbmb.org 240-283-6614 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The National Human Genome Research Institute today announced the results of a five-year international study of the regulation and organization of the human genome. The project is named ENCODE, which stands for the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. In conjunction with the release of those results, the Journal of Biological Chemistry has published a series of reviews that focus on several aspects of the findings.
"The ENCODE project not only generated an enormous body of data about our genome, but it also analyzed many issues to better understand how the genome functions in different types of cells. These insights from integrative analyses are really stories about how molecular machines interact with each other and work on DNA to produce the proteins and RNAs needed for each cell to function within our bodies," explains Ross Hardison of Pennsylvania State University, one of the JBC authors.
Hardison continued: "The Journal of Biological Chemistry recognized that the results from the ENCODE project also would catalyze much new research from biochemists and molecular biologists around the world. Hence, the journal commissioned these articles not only to communicate the insights from the papers now being published but also to stimulate more research in the broader community."
The human genome consists of about 3 billion DNA base pairs, but only a small percentage of DNA actually codes for proteins. The roles and functions of the remaining genetic information were unclear to scientists and even referred to as "junk DNA." But the results of the ENCODE project is filling this knowledge gap. The findings revealed that more than 80 percent of the human genome is associated with biological function.
The study showed in a comprehensive way that proteins switch genes on and off regularly and can do so at distances far from the genes they regulate and it determined sites on chromosomes that interact, the locations where chemical modifications to DNA can influence gene expression, and how the functional forms of RNA can regulate the expression of genetic information.
The results establish the ways in which genetic information is controlled and expressed in specific cell types and distinguish particular regulatory regions that may contribute to diseases.
"The deeper knowledge of gene regulation coming from the ENCODE project will have a positive impact on medical science," Hardison emphasizes. For example, recent genetic studies have revealed many genomic locations that can affect a person's susceptibility to common diseases. The ENCODE data show that many of these regions are involved in gene regulation, and the data provide hypotheses for how variations in these regions can affect disease susceptibility, adds Hardison.
The effort behind the ENCODE project was extraordinary. More than 440 scientists in 32 labs in United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore and Japan performed more than 1,600 sets of experiments on 147 types of tissue. The results were published today in one main integrative paper and five other papers in the journal Nature, 18 papers in Genome Research and six papers in Genome Biology.
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Major advances in understanding the regulation and organization of the human genome
Sep 5, 2012 07:56 PM ET by Kate Stanhope Follow katestanhope Tweet
Kim Raver
Grey's Anatomy and 24 grad Kim Raver is joining NBC's new drama Revolution in a recurring role, TVLine reports.
Executive-produced by J.J. Abrams, Revolution takes place 15 years in the future and shows the aftermath of a global blackout where the entire world lost power. The cast includes Billy Burke, Elizabeth Mitchell, Tracy Spiridakos and Giancarlo Esposito. The full Revolution pilot can be viewed early here.
Justified's David Meunier joins Revolution
Little is known about Raver's character other than that she will play a pivotal role.
Raver, 43, most recently played Dr. Teddy Altman on Grey's Anatomy for three seasons before exiting in May. She is also known for her role as Audrey Raines on 24, as well her work on The Nine, Lipstick Jungle and Third Watch.
Revolution premieres on Monday, Sept. 17 at 10/9c on NBC.
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Grey’s Kim Raver Jumps Aboard NBC’s Revolution
A stubborn bolt on the International Space Station finally cooperated, thanks to a pair of spacewalking astronauts with improvised tools.
A pair of spacewalking astronauts cleaned, greased and finally coaxed a jammed bolt into position on Wednesday, restoring the International Space Station's power system.
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The spacewalk by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide was the second in a week to replace a key part of the station's power system.
The astronauts were able to remove the faulty 220-pound (100-kg) device, known as a main bus switching unit, during a spacewalk last Thursday, but were unable to bolt a replacement into position.
While engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston mulled over repair options, Williams and Hoshide spent the weekend fashioning tools to clean the bolt and its receptacle of metal shavings and other debris believed to be causing the problem.
The homemade tools included a wire brush formed from a spare cable and another fashioned out of a toothbrush.
Toting their makeshift brushes and bags of tools, Williams and Hoshide left the station's airlock shortly after 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) and headed to where they had tethered the new power distributor into position on the station's metal framework.
They used puffs of compressed nitrogen gas to blow away debris, brushed the bolt clean and wiped it with greased cloths. Hoshide also practiced with a spare bolt to get a feel for how much force would be needed to drive the real one into its receptacle.
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Toothbrush-wielding, spacewalking astronauts repair space station
A $100 billion space station saved by a simple $3 toothbrush? It was the brainstorm of astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihido Hoshide and NASA engineers on the ground: a tool to clean a bolt that gave them so much trouble during a marathon 8-hour spacewalk last week.
They were trying to replace an electrical switching unit, but on Thursday they couldn't bolt it to the outside of the station.
What to do if there is no hardware store in the neighborhood and the next supply ship is months away? Build it yourself -- so they attached a simple toothbrush to a metal pole and voila! They were able to clean out the bolt's socket today and finish the job. Shades of Apollo 13 -- when engineers threw parts on a table and brainstormed a solution, which saved the crew.
Spacewalking is incredibly difficult -- the astronauts wear space suits that fight every move they make. Williams wrote about last week's spacewalk in her blog.
"You don't just 'go outside,'" she said. "Usually that is the fun and easy part of the entire thing -- suit sizing, tool gathering and preparation, equipment gathering and preparations, studying new procedures, reviewing and talking through how to get us suited and how to get the airlock depressed, reviewing the tasks we will do with each other and with the robotic arm, talking about cleaning up, and then talking thru a plan to get back into the airlock, and any emergencies that can come up -- loss of communications, suit issues, etc.
"Yes, that took a lot of our time leading up to Thursday last week. Even planning when to go to sleep and what to eat are important. Remember, you are in that suit usually about 8 hours for a 6 hour EVA.
"To my surprise, the most intense part for this EVA happened to be outside when we encountered our 'sticky' bolt.
"That resulted in a long EVA, and over 10 hours in the suit. No bathroom and no lunch."
Williams and Hoshide accomplished their major tasks on today's spacewalk, and earned champagne when they got back inside the space station -- but, alas, there is no alcohol on the orbiting outpost.
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When we heard that astronauts aboard the International Space Station took a spare toothbrush along on a spacewalk today and used it to help clean debris from around some bolts they needed to secure in order to install a power unit, it got us thinking.
Just how versatile are old toothbrushs? We know we've used them to:
Clean bike gears.
Get grime out of our hubcaps.
Get at the crust around a car battery's terminals.
Polish jewelry.
Reach into aquarium filters.
There must be, though, many other ways they've been used. Please put on your "Hints from Heloise" hats and share in the comments thread.
By the way, NPR's Joe Palca tells our Newscast Desk that the two astronauts' spacewalk was a success. He says that:
"The space station gets its power from an array of solar panels. Four boxes, called main bus switching units, deliver that power to the electrical system on board the station. One of those units had stopped working properly. The station has a spare, so NASA decided to replace the malfunctioning unit.
Excerpt from:
The Toothbrush: It's In The Space Station's Toolbox. How About Yours?
By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Toting homemade brushes and bags of tools, two astronauts left the International Space Station on Wednesday for a second spacewalk to try and install a new power system unit.
Lead spacewalker Sunita Williams and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide floated outside the station for the second time in a week, hoping to resolve a problem that left a replacement power router tethered to its attachment plate.
The astronauts attempted to install the 220-pound (100-kg)device, known as a main bus switching unit, to the station's framework during a spacewalk last Thursday, but were stymied by a jammed bolt.
The unit is one of four needed to route power from eight solar array wings to transformers that distribute electricity to run the $100 billion orbital outpost.
Williams, who is making her sixth spacewalk, and Hoshide, on his second, left the station for another try shortly after 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT). Their gear included an assortment of brushes including one they fashioned out of a toothbrush.
NASA hopes that a thorough cleaning of the bolts and their housings will resolve the problem, though engineers came up with 15 pages of options and procedures.
If the new unit cannot be plugged into the station's power grid within four hours of the planned 6.5-hour spacewalk, Williams and Hoshide plan to bring it into the airlock with them for additional assessments inside the station, said NASA spokesman Josh Byerly from Mission Control in Houston.
Replacing the main bus switching unit was the primary goal of last week's spacewalk. The old unit was routing power but could not be commanded. Without the new unit installed, the station cannot get power from two of its eight solar panel wings.
An unrelated problem on Sunday took out power from a third wing.
Excerpt from:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2012) Completing this round of flight test objectives, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, flew to an altitude of 100 feet and descended gently to a controlled landing during a successful free flight Sept. 5 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Guided by autonomous rendezvous and capture software, the vehicle located an on-the-ground target using its onboard camera and flew to it. Last week's flight followed a preprogrammed flight profile, but today's operated "closed loop," with the vehicle seeking and finding its target using the onboard software to guide the flight.
"The 'Mighty Eagle' had a great flight, fulfilling the objectives we had for this test -- finding and landing on its target using a closed-loop system," said Greg Chavers, test lead for the project. "Given this is one of our last tests in this series, it is a worthy finale of a lot of people's hard work -- including our young engineers. They did a remarkable job running today's flight."
New for this test, the "Mighty Eagle" project managers turned over the vehicle's keys to three young Marshall engineers, Adam Lacock, flight manager; Jake Parton, test conductor; and Logan Kennedy, systems engineer.
Nicknamed the "Mighty Eagle" after one of the characters in the popular "Angry Birds" game, the vehicle is a three-legged prototype that resembles an actual flight lander design. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds. It is a "green" vehicle, fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide, and is guided by an onboard computer that activates the thrusters to power the craft's movements.
"We've surpassed our expectations and flew the most challenging run to date," said Mike Hannan, a controls engineer in Marshall's Engineering Directorate. "It was an overcast, extremely humid day, and we were concerned steam might block the vehicle's camera. We didn't see that, and the lander sought and found its target successfully."
"It was an invaluable experience managing today's test," added Lacock. "This is the kind of experience young engineers, like myself, need to learn more about flight mechanics, vehicle hardware and project management. It was a good day for our team."
NASA will use the "Mighty Eagle" to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.
The "Mighty Eagle" was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASA's Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate. Key partners in this project include the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, which includes the Science Applications International Corporation, Dynetics Corp., and Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., all of Huntsville.
For more information on NASA's robotic landers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/lunarquest/robotic/index.html
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NASA's 'Mighty Eagle' robotic prototype lander aces major exam
Public release date: 5-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rob Gutro robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov 443-858-1779 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite shows that Tropical Storm Leslie has been causing problems for itself.
Tropical Storm Leslie has been on a slow track in the Atlantic, and because of that, the storm is kicking up cooler waters from below the ocean surface. Those cooler waters were seen in infrared imagery on Sept. 5 at 0611 UTC (2:11 a.m. EDT) taken by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The cooler waters are responsible for Leslie's slow strengthening. Sea surface temperatures need to be at least as warm as 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.6 Celsius) to maintain a tropical cyclone. When a tropical cyclone moves slowly, however, it churns up the waters below the surface, which are cooler. That cooler water saps the tropical cyclone's strength.
Infrared satellite data from NASA's AIRS instrument has often seen a "cold water wake" trailing behind a tropical cyclone. That's the cold water drawn up to the ocean's surface as the tropical cyclone passes by. If there's another tropical cyclone behind the one that stirs up the deeper, cooler, ocean water, the second storm tends to weaken in the cold water wake.
Other than cool sea surface temperatures, Leslie has been battling wind shear, which has kept the storm below hurricane strength so far. That's changing, though, as the vertical shear has been gradually decreasing today, Sept. 5. As a result of the weaker wind shear, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center noticed a "banding eye feature" in visible satellite imagery. The AIRS data of Tropical Storm Leslie confirmed the visible imagery. AIRS infrared data showed the strongest convection (rising air that forms thunderstorms) and coldest cloud top temperatures were in a large area surrounding the center of circulation and in a band of thunderstorms to the east of the center.
On Sept. 5 at 11 a.m. EDT, Leslie was close to hurricane strength with maximum sustained winds near 70 mph (110 kmh). Leslie is expected to reach hurricane status later in the day as the wind shear eases. Leslie's center was about 470 miles (760 km) south-southeast of Bermuda, near latitude 25.7 north and longitude 62.8 west. Leslie is moving toward the north near 2 mph (4 kmh). Leslie is expected to continue crawling and wobbling to the north and north-northwest over the next couple of days because it is being blocked by a ridge (elongated area) of high pressure to the north and east of the storm. A strong trough (elongated area) of low pressure is expected to move out of southern Canada toward the southeastern U.S. and is expected to push Leslie northward in a couple of days.
The National Hurricane Center noted that Leslie will continue bring rough surf to Bermuda and the U.S. east coast from central Florida northward, the Northern Leeward islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands over the next couple of days.
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NASA sees Tropical Storm Leslie was causing a problem for itself
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. While Curiosity is busy exploring the surface of Mars, NASA's "Mighty Eagle" rover is blazing the way for future missions.
Holding their breath with anticipation, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center watched their brain child skyrocket hundreds of feet into the air. Completing this round of flight test objectives, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, flew to an altitude of 100 feet and descended gently to a controlled landing during a successful free flight Wednesday morning. Guided by state-of-the-art autonomous rendezvous and capture software, the vehicle located an on-the-ground target using its onboard camera and flew to it. Previous tests have followed a preprogrammed flight profile. But today the rover operated "closed loop," meaning the vehicle sought out and found its target completely independently.
"The Mighty Eagle had a great flight, fulfilling the objectives we had for this test -- finding and landing on its target using a closed-loop system, says Greg Chavers, test lead for the project. "Given this is one of our last tests in this series, it is a worthy finale of a lot of peoples hard work - including our young engineers. They did a remarkable job running todays flight."
New for this test, the "Mighty Eagle" project managers turned over the vehicles keys to three young Marshall engineers, Adam Lacock, flight manager; Jake Parton, test conductor; and Logan Kennedy, systems engineer.
Nicknamed the "Mighty Eagle" after one of the characters in the popular "Angry Birds" game, the vehicle is a three-legged prototype that resembles an actual flight lander design. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds. It is a green vehicle, fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide, and is guided by an onboard computer that activates the thrusters to power the crafts movements.
"Weve surpassed our expectations and flew the most challenging run to date," saidMike Hannan, a controls engineer in Marshall's Engineering Directorate. "Itwas an overcast, extremely humid day, and we were concerned steam might block the vehicles camera. We didnt see that, and the lander sought and found its target successfully."
"It was an invaluable experience managing todays test, added Lacock. "This is the kind of experience young engineers, like myself, need to learn more about flight mechanics, vehicle hardware and project management. It was a good day for our team."
NASA will use the "Mighty Eagle" to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.
The "Mighty Eagle" was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASAs Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate.
Keep up with the vehicle's progress on Twitter by following @NASAMightyEagle
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05-09-2012 14:54 On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 pm EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled away from the sun at over 900 miles per second. This movie shows the ejection from a variety of viewpoints as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and the joint ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: : Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: Or find us on Twitter:
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05-09-2012 10:16 History will remember Neil Armstrong, foremost, as the first human to step foot on another heavenly body. But his NASA family and many admirers worldwide will forever appreciate him for more than just that one, albeit world-changing, accomplishment.
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NASA is now offering museums a choice of freeze-dried and heat-resistant artifacts for their space shuttle-themed displays.
The space agency on Tuesday (Sept. 4) expanded its offer of surplus space food and space shuttle heat shield tiles, which had earlier been open only to educational organizations. Now, museums located across the nation can request the same pieces of space history that U.S. schools and universities have received since the end of the space agency's shuttle program in 2011.
For 30 years, NASA stocked its shuttle pantry with shrimp cocktail and spaghetti with meat sauce, among a variety of other dishes. Dessert selections on the shuttle included freeze-dried strawberries and off-the-shelf sweets such as candy-coated chocolates (otherwise known as M&Ms).
To drink, crew members could choose from coffee or tea, as well as powdered juices (Tang, in its many flavors).
The astronaut food was precooked or processed so as not to need refrigeration and was ready to eat. Meals could be prepared simply by adding water or by heating. [Space Food Photos: What Astronauts Eat]
That said, the food being offered is for demonstration and display use only. "Not for consumption," NASA warned on its website.
The other artifacts NASA is offering, lightweight thermal tiles, protected the shuttle orbiters from the extreme heat encountered during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
More than 20,000 tiles were installed on each shuttle and each tile was designed to survive 100 trips to space and back. Varying in thickness from 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) to 5 inches (12.7 cm), the tiles shielded the orbiter against temperatures as high as 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Both the space food and the tiles are available to eligible institutions on a first-come, first-served basis. Museums and schools must have the proper credentials from their state or federal agencies to qualify.
The tiles are available in three types: black coated, white coated and uncoated. Institutions may request up to three tiles, one of each type, while supplies last. The tiles are free but the schools and museums are responsible for the shipping and handling fees, $23.40 per tile.
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ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2012) A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.
The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA's Aquarius instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011. Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
SPURS scientists aboard the research vessel Knorr leave Sept. 6 from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and head toward a spot known as the Atlantic surface salinity maximum, located halfway between the Bahamas and the western coast of North Africa. The expedition also is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation.
The researchers will spend about three weeks on site deploying instruments and taking salinity, temperature and other measurements, before sailing to the Azores to complete the voyage on Oct. 9.
They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate change -- the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-reaching implications for life on Earth.
"What if the drought in the U.S. Midwest became permanent? To understand whether that could happen we must understand the water cycle and how it will change as the climate continues to warm," said Raymond Schmitt, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole and principal investigator for SPURS. "Getting that right is going to involve understanding the ocean, because the ocean is the source of most of the water."
Oceanographers believe the ocean retains a better record of changes in precipitation than land, and translates these changes into variations in the salt concentration of its surface waters. Scientists studying the salinity records of the past 50 years say they already see the footprint of an increase in the speed of the water cycle. The places in the ocean where evaporation has increased and rain has become scarcer have turned saltier over time, while the spots that now receive more rain have become fresher. This acceleration ultimately may exacerbate droughts and floods around the planet. Some climate models, however, predict less dramatic changes in the global water cycle.
"With SPURS we hope to find out why these climate models do not track our observations of changing salinities," said Eric Lindstrom, physical oceanography program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We will investigate to what extent the observed salinity trends are a signature of a change in evaporation and precipitation over the ocean versus the ocean's own processes, such as the mixing of salty surface waters with deeper and fresher waters or the sideways transport of salt."
To learn more about what drives salinity, the SPURS researchers will deploy an array of instruments and platforms, including autonomous gliders, sensor-laden buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles. Some will be collected before the research vessel heads to the Azores, but others will remain in place for a year or more, providing scientists with data on seasonal variations of salinity.
Some of the devices used during SPURS to explore the Atlantic's saltiest spot will focus on the outer edges of the study area, traveling for hundreds of miles and studying the broadest salinity features. Other instruments will explore smaller areas nested inside the research site, focusing on smaller fluxes of salt in the waters. The suite of ocean instruments will complement data from NASA's salinity-sensing instrument aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-D) observatory, and be integrated into real-time computer models that will help guide researchers to the most interesting phenomena in the cruise area.
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