Billion-Dollar Road Trip Will Bring Space Boulder Into Lunar Orbit

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NASA is going on a $1.25-billion road trip, and all were getting is this lousy boulder.

Today, the space agency announced a modified plan for its Asteroid Redirect Mission: Instead of bringing an entire asteroid back to lunar orbit, an uncrewed spacecraft will snag a boulder.

Were going to have a sensor suite on the spacecraft that will allow us to actually look at the boulders and actually make an educated choice about which ones were going to pull, says NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot. Lets get on with it.

As described during a news conference, NASA will select a final destination for its spacecraft in 2019. Theres already a space-rock short list that includes Itokawa, Bennu, and 2008 EV5, the last of which is currently at the top of the list. The spacecraft will launch in December 2020, then spend about two years heading into an asteroid belt in Earth's neighborhood.

Once it gets there, it will retrieve a boulder up to 13 feet (four meters) wide from the surface, then spend anywhere between 215 and 400 days circling the asteroid, using its gravity to nudge the giant rock into a different orbit.

Next, the spacecraft will return its prize, the boulder, to a stable orbit around the moon in 2025. At that point, astronauts could rendezvous with the boulder and collect samples.

If successful, the mission will be the first to purposefully place a hefty chunk of space rock anywhere near Earth. Astronauts will dock with the retrieved boulder and collect data that will help scientists learn more about the particular type of asteroid it came from.

NASA says the mission is a stepping-stone toward human exploration of Mars, as well as a chance to test planetary defense strategies. While the spacecraft is visiting its target asteroid, it will be gently redirecting it to a different orbit, allowing scientists to test a possible way to deflect large asteroids heading for Earth.

Several of the missions components, such as solar electric propulsion, are being considered for extended missions into deep space.

NASA is moving into whats called Phase A, where mission plans are being refined. Target selection wont happen for a few more years, and NASA needs to get its heavy lifterthe Space Launch System and Orion crew capsuleup and running to actually send humans to lunar orbit.

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Billion-Dollar Road Trip Will Bring Space Boulder Into Lunar Orbit

Wearable Electronics' Newest Wrinkle: Power-Producing Cloth

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Good-bye charging cords and batteries. Wearable electronics such as the Apple Watch might soon power themselves with a clean, portable energy source: human motion.

If cutting-edge nano science pans out, limited battery life may no longer be the bugaboo of everyday technology. At universities worldwide, researchers are finding new ways to produce power from walking, typing, and other basic activities.

Their progress, documented in at least 146 scientific papers in the last three years, holds promise not only for wearable devices but also for keyboards, smartphones, laptops, and biomedical applications such as robotic skins.

"Self-powered electronics will play a critical role in the Internet of Things," in which people and devices are seamlessly connected, says Zhong Lin Wang, a leading researcher in nanotechnology as regents' professor of engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. (Read about how scientists also develop nanobatteries.)

The basic principlestatic electricityis ancient. It focuses on the friction that occurs when two dissimilar materials touch each other. It's basically the spark that can occur when combing your hair, putting on a freshly laundered fleece in winter, or touching a doorknob after shuffling across carpet.

What's new are the minuscule materials, typically a fraction of the width of human hair. The result: Nanogenerators that are triboelectric, which stems from the Greek word for "rub."

A new backpack device harnesses the energy created by people walking to light more than 40 commercial LEDs.

The latest example is a flexible and foldable cloth that, in lab experiments, powered LEDs, a liquid crystal display, and a vehicle's keyless-entry remote. Here's how it worked: A team of Korean and Australian researchers stacked together four pieces of this clothcoated with nanorods and a silicon-based organic materialand then pushed down on the material and captured the energy generated from that pressure.

"The cloth worked for more than 12,000 cycles, showing very good mechanical durability," says Sang-Woo Kim of Korea's Sungkyunkwan University, lead author of a paper that was published last month in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Nano.

"Cost is not a big hurdle for commercialization," he says, noting the materials are inexpensive. Yet the smart cloth needs to be washable, so his team is pursuing "novel technology" to make it waterproof.

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Wearable Electronics' Newest Wrinkle: Power-Producing Cloth

More anti-inflammatory genes mean longer lifespans for mammals

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We age in part thanks to "friendly fire" from the immune system -- inflammation and chemically active molecules called reactive oxygen species that help fight infection, but also wreak molecular havoc over time, contributing to frailty, disability and disease. The CD33rSiglec family of proteins are known to help protect our cells from becoming inflammatory collateral damage, prompting researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine to ask whether CD33rSiglecs might help mammals live longer, too.

In a study published April 7 by eLife, the team reports a correlation between CD33rSIGLEC gene copy number and maximum lifespan across 14 mammalian species. In addition, they found that mice lacking one CD33rSIGLEC gene copy don't live as long as normal mice, have higher levels of reactive oxygen species and experience more molecular damage.

"Though not quite definitive, this finding is provocative. As far as we know, it's the first time lifespan has been correlated with simple gene copy number," said Ajit Varki, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine and member of the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. "Since people also vary in number of CD33rSIGLEC gene copies, it will be interesting to see if these genes influence variations in human lifespan as they do in mice."

Varki led the study, along with Pascal Gagneux, PhD, associate professor of pathology.

The CD33rSIGLEC genes encode siglec receptors that bind sialic acids -- sugar molecules found on many cells. These siglec receptors stick out like antennae on the outer surface of immune cells, probing the surface of other "self" cells in the body. When sialic acids bind siglec receptors, they transmit the message to the inside of the cell. This signal relay puts a brake on immune cell activation. In this way, the CD33rSiglec receptors help dampen chronic inflammation and reactive oxygen species in the body.

Different mammal species carry different numbers of the CD33rSIGLEC genes in their genomes. In this study, Varki, Gagneux and colleagues surveyed 14 different mammalian genomes, including those of elephants, dogs, monkeys and humans, and found that CD33rSIGLEC gene number correlates with maximum lifespan. In other words, species with more copies tend to live longer, even when the researchers controlled for other factors, such as body mass, adjacent genes and shared evolutionary history.

To dig deeper, Varki, Gagneux and team turned to a mouse model. They discovered that mice that were missing one CD33rSIGLEC gene and experienced inflammation early in life showed signs of accelerated aging (gray hair, disorientation, thin skin), had higher levels of reactive oxygen species and did not live as long as normal mice.

"The higher CD33rSIGLEC gene number can be thought of as an improved maintenance system that co-evolved in mammals to buffer against the effects of many infectious episodes fought off by the immune system of long-lived mammals," said Gagneux.

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of California, San Diego Health Sciences. The original article was written by Heather Buschman, PhD. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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More anti-inflammatory genes mean longer lifespans for mammals

YouTuber MysteryGuitarMan and Jeff Schweikart create love story with 1,296 RUBIK'S CUBES

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The animation was the work of Joe Penna and Jeff Schweikart Penna, aka MysteryGuitarMan, wasassistedby three people Project took the group between three-to-four days to complete Video features a robot finding love of his life on another planet

By Jake Polden For Mailonline

Published: 06:23 EST, 7 April 2015 | Updated: 06:31 EST, 7 April 2015

The Rubiks Cube is notorious for having boggled many a bright mind since its official inception in 1980.

But for Youtube user Joe Penna, who is based in Los Angeles, and animator Jeff Schweikart it is merely a toy in which to create amazing pieces of artwork.

Penna, who is best known online as MysteryGuitarMan, solved a whopping 1,296 mini Rubik's Cubes 961 times to create a short animated video.

Amazing animation as 1300 rubik's cubes make robot love!

Youtube user Joe Penna (pictured) and animator Jeff Schweikart took between three-to-four days to complete the project

With the help of Schweikart, the pair produce arguably the greatest love story ever told between a pair of robots with a lot of Rubiks Cubes.

The short narrative features a robot entering a workshop, building a spaceship and heading off into the atmosphere.

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YouTuber MysteryGuitarMan and Jeff Schweikart create love story with 1,296 RUBIK'S CUBES

Genomics, Big Data, and Medicine Seminar Series — Eric D. Green – Video

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Genomics, Big Data, and Medicine Seminar Series -- Eric D. Green
Eric D. Green, Director, National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) speaks on human genomics, precision medicine, and advancing human health....

By: Icahn School of Medicine

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Genomics, Big Data, and Medicine Seminar Series -- Eric D. Green - Video

Andrew Kung, MD, PhD, explains how precision medicine helps clinical decision making – Video

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Andrew Kung, MD, PhD, explains how precision medicine helps clinical decision making
From a conversation on the future of cancer held on March 24 at Columbia University, to mark the PBS broadcast of Ken Burns Presents Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, a film by Barak...

By: Columbia University Medical Center

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Andrew Kung, MD, PhD, explains how precision medicine helps clinical decision making - Video

Risk of breast and ovarian cancer may differ by type of BRCA1, BRCA2 mutation

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Findings may lead to more effective cancer risk assessment, care and prevention strategies

PHILADELPHIA - In a study involving more than 31,000 women with cancer-causing mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, researchers at The Basser Center for BRCA, the Abramson Cancer Center, and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania identified mutations that are associated with significantly different risks of breast and ovarian cancers. Authors say the results - which show that some mutations confer higher risks of breast cancer, while other mutations show higher risks of ovarian cancer - may lead to more effective cancer risk assessment, care and prevention strategies for health care providers and carriers. The results are published in the April 7 issue of JAMA.

"We've made a lot of progress toward understanding how to reduce the cancer risks associated with inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, but until now, little has been known about how cancer risks differ by the specific mutation a woman has inherited," said Timothy R. Rebbeck, PhD, professor of Epidemiology, and associate director for Population Science at Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center. "The results of this study are a first step in understanding how to personalize risk assessment around a woman's specific mutation, which can help guide carriers and providers in the cancer prevention decision making process."

Rebbeck and colleagues evaluated cancer diagnoses for 19,581 carriers of BRCA1 mutations and 11,900 carriers of BRCA2 mutations. The team then analyzed whether the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation type or location was correlated to breast and/or ovarian cancer risk. He and his co-authors identified regions of both BRCA1 and BRCA2 that, when mutated, confer higher risks of ovarian cancer, and other regions that confer higher risk of breast cancer.

Previously, a woman with a BRCA1 mutation would have been thought to have a 59 percent risk of breast cancer and a 34 percent risk for ovarian cancer, up until age 70. However, the new research suggests that women who carry a specific subset of BRCA mutations most commonly present in the Ashkenazi Jewish population have a higher risk of breast cancer (69 percent) and a lower risk of ovarian cancer (26 percent), for example. The important question that remains is whether these differences will change the decisions a woman makes about preventive surgery or other behaviors.

"With these new findings, we've gained knowledge of mutation-specific risks which could provide important information for risk assessment among BRCA1/2 mutation carriers," said senior author Katherine L. Nathanson, MD, associate professor of Medicine and director of Genetics in the Basser Research Center for BRCA at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center, "Additional research is needed to determine the absolute risks associated with different mutations, and how those differences might influence decision making and standards of care, such as preventive surgery, for carriers of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations."

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In addition to Rebbeck and Nathanson, other Penn authors on the study include Nandita Mitra, PhD, and Fei Wan, MS, from the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Susan M. Domchek, MD, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA.

Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.9 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 17 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $409 million awarded in the 2014 fiscal year.

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Risk of breast and ovarian cancer may differ by type of BRCA1, BRCA2 mutation