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Cabbage harvested aboard space station: NASA – The Indian Express

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

By: PTI | Washington | Published:February 19, 2017 1:44 pm In this frame from NASA TV, the SpaceX Dragon capsule arrives at the International Space Station bearing supplies on Wednesday, July 20, 2016. (NASA TV via AP)

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have harvested the first crop of Chinese cabbage after spending nearly a month tending to the leafy greens, according to NASA. While the space station crew will get to eat some of the Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage harvested by astronaut Peggy Whitson, the rest is being saved for scientific study back at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre.

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This is the fifth crop grown aboard the station, and the first Chinese cabbage. The crop was chosen after evaluating several leafy vegetables on a number of criteria, such as how well they grow and their nutritional value. The top four candidates were sent to NASAs Johnson Space Centers Space Food Systems team, where they brought in volunteer tasters to sample the choices.

The Tokyo Bekana turned out to be the most highly rated in all the taste categories, NASA said. Astronauts often report that their taste buds dull during spaceflight, and they frequently add hot sauce, honey or soy sauce to otherwise bland-tasting fare.

One explanation for this may be that, in a reduced gravity environment, the fluid in astronauts bodies shifts around equally, rather than being pulled down into their legs as were accustomed to on Earth. However, there is a backup plan to ensure the crews culinary delight.

If the fresh Chinese cabbage they grew does not awaken their taste buds on its own, packets of ranch dressing were also sent up to help them enjoy the fruits (or veggies) of their labour, NASA said.

This year, a second veggie system will be sent up to be seated next to the current one. It will provide side-by-side comparisons for future plant experiments and will hopefully make astronauts happy to have a bigger space garden. Aboard the next resupply mission to the space station will be an experiment involving Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant, and petri plates inside the veggie facility.

Arabidopsis is the genetic model of the plant world, making it a perfect sample organism for performing genetic studies. These experiments will provide a key piece of the puzzle of how plants adjust their physiology to meet the needs of growing in a place outside their evolutionary experience, said Dr Anna Lisa Paul, the principal Investigator, from University of Florida in the U.S. And the more complete our understanding, the more success we will have in future missions as we take plants with us off planet, Paul added.

Cabbage harvested aboard space station: NASA - The Indian Express

First Black Crew Member to Join International Space Station – Black Voice News

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

While working on her doctorate, Epps was a NASA graduate student Researchers Project fellow, authoring several journal and conference articles about her research. After completing her graduate studies, Epps worked in a research lab for more than two years, co-authoring multiple patents, before being recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She was a CIA technical intelligence officer for about seven years before being selected as a member of the 2009 astronaut class.

Anything you dont know is going to be hard at first, Epps said in a video statement about the launch. But if you stay the course, put the time and effort in, it will become seamless eventually.

Epps, in the NASA video interview, shared when she was first introduced to the idea that she could be an astronaut. It was about 1980, I was nine years old. My brother came home and he looked at my grades and my twin sisters grades and he said, You know, you guys can probably become aerospace engineers or even astronauts, Epps said. And this was at the time that Sally Ride [the first American woman to fly in space] and a group of women were selected to become astronauts the first time in history. So, he made that comment and I said, Wow, that would be so cool.

Epps will join veteran NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel at the Space Station. On Feustels first long-duration mission, he served as a flight engineer on Expedition 55, and later as commander of Expedition 56.

Each space station crew brings something different to the table, and Drew and Jeanette both have a lot to offer, said Chris Cassidy, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. The space station will benefit from having them on board.

NASA live stream films SIX UFOs fly METRES away from International Space Station – Express.co.uk

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

The YouTube video taken from NASA camera on the ISS itself shows one faded object appear to pass the space station.

Then four clearer objects appear to pass, followed by a sixth faded one.

The footage was uploaded by YouTube user Streetcap 1 who spends hours scouring ISS live cams looking for anomalies.

He has posted several clips of alleged UFOs by the ISS, but many have been exposed as nothing more than lens flares being projected out by the camera after light reffacted inside the lens.

But, the latest video is one of the more intriguing ones.

NASA

So, the aliens were fully aware that they would be seen on the live internet cameras and they just didn't give a flying f***.

Scott C Waring

The video, uploaded this month, has been picked up by UFO blogger Scott C Waring.

He blogged on ufosightingsdaily.com: "This amazing catch was by Streetcap1 of Youtube as he watched the space station and caught a fleet of UFOs doing a fly by of the ISS.

"They came in close and they came within about 30 to 50 meters."

He claimed it was proof they were alien spaceships.

NASA

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ISS Nasa live cam cuts after 'suddenly locking on to mystery glowing UFO'

He added: "So, the aliens were fully aware that they would be seen on the live internet cameras and they just didn't give a flying f***.

"You see, on Earth, aliens in the most part, have to follow our rules, especially the rules made by former presidents that say that alien cannot reveal themselves to humans...yet.

"But in space, its their home turf, and that means, their rules. As you can see for yourself, they do as they please."

But, Scott Brando, a forensic UFO investigator, who runs hoax-busting website ufoofinterest.org, said it was just paticles of ice floating past, that were out of focus, giving an orb-like appearance.

He also said that the footage dated back to 2010, and was being re-run on YouTube, withoutthis pointed out.

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NASA live stream films SIX UFOs fly METRES away from International Space Station - Express.co.uk

Commercial space flights from UK by 2020 under new Govt plans – Sky News

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Space ports could be set up and satellites could blast off from regions across the UK under new proposals set to be unveiled this week.

The Spaceflight Bill would allow scientists to conduct experiments in zero gravity - paving the way for the development of vaccines and antibiotics, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

Science minister Jo Johnson said the bill would "cement the UK's position as a world leader in this emerging market".

Under the proposals, the first commercial flight from a UK space port could lift off by 2020.

Mr Johnson said: "From the launch of Rosetta, the first spacecraft to orbit a comet, to Tim Peake's six months on the International Space Station, the UK's space sector has achieved phenomenal things in orbit and beyond.

"With this week's Spaceflight Bill launch, we will cement the UK's position as a world leader in this emerging market, giving us an opportunity to build on existing strengths in research and innovation."

Aviation minister Lord Ahmad said: "We have never launched a spaceflight before from this country.

"Our ambition is to allow for safe and competitive access to space from the UK, so we remain at the forefront of a new commercial space age."

Grants worth 10m would be made available to help develop commercial launch capability for spaceflight.

The commercial spaceflight market is worth an estimated 25bn over the next 20 years.

The bill will be unveiled in Parliament this week.

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Commercial space flights from UK by 2020 under new Govt plans - Sky News

Dawn spacecraft finds evidence of organic materials on Ceres – SpaceFlight Insider

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Jim Sharkey

February 19th, 2017

This enhanced color composite image, made with data from the framing camera aboard NASAs Dawn spacecraft, shows the area around Ernutet Crater. The bright red portions appear redder with respect to the rest of Ceres. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

NASAs Dawn spacecraft has detected evidence of organic materials on Ceres, a dwarf planet that is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Researchers using Dawns visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) discover the material in and around a crater in Ceres northern hemisphere named Ernutet. Organic materials are of interest to scientists because they are necessary, but not sufficient, components of life on Earth.

Ernutet Crater measures about 32 miles (52 km) in diameter and is located in the northern hemisphere of Ceres. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

Organic materials have previously been found inside certain meteorites and inferred from telescopic observations of certain asteroids. Ceres shares many attributes in common with meteorites rich in water and organics; in particular, a group of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites. The discovery of organics on Ceres strengthens the connection between the dwarf planet, these meteorites, and their parent bodies.

This is the first clear detection of organic molecules from orbit on a main belt body, said Maria Cristina De Sanctis, lead author of the study, based at the National Institute of Astrophysics, Rome.The discovery is reported in the journal Science.

Data presented in the new study supports the idea that organic materials are native to Ceres. Carbonates and clays previously found on Ceres provide evidence for chemical activity in the presence of water and heat. It is possible that the organics were similarly produced in a warm, water-rich environment.

The discovery of organics on Ceres adds to the ingredients found on the dwarf planet that areassociated with life in the past. Previous studies have foundhydrated minerals, carbonates, water ice, and ammoniated clays that must have been altered by water. Salts and sodium carbonate, such asthose foundin the bright areas of Occator Crater, are also thought to have been carried to the surface by liquid.

This discovery adds to our understanding of the possible origins of water and organics on Earth, said Julie Castillo-Rogez, Dawn project scientist based at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

This enhanced color composite image from Dawns visible and infrared mapping spectrometer shows the area around Ernutet Crater on Ceres. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / ASI / INAF

The organic materials on Ceres are primarily located in an area covering approximately 400 square miles (about 1,000 square kilometers). A very strong signal of organics is visible on the floor of Ernutet Crater, on its southern rim and in an area to the southwest, just outside of the crater. There are smaller organics-rich areas several miles (11 kilometers) west and east of the crater. Organics were also located in a small portion of Inamahari Crater, approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Ernutet.

DawnsVIR instrument was able to detect the organic material because of its special signature in near-infrared light. In enhanced, visible-light images taken by Dawns framing camera, the organic material associated with areas that appear redder than the rest of Ceres. The unique nature of these regions stands out even in low- resolution images from the VIR instrument.

Were still working on understanding the geological context for these materials, said study co-author Carle Pieters, professor of geological sciences at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

After completing nearly two years of observations at Ceres, Dawn is now in an extremely elliptical orbit of the dwarf planet, going for an altitude of 4,670 miles (7,529 kilometers) up to nearly 5,810 miles (9,350 kilometers). On February 23, Dawn will raise its orbit to approximately 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers), about the same height as GPS satellites above Earth.

The spacecraft will also shift into a different orbital plane, allowing Dawn to study Ceres in a new geometry. In late spring, Dawn will view Ceres with the Sun directly behind the spacecraft, so that Ceres will appear brighter than before, possibly revealing more clues about its nature.

Tagged: Ceres Dawn NASA The Range

Jim Sharkey is a lab assistant, writer and general science enthusiast who grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, the hometown of Skylab and Shuttle astronaut Owen K. Garriott. As a young Star Trek fan he participated in the letter-writing campaign which resulted in the space shuttle prototype being named Enterprise. While his academic studies have ranged from psychology and archaeology to biology, he has never lost his passion for space exploration. Jim began blogging about science, science fiction and futurism in 2004. Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay area and has attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover landing and the NASA LADEE lunar orbiter launch.

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Dawn spacecraft finds evidence of organic materials on Ceres - SpaceFlight Insider

NASA studying farming in space to support trips to Mars – SpaceFlight Insider

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Bart Leahy

February 17th, 2017

Astronaut Shane Kimbrough tends the Veggie experiment on board the International Space Station. Photo Credit: NASA

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. Children might not want to hear this, but, if they want to be the first astronaut on Mars, theyll need to eat their vegetables. To account for that painful truth, NASA has several space farming projects to ensure people living and working in space get fresh green stuff as part of their diet.

One project the agency has in work is the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), an experiment scheduled to head to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.

The Advanced Plant Habitat. Photo Credit: Jim Siegel / SpaceFlight Insider

This 18 18 18-inch (45 45 45-centimeter) enclosure contains a seed bed filled with thick sand-quality clay chips for soil, fertilizer, and pumped-in water. It is covered by a plastic top to keep the surface from floating around.

The enclosure also includes two small robotic arms, which take leaf temperatures and measure the interior humidity.

Thin-stemmed flowering plants called Arabidopsis (the white mice of the plant world) will be tested for different levels of humidity, water, and light, which consists of red, white, and blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), to determine which combination of factors most effectively support plant growth.

After the astronauts plug APH into an existing EXpedite the PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (EXPRESS) rackaboard, they can monitor the experiment using an existing computer called FARMER or let people on the ground run it.

The system runs on approximately three liters of water and, being a mostly closed-loop system, it can run for as many as six weeks without needing to be refilled.

APH is scheduled to be launched in two parts. The first will launch on Orbital ATKs OA-7 Cygnus launch and the other aboard SpaceXs CRS-11 or CRS-12 Dragon spacecraft.

One NASA plant experiment already aboard the ISS is called Veggie.

Filling approximately a 12 12-inch (30 cm 30 cm) area, Veggie is a soft plastic enclosure that can accordion from six to 12 inches high. The base of the enclosure contains half a dozen plant pillows containing ground clay chips and fertilizer, which substitute for the dirt they would use on Earth.

The enclosure includes an interior fan to draw in space station air and keep it moving around the plants. Without constant air movement, plants in zero gravity tend to build up bubbles of oxygen around themselves.

Kjell Lindgren (left) and Scott Kelly eat lettuce grown in the Veggie experiment during Expedition 44 in August 2015. Photo Credit: NASA

Veggie project scientist Gioia Massa explained that unlike the APH, the Veggie experiment is actually growing plants that astronauts can eat, like Chinese cabbage, bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers.

Astronauts are allowed to keep and eat half of the crop developed by Veggie, while the other half is packaged up and sent back to Earth for analysis.

Plants could be useful for more than just providing food for space travelers they could also supplement spacecraft life-support systems by providing oxygen.

Raymond Wheeler, Kennedy Space Centers advanced life support lead, is looking into growing plants using whats called controlled environment agriculture.

Plants will be much easier to grow on a planetary body like the Moon or Mars because gravity allows water to flow more naturally than in zero gravity. With planet-based agriculture in mind, Wheeler is studying Earth-based techniques such as hydroponics and LED-lighted greenhouses to maximize plant growth.

When asked whether any particular plants produce more oxygen than others, Wheeler told Spaceflight Insider, No, not really. But the more light plants get, the more oxygen they produce its almost a linear function. The trick is to identify plants that are more light-tolerant.

NASAs advanced greenhouses can produce useful outcomes on Earth as well. While its hard to beat Idaho for growing consumable potatoes in the ground, Wheeler explained that NASAs nutrient-film technique is ideal for growing seed potatoes, which provide the seed stock for the potatoes grown on Earth.

By planting seed potatoes in shallow, tilted trays with a thin layer of nutrient-laden water, they can grow in a clean, disease-free environment, which is better for producing high-quality seeds.

Ralph Fritsche, Kennedy Space Centers project manager for food production, is looking into multiple creative ways to keep plants fed and watered in zero gravity.

One approach to growing food on a Mars mission is to utilize microgreens, which doesnt take up a lot of room and can be cultivated in a couple of weeks. Photo Credit: Jim Siegel / SpaceFlight Insider

Another challenge with growing plants in zero-g is overcoming surface tension, as water tends to form in globules rather than flow in a way plants can access easily.

One approach to embedding seeds in a 3-D-printed, triangle-latticed box that draws water into crevices where roots can get at it.

Some other strong contenders for Mars veggies are microgreens, which are commonly found in salads at upscale restaurants. They dont take up a lot of room, are more flavorful, and can grow in a couple of weeks.

Fritsche also mentioned a project being conducted by the Buzz Aldrin Institute to investigate plants that grow in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It is hoped that edible plants could be combined with Atacama plants to adapt to conditions on Mars.

Something NASA is still working on is determining how much space and mass will be dedicated to providing fresh vegetables on the long haul to Mars. Most of the astronauts food will be prepackaged in some form, yet fresh fruits and vegetables will still be vital for their dietary health.

Fritsche said: The challenge is getting the engineers to talk with the plant biologists to determine the best mix of equivalent system mass.

In short, NASA still needs to determine how much hardware to grow and care for plants is needed compared to just shipping prepackaged foods.

Much of this space farming technology is still a work in progress, and the ISS is the testing ground for a lot of systems. When crews start living and working at more distant destinations, they will need to take a bit of Earth with them, to help them breathe and, yes, to make sure they eat their vegetables.

Tagged: Advanced Plant Habitat CRS-11 Cygnus Dragon International Space Station OA-7 Orbital ATK SpaceX The Range Veggie

Bart Leahy is a freelance technical writer living in Orlando, Florida. Leahy's diverse career has included work for The Walt Disney Company, NASA, the Department of Defense, Nissan, a number of commercial space companies, small businesses, nonprofits, as well as the Science Cheerleaders.

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NASA studying farming in space to support trips to Mars - SpaceFlight Insider

Floating ecopolis – Wikipedia

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

The Floating ecopolis, otherwise known as the Lilypad, is a model designed by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut for future climatic refugees. He proposed this model as a long-term solution to rising water level as per the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate) forecast. It is a self-sufficient amphibious city and satisfies the four challenges laid down by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in March 2008 namely, climate, biodiversity, water and health.[1]

Vincent Callebaut is a Belgian architect known for his eco-friendly projects. He has received many awards. Some of the recent ones include:

The floating structure has a capacity to shelter 50,000 individuals. It consists of three marinas and three mountains, which are meant for entertainment purposes, surrounding a centrally located artificial lagoon that performs the task of collecting and purifying water. The shape of this floating structure was inspired from the highly ribbed leaf of the Amazonia Victoria Regia water lily. The double skin of this structure would be made of polyester fibers covered by a layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2). The titanium oxide reacts with ultra violet rays and therefore, due to photocatalytic effect, it absorbs atmospheric pollution in the process.[3]

By only using renewable energies, this design has zero carbon emission and it produces more energy than it consumes.[4] Energy sources could include:

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Floating ecopolis - Wikipedia

Nasa’s Dawn finds key ingredients for alien life on dwarf planet Ceres – Expat Newswire

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Home Desporto Nasas Dawn finds key ingredients for alien life on dwarf planet Ceres

The spacecraft contains a Viable or InfraRed Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) that is able to detect organic materials on the planets surface. The discovery was made by the Dawn mission, which has previously found evidence of water ice at the planets poles and carbonate minerals, that appear to be responsible for the mysterious bright spots on the surface.NASAs Dawn spacecraft recently detected organic-rich areas on Ceres. Dr Simone Marchi, from the Southwest Research Institute, and an author of the study, said: This discovery of a locally high concentration of organics is intriguing, with broad implications for the astrobiology community. With this new finding Dawn has shown that Ceres contains key ingredients for life. The material was found near a almost 50-km-wide crater in the planets northern hemisphere. Kim Kardashian Goes Platinum Blonde Again & Flaunts Major Cleavage So shaken is the mother of two, she said she struggles to even speak about what happened. The second time she went blonde it was a wig . The exact compounds cant be identified but they do match tar-like minerals such as kerite or asphaltite. Organic compounds are volatile and would be easily destroyed by the intense heat of an asteroid impact. The compounds wouldnt have survived such a powerful, high-heat impact, the study says, but its not fully understood how exactly they moved from inside the planet to the surface. Ceres was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.Put Ceres down on the list of places in the solar system that could have once harbored life or may be hiding it now, alongside Mars, Titan, Enceladus, Europa and some other far-out locales. The dwarf planet is also believed to have an under-surface ocean.The discovery indicates that the starting material in the solar system contained the essential elements, or the building blocks, for life, Russell said. New origami-inspired shield deflects handgun bullets When expanded which takes only five seconds it can provide cover for officers and stop bullets from several types of handguns. Kevlar fabric is very flexible, but it is susceptible to fraying and abrasion, whilst also being sensitive to sunlight and water. At around 600 miles across, Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Such a find would also snatch away the title of Coolest Dwarf Planet from Pluto, dealing that plucky iceball yet another degrading blow. Instead, scientists think the asteroids core continues to be hot, retaining some of the heat from its formative days, and this heat interacts with other materials within the asteroid to create the organic compounds.We can not exclude that there are other locations rich in organics not sampled by the survey, or below the detection limit, study lead author Maria Cristina De Sanctis, of the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Space Planetology in Rome, told Space.com via email. The addition of organic material makes the dwarf planet a promising environment for prebiotic chemistry.Composite image of the area around Ernutet Crater. Dawn spacecraft data show a region around the Ernutet crater where organic concentrations have been discovered (labeled a through f). Teenage boy badly hurt after shark attack off Australian coast He was quickly hauled onto a boat where a tourniquet was applied to his leg to stem heavy bleeding which left him unconscious. Ballantyne called Dickson an awesome person and also someone who cares about his friends and family. This is the first clear detection of organic molecules from orbit on a main belt body, said researcher Maria Cristina De Sanctis from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. Indeed, Ceres shows clear signatures of pervasive hydrothermal activity and aqueous adjustment, they wrote in the new study. The finding helped researchers explain that water ice existed beneath the surface of the dwarf planet, especially in the regions near the planets poles.

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Nasa's Dawn finds key ingredients for alien life on dwarf planet Ceres - Expat Newswire

Former Mikado resident named candidate for Canadian Space Agency astronaut – Kamsack Times

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Tim Haltigin, the former Canora area resident who is in the running to become a Canadian astronaut, credits much of his journey to the Canora Composite School, his fellow students and their teachers.

Tim is one of a special group of young people fostered by CCS teachers who had encouraged competition and achievement, his mother, Linda Osachoff, said last week when asked about her son having been named one of 70 astronaut candidates selected by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Astronauts are modern-day explorers, said information on the CSA website. They courageously travel beyond the Earth to help acquire new scientific knowledge. Their courage and determination are an inspiration to many.

Despite their unique journeys, astronauts have a few things in common: an academic background in science or technology, excellent health and outstanding qualities and skills, the information said.

Born in Toronto, Haltigin was raised in Canora from nursery school until his graduation from CCS. Now living in Saint-Constant, Que., with his wife Melissa Triottier and two daughters, Nora, 5, and Sasha, 3, he obtained a bachelor of science degree in environmental geography from Concordia University, a masters degree in geography (fluvial geomorphology) from McGill University and a Ph.D in geography (periglacial geomorphology and comparative planetology) from McGill. He is the senior mission scientist for planetary exploration for the CSA.

Readers of the Courier read about Haltigin in September when he was about to take part in the first NASA-led mission that will bring asteroid material to Earth. Heis part of the team which launched the satellite Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) on September 8 in order to take a sample of matter from the asteroid Bennu. The satellite consists of a camera system named OCAMS, a thermal emission spectrometer named OTES, a visible and infrared spectrometer known as OVIRS, an X-ray named REXIS, and the laser altimeter known as OLA, of which Haltigin is the mission manager.

The satellite will reach the asteroid in July of 2018 and use OLA to measure the shape and surface of the asteroid, which is 492 metres in diameter and spins like a top, according to Haltigin. The laser altimeter will take about a billion different measurements in order to find an area that is safe for the spacecraft to take a sample. Once an acceptable spot is found, the satellite will collect between 60g and two kg of dust and small fragments from the surface of the asteroid and should return with the sample in September of 2023.

As the senior mission scientist for planetary exploration with the CSA, I get to work helping Canada find new and different ways to understand the evolution of objects in the solar system, he said, adding that he gets to plan Canadian contributions to future missions, and to design and run student exercises that help train the next generation of Canadian planetary scientists and engineers.

Becoming an astronaut represents two of the values I hold most dear: the constant pursuit of knowledge and using that knowledge to inspire those around you, he said. Essentially, the job description is to learn how to do awesome things and then share it with people afterwards.

I have always loved taking on new and exciting challenges, whether in science, sports, or music. Not only have I benefitted greatly from all of the experience I've gained, but I've particularly appreciated the opportunities I've had to share my work and hopefully help out a few people along the way.

Astronauts are modern-day explorers, the CSA website says. They courageously travel beyond the Earth to help discover new scientific knowledge. Their courage and determination are an inspiration to many. Their unique experience helps advance scientific research and technology development.

Canada's active astronauts support space missions in progress and prepare for a future mission by taking extensive training, it said. They mainly work at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. However, they return to Canada periodically to participate in various activities and encourage young Canadians to pursue their education in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Growing up at the time he did, most boys had wanted to be a superhero or a space guy, his mother said. He was interested, in the way lots of young people are: with boundless enthusiasm.

Tim showed a lot of qualities at a young age, she said. He was focused; academically, in sports and in music. He was a team player with friends and family.

Osachoff said that the first time she had noticed an interest that could have led to his desire to become an astronaut was one time when he had come home from university in Montreal and he had stood aside, with his head looking straight up at the beautiful winter sky for about 15 minutes.

But, it had started with his interest in water and geography, which opened many channels, she said, shaking her head at the thought of the many theses that she had been asked to proofread for her son.

Hisfirst research had focused on the study of malaria, but eventually he had decided to switch degrees to geography, and studied rivers and trout habitats.

While completing his masters degree, some friends of his entered a contest held by the European Space Agency. Teams were instructed to determine how scientists could find water on Mars, and Haltigins friends asked him to join in. Their team eventually travelled to Barcelona, Spain for the finals, and the professor organizing the team asked Haltigin if hed like to pursue a PhD on the nature of Mars.

He then did research up north, Osachoff said, referringto her sons research that had led him to make nine expeditions beyond the Arctic Circle in order to compare the conditions of the land and climate to Mars. The expeditions were funded by the CSA, which allowed him to make contact with people involved in space research, and just before graduating, he decided to apply for work in the agency.

Asked how his grandparents, the late Evelyn and Bill Osachoff, might have received the news of their grandsons pursuits, Linda said that they had been very close to him and were a part of his upbringing.

Tim had qualities early that indicated that he would be able to do anything he had wanted, she said, adding that her son remains very humble and thanks his blessings for his opportunities.

Having spoken to her son recently, Linda said that he had told her that no matter what happens, he has become a better person with the self examination, rigorous training, both mental and physical, and for having met many peers across the country.

Asked how she feels, thinking that one day she may very well be looking at the sky, knowing that her son is out there beyond the Earth, and Linda said she vacillates between pride and panic.

After all, that is the final frontier, she said, adding that she was reminded that at a recent family get-together around a bonfire, Tim had his daughter on his lap and together they were looking at the sky. He was pointing out to her the satellites and the International Space Station as they had moved across the sky.

When Tim had asked his mother for advice regarding his possible selection as an astronaut, Linda said she had told him to remember the music festivals.

Focus on your unique skills, dont over prepare and save the thunder for the final performance, she had told him.

Tim is a great communicator. Hes down to earth, a sound guy and a joker, she said, adding that as he works with the CSA, he will be on speaking tours.

Osachoff is currently the CEO of Crossroads Credit Union in Canora. She and her husband Alfredo Converso operate La Compangna Bed and Breakfast near Mikado.

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Former Mikado resident named candidate for Canadian Space Agency astronaut - Kamsack Times

NASA Announces Winners In ‘Space Poop Challenge’ – NPR

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

This is the actual NASA graphic illustrating the "Space Poop Challenge." NASA hide caption

This is the actual NASA graphic illustrating the "Space Poop Challenge."

On Wednesday morning, NASA rewarded five members of the public two doctors, a dentist, an engineer and a product designer for their creative ideas for how to poop in a spacesuit.

Yes, it sounds a little bit funny. But unmet toilet needs could have life or death consequences for an astronaut in an emergency situation.

That's why thousands of people spent tens of thousands of hours on the "Space Poop Challenge," brainstorming, modeling, prototyping and number-crunching to come up with a crowd-sourced solution to the problem of human waste in a spacesuit.

Currently, astronauts on spacewalks rely on diapers, which is a feasible solution for only a few hours at a time. As we explained in November, NASA is imagining a situation where an astronaut is stuck in a spacesuit for days like during an emergency on future Orion missions, which could take astronauts far from Earth.

The super-portable-bathroom solution has to work quickly, easily, in micro-gravity, without impeding movement, for both men and women, for solid and liquid waste. It can either store waste in the suit or expel it. And it has to be comfortable ... for up to six continuous days.

Since the project launched on the HeroX crowdsourcing site in October, nearly 20,000 people, from all over the world, submitted more than 5,000 ideas. They were competing for a total of $30,000 in prizes.

The winning solution came from Thatcher Cardon, an Air Force officer, family practice physician and flight surgeon. He says his design was inspired by minimally invasive surgical techniques and a strong desire not to store the poop.

"I never thought that keeping the waste in the suit would be any good," he told NPR. "So I thought, 'How can we get in and out of the suit easily?' "

[In] less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology, they can do some amazing things in very small openings.

Winner Thatcher Cardon

"I thought about what I know regarding less invasive surgeries like laparoscopy or arthroscopy or even endovascular techniques they use in cardiology they can do some amazing things in very small openings.

"I mean, they can even replace heart valves now through catheters in an artery. So it should be able to handle a little bit of poop!"

He designed a small airlock at the crotch of the suit, with a variety of items including inflatable bedpans and diapers that could be passed through the small opening and then expanded. His design even allows an astronaut to change underwear while inside the spacesuit, through the same small opening.

Cardon used an old flight suit to try some physical prototyping, and his kids helped gather supplies. They were "totally excited," he says. "They lost their minds when I told them I won."

Second place went to a trio from Houston a physician, an engineering professor and a dentist (who also served as the team's illustrator). All three had studied chemical engineering in college.

Stacey Louie, the environmental engineer on the team, said the different areas of expertise on the team were central to their solution. But before they fine-tuned their design, they had to discard a lot of ideas.

The SPUDs team "Space Poop Unification of Doctors" designed the Air-PUSH Urinary Girdle. They explain: "Air flows through the top of the device to direct urinary and/or menstrual waste in an anteroposterior direction, where it then exits via the larger tube at the bottom of the device." Katherine Kin/Courtesy of the SPUDs team hide caption

For instance, doctor and team leader Jose Gonzales says that he immediately thought of some medicine-inspired strategies that would be effective but not at all comfortable.

"You have to take into consideration, 'Is the astronaut going to be OK with this design?' " Katherine Kin, the dentist and artist, notes. "You have to have something that's psychologically comfortable."

So internal catheters were out. Instead, Gonzales says, they used an air-powered system to push waste away from the body to store it elsewhere in the suit. "More specifically, that air is created by passive and active normal body movements of the astronaut," Gonzales says.

A product designer from the U.K., Hugo Shelley, placed third. He usually works with electronics and tech products, but he says for this contest, he went in the other direction and tried to build a solution with as few electronic parts as possible.

"I think we're all aware of the dangers of things going wrong in space," he says. A simple design seemed safer, he says.

Hugo Shelley's design is "built into a form-fitting garment that is worn underneath the pressure suit," he says. "It features a new catheter design for extended use in microgravity, combined with a mechanism that compresses, seals and sanitizes solid waste." Dani Epstein/Courtesy of Hugo Shelley hide caption

"My mother's a textile designer so I think I started off really thinking about materials," he says. "Making something as comfortable as possible I thought was fairly important ... a lot of your mechanism really has to be in, effectively, the first few millimeters away from the skin."

His solution, the "SWIMSuit Zero Gravity Underwear," disinfects and stores waste inside the suit, like the second-place design does.

Cardon won $15,000, while the trio from Houston took home $10,000 and Shelley netted $5,000.

The next step is for NASA to start prototyping the ideas, and get working versions of a waste-management system up to the International Space Station for testing.

Dustin Gohmert, the Orion crew survival system project manager at NASA, explains that NASA will combine existing ideas with elements of the winning designs to create a solution that will, indeed, go into space.

"Optimistically this will never be used, because it is a contingency scenario that something catastrophic has happened," he said. "But this will be on Orion and should something happen, and should it be called on to save the crew, this will be there and at their disposal."

Shelley, the product designer, notes that research on how to improve waste management inside a spacesuit could also be useful in "earth-bound applications" for people with incontinence or in high-pressure, critical job situations.

It's an amusing thing to think about, but still it's a part of a spacesuit and there's something incredibly thrilling about the space missions.

Third-place finisher Hugo Shelley

And while it was "kind of odd" to think about poop in space for weeks at a time, he says the project was "quite exciting."

"Yes, it's an amusing thing to think about, but still it's a part of a spacesuit and there's something incredibly thrilling about the space missions," he says.

And, he notes, "you can't fully appreciate being an interplanetary explorer if you've constantly got to use the bathroom and you can't."

NASA Announces Winners In 'Space Poop Challenge' - NPR

SpaceX, NASA Hail 1st Falcon 9 Rocket Launch from Pad Steeped in History – Space.com

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. SpaceX'shistoric launch from NASA's Launch Complex 39A Sunday (Feb. 19) was a complete success. So it's no surprise that when the time came to discuss the flight, the post-launch press conference was short, sweet and full of smiling faces.

The private spaceflight company's Falcon 9 rocket launched a Dragon spacecraft full of cargo into orbit at 9:39 a.m. EST (1439 GMT), after which the booster's first stagereturned to Earth to make had a perfect landing at the company's Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.

"It's been a super-exciting day it's really awesome to see 39A roar back to life for the first time since the shuttle era, and it was extremely special that this first launch on 39A was a Dragon mission for NASA to the space station," Jessica Jenson, the Dragon mission manager at SpaceX, said during the briefing.Pad 39A was used for most of the Apollo missions and many shuttle missions, including the first and the last launches; SpaceX modernized the pad under a 20-year lease from NASA. [Watch: The Most Historic Launches Ever from Pad 39A]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches its first cargo mission for NASA from the agency's historic Pad 39A, with a U.S. flag and NASA countdown clock in the foreground, in this view from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Feb. 19, 2018.

"This is a huge deal for us," she added.

Jenson is anticipating just a two-week turnaround before SpaceX's next launch from Pad 39A, and the first reused booster will eventually launch from that pad as well. Ultimately, the site will become the primary launchpad for the Falcon 9 Heavy, SpaceX's huge heavy-lift booster, SpaceX representatives have said. The Falcon 9 launches will move to a repaired Pad 40 at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (which was damaged last year in a Sept. 1 explosion). Jenson confirmed that SpaceX plans to launch an uncrewed test flight of the its Crew Dragon astronaut taxi by the end of this year, followed by a crewed flight in early 2018.

Sunday's liftoff was originally scheduled for yesterday, but it was called off with 13 seconds left on the countdown as a precaution due to an unexpected reading on the rocket's second-stage engine nozzle's position.

"Great launch today; we were really excited to see everything go well after yesterday's countdown fun," William Spetch, NASA's deputy manager of the International Space Station's transportation office, said during the briefing. "Dragon's on its way, space station is in great shape and really looking forward to getting the 5,000 plus pounds of cargo coming up to the vehicle."

Dragon bringing nearly 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kg) of supplies and experiments to the crew on the space station, including many science investigations. The spacecraft will take two days to reach the station, where it will be grappled by the crew and berthed early Wednesday morning (Feb. 22). [In Photos: SpaceX's 1st Launch from Pad 39A]

Their first priority to unpack? "We have a lot of time-critical stuff that we bring up that gets loaded very late into the vehicle, so the first steps for the crew will be getting that off-loaded on the vehicle and getting into the experiments," Spetch said. "One of the first things is the rodents, getting all of our mice set up in their accommodations on board."

The ground crew will be busy, too, using the station's robotic arm attachments to unload things from Dragon's unpressurized "trunk."

"The ground teams will be working very hard and very quickly on the robotics ops to change out the science that's in the trunk, pull it out, and put it in spots in orbit and put additional cargo back in that's no longer being used."

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her@SarahExplains.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

GOP Wants NASA To Stop Worrying About Earth And Focus On Space – Huffington Post

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

NASA continues to steadfastly tweet urgent climate change information despite GOP efforts to force the agency to stick to space and forget the Earth.

The Trump administration aims to largely restrict NASAs focus to its space missions and have it abandon climate change research, which is a part of its Earth Sciences Division. The division, which accounts for just $2 billion of NASAs $20 billion budget, also includes gathering weather information, which the Republicans dont want to drop.

At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing last Thursday, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he wants a rebalancing of NASAs mission to allow other agencies to take over its climate change research. But its unclear which agencies could pick up the slack.

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, climate-change skeptic Scott Pruitt, has vowed to cut the EPAs budget and staffin the wake of Trumps campaign promise to get rid of the agency, The New York Times noted. The EPA has also been under orders from the Trump administration to refrain from tweeting anything about climate change.

Meanwhile, NASA posts daily climate change updates on@NASAclimateand Facebook, with frequent warnings about rapid global changes.

Despite NASAs own calls for more knowledge and action on climate change, Smith wants more funds to go into space exploration, he told E&E News. Id like for us to remember what our priorities are, and there are another dozen agencies that study earth science and climate change. We only have one agency that engages in space exploration, and they need every dollar they can muster for space exploration.

The move is viewed as yet another way to starve funds from research on climate change, which President Donald Trump, during his campaign,called a Chinese hoax invented to hurt U.S. manufacturing.

Fearful of a crackdown on NASA and other agencies, scientists and techies have been busily downloading all available research information from federal databases through groups like DataRefuge and The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative,Wiredreported. The gag order against EPA and other federal agencies has also given birth to a large family of underground alternative Twitter sites, many with information about climate change.

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GOP Wants NASA To Stop Worrying About Earth And Focus On Space - Huffington Post

Ozone-measuring instrument from NASA Langley-HU partnership launches into space – Daily Press

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

As the top portion of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket separated from its cargo bay in space Sunday morning, cheers erupted back on earth in a conference room filled with scientists and their family members watching the launch at Hampton's Harbour Centre.

The group that filled the conference room was cheering because the live-stream showed two pieces of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III, or SAGE III, that was designed and built by a team from Hampton University and NASA Langley. SAGE III is an ozone-measuring instrument traveling aboard the Falcon 9, which is bound for the International Space Station.

Dr. Charles Hill, a Hampton graduate and instrument scientist with the SAGE program, said seeing the equipment in space was a big part of the payoff of seven years of work.

He called the launch seven years of work and 30 seconds of terror.

For the scientists in Hampton, the 30 seconds of terror were actually postponed by a day; Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida Saturday, but conditions in the atmosphere led to the postponement. Hill said the countdown clock got all the way to 13 seconds before the launch was scrubbed.

Once it reaches the space station, SAGE III will collect atmospheric data with special emphasis on the ozone layer. For each sunrise and sunset, SAGE III will look at sun, scan it and use it as a light source to probe the atmosphere and measure ozone and aerosols, according to Robert Damadeo, an algorithm scientist.

"If you look at Edvard Munch's The Scream, the sky is blood red because of residual substance in the air after a huge volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa," Damado said. "Same concept now you can tell how much aerosol is in the sky based on its color."

Hill called the readings from the SAGE program the gold standard in these atmospheric readings and said the data is used by scientists throughout the world to validate their research.

Ozone is important to the atmosphere because it protects the earth from ultraviolet rays, similar to sunscreen on a person's skin, Hill said. However, the ozone layer was found to be thinning and eventually a hole was discovered in the 1990s.

Since then, the layer has recovered due to a worldwide ban on Freon 12, a substance once commonly used in air conditioning units that was found responsible for ozone depletion. But Hill said it will take about 50 years for the layer to return to a comfortable level.

Dr. James Russell, co-director of Hampton University's Center for Atmospheric Science, said the SAGE program has its origins in the 1970s, putting 40 years of experience into the SAGE III project. "It's really a Langley brand," he said.

As the team members from Hampton and Langley congratulated each other on the successful launch, Hill said the next step is already lined up; work on SAGE IV will begin in about a month, and funding for the project has already been secured.

Reyes can be reached by phone at 757-247-4692. Mishkin at 757-641-6669

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Ozone-measuring instrument from NASA Langley-HU partnership launches into space - Daily Press

CU Boulder students show NASA their vision of future space transport – Boulder Daily Camera

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Four University of Colorado juniors are back from NASA's Langley Research Center, where they competed Wednesday as finalists in that agency's BIG Idea Challenge.

The competition tasked students with advancing concepts for in-space assembly of spacecraft, particularly tugs, powered by solar propulsion.

NASA's challenge to competing students was that their design enable the transfer of payloads from low-Earth orbit to an orbit around the moon, or to a lunar distant retrograde orbit.

CU's group, whose project was dubbed "Odysseus," was one of five selected as finalists who made their pitch for an in-orbit assembly design of a spacecraft that can deliver cargo from low-Earth to lunar and Martian orbits.

The competition, which was held Wednesday, was won by a team from Tulane University.

But the CU team, comprised of juniors Justin Norman, Olivia Zanoni, Gerardo Pulido and Gabriel Walker, nevertheless distinguished itself, according to Brian Sanders, deputy director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, who accompanied them to Hampton, Va., returning to Colorado late Thursday night.

"I'm incredibly proud of what the students did, both in terms of paper and presentation, and the feedback we got after the competition from the judges was amazing," said Sanders.

"These students put in hundreds of hours with great simulations, doing great trade studies, to formulate a mission concept that was highly recognized by the judges as being really unique and practical yet cutting edge."

Walker, Norman and Pulido are students in the Ann and H. J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, while Zanoni is in the Engineering Physics program associated with the Department of Physics. All are members of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, which provides mostly undergraduate students with hands-on experience in designing, building and flying spacecraft.

The CU students didn't win, and also did not claim runner-up honors that prize went to the team from the University of Maryland but they hardly feel defeated.

"We made it. We were top 5, out of 29 teams in the nation," said Norman, a Boulder native. "To be able to be in the top-17 percentile is an honor in itself."

Norman had no quarrel with seeing the Tulane team take the top prize.

"It was humbling to see other people's designs. They came up with some just outstanding innovative things that just really blew my mind," he said. "The people who won, they deserved it. Their design was totally out of the box, and totally innovative."

The CU team, Norman said, was the only finalist to meet all of the original design requirements, but that wasn't enough to win out over the innovation of other finalists.

Sanders agreed that the students' not winning didn't mean their paper and presentation were in vain.

"Each team brought its own unique vision and solution, and that was commented and remarked upon by the NASA center officials. And they were hoping to collect some of those ideas and further incubate them, and use them as seeds to grow potential future NASA missions," Sanders said.

Elements of all five finalists' projects, Sanders said, could influence future NASA project designs.

"That's exactly what they're hoping to do," Sanders said, "is, take broad brush strokes of concepts from all over the country, elements of proposals one, two, three, four and five, and be able to hopefully influence what NASA is able to do, out of their Game Changing division out at Langley."

Norman returned to Boulder all that more determined to forge a future in aerospace engineering.

"You have to fail before you find success in this field," he said. "If anything, it has made me want to double my efforts toward a career path in that direction.

"I have seen what the bar was raised to by other teams. It's really high. It's good that there's such a high bar, because that's what it takes to do the things we're trying to do."

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan

Coders to the rescue for NASA’s Earth science data – Grist

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

This story was originally published by Wiredand is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

OnFeb. 11, the white stone buildings on UC Berkeleys campus radiated with unfiltered sunshine. The sky was blue, the campanile was chiming. But instead of enjoying the beautiful day, 200 adults had willingly sardined themselves into a fluorescent-lit room in the bowels of Doe Library to rescue federal climate data.

Like similar groups across the country in more than 20 cities they believe that the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole. So these hackers, scientists, and students are collecting it to save outside government servers.

But now theyre going even further. Groups like DataRefugeand the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASAs Earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And theyre keeping track of whats been removed to learn exactly when the pruning began.

The data collection is methodical, mostly. About half the group immediately sets web crawlers on easily copied government pages, sending their text to the Internet Archive, a digital library made up of hundreds of billions of snapshots of webpages. They tag more data-intensive projects pages with lots of links, databases, and interactive graphics for the other group. Called baggers, these coders write custom scripts to scrape complicated data sets from the sprawling, patched-together federal websites.

Its not easy. All these systems were written piecemeal over the course of 30 years. Theres no coherent philosophy to providing data on these websites, says Daniel Roesler, chief technology officer at UtilityAPI and one of the volunteer guides for the Berkeley bagger group.

One coder who goes by Tek ran into a wall trying to download multi-satellite precipitation data from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Starting in August, access to Goddard Earth Science Data required a login. But with a bit of totally legal digging around the site (DataRefuge prohibits outright hacking), Tek found a buried link to the old FTP server. He clicked and started downloading. By the end of the day he had data for all of 2016 and some of 2015. It would take at least another 24 hours to finish.

The non-coders hit dead-ends too. Throughout the morning they racked up 404 Page not found errors across NASAs Earth Observing System website. And they more than once ran across empty databases, like the Global Change Data Centers reports archive and one of NASAs atmospheric CO2 datasets.

And this is where the real problem lies. They dont know when or why this data disappeared from the web (or if anyone backed it up first). Scientists who understand it better will have to go back and take a look. But in the meantime, DataRefuge and EDGI understand that they need to be monitoring those changes and deletions. Thats more work than a human could do.

So theyre building software that can do it automatically.

Later that afternoon, two dozen or so of the most advanced software builders gathered around whiteboards, sketching out tools theyll need. They worked out filters to separate mundane updates from major shake-ups, and explored blockchain-like systems to build auditable ledgers of alterations. Basically its an issue of what engineers call version control how do you know if something has changed? How do you know if you have the latest? How do you keep track of the old stuff?

There wasnt enough time for anyone to start actually writing code, but a handful of volunteers signed on to build out tools. Thats where DataRefuge and EDGI organizers really envision their movement going a vast decentralized network from all 50 states and Canada. Some volunteers can code tracking software from home. And others can simply archive a little bit every day.

By the end of the day, the group had collectively loaded 8,404 NASA and DOE webpages onto the Internet Archive, effectively covering the entirety of NASAs Earth science efforts. Theyd also built backdoors in to download 25 gigabytes from 101 public datasets, and were expecting even more to come in as scripts on some of the larger datasets (like Teks) finished running. But even as they celebrated over pints of beer at a pub on Euclid Street, the mood was somber.

There was still so much work to do. Climate change data is just the tip of the iceberg, says Eric Kansa, an anthropologist who manages archaeological data archiving for the nonprofit group Open Context. There are a huge number of other datasets being threatened with cultural, historical, sociological information. A panicked friend at the National Parks Service had tipped him off to a huge data portal that contains everything from park visitation stats to GIS boundaries to inventories of species. While he sat at the bar, his computer ran scripts to pull out a list of everything in the portal. When its done, hell start working his way through each quirky dataset.

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Coders to the rescue for NASA's Earth science data - Grist

Micro and Nano Engineering 2016 – Vienna | 19-23 September …

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Thank you for visiting MNE 2016

The organizers would like to thank all participants, authors, exhibitors, and sponsors for making MNE 2016 such a success!

Participants are welcome to download photos of MNE 2016 (Photo: Marko Kovic).

Please make sure to save the date for MNE 2017 in Braga, Portugal: September 18-22, 2017

Open call for papers for four special issues in the Elsevier Journal of Microelectronic Engineering associated with the 42nd Micro- and NanoEngineering conference, MNE 2016:

Manuscript submission deadline: October 14, 2016 For more information, please click here.

MNE 2016 is the 42nd international conference on micro- and nanofabrication and manufacturing using lithography and related techniques with around 700 participants. The conference brings together engineers and scientists from all over the world to discuss recent progress and future trends in the fabrication and application of micro- and nanostructures and devices. Applications in electronics, photonics, electromechanics, environment, life sciences and biology are also discussed.

Electronic systems will continue to shape our future. Micro- and Nano-Engineering is at the heart of this development enabling micro- and nano-electronics, embedded, cyber-physical as well as integrated systems. It is indispensable for applications such as automated driving, internet of things, intelligent infrastructures as well as digital revolution in industry. At least ten percent of the gross domestic product throughout Europe depends on Micro- and Nano-Engineering.

This broad spectrum is also reflected in the selection of outstanding plenary speakers at MNE 2016. In addition, 17 world-Ieading invited speakers will reflect modern topics in the four MNE categories: micro- and nanopatterning, micro- and nanofabrication, micro/nano devices and systems, and micro- and nanotechnology/engineering for life sciences and biology.

Be involved in

This webpage contains the logos of Sponsors/Exhibitors whose support is indispensable for this conference.

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Micro and Nano Engineering 2016 - Vienna | 19-23 September ...

Micro-RNA may amplify effectiveness of sorafenib in difficult liver cancer cases – Science Daily

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Micro-RNA may amplify effectiveness of sorafenib in difficult liver cancer cases
Science Daily
Antonio Giordano, Director of the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia. "Sorafenib is still the only drug indicated in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, which highlights the ...

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Micro-RNA may amplify effectiveness of sorafenib in difficult liver cancer cases - Science Daily

Crazy Videos on YouTube That No One Can Explain – Thrillist

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

For as long as humans have had a way of committing moving images to tape, pixelated frames have been used to document the sinister, the peculiar, and the downright unexplainable. YouTube has long been a repository for some of the creepiest mysteries of the modern age ever caught on camera, and the endlessly obsessive and curious internet hive mind has ferreted out the truths lurking behind many of these eyebrow-raising videos. But occasionally, that is not the case.

These are six of those stories.

One of the most notorious pirate broadcasts of all time, preserved well beyond its intended lifespan, occurred on November 22, 1987, during a Chicago station's nightly local news broadcast. After turning black for 15 seconds, the picture reappeared but now showed a person wearing a Max Headroom mask, situated in front of a rotating piece of corrugated metal and accompanied by a humming noise. Technicians at the station managed to halt the pirated broadcast by switching the microwave transmitter they were using to broadcast, suggesting a hack by a strong pirate microwave signal nearby.

That same night, PBS member station WTTW fell victim to the same hackers during a broadcast of the Doctor Who episode "Horror of Fang Rock." This time, the pirates were able to cut in for a full 90 seconds, and used the time to spout advertising slogans and seeming nonsense. The clip ended with the Max Headroom mask-wearer pulling down his pants, receiving a spanking from an unidentified person in a French maid outfit, and yelling "They're coming to get me!" The WTTW broadcast was being sent from the Sears Tower microwave dish and because there were no technicians on duty at the time, they were unable to trace the signal.

The identity of the hackers and what the videos mean beyond a simple joke remain a mystery to this day. Occasionally, the wide world of the internet will stumble across a character that seems like they could have pulled off the Max Headroom hack, only to dismiss the theory later. The most current thinking on the subject suggests it was someone within the Chicago Broadcasting Community because the technology required to pull off a huge microwave hack wasn't available to the average consumer in the late 1980s.

One of America's most well-known conspiracy theories -- that an alien ship crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1950s -- is still giving willing theorists thrills more than 50 years later. In 2011, a new YouTube user named "ivan0135" uploaded a series of four videos that claimed to have been culled from leaked classified material. The uploaded information and film footage introduces us to a purported test subject known as "Skinny Bob," who appears to be an eerily realistic alien life form.

Is it real? The videos claim the footage was collected between 1942 and 1969, but post-production techniques seem to have been applied. If you look at the bottom left of the Skinny Bob video, the timecode appears to be flashing at a different rate than the footage, suggesting a digital post-production trick.

Even if the ivan0135 tapes probably aren't actual aliens (just like Roswell was most certainly not an extraterrestrial craft), the computer animation skill on display is an impressive work of special effects that has still gone uncredited for five years.

In 2008, on a 4chan board for paranormal posts, a user put a link into the "unsecured webcams" thread that showed a live-stream of a woman who was unconscious -- possibly even dead -- in a contorted position. The stream was coming from Seoul, South Korea. The woman woke up 10 hours later, and revealed that she had merely been sleeping in an odd position, but the attention of the internet had been piqued.

The woman, dubbed Chip-chan, was constantly broadcasting on webcam and falling asleep at odd times and in odd positions. She kept a blog and a YouTube channel where she told her odd story. The woman apparently never left the apartment and started making signs that were translated into various paranoid accusations like: "Don't get tricked, don't get fooled. Early every morning. If someone comes that paralyzes the person. I can't be stopped."

Over years, internet detectives pieced together a dossier of information on Chip-chan, including her contact e-mail and exchanges with the woman herself. She claims that a Korean police officer she calls "P" implanted something called a "Verichip" in her that keeps her forcibly in her apartment and can cause her to fall asleep at will. After Chip-chan's apartment was found via Google Earth sleuthing, concerned parties contacted the police in Seoul who said they were aware of a mentally disturbed woman who kept to herself except for occasional appearances at anti-government protests where she would photograph police officers.

In March 2015, a YouTube user named "unfavorable semicircle" sprang into existence and began uploading videos a month later. Most of them were only seconds or minutes long. Some included distorted voices uttering a letter or number. But the most notable quirk of the account was the sheer number of videos it uploaded: tens of thousands, causing YouTube to shut it down for violating the spam-related portions of its terms of service. Since then, the unfavorable semicircle project has continued on Twitter and a new YouTube account that continues to release videos to this day.

Most speculation about what unfavorable semicircle is trying to accomplish is centered on finding a reliable way to decode the videos. A similar YouTube channel that had puzzled online sleuths in the past had specialized in uploading videos featuring colored geometric shapes and tones, and it was eventually revealed to be the still active Google test channel Webdriver Torso. Unfavorable semicircle's return after the first channel was blocked has led most theorists to suspect it is some sort of coded art project or even an electronic numbers station.

More than likely just an amateur film about two students' exploration of an abandoned asylum, the "Pennhurst Found Footage" has yet to be attributed to a filmmaker or individual. It also hasn't been reliably connected to a real-life crime, which casts doubt on its claim that the footage involves "missing" college students. Nonetheless, the film's two parts are prefaced by intentionally creepy text stating that the students seen in the video have never been found.

The mysterious part of the video is its ending, which cuts suddenly from a staircase inside the abandoned mental institution to a scene in the surrounding forest in daytime, even though the time code on the camera shows only 32 seconds elapsing (which wouldn't have been enough time to exit the facility from the stairwell where the students had been investigating).To date, no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for this likely hoax, even as internet mystery-hunters are still trying to find answers.

An "ARG" is the abbreviation for an "Alternate Reality Game," or a fictional experience that extends its narrative into real life. There have been ARGs to promote products like movies and albums, and there have been ARGs that exist purely as an experience you have offline. Because of the nature of these types of games and experiences, sometimes it's hard to tell which parts of them are real and which aren't.

Such is the case with "deeper," a channel that uploaded cryptic videos with distorted audio and old camcorder footage in 2016. The hive mind of internet sleuths, particularly on 4chan, quickly set about trying to decode the mysterious videos by running the beeps that appeared at the end of certain clips through a spectrogram -- a process that revealed the names of actual cold cases from the state of Colorado in the 1980s. Different codes have continued to be hidden in the videos and their associated descriptions, but nothing has led to a big reveal, nor have any of the cold cases referenced been solved.

It's unlikely that this ARG was posted by a murderer who grew a conscience and decided to confess through YouTube ciphers that use old Daniel Johnston songs, but then again... The last video was uploaded two months ago.

Dave Gonzales is a frequent contributor to Thrillist Entertainment and loves internet mysteries.

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Crazy Videos on YouTube That No One Can Explain - Thrillist

Precision medicine’s Holy Grail: Anticipate cancer’s next step – Healthcare IT News

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

ORLANDO At the Precision Medicine Symposium on Sunday, Intermountains gastrointestinal medical oncology director, Mark Lewis, MD, outlined both the challenges and solutions to cancer treatment.

Our Holy Grail isnt just to treat now, but to anticipate what cancer is going to do, Lewis said, adding, Cancer is a Darwinian nightmare, with millions of cells competing for survival. If we can anticipate the changes, we may be able to get ahead of it.

Lewis opening keynote at Sundays HIMSS17 Precision Medicine Symposium highlighted the results of Intermountains precision medicine program, which has reduced cancer treatment costs and improved patient outcomes. Intermountain Healthcare is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Lewis described the patients journey, which begins at Intermountains precision medicine clinic, followed by a biopsy or FFPE and pathology review. The sample is prepped for molecular analytics, and a molecular tumor board creates a personalized treatment. The process should take two weeks or less from patient entry to results.

To take longer than that is truly doing a disservice to patient care, Lewis said. Cancer doesnt wait.

But a single sample cant allow researchers to understand the complete genomic architecture of cancer, Lewis explained. EMRs, and even our own data warehouses, cant compute the volume of genomic data and arent well-suited to the workflow. And there isnt an excellent mechanism for outcome tracking.

Infrastructure of managing genomic data is absent at most institutions, he said. True implementation comes from measurement outcomes and a clinical champion. There needs to be at least one doctor who invests in precision medicine.

Interoperability is also a challenge, as theres no real industry standard. HL7 has made great use of FHIR, but its not yet used in labs.

The only way were going to move the standard of care ahead for cancer is with research, he said. What genomics is helping us do is to be smarter about how we treat cancer.

And precision medicine needs to be a global effort, Lewis explained, and that its also imperative organizations use specialized tools like Syapse, which streamline precision medicine data in EHR clinical workflows.

What were trying to do here is find things that are actionable and make a difference in a patients care, he said.

Intermountain has generated a large pool of data, which can be used to determine the best course of action for each patient. Patients can be matched to conventional therapies or clinical trials.

Having the data is one thing, but being able to act on that information is another thing entirely, Lewis said. This is not an academic exercise: This is trying to better patient care.

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. VisitDestination HIMSS17for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

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Precision medicine's Holy Grail: Anticipate cancer's next step - Healthcare IT News

3D-printed prosthetic limbs: the next revolution in medicine – The Guardian

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Danzig

Daniel Omar, now 14, was fitted with a 3D-printed prosthetic arm after losing both arms during an aerial attack in Sudan. Photograph: Not Impossible/Project Daniel

John Nhial was barely a teenager when he was grabbed by a Sudanese guerrilla army and forced to become a child soldier. He spent four years fighting, blasting away on guns almost too heavy to hold, until one day the inevitable happened: he was seriously injured, treading on a landmine while he was on morning patrol.

I stepped on it and it exploded, he recalled. It threw me up and down again and then I tried to look for my leg and found that there was no foot.

His comrades carried him back to base camp, but there was hardly any medical care available. It took 25 days before he received proper treatment, during which time he developed tetanus down one side of his body. Finally, Nhial (not his real name) was put on a flight to the Kenyan border, his life only saved when he was handed over to a Red Cross team.

Now, a decade later, he lives in a Juba refugee camp, having suffered further troubles in the conflict that has engulfed the struggling new nation of South Sudan. He plays wheelchair basketball for his country, although he relies on a prosthetic lower leg to struggle around the muddy, sprawling camp. Reaching the most basic services often entails long walks and it can be difficult to get to training. But at least his hands are free to carry things such as food and water, unlike those on crutches.

Such stories of lives devastated by conflict or disease are all too common in developing countries. Lack of an arm or leg can be tough anywhere, but for people in poorer parts of the world it is especially challenging. Some are victims of conflict, while others may have been born with congenital conditions. Many more are injured on roads, with the casualty toll soaring in poorer nations. In Kenya, half the patients on surgical wards have road injuries. The World Health Organization estimates there are about 30 million people like Nhial who require prosthetic limbs, braces or other mobility devices, yet less than 20% have them.

Prosthetics can involve a lot of work and expertise to produce and fit and the WHO says there is currently a shortage of 40,000 trained prosthetists in poorer countries. There is also the time and financial cost to patients, who may have to travel long distances for treatment that can take five days to assess their need, produce a prosthesis and fit it to the residual limb. The result is that braces and artificial limbs are among the most desperately needed medical devices. However, technology may be hurtling to the rescue in the shape of 3D printing.

Slowly but surely, 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has been revolutionising aspects of medicine since the start of the century, just as it has had an impact on so many other industries, from cars to clothing. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that its key benefit is to enable the rapid and cost-efficient creation of bespoke products. There are few commercial products that need to suit a wider variety of shapes and sizes than medical devices made for human beings.

Experts have developed 3D-printed skin for burn victims, airway splints for infants, facial reconstruction parts for cancer patients, orthopaedic implants for pensioners. The fast-developing technology has churned out more than 60m customised hearing-aid shells and ear moulds, while it is daily producing thousands of dental crowns and bridges from digital scans of teeth, replacing the traditional wax modelling methods used for centuries.

Jaw surgery and knee replacement operations are also routinely carried out using surgical guides printed on the machines. So it is no surprise that the technology has begun to stir interest in the field of prosthetics, even if sometimes by accident. Ivan Owen is an American artist who likes to make weird, nerdy gadgets for use in puppetry and budget horror movies. In 2011, he created a simple metal mechanical hand for a steampunk convention, the spiky fingers operated by loops pulled through his own.

He posted a video that was seen by a carpenter in South Africa who had just lost four fingers in a circular-saw accident. They began discussing plans for a prototype prosthetic hand and that came to the attention of the mother of a five-year-old boy, called Liam, who had been born without fingers on his right hand.

She wanted a tiny version of their hand, but Owen realised the child would rapidly grow out of anything they made, so he looked at the idea of using 3D printing. If we could develop a design that was printable, it would be possible to rescale and reprint the design as Liam grew, essentially making it possible for his device to grow with him, he said.

So the artist persuaded a printer manufacturer to donate two machines and developed what has been claimed to be the first 3D-printed mechanical hand. Crucially, rather than patent this work, Owen published the files as open source for anybody to access, allowing others to collaborate on, use and improve the designs.

This has grown into Enabling the Future, a network with 7,000 members in dozens of countries and access to 2,000 printers, who help make arms and hands for those in need. One school student in California even printed a new hand for a local teacher.

Often they are aimed at children, since many dislike the weight, look and hassle of modern prosthetics, which can involve inserting the arm into a silicone sleeve and using straps across the back to hold the device in place.

These body-powered hands cost thousands of pounds, yet must be replaced every couple of years as a child grows. The 3D-printed versions cost about 40, come in any colour and look like a cheery toy, so are often more appealing despite being less sophisticated.

Jorge Zuniga, a research scientist in the biomechanics research department at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, heard about this project on his car radio. He was only half-listening, but on arriving home he started playing baseball with his four-year-old son and observed how important the grabbing of an object was to his childs development.

He spent the next month carefully building a prosthetic model that mimicked the human hand, only for his work to be dismissed instantly by his son. He told me children wanted a hand that looked like a robot.

From this conversation and the open-source designs emerged Cyborg Beast, a project heavily backed by Zunigas department to develop futuristic-looking, low-cost prosthetic hands. You can do anything with 3D printing, said Zuniga, who now leads a seven-strong team. We believe it will revolutionise the prosthetics field. It will lower the costs worldwide and gives engineers, patients and doctors the chance to modify prosthetic hands as they want. And they can be any colour.

When I told Zuniga, slightly hesitantly, that his design looked like a toy, he was delighted. Thats great we want children to see it as a toy, he said. This is a transitional device. Many children do not like prosthetics, however good they are these days, because they might have a hook for a hand and they need help to put the harness on, which children dislike. So this is to bridge the gap, helping them get used to the idea as they grow up.

We have even had a child missing a shoulder. So we developed a device that weighs the same as the missing arm. This meant he not only got a new arm that helped daily life but it also improved his posture and balance, therefore was much better for his spine. This sort of thing can be done much easier with 3D technology.

It is remarkable that people who do not even own a printer can obtain a functional childs hand for the price of a theatre ticket within 24 hours. Zuniga says at least 500 Cyborg Beasts are in use worldwide and the design has been downloaded more than 48,000 times. He has taken it to his native Chile, where he runs a paediatric orthopaedic 3D-printing laboratory, and has had recent requests for the plans from Nigeria.

My concern at this stage is that some of the materials can melt in higher temperatures. It is not working well there yet, but this sort of prosthetic has huge potential to be used with better materials in the developing world. We are still in the infancy stage at this moment.

Another scheme experimenting with this technology is Project Daniel in the Nuba mountains of Sudan, where in the middle of the ongoing civil war an American physician, Tom Catena, has been working as the only permanent doctor for half-a-million people around his Mother of Mercy hospital. Fuelled by his religious faith, for almost a decade this brave medic has ignored bombings, a lack of electricity and water shortages to do everything from delivering babies to amputating limbs.

Its demoralising for us to amputate an arm knowing that there is no good solution, Catena told me by email. We have many arm amputees both above and below the elbow as a result of the war here and general lack of medical care. This in an agricultural society, where nearly everyone is a subsistence farmer. If one is missing an arm, he is not very functional in this society.They become totally dependent on the family and have a difficult time getting married [which is also very important in this society].

The idea of using 3D printing to help arose when Mick Ebeling, an American film producer and philanthropist, learned about the Mother of Mercy hospital at the same time as he was hearing about the emerging work on low-cost prosthetic hands. Searching for information on Catena, Ebeling read about one of his patients: Daniel Omar, a 12-year-old boy who had wrapped his arms around a tree to protect himself during an aerial attack. His face and body were protected when a bomb exploded nearby, but both the boys arms were blown off.

You cant just smash in these new technologies, but if we get this right the growth could be exponential

Ebeling travelled out to the Nuba mountains with 3D printers and, working with hospital staff, fitted about a dozen people with new arms. Unfortunately, as time went on, none of the amputees was using the prostheses as they felt they were too cumbersome, said Catena. The doctor concluded: The 3D model was good, fairly easy to make and inexpensive although it hasnt worked out so well here. Perhaps with some tweaking, the 3D printers can be of great use for arm amputees.

Yet for all the agonies and difficulties associated with arm loss, the bigger problem in poorer countries is when lower limb disability leads to a loss of mobility. Wheelchairs are expensive and can be difficult to use when roads are potholed, streets are muddy and pavements are nonexistent. Without a prosthetic limb, people struggle to fetch water, prepare food and, above all, to work. This throws them back on their families and communities, intensifying any hardship and poverty.

One group that has spent almost three decades trying to tackle these issues is Exceed, a British charity set up by diplomats and academics at the request of Cambodias government to help thousands of landmine survivors. It works in five Asian countries, training people at schools of prosthetics and orthotics. In Cambodia, there are almost 9,000 landmine survivors in need of artificial limbs, although these days traffic accidents are a more likely cause of disability, while children also need braces for a range of common conditions such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy and polio.

If you wear a prosthesis, you are disabled for about 10 minutes in the morning while you have a shower, then you put your leg on and go to work. If you do not have one, then your hands are out of use with crutches so you cant even take drinks to the table, said Carson Harte, a prosthetist and the chief executive of Exceed. Without a prosthesis, there are no expectations. You just go back and rely on the goodwill of your family.

It is not really a lack of money that denies people these devices, since simplified forms cost little and generic Chinese models are improving fast. The components can cost just 30. The big hurdle is the lack of trained technicians to fit the artificial limbs. In the Philippines, there are estimated to be 2 million people needing prosthetics or orthotics. However, there are only nine fully trained experts, each able to treat 400 patients a year, at most, although more are being trained on a new four-year course.

Traditionally, a prosthetist would wrap a stump with plaster of Paris bandages to make a reverse mould and let it dry, then fill it with more plaster that must harden. From this, a socket can be forged that fits, with more modifications for precision, to the bone on the stump. Great care must be taken to avoid nerves and tender areas that are not tolerant of pressure.

The key for the technician is to understand the pathology of a stump, which differs for each person. This is a cumbersome process that can take a week, especially with physical therapy for new patients that lasts three days. It can also be messy work, mixing up and moulding the plaster, while a prosthetist visiting a rural area must transport 20-kilo packs of plaster. With a 3D scanner, a digital image can be made in half an hour and sent by email.

Exceed has begun a seven-month trial of 3D-printed devices in Cambodia with Nia Technologies, an innovative Canadian not-for-profit organisation. This technology has the potential to increase the productivity of every technician, said Harte. It is not about printing off legs, nor does it replace the skills of a well-trained professional, but it has potential to produce a better, faster, more easily repeatable way of doing one key part of the chain. There are no magic bullets, but this may be an important incremental change.

Nia is also trialling its 3D PrintAbility technology in Tanzania and Uganda, where there are only 12 prosthetists to serve a population of about 40 million people; at the time of writing, all six state clinics have run out of materials. Doctors there often deal with children who have lost limbs after falling into open cooking fires, while other youngsters need braces after suffering post-injection paralysis caused by badly administered jabs that damage nerves.

In Uganda, its team is working with CoRSU hospital in Kisubi, a specialist rehabilitation centre for children with disabilities. Orthopaedic technician Moses Kaweesa said they found the technology lighter and faster to use, as well as easier for people in remote rural areas. It used to take five days to have a limb manufactured, with lots of hanging around for the patient. Now, it is barely two days, so they spend much less time in the hospital. There is also less waste of material, so for a country like ours this can help so much by cutting down the costs.

The first person to test out a 3D-printed mobility device at the hospital was a four-year-old girl who until then had dragged herself across floors and had to be carried around by her family. When she was born, her right leg was missing the foot, said her older brother. It was very difficult for her to walk, to play with other children. She can be lonely. But when she was given a leg she was able to run with others, play with others.

Matt Ratto, Nias chief science officer, who led the projects development, admitted that it was only when he saw the serious-looking child in her red dress start to walk that he realised his technology actually worked. But, like Harte, he urges caution. We are surrounded by the hype of 3D printing with crazy, ridiculous claims being made, he said. We must be cautious. A lot of these technologies fail not for engineering reasons but because they are not designed for the developing world. You cant just smash in these new technologies.

Rattos aim is to use the technology to fit 8,000 people with 3D-printed mobility devices within five years, across some 20 sites in poorer countries. If we get this right the growth could be exponential. If we iron out the kinks, and work out the best way to help clinicians, I think we will see something of a hockey stick curve on the graph. But we must not get it wrong, move too fast nor over-hype the potential.

This article first appeared on Mosaic and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence

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