The Astronauts on the International Space Station Are About to Harvest Chinese Cabbage – Modern Farmer

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Last week, U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson tweeted a picture of the Chinese cabbageshes growing on the International Space Station as part of an ongoing study called, aptly enough, the Veggie Project. Think about that: Not only can someone use social media from nearly 250 miles above the planet, they can also grow delicious vegetables there, too.

I am growing cabbage on station. I love gardening on Earth, and it is just as fun in space I just need more room to plant more! pic.twitter.com/5hGMltDVCy

Peggy Whitson (@AstroPeggy) February 8, 2017

ThisFriday, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station will harvestand eatthecabbage, a variety called Tokyo Bekana, which is the first cabbage to be grown in space (astronauts have previously growna romaine variety and some flowers, too.)

Like everything else at NASA, how Tokyo Bekana was selectedinvolves research, research, and more research. Short stature and fast growth were the two main traits scientists were looking for in a crop. A variety of plants, including Swiss chard, several lettuce varieties, spinach and beets, were tested and consideredafter all, the whole point is to get the astronauts to eat their veggies. (Just kidding. In actual fact, the project is about figuring out the best way to grow vegetables in space for long-duration trips, such as goingto Mars, and to provide the crew with a means of recreation and relaxation.)

We conducted a survey of several leafy green vegetables and looked at how the crops grew, how nutritious they were, and how a taste panel felt about them, Gioia Massa, a scientist on the project, told Modern Farmer in an email. The Tokyo bekana Chinese cabbage variety was rated as the top in growth and the favorite of tasters.

Since this is space,a special system was needed. The Vegetable Production System(nickname: Veggie) forgoes soil in favor of aplant pillow that includescontrolled-release fertilizer, water, and calcined clay, which helps with aeration. The system, developed byOrbital Technologies Corp,also uses red and green LED grow lights to replacesunlight. A new, large, plant-growing system namedtheAdvanced Plant Habitat(no nick name yet) has been developed and is expected to head up to ISS sometime this year.

According to Massa, one thing the scientist have learned is that the plants are growinga bit more slowly than expected, but are generally growing well. This is pretty much uncharted territory and things dont always go as imagined.

Our testing has revealed that leaves growing under the high CO2 of the International Space Station sometimes have yellowing and we are seeing a little of this yellowing response, she says. Being able to distribute the correct level of moisture and oxygen to plant roots has been one of the biggest challenges we face. Getting other environmental conditions optimal for plants is also a challenge.

The astronauts have already successfully grown (and eaten, and experimented on) red romaine lettuce, but this is the first time Chinese cabbage will be on the menu.Whitson, who loves to garden on Earth, too, has been in charge of growing this round of vegetables.How the crew plans to enjoy this mild and peppery green hasnt been determined. It can be eaten raw as a salad green or sautedin a stir fry. But they only get to eat half the crop as the rest will be used for experiments.

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The Astronauts on the International Space Station Are About to Harvest Chinese Cabbage - Modern Farmer

Indian rocket set to place 104 satellites in orbit – Spaceflight Now

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Indias Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is scheduled to fire into orbit early Wednesday with 104 satellites on-board, setting a record for the largest flock of spacecraft ever launched on a single rocket.

Most of the payloads cocooned inside the PSLVs nose shroud are as small as a toaster oven, set to join commercial fleets tasked with daily imaging of the Earth and the collection of weather data to improve forecast models.

The 145-foot-tall (44-meter), four-stage PSLV is set for liftoff at 0358 GMT Wednesday (10:58 p.m. EST Tuesday) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, Indias launch base on the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

The launch is scheduled for 9:28 a.m. local time in India.

The prime passenger aboard the rocket is the Indian Space Research Organizations Cartosat 2D environmental satellite, a 1,574-pound (714-kilogram) observatory to help analysts update maps, plan urban and rural infrastructure, monitor coastlines and track water usage.

Deployment pods mounted on the PSLVs upper stage also hold 96 CubeSats made by Planet and Spire Global, two San Francisco companies adding to commercial satellite constellations.

Planets 88 spacecraft awaiting blastoff will nearly double the number of satellites the company has launched since its founding in 2010. The majority of Planets orbiting camera platforms have been ejected from the International Space Station in orbits that do not fly over the entire globe, while the satellites going up from India will launch into polar orbit, enabling worldwide coverage.

The small 10.3-pound (4.7-kilogram) CubeSats, nicknamed Doves, carry a sharp-eyed camera, extendable solar panels, and high-speed data transmitters to beam images to antennas around the world. Each flock of Planet satellites debuts upgraded technology, with the suite of spacecraft launching Wednesday named Flock 3p.

This is the fifteenth time Planet is launching Dove satellites; and it will be our biggest launch to date, Planet wrote in an update on its website earlier this month. Combined with the 12 satellites of Flock 2p operating in a similar orbit, this launch will enable Planets 100 satellite line scanner constellation of Doves. With our RapidEye satellites and Doves operating in other orbits, Planet will be imaging the entire Earth daily.

Planets satellites do not have the high resolution of larger, more expensive Earth observatories like those owned and operated by DigitalGlobe but their large numbers allow customers to refresh views of a specific location on the ground more often.

The launch of 88 Dove satellites comes less than two weeks after Planet announced the acquisition of Terra Bella from Google, which has a constellation of seven higher-resolution spacecraft capable of recording high-definition video during passes over ground targets.

Eight 10.1-pound (4.6-kilogram) Lemur satellites owned by Spire Global are also set for launch Wednesday.

The shoebox-sized craft carry GPS radio occultation antennas, using satellite navigation signals passed through Earths atmosphere to derive temperature and humidity profiles that can be fed into numerical forecast models.

Spires satellites also track ships out of range of terrestrial receivers.

The company has launched a total of 21 CubeSats, some of which have ended their missions.

Spire won a $370,000 contract from NOAA in September to supply pilot data for the weather agency to determine the informations usefulness. If the pilot program proves fruitful, NOAA could place an order for more weather data from Spire and other commercial satellite startups to supplement measurements from government-owned satellites.

Seattle-based Spaceflight Services booked the Spire satellites aboard Indias PSLV mission, along with an Israeli CubeSat named BGUSat developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and Ben Gurion University. BGUSat, conceived as an educational research project, will take pictures of clouds from space and measure atmospheric background radiation.

The other international payloads stowed for Wednesdays launch are four CubeSats for institutes and companies in the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan.

ThePiezo Electric Assisted Smart Satellite Structure, or PEASSS, project will validate a new class of composite structures and power systems for future space missions.

Backed by European Union research and development funding, the PEASS mission will help develop, manufacture, test and qualify smart structures which combine composite panels, piezoelectric materials, and next-generation sensors, for autonomously improved pointing accuracy and power generation in space, officials wrote on the mission website.

Smart structures will enable fine angle control, thermal and vibration compensation, improving all types of future Earth observations, such as environmental and planetary mapping, border and regional imaging, according to mission officials.

The 6.6-pound (3-kilogram) PEASSS spacecraft was developed by a consortium of Dutch companies and scientific institutes.

The Swiss-headquartered company SpacePharma is launching its first satellite Wednesday. Named DIDO 2, the 9.3-pound (4.2-kilogram) CubeSat is the first in a line of small spacecraft SpacePharma hopes to send into orbit hosting miniature microgravity research experiments.

The student-built Al-Farabi 1 and Nayif 1 CubeSats from Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates, respectively, are also heading to space on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Al-Farabi 1 will test out a communications system, and Nayif 1 carries an amateur radio transponder.

The 101 international CubeSats are stored inside 25 QuadPacks built by Innovative Solutions in Space, a Dutch firm specializing in arranging rideshare launches for small satellites.

Two Indian nanosatellites, named INS 1A and 1B, round out the 104 spacecraft awaiting blastoff.

INS 1A and 1B, each weighing about 20 pounds (9 kilograms), will demonstrate a new type of camera and gather measurements of Earths atmosphere and the space environment.

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Indian rocket set to place 104 satellites in orbit - Spaceflight Now

No imminent X-37B landing planned – Spaceflight Now

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An artists concept of X-37B in orbit. Credit: Boeing

CAPE CANAVERAL The enigmatic X-37B spaceplane, launched into low-Earth orbit on an experimental military mission in 2015, continues to circle the planet despite a flurry of landing rumors.

The X-37 is still on-orbit. The program is conducting a regularly scheduled exercise this week, said Capt. Annmarie Annicelli, media operations officer at the Pentagons Air Force Press Desk.

Internet chatter buzzed in recent days about a potential landing of the stubby-winged spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centers Shuttle Landing Facility as early as this morning.

But the Pentagon put those rumors to rest with its brief but pointed statement.

The X-37B was launched on May 20, 2015 and spent its 636th day in space today on a classified mission.

This fourth flight of the unmanned and reusable spaceplane program carried at least two payloads on its latest voyage. The military revealed before the ship took off that it was carrying an experimental electric propulsion thruster to be tested in orbit and a pallet to expose sample materials to the space environment.

What else, if anything, the vehicle is carrying in its pickup truck-size cargo bay is unknown.

As of today, the X-37B program has used twin reusable vehicles to amass 2,004 cumulative days in space on four flights since 2010, launching like a satellite atop Atlas 5 rockets and then landing like an airplane.

The three previous flights landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But the Air Force and builder Boeing have worked to consolidate all X-37B launch and landing operations at the Kennedy Space Center to use the former hangars and runway from the now-retired civilian program.

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Photos: Ariane 5 rocket in position for first launch of 2017 – Spaceflight Now

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A powerful Ariane 5 rocket rolled out of its vertical assembly hangar to a tropical launch pad on the shores of South America on Monday, and these photos show the booster on the eve of liftoff.

Standing 180 feet (55 meters) tall, the Ariane 5 is scheduled for blastoff Tuesday with the Sky Brasil 1 and Telkom 3S communications satellites. It will be the 91st launch of an Ariane 5 rocket since 1996, and the first of up to seven Ariane 5 flights planned by Arianespace in 2017.

The images below show the Ariane 5 emerging from the final assembly building in French Guiana for the 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) journey to the ELA-3 launch zone. Officials also released photos of the rocket after arriving at the launch pad, which sits in a clearing about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the Atlantic coast.

The rocket is composed of a core stage and upper stage, each consuming cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants, and two side-mounted solid rocket boosters with pre-packed powder fuel.

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How Trump Can Save NASA By Keeping It Grounded – Fast Company

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This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company.

Its tough to be NASA in 2017. The last time anyone walked on the Moon was more than 40 years ago. The Space Shuttle has flown its last mission, and the only way to get to the International Space Station is on a Russian rocket. News headlines are confined to the agencys role in studying climate change. Meanwhile, the commercial space industry is booming, throwing NASA's comparatively sluggish pace into high relief.

Now, as the Trump administration begins to shape federal agencies around its own agenda, NASA's future remains to be seen. It will be a few weeks before the budget that the White House sends to Congress reveals what might be next for NASA. But one thing is already clear: If the president aims for a grand, outer-space "moonshot" like some of his predecessors have, things aren't likely to go well. In fact, the best way Trump can revitalize NASA is by keeping it focused on not-so-flashy yet crucial innovations.

Each new presidential administration seems compelled to reset the agency's agenda, to put its own mark on the final frontier. In the 1990s, the mission was to build the Space Station as a precursor to visiting Mars. Then the George W. Bush administration decided to return to the Moon. The Obama administration targeted Mars once againas well as manned exploration of near-Earth asteroids.

Any one of these moonshot missions would take decades to realize. But the odds of us attaining any of them shrink pretty much every eight years, when we change our mind about what were doing and why.

To be fair, some of this is baked into NASA's DNA, ever since Kennedys famous, "We choose to go to the moon" speech in 1962. It was a brilliant vision and speech, but as soon as we reached the Moon, we started debating what NASAs next big goal would bewithout ever stopping to question whether the agency really needed to chase a new single big goal.

If the Trump administration shakes up NASA in the wrong waytoward yet another moonshotwe'll perpetuate a cycle that's kept the agency treading water for decades. Instead, NASA needs some time to focus on less high-flying work, namely developing the core technologies that will open up space for the next generation.

Lets look into the future, say 50 years from now. Imagine humanity as a multiplanet species. We have thriving settlements in orbit and on Mars. Robots mine asteroids for water and rare elements. Daily hyper-spectral imagery is used to optimize agriculture and manage our climate. In-space manufacturing produces materials that are impossible to make on Earth. Space-based solar power stations beam green power down to Earth. Enormous telescopes capture images of planets around other stars and scour them for signs of life.

With the right investments, these sci-fi dreams are all achievable. But they all depend on new technologies that we haven't spent the time or money developing yetlike in-space 3D printing to fabricate large structures in zero-G, in-space refueling technology, and robotic means of harnessing outer space's in-situ resources.

It isn't that these advancements are technologically infeasible in 2017; it's just that none have yet had a chance to be demonstrated in space (mostly because, like most innovations, they aren't likely to succeed the first timewhich means a lot of money for probably few immediate returns).

Caught between limited budgets and grandiose, moonshot visions, NASA doesn't have the tolerance for failure that ultimately drives progress. But if we make technological advancement the mission, then the only real failure is a failure to innovate.

So here's a new mission for NASA that the Trump administration should seriously consider: Use the agency's $19 billion annual budget to make this green, multiplanet future a reality. With refocused priorities, NASA could develop technologies that will truly open the space frontierall within a single presidential administration. Here's how:

1. Large-scale, in-space construction. The current Space Station was constructed by building modules on Earth and then bolting them together in space. But what if we could send up bulk raw materials and then 3D print the structure in space? By constructing in zero gravity, we could use a much less massive frame and greatly increase the total area of the structure.

Commercial space companies are rapidly reducing launch costs and ramping up to support weekly, or even more frequent, launches. So this kind of construction could be done with regular deliveries from Earth to an onsite team, not unlike a construction project in New York or Hong Kong.

This way, multiple big structures could be assembled in a short period of timeincluding space stations for dozens of astronauts to run experiments on everything from zero-gravity manufacturing to in-space biology; large telescopes capable of directly imaging planets around other stars; or in-space solar power stations capable of beaming power back to Earth.

2. In-space refueling. As Elon Musk is fond of saying, it would be crazy to fly from Los Angeles to New York and then throw away the 737 because we dont know how to refill the fuel tanks. But NASA is still treating its spacecraft that way. Just adding the ability to launch spacecraft with empty tanks, and then separately send up the fuel, would greatly reduce mission costs and risk. There's no reason we can't do this in principle, but no previous mission has ever deemed it worth the cost of trying to demonstrate that tech for the first time.

3. Local resource utilization. Pioneers of the next frontier should take a lesson from those of the last one, who never lived in covered wagons longer than it took them to build a log cabin. Mars and the Moon both contain raw materials for construction and the extraction of water and atmospheres. Many asteroids also house significant amounts of water that can used to synthesize rocket fuel.

This is one of the most important building blocks for in-space operation at scale. But space missions aren't designed this wayonce again, because the technology hasn't been demonstrated before, so it's not something mission planners can depend on.

4. Developing human-robotic teams. We already know how to build self-driving cars on Earth, and construction and resource extraction in space will likewise be robotic. But complex manipulation and repair tasks will still require a human touch. Our in-space future will depend on autonomous robots remotely controlled by humans, plus some direct astronaut labor. We need to build out the technology for each of these modalities and show how they work together to accomplish complex tasks.

There are more than just these four technologies NASA will need to develop in order to truly open space up to the next generation. Others include in-space crop production, inflatable habitats, autonomous rendezvous and docking, and highly efficient ion thrusters, to name a few. But these are the best places to start, and with the right executive mandate, we can achieve all of them within the next decade or so.

This line of thinking leads to a very different vision for NASAone that flies much closer to the ground, so to speak, at least for now. Instead of trying to get to the Moon or Mars using current technology, focus on developing the technology itself. NASA has done this for years in Aeronautics (the first "A" in NASA). The agency pioneered wind tunnels, worked through different approaches to air-traffic control, studied pilot fatigue and its role in air crashes, and, more broadly, built much of the core technology we take for granted every time we fly.

President Trump is all about shaking things up, and this approach to NASA would surely do that, while setting the agency up for real success. It would also cement U.S. leadership in space innovation and inaugurate a new era of public-private space partnership.

There are many things NASA does exceptionally well. Unmanned exploration missions continue to return spectacular resultswitness the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the ongoing flood of data from the Mars rovers and orbiters. Science missions, from Hubble to WMAP, advance our fundamental understanding of the universe, and NASA continues to inspire generations of children who have at one time or another dreamt of becoming astronauts.

But we've reached a point where we won't be able to push ahead without investing in the next generation of tech R&D. If NASA leads the way on that, the commercial space sector will follow. Other nations will follow. More sophisticated NASA missions to Mars, the Moon, asteroids, and more exotic destinations will suddenly become both affordable and achievable. The space frontier will openand it won't have taken another moonshot to do it.

James Crawford is the founder of Orbital Insight, Inc., one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2017.

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NASA, Kennedy Space Center await direction from Trump – USA TODAY

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USA Today Network James Dean, Florida Today 7:09 a.m. ET Feb. 15, 2017

Robert Cabana, director of Kennedy Space Center, talked about the center's future as a multi-user spaceport during a National Space Club Florida Committee luncheon Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017, in Cape Canaveral.(Photo: Malcolm Denemark, Florida Today)

CAPE CANAVERALNASA and Kennedy Space Center are awaiting direction from the Trump administration about whether it wants to make changes to NASAs human exploration program, the center's director said Tuesday.

The presidential appointments team is still in the process of gathering data, Director Robert Cabana told the National Space Club Florida Committee in Cape Canaveral. We look for some direction here in the very near future.

Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot has instructed teams to continue executing plans set during the Obama administration, including preparations to launch giant Space Launch System rockets and Orion crew capsules on deep space missions.

Cabana said he believes the rocket and capsule, slated to send astronauts around the moon and eventually on their way to Mars, are flexible enough to adapt to new missions.

Related: SpaceX targets Feb. 18 launch, landing in Fla.

I truly believe the architecture that weve created, this capability-based architecture, allows us to go anywhere in our quest to explore beyond our home planet, he said. Well be able to take any kind of shift in direction. But in the meantime, our plate is full with all the things that we have to do.

Those things include modernizing infrastructure such as the Vehicle Assembly Building, launch pad 39B, a firing room, crawler-transporter and mobile launch tower for the first launch of aSpace Launch System rocket. The unmanned flight called Exploration Mission-1 is planned in late 2018.

The Orion spacecraft flying that mission is being assembled at Kennedy Space Center.

More broadly, Cabana reiterated that space center has realized its post-shuttle vision to become a home to not only NASA, but also to commercial operations and other government agencies.

What we dreamed six years ago is now a reality, Cabana said. We really are a multi-user spaceport.

Related: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex plans expansion, new attractions

That identity will be cemented in place even more firmly this weekend, he said, if SpaceX is cleared to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from the space center's historic pad 39A for the first time.

The launch of International Space Station supplies is planned around 10 a.m. Saturday, pending approval of a launch license by the Federal Aviation Administration and other preparations proceeding on schedule.

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SpaceXs Dragon cargo capsule has joined the rocket inside SpaceXs new hangar at the base pad 39A, the former Saturn V and shuttle pad that NASA in 2014 leased to the company for 20 years.

Yeah, its historic, Cabana said of the upcoming launch. But its one more step solidifying what weve done, what weve put in place. What a great use of an asset that would have just sat and rusted away in the salt air.

SpaceX hopes to launch astronauts from pad 39A to the space station starting next year. Boeing also plans to launch crews next year from neighboring Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Boeing is assembling its CST-100 Starliner crew capsules in a former shuttle hangar. The company operates two more hangars for the Air Forces X-37B military space plane program.

Related: Atlas V rocket blasts off with missile warning satellite

Space Florida now manages the three-mile Kennedy Space Center shuttle runway, which it hopes to turn into a commercial hub for horizontal launches and landings by the likes of Virgin Galactic or Sierra Nevada Corp.

At the space center's Exploration Park, just outside the centers south gate, Blue Origin and OneWeb Satellites are building large manufacturing centers for production of rockets and satellites, respectively.

Everything that we said we were going to accomplish, weve been able to accomplish, Cabana said. And the Space Coast has totally turned around.

The ability of NASAs own exploration systems to survive political changes, Cabana said, depends in part on the agencys ability to deliver projects on time and within budgets.

And as long as we continue to do that, were going to have credibility with all our legislators, and more will be asked of us, he said. As soon as we start falling short, then people are going to start looking for a different solution to the problem.

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NASA, Kennedy Space Center await direction from Trump - USA TODAY

NASA Detects Star’s ‘Heartbeat’ Just in Time for Valentine’s Day – TIME

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An illustration produced by NASA that shows HAT-P-2b, left, and how it appears to cause heartbeat-like pulsations in its host star, HAT-P-2.NASA/JPL-Caltech

It looks like Valentine's Day isn't just limited to Earth or its solar system.

On Tuesday, NASA announced the discovery of a distant star with a "heartbeat." The space agency observed the heartbeat-like vibrations on the outer shell of a star called HAT-P-2, making the detection with its Spitzer Space Telescope, according to details published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The star is reportedly 370 light-years away, and scientists believe the star's behavior was caused by an exoplanet, dubbed HAT-P-2b, circling it in a tight orbit.

The planet, NASA found, appears to interact with the star every time it makes its closest approach in its orbit, almost as if it's giving the start a "kiss." If this gravitational force is what causes the heartbeat, then these findings could have major implications for how scientists look for and study exoplanets in the future.

"We had intended the observations to provide a detailed look at HAT-P-2bs atmospheric circulation," Nikole Lewis, co-author and astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, said in a statement . "The discovery of the oscillations was unexpected but adds another piece to the puzzle of how this system evolved."

Lewis and her team were surprised to find a relatively small planet like HAT-P-2b could have such an effect on the much-larger star it orbits. But even though the planet's mass is eight times the size of our solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, its host star, HAT-P-2, is approximately 100 times larger than the planet it interacts with, according to the findings.

"Our observations suggest that our understanding of planet-star interactions is incomplete," Julien de Wit, postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said in the same statement. "There's more to learn from studying stars in systems like this one and listening for the stories they tell through their 'heartbeats.'"

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NASA Detects Star's 'Heartbeat' Just in Time for Valentine's Day - TIME

The Lost Stories of NASA’s ‘Pink-Collar’ Workforce – The Atlantic

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In 1962, a young reporter named Ursula Vils signed on to The Los Angeles Times at the beginning of the most spectacular and productive period of human spaceflight in United States history. A year earlier, Alan Shepard had become the first American to fly in space, and eight months later, John Glenn would become the first American to orbit the earth. Before the end of the decade, the United States would plant the stars and stripes on the moon.

As part of the papers coverage of the space program, Vils, a former womens editor who would go on to work in the Family and View sections of the Times, contributed to a series on the women who worked at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, and other NASA centers and contractors. The series profiled women in various technical and clerical positions whose work contributed to what was by the mid-1960s a vast technological enterprise and a source of national prestige.

Last year, women who worked in the space program and other scientific and technological institutions throughout the 20th century were given some long-overdue attention by new nonfiction books like Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt and The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel. A third book, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, was adapted into a film. In particular, the critical and financial success of the film, about black women computers working to calculate spacecraft trajectories for NASAs Mercury program, presented a more nuanced and complete history of the space programa history that, until this point, has been predominantly told through the accomplishments of white men.

In the same way, revisiting Vilss reporting reintroduces women whose pioneering work has largely been forgotten. Sometimes, Vilss dated journalistic style confines these women to the tropes of mid-century gender roles. Yet often her stories cut both ways, getting at the heart of womens struggles to be accepted and succeed in male-dominated professions.

Many of the women Vils wrote about worked in technical positions like physiology or engineering, but others held more traditional pink collar jobs as secretaries and stenographers. Vils profiled Marilyn Bockting when she was an assistant to George Low, a high-ranking administrator at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Bockting managed Lows calendar and correspondence, and a large part of her job consisted of responding to letters from the public. Vils portrays her as something of an informant about the lives of the families of astronauts and administrators, whose stories were highly sought-after by the press and public. The Lows have five children and Mrs. Low says she even had to schedule her last baby around Gordon Coopers flight, Vils reports via Bockting. But Bockting was no idle gossip; she went on to be one of the first women to be promoted to a management position at NASA.

Women also worked for aerospace firms that contracted with the agency. Vils profiled Paula Robb, who worked in the Stowage Group at North American Rockwell during the Apollo program in 1972, just as the program was ending. Known at work as P.F. Robb, her job was to design the packing scheme for Apollo spacecraft, ensuring that all the astronauts gear was organized and stowed securely for their voyage. Vils describes Robb as not an engineer, but quotes her as saying she has always worked in engineering and notes that she had never held a secretarial job.

Robb was openly critical of the gender hierarchy of her profession. Why should anyone be surprised that when P.F. Robb answers the phone, its a woman? she asks Vils. Why should it be more of surprise than if its a man? But Vils undermines Robbs critique somewhat when she follows this quote with a description of how North American Rockwells P. H. Robb is very much Mrs. Ronald Robb, wife of a management systems analyst. And Vils goes on to juxtapose Robbs family life and professional organizing skills by quoting Robbs description of how she planned her pregnancies so carefully that when her son was born she missed the first calculation by 23 hours and 32 minutes.

Vils uses a similar framing for the work of Rita Rapp, an aerospace technologistenvironmental physiology, whose job entailed the packing and organizing of food containers onboard spacecraft. When describing astronaut food, Vils quotes Rapp to note that with the freeze-dried rehydratable foods, the astronauts can eat with a spoon, which means we can use larger chunks of food. Its the difference between baby foods and junior foods. But later, Rapp emphasizes that her job relates more to viewing food as the hardwareits my job to see its on board the spacecraft. The analogy of baby food suggests a domestic connotation for Rapps work, but Rapp shows how it is in fact part of the technology of the spaceflight.

Many of Vilss pieces are studded with asides liked these that feel outdated or even sexist. Vils usually gives a physical description of the women she profiles, noting if they are pretty and their height and hair and eye color. But each profile attempts to account for the challenges these women faced working in a male-dominated environment. Vils often includes anecdotes that highlight the tension that sometimes surrounded womens position in the space program: I finally got a desk, said endocrinologist Carolyn Leach, and added that Im sure heshe nodded toward a male scientists desk that share office space with hersexpects me to hang polka-dot curtains in here. I just wish I had the time to do it. Indeed, Leach was too busy with a career: In 1994, she became the first woman director of Johnson Space Center.

By highlighting domestic metaphors, workers personal and family lives, and assumptions her readers would have had about specifically feminine skills, Vils frames the labor of women working in the space program in the gendered terms that would have been familiar to her audience. At a time when more and more women were working outside the home and in technical professions that had been long been reserved for men, Vilss reporting is a snapshot of the ways that women negotiated new roles for themselves.

As far as I know, Vils never profiled any women of color for her series, though they were undoubtedly working in many other fields besides computing. Their absence in the Timess reporting reflects the dynamics of gender and race in mid-century America. Though people of color did work at NASA before the passage of the Civil Rights act in 1964, it wasnt until that year that the agency began actively recruiting black engineers. Access to specialized education was limited for people of color, and technical education was generally reserved for men. Vilss reporting is one avenue toward recovering the contributions of women to the story of human spaceflight in the United States, but clearly there is much work left to be done.

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NASA astronauts at survival school highlights capabilities, needs – Air Force Link

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FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. (AFNS) -- Four NASA astronauts trained with U.S. Air Force Survival School instructors in water survival and recovery Feb. 10, at the base fitness center pool here.

The astronauts underwent the training in preparation for anticipated test flights of the new commercially made American rockets, the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the SpaceX Dragon.

Its a different space program now, said Sunita Williams, a NASA astronaut. Were flying in capsules instead of shuttles, and they can land anywhere. You never know when an emergency situation may happen, so were grateful to get this training.

The astronauts were put through the paces of bailing out from a simulated crash landing in water. They learned to deploy and secure a life raft, rescue endangered crewmembers, avoid hostile forces and experience being hoisted into a rescue vehicle.

This is the first time weve gotten a complete environmental training experience, lots of wind, waves and rain, said Doug Hurley, a NASA astronaut. This is a great way to experience how bad it can get and how important it is to be prepared.

The astronauts opted to join in with more than 20 water survival course students, despite being given the option to train alone.

They didnt want to train on their own, said Lt. Col. Chas Tacheny, the chief of NASA Human Space Flight Support-Houston. They wanted to train with the group because some of these people may one day be preforming search and rescue for them.

Other NASA astronauts visited the survival school last year in an effort to research and test the viability of its training course and facilities. The astronauts liked what they experienced and NASA has since developed its training partnership with the schoolhouse.

The SERE instructors are advising us in water recovery, Behnken said. These experts are the most experienced Ive ever seen. They are able to spot holes in our training and fill the gaps.

NASAs Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston possesses a large water training facility built to simulate weightless conditions during space walks, but its not properly equipped to simulate water surface conditions for recovery training.

This training is vital for future NASA mission recovery operations, said Behnken. We are working with the experts here to eventually replicate the survival school water survival training equipment at the NBL facility in Houston.

Im impressed by the use of the facilities here, Williams said. Its a small space, but they really manage to simulate all kinds of weather conditions and situations we might experience during a water landing.

The survival school originally had a separate detachment at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, where it conducted water survival training in open ocean waters. The training was brought to Fairchild Air Force Base in August 2015 in an effort to save time and money by consolidating training at one location.

It was a good decision for the Air Force to streamline our training efforts by moving all portions of water survival training here, said Col. John Groves, the 336th Training Group commander. However, the fitness center pool was designed for recreational use and isnt suited to the ever increasing demands placed on it by our training programs. Bottom line, we owe it to our Airmen and mission partners such as NASA, who rely on our unique training capabilities, to have a purpose built water survival training facility.

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NASA astronauts at survival school highlights capabilities, needs - Air Force Link

How NASA is planning to touch the sun – Popular Science

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Our sun might not seem as enigmatic as more exotic, distant stars, but its still a marvelously mysterious miasma of incandescent plasma. And its certainly worthy of our scientific attention: Curiosity aside, a violent solar event could disrupt satellites and cause $2 trillion in damages for the U.S. alone. Yet, despite living in its atmosphere, we dont understand some of its defining phenomena. For sixty years, we havent understood why the surface is a cozy 5,500 Celsius, while the halo called the coronaseveral million kilometers away from the stars surface and 12 orders of magnitude less denseboasts a positively sizzling 1-2 million Celsius.

To figure out why, NASA needs to fly a little closer to the sunand touch it.

We know that magnetic reconnectionwhen magnetic field lines moving in opposite directions intertwine and snap like rubber bandspropels nuclear weapon-like waves of energy away from surface. Meanwhile, magnetohydrodynamic wavesvibrating guitar string-like waves of magnetic force driven by the flow of plasmatransfer energy from the surface into corona. However, without more data, our understanding of phenomena like coronal heating and solar wind acceleration remain largely theoretical...but not for long.

Launching in 2018, NASAs Solar Probe Plus will travel nearly seven years, setting a new record for fastest moving object as it zips 37.6 million kilometers closer to the sun than any spacecraft that has ever studied our host star. But what manner of sensory equipment does one bring to Dantes Inferno?

Spacecraft systems engineer Mary Kae Lockwood tells PopSci that the craft will rely on four main instruments. The Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons systems, or SWEAP, will monitor charges created by colliding electrons, protons and helium ions to analyze solar windninety times closer to the sun than previous attempts. Similarly, the ISIS (Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun) employs a state-of-the-art detection system to analyze energetic particles (think: cancer-causing, satellite-disabling particles).

The FIELDS sensor, meanwhile, will analyze electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waveswhile gathering information on the high-speed dust particles sanding away at the craft using a technique discovered by accident. Lastly, the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR telescope, will make 3D, cat-scan-like images of solar wind and the suns atmosphere.

Theres just one problem. Between intense heat, solar radiation, high-energy particles, the fallout of solar storms, dust, and limited communication opportunities at closest approach, all that sensitive equipment is going to an environment that almost makes Junos new home look sympathetic by comparison.

One of the things we had to watch out for in the design, according to Lockwood, was the electrical charging of the spacecraft by the solar wind. The probe has to be conductive so that the instruments that are actually measuring the solar wind dont have interference.

To get close enough to worry about that, though, the probes has to lose some energy says Lockwood, performing several Venus flybys to shrink its orbit [allowing] us to get . . . closer and closer to the sun.

However, that comes with interesting design challenges, because youre not only going into the sun as heatshield mechanical engineer Beth Congdon tells PopSci. You get hot on approach, and then come out and get cold, over and over for 7 flybys and 24 orbits. You actually need to have it cyclically survive hot and cold temperatures. And high energy particles. And hypervelocity dust. For that, you need a heat shield different from any other heat shield that has ever existed.

A lot of heat shields you typically think about, like the shuttle . . . They have a few minutes maximum of that kind of heat. But at the probes closest approach of 5.9 million kilometers, Congdon says, temperatures will reach up to 1,377 Celsius for a full day.

But carbon can come to the rescue. On Earth, carbon likes to oxidise and make barbeque, chimes Congdon, [but] in the vacuum of space, its a great material for high temperature applications. The probes shield is made of carbon foam, sandwiched between layers of carbon composite, with a reflective ceramic coating.

Whats more, she says, most shields have the luxury of being attached to a vibration-dampening platform. This shield, on the other hand, had to be integrated in such a way that it could mitigate vibration without one so that we could keep the whole system as low mass as possible. The slim, trim, and ultralight build, however, makes it challenging to keep all the sensitive equipment hidden safely behind it.

To that end, the craft is outfitted with solar limb sensors. These sensors would be the first thing to get illuminated if the spacecraft started drifting off-kilter, and would inform the autonomous guidance and control system that keeps all the instruments behind the thermal protection system, and which is even outfitted with a backup processor in case of any malfunctions.

Meanwhile, the solar array, facing solar intensity 475 times greater than here on Earthin an environment where one degree of change, at closest approach, equals a 30 percent change in powerwill automatically retract behind the heat shield whenever it swings toward the sun. From there, itll be kept at a cool 160 Celsius by a network of water-filled titanium channels.

So while the heatshield weathers a minefield of million-mile-per-hour winds and countless coronal mass ejections, the communication system scarcely able to relay information for 11 straight days, the array will be kept comfortableall while powering an autonomous 1,345 lb scientist on the doorstep of our little cosmic neighborhoods big, confounding catalyst.

Going to a place changes everything we think about a place. Just look at New Horizons and how its changed our thoughts, beliefs, and understanding of Pluto. Were really excited to go and totally change our view of the sun, says Congdon. Understanding the suns defining phenomena is a tantalizing goal. But first we have to contend with 143.3 million kilometers of spaceand one of NASAs most technically challenging builds, over half a century in the making.

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A NASA Astronaut Just Pulled Off an Awesome Prank in Space – Space.com

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NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson pops out of a cargo bag during a prank on the International Space Station on Feb. 13, 2017.

NASA astronautPeggy Whitson just pulled off a prank that's literally out of this world.

Whitson, a veteran space traveler, is one of six people living and working on the International Space Station right now. And while astronauts are usually pretty busy in space, Whitson found time Monday (Feb. 13) to surprise her Russian crewmates with a gag you could only pull off in space. As you can see here, Whitson packed herself inside a cargo bag and enlisted two partners-in-prank (NASA's Shane Kimbrough and France's Thomas Pesquet) to surprise their Russian crewmates. [Fun in Zero G: Awesome Weightless Photos]

"They were quite surprised when I popped out!"Whitson wrote in a Twitter post.

Zipped inside a cargo bag @Thom_astro & @astro_kimbrough took me over to the Russian segment. They were quite surprised when I popped out! pic.twitter.com/om59WVfzwE

The Russian members ofthe station's current Expedition 50 crew are Andrewy Borisenko, Sergey Ryzhikov and Oleg Novitskiy. I can only guess at what they thought when a seemingly innocent cargo bag floated into their module, only to have Whitson pop out.

Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut, apparently tried to climb in a cargo bag, too. But that didn't work out.

"I tried ... I but I didn't fit!"Pesquet wrote on Twitter.

This isn't the first time Whitson and her crewmates have had fun in space during their mission. To celebrate the Super Bowl earlier this month, they practiced some weightless tosses of their own ... using Whitson as the ball.

Practicing #SB51 football skills w/ @Thom_astro & @astro_kimbrough. I got a bit worried when Shane yelled "go long. pic.twitter.com/RQ1LvXw21K

And there was that time last month when Whitson decided to play with her space jello.

Gelatin in space! Looks a bit like a tadpole when it is floating around, but I promise it was a tasty treat for us on @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/wlBsC60P5f

Whitson, Pesquet and Novitsky launched to the space station last November, joining Kimbrough (who commands Expedition 50 mission),Borisenko andRyzhikov already onboard. Later this month, Kimbrough,Borisenko andRyzhikov will return to Earth. At that time, Whitson will take command of the space station for the second time in her career a first for a female astronaut.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalikandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Nano-design will reduce smog – Hydrocarbon Engineering

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By optimising titanium dioxide nanoparticles, researchers aim to improve the efficiency of catalysts used for cleaning off-gases from engines, industry, and power plants by 30%. This will significantly enhance companies ability to meet strict environmental regulations.

Haldor Topsoe is part of ProNOx a new four-year, US$4 million research program to improve selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalysts by designing an optimal nanomaterial.

Currently, the most effective catalyst for removing toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx) consist of titanium oxide crystals covered with highly dispersed vanadium oxides. ProNOx researchers aim to identify an industrially viable nano-design of the vanadium covered titanium oxides that will improve the catalysts performance by 30%.

Clean air is increasingly important to people in megacities across the globe, and companies need to stay in compliance with increasingly strict environmental regulations. The ProNOx programme brings together three world-leading research teams to further optimise the best solution, we have available today and I believe that we can improve catalytic emissions control significantly, said Kurt Agerbk Christensen, Senior General Manager, Haldor Topsoe.

SCR catalysts remove NOx from flue gases from engines, boilers and other industrial combustion. NOx causes smog, acid rain, and forms a wide variety of toxic products when it is released into the atmosphere.

The programme will use the most recent research on how to control materials synthesis at the atomic scale by closely integrating synthesis, characterisation, modelling and tests. The end-goal is to identify the optimal SCR catalysts and how to produce it in a controlled way.

The ProNOx programme is a collaboration between Haldor Topsoe and two research teams at Aarhus University, one team from the chemistry department led by Professor Bo Brummerstedt Iversen and the other team from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) led by Associate Professor Jeppe V. Lauritsen. Innovation Fund Denmark invests approximately US$2.8 million in the project.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/the-environment/14022017/nano-design-will-reduce-smog/

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Ben Gurion University to launch nano- satellite – San Diego Jewish World

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Posted on 14 February 2017.

BGUSAT

BEER-SHEVA, Israel(Press Release) BGUSAT, the first nanosatellite for Israeli academic research, is being launched Wednesday, February 15 as part of a collaboration between Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and the Israel Ministry of Science, Technology and Space. It will provide researchers with data on climate change, agricultural developments and other scientific phenomena.

The nanosatellite is slightly larger than a milk carton (4x4x12 inches) and weighs only 11 pounds.

BGUSAT is an important and affordable new tool to facilitate space engineering and research, says Prof. Dan Blumberg, BGU vice president and dean for research and development. The reduced costs allow academia to assume a much more active role in the field, taking advantage of the innovation and initiative of researchers and students.

BGUSAT is outfitted with visual and short wavelength infrared cameras. Hovering at 300 miles above the surface of the earth, the nanosatellites orbital path will enable BGU researchers to study a broad range of environmental phenomena. For example, they will be able to track atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and study Earths airglow layer, which provides crucial information about climate change.

BGUSAT can change its angle and obtain views from multiple orbits and positions. Larger satellites orbit too high to accomplish this, while observation planes and balloons fly too low.

Seed funding to build the BGU satellite and its ground receiving station was provided by AABGU Boca Raton, Florida donors Max and Rachel Javit. Were so pleased to have helped Israel soar to new horizons by providing eyes in the sky, says Rachel. BGUSAT will provide valuable data for BGU and other Israeli academics that will benefit the scientific research community worldwide.

BGU partnered with IAI and the Israel Space Agency within the Science Ministry five years ago. Construction of the satellite began two years ago at IAIs space division. Only a collaboration with government backing can preserve the Israeli space industrys global standing, promote research, create new jobs, and safeguard the essential interests of Israel, says Science Minister Ofir Akunis.

While developing BGUSAT, BGU students and researchers were challenged to conceive new methods of constructing a miniaturized satellite, working together to integrate knowledge from the software and electrical engineering, planetary sciences and industrial management fields.

This is the first project to showcase the enhanced space engineering capability we are developing at BGU, Blumberg says.

BGUs Earth and Planetary Image Facility in the Department of Geography and Environmental Development is one of just five NASA Regional Planetary Image Facilities outside the U.S.

According to Avi Blasberger, director of the Israel Space Agency, This is the first time Israeli researchers will have the opportunity to receive information directly from a blue and white [Israeli] satellite without having to go through other countries or research agencies.

We are proud to be part of this innovative, technological project, which opens up the world of nanosatellites to new and varied scientific missions, says Col. (res.) Ofer Doron, head of IAIs MBT Space Division. For the first time, the space division developed a dedicated computer specifically for nanosatellites that has computing power similar to that of larger satellites. This computer has already been integrated into the SpaceIL spacecraft and the three Samson satellites.

The BGUSAT nanosatellite will be launched from the Satish Dhawan launching pad in India.

* Preceding provided by Ben-Gurion University

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Ian Waitz to step down as dean of engineering – MIT News

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Ian A. Waitz will step down as MITs dean of engineering at the end of this academic year, concluding over six years of service.

Provost Martin Schmidt announced the news today in an email to the MIT community, praising Waitz's collaborative vision that has both bolstered local departments and encouraged the school and the Institute to reach beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to expand the ways that engineering can address our most challenging problems.

MIT President L. Rafael Reif adds, Under Ians leadership, the School of Engineering has never been a stronger magnet for talent. With characteristic energy, optimism, and persistence, he has cultivated a dynamic community that unites the schools many departments and links engineering to disciplines across MIT. And from the Sandbox Fund to the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, he spearheaded new initiatives that will have a lasting impact on our ability to develop our students ingenuity, tackle important problems for humanity, and deliver our best ideas to the world. We are deeply grateful to Ian for his collaborative leadership and his distinguished service.

As dean of the School of Engineering (SoE), Waitz developed and implemented the schools strategic plan, focusing on people, education, and innovation. He made a concerted effort to support faculty while refining the schools primary academic departments and programs by increasingdata-based decision-making, bolstering funding for teaching, addressing research underrecovery, and enabling more local control of resources and strategic direction.

Without a doubt, the greatest thrill of the position has been the opportunity to live vicariously through the accomplishments of our exceptional students, staff, and faculty members, Waitz said in a letter sent today to SoE colleagues. It is a truly humbling experience when one understands the full breadth, depth, and impact of the School of Engineering at MIT. In partnership with our sister schools at MIT we are building a better world.

Waitz, also the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and former head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (from 2008 until his appointment as dean in 2011), has no immediate plans other than taking a year-long sabbatical.

I am not sure what I will do next (the job does not leave a lot of free time for contemplating such things!), but I very much look forward to recharging, redirecting, and exploring new opportunities, he conveyed in his letter to the SoE community. Thank you for allowing me to serve you and the greatest engineering school on the planet.

Of particular note during Waitzs tenure has been the launch of two new Institute-encompassing endeavors: the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). He has also worked to support and strengthen all of the schools academic departments, including a renewal of civil and environmental engineering and growth in nuclear science and engineering.

Novel opportunities in residential education were also priorities for Waitz as dean. He co-launched the MIT Beaver Works Center, which supports collaborative efforts between Lincoln Laboratory and the MIT campus, and was a supporter and early participant in MITx and edX. He worked to strengthen several key MIT-wide educational programs, including the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, and activities within the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs. Waitz worked with department heads to create ways for undergraduate students to pursue more flexible degrees and take courses remotely, and is currently championing a novel school-wide undergraduate degree option. Under his leadership, financial support for teaching in the school grew by over 30 percent.

In parallel, Waitz helped spark new programs and spaces for innovation and entrepreneurship, including the creation of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, which provides all MIT students with an opportunity to move innovative ideas forward. He was a key part of a process that catalyzed the MIT Innovation Initiative, and he successfully articulated the need for expanded makerspaces on campus. Waitz also lobbied on behalf of the School of Engineering for the creation of MIT.nano, a new 200,000-square-foot center for nanoscience and nanotechnology, due to open in 2018.

Waitz established resource development personnel in all departments, which has led to a nearly threefold increase in yearly giving to the SoE during his tenure. He also strengthened partnerships with alumni, industry, and donors by highlighting the benefits of engaging with MIT broadly.

Waitz joined the MIT faculty in 1991, after earning his BS in 1986 from Penn State University, his MS in 1988 from George Washington University, and his PhD in 1991 from Caltech. In addition to scholarly publications, Waitz has contributed to several influential policy documents and scientific assessments, including a report to Congress on aviation and the environment. He holds three patents and has consulted for many organizations. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering and the American Society of Engineering Education. A dedicated teacher, he was honored with the 2002 MIT Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award and an appointment as an MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 2003.

Schmidt plans to appoint a faculty committee to advise him on the selection of the next dean of engineering. Members of the MIT community are welcome to send suggestions and ideas to engineering-search@mit.edu.

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Grant to help pave a big data highway to explore genome, enhance health – Penn State News

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. A $6.1 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health may help researchers leverage massive amounts of genomic data to develop medical treatments and pharmaceuticals, according to an international team of researchers.

The project called VISION or Validated Systematic Integration of Hematopoietic Epigenomes -- will integrate and functionally validate large amounts of emerging genomic and epigenetic data, according to Ross Hardison, T. Ming Chu Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Penn State and a member of the Genome Sciences Institute of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

Hardison, who will lead the international multidisciplinary team, added that the group will try to develop new tools for using data to facilitate advances both in basic research as well as medical applications, such as precision medicine.

The project will focus on blood cell development as a model system for gene regulation in mammals. Blood cell development is vitally important to health because humans must continually replace old and damagedcells, and because many diseases, like leukemias and anemias, result from mis-regulation of gene expression during blood formation.

"We are excited about this project because the methods we are developing can be applied not only to diseases that affect blood, but others as well," Hardison said. "A person's genetic profile can have a significant impact on disease susceptibility and response to specific treatments. However, the critical genetic variants that make up that genetic profile most often do not code for protein, but rather they are located in the much larger noncoding genome. We are studying these noncoding regions and finding new ways to extract valuable information about functional elements within them, which in turn informs us about how genetic variants play a role in disease."

The results of the VISION project are being provided to the research community in readily accessible, web-based platforms and online tools that will allow researchers to extract meaningful, experimentally validated interpretations from the data andproduce a guide for investigators to translate insights from mouse models to human clinical studies.

Hardison is working with Cheryl Keller, project manager, Yu Zhang, associate professor of statistics, andFeng Yue, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, College of Medicine, all at Penn State; Mitchell Weiss, chair of the department of hematology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; Gerd Blobel, Professor of Pediactrics, University of Pennsylvania abd Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; James Taylor, associate professor of biology and associate professor of computer science, Johns Hopkins University; David Bodine, chief and senior investigator, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH; Berthold Gttgens, principal investigator and professor of haematology, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge; Douglas Higgs, group head and principal investigator, and Jim Hughes, associate professor of genome biology, both of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford University.

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Data mining tools for personalized cancer treatment – Science Daily

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Data mining tools for personalized cancer treatment
Science Daily
In the laboratories of Institute of Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), drug testing is done ex vivo. That is, various leukemia drugs are tested with patient samples instead of the patients themselves. This enables the researchers to test different drug ...

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Data mining tools for personalized cancer treatment - Science Daily

Ebolaviruses need very few mutations to cause disease in new host … – Phys.Org

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February 15, 2017 Ebolavirus Protein VP24. Credit: University of Kent

Kent researchers have identified how few mutations it can take for Ebolaviruses to adapt to affect previously resistant species.

Ebola is one of the world's most virulent diseases, though rodent species such as guinea pigs, rats and mice are not normally susceptible to it. However, through repeated infection of a host animal, Ebola virus strains can be generated that replicate and cause disease within new host rodent species.

Scientists in the University of Kent's School of Biosciences examined the changes associated with Ebolavirus adaptation to rodents including guinea pigs and mice across four different studies. They found that only very few mutations, probably fewer than five, are required for the virus to adapt.

In particular, a change in the Ebolavirus protein VP24 seems to be critical for Ebola viruses to infect a new animal species. Ebolaviruses infecting domestic species, including pigs and dogs, may also result in virus changes that may increase the risk to humans. Reston viruses, Ebolaviruses that have not been shown to cause disease in humans, so far, are known to circulate in domestic pigs in Asia.

The research was performed by Dr Mark Wass (Senior Lecturer in Computational Biology), Professor Martin Michaelis (Professor of Molecular Medicine), and Dr Jeremy Rossman (Senior Lecturer in Virology) and members of their research groups.

The research, entitled Changes associated with Ebola virus adaptation to novel species, was published in the journal Bioinformatics.

Explore further: Research shows potential for emergence of new Ebola virus that causes disease in humans

More information: Bioinformatics (2017). DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx065

Journal reference: Bioinformatics

Provided by: University of Kent

New research at the University of Kent has highlighted the potential for the emergence of a new form of Ebolavirus.

Researchers have identified mutations in Ebola virus that emerged during the 2013-2016 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa that increased the ability of the virus to infect human cells, two independent teams of researchers ...

Canadian investigators have shown that a species of ebolavirus from Zaire that is highly virulent in humans can replicate in pigs, cause disease, and be transmitted to animals previously unexposed to the virus. The findings ...

There may be a "silver bullet" for Ebola, a family of hemorrhagic viruses, one of which has killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in the past two years.

(AP) -- A form of ebola virus has been detected in pigs for the first time, raising concerns it could mutate and threaten humans, scientists report.

A researcher at Canada's National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg was "potentially exposed" to the Ebola virus, authorities announced Tuesday.

FedEx, UPS, DHLwhen it comes to sending packages, choices abound. But the most important delivery service you may not have heard of? mRNA. That's short for messenger RNA, which is how your DNA sends blueprints to the protein-assembly ...

The number of alien species is increasing globally, and does not show any sign of saturation, finds an international team involving UCL researchers.

(Phys.org)A team of researchers from Kyoto University has found that dogs and capuchin monkeys watch how humans interact with one another and react less positively to those that are less willing to help or share. In their ...

(Phys.org)A small team of researchers with Queen Mary University of London has found that goats are able to recognize their stable mates by both sight and sound. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open ...

A honeybee signal widely thought to be used by bees in the hive to prevent one another from advertising the location of food could also be a response to being startled or surprised, according to scientists.

Walking on our heels, a feature that separates great apes, including humans, from other primates, confers advantages in fighting, according to a new University of Utah study published today in Biology Open. Although moving ...

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Type 1 diabetes: Reprogramming liver cells may lead to new treatments – Medical News Today

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Researchers have discovered a way to reprogram mouse liver cells into precursor pancreatic cells by changing the expression of a single gene. They suggest that the finding is an important step toward showing that reprogramming liver cells might offer a way forward for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in humans.

The team - led by researchers from the Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany - reports the study in the journal Nature Communications.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that develops either when the body cannot make enough insulin, or when it cannot effectively use the insulin that it does make. Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar, or glucose, and it helps to convert glucose from food into energy for cells.

Uncontrolled diabetes leads to high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, which over time causes serious damage to many parts of the body, including the heart, blood vessels, nerves, eyes, and kidneys.

In the United States, an estimated 29.1 million people have diabetes, including 8.1 million who are undiagnosed.

The most common type of diabetes is type 2, in which the body cannot use insulin effectively. Type 1 diabetes, in which the body does not make enough insulin, accounts for around 5 percent of diabetes cases in adults.

The new study is likely to interest researchers developing treatments for type 1 diabetes. In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas.

Researchers in regenerative medicine are exploring ways to generate new populations of pancreatic beta cells as a possible avenue for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Fast facts about type 1 diabetes

Learn more about type 1 diabetes

The new study concerns a method called cell reprogramming, in which it is possible to convert one type of cell into another type of cell, by tweaking genes.

An obvious source of cells for reprogramming into insulin-producing beta cells might be other types of cell in the pancreas.

In their study paper, the researchers mention other research that shows such pancreatic cells display a high degree of the necessary "cellular plasticity."

However, the researchers chose to focus on liver cells because, from a clinical perspective, they offer important advantages over pancreatic cells; for example, they are more accessible and abundant.

They also cite studies that have partially corrected hyperglycemia in diabetic mice by reprogramming liver cells into pancreatic beta cells.

The new study shows how just by changing the expression of a single gene called TGIF2, the team was able to coax mouse liver cells to take on a less specialized state and then stimulate them to develop into cells with pancreatic features.

When the researchers transplanted the modified cells into diabetic mice, the animals' blood sugar levels improved, suggesting the cells were behaving in a way similar to pancreatic beta cells.

The researchers identified TGIF2 (Three-Amino-acid-Loop-Extension homeobox TG-interacting factor 2) by running gene expression profiling tests on immature liver and pancreas cells isolated from mouse embryos as the cells differentiated toward their particular cell fates.

They found that at a particular differentiation branchpoint, the expression of TGIF2 changes in opposite directions as the cells commit to either liver or pancreatic fates.

The authors note that their study shows that "TGIF2 is a developmental regulator of pancreas versus liver fate decision," and when expressed in adult mouse liver cells, it suppresses the transcription program for liver cells and induces a subset of pancreatic genes.

There is still a lot of work to do to investigate whether the results with mice translate to humans. The team has already started working on human liver cells.

"There are differences between mice and humans, which we still have to overcome. But we are well on the path to developing a 'proof of concept' for future therapies."

Senior author Dr. Francesca M. Spagnoli, Max Delbrck Center

Learn how type 1 diabetes kills some insulin-producing cells but not others.

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Invivoscribe Announces Long-Term Collaboration Agreement with … – Yahoo Finance

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SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 14, 2017) - Invivoscribe Technologies Inc., an international company with decades of experience providing clonality and biomarker test solutions for the fields of oncology, personalized molecular diagnostics and personalized molecular medicine, announces today its long-term collaboration agreement with Illumina Inc., to develop and commercialize in vitro diagnostic (IVD) assays for the next-generation sequencing (NGS) MiSeqDx platform. This agreement allows Invivoscribe to bring IVD assays through the FDA, together with the associated bioinformatics software, for sale and distribution in the US.

Under the terms of the agreement, Invivoscribe will work with Illumina to seek FDA clearance or approval of a number of biomarker and immuno-oncology assay kits for use on the MiSeqDx instrument. Invivoscribe has already developed and commercialized a number of RUO and CE-marked IVD assays for the MiSeq instrument. These assays include a FLT3 mutation assay, a series of B- and T-cell clonality assays used to detect IGH, IGK, and TRG rearrangements, and an IGHV somatic hypermutation assay. A TRB assay kit will be released later this year. All Invivoscribe B- and T-cell clonality RUO assay kits were developed with accompanying design-controlled bioinformatics software, so customers can easily detect and track minimal residual disease (MRD) in a research setting.

Additional tests that have been developed and validated by Invivoscribe include MyAML, MyHEME, and MyMRD gene panels, as well as assays targeting other biomarker mutations. For example, the Invivoscribe FLT3 MRD mutation assay, coupled with its proprietary bioinformatics software, detects and tracks both FLT3 internal tandem duplication (ITD) and tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) mutations in case samples of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) to levels as sensitive as 10-6. A related assay targeting NPM1 is available as a service through Invivoscribe clinical laboratories, LabPMM, to track mutations and residual disease in AML samples.

"This agreement allows us to move forward with the opportunity to offer more than just RUO assays here in the US; it allows us to provide laboratories with internationally-standardized, FDA-approved and -cleared kits that will be of huge benefit to patients and to the field of personalized molecular diagnostics and precision medicine," said Dr. Jeffrey Miller, Founder, CSO & CEO of Invivoscribe. "A number of these assays and associated bioinformatics software have already been validated for use at LabPMM, our CLIA/CAP, ISO 15189 accredited, New York State Licensed laboratory in San Diego. They are currently being used by leading cancer treatment centers to optimize treatment for their patients, and by pharmaceutical partners to stratify, select, and track residual disease in subjects in international phase II and phase III clinical studies. We want to make these powerful tools accessible to all of our partners and customers."

This collaboration agreement is consistent with Invivoscribe's ongoing global initiative to develop and provide standardized molecular diagnostic assays to support precision medicine in the oncology field. Invivoscribe's tests and reagents include a menu of more than 40 CE-marked IVDs for use on a number of capillary electrophoresis and NGS platforms used across the world in 65 countries and in more than 650 clinical and research laboratories. Invivoscribe has long embraced the value of quality systems and develops all products, including bioinformatics software, to be compliant with ISO 13485 design control. The company has companion diagnostics development partnerships with Novartis and Astellas Pharma, Inc., and expects to announce additional collaborations in 2017.

About Invivoscribe Invivoscribe Technologies Inc. is a privately held biotechnology company dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare worldwide by providing high quality, reliable, cutting-edge reagents, tests, and bioinformatics tools to advance the fields of personalized molecular diagnostics and personalized molecular medicine. Invivoscribe provides ISO 13485 certified, cGMP manufactured, PCR- and NGS-based reagents; RUO test kits; CE-marked IVDs, including IdentiClone and LymphoTrack Dx Assays and MyInformatics Software; for clonality, MRD, and somatic hypermutation testing. Invivoscribe's clinical laboratories in the USA, Europe, and Japan provide international access to harmonized CLIA, CAP, and ISO 15189 accredited clinical testing and contract research organization (CRO) services. Additional information can be found at http://www.invivoscribe.com.

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Estrogen explains the exosome-carried messenger profile in the circulation among postmenopausal women – Science Daily

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Estrogen explains the exosome-carried messenger profile in the circulation among postmenopausal women
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... the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku and the Turku Clinical Sequencing Laboratory. In addition, researchers from the University of Oulu and The Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine were involved. The study has been published in the ...

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Estrogen explains the exosome-carried messenger profile in the circulation among postmenopausal women - Science Daily