Aerospace Leadership Changes Effective April 1

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Two Aerospace leadership changes are effective today, both involving senior vice presidents.

Catherine Steele is the senior vice president of National Systems Group, and succeeds Dr. Manuel De Ponte, who retired today. NSG comprises over 700 technical experts that support the national security space and intelligence community in the acquisition, launch, and orbital operation of advanced technology space systems and their ground data stations. Steele was previously vice president, Strategic Space Operations, and oversaw several major mission areas including space situational awareness, space protection, small satellites, and nuclear operations. Steele is located in Aerospaces Chantilly, Virginia office.

Dr. Charles L. Chuck Gustafson is the senior vice president, Engineering and Technology Group, and succeeds Dr. Rami Razouk, who retired today. ETG comprises about 1,200 engineers and scientists, nearly half the companys technical staff. ETG provides support to all national security space programs in the areas of Space and Launch Vehicles, Electronics and Sensors, Computers and Software, Communications and Cyber, and Systems Engineering and Architecting. Gustafson was previously general manager of the Launch Systems Division, where he was responsible for Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle new entrant certification activities, civil and commercial launch programs, and enterprise-level functions. Gustafson is located in Aerospaces El Segundo office.

The Aerospace Corporation is a California nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center and has approximately 3,500 employees. It provides guidance and advice to military, civil, and commercial customers to ensure the success of complex, technology-based programs. The Aerospace Corporation is headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., with multiple locations across the United States.

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Aerospace Leadership Changes Effective April 1

Aerospace Maintenance Competition Taking Place During MRO Americas 2015

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The Aerospace Maintenance Competition (AMC) is taking place next week, April 14-16, at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, FL, during MRO Americas 2015. AMC brings teams together from all over the world to compete in a skill-based competition. Teams consist of either certified Aircraft Maintenance Technicians, Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, international and domestic Armed Forces personnel involved in aircraft maintenance, and students enrolled in either FAA, EASA or CASA schools. All teams are divided into categories of General Aviation, Commercial Aviation, Space, Military, MRO/OEM and School. These teams compete in a timed competition by testing their knowledge and skills in 16 scheduled events that highlight the principles of the AMT and AME craft and profession.

RF System Lab, manufacturer of the VJ-Advance video borescope, is proud to be a sponsor of AMC 2015.RF System Lab is donating a VJ-Advance to the winning school team and is excited to be providing the winning students an opportunity to enhance their studies through hands-on learning with the tools regularly used in the aviation maintenance industry.

Another AMC sponsor is the Aeronautical Repair Station Association. The ARSA is a repeat sponsor of AMC and is an extremely important part of the aviation maintenance industry.

RF System Lab is proud to stand alongside other companies and organizations who are an integral part of the aviation community. Interested parties can help these and many other sponsors support the teams competing next week by stopping by the Aerospace Maintenance Competition at MRO Americas 2015.

More information about the Aerospace Maintenance Competition can be found at the event website. More information about RF System Lab and the VJ-Advance video borescope can be found at http://www.rfsystemlab.us or by calling 855-787-3091.

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Aerospace Maintenance Competition Taking Place During MRO Americas 2015

World Nanomedicine Universe Discussed by Kuick Research in New Market Study Recently Published at MarketPublishers.com

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London, UK (PRWEB) April 09, 2015

Pharmacos are developing more effective drug delivery vehicles with the aid of nanotechnology. Lack of specificity induces undue drug wastage, reduced potency and undesirable side effects during treatment. This is a serious problem, especially when a patient is suffering from cancer, where the use of chemotherapy is part of therapeutic regimen. Easy modification, customisability and product cost are set to be the major factors determining the commercial success apart from their pharmacological benefits. Heavy investments in R&D are poised to assist in identifying effective nanoparticle-based drug delivery vehicles.

Manifold nanotechnology-based devices, medicines, chips and sensors are undergoing various stages of clinical trials. To date, there are 144 nanomedicines in clinical development. The majority of the nanomedicines are in pre-clinical development phase, followed by research phase. Only a limited number of products are in the market for few indications; currently, 13 nanomedicines are commercially available in the market. Their clinical pipeline is getting stronger year by year and novel incentives are being taken by pharmacos, but the rate of commercialisation of such products is slow and the market size is still limited. To surmount these barriers, the pace of R&D alongside market introduction needs to be increased in the offing. This would help generate a big chunk of revenues, however, it will take several years for nanomedicines to receive recognition as mainstream medicines. Judging by the pace at which they are growing, nanomedicines and associated medical technologies have bright future.

New research report Global Nanomedicine Market & Pipeline Insight 2015 developed by Kuick Research is now available at MarketPublishers.com.

Report Details:

Title: Global Nanomedicine Market & Pipeline Insight 2015 Published: April, 2015 Pages: 330 Price: US$ 2,400.00 https://marketpublishers.com/report/medical_devices/other_medical_devices/global-nanomedicine-market-pipeline-insight-2015.html

The report offers a detailed guide to the worldwide nanomedicine (nanotherapeutic) marketplace. It provides deep insights into the nanomedicine mechanism, an analysis of the present-day market scenario and an overview of the nanomedicine product pipeline globally. The research report limelights the market dynamics covering major market driving factors and challenges, as well as peeps into the future development path of the sector. The study reviews the nanomedicine product clinical pipeline by indication, phase and company; discusses marketed nanomedicines by company and disease indication; sheds light on the suspended and discontinued nanomedicine clinical pipeline. The research publication delves in the competitive landscape along with profiling the major players.

Report Highlights:

More new reports by the publisher can be found at Kuick Research page.

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World Nanomedicine Universe Discussed by Kuick Research in New Market Study Recently Published at MarketPublishers.com

Comprehend complex data sets through visual representations

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Component technologies such as visualisation tools, modelling techniques and user interfaces have been heavily influencing the success of data visualisation (DV) solutions. As such, DV researchers and solution providers should form strategic alliances to drive advancements in component technologies. Only then can DV emerge as a holistic solution, which can deliver simplicity and a high level of user controllability.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Data Visualisation - An Outlook on Disruptive Techniques (http://www.frost.com/d549), forecasts that the DV technology value chain will bring more application developers into its fold by adopting core software technologies with features such as high agnosticism, ability to integrate easily, and plug-in options for a wide range of applications. This, in turn, will enable faster diffusion of DV technologies across various application segments.

For instance, with its efficient interface that can deal with heavy numbers and algorithms to considerably reduce the load on big data analytics engines, DV is on the verge of becoming the most indispensable technology for big data solution providers.

"Big data solution providers are beginning to realise the need for varied DV techniques to enhance their analytics capabilities," noted Technical Insights Senior Research Analyst Sathya Vendhan. "Small- and medium-sized DV solution providers are therefore likely to strike collaboration deals with big data companies in the next three to six years."

The rapid increase of DV in small-screen mobile devices is also propelling solution providers to extend their reach beyond companies to the individual customer level. Small- and medium- sized DV technology providers will begin to occupy a major part of the market, as solutions evolve to provide interactive visuals on day-to-day activities, health conditions and other vital information.

"DV solution providers will imbibe more customisation and personalisation techniques for product development," added Vendhan. "To facilitate this transformation, DV research firms will create algorithms, which can be used in simple mobile devices as well as integrated in any sector-specific application."

So far, however, it has been difficult for DV application developers to convert general algorithms to application-specific functionalities due to compatibility issues. To overcome this issue, the majority of DV solution providers in the market are now using open source-based algorithms.

The challenges for DV hardware technology developers have been slightly different. For large-scale DV systems, hardware technology developers need to develop processors and servers that can support the charting engines seamlessly. Moreover, they have to ensure the availability of high-quality RAM, which is required to perform complex analytics.

Notwithstanding the market challenges, DV is expected to have the maximum impact on social networking. The technology's ability to provide a full view of even the minute details of activities in the social network medium has set it up to become the most needed medium for marketing, entertainment, governance and crime investigation as well.

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Comprehend complex data sets through visual representations

Agnostic Catholic

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I BELIEVE in God for I had been raised God-fearing in a Catholic family. From generations then, Catholicism has run in the veins of my Kin. And this may well explain why since Kindergarten to elementary, high school toward college and graduate school, I had been in a sectarian Jesuit academic institution. With both forces at play -- family and school -- no doubt the Catholic faith has been reinforced to me like the Pavlovian conditioning or Skinners rewards and punishments.

As such, no doubt, I have known of prayers and doctrines that are of Catholic. I have memorized the different books of the bible, as well as the saints. I conform to Catholic traditions. I attend masses during Christmases, New Years, Holy Week and all other special masses aside from my birthday.

I have always been a conformist to the rituals of my Faith. And beyond dramaturgy or staged social interaction, I have always found the gospel and the bible insightful. I have always gleamed clarity to the lengthy homilies and litanies of the priest. I have always been moved by how their brief anecdotes capture the realities of daily living in the parallel world of good and evil.

But thats just it.

As I was growing up, I have seen the other side of the coin -- the abuses of some Catholic priests centuries ago with some of its remnants surviving the post-modern days. No one will argue in history classes that Spanish colonizers then "forced" their Western culture to our primitive ancestors under the banner of religion. If one closely examines history, was it not a social mechanism of control to use "garote" on Filipino heretics, who refuse to accept the Catholic faith. Most of the victims must have been our Muslim ancestors, thus, the division between some of the Catholics and Islam in the current era.

Likewise, if one examines the legitimacy then of kings, emperors and all the other monarchs, was it not a belief drenched and soaked in the fluidity of the notion that they were anointed by God and must be given the highest regard for they have been appointed to gain dominion over a certain land. Furthermore, who crowns these extensions of the divine? Was it not the popes from Rome?

One cannot help but think that to prevent questioning their legitimacy, religion is invoked to explain and justify.

As my mind sharpened, I began to be empiricist with my faith.

Am I to be blamed? I was trained to think scientifically and to be logical by the same Jesuit institution which conferred me my degree in nursing, although, they never made implicit to question Faith as it was beyond the realm of positivism.

Still, my destination toward agnosticism was furthered, as I entered the graduate school of the same Jesuit institution for the degree master of arts in sociology. This time, I have seen the fullest view of religion in the sociological and anthropologic context. Surrounded by the professors, whom I assumed shared the same thoughts with me on religion sociologists and anthropologists as they are; I have been condition to view religion as opium of the oppressed that functions to reduce anxiety.

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Agnostic Catholic

School notes: FCPS students take home prizes at state science fair

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Two FCPS students take home grand prize awards at state science fair

Two Fairfax County public school students won grand prize awards at the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair.

FCPS students took first place in nine of the 17 categories in the fair, held March 27-28 at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington.

Ava Lakmazaheri of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology won the second grand prize in the fair and first prize for her project in the electrical and mechanical engineering category. Fellow TJ student Matthew Park won a grand prize runner-up award and first prize in the microbiology category for his project.

Both Lakmazaheri and Park qualified to compete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, scheduled for May 10-15 in Pittsburgh.

FCPS students from TJ, Madison, Marshall and West Potomac also took home first-place awards in seven other categories: behavioral and social science; computer science; earth and planetary science; energy and transportation; environmental management; physics and astronomy; and plant science.

The Unified Prevention Coalition will host two community forums on the dangers of alcohol abuse.

The forums will be held Tuesday, April 14, at 7 p.m. at Madison High School, and Wednesday, May 20, at 7 p.m. at the Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College. Parents are encouraged to attend with their adolescent children.

The UPC is a nonprofit that partners with school and government officials and community groups to combat substance abuse. The events, under the headline The Perils of College Drinking Culture, will feature a screening and panel discussion of a documentary on binge drinking on college campuses.

Featured speakers and panelists will include Deputy Commonwealths Attorney Casey Lingan, Fairfax County Police Sgt. Dan Pang, and Inova Fairfax Hospital emergency physician Dr. William Hauda, among others.

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School notes: FCPS students take home prizes at state science fair

Russian oligarch offers $1m to the first person that lives to 123

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The large prize is being offered by businessman, Dmitry Kaminskiy He hopes money will help create a new group of 'supercenternarians' Jeanne Calment holds the record of oldest person, dying aged 122.5 He has made a $1m bet with Dr Alex Zhavoronkov on who will die first

By Zoltan Istvan For Dailymail.com

Published: 17:02 EST, 10 April 2015 | Updated: 19:23 EST, 10 April 2015

Dmitry Kaminskiy is hoping his million dollar gift will trigger a new group of 'supercenternarians'

A Russian multi-millionaire whose dream it is to live forever has promised to give $1 million to the first person to reach the age of 123.

Dmitry Kaminskiy, a senior partner of Hong Kong-based firm, Deep Knowledge Ventures, is hoping his million dollar gift will trigger a new group of 'supercenternarians'.

He says research into stem cells, tissue rejuvenation and regenerative medicine will allow people to live beyond 120 - an age that has been quoted as the 'real absolute limit to human lifespan'.

'We live in the most exciting era of human development when technologies become exponential and transformative,' Kaminskiy told DailyMail.com.

'They may not realise it, but some of the supercentenarians alive today may see the dawn of the next century if they live long enough for these transformative technologies to develop.

'I hope that my prize will help some of them desire longer lifespans and make their approaches to living longer a little more competitive.'

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Russian oligarch offers $1m to the first person that lives to 123

Study Showing How Stem Cells Slow Aging May Lead To New Heart Failure Treatments

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Durham, NC /PRNewswire/ -- A new study published in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine demonstrates how mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) not only protect the heart from further damage after a cardiac incident but can actually slow down its aging process, too. These findings, in a rat model of the aging heart, could help propel stem cells to the forefront as a potential solution for more effective ways to treat heart conditions.

"This study is important as it suggests an alternative approach for treating heart failure in elderly patients," said Yanjie Lu, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the pharmacology department at Harbin Medical University (HMU) in Harbin, China, and a world-renowned expert on myocardial infarction. He led the study, conducted by colleagues at HMU.

Aging is a complex and multifaceted process, resulting in damage to molecules, cells and tissue that in turn leads to declining organs. Mesenchymal stem cells, found in bone marrow, can generate bone, cartilage and fat cells that support the formation of blood and fibrous connective tissue. These stem cells also can be coaxed in the laboratory into becoming a variety of cell types, from cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) and neurons, to osteoblasts, smooth muscle cells and more.

Several studies have already shown that MSCs can reverse age-related degeneration of multiple organs, restore physical and cognitive functions of aged mice, and improve age-associated osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease and atherosclerosis. Dr. Lu's team has been looking into the anti-aging benefits MSCs might have on the heart, too.

"We previously showed that MSCs offer an anti-senescence action on cardiomyocytes as they grow older," he explained. (Senescence is the condition or process of deterioration with age, including the loss of a cell's power to divide and grow.) "However, what we didn't know was whether these findings from a cellular model could be applied to more physiological conditions in whole animals. That's what we wanted to learn with this study."

They decided to explore their question using rats. After injecting MSCs into rat cardiomyoctyes being cultured in lab dishes and receiving encouraging results, they repeated the procedure on a group of young (4 months old) rats and old (20 months) rats, too. The results in both instances demonstrated that MSCs have a significant anti-aging effect.

"Our study didn't just unravel the efficacy of MSCs in fighting cardiac aging, it also delineated the mechanisms underlying this beneficial action," Dr. Lu explained. "The anti-aging effects could be ascribed to the MSCs anti-oxidative action. The results provide a novel strategy for retarding the cardiac aging process."

"This study helps unravel the efficacy of these cells in fighting cardiac aging and delineates the underlying mechanisms," said Anthony Atala, M.D., editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "The results suggest a promising therapeutic approach for treating heart failure in the elderly population."

The full article, "Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell transplantation retards the natural senescence of rat hearts," can be accessed at http://www.stemcellstm.com.

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), published by AlphaMed Press, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices.

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Study Showing How Stem Cells Slow Aging May Lead To New Heart Failure Treatments

Governments who want to ban smoking from films should butt out

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Martin Ruetschi/Keystone/Redux

These should be salad days for anti-smoking crusaders. New data show only 15 per cent of Canadians currently smoke, and just 11 per cent on a daily basis. These are the lowest rates ever recorded; as recently as 1999, smokers made up a quarter of the population. The decline is even more pronounced among teenaged Canadians, suggesting this downward trend will continue well into the future. Despite such success, however, tobacco-control advocates seem perpetually unsatisfiedto the extent theyre now pushing measures that threaten the limits of good science, artistic freedom and civil society.

Smoking is obviously a significant health risk. While adults may choose to take it up in full knowledge of its dangers and costs, we properly restrict adolescents from making a similar choice. But how far should this effort go? The conference, Silencing Big Tobacco on the Big Screen, held in Toronto earlier this month, garnered considerable attention for its proposal that all movies featuring characters who smoke should be rated 18A (those under 18 need adult accompaniment). Impressionable young moviegoers would thus be shielded from the sight of such Hollywood role models as Cruella de Vil, the cigarette-wielding, dog-napping villain of the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians, and Gandalf, the pipe-puffing wizard from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies.

Public health groups claim, with scientific certainty, that movie censorship will prevent teens from taking up the habit. U.S. research argues that 37 per cent of all teenaged smokers do so because theyve been influenced by movies. Building on this, a study released last year by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit obsessively toted up every glimpse of tobacco smoke across a decades worth of top-grossing films and declared that 4,237 residents of the province will die prematurely as a result of tobacco imagery in movies. Despite such exactitude, however, these claims are complicated by important questions of causality. Does the sight of a smoker in a movie seduce innocent teenagers into a lifetime of cigarette use, or do teenagers predisposed to rebellious behaviour simply prefer movies that show smoking, not to mention plenty of other equally risky activities? While anti-smoking researchers insist that their studies carefully isolate the effect of smoking on young viewers, teasing out such a nuance is simply not feasible, as Simon Chapman, editor emeritus of the academic journal Tobacco Control, has pointed out. Chapman strongly chastises the censorship movement for its crude reductionism and questionable precision in ignoring the near-perfect correlation between smoking and other dangerous activities in movies. The only solution to this statistical obstacle, he notes, would be to conjure a genre of movies full of smoking but lacking car chases, violence, guns, drugs, alcohol, sex, nudity, profanity and abuse of authority. Good luck with that.

The proof arising from this data is often underwhelming, as well. One of the most frequently referenced studies claiming to prove a link between cinematic smoking and youth behaviour surveyed 2,603 adolescents over 2 years. Only six became new regular smokers. Most of the subjects mustered as evidence of the power of movie-induced smoking took just a few puffs of a cigarette over the entire period. Its hardly a smoking gun. As the study itself reveals, parental behaviour exerts far more influence on adolescent tobacco use than personal taste in movies.

And, even setting aside serious defects of science, does anyone really think slapping an 18A rating on a movie will prevent unaccompanied teenagers from seeing the forbidden act of smoking? The tidal wave of pornography available for free on the Internet suggests not.

Then again, the end game is not to hide teenaged eyes from smoking in movies, but to eliminate it entirely. Faced with proposed ratings guidelines, advocates hope Hollywood will eventually remove cigarettes from all (or nearly all) of its movies to ensure the widest possible audience for its product. The campaign thus seeks control over the content of a popular art form through government regulation and coercion. Forcing the movie industry to deliver state-sanctioned religious or moral instruction would be immediately repulsive to Canadian society. Why should such a thing be acceptable in the name of promoting anti-smoking policy?

Lately, it has become popular for tobacco opponents to talk of de-normalizing cigarette use. New rules in Ontario and elsewhere, for example, have banned smoking outdoors in parks and sports fieldswhere second-hand smoke poses no legitimate health threat to othersto control what is considered normal, everyday behaviour. Plans to censor movies are similarly offensive, in that they also seek to limit what may be seen in public space. Disseminating information on the hazards of smoking remains an important function for the field of public health. But it is the not job of government to decide what normal looks like.

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Governments who want to ban smoking from films should butt out

Teachers sue to join union without paying for political activities

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An advocacy group has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop teachers unions in California from using member dues for political purposes unless individual instructors provide their permission.

The effort, if successful, could weaken the influence of these unions by limiting their spending.

The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court by StudentsFirst, a Sacramento-based organization that has opposed candidates and measures backed by teachers unions nationwide, while also working to pass laws that curtail union power.

In the suit, four teachers, including two from the Los Angeles Unified School District, assert that union rules and state laws violate their 1st Amendment rights to free speech because they cannot belong to the union unless they allow a portion of their dues to be spent on political activity. The teachers claim they should be able to join without subsidizing viewpoints they may oppose.

As part of protecting the right to free speech, the 1st Amendment does not permit forcing an individual to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support, the suit states.

The defendants are the two largest teachers unions in the country as well as the two largest in California. Also being suedare two union locals where three of the teachers work, including United Teachers Los Angeles. The suit also names the superintendents of L.A. Unified, West Contra Costa Unified and Arcadia Unified school districts.

Union leaders characterized the legal action as an attempt to limit what labor can accomplish against well-funded business interests and other opponents by cutting off funding.

Thislawsuit is attempting to use the 1st Amendment to stifle speech, not enhance it, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement.

In California, although teachers are not compelled to join a union, they must pay a portion of membership dues as agency fees to cover their estimated share of costs when the union negotiates contract terms on their behalf.

The remaining portion, which the plaintiffs pegged at 30% to 40%, can be spent on political activities. Union leaders pointed out that contributing this portion is optional.

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Teachers sue to join union without paying for political activities