Ten Ways Facebook Has Changed How We Travel

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This week is Facebook's 10th Anniversary, and all I can say is that in the past decade the world's largest social network sure has changed the way we travelboth for better and for worse. From my perspective, here are ten of the biggest changes:

Our travel dreams feel more achievable. When you log onto Facebook and see a friend riding a camel through the Sahara or photographing penguins in Antarctica, it becomes easier to picture yourself there. It also makes you insanely jealous.

We spend more time savoring our upcoming vacations. As soon as we announce travel plans on Facebook, we start to discuss them with friends and daydream about the trip. And happiness experts will tell you that the more time you spend anticipating a happy event, and reveling in that anticipation, the more it boosts your happiness.

It's easier to get our friends' recommendations for destinations we're headed to. Do a Facebook search for, say, "Hotels in Los Angeles," and you can immediately learn which of your friends have been to which hotels there, which they liked most, and what they have to say about them. It's a lot faster than emailing individual people whom you seem to recall may have once visited the place.

We share our travel experiences in real time. In the old days you had to wait for your neighbors to get back from a trip before you could see their photos. Now you see them atop the Eiffel Tower at the moment they're there.

We're forced to choose hotels with free Wi-Fi. Because if you can get on Facebook for free at home, you feel like an idiot paying a daily fee of $9.99or, in some countries, $29.99for Internet access.

When we're hungry or need a sightseeing break, we're drawn to eateries with Wi-Fi so we can "check in" on Facebook and check our friends' updates. Which is sad because when you're traveling you should seek out homegrown hangouts, not Starbucks. The more you spend those spare moments connecting with people you already know, the less you'll connect with locals.

We can track where we've been via Facebook's Timeline. It's now Facebook, not the attic, where we store our personal travel diaries and photo albums. And we carry our trip memories with us at all timeson our smartphones.

We're less likely to get homesick. No matter where you are in the world, you can keep constantly connected with friends and family back home.

We're more likely to worry throughout a trip that our house is being robbed. It's a risk you run when you announce on Facebook that you're hundreds of miles from home.

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Ten Ways Facebook Has Changed How We Travel

What Is Stem Cell Treatment? | eHow – eHow | How to Videos …

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Bronwyn Timmons

Based in Colorado, Bronwyn Timmons has been writing professionally since 2009. Her work has appeared on a variety of websites, covering topics such as career and education planning, wedding planning, home improvement, crafts and gardening. Timmons is pursuing her bachelor's degree in mortuary science.

Stem cell research is on the rise, giving hope to patients and providing treatment for many diseases and disorders. While stem cell treatments are a fairly new science, they can have life-saving effects.

Stem cell treatments consist of removing healthy regenerative cells from the patient and transplanting them into the affected area. This treatment helps repair and reverse a variety of conditions and diseases.

Regenerative cells can be harvested from the patient's bone marrow, fat or peripheral blood. This is done to eliminate the risk of cell rejection in the patient.

Typically, four to six treatments are administered depending on how the condition reacts to the stem cell treatment. Treatments are given over a period of seven to 12 days.

Stem cell treatments are effective at treating autoimmune diseases, cerebral palsy, degenerative joint disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, spinal injuries and type 2 diabetes. It is thought that in the future, stem cell treatment can be used to treat Alzheimer's disease.

Stem cell therapy can reduce pain and discomfort; it can help patients suffering from arthritis regain mobility. In serious cases, such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis, stem cell treatments can be life-saving.

Because stem cell treatment is a new science, little is known about its long term effects. According to Cell Medicine, no side effects have been reported by patients other than pain at the injection site.

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Stem Cell Therapy for Feline Kidney Disease, a Video Testimonial by a Pleased Pet Owner Gives Hope for Cats Suffering …

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Poway, CA (PRWEB) February 06, 2014

Stem Cell Therapy for Feline Kidney Disease is a special interest piece produced by Nicky Sims, the owner of Kitters, who recently had Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Therapy for his Feline Kidney Disease. Nicky highlights Kitters journey through diagnosis of the disease and his recent stem cell therapy, as well as educating about stem cells and their benefits.

Nickys film explains that Kitters began showing signs of kidney failure at the age of 15, exhibiting classic symptoms; lack of appetite, excessive thirst, nausea and lethargy. In 2012, Kitters was officially diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure, or kidney disease. He was prescribed a low protein diet and subcutaneous fluids for rehydration. This has been the standard treatment for decades although it has only been shown to slow the progression of the disease; not reverse it.

Dr. Richter at Montclair Veterinary Hospital thinks that there is something else that can help. In recent years, his hospital has begun using stem cells to treat animals for various orthopedic conditions such as pain from arthritis and dysplasia. In October 2013, Kitters would be the first cat he had treated with stem cell therapy for Feline Kidney Disease.

Dr. Richter explains why this could work for Kitters, Stem cells are cells within your body that are able to turn into any other cell in the body. Kitters has kidney issues, so what weve done is harvested some fat from his abdomen and sent that fat to Vet-Stem in San Diego, and what they do is isolate the stem cells from the fatty tissue. They concentrate them and send them back to us. In the case of an animal with kidney disease, we just give the stem cells intravenously. What that is going to do is begin the healing and rebuilding process.

Nickys film explores the importance of kidneys stating they play a vital role, ridding the body of toxins. As kidney disease progresses scar tissue develops making it harder to filter toxins. Damage to the kidneys makes the animal vulnerable to a number of other health conditions. Unfortunately the disease usually goes undiagnosed given that the symptoms of the disease often do not show until 2/3 of the kidneys are damaged.

Kitters own stem cells were used with the hope of repairing his damaged tissue Dr. Richter goes on, The nice thing about stem cells is that there is no issue of tissue rejection, since it is Kitters own stem cells. Additionally, if there is anything else going on in his body beyond the kidneys its going to address that as well. So, it is a really wonderful systemic treatment.

To find out more or view the special interest piece by Nicky Sims, Stem Cell Therapy for Feline Kidney Disease, visit this link.

About Vet-Stem, Inc. Vet-Stem, Inc. was formed in 2002 to bring regenerative medicine to the veterinary profession. The privately held company is working to develop therapies in veterinary medicine that apply regenerative technologies while utilizing the natural healing properties inherent in all animals. As the first company in the United States to provide an adipose-derived stem cell service to veterinarians for their patients, Vet-Stem, Inc. pioneered the use of regenerative stem cells in veterinary medicine. The company holds exclusive licenses to over 50 patents including world-wide veterinary rights for use of adipose derived stem cells. In the last decade over 10,000 animals have been treated using Vet-Stem, Inc.s services, and Vet-Stem is actively investigating stem cell therapy for immune-mediated and inflammatory disease, as well as organ disease and failure. For more on Vet-Stem, Inc. and Veterinary Regenerative Medicine visit http://www.vet-stem.com or call 858-748-2004.

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Extraordinary stem cell method tested in human tissue

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(Image: Charles Vacanti and Koji Kojima, Harvard Medical School)

Talk about speedy work. Hot on the heels of the news that simply dipping adult mouse cells in acid could turn them into cells with the potential to turn into any cell in the body, it appears that the same thing may have been done using human cells.

The picture above, given to New Scientist by Charles Vacanti at Harvard Medical School, is said to be images of the first human "STAP cell" experiments.

Last week, the scientific world was bowled over by a study in Nature showing that an acidic environment turned adult mouse cells into "totipotent" stem cells which can turn into any cell in the body or placenta. The researchers called these new totipotent cells stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells.

"If they can do this in human cells, it changes everything," Rob Lanza of Advanced Cell Technologies in Marlborough, Massachusetts, said at the time. The technique promises cheaper, quicker and potentially more flexible cells for regenerative medicine, cancer therapy and cloning.

Now, Vacanti and his colleagues say they have taken human fibroblast cells and tested several environmental stressors on them in an attempt to recreate human STAP cells. He won't reveal what type of stressors were applied but he says the resulting cells appears similar in form to the mouse STAP cells. His team is in the process of testing to see just how stem-cell-like these cells are.

Vacanti says that the human cells took about a week to resemble STAP cells, and formed spherical clusters just like their mouse counterparts. Using a similar experimental set-up with green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) cells, Vacanti says the resulting cells are behaving slightly differently. He says that may be due to the fact that the researchers used slightly different techniques. Both Vacanti and his Harvard colleague Koji Kojima emphasise that these results are only preliminary and much further analysis and validation is required.

"Even if these are STAP cells they may not necessarily have the same potential as mouse ones they may not have the totipotency which is one of the most interesting features of the mouse cells," says Sally Cowley, head of the James Martin Stem Cell Facility at the University of Oxford.

Pluripotent cells, such as embryonic stem cells, can form any cell in an embryo but not a placenta. Totipotent cells, however, can form any cell in an embryo and a placenta meaning they have the potential to create life. The only cells known to be naturally totipotent are in embryos that have only undergone the first couple of cell divisions immediately after fertilisation.

Research using totipotent cells would have to be under very strict regulatory surveillance, says Cowley. "It would actually be ideal if the human cells could be pluripotent and not totipotent it would make everyone's life a lot easier."

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Extraordinary stem cell method tested in human tissue

Histones may hold the key to the generation of totipotent stem cells

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5 hours ago This image shows iPS cells (green) generated using histone variants TH2A and TH2B and two Yamanaka factors (Oct3/4 and Klf4). Credit: RIKEN

One major challenge in stem cell research has been to reprogram differentiated cells to a totipotent state. Researchers from RIKEN in Japan have identified a duo of histone proteins that dramatically enhance the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and may be the key to generating induced totipotent stem cells.

Differentiated cells can be coaxed into returning to a stem-like pluripotent state either by artificially inducing the expression of four factors called the Yamanaka factors, or as recently shown by shocking them with sublethal stress, such as low pH or pressure. However, attempts to create totipotent stem cells capable of giving rise to a fully formed organism, from differentiated cells, have failed.

The study, published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell and led by Dr. Shunsuke Ishii from RIKEN, sought to identify the molecule in the mammalian oocyte that induces the complete reprograming of the genome leading to the generation of totipotent embryonic stem cells. This is the mechanism underlying normal fertilization, as well as the cloning technique called Somatic-Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT).

SCNT has been used successfully to clone various species of mammals, but the technique has serious limitations and its use on human cells has been controversial for ethical reasons.

Ishii and his team chose to focus on two histone variants named TH2A and TH2B, known to be specific to the testes where they bind tightly to DNA and affect gene expression.

The study demonstrates that, when added to the Yamanaka cocktail to reprogram mouse fibroblasts, the duo TH2A/TH2B increases the efficiency of iPSC cell generation about twentyfold and the speed of the process two- to threefold. And TH2A and TH2B function as substitutes for two of the Yamanaka factors (Sox2 and c-Myc).

By creating knockout mice lacking both proteins, the researchers show that TH2A and TH2B function as a pair, are highly expressed in oocytes and fertilized eggs and are needed for the development of the embryo after fertilization, although their levels decrease as the embryo grows.

In the early embryo, TH2A and TH2B bind to DNA and induce an open chromatin structure in the paternal genome, thereby contributing to its activation after fertilization.

These results indicate that TH2A/TH2B might induce reprogramming by regulating a different set of genes than the Yamanaka factors, and that these genes are involved in the generation of totipotent cells in oocyte-based reprogramming as seen in SCNT.

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Histones may hold the key to the generation of totipotent stem cells

Spirituality "Spirit Science" Extraterrestrial Life, ET’S Life In The Universe (Chapter Thirteen) – Video

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Spirituality "Spirit Science" Extraterrestrial Life, ET #39;S Life In The Universe (Chapter Thirteen)
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What happened when I tried to be a mindful parent

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When I had my son James, I tried to be mindful for the first time in my life.

I had practised yoga and meditation and read books on Buddhism and spiritual enlightenment before. I even did a 10-day juice detox during which I hallucinated colours while in a particularly intense reiki session. But I dont think much of it sank in. Id go through these phases of being present while half-starving on brown rice and spirulina tea and then return to eating canap dinners and moaning about my charming commitment-phobe boyfriend of the moment.

But as I found out fast after my son came shrieking into the world, there is really no way of caring for a newborn other than to surrender to the experience. As the old gospel song says, you gotta walk that lonesome valley for yourself aint nobody else gonna walk it for you.

Being alone all day with a baby, I quickly realized, is much easier if you can quiet your mind and go to the baby place in your brain. This is a state where you can spend several minutes, and eventually hours, simply laying on the floor and empathizing with your infant by feeling the sun on your face and occasionally thinking, Oooh, look how my fingers move. I think I might do a poo now.

Of course, many books will have you believe that to effectively care for a newborn you must spend your days sterilizing, pumping and swaddling according to a strict, incremented schedule, but I didnt do any of that. I just sort sloped around braless for a few months, silently communing with Jamess oceanic ego and changing an endless stream of diapers.

Eventually I went back to work and before I knew it Id turned into that mother the one in the supermarket lineup scrolling through work e-mails, snapping at the five-year-old to put down the candy NOW and nearly driving off leaving the baby in the cart.

So I started reading up on the practice of mindful parenting, which incorporates the techniques of mindfulness into family life. There was no shortage of material to choose from: In the past few months alone, several new books have come out on the subject. I started reading the daily tips on The Mindful Parent website and even signed James up for toddler yoga and meditation classes at my local wellness centre.

Much of the advice effective breathing techniques, strategies to still the racing mind, tips for existing in the moment rather than ruminating about the past or fretting about the future is stuff Ive read before. Cultivating stillness is difficult, but its also simple.

After all this theory, it was time for practice. I decided to start with one of the most basic exercises on The Mindful Parent blog. The idea is to gather your family together and suggest a minute of silence, and in this way, insert a pause at a time when everyone is otherwise caught up and engaged in the doing of things. How sweet, I thought, imagining my stepson Freddie and James clasping hands around the kitchen table and doing cleansing breaths.

I decided Saturday breakfast was my best window of opportunity. First, I made sure my English husband had gone out to buy the paper because, although he is very good at being silent and calm, he has an admittedly low tolerance for what he calls North American hippy bollocks. Once Freddie and James were finished munching their muesli, I announced in my best Mary Poppins voice that we were going to play a game called being silent for one minute. The boys stared at me in confusion, but I persisted. Doesnt that sound fun? So on the count of three we all say nothing and keep very still for one minute. Okay, one, two

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What happened when I tried to be a mindful parent

Live from Space! National Geographic, NASA Team Up for Cosmic TV Event

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TV-viewers around the world will be treated to an unprecedented live tour of the $100 billion International Space Station next month when the National Geographic Channel airs a two-hour special from the astronauts' orbital home.

During the "Live from Space" TV event, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata two of the six spaceflyers currently living on the station will show how they stay fit, conduct science experiments and even use the toilet in microgravity. They'll also talk to viewers via video chat, according to Nat Geo. Meanwhile, veteran NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who is perhaps most famous for his spacewalking repairs the Hubble Space Telescope, will be partaking in the two-hour event, live from Houston.

Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St...

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

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Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St...

The International Space Station is the largest structure in space ever built by humans. Let's see how much you know about the basics of this science laboratory in the sky.

The TV special, which will air in mid-March, is meant to coincide with the reboot of Carl Sagan's popular "Cosmos" miniseries, according to Nat Geo. The new iteration of the show, called "Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey," is hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the first episode is set to air March 9 on Fox and the National Geographic Channel.

The International Space Station is the largest manmade structure ever built in space. Five different space agencies representing 15 countries contributed to its construction and rotating crews of astronauts have continuously occupied the orbiting lab since 2000.

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Space Station Instrument Will Be the Coldest Thing in the Universe

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The International Space Station is set to become the coldest place in the known universe. Credit: NASA

When temperatures fall to record lows, some hardy folks like to boast that they went about their daily tasks unfazed by the wind chill warnings. Well, if sub-zero bragging rights are at stake, the International Space Station will soon have the entire universe beat.

In 2016, a new instrument due to be added to the ISS NASAs Cold Atom Laboratory will become the coldest location in the known universe. The instrument is capable of achieving a temperature of 100 Pico-kelvin, or one ten-billionth of a degree above absolute zero. For perspective, the average temperature of space is a balmy 2.7 Kelvin, or -454.81 degrees Fahrenheit.

At these extremely low temperatures, ordinary concepts of solid, liquid and gas are irrelevant. Matter can be in two places at once, objects behave simultaneously as particles and waves, and nothing is certain.

The temperature isnt the only thing thats cool about the Cold Atom Lab. Scientists will use the instrument to study the behavior of a strange form of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensates. Bose-Einstein condensates occur when atoms get so cold near absolute zero that they coalesce into a single wave of matter.

Diagram of the Cold Atom Lab. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cal-Tech

The Cold Atom Lab has one big advantage over Earth: microgravity. Earthbound cooling chambers need to use a lot of energy and powerful magnets to counteract the forces of Earths gravity in order to hold a molecule in place for observation. As a result, they can only observe molecular behavior for a second at a time and cannot achieve 100 pico-Kelvin temperatures. Without gravity, and with the aid of magnetic traps, scientists on the ISS can observe molecular behavior for up to 20 seconds at a clip, and drop the temperature closer to absolute zero.

Scientists on the ISS plan to mix two Bose-Einstein condensates together, and no one is really sure what will happen in a hyper-cold, microgravity environment.

If scientists can drop the temperature low enough in the Cold Atom Lab, theyll be able to assemble atomic wave packets as wide as a human hair large enough for the human eye to see.

A deeper understanding of Bose-Einstein condensates could lead to important technological innovation. Studying this unique state of matter has already yielded new laser and optical physics, such as an atom laser, which promise to improve electronic chip and circuit construction.

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NASA Astronauts Talk Space Fitness with US Olympic Bobsled Team

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Two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station connected with the United States Olympic bobsled team in Sochi, Russia before the 2014 Winter Games kick off Friday (Feb. 7).

Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio chatted fitness in space and on the ground with Curt Tomasevicz and other members of the U.S. bobsled team during a NASA-sponsored Google Hangout about the upcoming games and how astronauts exercise in space. Tomasevicz spoke to Hopkins and Mastracchio from Sochi, where he will compete in the coming weeks.

NASA astronaut Jeannette Epps, CrossFit Games Champion Rich Froning Jr., and Houston Texans professional football player Jared Crick also spoke with the space station astronauts from the ground during the Hangout. [Photos: 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and Space Travel]

"We do a lot of science, we do a lot of maintenance on the station," Hopkins said during the event. "But one of the most important things that we do and one of the big reasons we here, obviously today is to talk about fitness and exercise. We have between an hour and a half to two hours a day that's [a] dedicated part of our work time to exercise."

Mastracchio and Hopkins spoke to the group from their gym on the space station that holds three specialized pieces of equipment they can use to work out in microgravity. A treadmill, stationary bike and the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) are all available to help the astronauts get in their exercise while in space.

The ARED allows astronauts to put a specific amount of resistance on their bodies, helping them weightlift in weightlessness.

The astronauts exercise for about two hours each day to keep up bone density and prevent muscle loss during their time in space. Before launching into space, astronauts work with trainers on the ground to develop a plan for exercise while in orbit.

While the astronauts are in space, Mission Controllers on the ground analyze the data collected during Mastracchio and Hopkins' workouts in order to determine their fitness.

"Within two weeks of launching and being up in space, my fitness level as they [Mission Controllers] defined it had dropped 15 percent," Hopkins said. "From that point on, it's just a battle to get yourself back to that shape that you were in before you launched."

Mastracchio and Hopkins are both planning to watch the Olympics while in orbit. They showed off a "Team U.S.A." flag hanging in the exercise area, and said they have a picture of Tomasevicz and other Olympians on the station with them.

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NASA Astronauts Talk Space Fitness with US Olympic Bobsled Team

Russian Soyuz rocket launched to International Space Station

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A Russian Soyuz rocket boosted an unmanned Progress supply ship into orbitWednesday, kicking off a six-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station.

With a sky-lighting burst of flame, the Progress M-22M/P-54 spacecraft climbed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at11:23 a.m. EST(GMT-5,10:23 p.m.local time) at roughly the moment Earth's rotation carried the launch complex into the plane of the space station's orbit.

The space station passed 260 miles above Kazakhstan within a few minutes of liftoff, giving the lab's crew a glimpse of the rocket's fiery climb go space.

"We got a pretty good view of the first stage," flight engineer Rick Mastracchio told NASA flight controllers in Houston. "After (stage) separation, we pretty much lost it, but it was a good show for a few seconds."

The climb to space went smoothly and the Progress supply ship slipped into its planned preliminary orbit, with a high point of around 150 miles and a low point of roughly 120 miles, about nine minutes after liftoff. A few moments later, the spacecraft's solar panels and antennas deployed as expected.

"We have confirmation of separation of the Progress vehicle (from the Soyuz booster) and also deployment of the solar arrays and the appendages associated with the automated rendezvous and docking system," commentator Kyle Herring reported from NASA's mission control in Houston.

If all goes well, the cargo ship will carry out an automated four-orbit rendezvous with the space station, gliding to a docking at the Earth-facing Pirs module at6:25 p.m.As usual, Russian cosmonauts aboard the lab complex planned to be standing by in the Zvezda command module to remotely take over manual control of the approaching Progress if necessary.

The spacecraft is loaded with 2.8 tons of equipment and supplies for the station's six-man crew, including 2,897 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and general supplies, 1,764 pounds of propellant, 926 pounds of water and 110 pounds of oxygen.

The next space station resupply mission will be carried out by a commercially developed SpaceX Dragon supply ship launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Liftoff is expected in mid March.

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Russian Soyuz rocket launched to International Space Station

James Webb Space Telescope Flight Instruments and Primary …

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The amazing mirrors that will fly aboard NASAs James Webb Space Telescope will allow the James Webb Space Telescope to see farther away and further back in time to detect the light from the very first and most distant stars and galaxies. In this photo, an engineers crystal clear reflection is seen on the surface of one of the primary mirror segments. The image is so clear you can see an expression of concentration in the engineers face. Behind the engineer looking into the mirrors surface, the top part of the canister that the mirror was shipped in hangs from four straps. Other engineers use flashlights to inspect the mirror segment. Photo Credit and Caption: NASA/Chris Gunn

At NASAs Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a1.3-million-cubic-foot clean room, now rests all 18 gold-coated primary mirror segments for NASAs James Webb Space Telescopethe successor to the space agencys aging Hubble Space Telescope. All four of the telescopes science instruments are being kept within walking distance of the mirrors, and nowwith four years to launchtechnicians at Goddard are ready to assemble what will become the most powerful space telescope ever built.

The Hubble Space Telescope has already rewritten the science books. Going from Hubble to the James Webb Space Telescope is like going from a biplane to the jet engine, said MarylandSenator andChairwoman of the Senate Appropriations CommitteeBarbara Mikulski at a news conference held at Goddard on Feb. 3. As Chairwoman, Ive continued to fight for funds in the federal checkbook to keep the James Webb Space Telescope mission on track, supporting jobs today and jobs tomorrow at Goddard. NASA Goddard is home to leaders in Marylands space and innovation economies, making discoveries that not only win Nobel Prizes, but create new products and jobs. The James Webb Space Telescope will keep us in the lead for astronomy for decades to come, spurring the innovation and technology that keep Americas economy rolling.

NASA engineer Ernie Wright looks on as the first six flight ready JWST primary mirror segments are prepped for final cryogenic testing at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center. Photo Credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham

With most of the major hardware now under one roof, assembly of the massive space-based observatory is expected to begin as soon as thetelescopes structure arrives at Goddard, with assembly expected to be completed in 2016. Once complete, Webbwith its69.5 ft x 46.5 ft instruments-protecting sunshield deployedwill be the size ofa Boeing 737 airplane. Hubble, in comparison, isabout the size of a large tractor-trailer truck or bus. Webbs 6.5-meter diameter primary mirror will also be bigger, much bigger. The telescope will have nearly seven times more light collecting area than Hubble, allowing for unprecedented infrared observations of distant objects from the dawn of the universe some 14 billion years ago. Its mirror and instruments will capture images of the universe and break down the spectra of incoming light to analyze the properties of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets beyond our Solar System.

The recent completion of the critical design review for Webb, and the delivery of all its instruments to Goddard, mark significant progress for this mission, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The design, build, delivery and testing of these components took meticulous planning and action here at Goddard and with teams across the country, as well as with our international partners. Its very exciting to see it all coming together on schedule. And I want to thank our good friend Senator Barbara Mikulski for her support. We wouldnt be here today without her championing of this critical capability for NASA. I know she understands just how important it is to continue to push the boundaries of what we can do in space.

A joint project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Webb will have been in planning, design, and development for over 20 years when it is launched atop an Ariane-5 rocket fromArianespaces ELA-3 launch complex at the European Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana, in 2018.

This past year has been one of significant progress for the Webb telescope, said Goddard Director Chris Scolese. The NASA Goddard team is working tirelessly with our partners to keep the program on track as we develop this newest scientific tool to explore the universe.

The program has not been without its own share of problems and was nearly cancelled by theUnited States House of Representatives appropriations committee on Commerce, Justice, and Science in 2011, citingbillions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management as the reasoning behind killing the program. Congress, however, reversed the cancellation plans and instead capped additional funding to complete the project at $8 billionfour times more expensive than originally proposed, with a new launch date at least seven years later than originally planned.

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