NASA, Dept. of Interior use drone for wildfire detection

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- A small electric-powered unmanned aerial vehicle from NASA is being tested for early detection of fires in a national wildlife refuge.

The testing of the UAV in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a 50,000-square-acre area on the Virginia-North Carolina border, is being conducted under a one-year agreement between NASA's Langley Research Center and the Department of the Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is evaluating the feasibility of airborne unmanned platforms and their ability to offer a safer and more cost-effective alternative for surveillance of potential areas of interest immediately following thunderstorm activity," said Great Dismal Swamp Refuge Manager Chris Lowie. "The agency hopes to see a significant decrease in cost to survey the Great Dismal Swamp, as well as a reduction in time to detect nascent fires, which could potentially save millions of dollars to the taxpayer in firefighting costs."

The idea of using a small UAV for fire detection in the swamp came from a NASA employee following a four-month fire in 2011.

The fire was caused by a lightning strike, which fire officials told him were the primary reason for most fires in wilderness areas.

"I learned most fires are caused by lightning strikes and the only way they can spot them is by hiring an aircraft to do an aerial survey of the huge swamp," said Mike Logan, who works at the Langley Research Center. "So I figured why not use a UAV as a fire detector?"

The UAV being used in the experiment will be equipped with an out-of-the-nose camera that can see rising smoke plumes. A downward-pointing infrared camera in the aircraft body will detect heat signatures to find hot spots.

Video from the aircraft will be viewed using a laptop at a mobile ground station.

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NASA's orbiters, rovers prep for rare comet close-up

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Mars robotic rovers and orbiters are set to have a front row seat for a comet that will be flying past the Red Planet

NASA scientists will be using various orbiters, rovers and satellites to study the Siding Spring comet as it makes a relatively close flyby past mars on Oct. 19.

Mars robotic rovers and orbiters are set to have a front row seat for a comet that will be flying past the Red Planet so close it will be less than one-tenth the distance of any known comet flyby of Earth.

NASA scientists are just trying to make sure it's not dangerously close.

What astronomers are describing as a "once-in-a-lifetime" comet flyby is expected to zoom within about 87,000 miles of Mars on Sunday, Oct. 19.

While that distance may seem large, it is less than half the distance between Earth and our moon.

The comet, known as C/2013 A1 or Siding Spring, should travel past Mars at approximately 126,000 mph with its nucleus coming closest to the planet at 2:27 p.m. ET, according to NASA. While the nucleus will miss the orbiters working around Mars, the comet will be shedding material as it goes by. That debris is expected to hurtle toward Mars at 35 miles per second.

NASA noted that at that velocity, even a particle only one-fiftieth of an inch across could cause significant damage to a spacecraft and could be disastrous for the Mars orbiters.

The Martian atmosphere, though thinner than that here on Earth, should protect the Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity from being damaged by any particles flying off the comet.

NASA now has three spacecraft -- the Mars Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN orbiter -- working above the surface of Mars. And they won't have the protection the rovers do.

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NASA's orbiters, rovers prep for rare comet close-up

Antarctic sea ice level breaks record, NASA says

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A view of the Antarctic's record-breaking sea ice. NASA

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica is at an all-time high, even as overall averages of global temperature continue to climb. NASA reports that ice formation in the continent's southern oceans peaked this year, breaking ice satellite records dating back to the late 1970s.

"We are seeing overall temperatures warming around the globe, so you would expect to see ice loss," said Dr. Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Given the warming trend, he admits that the Antarctic ice uptick is somewhat of a "mystery."

While the Antarctic sea ice has expanded beyond levels that researchers have seen in the past, experts point to overall atmospheric changes, including shifts in pressures and winds, which can drive ice formations.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that as of Sept. 19, for the first time since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was recorded at 7.23 million square miles.

Despite this trend, sea ice as a whole is decreasing on a global scale. Researchers say that just like global warming trends have different outcomes in various parts of the world, not every location with sea ice will experience ice loss.

"When we think about global warming we would expect intuitively that ice should also be declining in the Antarctic region as in the Arctic," NASA's senior research scientist Josefino Comiso explained. "But station and satellite data currently show that the trends in surface temperature are most positive in the Arctic while in the Antarctic region the trends are a mixture of positive and negative trends," he said, adding that cooling and declining sea surface temperatures could also contribute a "more rapid advance at the ice edge."

Snowfall could also be behind the growing ice pattern. NASA explains: "Snow landing on thin ice can actually push the thin ice below the water, which then allows cold ocean water to seep up through the ice and flood the snow - leading to a slushy mixture that freezes in the cold atmosphere and adds to the thickness of the ice."

Though some global warming cynics might see the ice trend as an opportunity to dispute the larger climate trend, the statistics on the Arctic warming indicate otherwise. NASA says that on an annual average basis, Arctic sea ice has decreased at a rate of 4.3 percent each decade since 1979, whereas in the Antarctic, sea ice has increased at a rate of 1.7 percent every 10 years.

Despite the current increase in Antarctic ice cover, scientists say the trend is likely to reverse in the future as global warming heats the planet.

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NASA Logo Has Cameo in Disney's 1st 'Tomorrowland' Trailer (Video)

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NEW YORK NASA makes a cameo in the first teaser trailer for the new, highly secretive Disney movie "Tomorrowland."

The "Tomorrowland" teaser trailer features the character Casey Newton (played by Britt Robertson) leaving a police department and taking a red hat bearing the NASA logo with her. While the movie's plot is still under-wraps, the teaser was revealed Thursday (Oct. 9) to a raucous crowd here at New York Comic Con. Robertson, George Clooney and Hugh Laurie were even on-hand to reveal some never-before-seen footage from "Tomorrowland" and discuss the film under the watchful eye of producer Damon Lindelof and director Brad Bird.

"[Tomorrowland is] larger than most things I've ever been around," Clooney said after making a surprise appearance at the Comic Con panel. "The beautiful thing about it is that Brad has a real vision of the film he wants to make, and it was really fun, I think for all of us, to come play in this giant toy box with him."

After much cajoling from Clooney, Bird and Lindelof showed another clip from the film during the Comic Con panel much to the delight of the packed crowd. The exclusive features Clooney fighting off some intruding robots with Casey.

"Tomorrowland's" first teaser shows Casey on her way out of jail when she finds an odd pin in her items. When she picks up the pin, it transports her into a field of wheat. Once she lets go of the pin, however, she ends up right back in the prison waiting room.

Casey's NASA hat isn't the movie's only tie to outer space. A box allegedly found in the Disney vaults actually inspired much of the plot for the movie. The container held, among other things, a note printed on NASA letterhead that asked Walt Disney to meet the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and tour Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Disney really did tour the flight center in April 1965.

Entertainment Weekly got a few more space-y details about the plot. Casey is apparently from Florida and watched NASA's launch pads being disassembled at Cape Canaveral, according to Entertainment Weekly.

"Tomorrowland" is set to hit theaters on May 22, 2015.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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NASA Logo Has Cameo in Disney's 1st 'Tomorrowland' Trailer (Video)

Blood Moon Tetrad Tribulations And The Coming Astral Kingdom of God – Video

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Blood Moon Tetrad Tribulations And The Coming Astral Kingdom of God
God vs Satan, the Antichrist and his devils Alliance: Battle for the Power of God. Satan #39;s Battle for the Kingdom of God began 06/06/06 Before 06/06/06 No Nanotechnology Product or Patent...

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DNA nano-foundries cast custom-shaped metal nanoparticles

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Oct-2014

Contact: Kat McAlpine katherine.mcalpine@wyss.harvard.edu 617-432-8266 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard @wyssinstitute

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have unveiled a new method to form tiny 3D metal nanoparticles in prescribed shapes and dimensions using DNA, Nature's building block, as a construction mold.

The ability to mold inorganic nanoparticles out of materials such as gold and silver in precisely designed 3D shapes is a significant breakthrough that has the potential to advance laser technology, microscopy, solar cells, electronics, environmental testing, disease detection and more.

"We built tiny foundries made of stiff DNA to fabricate metal nanoparticles in exact three-dimensional shapes that we digitally planned and designed," said Peng Yin, senior author of the paper, Wyss core faculty member and Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

The Wyss team's findings, described in a paper titled "Casting Inorganic Structures with DNA Molds," were published today in Science. The work was done in collaboration with MIT's Laboratory for Computational Biology and Biophysics, led by Mark Bathe, senior co-author of the paper.

"The paper's findings describe a significant advance in DNA nanotechnology as well as in inorganic nanoparticle synthesis," Yin said. For the very first time, a general strategy to manufacture inorganic nanoparticles with user-specified 3D shapes has been achieved to produce particles as small as 25 nanometers or less, with remarkable precision (less than 5 nanometers). A sheet of paper is approximately 100,000 nanometers thick.

The 3D inorganic nanoparticles are first conceived and meticulously planned using computer design software. Using the software, the researchers design three-dimensional "frameworks" of the desired size and shape built from linear DNA sequences, which attract and bind to one another in a predictable manner.

"Over the years, scientists have been very successful at making complex 3D shapes from DNA using diverse strategies," said Wei Sun, a postdoctoral scholar in the Wyss' Molecular Systems Lab and the lead author of the paper. For example, in 2012, the Wyss team revealed how computer-aided design could be used to construct hundreds of different self-assembling one-, two-, and three-dimensional DNA nanoshapes with perfect accuracy. It is this ability to design arbitrary nanostructures using DNA manipulation that inspired the Wyss team to envision using these DNA structures as practical foundries, or "molds", for inorganic substances.

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DNA nano-foundries cast custom-shaped metal nanoparticles

University of Michigan opens $46M research center

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By - Associated Press - Friday, October 10, 2014

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - The University of Michigan is opening a $46 million complex for researchers to study nanotechnologies in energy, biotechnology and other fields.

The Center of Excellence in Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering is a 62,000-square-foot addition to laboratories on the Ann Arbor schools north campus. Researchers will be able to watch the degradation of materials that go into things like cars and medical devices.

Researchers also will be able to use tissue culture rooms to grow cells to do cancer research or test blood infections. Specially designed chambers will allow a team to study how a single molecule of DNA responds to slight forces, which could provide insight into genetic diseases.

Gov. Rick Snyder, University of Michigan Mark Schlissel and other will speak at the grand opening Friday morning.

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University of Michigan opens $46M research center

DNA nano-foundries cast custom-shaped 3-D metal nanoparticles

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19 hours ago The concept of casting nanoparticles inside DNA molds is very much alike the Japanese method of growing watermelons inside cube-shaped glass boxes. Credit: Harvard's Wyss Institute / Peng Yin

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have unveiled a new method to form tiny 3D metal nanoparticles in prescribed shapes and dimensions using DNA, Nature's building block, as a construction mold.

The ability to mold inorganic nanoparticles out of materials such as gold and silver in precisely designed 3-D shapes is a significant breakthrough that has the potential to advance laser technology, microscopy, solar cells, electronics, environmental testing, disease detection and more.

"We built tiny foundries made of stiff DNA to fabricate metal nanoparticles in exact three-dimensional shapes that we digitally planned and designed," said Peng Yin, senior author of the paper, Wyss core faculty member and Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

The Wyss team's findings, described in a paper titled "Casting Inorganic Structures with DNA Molds," were published today in Science. The work was done in collaboration with MIT's Laboratory for Computational Biology and Biophysics, led by Mark Bathe, senior co-author of the paper.

"The paper's findings describe a significant advance in DNA nanotechnology as well as in inorganic nanoparticle synthesis," Yin said. For the very first time, a general strategy to manufacture inorganic nanoparticles with user-specified 3D shapes has been achieved to produce particles as small as 25 nanometers or less, with remarkable precision (less than 5 nanometers). A sheet of paper is approximately 100,000 nanometers thick.

The 3D inorganic nanoparticles are first conceived and meticulously planned using computer design software. Using the software, the researchers design three-dimensional "frameworks" of the desired size and shape built from linear DNA sequences, which attract and bind to one another in a predictable manner.

"Over the years, scientists have been very successful at making complex 3D shapes from DNA using diverse strategies," said Wei Sun, a postdoctoral scholar in the Wyss' Molecular Systems Lab and the lead author of the paper. For example, in 2012, the Wyss team revealed how computer-aided design could be used to construct hundreds of different self-assembling one-, two-, and three-dimensional DNA nanoshapes with perfect accuracy. It is this ability to design arbitrary nanostructures using DNA manipulation that inspired the Wyss team to envision using these DNA structures as practical foundries, or "molds", for inorganic substances.

"The challenge was to translate this kind of 3D geometrical control into the ability to cast structures in other diverse and functionally-relevant materials, such as gold and silver," Sun said.

Just as any expanding material can be shaped inside a mold to take on a defined 3D form, the Wyss team set out to grow inorganic particles within the confined hollow spaces of stiff DNA nanostructures

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DNA nano-foundries cast custom-shaped 3-D metal nanoparticles

Hunger Games: How the brain 'browns' fat to aid weight loss

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Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have uncovered a molecular process in the brain known to control eating that transforms white fat into brown fat. This process impacts how much energy we burn and how much weight we can lose. The results are published in the Oct. 9 issue of the journal Cell.

Obesity is a rising global epidemic. Excess fatty tissue is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, neurological disorders, and cancer. People become overweight and obese when energy intake exceeds energy expenditure, and excess calories are stored in the adipose tissues. The adipose organ is made up of both white and brown fat. While white fat primarily stores energy as triglycerides, brown fat dissipates chemical energy as heat. The more brown fat you have, the more weight you can lose.

It has previously been shown that energy-storing white fat has the capacity to transform into energy-burning brown-like fat. In this new study, researchers from the Yale Program in Integrative Cell Signaling and Neurobiology of Metabolism, demonstrate that neurons controlling hunger and appetite in the brain control the browning of white fat.

Lead author Xiaoyong Yang, associate professor of comparative medicine and physiology at Yale School of Medicine, conducted the study with Tamas Horvath, professor and chair of comparative medicine, and professor of neurobiology and Obstetrics/gynecology at Yale School of Medicine, and their co-authors.

The team stimulated this browning process from the brain in mice and found that it protected the animals from becoming obese on a high-fat diet. The team then studied the molecular changes in hunger-promoting neurons in the hypothalamus and found that the attachment of a unique sugar called O-GlcNAc to potassium ion channels acts as a switch to control brain activity to burn fat.

Our studies reveal white fat browning as a highly dynamic physiological process that the brain controls, said Yang. This work indicates that behavioral modifications promoted by the brain could influence how the amount of food we eat and store in fat is burned.

Yang said hunger and cold exposure are two life-history variables during the development and evolution of mammals. We observed that food deprivation dominates over cold exposure in neural control of white fat browning. This regulatory system may be evolutionarily important as it can reduce heat production to maintain energy balance when we are hungry. Modulating this brain-to-fat connection represents a potential novel strategy to combat obesity and associated illnesses.

Other authors on the study include Hai-Bin Ruan, Marcelo O. Dietrich, Zhong-Wu Liu, Marcelo R. Zimmer, Min-Dian Li, Jay Prakash Singh, Kaisi Zhang, Ruonan Yin, and Jing Wu.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, American Diabetes Association, Ellison Medical Foundation, American Heart Association, and CNPq/Brazil.

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Hunger Games: How the brain 'browns' fat to aid weight loss

Dr Stephen Murphy: Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, Divine Saviour Healthcare – Video

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Dr Stephen Murphy: Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, Divine Saviour Healthcare
Dr. Stephen Murphy: Podiatric Medicine and Surgery "Any treatment I propose I think of whether or not I would recommend this to a family member."

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