NIH Receives Major Supercomputer Upgrade | TOP500 … – TOP500 News

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CSRA, a system integrator and service company, has installed the second phase of the Biowulf supercomputer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), more than doubling the systems capacity.

Biowulf was built to serve biologists, medical researchers, and other life scientists associated with NIH projects. Those include research efforts in genomics, molecular biology, bioimage analysis, and structural biology, to name a few. The system hosts dozens of software packages that support these areas, as well as an array of scientific databases.

Biowulf, an HPE Apollo XL1x0r cluster, was initially installed in 2016, and currently sits at number 139 on the TOP500 list. Its peak performance of 1.23 petaflops yielded a Linpack mark of 991.6 teraflops. The phase 1 system is powered by Broadwell-generation Xeon processors, and uses Mellanox FDR as the system interconnect for both the compute nodes and the main storage array. Ethernet provides connectivity to the NIH wide area network, known as NIHnet, and the NFS storage. The system also provides 14 petabytes of GPFS storage, courtesy of Data Direct Neworks (DDN).

According to the CSRA press release, the Biowulf upgrade will include an additional 1,104 CPU nodes representing 1.2 peak petaflops of extra capacity, along with 72 GPU nodes, which were added to the existing 2,372-node cluster. If the Biowulf website has been updated correctly, those GPUs are NVIDIA K80s, with two per node. That would bring the GPU contribution alone to over 400 teraflops, and the upgraded cluster to 1.6 peak petaflops. With the inclusion of the 1,104-node addition, that brings the capacity of the entire system to 2.8 petaflops.

Thats a lot more computational horsepower than the NIH has ever commanded before. Curiously, the press release doesnt include a quote from any NIH official on what all that extra capacity might be used for. The announcement does, however, offers this:

The second stage of computing power announced today will enable NIH researchers to make important advances in biomedical fields. This field of research is deeply dependent on computation, such as whole-genome analysis of bacteria, simulation of pandemic spread, and analysis of human brain MRIs. Results from these analyses may enable new treatments for diseases including cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, infectious disease, and mental health.

The lack of NIH input could reflect the uncertainty in the research that will be funded there over the next year. The Trump White House has called for a $1.7 billion reduction for FY2017 and a further decrease of $5.8 billion in FY2018, amounting to almost a 20 percent cutback for the agency. Congress doesnt appear to be going along with these proposed reductions, however, and has come up with an omnibus agreement to increase spending by $2 billion for at least this fiscal year.

Regardless, the additional capacity in Biowulf will almost certainly fill up with workloads from life scientists who rely on the NIH for computational resources. The desire for the government to provide better healthcare, which drives much of this research, is growing, even in an era when the appetite for public spending is waning.

In a recent interview by the Washington Examiner, NIH Director Francis Collins noted that this type of research can return can return $8 to the economy for each dollar spent, notwithstanding its ability to improve peoples lives. This is a really remarkable moment in terms of making rapid progress, whether you're talking about cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, rare diseases or common diseases, said Collins. We are at a particularly exciting moment, scientifically, in terms of the ability to make rapid progress.

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NIH Receives Major Supercomputer Upgrade | TOP500 ... - TOP500 News

The rise of unproven stem cell therapies turned this obscure scientist into an industry watchdog – Science Magazine

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A cancer scare helped encourage stem cell researcher Paul Knoepfler to become an outspoken watchdog over his field.

Carl Costas

By Kelly ServickAug. 3, 2017 , 9:00 AM

SACRAMENTOBack in his lab after a week of vacation, Paul Knoepfler slogs through backlogged emails: A 71-year-old woman with arthritic knees would like to know whether a stem cell clinic she researched can give her relief. The parents of a 12-year-old with a degenerative eye disease wonder whether there's any hope of averting blindness with a stem cell injection. "Kindly apprise us of expenses and chance of success," they ask.

Knoepfler, though housed in the Shriners Hospitals for Children here, isn't a physician. And his University of California (UC), Davis, lab doesn't study arthritis or eye disease, nor does he have any experience developing a stem cell therapy. He mostly uses stem cells to study cancer-causing gene mutations. But thanks to The Niche, a blog he has run since 2010, Knoepfler has become an unlikely authorityand a dogged voice of cautionon the clinical use of stem cells.

The blog, which now averages more than 4000 daily visits, has elevated him from an obscure bench scientist to an international spokesperson on all things stem cell. "It's one of the major sources of information [for the] layperson, and also for stem cell researchers," says Jeanne Loring of Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, an occasional commenter and guest writer on the blog.

It also has turned Knoepfler, a softspoken, unimposing presence in person, into a divisive figure. He has sounded the alarm on hundreds of U.S. physicians and clinics advertising stem cells to treat everything from sore knees to spinal cord injury. These offerings haven't been through the approval process at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most aren't supported by evidence from randomized clinical trials.

"They were just saying, Screw the rules, we're just going to set up shop and put up a website and start injecting people with stem cells,'" says Knoepfler, who co-wrote a paper last year documenting the scope of this industry. "I saw that as a threat, first to patients, but to the field as well."

Stem cell researchers largely applaud his efforts. "He's been a reliable voice of reason in the field," says George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Boston Children's Hospital and dean of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Academics are "often more comfortable being provincial and insular, and not mixing it up in the public debates."

But even people who have expressed concern about predatory and fraudulent clinics contend Knoepfler has sometimes painted potential stem cell therapies with too broad a brush. "There are clinicians in the United States that are practicing forms of regenerative medicine that are legal and that are having good results for their patients," says Bernard Siegel, executive director of the nonprofit Regenerative Medicine Foundation in Wellington, Florida. "We can't tar everyone."

Siegel says he admires Knoepfler, and his foundation honored the blogger with its national advocacy award in 2013. But in Siegel's view, Knoepfler has at times acted as "almost a bit of a societal scold."

On The Niche's discussion thread, patients who believe they have benefited from unapproved stem cell treatments are harsher. "You and I will never agree on this issue," wrote one commenter, Barbara Hanson, who has sought stem cell treatment overseas for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and runs an online forum for patients, in a discussion about the value of FDA approval. "I have experienced a much better quality of life after having stem cell treatment than I could ever have expected from prescription medications and conventional treatment."

Seven years into the conversation, Knoepfler accepts criticism in stride. But with FDA looking unlikely to tighten its grip on such clinics, and strong pressure from some patients, advocates, and companies to keep stem cell treatments outside regulators' grasp, he admits the impact of his outreach is hard to measure. "A few individuals can't really necessarily rein in a whole industry."

Paul Knoepfler's blog, The Niche, steadily gained readers in its early years, but saw a spike in 2014 with his skeptical coverage of stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) stem cell claims.

(Graphic) G. Grulln/science; (Data) Paul Knoepfler

Knoepfler's fascination with stem cells grew out of science, but his willingness to speak out started with a life-changing personal event. A college English major, he didn't commit to science until he landed a postgraduation job as a research technician at UC San Diego, where his wife was starting medical school. "Being in the lab setting felt like I was at home," he says.

While working on a doctorate there and a postdoc at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, Knoepfler explored the proteins and genes that act up in some childhood cancers. To understand why variations in the gene MYC and its relatives lead to childhood brain tumors, Knoepfler realized he would have to detail their normal role in the growth and differentiation of neural stem cells.

Just as he set out to establish his own lab, the state of California launched a grand experiment in stem cell funding. Motivated in part by then-President George W. Bush's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem (ES) cell research, which antiabortion groups opposed, California voters approved the $3 billion California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). In 2006, a $2 million "new faculty" grant from CIRM helped get Knoepfler's UC Davis lab off the ground.

It had been running for 3 years when, at age 42, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and given roughly 50-50 survival odds. Knoepfler found himself a patient at the same cancer center he frequented for research meetings and seminars. "This time, I walked straight past the auditorium for the clinic. That was a freaky moment."

Surgery led to a remission that has now lasted for 7 years. But the medical scare emboldened him "to try to expand how I had impact, beyond just the pure science," he says. Weeks after the operation, Knoepfler published the first official post on The Niche, named after a defunct stem cell blog once hosted on Nature.com that he admired. (Stem cells often reside and grow in specific niches in the body, such as bone marrow, which houses blood-forming cells.)

Early on, Knoepfler was an impassioned and partisan advocate for ES cell research. Many Republicans "are in favor of executing prisoners who might be innocent, taking away women's rights, cutting aid to poor children, eliminating Social Security," he wrote after Mississippi lawmakers introduced an amendment to give embryos constitutional protections, "but when it comes to fertilized eggs or few-days-old blastocysts, they start carrying pitchforks and torches."

As the threat to ES cell research began to feel less serious under former President Barack Obama's administration, Knoepfler's attention shifted. His periodic Google searches for "stem cells" began to turn up unfamiliar treatment centers in the United States advertising poorly validated therapies. Many clinics isolated adult stem cells from a patient's own fat or bone marrow and reinjected them, promising to heal injured joints, rejuvenate aging skin, or even repair damage from neurological disorders and autoimmune disease.

Recently, Knoepfler and bioethicist Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis set out to compile U.S. stem cell clinics marketing directly to consumers online. In a paper in Cell Stem Cell, they revealed a marketplace of 351 businesses operating at 570 clinics. "That was a tremendous piece of work," says David Jensen, a retired newspaper journalist in Paso Robles, California, who runs a blog monitoring CIRM. "You could see it was a problem if you looked out your window. The question was how big it is."

Knoepfler believes that new stem cell treatments will eventually help patients, but he has long fretted about their safety. In 2012, his team published a paper pointing out similarities between tumor cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cellsadult cells reprogrammed to a more primitive state in the lab. In part because iPS cells don't face religious objections, they are an appealing alternative to ES cells. But the paper concluded that iPS cells' potential for cancerous growth could stand in the way of using them therapeutically.

The adult stem cells used in most of the emerging clinics didn't undergo the same reprogramming process, but Knoepfler still worried about their potential for uncontrolled growth. "I guess I just had this deep concern that someone was going to get cancer, maybe because of my own experience with cancer, in retrospect."

Knoepfler acknowledges that few stem cell-induced cancers and other serious side effects have been reported. But he maintains that the risk is still there, noting the case of stroke patient Jim Gass, who ended up with a tumor along his spine after a series of stem cell injections at clinics outside the United States. A report this year in The New England Journal of Medicine also documented three women who were blinded after a Florida clinic injected them with stem cells to treat macular degeneration. And even patients not physically harmed might spend thousands of dollars on useless treatments that insurers often refuse to cover.

At first, Knoepfler thought FDA would crack down on the emerging industryan expectation he now calls nave. The only FDA-approved stem cell therapies involve transplants of umbilical cord blood-derived stem cells for blood cancers and certain metabolic and immune disorders. But the agency classifies other uses of stem cells as medical procedures and exempts them from its drug approval process, provided they meet certain criteria, including "minimal manipulation" of the cells and "homologous use"using the cells for the same function they naturally perform in the body. Some uncertainty remains about which products are exemptedparticularly when it comes to fat-derived stem cells. Draft guidances FDA issued in 2014 and 2015 seemed to narrow the set of exempted therapies, but those have yet to be finalized.

Meanwhile, Knoepfler pursues his own grassroots effort with unlikely passion. "He's a sweetheart," Jensen says. "Personally, I find him sort of shy and diffident sometimes," but Knoepfler "doesn't shy away from contact with the mainstream media." He has picked apart stem cell claims that seem too good to be true, requested details from clinics, and complained about uncritical press coverage of treatments.

Even after a recent redesign of The Niche, Knoepfler's corner of the internet feels homespun and unadorned. He often illustrates his posts with corny clip art, appropriated Hollywood movie posters ("A Nightmare on Stem Street"), and cartoons he draws himself. The blog yo-yos between audiences, dissecting a technical research paper one day, raising questions about a celebrity's stem cell boob job the next. Its most visited page in the past year is a Spanish translation of his layperson-friendly explainer, "What are stem cells?"

In 2014, Knoepfler found himself fielding midnight calls from Japanese reporters after he blogged his doubts about a paper from a Kobe-based research team describing stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) stem cells, allegedly created from adult cells by simple measures such as exposure to acid. He published some of the earliest skepticism of the claim, which swiftly fell apart through failed replication attempts, a misconduct investigation, and the paper's retraction. Knoepfler chronicled the downfall of STAP stem cells blow by blow.

Other moves drew more criticism. Knoepfler took to The Sacramento Bee last June to decry what he saw as a dangerous shift in CIRM's agenda. In a Fox News oped, CIRM's then-President C. Randal Mills and Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) criticized FDA's regulatory process as too rigid. The comments came as the Senate considered legislation that would let FDA conditionally approve stem cell therapies without largescale clinical trials. CIRM "should refocus its efforts on the science and medicine of stem cells," Knoepfler wrote, "instead of lobbying for high-risk weakening of federal stem cell oversight."

The affront to the head of a major funding organization that had supported Knoepfler's own lab struck some colleagues as reckless. "I advised him not to do it," says Loring, adding, "it doesn't mean I agreed with [Mills]."

Asked about Knoepfler's criticism the next week, Mills called him "fairly self-interested" in his push for more basic research and suggested that critics of FDA reform "live with a horrible disease" before defending the agency's slow and expensive process for approving new treatments.

Knoepfler's unyielding skepticism has also turned some patients against him. In a three-part series of posts this spring, he questioned the ethics of a center at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, that is attempting to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) by eliminating patients' immune cells and then using their bone marrow stem cells to replenish them. The principal investigator, Richard Burt, has run clinical trials, but has also provided treatment outside of trials under an FDA-sanctioned protocol known as expanded access.

After hearing that some MS patients were asked to pay as much as $150,000 to participate in a trial or receive off-study treatment, Knoepfler took to his blog. Although careful not to equate Burt's operation with for-profit clinics, Knoepfler suggested that testimonials on the center's website painted too rosy a picture of the experimental therapy and that its patient handbook encouraged fundraising efforts that might force patients to share private health information.

"It was astonishing, what he wrote," says Heather Burke of Orlando, Florida, who credits treatment at Northwestern with putting her MS into permanent remission and runs a Facebook group for patients. She says Burt tells patients that the procedure is potentially fatal and never promises improvements in their symptoms. Knoepfler's suggestion that Northwestern endorses fundraising is unfair, she adds, because for most patients, the procedure is fully covered by insurance. (Burt declined a request for comment.)

Burke shares Knoepfler's concerns about stem cell clinics that peddle shoddy science. But "Northwestern is not a popsicle stand in Mexico," she says. "When you have bloggers like Paul putting things out there like this, the only thing that they're doing is halting a possible really big breakthrough for treatments for MS."

One patient threatened to file an ethics complaint with his university. Others have accused Knoepfler of being a shill for Big Pharma, intent on suppressing alternatives to traditional drugs. (Knoepfler says he receives no funding from pharmaceutical companies.)

Knoepfler's online jabs at high-profile figures, companies, and doctors have never led to a libel lawsuitthough he says there have been a few threats. He has had tenure since 2011, and higher-ups at the university have never reprimanded him for voicing his opinions online, he says. But the stream of negativity has made him question how much longer he will continue blogging, even if he has no immediate plans to stop. "It takes a certain amount of energy just to deal with that."

He also admits that "I haven't necessarily made much headway" in convincing advocates of unfettered stem cell access that careful oversight is important, too. In recent years, nearly 40 states have passed controversial "right to try" laws, meant to allow dying patients easier access to experimental treatments without FDA oversight. And in June, Texas enacted a law that allows clinics to offer stem cell interventions without the testing and approval required under federal law. Knoepfler has predicted the change will be a boon to predatory clinics.

Still, he believes his handful of weekly email exchanges with conflicted patients is a chance to make a difference. He encourages them to get advice from their doctors, then explains why he's skeptical of approaches not proven in randomized trials. Some, he knows, will decide to go through with treatments anyway. Rarely do they write back to tell him about their decision. "That's kind of a hard part for me," he says. "I don't know the end of the story."

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The rise of unproven stem cell therapies turned this obscure scientist into an industry watchdog - Science Magazine

A Warning About ‘Stem Cell Tourism’ – Multiple Sclerosis News Today

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I regularly see comments on various social media sites from MS patients who have traveled, or who plan to travel, outside the U.S. to be treated with stem cells. Some of these patients have reported excellent results and a reversal of symptoms. Others have died. Many MS patients are frustrated with the slow stem-cell approval process in the U.S.

I wrote about this slow process in February, but just the other day someone commented on that old column, and said she was heading to Russia soon for a stem cell transplant:

They started studying it in Chicago more than 20 years ago, it is ridiculous that is still has not been approved! Boy, they keep on approving those high priced drugs that dont work and can kill you! I have been studying this and waiting for 17 years for approval in the states. I cant wait any longer, I am heading to Moscow in February to receive the treatment that I need!

But an article that recently appeared in the journal Science Translational Medicine strongly warns against this sort of thing, and what the authors call the marketing of unproven stem cell-based interventions.

Those authors are 15 scientists from seven countries. One of them is Sarah Chan of the University of Edinburgh. Quoted in a university press release, her remarks sound as if they could be directed to the MS patient who is heading to Moscow:

Many patients feel that potential cures are being held back by red tape and lengthy approval processes. Although this can be frustrating, these procedures are there to protect patients from undergoing needless treatments that could put their lives at risk.

The scientists concerns are about stem cell therapies for many diseases, not just those that are used as MS treatments. The authors call the practice of advertising therapies that arent supported by clinical research, and that are often made directly to patients, stem cell tourism.

Chan and her colleagues are calling for the World Health Organization to offer guidance on what should be considered responsible clinical use of cells and tissues, just as the WHO does for medicines and medical devices.

Stem cell therapies hold a lot of promise, Chan writes, but we need rigorous clinical trials and regulatory processes to determine whether a proposed treatment is safe, effective and better than existing treatments.

Rather than rushing through stem cell approval in the U.S., the authors call for tighter regulations on stem cell therapy advertising, especially regarding potential clinical benefits. They also think that international regulatory standards should be established for the manufacture and testing of human cell and tissue-based therapies.

Thats all well and good, but where does that leave the MS patients who need this treatment now, not five or 10 years from now? What do they say to the woman whos been waiting for 17 years and can wait no longer, so shes headed to Russia? How many more months or years of clinical trials are needed before stem cell therapies will be considered safe, effective and better than existing treatments in the United States?

Just askin.

(Youre invited to follow my personal blog at http://www.themswire.com)

***

Note:Multiple Sclerosis News Todayis strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those ofMultiple Sclerosis News Today, or its parent company, BioNews Services, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to multiple sclerosis.

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Art, history, spirituality among topics celebrated at Silver Lake Experience – The Livingston County News

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The Silver Lake Experience, a series of workshops, presentations and performances at Asbury Camp and Retreat Center on Silver Lake, returns Aug. 10 through 13.

The four-day event consists of 80 different presentations, tours and demonstrations that combine art, history, music, food and more to highlight what the lake and the area are all about. While some programs have filled up, there is still time to register for other sessions.

Programs celebrate and share knowledge in the arts, music, literature, spirituality, culinary arts, crafts, nature, history and other topics.

The event begins at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday and jumps right into presentations and demonstrations by 10:10 a.m. Then lunch is provided only to go right back into the next session that ends at 3:20 p.m. After that, theres a third session that runs between 4-5 p.m.

The topics for that many classes offered in each session cover just about everything. Theres a class on desserts, Silver Lakes health, the opioid crisis and religion among many others.

The lineup is a balanced program for four days that will appeal to, really, everyone that is interested in coming, Loren Penman, one of the events organizers, said earlier this year.

For more information, or to register, go to http://www.silverlakeexperience.org.

The first Silver Lake Experience was offered in 2015 and before the weekend was over plans were already underway for the sequel. That event was attended by more than 400 people from seven states and one foreign country.

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Art, history, spirituality among topics celebrated at Silver Lake Experience - The Livingston County News

Books This Weekend: Of spirituality, mystery and rapists – India New England

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New DelhiFlick through the story of a young man whose struggles come to an end with the growing spiritual influences in his life; read a mysterious tale around a lost woman. There is also an intriguing analysis, through a fictional tale, around the question: Is a rapist born or shaped by events around him? Finally, learn about the life of Guru Gobind Singh.

The IANS bookshelf has a whole lot for its readers this weekend.

1. Book: One Enduring Lesson; Author: Jamal Merchant; Publisher: Rupa; Pages: 274; Price: Rs 295 Give me your money, or I will kill you! Please I gasped. Ive come from England to study! Well, let this be your first lesson, English boy

Eager to start a new phase in life, Rahul Saxena, 27, a half-Indian British citizen, recently out of job and rejected in love, lands in Mumbai from London to study filmmaking. But little does he know that Mumbai, the city of dreams, will turn his life inside out. From the dark corners of the streets as a professional rat killer to the vermin-infested confines of a jail, from shady dance clubs to the homes of Mumbais rich women where he is paid to provide pleasure fate takes him on a roller-coaster ride that challenges his very will and determination to survive.

When his secret life threatens to destroy even the love that he finds, Rahul seeks recourse in spirituality. Inspired by Indias syncretic religious traditions, Rahul fights back internal and external demons to write his own destiny.

2. Book: Friend request; Author: Laura Marshall; Publisher: Sphere; Pages: 371; Price: Rs 399 Maria Weston has been missing for over 25 years. She was last seen the night of a school party. The world believes her to be dead, particularly Louise, who has lived her adult life with a terrible secret.

As Marias messages start to escalate, Louise forces herself to reconnect with the old friends she once tried so hard to impress. Trying to piece together exactly what happened that night, she soon discovers theres much she doesnt know. The only certainty is that Maria Weston disappeared that night, and was never heard again.

3. Book: Plutons Pyre; Authors: Gyandeep Kaushal and Nitin Kulkarni; Publisher: Bloomsbury; Pages: 242; Price: Rs 299 Suraj gets rejected in love twice. Urged by his grandfather, he gets married. With his sweet and caring wife, life is smooth.

But later, Suraj discovers that his otherwise blameless wife was in a clandestine meeting with her lover and his world collapses in wild anger around him.

Robbed of self-belief and pride, and aflame with a lust to reassert his power over women, he hunts for his first love and rapes her in exasperation.

Tracked down by the forces of the law, he is condemned to be hanged to death.

Authors Gyandeep Kaushal and Nitin Kulkarni present a tale simply told, but which underscores the question that has plagued bio-genetics over the years is a rapist born, or shaped by events around him? Is there anything, in short, as a rape gene?

The jury is out on that one, and the writers circumspectly leave them where they are.

4. Book: Sacred Sword; Author: Hindol Sengupta; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 230; Price: Rs 350 We are warriors, Painda. The Khalsa does not think of war as entertainment; death is not a joke, killing men is no festival, said Guru Gobind Singh.

A boy grows up, suddenly, into adulthood when he is brought the severed head of his father. He is born to rule but never acts like a monarch. Invincible as a warrior, he has the soul of a mystic. Poetry fills his heart. Few men before or after him have used a bow as he does, few men mastered their swords like him.

Guru Gobind Singh turns villagers into warriors, sends shivers up the spine of the army of Aurangzeb and sets the foundation stone of the great Sikh empire. Sacred Sword is a historical fiction based on his life and legend.

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Books This Weekend: Of spirituality, mystery and rapists - India New England

Yardsmart: How to make your own hallowed ground – Fredericksburg.com

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When does a garden become hallowed ground? When we have created a space for spirituality or remembrance there. Traditionally called shrines, these amazing spiritual nooks in nature remind us that peace can be found in this chaotic world. Youll find shrines in the ruins of every ancient civilization, proving desire for expression is intrinsic to human nature.

Shrines are a testament to our beliefs, loves, memories and values. Thats why they were so common in Catholic family home gardens. Many were first constructed as memorials for fallen soldiers from many wars. Others were dedicated to beloved parents and lost children. Most featured Mary, the mother of Jesus, often perched in an upturned bathtub grotto, but St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and nature, is even more common.

Today, the many spiritual pathways are coming together in the garden, so its natural to rekindle this form of artistic expression to lend meaning to our favorite spaces. There are two ways to create these elements, depending on your personal preference. Images and figural statuary can reflect Mary, Buddha and other religious icons. Another option: a photo of a loved one in weatherproof case or glazed on a ceramic tile.

Where no images are used, then the shrine becomes an altar for expressing ourselves with offerings, more esoteric symbols and objects of meaning. This can reflect a reverence for Earth with a beautiful natural space, petroglyphs, mandalas, minerals and plants along with other natural elements. It is the space you deem the center of your landscapes spiritual universe, be it a nook in the side yard or the focal point of your view-shed.

To create such a space this summer is a great way to refocus the mind from current events to the inner spirit that truly matters. If you practice yoga or other spiritually-based disciplines, this is a great way to create an appropriate outdoor space. This is why the space you choose is directly related to the way you practice your own brand or blend of spirituality.

Spaces for shrines dedicated to prayer and meditation should not be close to sources of neighbor noise. They should be designed with respect to the weather during seasons of use so youll always be comfortable there. Where privacy is needed, the space needs room for a screen hedge or partition.

Within the space youll need a comfortable place to relax and let your mind wander its spiritual corridors. A comfortable outdoor chair with a high back takes the least amount of space. For larger areas a chaise lounge or a budget recycled futon. Pay attention to your ground treatment if you do yoga for a clean, smooth surface for the mat.

Once created, these spaces tend to evolve as you do. Items gathered there may change from time to time as your path grows and diversifies. Virtually all spiritual spaces are beautiful, so the final itemand the most importantare plants and flowers. These give your shrine life and change as the days pass with one blooming and then the next. By fall make sure your have bright leaves there before it all goes to bed before winter.

Where shrines are seasonal, let yours be recreated each year in a fresh new way. Let your spirit soar to the heavens by including all your favorite colors, or perhaps a composition of hues for visual eye candy. Make it a delightful place to look at and one pleasing to spend time in so your shrine becomes a place of genesis, rekindling the fading fires.

In difficult times, the garden has always offered respite because it never changes. The circle of the seasons and cycles of nature are a manifestation of a higher power unaffected by our human conflicts. It is why human beings have brought their spirituality into nature, and nature into their spirituality by creating shrines in gardens. When nature and spirit are longer separated in part of your yard, that is all it takes to make your own hallowed ground.

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Yardsmart: How to make your own hallowed ground - Fredericksburg.com

Astronauts Film ‘Star Wars’-like Docking of Spaceship With Space Station – Inverse

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Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) captured the crewed Soyuz spacecraft firing thrusters and spewing cryogenic snow into space as it docked with the ISS last week, a scene befitting of a Star Wars space maneuver.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik tweeted out a video of the July 28 event, which can be watched below. Bresnik praises the piloting of Russian Soyuz Commander Sergey Ryazanskiy, who carefully unites the pointed nose of the Soyuz spacecraft with the ISSs docking port.

Docking two spaceships is essentially an orbital ballet culminating in a collision, wrote Bresnik.

These docking maneuvers have become commonplace, but a screen full of blasting thrusters and chunks of cryogenic snow is a vivid reminder of how extreme the space procedure truly is. This docking occurred while both spacecraft were racing around Earth at 17,150 miles per hour.

Until SpaceX and Boeing complete their respective crew modules which are both slated to launch in 2018 the only way any human can travel into space is aboard the Soyuz spacecraft and accompanying rocket.

NASA currently pays Russia some $70 to $80 million per seat on the Soyuz. This might be costly, but it comes with an impeccable record of safety and success. Russian engineers designed and first launched the Soyuz in the mid-1960s. After two fatal incidents soon after its inception, the craft has performed safely for nearly 50 years, both launching astronauts into space and bringing them home.

When the SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner come online next year, NASA estimates that the price per seat will be a bit cheaper than a trip upon a trusty Soyuz rocket, at $58 million.

For now, there is a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the ISS at all times to serve as a lifeboat. If the ISS experiences an emergency say the station gets pummeled by an unforeseen asteroid chunk or wayward satellite astronauts can flee from the station via the Soyuz.

Such a dramatic evacuation would likely be as Star Wars-like as the docking, complete with blasting thrusters and a violent descent to Earth.

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Astronauts Film 'Star Wars'-like Docking of Spaceship With Space Station - Inverse

Private spaceflight startup Vector pulls off second test of its micro-rocket – The Verge

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Vector a private spaceflight startup based out of Tucson, Arizona just successfully pulled off another test flight of one of its micro-rockets, launching the 40-foot-tall vehicle this morning from a spaceport in Georgia. Its the second flight of the vehicle: a full-scale prototype of one of the companys rockets, the Vector-R. And though the vehicle didnt reach orbit, it puts Vector one step closer to its goal of rapidly launching tiny satellites to space starting in 2018.

The Vector-R is one of two rockets that the company hopes to start launching on a regular basis in the years ahead. Its designed to launch very small payloads weighing up to 145 pounds into lower Earth orbit. Vectors other rocket under development is the Vector-H, a slightly larger vehicle that can carry payloads weighing over 350 pounds into orbit. Once testing is done, Vector hopes to launch these two rockets hundreds of times a year in order to get small probes into space as quickly as possible.

We hope to get these two vehicles running and milk the hell out of them.

Were not going to be the guys developing new rockets, Jim Cantrell, CEO and co-founder of Vector, tells The Verge. We hope to get these two vehicles running and milk the hell out of them... Were going to be building the same thing over and over like the McDonalds of rocket business.

Vector seems to have the credentials and resources to meet its goal. Formed last year, the company boasts an impressive team with extensive spaceflight experience. Cantrell is a member of SpaceXs original founding team, and hes working with engineers who come from Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and more. In its latest round, Vector raised $21 million, totaling more than $30 million in overall funding. Its also racked up numerous customers that include a few major players in the aerospace industry. Todays launch was fully funded by Vectors customers and carried test payloads from NASAs Ames Research Center, the Center for Applied Space Technology, and Astro Digital a company that specializes in small imaging satellites.

Todays launch also marks the first rocket flight ever out of Camden Spaceport, located near the coast of Georgia. The site was once used by NASA in the 1960s to do ground-based testing of rocket motors, but since then it hasnt seen much action. Camden County officials have been vying recently to turn the site into a commercial spaceport, and in May, the Georgia state government passed legislation to help foster the growth of the site. The spaceport is still very new, though, so there isnt much equipment on the ground to support launches. Where were launching from in Camden, theres really no infrastructure there whatsoever, says Cantrell. Were proving we can go anywhere really and launch these rockets. Vectors first test flight was done in Mojave, California.

Ultimately, Vector hopes to capitalize on what is being hailed as the small satellite revolution. Satellite companies are building and operating space probes that are much smaller than your typical, bus-sized satellite, with some ventures like Planet making imaging satellites that are about the size of a shoebox. Normally, these tiny probes have to ride-share to space, though. They hitch a ride to orbit on the launch of a much larger satellite and are deployed only after that satellite has been released. But Planet, for instance, can fit eight of its satellites on a Vector-R or 20 on a Vector-H no larger rocket required.

So far, the company says it has seen an enthusiastic response from potential customers about this strategy. Were already seeing signs that the existence of rockets like ours would create its own demand, says Cantrell.

Vectors prices are minuscule compared to larger rocket launch providers. Typical rocket launches will run tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, but Vectors rockets will start at around $1.5 million and $3 million per flight. Cantrell is confident the team will be able to make these rockets fast enough to launch between 400 and 500 a year. The key, he says, is that theyre easy to make. Theyre just dead simple. Were really building the simplest rocket possible and the smallest rocket possible, says Cantrell. Technologically its like the Model T versus the modern Mercedes. [Other rocket companies are] all using Mercedes-level technology.

Cantrell says the company is aiming to do up to six test flights before commercial launches begin next year. The next test will tentatively occur in December.

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Private spaceflight startup Vector pulls off second test of its micro-rocket - The Verge

SpaceX launching last new first-generation Dragon cargo ship – SpaceFlight Insider

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Lloyd Campbell

August 4th, 2017

A file photo of the CRS-4 Dragon capsule arriving at the International Space Station in 2014. That same pressure vessel was used in the CRS-11 Dragon capsule, which arrived at the outpost June 5, 2017. Photo Credit: NASA

SpaceX is set to send its next supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) as early as Aug. 13, 2017. That mission, CRS-12, will mark the end of an era as it will be the last new first-generation Dragon spacecraft to fly.

The CRS-12 mission will bring supplies and science experiments to the Expedition 52 crew currently on board the ISS before returning cargo and science back to Earth in September.Dragon spacecraft have visited the orbiting outpost 11 times since 2012, carrying well over 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) of cargo to date.

The only blemish on the capsules record occurred during the CRS-7 flight, which launched June 28, 2015. After a successful liftoff, and an almost complete Falcon 9 first stage burn, a strut attached to a high-pressure hydrogen bottle in the second stage failed. That failure led to the second stage oxygen tank to over-pressurizing, causing it to burst and the entire booster to fail. The Dragon capsule survived the breakup but was destroyed when it impacted with the Atlantic Ocean several minutes later.

All subsequent SpaceX resupply missions since CRS-7 have been completed successfully.

For the CRS-11 mission, SpaceX utilized a thoroughly inspected and refurbished pressure vessel that was previously flown for the CRS-4 mission in 2014. For the second time that particular vehicle made a successful delivery of cargo to the ISS, and returned experiments back to Earth. This was the first flight of a previously-flown spacecraft since the Space Shuttles last flight in July 2011.

The company plans to only use previously-flown first-generation Dragon spacecraft for future cargo missions to the ISS.Since SpaceX will no longer be manufacturing complete Dragon 1 spacecraft, resources will be freed up to allow the company to focus more of its efforts on completing the development of the Dragon 2 spacecraft, which will provide crew transportation to the ISS and for other missions.

The long-delayed first flight of a Dragon 2 spacecraft is currently expected to occur sometime in the first half of 2018. The new spacecraft is capable of carrying up to seven people into Earth orbit. For NASA missions taking crew to and from the ISS, it will only carry four astronauts. The remaining area inside of the spacecraft will be used for pressurized cargo.

While SpaceX is developing Dragon 2 for crew, it is expected to have a cargo-only version for resupply missions to the space station. It is unclear when the NewSpace company will make the transition from Dragon 1 to Dragon 2 cargo missions. The company is currently under a contract to send 20 missions to the outpost, which will be completed with CRS-20 no earlier than 2019. A follow-up contract calls for at least six more cargo delivery missions.

Tagged: CRS-12 Dragon International Space Station Lead Stories NASA SpaceX

Lloyd Campbells first interest in space began when he was a very young boy in the 1960s with NASAs Gemini and Apollo programs. That passion continued in the early 1970s with our continued exploration of our Moon, and was renewed by the Shuttle Program. Having attended the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on its final two missions, STS-131, and STS-133, he began to do more social networking on space and that developed into writing more in-depth articles. Since then hes attended the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, the agencys new crew-rated Orion spacecraft on Exploration Flight Test 1, and multiple other uncrewed launches. In addition to writing, Lloyd has also been doing more photography of launches and aviation. He enjoys all aspects of space exploration, both human, and robotic, but his primary passions lie with human exploration and the vehicles, rockets, and other technologies that allow humanity to explore space.

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SpaceX launching last new first-generation Dragon cargo ship - SpaceFlight Insider

Planetary protection is serious business at NASA – Spaceflight Now

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STORY WRITTEN FORCBS NEWS& USED WITH PERMISSION

A NASA post advertising an opening for a new Planetary Protection Officer provided a field day for headline writers who apparently couldnt resist having a bit of fun at the agencys expense by suggesting, in large type, that whoever filled the post would be defending Earth from aliens. And making good money to boot.

While true in the broadest possible sense the aliens in question are microbes not sentient beings one had to read the actual stories to find out the office is part of a long-standing program to make sure NASA spacecraft dont contaminate other planets with any earthly bugs and ensure that any samples returned to Earth are properly isolated and pose no threat to our ecosystem.

Catharine Cassie Conley is the outgoing Planetary Protection Officer, the seventh to hold the post. She came on board in 2006 and, like her predecessors, reports directly to the NASA administrator.

https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/overview

As the Planetary Protection Officer for NASA, I am responsible for ensuring that the United States complies with Article IX of The Outer Space Treaty, she said in a NASA interview.

Article IX specifies that planetary exploration should be carried out in a manner so as to avoid contamination of the bodies we are exploring throughout the solar system, and also to avoid any adverse effects to Earth if materials are brought back from outer space.

As she told the New York Times in a 2015 interview, If were going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead.

No matter. NASAs search for the agencys eighth Planetary Protection Officer and the advertised salary of up to $187,000 per year were enough to trigger a flurry of stories.

NASA has a job opening for someone to defend Earth from aliens and it pays a 6-figure salary, Business Insider headlined its web story.

The piece included a graphic from the movie Independence Day showing a giant alien spaceship in the process of destroying New York City. The caption: A typical day in the office for a planetary protection officer isnt this exciting.

The Independent in the United Kingdom headlined its story: NASA offering six-figure salary for new planetary protection officer to defend Earth from aliens.

Even former shuttle commander Mark Kelly got in on the fun, tweeting Thursday night I nominate Bruce Willis.

Followers then suggested Men in Black star Will Smith, Matt Damon of Martian fame, Peter Cushing, the evil Star Wars general, Jodie Foster, who met aliens in the movie Contact, Bill Pullman, who portrayed the president in Independence Day, and even the fictional Jack Bauer of the long-running series 24.

But planetary protection is serious business at NASA, guiding how missions are designed and implemented. Consider the agencys Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn.

Now at the end of a 20-year mission the past 13 in orbit around Saturn Cassini is virtually out of fuel and without propellant, NASA cannot control the probes orientation or change its trajectory.

Instead of simply letting the spacecraft die, leaving it at the mercy of unpredictable gravitational interactions, flight controllers earlier this year used most of the probes remaining fuel to put it on a trajectory that will impact Saturn next month, ensuring its destruction.

Thats because at least one of Saturns moons Enceladus has a sub-surface ocean that could be an abode for life. If NASA simply let Cassini die, it eventually could crash into Enceladus, depositing microbes from Earth. And heat from the spacecrafts three plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs.

The RTGs were built to withstand a launch pad explosion and all three likely would survive an impact on Enceladus where more than likely (they would melt) through the ice shell, over time, and then youre in the sub surface, said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters. Its going to be laying there, and its going to end up in the ocean.

And that includes tens of thousands of microbes that hitched a ride to Saturn aboard Cassini.

Human microbes can withstand all kinds of things, but having the right environment where heat is available is really the way they could multiply and grow, Green said in an interview Wednesday. So, having that system in the ocean is not good. Even though it might be a remote chance, its not zero.

NASA ended the Galileo Jupiter probe the same way, crashing it into the giant planets atmosphere in 1995 to make sure it could not one day hit Europa, another moon with a sub-surface ocean, or any others that might be habitable.

The Juno probe currently in orbit around Jupiter faces the same fate when its mission ends as will the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft currently on the drawing board that will study the intriguing moon during multiple flybys in the 2020s.

Mars, of course, is a major concern when it comes to planetary protection, the target of multiple satellites, landers and rovers over several decades. No one yet knows whether some form of microbial life might exist at the red planet, either on or below the surface, and NASA scientists want to find out, if possible, before humans make the trip.

Once astronauts arrive, its game over, Green said. Its then the clash of two potentially different ecosystems.

For me as a scientist, I want to get in there and I want to understand the environment before we bring our environment with us, he said. Answering the question is Mars alive today, is there a living population, is actually something thats very important for us to try to pull off. And thats very hard to do.

Astronauts, of course, will live in isolated habitats, almost like theyll be quarantined, Green added. So there will still be areas all over Mars thatll be very pristine and could maintain an ecosystem, you know, perhaps theres life in the aquifers, and itll take maybe a couple of centuries before its totally game over.

This is the kind of thing we need to guard against, and getting in there and understanding the environment the best we can is the first thing we want to do.

Green and his fellow planetary scientists are equally concerned about making sure any Mars rocks returned to Earth are handled safely. When the Apollo astronauts brought rocks back from the moon, the samples and the astronauts were initially quarantined. Green said NASA is considering a variety of options to isolate Mars rocks.

Were looking at either constructing or using an existing bio-level 4 facility, he said. This is a facility that would be used for the most extreme virus or bacteria or something that could sweep the world and kill the population. There are facilities like that (and) were going to have to either develop our own or tag onto something like that.

He said some researchers dont believe life currently exists on Mars and theyd be delighted to just lift the top of every one of the rock tubes and that would make them publicly available if they didnt die the next day!

But thats not how its going to work, he said. Were going to bring them in and examine the heck out of them. (Even) if it had zero biological contamination associated with it, is going to be a number of years before anybody will be able to analyze the samples outside that facility.

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Planetary protection is serious business at NASA - Spaceflight Now

Preparing to paint the town red for world record attempt and Huntington’s Disease fundraiser – Ararat Advertiser

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22 Jul 2017, 7:30 p.m.

Orange set to paint the town red for world record attempt and Huntington's Disease fundraiser.

SHADES OF RED: Austin, Rachael and Finn Brooking (front) joined other redheads at Wade Park on Saturday ahead of their September gathering. Photo: JUDE KEOGH

RED PRIDE: Adults and children with red hair gathered on Saturday to encourage others to join them at their world record attempt in September. Photo: JUDE KEOGH

Redheads from infants to adults gathered at Wade Park, Orange,on Saturday in bid to encourage other redheads to join them in aGuinness World Record attemptin September.

Event organiser Rachael Brooking is hoping more than 1672 red heads,from people with strawberry blonde hair through to those with dark auburn locks, will gather at Wade Park by 1pm on September 30 for the attempt.

Mrs Brooking said the event is also about raisingmoney to support NSW families of people living withHuntingtons disease, which claimed her mother Frances Kelly, also a redhead.

She said there will also be childrens activities including a jumping castle and face painting, a red beard competition for all men with red beards, live music, food and drinks from 11am to 3pm.

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Preparing to paint the town red for world record attempt and Huntington's Disease fundraiser - Ararat Advertiser

Taking a (red)headcount: how close are we to beating the world record? Poll – Ballarat Courier

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1 Aug 2017, 8 p.m.

A NSW city needs 1672 gingers on one day at one park to claim world record.

RED IS BEST: Will you be among the redheads in Orange on Saturday, September 30?

WITH less than two months to go until the attempt for the most redheads in one place its time to ask the question: will the citys Red Army be the biggest ever?

Rachael Brookings Redhead Hunt 4 HD has attracted attention across the Central West, NSW and Australia, with thousands of comments and posts on social media from fair-haired people statingthey would like to be at Wade Park on Saturday, September 30.

So we want to know if the Guinness World Recordis in reach.

To do so were asking all ginger-topped readers to vote in the below poll and register your interest or lack thereof in the innovative event.

Hopefully in a couple of days we will have an accurate picture of how close we are to beating the current world record of1672.

To find out more about the day, which will raise funds to support those suffering from Huntingtons Disease, head to the events Facebook page.

Central Western Daily

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Taking a (red)headcount: how close are we to beating the world record? Poll - Ballarat Courier

SwRI part of international team identifying primordial asteroids – Space Daily

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Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) was part of an international team that recently discovered a relatively unpopulated region of the main asteroid belt, where the few asteroids present are likely pristine relics from early in solar system history. The team used a new search technique that also identified the oldest known asteroid family, which extends throughout the inner region of the main asteroid belt.

The main belt contains vast numbers of irregularly shaped asteroids, also known as planetesimals, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. As improved telescope technology finds smaller and more distant asteroids, astronomers have identified clusters of similar-looking bodies clumped in analogous orbits.

These familial objects are likely fragments of catastrophic collisions between larger asteroids eons ago. Finding and studying asteroid families allows scientists to better understand the history of main belt asteroids.

"By identifying all the families in the main belt, we can figure out which asteroids have been formed by collisions and which might be some of the original members of the asteroid belt," said SwRI Astronomer Dr. Kevin Walsh, a coauthor of the online Science paper detailing the findings.

"We identified all known families and their members and discovered a gigantic void in the main belt, populated by only a handful of asteroids. These relics must be part of the original asteroid belt. That is the real prize, to know what the main belt looked like just after it formed."

Identifying the very oldest asteroid families, those billions of years old, is challenging, because over time, a family spreads out. As asteroids rotate in orbit around the Sun, their surfaces heat up during the day and cool down at night. This creates radiation that can act as a sort of mini-thruster, causing asteroids to drift widely over time.

After billions of years, family members would be almost impossible to identify, until now. The team used a novel technique, searching asteroid data from the inner region of the belt for old, dispersed families. They looked for the "edges" of families, those fragments that have drifted the furthest.

"Each family member drifts away from the center of the family in a way that depends on its size, with small guys drifting faster and further than the larger guys," said team leader Marco Delbo, an astronomer from the Observatory of Cote d'Azur in Nice, France. "If you look for correlations of size and distance, you can see the shapes of old families."

"The family we identified has no name, because it is not clear which asteroid is the parent," Walsh said. "This family is so old that it appears to have formed over 4 billion years ago, before the gas giants in the outer solar system moved into their current orbits. The giant planet migration shook up the asteroid belt, removing many bodies, possibly including the parent of this family."

The team plans to apply this new technique to the entire asteroid belt to reveal more about the history of the solar system by identifying the primordial asteroids versus fragments of collisions.

This research was supported by the French National Program of Planetology and the National Science Foundation. The resulting paper, "Identification of a primordial asteroid family constrains the original planetesimal population," appears in the August 3, 2017, online edition of Science.

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SwRI part of international team identifying primordial asteroids - Space Daily

This Pilot Is Headed To Space With Or Without NASA – NPR

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Wally Funk is one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who trained to be astronauts in the early 1960s. Courtesy of Wally Funk hide caption

Wally Funk is one of the Mercury 13, a group of women who trained to be astronauts in the early 1960s.

Wally Funk has spent her life in pursuit of a dream. The pilot, flight instructor and almost-astronaut longs to go to outer space.

In 1961, she was part of a group of female pilots who took part in tests to determine whether women were fit for space travel. The project was run by the same doctor who developed tests for NASA astronauts and the women became known as the Mercury 13.

"I get a call said, 'Do you want to be an astronaut?' I said, 'Oh my gosh, yes!' And he said, 'Be here on Monday to take these tests,' " the 78-year-old Funk recounted to her friend and flight student, Mary Holsenbeck, during a recent visit to StoryCorps in Dallas.

Mary Holsenbeck (left) and Wally Funk at StoryCorps in Dallas. The two friends talk every day at 10 p.m. and often take to the skies together. StoryCorps hide caption

Mary Holsenbeck (left) and Wally Funk at StoryCorps in Dallas. The two friends talk every day at 10 p.m. and often take to the skies together.

"I had needles stuck on every part of my body. Tubes running up my bottom. So I went along with it. It didn't bother me," she said. "And then they said, 'We want you to come with a swimsuit; you're going to go into the isolation tank.' Well, I didn't know what that was. The lights come down, they said try not to move. Well, I didn't have a whole lot to think about. I'm 20, I had $10 in my pocket. And then finally they said: 'Wally, you were outstanding. You stayed in 10 hours and 35 minutes. You did the best of the guys that we've had and of the girls.' "

Funk was preparing to go to Florida for more testing when she found out the program had been shut down. So, though they passed many of the same tests as the men, Funk and the other Mercury 13 women never got to go to space.

"When we got the telegram, that was it, and I never heard anything more," she explained. "So I went on about my own business. I'm not going to sit back and pine over anything."

No, Funk didn't pine. Instead, she applied to NASA four times but got turned down because she didn't have an engineering degree. But Funk hasn't given up on going to space.

"I never let anything stop me," she said. "I know that my body and my mind can take anything that any space outfit wants to give me high altitude chamber test, which is fine ... centrifuge test, which I know I can do five and six G's. These things are ... easy for me."

Wally Funk poses in front of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft in 2015 in the Mojave Desert. Funk has a ticket and hopes to be on its first flight into space. Courtesy of Mary Holsenbeck hide caption

Wally Funk poses in front of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft in 2015 in the Mojave Desert. Funk has a ticket and hopes to be on its first flight into space.

Funk bought a ticket for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic commercial spaceship and hopes to be on board its maiden voyage into space. Holsenbeck plans to be there, cheering Funk on when she finally blasts off.

"You are probably the most fearless person I've ever known in my life," she told Funk, adding that the aspiring astronaut was not just her hero, but also her mentor.

"I went through a very nasty divorce and you made a phone call at the right time one afternoon that saved my life," Holsenbeck said. "You said, 'Mary, let's go flying and I said, 'Wally, I can't afford to go flying.' And you said, 'I didn't ask you that meet me at the airport.'

"And taking me flying, you would pick out a cloud and you would say 'Mary, you see that cloud up there?' I'd say 'Yes, ma'am.' You said, 'Point the nose of this airplane toward that cloud and just fly to it.' And it was the most freeing feeling. I felt like I was in charge of something when I was in that airplane, and that helped me to put myself back in charge of my own life," Holsenbeck continued. "So yeah, you fix the problem."

Wally Funk and Mary Holsenbeck in 1993. Courtesy of Mary Holsenbeck hide caption

Wally Funk and Mary Holsenbeck in 1993.

The two women talk every day at 10 p.m., recounting their days. They call it their 10 o'clock flight.

"So we go up into the clouds together because Wally, you've always told me, 'When you have problems? Go to the clouds.' "

Audio produced for Morning Edition by John White.

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.

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This Pilot Is Headed To Space With Or Without NASA - NPR

"Alien" headlines aside, NASA is serious about planetary protection – CBS News

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A NASA post advertising a job opening for a new Planetary Protection Officer provided a field day for headline writers who apparently couldn't resist having a bit of fun at the agency's expense. Stories went viral by suggesting that NASA wants to hire someone to defend Earth from aliens and will pay them good money to do it.

While true in the broadest possible sense the "aliens" in question are microbes, not sentient beings the office is actually part of a long-standing program to make sure NASA spacecraft don't contaminate other planets with any earthly bugs and to ensure that any samples returned to Earth are properly isolated and pose no threat to our ecosystem.

Catharine "Cassie" Conley is the outgoing Planetary Protection Officer, the seventh to hold the post. She came on board in 2006 and, like her predecessors, reports directly to the NASA administrator.

"As the Planetary Protection Officer for NASA, I am responsible for ensuring that the United States complies with Article IX of The Outer Space Treaty," she said in a NASA interview.

"Article IX specifies that planetary exploration should be carried out in a manner so as to avoid contamination of the bodies we are exploring throughout the solar system, and also to avoid any adverse effects to Earth if materials are brought back from outer space.

Catharine Conley, NASA's outgoing Planetary Protection Officer, holds a Ph.D. in plant biology. She's held the post since 2006.

NASA

As she told The New York Times in a 2015 interview, "If we're going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead."

No matter. NASA's search for the agency's eighth Planetary Protection Officer at a salary of up to $187,000 per year was enough to trigger a flurry of stories.

"NASA has a job opening for someone to defend Earth from aliens and it pays a 6-figure salary," Business Insider headlined its web story.

The piece included a graphic from the movie "Independence Day" showing a giant alien spaceship in the process of destroying New York City. The caption: "A typical day in the office for a planetary protection officer isn't this exciting."

The Independent in Britain headlined its story: "NASA offering six-figure salary for new 'planetary protection officer' to defend Earth from aliens."

Even former shuttle commander Mark Kelly got in on the fun, tweeting, "I nominate Bruce Willis."

Followers chimed in with other suggestions, including "Men in Black" star Will Smith; Matt Damon of "Martian" fame; Peter Cushing, the evil "Star Wars" general; Jodie Foster, who met aliens in the movie "Contact;" Bill Pullman, who portrayed the president in "Independence Day;" and even the fictional Jack Bauer of the long-running series "24."

But planetary protection is serious business at NASA, guiding how missions are designed and implemented. Consider the agency's Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn.

Now at the end of a 20-year mission the past 13 in orbit around Saturn Cassini is virtually out of fuel and without propellant, NASA cannot control the probe's orientation or change its trajectory.

Instead of simply letting the spacecraft die, leaving it at the mercy of unpredictable gravitational interactions, flight controllers earlier this year used most of the probe's remaining fuel to put it on a trajectory that will impact Saturn next month, ensuring its destruction.

That's because at least one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has a sub-surface ocean that could be an abode for life. If NASA simply let Cassini die, it eventually could crash into Enceladus, depositing microbes from Earth. And heat from the spacecraft's three plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs.

The RTGs were built to withstand a launch pad explosion and all three likely would survive an impact on Enceladus where "more than likely (they would melt) through the ice shell, over time, and then you're in the sub surface," said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA headquarters. "It's going to be laying there, and it's going to end up in the ocean."

And that includes tens of thousands of microbes that hitched a ride to Saturn aboard Cassini.

"Human microbes can withstand all kinds of things, but having the right environment where heat is available is really the way they could multiply and grow," Green said in an interview Wednesday. "So, having that system in the ocean is not good. Even though it might be a remote chance, it's not zero."

NASA ended the Galileo Jupiter probe the same way, crashing it into the giant planet's atmosphere in 1995 to make sure it could not one day hit Europa, another moon with a sub-surface ocean, or any others that might be habitable.

The Juno probe currently in orbit around Jupiter faces the same fate when its mission ends as will the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft currently on the drawing board that will study the intriguing moon during multiple flybys in the 2020s.

Mars, of course, is a major concern when it comes to planetary protection, the target of multiple satellites, landers and rovers over several decades. No one yet knows whether some form of microbial life might exist at the red planet, either on or below the surface, and NASA scientists want to find out, if possible, before humans make the trip.

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Once astronauts arrive, it's "game over," Green said. "It's then the clash of two potentially different ecosystems."

"For me as a scientist, I want to get in there and I want to understand the environment before we bring our environment with us," he said. "Answering the question is Mars alive today, is there a living population, is actually something that's very important for us to try to pull off. And that's very hard to do."

Astronauts, of course, will live in isolated habitats, "almost like they'll be quarantined," Green added. "So there will still be areas all over Mars that'll be very pristine and could maintain an ecosystem, you know, perhaps there's life in the aquifers, and it'll take maybe a couple of centuries before it's totally game over."

"This is the kind of thing we need to guard against, and getting in there and understanding the environment the best we can is the first thing we want to do."

Green and his fellow planetary scientists are equally concerned about making sure any Mars rocks returned to Earth are handled safely. When the Apollo astronauts brought rocks back from the moon, the samples and the astronauts were initially quarantined. Green said NASA is considering a variety of options to isolate Mars rocks.

"We're looking at either constructing or using an existing bio-level 4 facility," he said. "This is a facility that would be used for the most extreme virus or bacteria or something that could sweep the world and kill the population. There are facilities like that (and) we're going to have to either develop our own or tag onto something like that."

He said some researchers don't believe life currently exists on Mars and "they'd be delighted to just lift the top of every one of the rock tubes and that would make them publicly available if they didn't die the next day!"

"But that's not how it's going to work," he said. "We're going to bring them in and examine the heck out of them. (Even) if it had zero biological contamination associated with it, is going to be a number of years before anybody will be able to analyze the samples outside that facility."

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"Alien" headlines aside, NASA is serious about planetary protection - CBS News

How will NASA photograph the eclipse? With jet planes, of course – Digital Trends

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The images could help researchers understand why the sun's outer atmosphere is hotter than the lower layers, as well as potentially gaining a better understanding of what Mercury might be made of.

The first full solar eclipse to come to the U.S. in 100 years will only last in totality for about two minutes unless of course you are a NASA scientist with a pair of jet planes. During the Aug. 21 eclipse,NASA is aiming to photograph the most detailed images of the sun yet by extending the total view time of the eclipse with a pair of telescopes mounted on two WB-57F jets. While photographers on the ground view the phenomenon with special glasses and filters, getting higher in the earths atmosphere will result in both clearer pictures and an extended viewing time for a NASA eclipse study.

By following the eclipse via jet, the team will extend their viewing time of the celestial phenomenon from less than two and a half minutes to over seven minutes. The scientists will shoot from twin telescopes, both located on the nose of the jets.

The teams goal is to capture the details in the corona as the moon completely blocks the sun, leaving the outer atmosphere easily visible. The darkness created by the eclipse will also allow the researchers to study Mercury the team plans to take the first thermal images of the planet during the eclipse from those same jets. Recording how fast the planet cools while the sun is covered could help scientists better understand Mercurys make-up.

These could well turn out to be the best ever observations of high frequency phenomena in the corona, Dan Seaton, co-investigator of the project and researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, said. Extending the observing time and going to very high altitude might allow us to see a few events or track waves that would be essentially invisible in just two minutes of observations from the ground.

NASA says the images could help researchers understand why the sun is so hot. While the temperatures in the corona reach the millions, lower layers such as the photosphere top out in the thousands. Gathering data from the corona during the eclipse could help the team better understand why the inner layers of the suns atmosphere are actually cooler than the outer layers. The images could help prove or disprove a theory that nano-flares, which scientists have not yet seen, accounts for the temperature differences.

The telescopic camera will be shooting high resolution images at 30 fps. By taking multiple images over time, scientists expect they could identify potential nanoflares by comparing the shots to look for motion. The images will be taken with the traditional visible light camera, while the images of Mercury will be shot in infrared to create a temperature map of the planet.

The project is just one of 11 different tasks NASA is leading during the eclipse.

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How will NASA photograph the eclipse? With jet planes, of course - Digital Trends

Students work with NASA to land on Mars – Asheboro Courier Tribune

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ASHEBORO Students at The Dream Center of Randolph County are playing a role in the U.S. Department of Educations ongoing effort to solve a national problem the critical shortage of students with mastery of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills.

Through an exciting out-of-school collaboration between the department and NASA, local students are conducting scientific observations of the natural environment and are learning the relevance of STEM skills to daily life.

The Dream Center is part of the departments 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program, which focuses in part on exposing students in high-need schools to meaningful STEM-learning opportunities. One goal of the 21st CCLC program which will serve more than 1.5 million students in all 50 states in 2016 is to demonstrate the value of STEM skills both inside and outside the classroom, thereby raising student interest in STEM and related professions.

Since NASA first became a partner in 2013, available programs have grown from 20 sites in three states to nearly 146 sites across 15 states in 2016. This year, NASA will offer two options for unique STEM experiences: Engineering Design Challenges (EDC) and a Global Observation to Benefit Environment (GLOBE) investigation.

EDC introduces students to the engineering design process so they can develop solutions to real NASA challenges, such as how to land a spacecraft on Mars or grow plants in lunar habitats. GLOBE immerses students in scientific investigation techniques, such as data gathering, to learn how clouds impact the Earths climate. In both cases, students work with NASA engineers and scientists to receive feedback on their work, learn about STEM careers and find out what its like to work in science and engineering professions.

In 2016-2017, 23 students from both Asheboro and Randleman are participating in the NASA partnership program. Students are working in teams of four to design a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that will safely carry two astronauts through a series of landing trials. The CEV must fit inside the designated size constraint, weigh no more than 100 grams and safely carry two astronauts. Teams must design and build a vehicle with secure seats for the astronauts and include a hatch that stays closed during testing. The challenge also requires a model of an internal fuel tank on the vehicle. Students will complete the project and submit a video of the engineering design process they used to complete the project.

Dr. James Johnson, principal at Randleman Elementary School, explained the importance of the program.

Before becoming involved in this project, students often felt as if not knowing the answer to a problem or question was bad. Through STEM learning, the students have learned that the not knowing is where learning actually starts. They have learned to question the things they dont know and look for an answer.

The Dream Center of Randolph County is a free after-school program offered for under-resourced children in Randolph County. The program offers enrichment activities and tutoring to families with children in grades 6-8.

For more information, visit http://www.thedreamcenternc.org.

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Students work with NASA to land on Mars - Asheboro Courier Tribune

The next stop for NASA’s Pluto spacecraft may be a duck-shaped space rock – The Verge

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Two years after its famous flyby of Pluto, NASAs New Horizons spacecraft is zooming toward another space rock at the edge of the Solar System, and scientists now think they may know its shape. The object could resemble a rubber duck or it could be two space rocks very close together, according to new observations. The information is key to better prepare for New Horizons flyby of the object, which is currently scheduled for January 1st, 2019.

The small icy body is called 2014 MU69 and it orbits about 4 billion miles away from Earth. Last month, New Horizons scientists briefly spotted 2014 MU69 from a remote part of Argentina, as the rock passed in front of a background star, momentarily blocking the stars light. The short eclipse also known as an occultation was seen with five different telescopes, and gave scientists a ton of new data about 2014 MU69s size, shape, and brightness.

Its even possible that the object is, in fact, two objects

Up until now, the New Horizons team has only been able to track 2014 MU69 with the Hubble Space Telescope. (Since the rock is pretty dim, telescopes like Hubble cant gather too much information on its properties.) But the recent observations suggest that the rock is no more than 20 miles long, and its shape is not round or elliptical, like most space rocks. Instead, the icy body is either shaped like a stretched football, called an extreme prolate spheroid, or like two rocks joined together. That creates a rubber ducky shape similar to the comet that the European Space Agency landed on two years ago.

Its even possible that the object is, in fact, two objects like a pair of rocks that are orbiting around each other, or are so close that theyre touching. If 2014 MU69 does turn out to be two objects, then each one is probably between nine and 12 miles in diameter, according to the New Horizons team.

2014 MU69 was first discovered in 2014 in the Kuiper Belt, the large cloud of icy bodies that orbit beyond Neptune. Since then, weve had very little new information about the properties of this rock. But knowing the objects size and shape will help the New Horizons team better plan for the spacecrafts flyby. And it will certainly make this event much more interesting.

This new finding is simply spectacular, Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, said in a statement. The shape of MU69 is truly provocative, and could mean another first for New Horizons going to a binary object in the Kuiper Belt.

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The next stop for NASA's Pluto spacecraft may be a duck-shaped space rock - The Verge

‘Nanomedicine’: Potentially revolutionary class of drugs are made-in … – CTV News

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It's rare for researchers to discover a new class of drugs, but a University of Calgary microbiology professor recently did so -- by accident and now hopes to revolutionize autoimmune disease treatment.

In 2004, Dr. Pere Santamaria and his research lab team at the Cumming School of Medicine conducted an experiment to image a mouse pancreas, using nanoparticles coated in pancreatic proteins.

The work didnt go as planned.

Our experiment was a complete failure, he recently told CTV Calgary. We were actually quite depressed, frustrated about the outcome of that.

But the team was surprised to discover the nanoparticles had a major effect on the mice: resetting their immune systems.

The team realized that, by using nanoparticles, they can deliver disease-specific proteins to white blood cells, which will then go on to reprogram the cells to actively suppress the disease.

Whats more, the nanoparticles stop the disease without compromising the immune system, as current treatments often do.

Santamarias team believes nanomedicine drugs can be modified to treat all kinds of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Convinced that nanomedicine has the potential to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry, Santamaria founded a company to explore the possibilities, called Parvus Therapeutics Inc.

This past spring, Novartis, one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies, entered into a license and collaboration agreement with Parvus to fund the process of developing nanomedicine.

Under the terms of the agreement, Parvus will receive research funding to support its clinical activities, while Novartis receives worldwide rights to use Parvus technology to develop and commercialize products for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Its a good partnership, Santamaria said in a University of Calgary announcement. Bringing a drug to market requires science as well as money.

Santamaria cant say how long it might be before nanomedicine can be used to create human therapies, but he says everyone involved is working aggressively to make it happen.

With a report from CTV Calgarys Kevin Fleming

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'Nanomedicine': Potentially revolutionary class of drugs are made-in ... - CTV News

Commercial Scale Lithium Production In Sight For Nano One Materials – InvestorIntel

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The announcements coming out of Nano One Materials Corp. (TSXV: NNO) (Nano One) just keep getting bigger; not only has the company secured yet more key patents, but their pilot plant processes have been improved to the extent that it is now thought to be capable of output on a commercial scale. The companys patented process is able to chemically manufacture materials at the nanoscale which are suitable for the production of cathode units used in lithium ion batteries, a market poised for massive growth over the next ten years as the world moves ever closer to full adoption of electric vehicles.

Specifically, Nano One have worked with Noram Engineering on a series of process improvements that, in the lab, have prompted anticipation of a 100-fold increase to the material throughput of the reactor. This means that the production rate of the existing pilot reactor could be increased from the planned 10 kg/day to as high as 1,400 kg/day. Current commercial production rates for these materials vary from 1,000 to 10,000 kg/day, and moving into this range represents a massive leap forward for the team as well as a significant reduction to capital expenses.

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Demonstration of the new throughput benchmark is expected later this year, and should it be successful, the company can expect commercial adoption of their lithium products to happen very quickly indeed. If nothing else, the recent improvements show that Nano One are more than capable of creating a full-scale plant that can produce 10,000 kg/day of refined product. Crucially, the companys nanoscale production technology eliminates a multitude of steps from the refinement process, as well as doing away with the tailings that milling and acid leach operations must normally dispose of responsibly and at considerable expense.

According to industry reports, the global market for battery cathode materials is around 500,000 kg/day at present, and this is only going to increase as more and more developing economies adopt technologies that require energy storage solutions. In the developed world, the move away from combustion engines is expected to create such explosive demand for batteries that the mining world has gone completely lithium crazy over the last ten years, and the guys at Nano One promise to disrupt this space entirely by assembling better quality materials cheaper, in less time and with almost no waste products.

At the beginning of July, the company was awarded yet another patent relating to their lithium battery cathode production tech, expanding Nano Ones proprietary position to include the improvements in battery performance provided by the lithium ion cathode materials produced. Batteries produced using this process are far more robust than units produced using current methods, lasting 2-3 times longer. Additionally, these new batteries would store more energy and deliver more power as a result of the finer structure achieved in the cathodes produced using this method.

The repeated good news over the past year had caused a few serious jumps in the companys share price, and I really feel that this may be the final opportunity to get in on the action before Nano One goes big-league. The ability to cater to a booming market in a way that nobody else can is too good an opportunity to pass up, and the development of commercial scale processing means that shares wont be trading at only C$1.10 for very long.

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Commercial Scale Lithium Production In Sight For Nano One Materials - InvestorIntel